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...
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