Driftless

It was just too nice out so I grabbed the tent and my fishing gear and sped southwest into The Driftless, that old glacier-free pocket of Wisconsin where valleys outnumber towns. Ryan and his doggie met me in Richland County and we built a big bonfire next to a stream and a weathered rockwall. The coyotes yipped and barked at the crescent moon. We enjoyed some whiskey, and after midnight a dense fog moved in... Tiny twinkling stars of water vapor drifted in front of our headlamps and then - it seemed - through us. The coyotes screamed, closer now. We marveled at all of this. Pretty lucky, we concluded, to be here and now...
We spent most of the next day wading up blue ribbon trout streams, beneath scattered clouds and perfect spring lighting.

Sometimes the general scenery out there is so stunning that I find myself missing the fine detail, but the fine detail is what makes a perfect moment. I'd catch a gorgeous trout but be so consumed with getting a good picture that I'd never actually look at the living fish.
I realized I had not been fully present in the moment.
Sometime before noon Ryan put a perfect cast above a deep and menacing root system in the strong middle of a big bend, and we saw a bright flash, and Ryan made a strange noise that told me it was a big fish. The brown trout was 18 inches, his biggest so far. There was no world beyond that bend of rushing spring water, and we burned the fish into memory, and watched it swim away.

I was driftless for two days and nothing beyond where I was standing in the stream mattered. I was quieted. I let the fire die down on Sunday night and climbed in my sleeping bag. Something woke me at 5:30 and I saw the fire burning brightly. Strange, I thought. I rubbed my eyes and expected to see a coyote stoking the coals. I went back to sleep.
On Monday morning we woke to cold rain so we packed up camp and headed for home, where glaciers had made room for more people, and pretty quickly I began thinking about what I would do tomorrow, and next week. And what was happening elsewhere... And should I make tacos tonight? What about all the things I need to get done in April? ... And what if, what if?
-30-

Bed of Thunderstorms

Winter camping has a way of turning the natural world upside-down. This has been something on my to-do list for a long, long time, and I finally had the chance to give it a try last week, returning to the park I spent seven months of 2011 exploring. And this was a good excuse to visit my good friends Erik and Tori, who are lucky enough to have each other and an off-grid cabin in the northcountry complete with a wood-burning sauna.

And what better way to see the Boundary Waters in winter than by dog-sled?

The reason Erik gets to stay up north year-round is he works as a dog-sledding guide in the winter months, and so we followed up a perfect fall trip into The Quetico with a two-night winter trip up to Knife and Ottertrack Lakes on the border-route. Myself, Erik and Tori were joined by fellow adventurers Ed and Nick, out of Duluth, and so five sleds and twenty-five doggies set out into the Park on Tuesday morning over a crisp two-inches of snow. My team, pictured above, featured a crazed yearling named Proby (top), lead dog Possum, Xena, Brillo and Cash.

Everyone else in the group had already run dogs before and as we harnessed and hooked up the teams, the lake access became a scene of organized chaos. I wasn't sure what to expect. I was definitely a bit intimidated, but was told Possum would follow the track automatically, and that I should use the brake as needed through portages, and then suddenly all sleds were cut loose and we were off into the frozen wild. In the moments before we turned the dogs loose they were all going crazy and yipping and howling and barking, but once the sleds were set free it was business time and the quieted huskies happily began churning out miles and miles of pristine borderlands. The cold froze in my beard and stung my face but the dogs simply loved it. You could tell. They ran with purpose. This was a paradise.

A twenty-mile day by canoe is a strong effort, but we quickly gobbled up nearly that much distance in just a few hours, and I only crashed my sled once along the way (but I didn't let go). We quickly found a wind-protected bay on Knife Lake and got the dogs all settled in and fed (frozen mink - yum!). Then we got to setting up camp and collecting a huge pile of wood, and finally Ed and I peppered the bay with traps. Although we didn't spend much time fishing we did pretty well during the trip, each catching a nice Lake Trout.

