Today while going about my shop work, my mind kept wandering to ‘spring plans’. Not work related plans, but plans for another trip into the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area), which is a 1 million acre designated wilderness area. It contains thousands of lakes and many miles of portages between these lakes. The charm of this wilderness is that it is a ‘primitive area’, meaning no motors allowed, other than on some of the lakes that border the BWCA. Once you are past the first portages, all travel is either by foot or canoe. Even airplanes are limited as to how high they must be to fly over this wilderness.
Some folks are offended by a designated wilderness that cuts off modern means of transportation. My opinion is that in a country as big as ours, there should be room for everyone to enjoy their chosen sports without infringing on other people. Thus there should be areas where the ‘motor heads’ can take their motorcycles or 4-wheelers and explore the back country. There are state forest trails in other areas that are designated to horsemen, this is as it should be. My chosen sport for such outings is to travel by canoe and portage to reach the deep woods and find some solitude and on occasions, even catch some fish.
I have a fond memory that reoccurs whenever I think of trips into the BWCA. It was around the Memorial Day holiday of 1987, that my wife and I took our first real trip into the BWCA. We went as far as a small lake called Koma, which was about a day and a half of travel by canoe and portage. On our first afternoon of fishing, we were out in a light drizzle and as I cast a huge rubber perch replica minnow under the overhang of a pine tree, that had partly fallen over the water, there was a great rapid swirl on the surface and the bait disappeared. In a flash, my line was singing off the reel as the fish made a long run. It was the single largest northern pike that I had ever caught. It was a wonderful battle between me and “Moby Dick”! Landing a 20 pound northern pike in a canoe is a very exciting affair. As is common with big fish, it would not go in my landing net, other than its head. The battle lasted a good 20 minutes or more before the fish was finally worn out enough that I could get my hands on it to “flop” into the bottom of the canoe. Then it came to life again and trashed, flopped and generally made a “scene” fit only for a backwoods brawl.
Such a fish under those circumstances is better released than killed. To start with there was no way to keep it fresh to take to a taxidermist, for it was many days before we would be back in civilization. There was too much meat to eat in a day or so, besides the big fish are not the best eating anyway. So after a couple pictures that turned out poorly, I revived the fish and watched it swim away. That was 24 years ago and I have yet to catch another fish that big, but the memory of such an experience will stick with a fisherman as long as he lives.
I have since made the trip in one day on several occasions, but would hate to think of doing that again! The portage trails in that country are not exactly “walking paths” like you think of in a state park or some such place. The terrain is such that you meet up with low places that can only be described as “swamps’ and other spots that requires you to take off, straight up over slippery rocks, mud and various other obstacles which are prone to ‘trip you up’. Doing this with a backpack or canoe on you shoulders makes the trail even more interesting.
Last spring, me and a friend made the trip into Koma at the same time of year, on Memorial Day. It was a lot different than the ‘87 trip, but also left memories that won’t be forgotten. In contrast to the great fishing that we had in ‘87 that included a lot of fish besides ‘the big one’, this last trip barely provided enough fish of one meal. What makes this trip a grand memory is the “challenge” of it. Rain, wind and waves can make a wilderness trip very ‘memorable’. To be totally honest, I am not sure which memory I cherish the most. Whether catching the fish of a lifetime in my relative youth, or meeting a serious physical challenge in my mid-50’s.
It was almost one year to the day after having a full knee replacement that we made this most recent trip into Lake Koma. Calculating the portages according to the rods listed on the Fisher maps, and considering that each portage is covered 6 times on a round trip, we covered 9 miles by foot from Monday morning to Wednesday evening. Two thirds of which I either had a 68# canoe or a 30# backpack on my shoulders. Besides the work of traveling, we had to contend with serious winds, reports were of steady winds at 40 MPH during part of our trip.
The trip in was not bad as far as wind was concerned. We had light rain, but nothing serious, that was a Monday. On Tuesday we planned to fish and make the return trip in two days, on Wednesday and Thursday.
Things went according to plan for a little while. But by mid-morning on Tuesday we had to get off the lake because the wind made fishing rather miserable and the canoe hard to control. As the day wore on, the winds picked up and the rain started. By dark the winds were in a good ‘roar’. I remember looking the trees over near my tent very carefully that night, calculating whether any of them were likely to reach my tent if they came down. I judged correctly and woke up Wednesday morning to the continued roar of wind, but no trees had invaded my tent during the night, for which I was thankful. I looked across to see if my traveling partner’s tent was still free of treetops and was glad to see that he had ‘made the night also’.
As our schedule was, we were compelled to travel that Wednesday in spite of the wind. The fortunate thing for us was that we were traveling on fairly small lakes and much of it was on a small river, so the wind could only kick up serious waves in a few places. Another helpful thing was that as we reached our last lake, which ran northwest to southeast and was several miles long, the wind was generally at our back. This made a very exciting and easy paddle to reach the landing, that is, as long as we made sure to keep the canoe “upright”. Which we did.
