Floating the Boundary Waters--9/15/2003

Hello all! I figured I better send out a letter to let everyone know that I arrived back home this evening, safe, sound and only missing the better part of one big toe-nail. Well, it’s not really gone, as such, but I’m sure it is only a matter of time before it is. While I’ve got your attention, why don’t I tell you a little story. No, let’s not call it a story, let’s call it a cautionary tale, since there is a pretty obvious lesson to be learned here—it is certainly a lesson that I won’t soon forget.

Let’s begin with a little background, since most of you are probably not familiar with all of the players involved. (And here I should make a note that I’m not trying to sound overly critical of anyone here so nobody should take offense—I fully plan to be overly critical of myself in my consideration of the events of the last few days so it’s only fair that I spare no-one)

Four people went on this trip: Steve, Brian, Kris and me. Of the four of us, only Steve had ever spent a considerable amount of time aboard a canoe (this is an important point to keep in mind throughout this little account). Kris owns a canoe and has spent enough time on it to know his way around a small water craft, but hadn’t really spent muchi> time on any serious float trips prior to this one. My experience with the world of paddling, prior to this trip, had consisted primarily of an absorption method of learning--though, possibly the word "osmosis" would hint at less soaking being involved, despite the fact that all of my prior experiences on canoes or kayaks has usually begun and ended with me getting wet upon entry and exit of the boat. Libby and I own two kayaks and I have been in my kayak a number of times (that number, I believe, is four). Most of what I knew about paddling I learned from listening to the things that Libby, Steve and Kris had figured out and experienced on the water, and I felt that, through them, I had learned quite enough. At least this was what I told myself and was the justification that I used in my mind for not getting out more and learning things first hand: I knew what I was doing. And, finally, Brian, had never been in a paddling boat of any form until two Sundays before we were supposed to leave, when Steve took him out in Kris’ aluminum canoe (which was nothing like the canoes we used on the Border Waters—I capitalize these names because they have earned capitalization in my vocabulary) where they spent roughly an hour paddling around the Sand Creek behind our house.

These are our players. Why, you might ask, would three people of such limited paddling experience venture out into a rather formidable environment like the Boundary Waters along the Canadian border, you might ask. The answer to this question lies solely on the shoulders of the fourth paddler, Steve. He talked us into it. Granted, it didn’t take much coaxing. We all liked the sound of getting away from Wichita for a week and of spending some time bonding (farting and making sex jokes) with just the guys. I can’t speak for anybody else, but, to be honest, I really didn’t take the Boundary Waters much into account. It was a destination and little more. It was vacation, and my approach to vacation is that the less planning that needs to be done the more enjoyable to experience as a whole it is (I’m not a meticulous planner, by any means, when it comes to vacations--I want a destination, a time of return and plenty of time to just sort of see where the spirit moves me). Having this attitude, I decided to opt out of nearly the entire planning portion of this adventure. I let Steve handle it. I think, perhaps, Kris and Brian also approached this trip the same way. As such, there was very little consultation prior to the voyage. Nobody but Steve had really considered the destinations that he had penned out on his map for us to make our way to on the water and, to be honest, I had absolutely no concept even of what the Boundary Waters were (this is also an important point to keep in mind).

Now, before I go any further, I can feel heads shaking at me. Some of you, doubtless, are wondering how I’ve survived to live this long. Before leaving at the beginning of the week I probably would have made some adamant argument about how I have ample common sense but just don’t much care for over-analyzing situations or something along that line. After this trip, however, I’m beginning to wonder just how I have managed to live as long as I have.

I will skip ahead in our trip to our arrival in Ely (pronounced eelee), MN. Not much but a fifteen hour car ride that ended up taking nearly nineteen hours happened up to this point. Ely is, in my opinion, one of the greatest towns I have ever been in. Every day we were there it never got above seventy-five degrees during the day, even though it was late July. It rained frequently and without warning (I love rain, so this was a good thing, at least it was before I had any experience paddling the Boundary Waters) and it got down to around fifty-five degrees at night. The people there were all fantastically nice—they obviously survive on the paddling trade as there were no less than a dozen outfitters in the town and no other obvious signs of industry in the area—and full of energy, and they were, on the whole, quite attractive. This was not an “old” town, which made it nice on our eyes (hey, we are guys). The town’s main thoroughfare was jammed full of quaint little shops and other assorted stores and restaurants. It was nearly surreal.

I still think I might like to live there some day. I like the winter—of which they get plenty—and I like the idea of 70s in July. But I digress. There are lots of places I would rather live than Kansas, at least that is what I decide every year about this time when it’s getting over 100 degrees during the days."" But I still digress.