There is really no way to prepare yourself for spending three days in sub-zero temperatures without the benefit of permanent shelter. It's one thing to travel through The Quetico when it's around the freezing mark at night... quite another to travel through the northcountry when it's well below freezing the entire time. No matter how big a bonfire you build, things simply freeze and never thaw. Putting your contact lenses in upon waking becomes a hazard, assuming your contacts are not frozen solid. And although we had a big tent with a wood-stove, I was determined to earn my 'sleeping on the frozen lake' badge. I had my 15F bag stuffed inside a -60F bag, and the first night was very comfortable sleeping beneath the stars. The second night the lows dipped to 30-below and it was colder than that with the wind-chill. Weather radio warned against exposure... keep your pets inside, it cautioned, as our dogs slept on the snow nearby. The clouds and flurries of the day broke around midnight and as the stars twinkled above the lake really started to sing, seismic molecules whistling like whales from the deep.

As I snuggled into my sleeping bags, the ice shuddered and boomed, and I could not sleep on this bed of thunderstorms. Like everything with winter camping, the world was askew... the storm on the horizon was beneath us, and the only calm in the Milky Way overhead, vivid and steady.

In the morning we pointed the dogs west and our faces were burned by the wind. Like every trip to the northcountry it was over too soon. And you would think there would be comfort in a heated cabin, in a huge cheeseburger and good beers, in a sauna so hot it made breathing difficult... but there is nothing in life like the power of a thunderstorm, real or imagined. Already, I miss this frozen bed, and how I got there.

-30-


For more information on dogsledding in the BWCA, visit White Wilderness.

Wildfire at McNiece Lake

Photo credit: Erik Danielson

In April I decided to abandon a career I enjoyed so I could take a seasonal job up north. I decided to go hide in the woods for seven months. I didn’t know anyone up there, but I met people I liked, and so when Erik asked me if I wanted to go on a month-long canoe trip in October, I decided that I should. I decided to buy a canoe and new boots, to get my passport renewed, to paddle whenever possible in preparation for the big trip. I decided to stare at maps after work, wondering what we would find out there. And while three of the original six participants dropped out before departure, I decided to get in the canoe and paddle further than I ever had before.

We had two re-supply stops in mind (Atikokan, Canada and Ely, Minnesota) but we decided against a set route, and so each day we would wake up and have our coffee, listen to the weather radio and start paddling, not sure where we’d end up. This is a great way to see something you’ve never seen before. We decided to enjoy ourselves instead of setting goals and hurrying to reach them. And sometime around lunch we’d look at the map and say, this looks like a good spot. 

On the fourth night we found ourselves on a huge rocky peninsula, looking north across Agnes Lake. We ate our soup with fresh dumplings and looked out on the massive lake. Later, reading in my hammock and watching the big sky, I thought, I’m really glad we decided to ride the south wind up here. I might've seen the aurora in the distance but I was so tired... 

And we moved forward in space and time, and the sun rose on Friday, October 7. We knew it was going to be windy and that we’d have to get off Agnes in a hurry, so we had our coffee and moved north again, through Silence and Sultry and Noon. We stopped for lunch on Shade Lake, and that’s when Erik spotted the plume of smoke to the north. It had been very dry, and now with the heavy south wind blowing, we weren’t surprised to see signs of forest fire. The smoke was in the general direction we were headed, but it was impossible to say how far away it really was, and we didn’t want to backtrack into the wind, so we finished our salami and cheese and decided to keep moving. 

That afternoon we hit lots of little lakes, passing from Shade to Dell to Grey and Yum Yum, and every time we got a glimpse of the smoke plume it looked closer, always to our north. At Yum Yum we had another decision: Keep heading towards the smoke or go south towards the Yum-Yum Portage, which by all accounts was a nasty path best avoided, despite it’s fun name. It was getting late in the day and nobody wanted to test the Yum Yum or the wind, so we pushed north into Shan Walshe Lake, and suddenly the smoke seemed much, much closer. It wasn’t scaring us the way it should have, though. We had heard there were virgin pines on McNiece Lake, so we put the boats and packs on our shoulders one more time and moved closer still. 

