The Boundary Waters area of Northern Minnesota is a spectacular place for getting back to nature. Nature as one might expect the early adventurers enjoyed, or perhaps endured. Mike McNett and I both enjoyed (that would be Mike, mostly) and endured (yours truly) a ten-day odyssey some years ago. I’ve covered our first two days in a previous installment, so let’s pick right up and continue on…

I wrote, before, of obtaining a shiny new sunburn on the second day of paddling and portaging, and too described a typical “black cloud” of mosquitoes that seemed to have hatched with an epicurean delight for my blood type. Those, along with my somewhat significant allergic reaction to heavy duty DEET repellent combined to make the following few days less than idyllic, in my opinion, even though I really was having a lot of fun.

Days Three and Four were similar in that Mike and I would slowly paddle our canoe full of gear, slowly winding the less frequently traveled ways. We became absorbed in nature – studying trees, wildflowers, fauna and anything that took our interest. We cleaned up campsites, bathed in the crisp, cold water and simply enjoyed the distance and remoteness from our everyday lives.

On the third day, in the process of toting our gear through a portage, I heard Mike say something like, “What the heck is tha…?”, at which time the front of the canoe (ever Mike’s domain) thumped on the ground and I looked to see him sprinting a few yards ahead and around a bushy bend in the trail. I placed my end of the canoe on the ground and started to cautiously approach a small open area, free of trees and the long grass I was leaving behind. As I approached, I could hear odd noises; small squeaks and whistles and the sound of thumping feet. I was silently cursing the next moment as I felt sure I would round the blind curve to find Mike riding a moose and bearing down on me at breakneck speed.

Instead, I was amazed to first see Mike, hopping around, onto and off the trail like he was
Lord of the Flippin’Dance when I suddenly saw at his feet a small mammalian ball curling in defense or attempting to wobble off the trail. Chief Mugwump’s rain dance, it turned out, was his attempt to simultaneously herd and keep from being skewered by a young porcupine. He was successful long enough for me to get some nondescript, slightly blurry pictures before we ended the molestation. I still attribute the blurriness of the photos to the frenetic wide receiver-like high stepping and midair directional changes, while Mike insists it’s because I was laughing and not concentrating. Either way, the picture is of Mike about three feet in the air looking down at what could be an animal, or a large clump of dirt on the trail. The next few hours were relatively uneventful in comparison, and thankfully more sedate as we carried on to our campsite and dinner.

There was a brief, cold rain that evening that mercifully abated the mosquitoes temporarily, but was hard enough to drive us into the shelter of the tent after a short time. We talked about the events of the past few days and listened to the rain hiss the fire out before the tapping of rain drops and the smell of soggy ashes coaxed us to sleep.

After rousing myself and shaking off the desire to sleep in, I followed Mike outside into the early morning sun to find our campsite abuzz with hundreds of dragonflies swooping, diving and snatching mosquitoes out of mid-air. There were literally dozens of the green and gold dragons swirling around each other like a miniature reenactment of a World War II dogfight. It was then that Mike and I agreed that the dragonfly would be our personal talisman for the rest of the trip. We felt elated and enfolded within the natural order of things. We were being taken care of by a power greater than ourselves, a benign presence that deepened our feeling every time one of the powerful insects would perch on our heads or shoulders to devour another hapless bug. We saw a moose cow and calf that day, peering out of the woods at us, along with a couple of white-tailed deer later on. We were casually floating snacking on granola mix when I spotted something big and fast leaping away from the water’s edge. I pointed quickly and we both got to see it race up a dead tree and run away from us through the branches. Even from a couple hundred yards away I could tell this animal was larger and darker in color than any pine marten and concluded that it could only have been the elusive fisher, for which I’ve held admiring curiosity since boyhood.

The campsite on the fourth night was something less than picturesque. Low and flat, all the dampness from the water rolled up on us and kept us shivering all night. Even the small wooden toilet provided by the park management was a mouldering, rotting loss. We crapped in the woods like bears that night, providing a nearly silent answer to the age-old question and dutifully buried it (unlike the bears.) There were no squirrels within reach, however, so we couldn’t verify the second age-old axiom.

Mike had planned to take us into a dead end lake for the middle of the trip, only one way in and out. He had coordinated with Mr. Binoculars, our outfitter, who had told him it was one of his favorite hideaway fishing spots since almost no one went into the dead end. It turned out to be the highlight of our trip, but I’ll save that story for next time.