Out of Myself I Go: Beauty for Ashes Pt. 2

Sunrise at Campsite #1495 on Lake Four in Boundary Waters

Beauty for Ashes Pt. 2

After a 105r portage the next morning, G2 entered the many-islanded Lake Insula. 

As always, Astrid had read what she considered to be a relevant book before the trip. This time it was The Voyageur by Grace Lee Nute, a historical study on the men who moved products through the upper Great Lakes on very big canoes in the 18th and 19th centuries. They were usually French, uneducated and impressively strong because they paddled all day, everyday for long seasons, in addition to portaging tons of materials between lakes. 

One whole chapter of the book was dedicated to their songs. Why songs? Paddling against the wind, up through Lake Insula that day, Astrid understood. When one eventually falls into an effective rhythm when paddling a canoe, it becomes a mesmerizing cadence that lends itself to song. The voyageurs’ songs helped them to pass the time, grew camaraderie, helped them synchronize their paddling strokes and was a lot more pleasant than just staring into the horizon. 

Just in time to disappoint a few other canoeing parties searching for a campsite, G2 made it to site #1323, a 5-star campsite with a sand beach, and campsite perched high on top of flat rocks overlooking an expanse of Lake Insula. This Best Campsite Ever would be their home for the next two days. 

Campsites in BW vary in size and beauty, but like so many things these days, are also rated by a 5-star system (BWCA campsite map with ratings). What impressed Astrid, eventually, when she thought about it, was that she saw nothing human-made other than the grates in each campsite. There were no signs, no random stakes in the ground, no surveying posts– only nature. 

Astrid picked a spot for her tent which backed up to a patch of oxeye daisies, but the whole campsite was sprinkled with wildflowers–orange hawkweed (Hieracium pilloseloides), tall buttercup (Ranunculus acris) and low tiny white flowers. The afternoon sun was strong on the front of the site, warming the boulders, which made it good for drying socks.

Canoeing meant that at one time or another, Astrid’s feet were going to get wet. She needed a decent hiking boot for the portaging trails, but getting decent hiking boots wet would immediately ruin them, so Astrid wore her old, cracked leather boots, since there was no way not to get one’s feet wet unless you wore rubber galoshes. But she was used to it; a past working in greenhouses and trudgeing around dew soaked fields in the morning had taught her to grin and bear wet feet. Every day, before setting up camp, the canoeists took off their soggy boots and changed into (hopefully) dry socks and camp shoes.

After setting up camp, most of G2 went swimming in the tannic waters under a hazy cloud of mayflies. Astrid made her usual survey of the camp, photographing wildflowers and following trails. 

After some time, two canoes went out fishing. Mr. K, Astrid’s travel-canoe partner liked to fish, it was his great joy, as many times during the trip, he would throw in a fishing line in while they were paddling to a spot. She had gone fishing once or twice when she was a child, but never had much interest. Admittedly, it was a great way to get dinner, but she did not quite understand the draw of it. Like the Merganser photographers, she thanked God that there were people in the world, including Mr. K, who loved to fish. 

The Best Campsite, #1323

Campsite #1323 was a beautiful campsite, but it was also dry and hot in the late afternoon sun, even in the shade it was uncomfortable. After all the resting and exploring had been done, Snorri and Astrid convinced a G2 fellow canoeist, D, to take a canoe out to explore. The minute they launched into the water, everyone felt better, the cool air blowing faintly against their faces. 

That night, Mr. K woke everyone for star-gazing. Astrid, coming out of a death-like sleep, to see one of the most spectacular sights she had ever seen, fumbled out of her cozy, one-man tent to look up to behold a dynamic, clear, twinkling sky full of stars. Through her sleepy fog, she knew it was beautiful and rare, since there was so little light pollution in the BW. And, though she had wondered and written about the splendor of a clear, star-filled night sky, in And the Darkness Has Not Overcome It', the sight always carried a vein of frustration with it. At first, she thought it was because she was spoiled, with Bjorn always staying up (read: keeping the family up) to photograph stars on their trips–but that wasn’t the whole reason. It was because the stars were untouchable. 

So many beautiful things she’d seen on her parochial travels held within them a point of contact, of relatability; she could touch the bark of the gigantic redwoods, hear the calls of the birds, come within feet of animals, touch the tannic waters, the dirt, the car-sized boulders … but the stars, they were beautiful, mute and … untouchable, incomprehensible, even if she did understand a tiny bit about what they were and where, they were all very theoretical to her, except for their light.

It made sense that people looked to the heavens when praying to God, who is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. Although the Judeo-Christan God, as the Soviets found out when they sent a man into space, does not live there*, He is credited with the construction of the heavens. The vastness of the star-lit skies, the seeming unending expanse and its untouchable sacrosanct-ness gives us puny humans a slight hint about how incomprehensible God really is. 

In the morning, the lake was covered with a film of dead Mayflies (Ephemeroptera spp.), which had died en masse during the night, and fallen into the water. They washed up in sheets onto the shores and dotted the waters everywhere. The mayflies seemed to be as numerous as the stars in the sky Astrid saw the night before, but unlike the almost-eternal stars, the delicate insects live for only a day. 

In the morning, all eight members of G2 packed a lunch and set off from The Best Campsite, traveling east to the Kawishiwi River, then south toward Fishdance Lake to see the Fishdance Picture Rocks, ancient drawings on the side of a rock. All along the trip, fishermen fished, non-fishermen paddled and looked and enjoyed the trip. When Astrid finally saw the rock hieroglyphs, she was a bit underwhelmed; the Fishdance hieroglyphs looked like smudges of red on rock. 

