PaPaddler wrote:

- Dickson to Bonfield portage with an 85 pound aluminum canoe.  We knew it would be tough but that boat taught me a lesson on how to portage through the pain.

PaPaddler, I know that pain!  That canoe and that portage put me through the 5 stages of grief when I was a teenager, plus I added 5 more stages for the complete 10 stages of portage grief.
 
Denial - it isn't that long.  I'll just steel my nerves and do it!
Anger - I had everything and everybody in the world. Who chose this route?
Bargaining - God, please make this end.  Or kill me now!
Depression - I am the saddest person in the world and could just sit down a cry.
Acceptance - No turning back now.  I'm at the halfway point.  I'm at the halfway point.  I'm at the halfway point.

Pain - accepting pain as your constant companion.  Your body barely bothers to send signals anymore.
Resignation - OK portage. You own me now.  I'm absorbed into your hell.
Fear - Anxiety of impending death gives way to expectation of death, but you'd still rather live.
Submission - OK trail, you win. I agree to stop hoping for a clearing over the next rise.
Despair - The realization that the portage doesn't end.  There is no lake.  This is where life will end. 

The first time I fell with a canoe was on that portage, trying to get around a massive deadfall.  Slipped and went down, canoe on top of me. I threw it off my shoulders, across the trail, and it broadsided on a tree with a resounding alumi-clang!  Canoe didn't even have the courtesy to get a dent.  It just retained all the mosquitoes that were already underneath it with me and cruelly waited for me to pick it up and keep going.