The biggest challenge that day was on the portages. During the night of ‘raging wind’, many trees had come down over our portage trails, making a stiff legged fellow really struggle to climb over them with a canoe on his back! I remember being stopped at one spot, stupidly looking at this tree that was over the portage and trying to determine if I could get my ‘bum leg’ high enough to clear it, all the while I had the canoe on my shoulders that I was afraid to set down because I did not think I would be able to get it back up if I let it down. It is very funny now and was “somewhat” funny then, but I am glad there was no video camera rolling while I stood there, like a frozen stump, staring at this tree, which was not in a place that I could go around it, due to huge boulders on each side of the trail. It reminds me of an animal in the headlights, they are blinded and stand still as if they cannot decide the best course of action. That is how I felt looking at this obstacle of a downed tree. When I finally came to my senses and realized that every second I stood there with that weight on my shoulders, I was using up valuable energy that I needed to clear that tree, I executed my plan of approaching it in such a way as to swing my ‘bum leg’ up and over the tree first and follow it with my good leg, to my relief the plan worked, but it is one of those memories we create when we get out of our normal routine and go off on some adventure, if that qualifies as an ‘adventure’. That too is a relative term, depending on what stage we are in our lives. What can be called an adventure at ‘late mid-life’ might not qualify as such for young folks. One of my favorite quotes on the term “adventure” came from Louis Lamour, he defined ‘adventure’ as a romantic name for “being in a lot of trouble”. I have thought of that definition many times and it never fails to cheer me up whenever I have gotten myself into a difficult situation.
Now we are making plans for another spring trip into the BWCA. So far, we have not been as ambitious in choosing a route that requires a lot of portaging, and as long as I am the one packing the canoe, we aren’t going to either! Not yet anyway.
Showing posts with label BWCA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BWCA. Show all posts
Monday, December 19, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Camping
How is it that we humans have the tendency to think of the things we want to do “next summer”, before the fall is over and before winter even sets in? Knowing full well that we have nearly 6 months to wait for any sign of summer weather, at least in MN we do.
I find it to be the case that every year, around the 1st of December, I begin to make my camping plans for the following year, with much more anticipation than “camping” merits, I might add. When I speak of camping, we are talking about the “old fashion” kind, a tent. Having had the joy of a modern 5th wheel camper, which was used for a 5 week vacation to Florida one winter, I do know the difference in “camping” the modern way and camping in a traditional manner. The cost and time to maintain a modern camper that is only used a few times a year just did not seem worth it, so I sold the thing and used the proceeds to transform our barn’s hayloft to a woodshop, which I spend far more time in than I would the camper. So now all my camping is back to a tent of some kind.
Remembering back to the first time I went “camping” as a child is a real treat. My children have camped from the time they were a few months old, so they will never have the same kind of memories as I dig up from the cobwebs of my mind, nearly 43 years ago. As is often the case in the things we remember, the “memory” is much more agreeable than the actual experience, for the simple reason that I woke up on the ground under a homemade quilt with my head chewed nearly off from mosquito bites. Other than that, I decided I liked “camping”.
I feel certain it was the summer of 68’ or 69’. My father gather up the whole family, which at that time included 5 children, to take us camping on a little farm pond that belonged to a man he was working for. Camping, most of the time, requires a body of water for the atmosphere to be proper, unless it happens to be a hunting trip, in which case the only water you need is for drinking and cleaning up. The tendency to camp near water also insures the company of many biting insects, and, as a general rule, insects really enjoy human companionship.
This pond was not very big, but I being a young fisherman, was in no way discouraged that my fishing prospects were somewhat limited. I don’t recall that we caught any fish. My clearest memory is of rolling up in my quilt by a campfire, with my father, mother and siblings doing likewise. There was a lot of grumbling from the female corner about the mosquitoes, but I was content enough in that I was “camping”. We did not have a tent in those days. By mornings light I remember my mother and maybe some sisters were found to have fled to the car seats to sleep, with the windows up tight!
My camping methods have advanced, somewhat, since that long ago night in southern Ohio. Now we use either a modern nylon tent, or a white canvas wall tent that even has a chimney hole, so that we can use a woodstove if it is cold. When backpacking and canoeing into the backcountry, a nylon tent is about the only good option, considering the weight and bulk of a canvas tent. For pure comfort, a canvas wall tent is hard to beat. They are roomy enough to set up cots to sleep on, plus they breath enough to have a heat source. Any heat in a nylon tent will soon give you a shower from the condensation that drops from the ceiling, besides if you try to use a woodstove in a nylon tent, it is nearly certain, that you will end up with a pile of melted nylon in short order!