They paddled leisurely back, fishing, swimming, eating lunch and portaging. When they finally returned to their campsite, and Astrid started to peel off wet boots and socks on the warm rocky ledge over the water, one G2 canoeist came around the bend and said, “I found them!”

“Them” were Group 1, nine canoeists who had spent the day paddling (and fishing) down from their route to meet G2. In the BW, voices travel easily over the water, and speaking in a normal tone will carry yards and yards, possibly miles, so they could carry on a normal conversation standing high on the rocks without G1 disembarking from their canoes. It was nice to see them. Funny how fond one grows of our friends when we see them again, after toiling on some shared, but separate journey. 

G1 paddled to a nearby campsite to set up camp, then paddled back to The Best Campsite Ever, to swap stories of long fish and short portages, fishing triumphs and losses, meals and sights. 

At 3AM the next morning, wakefulness found Astrid once again, leaving her restless and wondering when she would fall back asleep. Staring up at the ceiling of her tent, she noticed a marked difference from other nights: it was deadly still outside. There was no breeze, no critter scurrying, no sound, nothing but the occasional bright flash outside her tent. 

When she unzipped her tent and stood up, she understood. The sky was so overcast with dark clouds it shut out even twilight, making the skies inky black. The eerie darkness felt closer and more oppressive than ever. But the lightning bugs flashed all the brighter. As she returned to her tent, drops of rain pocked the canvas, then grew into what sounded like a downpour, then dwindled into a pitter patter again.

In the morning the rain had gone but had left the best smell ever, of piney woods after a rain; sweet, subtley perfumed, dewey, but fleeting as the morning sun came up to burn it all away. 

“The End” must come, to every pain, every journey, every lesson, every joy, every life; to everything we put a cage of time around, there must be an end. And that morning, they had reached the beginning of BW Canoe Trip 2020 End. 

After breakfast, G2 packed up and paddled over to G1’s campsite, soaking in each other’s company before setting out on their trip back to where they started. 

The whole flotilla stopped for lunch at a peninsula of rock and gravel. They were encountering more and more canoeists traveling the opposite direction. One family traveling the other way said they could not find a campsite up to that point, which gave them some concern.

They paddled across Lake Four and into a healthy headwind, the waves lapping against the hull of the canoe, to the first empty campsite, site #1495. Great boulders, sloping down into the water lined the shore, and behind it was a stark, recovering landscape with jagged dead trees and thick, green, but short undergrowth. Unsure they would find another site, and because a few G1 canoeists needed trees for hammocks, G2 took the sight and G1 paddled on.  

The site was dry, small and rocky, hot in the afternoon sun, but it was place to rest and stay for the night before heading off the water. The path to the “restroom” was overgrown, a hint that it was not much used. But they made the best of it, napped on the boulders, swam out into the cool waters and explored the area. 

It was the last night they would spend in the BW wilderness. One last night to see the untouchable stars sparkling over the water. 

Up to that point, Astrid’s life was not much affected by the national reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, other than losing some part-time work. But as she was sometimes empathetic to a point of fault, and slightly germaphobic, it worried her–for the health of those around her and the economic and social repercussions of the state and national lock-downs. Along with enough food and equipment and clothes for a week of canoeing in the BW wilderness, she carried all these worries with her, too. 

“Worry will follow you into the wilderness, but will it follow you back out?” she asked herself many times that week. In the end, at the less-than-ideal, but still beautiful campsite #1495 in Lake Four, her answer was, “Yes, but.” But, because your journey into the wilderness has given you an unique soul-deep rest, made you literally stronger, and figuratively taller, you can look at this worry from a different perspective; from above it, instead of from under it, and it will feel smaller even though it hasn’t changed. And considering it from that height and strength, it cannot do much harm. 

Every day, the BW’s wilderness offered gifts–an early morning sunrise over the water; a mirror-still lake reflecting the sky; a bald eagle sighting; the eerie wail of a loon song; hope growing green, new and lush to heal over devastated fire-torn forest; fellow canoeists' joy in their grand pursuits; incomprehensible stars begging far-away, unanswerable questions; the after-rain perfume of the forest; wildflowers tucked away in verdant corners; spectacular sunsets to close the days. The final gift was bittersweet–it was a slight sorrow, but edifying satisfaction of a journey well-traveled. Juxtaposed with these daily gifts, it was as if nature never heard of COVID, and if it did, it just shrugged. 

In the morning, after a quick breakfast, they sought and found their friends, G1, and paddled out along placid waters, back to where they started. They piled up all six canoes and all 17 lifevests, waited for LaTourelle’s Outfitters to come pick up the equipment, then got a long-awaited shower back at the outfitter’s.  

The group picked up lunch and souvenirs in the nearby town of Ely, Minnesota, then started on their drive home. They spent the night front-country camping at a state park in Wisconsin Dells, then drove back to Southwest Michigan the next day.

"Now we were to return, like the voyager in the play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected the while in our surroundings; what surprises stood ready made for us at home; and whither and how far the world had voyaged in our absence." -Robert Louis Stevenson An Inland Voyage 

When Astrid returned home, she found that the world hadn’t voyaged far; COVID still raged, jobs were lost, everything was canceled or at a standstill, but the pandemic didn’t seem as big and threatening as before, because she knew she could and must, paddle on into the wind, into uncertainty. 

 

* In 1961 the Russians sent up Yuri Gagarin into space. The quote, “I went up to space, but I didn’t encounter god,” is often misattributed to him.