Wilderness - The Third Morning

Paris. Amsterdam. Madrid. Florence. La Dordogne. Yosemite. Crater Lake. The great American national parks. Even Seoul, Korea, once, when I was a young man. I have been fortunate to travel to these places and to immerse myself in the unique pleasures that each has to offer.

Today, however, I will write about the place on this earth where I most like to find myself. Northern Minnesota is home to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness - over a million acres of forest and lakes that have been set aside for the exclusive use of canoists and hikers, although I've never encountered a hiker in over thirty years of visits.

If one picture could capture the essence of the BWCAW, this might be the one.

Or this one.

Entry to the BWCAW is controlled by government-issued permits. There are no motors allowed in the BWCAW - no cars, no powerboats. There are no buildings to provide shelter from the elements, no electricity, no roads, no cellphones, none of the conveniences of civilization. On my trips, there are no iPods, no GameBoys. Campsite amenities include a fire grate and a pit toilet - not so much for convenience as to keep the pertinent activities restricted to limited spaces.

What the BWCAW offers in abundance is the natural beauty of the lakes, the sky and the forest; quiet that is unimaginable until you have experienced it; the solitude of a monastery; the opportunity to live by your wits, your physical aptitude and your initiative; night skies filled to overcrowding with stars; Northern Lights, if you're lucky; incomparable fishing, if that's your weakness; swimming at your your own private swimming spot; fresh wild blueberries to add to your pancakes; water you can still drink straight from the lake; forest you can wander into and not know where your steps will take you; encounters with wildlife - bald eagles, deer, moose, otters, beaver, black bears. Life slows as your canoe slides through the water and you fall into a rhythm of paddling as you take in the enormous beauty of the wilderness surrounding you. Portages provide their own brand of pleasure - a chance to get out and stretch your legs, walk through the woods, albeit weighted down with packs, and if you're the lucky one, the canoe. Each dawn in the BWCAW brings with it uncertainty that tingles the imagination. What will today hold?

Looks easy, doesn't it? (My cedar canoe is 55 lbs. Aluminum canoes run up to 75 lbs. or more.)

All that stuff on the ground has to get to the other side of the portage, too.
We always try to do it in one trip.

Portages offer a different perspective of the wilderness.

I spend a week in the BWCAW every year in the late summer, when the water is the warmest and the insects are growing tired of annoying human visitors. If I miss a year (a rare occurrence), I feel cheated. I have gone into this wilderness with old friends and new friends, with family, and once, alone. I have camped with experienced wilderness campers and with first-time campers. For several years, I went each August with my good friend, John Danicic; and we achieved a harmony with each other and with nature that I can't explain to but remember with pleasure. I take great delight in introducing first timers to the wildeness experience. Last year, my son, Paul, a BWCAW veteran, and I took his nine-year old stepson, Ethan, on his first wilderness camping trip.

Ethan & Paul at Devil's Cascade this year, Ethan's second trip

What I always tell potential first-timers before they sign on is that it's the wilderness. It's the wilderness. If you don't think you can be happy paddling all day in the rain, or if being cloistered in a tent in a downpour will leave you miserable, then this trip isn't for you. It can get cold, even in August. It can be very hard; paddling into a stiff wind is hard work.

Ask my wife, Carol, about the BWCAW, and she'll give you a hundred reasons to take in Broadway plays for a week in New York instead. She has accompanied me into the wilderness a few times, and invariably we get rain, more rain and put-on-all-your-wool-garments weather. There's some bad karma there; I can't explain it. Ask me about the BWCAW, and I'll tell you about endless blue sky days and nights of stargazing and campfires.

Endless skies, deep waters, silent forests.

This year was a good one. I took two trips. On my birthday, I headed north with my longtime friend from Maine, Jay Bartner. Jay has said for years that he wants to see the BWCAW, and for years his busy schedule has crowded out the possibility. Last year I told Jay that what he needed to do was to decide right then that the BWCAW was on his calendar for August '09. He took my advice to heart. And, voila! There he was, putting his shoulder into paddling, when he wasn't mugging for the camera.

Jay Bartner, BWCAW rookie.

Father and son, BWCAW veterans. It does not get any better than this.

Jay, I can tell you with confidence, had a great time. We worked together well, whether we were paddling, portaging or setting up camp. Jay took charge of the campfires and did a splendid job. We found a great west-facing campsite and set up a base camp from which we explored lakes and hiked portage trails for the duration of the trip.

A word about campsites in the BWCAW. There is no such thing as a bad campsite in the wilderness. (Well, almost no such thing.) But there are certainly some that are head-over-heels better than others. For me, these start off with one key characteristic - they face west and give you the full advantage of the afternoon and evening sun. You can swim later in the day and sun dry yourself on a warm rock. Your evening play time is extended with the lingering light of the long northern dusk. Wet stuff dries on the clothesline more efficiently than in a Maytag.

Chef Jay, tending to our first night steak dinner.

Two amigos, with a good pinot noir to accompany the steaks.

Chef Marc is no slouch in the wilderness, either.