So, we get out to our outfitter—the business that is renting us canoes and supplying us with transportation to the point where we plan to drop into the water and start our float trip. Early on we decided to provide as much of our own gear and food as was possible, figuring it would save us much in the way of rental fees and services. And, had we not been dealing with a “professional” organization, this might, in fact, have been the case. Instead, they came up with new and even more unbelievable ways to charge us money ($60 to drive us twenty miles to our drop in point, $4 per person for a towel and the use of their showers when we returned, etc.). Naturally, we agreed to pay most of it since we were already there and didn’t want to mess with figuring something else out. As I think I’ve said before, this was all one big learning experience.

We got onto the water at about 10:00 a.m. on the first day of our time on the water. It was a wonderful, brisk morning. We hopped in our boats and start paddling vigorously out the quarter-mile swamp that was our drop-in point (not a swamp, really, but it was a shallow area completely filled with reeds, water lilies and moss-type plants—the only way through was by way of a snaking path of smashed foliage that months of paddlers before us had created). Once we got out into the wide open lake—a small one, really, no more than three quarters of a mile across (by my estimate, I still have hardly even looked at the map we had, so I’m not entirely sure about the “actual” distances we traveled)—we were instantly struck with the beauty and grandeur of the setting. Hills, trees, expanses of water, clouds floating low, early morning fog still lifting from the water’s surface, it was really quite nice. And, yes, I'm sure there is a better word for it, but "nice" was how I felt about it at the time, and I hate to over-romanticize something well after the fact.

“Wow,” we said. “This was certainly worth it!”

At this point, of course, we should have taken some pictures and gone home. We’d seen the “nice” and the pictures would help us remember it. >But, for some reason, we felt sure that it would be worth a full day of paddling to get to this waterfall right along the Canadian border. So we set off.

Now, here is where an open discussion of our options before leaving for this trip would have been a good idea. Had we discussed, we might have realized that the day’s work that we had planned was going to take us about eight hours of paddling. This is a big day—especially for us. At this point I feel that I need to give kudos to my Dad for making an observation a week or so before we left for this trip that turned out to be completely true. He said, “Aren’t you guys too old and too fat to be doing something like this?” My answer then was, “I’ve heard of much older people doing these trips.” Which was true, and I saw some far older people out there doing a far better job than I ever could, so his broad generalization was a bit unfair, unless he meant it, as I suspect he did, in specific reference to our little group of travelers. Now my answer to Dad’s observation—the answer of a wiser and more seasoned man—is, “Yes. Yes, I am too old and fat for this kind of vacation.” Though I’d have to wonder if I was ever young enough and in good enough shape to have pulled a trip like this off well.

But we set forth anyway, plugging heedlessly along through areas that had no camp sites in a blind hope of reaching this aquatic Shangri La that we had created in our heads. The fact that there were no camp sites did not sink in until later, when we noticed that it was starting to get late and we hadn’t yet reached our destination and we began to wonder if we needed to turn back—back tracking nearly three hours. Not that it would have mattered if we had, all of the camp sites would have likely been filled back the way we came by that point. One of the things we learned about the Boundary Waters during this, their peak season, is that the best plan of action is to find a camp site early, well before noon if possible, because that is what everyone else is doing. Nothing is open much into the afternoon, and the camp sites are so few and far between—only two or three on some entire lakes—that people rush to a site and set up camp. Apparently the purpose is only to camp for most of the people out there as none of them are covering any sort of distance with their paddling. Again, we went in with the wrong expectations.

But we felt sure that we’d find a site. We knew there were a half a dozen of them on the lake that bordered the waterfall with more a relatively short distance beyond in two directions.

Here I feel it is necessary to discuss a word common to anyone who has ever gone on an official “canoe” trip. “Portage.” First of all, despite what this word appears to be, it is both a verb and a noun. Thus, to say that one has “to portage” is entirely correct, though it defies all grammatical logic. “Storage,” “verbiage,” “foliage.” None of these words are verbs. In fact, I can’t think of another word with the “age” suffix that IS a verb. Grammatical logic, however, is openly scoffed by people who normally heft seventy-five-pound packs on their backs while carrying forty-pound canoes on their shoulders over nearly mountainous terrain. And it took a little research for me to figure out why.

It turns out that “portage,” as it is used within the context of paddling, IS a viable verb. The reason for this lies in the origins of the word’s roots. First, “port” is from the Latin word “portus,” which means “harbor” or “haven.” The second portion of the word “-age,” though commonly a simple suffix, is actually a shortening of another word when used in this case. “-age” is from the Greek word “agus,” which means “to create festering blisters by carrying heavy burdens while wearing previously dampened clothing.” So, obviously, portage should be a verb in this case.

