the great north woods

 That feeling of leaving behind the world I'm used to didn't begin in the boundary waters. It didn't even begin in Ely. It began at a stop sign on a two lane way back on a two lane at the very edge of the Superior National Forest. There on the other side of the road stood the Antler Inn. A run down bar with a twenty year old pickup and two four wheelers parked outside, a Pabst Blue Ribbon sign glowing neon in the window. It was about as far removed from Cincinnati Ohio as you are ever going to get. I sighed, looked at this s#%thole bar I'd never laid eyes on before and felt instantly at home. And that feeling of ease just kept getting stronger. All thru Ely, then at the outfitters to spend the night and then on the long boat ride up Moose Lake with the canoes lashed to rack on top. Then the deep quiet as the sound of the boats motor slowly faded leaving us the short portage into Birch Lake. The first of many portages in the BWCA. Into heaven. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness or simply the BWCA is a 1,090,000 acre wilderness on the Canadian border in northern Minnesota. Abutting the BWCA in Canada is Quetico Provincial Park, 1,180,000 acres of wilderness. So well over two million acres of roadless wilderness where no motors of any kind are allowed. This entire area is a vast network, maze really, of tiny ponds, brooks, rivers and lakes both huge and small piled one atop another in absolute chaos carved out by the last ice age. You better not get lost in there. You cannot get lost in there, They might just not find you.

Dave and I had two solo canoes from the outfitter. Each day at dawn we would go our separate ways, completely on our own till we met up at camp before dark. I felt completely alone but never lonely. It was just the place I was supposed to be. And I wasn't alone, loons called their haunting cries across the waters, otters caught fish or played along the banks, in one bay a cow moose and her nearly grown calf stood in chest deep water eating lily pads as a grand bull moose stood nearby staring at me unafraid. 

I distinctly remember thinking you will always have this moment, this here, this now. Bands of birches, their leaves turned into golden flames by the years first frost lined distant hills. Thoughts, worries, cares slipped away like water over these ancient stones. Some of the most ancient rocks on the planet, too old to have fossils, predating even life itself. The same crisp mornings that produced such gorgeous fall colors had me thankful for fleece long johns and my wool hat. A hat I was too self conscious to wear back home. A hat Fred Bear or Lee Wulff might have worn back in the day. But out here no one was around to think I was putting on airs. I was free to wear it simply because I liked it and it was immensely practical.

Every day was as long or as short as it really was. Morning sliding into mid day, slipping into evening, like the bars of a good poem following one another. Even the tedium of camp chores was anything but tedious. In the quiet of the north woods the sound of the tiny camp stove was clear from thirty feet, the coals of a dying fire visible a half mile away across a still dark lake. One night I heard sniffing just outside my tent. Some small animal I thought, hopefully it would show up on the trail camera I had strapped to a tree a few feet from the tent. A week later back home looking at the images captured by the trail camera, that small animal would turn out to be a very large bear.

The fishing was slow in the cooling water but never boring. When you caught a fish as often as not it would turn out to be huge, much larger than any you were liable to catch back home. And no matter the size each felt somehow more fierce, certainly more wild out here.

An eagle flew overhead. Then another swooped down and the two turned in an aerial cartwheel before going their separate ways. I caught myself thinking of telling my father about it. Then realising I never could, not anymore. I sat there for a moment, the only sound that of water dripping off the paddle that lay across my lap. Would my stepsons feel the same way? Or when left someday with my fathers and grandfathers guns, will just be burdens? relics of dead men long past? 

The woods can do that to you if you are not careful. Wilderness can lay bare your soul and brush aside all the extraneous till only the truth remains, no matter how gentle or harsh. If you are going to spend significant time alone in the wild you best be comfortable in your own skin. Here as far from your normal life as you can ever get you will find yourself...

Stories from the woods.... part 3

 Well. I guess I'm done digging ginseng for this year. The day after tomorrow I'll be heading north to spend some serious time in a canoe. It's funny but as much as I bowhunt, backpack, and fish I might just enjoy wandering thru the woods looking for ginseng as much as anything. As the world around me seemingly every day makes less and less sense the return to simpler times and a simpler pastime has more appeal. I've hunted sang since I was a boy, a little with my father, a lot with my grandfather and great uncle and various other old woodsmen that are all gone now. Anymore as I step into the woods and disappear I'm reminded of the song, Am I the last of my kind?. 

Two and half pounds of dried roots, probably seven pounds green. I think my grandfather would have been impressed. Considering a good day in the woods is a big heaping handful or pocketful. How many miles over steep wooded terrain? 100 miles? At least 100 I'd think. Far enough to leave behind at least for a few hours images of bad cops kneeling on dead mens necks. Past images of hero cops being shot by cowards. In the woods no idiots riot or call for defunding the police. In the woods it isn't a moral dilemma if I wear a mask or not. If there was ever a year I needed refuge it's 2020. In addition to watching the country as a whole descend into madness, on a personal level in the past year I've lost my dear mother, my wife has went thru a difficult transplant and I've lost the greatest man I've ever known, my father. Yeah I've needed refuge.