At McNiece it seemed we had finally gotten beyond the smoke (or maybe directly in it’s path), and I said to Erik as we pushed away from shore, this might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. But we paddled on anyways, both secretly hoping, I think, that the fire would be right around the corner... And it was! Pretty quickly we realized the fire was actively burning our only other route out of McNeice, which wasn’t a big lake. What to do, what to do? Back-tracking to Yum Yum now would mean paddling and portaging and setting up camp in the dark. There was a perfectly good campsite on McNiece itself, on the shore opposite the fire zone, so we decided to stop for the night about a mile from an active wildfire. Yeah... It was one of those decisions you make where you don’t even need hindsight to know it’s crazy.

But crazy isn’t always wrong! 

Here we were in the true interior of the park, five days of travel from anywhere, partially trapped and partially thrilled to be trapped. Canada doesn’t actively fight forest fires in wilderness areas, so we knew we were on our own up there. We started a fire in camp and fried up pike tacos with our last fresh avocado, always keeping an eye on the smoke and the wind. Erik and Paige and I all had huge grins on our faces and we kept giggling and remarking how crazy this was, saying things like, what in the hell are the chances? and, geeesh! and, hooooooly shit! It would be easy to say we were there because of fate, but no, I don’t believe that. 

I knew why we were here on this night, but I didn’t know how being there would change me. How, every decision I had ever made brought me here and now, somehow, and how being here would alter all of my future decisions. The Wildfire at McNiece Lake taught me an important lesson about the choices we make. The problem, of course, is trying to say what it really meant so that someone else can understand it. I just want to explain the rarity of this experience without comparing it to a conversation with a yeti, or the sensation of feeling the wind in your hair for the first time.

Darkness crept in but the fire shimmered across the lake, like northern lights within the rocks and water. Somehow, the wind got stronger - in excess of 50 mph - and we heard trees toppling all around us. Trees were exploding in the fire, booming across the lake. Thunder clapped, but we did not move from the exposed rocks, staring out at this glowing storm of destruction and rebirth. I thought about the things I had been thinking about a lot this year, watching massive pines erupt in flames, the fire creeping along the ridgeline very slowly underneath, releasing the explosions. Old things died. Something new started whirring in me, like the fire had released a sprouting seed in my guts. It was late when I got in my hammock beneath the rainfly and then very soon the rain started, heavy drops with an intense smokey taste. And the wind kept roaring.  

And we moved forward in space and time...

In the morning the wind had calmed and there was a haze lingering in every direction, but the big smoke plume had been drowned out, so we packed quickly and paddled directly into the difficulty. The shoreline was charred, individual trees were still on fire on both sides of the path, and we were over a mile from the next lake with no way to know what was going on in between. We got out and took pictures next to burning logs and laughed in disbelief. And this next decision we never really talked about. It would take each of us two trips to get everything through and we knew the path ahead was as dangerous as anything we could find out here, but we all understood this and knew we needed to do this, so we said nothing more, grabbed our packs and started into the wildfire. 

It was early in the morning but already hot, and as we walked over blackened earth and through fallen burnt trees, the humidex spiked. The forest was either burnt or still on fire, and I was covered in sweat by the top of the first hill. So many downed trees blocked the actual path, the one-mile portage kept increasing in length with every step. I felt like I had gotten myself in good shape for this trip, but halfway through I was using every bit of fuel I had to keep moving at a reasonable pace. Finally we reached the shores of Kahshapiwi Lake, covered in ash and blood (from where?!?), and we looked back. The wind seemed to be increasing again and we still had a food pack and both our boats sitting on McNiece. There was nothing to be done. The decision had already been made. We headed into the wildfire again at maximum speed.

The whole walk back I was thinking, How in the hell are we gonna get these canoes through these trees? It just kept getting hotter. The second run through was a true team effort, especially across the worst-hit sections, threading an 18-foot canoe through a tangle of charred branches, around standing pines that were burning themselves hollow from within and threatening to fall at any moment, shoulders and arms and lungs screaming for rest but something bigger pushing the legs forward. I found fuel I didn’t know I had and became a machine, incapable of stopping or being stopped... My eyes became cool water...  I burnt the pathway into my memory, took a deep breath and then we were out. We could see smoke rising from the trees behind us, all along the shoreline to the north, and there was a sense of quiet triumph. 

I drank mightily from the lake, and I was not the same after that. I can’t explain it any better, I can only live in a way that shows people how it changed me.