Sometime late in the spring, Paul asked me if I'd like to take a canoe trip with him and Ethan. How can a father say no to such a request? So the day I drove Jay to the airport for his return to Maine, I started repacking my gear and assembling food supplies for the next trip. We couldn't stay long - only two nights - because Paul had to get back to work. But we packed a lot into the time we had. We found a great west-facing campsite, explored Devil's Cascade and surrounding lakes, caught northerns, ate too many s'mores and told scary stories as we counted satellites streaking through stars too numerous to count. Ethan has grown a lot in the year since his first trip. He handled his share of the portaging and even took over paddling duty in the canoe. In fact, for the first time in thirty-four years of canoe trips, I got to be a "duffer," the guy who just sits in the middle of the canoe like an extra duluth pack and takes it all in while the others do the work.

Paul, Ethan & I paddled the stunning Little Indian Sioux River.

Mmmmmm. Pancakes and bacon for breakfast.

This is the perfect time to comment on another special delight of a wilderness vacation. The year I turned fifty, I took my first (and only) solo wilderness canoe trip. It was an experience I'll always be grateful for, but one I don't need to repeat. The wilderness with all its pleasures, surprises and challenges is something to be shared. How many times in life do you get to spend days of undivided, undistracted time with someone? It's how I got to know my son-in-law, Ben, when he was still Ellen's fiancé.

For me, the ideal trip has to be a minimum of five nights. You can have a splendid time in three (or even two) nights; but to let the wilderness wash over you completely, body and soul, it takes longer. You begin to shed the busy-ness of your everyday life when you leave your car, cellphone and watch behind at the entry point. Paddling and portaging canoe and packs, seeing your first bald eagle or otter moves the process along. Setting up camp, nursing a fire to the point where it's ready to cook your steaks just right gets you closer to what you're seeking. The first campfire and the stunning darkness of the forest night helps, and crawling into your sleeping bag takes you further. And so it goes, until that moment - for me it comes without fail the morning after the second night. That's when you feel as if you've always been here. On that third morning, not having a table to sit at or a chair to sit on for meals feels so right. Your feet move confidently over rough terrain. Silence rules. The western sky tells you all you need to know about the coming day. Rain falls, soaking firewood, and sending you to your tent to read or to nap and dream. The chores - cooking, washing dishes, setting up camp, breaking camp, getting firewood, hanging the food pack out of a hungry bear's reach - are no longer chores; they become part of the rhythm of your life, like breathing and whispering I love you.

Magic is tangible in the wilderness.

Maybe I'm not getting the point across to you. It's like the song, Do You Believe In Magic? (John Sebastian, The Lovin' Spoonful, 1965, if you're not old enough to remember.) There's a verse that fits here - I'll tell you about the magic. It'll free your soul, but it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock 'n roll. Maybe you've got to be there yourself on that third morning, when conversations take on a new richness, just as the silences between you and your companion do, when you find yourself smiling for no reason, when eagerness for adventure competes in a friendly way with eagerness to idle the day away. You leave your companion reading in the hammock (yes, there are ample creature comforts) and wander into the forest on a path beaten by others. The path soon disappears, but you continue on, bushwacking your way through the dense growth. You step over a fallen pine, making a mental note to come back with your camp saw later. You emerge into a sunlit clearing and stop to pick an instant treat of blueberries. You climb over an immense, moss-blanketed granite boulder. You sit. You look back and see the lake in the distance; how far have you wandered? The sun warms you. You feel the whole earth beneath you. You look at the infinite sky above. The silence enfolds you, broken softly by a wind sidling through the tops of the trees, then bending to touch your face. You gaze at shimmering aspen leaves and think for the first time so that's why they're called quaking aspen. A bee buzzing nearby becomes your companion. A field mouse scampers across your hiking boot; you sit motionless, hoping he will return. A butterfly flits its haphazard course in front of you. No one on the entire planet knows where you are. No one knows where you are. Do you believe in magic? You move your eyes from the butterfly to the vastness of the distant lake. Maybe you see a sliver of a canoe making its silent way across to a portage. Maybe you see into time, the water frozen solid and covered in white. You feel the slow rhythm of your heartbeat, hear it beat in answer to the bee still working nearby. How long have you been here, you wonder. It doesn't matter. You stretch out your legs and lie back on the warm rock. You close your eyes and breathe deep. You drift, as if in a canoe. You remember the time you and your friend paddled across the dusky lake to the mouth of a river. In the distance you saw a moose - a rare treat - grazing by the reedy shore. You set your paddles across your lap, careful not to make a sound. The wind is behind you, pushing you stealthily into the river, closer to the moose. The beautiful creature grows larger, until it looms as darkness descends. The wind that has brought you close carries your scent to the moose, who looks over its shoulder at you with indifference, then returns to its meal. You don't smell dangerous. You drift. You drift. You drift until you hear the bee, still humming, and you open your eyes. How long have you been here? It doesn't matter. All that matters is that you exist in this moment. For this moment.

All that matters...

Pleasures of a wilderness evening.

Here's to next year!