For those unfamiliar with the application of the term—as I was until I had experienced my first one—a portage is a connecting point between two bodies of water. To get from one body to the other, the paddler must carry his/her gear and canoe from one body of water to the other. Some of these portages are quite nice—short, flat, a good excuse to sit down and take a breather. Two of them were that way for us. Two out of about fifteen. The rest contained portions of trail that looked like the climbing walls that rock climbers practice on and had deep puddles of mud that had to be stepped in and the paths snaked around at angles that canoes couldn’t easily make. Most of them were hell and some of them were nearly a half a mile long (not the twenty or thirty foot jaunts that I had envisioned in my uneducated mind prior to our leaving).

Anyway, we reached our lake of destination and set out to find a camp site. The two that were closest we immediately saw were taken. We chalked this up to convenience, since these sites were close to the exit points of the lake. We paddled out into the middle of the lake (and it bears noting that, at this point, we’d been on the water or hauling our stuff pretty much non-stop for about seven straight hours and we were getting a bit short-fused; understandably, I think), and soon found that all of the sites on this lake were taken. We were a bit disappointed.

This was when it started to rain. Hard.

We had, of course, brought rain gear. It was all conveniently located in the bottom of our dry bags, which were large and full of things that we didn’t want rain or lake to get at. We knew there was a chance of rain, we’d watched the weather channel for a week before the trip to keep an eye on what was going on up there. But, somehow, we had managed to put that particular piece of information as far back in our brains as possible throughout the day. We pulled up on a rock and hid under a sizeable “Charlie Brown” style conifer for shelter, of which it provided none.

Twenty minutes later the storm passed and we decided that it was damn well time that we had a camp, because it looked like more storms would be setting in, probably in another hour or so.

This is the point where our story turns from a simple travel story to a “fight for survival” story. In fact, if it had ended in tragedy, I’m sure that the networks would be bidding on the rights to create a mini-series based on our experiences right now. If it had ended in near tragedy, “Storm Stories” might have opted for it. Fortunately for us but unfortunately for our fifteen minutes of fame, it didn’t end in tragedy or near tragedy—but it wasn’t for the lack of our trying to turn it that way.

By this point it was 6:30 p.m., far too late for us to make it back to the earlier lakes we had explored. There was nothing for us to do but plug along and hope we could find an open camp site. So that’s what we did. We spent a half an hour heading across the formidable lake towards the waterfall, planning to check the sites on the other side of it since they were the closest. We reached the waterfall just in time to meet another party who informed us that all of the camp sites down that path were taken for quite some distance. Needless to say, this worried us some.

That left us with only one direction to go, towards two rushing rapids that we had to fight against before we could portage around them. It was growing darker and the temperature was dropping. We had managed to stay somewhat dry thanks to our rain gear, but even that was starting to soak through. If we couldn’t find a suitable site on the other side of the rapids, we were going to have to create a camp site instead, and so far we’d only seen two large and inhospitable looking rocks with enough room for two tents on it, and they were a half an hour of paddling away.

We decided to scout ahead, beyond the portage, instead of trekking the boats and gear all the way over, in case we couldn’t find a spot—that way our stuff wouldn’t need to be moved twice if we were just going to have to head for the nearest big rock to make camp on. Steve tramped through the forest to where the closest camp site was (which was the only one we could reach from that end of the portage, despite what the map we had suggested). It was open!!! We began to run back to our canoes to start the final portage of the day when, lo and behold, an intrepid and possibly less organized group made up predominantly of European tourists met us on the portage trail. They were struggling to find an open camp site as well, it turned out. Kris or Brian, I’m not sure which because I was already moving gear, turned around and caught Steve up, telling him to run back to the camp and wait there to save it for us. There was no way we were losing this site to anybody.

Now, this isn’t to say that we wouldn’t have shared the site with them, if worse had come to worse and they hadn’t been able to find one a little further down. We had, after all, only checked one site on this lake and there were several more options available. But we wanted to be the ones doing the sharing because we knew we would share with another group if they needed the room. As it turned out, it was best that this group found their own camp site, as I caught one of them snooping through our boats as I was coming back from making a load to the other end of the portage (he was a footbol hooligan-looking German teenager and he tried to play it off like he was just checking out our gear, but who knows). All I know is that he looked a bit shady and at the time I wasn’t in the mood to spend the night listening for people rustling around in the bags outside our tent while we slept. Our day had been long enough by that point.

So we made camp and narrowly escaped a cold, wet death, or, at least, a miserable night of sleep on a hard rock. The rain came back about twenty minutes after we got our tents up and we ended up cooking our dinner—which none of us particularly felt like eating—under the cover of a tarp. The food, like our day, left a bitter taste in our mouths.