Sitting on a hillside leaning back against a big oak and snacking on a papaw I'd just gathered, the thought crossed my mind the other day that without the woods, without this escape, I'm not sure I would have made it thru the past few months. More than once the thought has crossed my mind to simply pick up the old canvas rucksack and slip into the woods to never return. But the wind in the treetops, the sound of birdsong greeting the dawn, the quality of evening light would bring me peace and bring me home. There is more to be found in the woods than just ginseng.

You aren't going to hear from me for a while. I'll be watching drops of water stream off the paddle like diamonds, I'll be listening to the haunting calls of loons and marveling at the spirit of smallmouth bass. I'll be tending a twig fire on a cool morning. I'll be all right....

Stories from the woods ... part 2

I find it interesting how whether or not I am outside or not has a huge impact on my perspective on being alone. Sitting at home I'm constantly aware of the fact of being alone if no one is in the house with me. But put me knee deep in a stream or walking thru a forest and I'm most comfortable alone. I don't ever think "oh, I'm alone", its just the natural state of experiencing the outdoors for me.  By myself I see things, rare wonderful amazing things that only reveal themselves when other people aren't around. Two people obviously make twice as much disturbance just walking, heck just breathing and putting the scent of humans out there to spook wild critters. And that's not even counting that I'm convinced it's nearly impossible for two people to do something without at least one of them feeling the urge to talk. All of which means I'm less likely to see deer or squirrels or turkey, not to mention if I'm busy talking and interacting with another person I'm going to miss little wondrous things like an owl hidden back in the branches of an evergreen or the beautiful designs on the bark of a sycamore. I'm just more connected to the land and open to experience when I'm alone.

But this does come with a price. That price is my personal safety. If something happens there is no one there to help, or to go for help, or even call 911. I bring all this up because of an incident that happened just the other day. I had permission to hunt ginseng in a woods that sat at the back of a very large farm. There was no great way to get to this woods once all the fields were planted without fighting an awful lot of briars and thicket. Unless I came at it from the opposite side. I parked right at daylight along the bike trail. I walked probably a mile up the bike trail then up a creek into the back side of the woods I desired to explore. But this meant the farmer wouldn't know if I didn't come back out on time. I also just got out of the car shouldered my daypack and headed out without putting a note in the car telling where I was going. And I hadn't told Brenda before leaving the house. All of this comes back to me now after the fact. 

Anyways up the creek I went. Then over a little ridge and up a steep little hollow. The hollow was really steep, in places impossible to navigate without holding on to trunks of small trees as you went. And surrounded on each side by vast corn field. Just the kind of extremely out of the way place you might stumble upon a hidden pocket of ginseng in. And sure enough, by mid morning I had a pocketful and was finding more. In front of me a small gully was cut into the side of the ravine. Way too deep to cross easily and the main holler was almost cliff like here. I had to search for a bit to find a way across. A deer trail angled down to a spot that though steep seemed crossable. I eased down the steep path till I was almost at the bottom of this gully. Its maybe five or six feet to the bottom and I stumble, catching my foot on the wire from a piece of old fence that had washed down from up above. I try to catch myself with my other foot and it too catches in the wire and I fall the five or six feet to the bottom. There are several broken limbs sticking up and I fend off one which kind of flips me and the broken end of another catches me flush right in the side of my head above my left ear. 

The next thing I know I am sitting up stunned in bottom of this small gully. My head had hit the branch so hard the branch was broken off and there was dried blood on the side of my head. Dried blood, how long had it been? Just moments or an hour? I honestly don't know. I crawled over to a tree and sat back against it piecing together what had just happened and thinking about all the mistakes that had put me in such a dangerous predicament. 

In five decades spent outdoors, most of that alone I can think of only one other time that scared me as much as this incident did. A few years ago I was wading a river. It was a several day float trip and I had just pulled up on a random rock bar to make camp. So again no one knew exactly where I was. I hastily  made camp and hurried to the river to fish as darkness began to settle on the river. On the far bank some kind of game fish was herding bait against the shore and busting into it. Time and time again frightened minnows flushed out of the water. I eased closer and closer to get near enough for a cast till I was over waist deep in the river when it happened. I stepped and my foot went between two big rocks wedging itself in tightly. And I mean tightly, try as I might I could not free myself. And I was chest deep in the middle of a river as night was falling. A bit of panic set in. Just how long could I stand up in the current I wondered. I struggled some more, no go, I was stuck fast, I couldn't even slip my foot out of it's shoe it was held so tightly. Finally I caught my breath ducked underwater and felt around. These rocks were too big for me to budge. I thought for a bit longer then ducked under again and began stacking stones. If nothing else I'd try and make a pile to sit on till whenever someone happened along sometime tomorrow. But this gave me an idea. I piled a couple flat rocks atop each other and placed my free foot up on top. This gave me leverage. Pushing with all my might with my free leg, extending it like I was using a leg press machine at the gym I pulled my other foot free taking off a huge area of my hide and my shoe in the process. I ducked under again found my shoe still in the crack between the rocks. By now it was completely dark as I stumbled back to shore. 

