[Interesting to note that I never actually carried a canoe by myself, and so in the PhD there are also invisible (in this photo) people who help you. -AW, 2023]
Doing a Ph.D. is similar to portaging a canoe in many respects. First, both seem like a really good idea at the start. Second, not many people in their right mind do either. The feeling when you first manage to get a canoe on your shoulders is a bit like the feeling you get when you pass your qualifying exam -- you're kind of shaky, but you feel like a million bucks.
You take your first wobbly steps with the canoe and try to ignore the odd pressure on your neck and shoulders. With high hopes and determination into the forest you go. You try to keep your spirits up in the face of clouds of little blood-sucking mosquitos (those undergraduate students that argue with you about 0.5% on their lab mark).
The odd pressure on your neck and shoulders now feels like electric shocks being applied directly to your cerebellum. Half way through you throw the canoe off in order to rest -- carefully, you don't want to put a hole in it! You pant and drink lots of fluids ;) but there's no relief from the mosquitos and soon enough you're saddled with the canoe again. 'Nuff said.
I imagine [correctly, -AW, 2023] that the end is like the last kilometer or so of the portage -- a sweaty trot fuelled by will and pain, not energy. The defense itself must then be like the last 100 meters: an exhilarating downhill race to the water, when, if you're not careful, you can easily twist your ankle or break your neck.
You put your canoe back in the water, you push off, you put your paddle in the water ... and head for the next portage.
[What to say? While this reads a touch masochistic 20 years later, "Hard things are hard", a wiseman once said. -AW, 2023]