My last noteworthy camping was this past spring (2011). It was a trip into the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) of northeast MN. For those not familiar with the BWCA, it consists of a million acres of wilderness area laying on the Canadian border. It is a “controlled wilderness”, meaning that the “powers that be” will only permit a certain number of travelers to enter the wilderness on any given day. That has its own merits and criticisms, but it does reduce congestion along the travel routes, which are from lake to lake over portages that have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years by traveling people in that area of the world. I have had the privilege of camping in the BWCA off and on since 1986, it is one of the unique places in our state where one can leave all modern modes of transportation or communication and lose themselves in a wilderness environment. There are no motors of any kind permitted beyond the outlying parts of the wilderness, so all travel will be by canoe or foot. Cell phones don’t work, at least in the areas that I have been to of late. All I can say about that is, I would not take one even if they did work, the experience could not possibly be the same if one had constant communication with the hectic outside world, which we are trying to escape from to begin with.
This last trip was also my most unforgettable trip into the BWCA. Due to unfavorable weather conditions. Even though it was in late May, a time when MN normally can expect the black flies and mosquitoes not to be out in force, they were on the first day. After that, they could not fly, being grounded by gale force winds! Now strong winds and canoe travel do not mix, but nature does not take into account the desires of travelers.
Part of the allure of wilderness camping is the ability, for a few days, to be transported, as a time machine, to the days before modern travel. I have found that for the average person, canoeing is one of the few ways to get into the wilderness and still enjoy some solitude. Backpacking is a natural alternative for those hardy enough to participate in that sport. But long before my ‘carcass’ began to fall apart, I decided that travel by canoe was ideal for my temperament. For starters I like to fish, that requires lots of water. Second, backpacking demands a minimal amount of gear, that requires a lot of sacrifice of comfort while encamped, to my opinion. Third, I get bored just “walking”, unless there is a better hiking environment than what I find in our great state. MN is full of great places, but hiking trails are not among our top attractions. After all, how many miles of “tundra” do you care to see? J But lakes! We have them by the thousands, according to our license plates, we are the land of ten thousand lakes, but the DNR assures us that this is a “low count” and there are many more than 10,000 lakes in our state. I would like to fish every one of them! Still working on that.
If you wonder what it is like to be in a canoe with white caps around a foot high, I can tell you it is “exciting”. It calls of a steady hand and careful navigation. You don’t let yourself get crossways to the waves, not unless you are wanting to go swimming. You must go with the waves or straight into them. As our good luck had it, on the day we really needed to travel the wind was to our back, so we rode the waves at a speed seldom seen before the steam engine. If we had been facing into that gale, more than likely we would have went into “camp” and waited for a calm. Travel speed into the wind is about as slow as a turtle on a greased road, there is a lot of energy put into the paddle, but very little forward progress.
Camping is not for everyone, especially ‘backwoods’ camping. But there are not many sports that can be done at such low cost in money as camping. Most of the equipment, if purchased wisely, will last a lifetime. No matter how the trip turns out, the memories are there to be dug out of the archive of our minds anytime we want them. Some of my most cherished memories are around a campfire somewhere beyond the roads, while the sun sets over a lake that has not seen a motor in 50 years. The moose and bear make it their home, the busy beaver is always at work, building dams or storing food for the long winter and the ‘haunting cry of the loon’ echoes across the water like a sound from another age in history.
Yep, I am going to make another trip into the BWCA next spring, but I am not going to carry enough food for a month! That is another story better left alone.
I find it to be the case that every year, around the 1st of December, I begin to make my camping plans for the following year, with much more anticipation than “camping” merits, I might add. When I speak of camping, we are talking about the “old fashion” kind, a tent. Having had the joy of a modern 5th wheel camper, which was used for a 5 week vacation to Florida one winter, I do know the difference in “camping” the modern way and camping in a traditional manner. The cost and time to maintain a modern camper that is only used a few times a year just did not seem worth it, so I sold the thing and used the proceeds to transform our barn’s hayloft to a woodshop, which I spend far more time in than I would the camper. So now all my camping is back to a tent of some kind.
Remembering back to the first time I went “camping” as a child is a real treat. My children have camped from the time they were a few months old, so they will never have the same kind of memories as I dig up from the cobwebs of my mind, nearly 43 years ago. As is often the case in the things we remember, the “memory” is much more agreeable than the actual experience, for the simple reason that I woke up on the ground under a homemade quilt with my head chewed nearly off from mosquito bites. Other than that, I decided I liked “camping”.
I feel certain it was the summer of 68’ or 69’. My father gather up the whole family, which at that time included 5 children, to take us camping on a little farm pond that belonged to a man he was working for. Camping, most of the time, requires a body of water for the atmosphere to be proper, unless it happens to be a hunting trip, in which case the only water you need is for drinking and cleaning up. The tendency to camp near water also insures the company of many biting insects, and, as a general rule, insects really enjoy human companionship.
