The team began by building canoes, plotting a route, securing sponsors, and procuring provisions for the 65 day trip which began last month. The team has set up several forms of media including a website, blog, and social media, which they attempt to update when they can retrieve a signal. (See the bottom of this page for the links.) The Expedition 2012 team has been featured in Canoe & Kayak Magazine, Wooden Canoe Magazine, and an online feature in Adventure World Magazine.
Growing up in Naperville, Sauer became in tune with nature at a young age. He began looking at gardening books at age four. He studied local plants and animals, making frequent trips to the Riverwalk and forest preserves. A curiosity sparked him, wanting to learn how to capture the natural world through photography and film.
Sauer always had a camera in hand taking film and photography classes at Naperville North High School and then proceeding to study at Boston University. He spent the last few summers as a camp counselor for the Keewaydin Foundation in VT, where he first met his Expedition 2012 paddling mates.
The team is paddling forward and raising money for a newly created Scholarship for the Keewaydin Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest summer camps established near Lake Dunmore, VT in 1893.
The expedition needed a videographer and Sauer writes how the trip came about. He had to, unexpectedly, graduate college a semester early.
“The other members of Expedition 2012 called and asked me to graduate early, come along for the trip, ditch all forms of technology except for a camera and make a film about the journey.”
The crew is documenting the current state of the wilderness territory with photography, video, and keeping a paddling log. They hope to bring awareness for the continued preservation of the wilderness and an individual’s intimate relationship with nature for future generations and paddlers.
The crew’s last update posted three days ago states, “We camped on Sucker Gut Lake, just before Frank’s Falls on the North Channel of the Lady Evelyn River.” This is a few hundred miles north of Toronto.
Stay tuned for updates as Positively Naperville tracks this trek as it paddles into northern Canada.
