Paddler’S Paradise
“Glurp. Glurp …”
A paddle churns through gently lapping water. A canoe glides across a placid lake. Long, lazy loon laughs echo from shore to shore, bouncing from granite boulders, drifting upward toward forests of pine, dogwood, spruce, birch and aspen, fading into a sky where hawks, ravens and eagles soar.
“Glurp …”
Paddling, you feel as if you can breathe it all in; float close to an elaborate beaver house, elegant lily pads, or schools of little fish swimming near the surface, which usually means bigger fish below: lake trout, bluegill, walleye, northern pike. An out-of-state Minnesota fishing license is a bargain for anglers who fancy primitive, unspoiled conditions.
Your gear would work for summer camp. Flashlight, fishing gear, pocket knife, Band-Aids, insect repellent, and a pair of lightweight boots you won’t mind getting very wet in one million acres of lakes, more than 11,000 of them larger than five acres, some deeper than 200 feet.
The Boundary Waters extend for some 150 miles along the Canadian border in Superior National Forest. It is the largest protected canoeing wilderness in North America, and it feels like it. The only people you see are other canoeists. Paddling is the only way in or out. The U.S. Forest Service administers the area in patrol canoes, but you rarely see one.
It is quiet, without hotels, phones, or electricity. Motors are prohibited on all but a few of the bigger lakes, which can be easily avoided. Planes overhead must fly higher than 5,000 feet. A Forest Service seaplane may be the only aircraft you see or hear in a week in these woods.
Of course, paddling a canoe is exercise, but it can be done by the reasonably fit spanning a great range in age. Attitude is important, and particular optimism may be needed to guide you over the next portage. These are land paths connecting the lakes. Unless you plan to paddle in circles, you must transport everything from lake to lake. Some portage trails are only 50 feet, others one-half mile.
You locate each portage by reading maps and scouting shorelines, then you start stretching your legs after propelling yourself with arm power, lugging paddles, fishing fear, life jackets, food and stowed gear in oversize, waterproof canvas packs called Duluth bags. Canoes, which must be carried, too, come with padded shoulder yokes for this purpose.
An easy canoe trip might cover five to six miles daily, including two or three portage treks over winding trails, skirting spongy mosses and lichens. A group portage is a lesson in cooperation.
Peaceful beauty follows narrow tracks down into low, shady fern glades, over and between rocks. Cresting hills, a natural order emerges. Strong members carry canoes, others, whatever they can handle. The task goes quickly. How tidy it would be if all trails were so logically manageable, all goals so clearly relieving as the sight of water through the trees after a lengthy portage with a 70-pound canoe balanced on your neck.
Camping is the only choice of accommodations, in primitive campgrounds equipped with fire grates and pit toilets. Some sites come with big logs for seats around the fire pit, others have only rocks. None have picnic tables or even an outhouse. It is just you and the forest.
Canoeing can be mesmerizing. Suspended over a lake, surrounded by dwarfing space that reduces you to just another element of the geography, you become a piece of a big picture. Pressures fade when the canoe, the paddling effort, the water, wind, sky and you converge in sync. You never know when it will occur, but when it comes, it approaches a perfection of rhythm. Time expands, if only for a fleeting moment when you experience solitude unchanged in over 2000 years since the days of the French voyageurs, Ojibwa Indians, and centuries beyond.
There is no need to wear a watch out here. Eat when you are hungry, sleep when tired, paddle and go when and where you choose. You can cross into Canada at specified customs and immigration points into the adjacent Quetico Provincial Park, which has an even bigger, protected canoe area. You can paddle all the way to Hudson Bay or farther, or sit still gazing at the phosphorescent Northern Lights.
Dark, clear night skies loaded with stars lull you into calm and deep sleep. You may awake in the morning with mists crowning reflections on a perfect glassy lake, wondering for a heartbeat which way is up.