Actually, it didn’t. Libby, my wife and a hearty camper who would have loved this trip if her gender hadn’t held her back from participating, helped us prepare all of our meals before we left and that night we had stacked enchiladas. They were quite tasty. But the bitter taste bit makes for a better, if not a bit clichéd, story.

The best part of this camp site was its proximity to Canada. We could have thrown a stone over the border—well, we could have if one of us could throw farther than your average sixth grader, I guess. We took the opportunity to moon Canada, which Brian took a picture of. We didn’t mean any disrespect, of course. We love Canada. Really. It’s great. Especially for mooning.

The next day turned out much the same, though we at least had a keener sense of pessimism and negativity developed by that point thanks to our experiences.

We decided to cut our trip back to our drop in point (where we were also being picked up) in two, covering two thirds the first day and the last little bit the morning before our pick up time. This, we figured, would be easy, since we covered that much distance in a single day. Unfortunately, the first day we were fresh and healthy and happy and feeling ripe for adventure. The second day we were already blistering and god-awful sore from paddling and climbing mountains all day and a bit cranky and not at all optimistic about our prospects of finding a good camp site in the only lake we really had as an option to stay in if we headed back towards our drop in point. Remember, the three or four lakes that made up the first part of our first day’s travels had only a handful of camp sites on each of them. So we decided to take our chances—such as they were turning out to be, which was why we were doubting our odds of finding a site—on an alternate lake that also connected to the lake we dropped into to begin with. There were a few short portages and we figured we would be home free.

And then it rained again. This time hard and for nearly a half an hour. And, again, there was nowhere for us to go. The storm had sprung up, literally, in less than fifteen minutes right over the top of us. To the best of our knowledge, there hadn’t even been much of a chance for rain that day. It seemed as though nature was taking pot shots at us, which we firmly believe it was.

Once the rain cleared, we finished the last portage and got into a narrow river-like area that led into the main lake. We soon found out that getting to the main lake required the negotiation of two “unmapped” portages around small, shallow rapids that ran over unnaturally slippery rocks. It was in-between two of these rocks that I tried to remove the top half of the toenail on my right big toe. Since my shoes had gotten soaked the day before and hadn’t had any time to dry, I was forced to wear my sandals, which, of course, had open toes. Open toes=bad for hiking and dragging boats through slippery, rocky rapids, in case anyone ever needs to know that for future reference.

I nearly lost it. I growled and cursed and very nearly tipped my boat and started swimming for the nearest set of woods to try and find a bear to wrestle (we didn’t see any bears. We didn’t see any moose either. I saw a loon, a mink—or a stoat or some other ferret-like critter, we couldn’t see it clearly enough for a positive ID—and a pike and pretty much nothing else that I couldn’t find in Kansas, which was a little disappointing).

But I eventually calmed down and we began to paddle towards the first batch of camp sites. These were, of course, full. So we paddled off to the next set, which were also taken. So we began to run over our options again. It was getting late—about 5:00 or so—and we were too far away from any other lakes to find a camp site . . .again. If none of the remaining camp sites were open, we were going to have to paddle all the way back to our drop in point, call the outfitters and hope like hell that they would make a 9:00 trip out to pick us up. Otherwise we were going to be camping in a parking lot and sitting around until our 1:00 pick up time at the tavern/outfitter located there (called the Chainsaw Sisters’ Tavern—though we only saw one guy working there and no trace of a chainsaw).

We paddled across the lake, somewhere about a half mile to three-fourths of a mile, and spotted two of the three remaining sites and saw that they were taken. Then we saw a third and, miraculously, it was still open. We pulled in, made camp, and said a silent prayer to Saint Nalgene of the sodden desperation, patron saint of pathetic campers. We ate our dinner, made a soggy fire that did little more than sputter and steam, and went to bed.

Really, once the paddling was out of the way, we had a quite enjoyable time with the camping bits. The weather was perfect, which almost never happens when camping in Kansas. Here it’s guaranteed to be as hot as it possibly can be and, though there might be a strong south wind blowing to help cool one off at night, it will usually bring dust and other debris which will filter through the netting on the side of a tent and leave a gritty layer all over one’s sweaty body. Not pleasant at all.

The last day held the three worst portages that we saw, but we tackled them eagerly and with great optimism, because beyond them lay the END of the trip! We made it back to the Chainsaw Sisters’ Tavern about an hour before our pick up time and we had a few beers—which didn’t leave a bitter taste at all. We decided that, overall, it was a fun trip. Yes, it could have gone more smoothly. Yes, we could have done many things differently, and, if we ever decide to go back, we probably will do things differently. But, despite it all, we had fun seeing things we’d never seen and mooning Canada. Especially mooning Canada.

The moral of the story is this: if you are going to do something that you’re not qualified to do, at least bring a heaping helping of last minute good luck or you’re gonna be screwed big time.

The End.