-30-

You're always warm and dry

I am now within a planned unemployment... I am now without work for the first time since I got my paper-route when I was 12. I should revise... I'll be without work-ing for someone else. Over the next three weeks - maybe four, five, ? - I plan on putting in the hardest work of my life. Lots of thinking and something like a hundred lakes by human-power!

I am going on a long trip from home. The adventure of my lifetime. But, yes, I have been away from home for months now. A cabin in the woods is nice... my ultimate goal... but this one is not home. I didn't build it. I got here when there was snow on the ground and there'll'be snow on the ground again before I leave it, but it's not home. It's got almost everything I need and a great location, but this is a temporary hiding spot at best. A good, quiet spot. I sleep here, I read here, I keep spring water in a big jug on my porch, mice intrude and die here, there are maps on the wall of every lake I can paddle to in a week, I think in the dark here, but this is not home. I love this spot, but I have no one to share it with, and so, it's not home.

But I will miss it... Like all my important places, particles of me will always live here - I have just a few more nights under this roof, I should expect no more...

Realizing I may not return to this place again, it hurts, and that's been the theme of this year, leaving home behind. It's been a tough, tough year for me. And I could write a book about the last year, and someday I might, but I can't write that book now and I'm not sure anyone would read it, anyways... We've all felt the pain of leaving home, and it hurts. No fun.

What I want to say... What I want to write about now, is not this year of hurt and regret and an expanding horizon, but of what comes next - for there is certainly a guilty excitement in the reception of a blank slate, no matter how you got it. I don't know what I'll do with it beyond the next month, but I think I know what I'm aiming at. This story, this searching for a philosophy of life, is fueled by the hurt of leaving, yes, but it is centered entirely on the thrilling prospect of finding home again.

Finding the true home.

Tomorrow morning I will embark on the greatest adventure of my life, at age 30, into the wilds of Canada with a paddle and a canoe and two fellow adventurers and some amazing boots. And determination. And nervousness. And regret. And hope. And so many questions, so many questions. Plenty of time to think. And decisions. And optimism, somehow.

I'm not always optimistic but I will do a better job of controlling my perspective going forward, and I think that is what the next month and year and life is about. That is what this story is about. I haven't figured out much of anything this summer, but I realized pretty quickly that my worries and complaints about life were my own problem... Maybe breathing good air helped me see it... Maybe it was the quiet, but I see it, even if I don't believe it all just yet.

Here is how I got on this thinking: I read Sig Olsen's Open Horizons a few weeks ago and in the book he tells a story from his guiding days up in the Quetico. This is where I'm going in two days. The Paddler's Paradise. It seems to me the story occurred in my exact current week the way it struck me. This story happened in the fall, during a spell when the sun never shone and it rained on and off for days and days and days. And it was cold. I listen to the cold rain wake me up in the morning, before the sun, and I shiver in my little cabin and think, how am I gonna handle this weather for a month in a tent (or a hammock!), not another group of humans within six or sixty lakes in any direction?

It was this kind of week when Sig was guiding some guesties into the northern wilds, packing his canoe in the cold rain, when an old-timer guide named Buck Skelton gave him some advice that changed his life, and the advice seems to have changed my course, if not my life entirely. This is what Buck told Sig: Remember, no matter how wet and cold you are, you're always warm and dry.

This Quetico adventure is the test of that philosophy. I know I will be cold, out there, rain on the roof of the tent at night, questions rolling through my mind, snow maybe... I am going on a long trip from home. I have been away from home for months now, and if I never get back home, it won't surprise me... I had to put in an address change today and I do not know where my next home is, but until I find it I will keep looking, everywhere. Maybe the answer will hit me out there, in the wild, or maybe I'll think of a new way to think of home...

But can my mind finally calm the wind? Can conviction still shivers? Will I be honest with myself and accept what I say? Will the quiet be truly quiet?

Where I get stuck is on the idea of control... If it is always warm and dry then you control your environment... Your life... And this is a nice notion, like a warm blanket... ... it's just a matter of wrapping yourself snugly. But it's bullshit, of course, and besides, I like my wild, Wild! I like the unpredictability of this world. Sometimes you are stuck in a storm, you are wet and cold. Sometimes life is terrible, uncontrollable.

And sometimes the forecast surprises you with a string of 70s and sun for your ride into the October north.

