The Fond du Lac's course generally demarcates a faultline between the harder granite to the northeast and the softer gravels and sandstone to the southwest. Since the river has had an easy job cutting its way through the soft gravels and sandstone formations, there are very few of the violent, drop-pool rapids typical of rivers that cut their way through harder granite formations.

Black Lake's spectacular Burr Falls

The geology of the Fond du Lac makes for a river with lots of long, shallow rock-strewn rapids and a few steep, short falls where its course intersects harder rock formations. To the southwest of the Fond du Lac is the Athabasca Basin. It is characterized by open stands of mature jack pine placed on soft carpets of caribou moss, bearberry, twinflower, and a host of other low, creeping flora. Many sand eskers and drumlins cut into the river on the northeast-southwest geological strike that appeared as the glaciers retreated from the area. It is not uncommon to walk for miles in these stands of mature jack pine trees without having to step over a dead log — thus the local designation"parkland" for this seemingly cultivated forest.

I refer to this country as the "friendly wilderness": Although far from civilization, it is such a comfortable and easy area to travel in that you are lulled into an immediate sense of relaxation. Mature jack pine forests require forest fires to begin their growth again — the cones need intense heat to open — and you will frequently find yourself paddling through old fire-killed areas where you can see the new-growth jack pine reclaiming the area. Dry, standing-dead firewood is everywhere, and you're almost guaranteed to find a gorgeous campsite within minutes of deciding to end your day's paddle. On one trip my partner was marking good camp spots on his map for future reference; after the first twenty finds in our morning's paddle I convinced him that perhaps it would be easier to mark the bad sections of the river.

The other predominate forest type, along with occasional tamarack and paper birch, is the black spruce, which claims the lower, wet, muskeg areas.

Sedimentary sandstone has been deposited as slablike layers along much of the Fond du Lac. The river has carved its way through the soft, porous material, leaving gorgeous, striated, vertical walls, many over fifty feet high. In many places the river has undercut the overhanging material to form shallow caves and roofed ledges. In one location Lynda and I found a gigantic, well-used eagle's nest on a ledge about twenty feet above the river's surface, with a perfectly formed roof of limestone; talk about a room with a view. The many small caves and crevices give rise to wild fancy of just what might be living inside — no doubt helping to create the legends and superstitions about "the homes of the little people" so common in Cree and Dene oral history.

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