After that I never wade without a knife, usually a solid sheath knife. That way if I'm ever tangled on any underwater debris I can cut myself loose. It would have worked even in the above situation too if I hadn't been able to free myself like I did. Looking back I could have worked the blade of the knife between my ankle and my shoe and sawed myself out my shoe. I'm convinced anyone wading or kayaking or canoeing should take a clue from scuba divers and carry a knife to free themselves with. And as soon as I got home from the ginseng woods I went inside and found a small notebook and pen to stash in the car to jot down where I'm going and leave on the seat or dash. 

Obviously there is no way to eliminate all risk in life. People have slipped on a spill in the kitchen and hit their heads and died. Accidents happen. And to be honest I hope when I go I hope it's a sudden accident out backpacking or fishing rather than a slow lingering affair in some hospital bed. I just don't want it to happen anytime soon I guess....

Stories from the woods...

 So I haven't posted any fishing photos lately. Which for me is incredible. What I've been doing is ginseng hunting. Something that in years past I was as passionate about as my fishing. If you are one of the two and a half people that read my stuff you already know I do some pretty hillbilly stuff. No glittery bass boats with ground penetrating, side imaging radar for me. I'm more the camping out on a rock bar, watching the fire type guy. My idea of an exotic fishing vacation isn't bonefish in Belize, instead in a couple weeks I'll be camped out in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area catching smallmouth. I come by these sensibilities honestly. My first job was skinning muskrats for my father who bought fur and ginseng from other good old boys back in the day when you could still do that sort of thing in southern Ohio without getting run out of town on a rail. I used to tag along with my grandfather and great uncle when I was probably 12 or 14 on trips to the woods hunting ginseng or "sang" as they called it. My grandfather Ofa was old school country from the hollers of Kentucky as were his best friends, Wilse and Buell. Yep, Ofa, Wilse, and Buell, it doesn't get much more hunting dogs, ginseng, and running trot lines country than that. 

I used to watch intently every time my dad bought ginseng. At the time ginseng was bringing "big money", maybe 50 or 60 bucks a pound. These old guys would pull up in equally old trucks and invariably have a brown paper grocery bag with a bit of dried ginseng in it. A brown paper bag or "tote" had to be the unofficial standard way of transporting your sang, I'd say 90% of it was brought in that way. This was pre digital scale days so dad would carefully check the grocery scale with little steel weights as the customer watched intently. I remember clearly my dad buying that old scale too. It was one of the few times my dad had a serious talk with me about what was right and wrong instead of just being a good example of how to live. The cause of this conversation was the fact that the only place he could find to buy a nice grocery scale was off of a former grand imperial wizard of the kkk. This was pre internet and he just couldn't find another. Out little town of South Lebanon was entirely white as was my class that year in school. But dad had served with blacks in the army and worked with some at GE and made sure I understood that people were just people and there were good ones and bad ones of all races. 

My dad was an avid gardener and naturally began to grow some ginseng in the woods behind our house. Every year adding another bed or two till he ended up with something like a quarter acre covered in ginseng. So I've pretty much spent my life immersed in a ginseng culture. I found that hunting ginseng, like fishing or hunting or most anything in life really, can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it out to be. You can simply go for a walk in the woods hoping to find some or you can apply serious thought to the process. Ginseng you see won't thrive just anywhere, it is in fact pretty strict about the conditions it prefers. Nowadays scouting trips don't involve looking for ginseng itself so much as looking for the correct set of conditions and most notably the right companion plants that also prefer the same conditions. Plants like maidenhair fern, cohosh, jack in the pulpit, and goldenseal prefer roughly the same conditions as sang and I'll skim thru a new woods looking for these as much or more than actual ginseng while scouting. In my part of the country probably the best indicator plant for me is baneberry. Baneberry looks a lot like cohosh but has white berries on vivid red stems. These white berries are deadly poison, as poisonous as anything around here if I remember right and make the plant easy to ID. Whenever I see baneberry I stop in my tracks and begin looking intently for ginseng. I think the only time you see baneberry without ginseng is in woods where the ginseng has long been dug out. If you are walking a woods and finding sang once in a great while then you start finding baneberry slow down there's probably ginseng growing somewhere nearby.

Even though ginseng has trended mostly upward in price over the years, to the point I once sold some for around a thousand dollars a pound, it's still hard to make any serious money at it if  you add up all the time you spend in the woods scouting and digging. I doubt you are making more on the hour than a decent factory job and you are working ten times harder. That being said I love it. You have to be really connected to the land to be good at it. and of course you get all the side benefits of time spent outdoors. This year I've seen deer, wild turkeys, had squirrels rain down hickory shells on me and even seen a big coyote slipping thru the underbrush. Just today I sat against a big tree having my lunch watching the sunlight send beams of light into a dark holler while the wind swept thru the treetops up on the ridge. Then off thru the woods a turkey began to yelp and continued to do so for ten minutes. It's times like this when I'd just as soon be from solid hillbilly stock as anything else...