This pond was not very big, but I being a young fisherman, was in no way discouraged that my fishing prospects were somewhat limited. I don’t recall that we caught any fish. My clearest memory is of rolling up in my quilt by a campfire, with my father, mother and siblings doing likewise. There was a lot of grumbling from the female corner about the mosquitoes, but I was content enough in that I was “camping”. We did not have a tent in those days. By mornings light I remember my mother and maybe some sisters were found to have fled to the car seats to sleep, with the windows up tight!
My camping methods have advanced, somewhat, since that long ago night in southern Ohio. Now we use either a modern nylon tent, or a white canvas wall tent that even has a chimney hole, so that we can use a woodstove if it is cold. When backpacking and canoeing into the backcountry, a nylon tent is about the only good option, considering the weight and bulk of a canvas tent. For pure comfort, a canvas wall tent is hard to beat. They are roomy enough to set up cots to sleep on, plus they breath enough to have a heat source. Any heat in a nylon tent will soon give you a shower from the condensation that drops from the ceiling, besides if you try to use a woodstove in a nylon tent, it is nearly certain, that you will end up with a pile of melted nylon in short order!
My last noteworthy camping was this past spring (2011). It was a trip into the BWCA (Boundary Waters Canoe Area) of northeast MN. For those not familiar with the BWCA, it consists of a million acres of wilderness area laying on the Canadian border. It is a “controlled wilderness”, meaning that the “powers that be” will only permit a certain number of travelers to enter the wilderness on any given day. That has its own merits and criticisms, but it does reduce congestion along the travel routes, which are from lake to lake over portages that have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years by traveling people in that area of the world. I have had the privilege of camping in the BWCA off and on since 1986, it is one of the unique places in our state where one can leave all modern modes of transportation or communication and lose themselves in a wilderness environment. There are no motors of any kind permitted beyond the outlying parts of the wilderness, so all travel will be by canoe or foot. Cell phones don’t work, at least in the areas that I have been to of late. All I can say about that is, I would not take one even if they did work, the experience could not possibly be the same if one had constant communication with the hectic outside world, which we are trying to escape from to begin with.
This last trip was also my most unforgettable trip into the BWCA. Due to unfavorable weather conditions. Even though it was in late May, a time when MN normally can expect the black flies and mosquitoes not to be out in force, they were on the first day. After that, they could not fly, being grounded by gale force winds! Now strong winds and canoe travel do not mix, but nature does not take into account the desires of travelers.
Part of the allure of wilderness camping is the ability, for a few days, to be transported, as a time machine, to the days before modern travel. I have found that for the average person, canoeing is one of the few ways to get into the wilderness and still enjoy some solitude. Backpacking is a natural alternative for those hardy enough to participate in that sport. But long before my ‘carcass’ began to fall apart, I decided that travel by canoe was ideal for my temperament. For starters I like to fish, that requires lots of water. Second, backpacking demands a minimal amount of gear, that requires a lot of sacrifice of comfort while encamped, to my opinion. Third, I get bored just “walking”, unless there is a better hiking environment than what I find in our great state. MN is full of great places, but hiking trails are not among our top attractions. After all, how many miles of “tundra” do you care to see? J But lakes! We have them by the thousands, according to our license plates, we are the land of ten thousand lakes, but the DNR assures us that this is a “low count” and there are many more than 10,000 lakes in our state. I would like to fish every one of them! Still working on that.
If you wonder what it is like to be in a canoe with white caps around a foot high, I can tell you it is “exciting”. It calls of a steady hand and careful navigation. You don’t let yourself get crossways to the waves, not unless you are wanting to go swimming. You must go with the waves or straight into them. As our good luck had it, on the day we really needed to travel the wind was to our back, so we rode the waves at a speed seldom seen before the steam engine. If we had been facing into that gale, more than likely we would have went into “camp” and waited for a calm. Travel speed into the wind is about as slow as a turtle on a greased road, there is a lot of energy put into the paddle, but very little forward progress.
Camping is not for everyone, especially ‘backwoods’ camping. But there are not many sports that can be done at such low cost in money as camping. Most of the equipment, if purchased wisely, will last a lifetime. No matter how the trip turns out, the memories are there to be dug out of the archive of our minds anytime we want them. Some of my most cherished memories are around a campfire somewhere beyond the roads, while the sun sets over a lake that has not seen a motor in 50 years. The moose and bear make it their home, the busy beaver is always at work, building dams or storing food for the long winter and the ‘haunting cry of the loon’ echoes across the water like a sound from another age in history.
Yep, I am going to make another trip into the BWCA next spring, but I am not going to carry enough food for a month! That is another story better left alone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)