And so, on the first day of August, from the oil pipeline town of Norman Wells, three generations of men and our group of strangers and Black Feather river guides flew to Divide Lake, the drop-off point for the seldom-traveled Broken Skull River flowing through the newly established Nááts’ihch’oh National Park Reserve in Northwest Territories. According to Elliot’s official Parks Canada Broken Skull Trip Planner produced after this scouting trip, Mike Fischeser thought his matrimonial celebration was a first descent until a year later when he met a polio survivor who’d paddled it the year before.