No, you can't ignore reality on the bad/good ::: days/weeks/years. But that's not what Buck was talking about. Buck's wild was wild, the rain very real, cold to the bone... but there's a way of knowing the chill can't last, and also, that you can't control so many things... And that's the key I think: Acceptance of now, improving tomorrow.

This is today. This is you. They are they. Here is here. Home is where you are tonight and who you share your dinner with. That's my best guess, and I hope it's a truth I can build my boat with as I look out on the lake and wind... And I will give this boat a vigorous test! So I say, be warm and dry and well.

-30-

Cloud camp

One of my goals for the summer was a multi-night solo camp, so last week when I was the only one off work I set out on a trip to a nearby 'mountain' lake that was full of brook trout. These are not actual mountains, but the eastern section of the boundary waters is often called the 'Minnesota Mountains' - and it is exceptionally rugged terrain. The overall elevations are not impressive on paper, but the climbs you can find here are certainly challenging, especially with a full pack and canoe on your shoulders.

My destination was 'three lakes in' and well above neighboring West Pike Lake. To get there, I paddled the entire six miles of Clearwater after the day's work was done, into an east wind, then portaged 214 rods to West Pike, then paddled a short distance to the final portage, which was 80 rods of steep climbing. It's like carrying a canoe and full pack up a ladder made of wet rocks and roots, and I was shot by the time I reached the top, where I saw the lake's only campsite unoccupied (whoo!). By this time I had about 30 minutes of light and there was thunder on the horizon, so I paddled across to the site and got to work on my rain fly and hammock.

Since our Clearwater Loop trip I've been fascinated by hammockry, and I intend to camp only in hammocks if possible from here on out. It's a good thing I brought that rain fly, because five minutes after I set it up over my hammock the rain started, along with energized wind. I was too tired to start a fire in the rain with wet wood so I quickly cooked a few Zup's wild rice brats in the frying pan and writhed into the hammock for the night, where I sipped on whiskey and read a large slice of Bill Bryson's Walk in the Woods, which was given to me by a guest that had hiked three days on the Border Route Trail the week before. All the while I watched lightening and listened to the thunder and rain.

It seemed the clouds were right on top of me.

The next day I had a delicious breakfast: One pound of thick pepper bacon (also from Zup's!) and four eggs, with an entire pot of coffee... Then I tested the box shitter... Then I sawed up and split a couple large chunks of cedar and read more of my book, before heading out to look for brookies. I got about halfway around the lake on my first trolling run when I caught a nice 11-incher (below). Later I got a foot-long brookie in the same area, casting the same lure, but with the added bonus of seeing the strike, which always thrills me (he escaped getting his picture made, the rascal!). Had I not brought a pile of delicious meats with me, I would have eaten a great brookie dinner, but I was well-meated so I let them go.

I didn't fish very long. Like solo camping, solo fishing is relaxing but lonesome. I'd much rather have company.
Solo camping did offer the opportunity for lots of hammock-reading and note-taking for my book project, thinking, and napping. The sunset on night two was outstanding, and I cooked my brats on a one-person cedar fire, making sure to leave plenty of good split firewood for the camp's next visitor (bonus camping points!).

Click images to view full size panoramas

Since I had to work at 1 the next day, I planned on getting up at first light and setting a course home, but I awoke to the densest fog I have ever seen. My hammock was maybe ten feet from the shore, and I couldn't see the lake. Could barely see the tree my hammock was hanging in! It was an odd feeling, like cloud camping. Regrettably, I didn't get a photo of this, but I'm sure the Fuji wouldn't have done the scene justice. I went back to sleep for another hour (or two) and then had to turbo-paddle to get back to the lodge by noon-thirty. Being out of the office and up here for over two months is starting to show - I worked a full shift and cooked dinner for 16 and wasn't even sore, even though the entire adventure required a great deal of energy.

July is here and there is lots more to do: I'll have posts on berry picking (strawberries are here!) and slip bobbering leeches on a dynamite walleye lake in the near future. And next week I am heading west, meeting up with Slowhand Lucious, Chinwhisker Charlie and Warden Cass for some big water trolling and cabin shenanigans at the other end of the boundary waters.