I. Missing Link

Missing Link Lake is a fine, though often overlooked, point of entry into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It lies a few miles beyond Gunflint Lake on the Gunflint Trail. Hilary and I started a four-day trip there in July. What follows is an unembellished record of the incidental stuff that makes such a trip worthwhile.

*

Two portages, 142 and 428 rods. (That is to say, 1/2 mile and a mile and a half.) Once again we groan at first but in the end emerge on Tuscarora without terrible suffering.
Hilary is dozing now in her Therma-chair. Pale blue sky. Few clouds. Our campsite looks south, we’re out of the sun and wind but can see the entire sweep of the lake. For the record, we left Minneapolis at 9:15, got to Grand Marais at 2:15. Picked up our permit, stopped in town to purchase an extra dinner packet, and after another hour of driving, set off from the trailhead at 4:00. We reached Tuscarora at 5:45.

*

It turns out the fuel canister I bought doesn’t fit our stove. But the salesman in the store said it would! It’s a case of error or negligence on his part, but an act of carelessness on my part, reinforcing the fact that we need to look out for ourselves in important matters.
Well, we’ll be cooking with wood on this trip. I was upset with both myself and the salesman—for about five minutes. Then I started to break up some of the brush that was lying around the campsite. I hiked up the trail leading to the latrine, located a few small dead-and-down cedar trees, and returned in ten minutes with enough wood for both the evening and morning fires.

This is how we always used to do it, before we got so ecological. It’s fun and easy, especially in dry weather. And it obviates the need to make a decision, day after day, about whether or not to have a fire. Of course, having a fire isn’t as much fun as it used to be, now that every campsite has been equipped with a huge cast-iron enclosure, which is useful for cooking but not for staring into. The folks across the lake seem to have built a fire large enough to melt that campsite grill. You can see it clearly with the naked eye even from here.

*

As I write these words, it’s 8:30. The sun is going down and we’re watching a moose swim across the lake. All you can see is the long snout and the huge antlers. I think it may take him ten minutes to reach the island he’s headed for.
Hilary spotted him with binoculars twenty minutes ago in a bay on the other side of the lake, walking through the reeds. Now he’s passed the island and headed for this shore, maybe a half-mile down from where we’re sitting.
Many loons on this lake. The wind has dropped to a gentle breeze.

*

The sun went down a half-hour ago, but no moon yet. It’s one day short of full, which means it should have been up for at least an hour. I suppose it’s behind us in the trees.
The day has been so benign we decided not to put up the fly on the tent. It’s possible the moon will keep us up, if it ever appears.

Finally it appears in the east, large and buttery, taking me by surprise as it peeks out above the tree-line—even though I’ve been waiting up just to see it. I ask myself, ‘Can it actually be that golden?’ and a song by a once-popular group called Dead Can Dance starts running through my head. What awful garbage for such a beautiful occasion. The song fades and the gentle lapping of the waves returns as we watch the orb drift higher by infinitesimal degrees. Moonlight dances on the water.

*

Thursday 1 PM. We broke camp at eight, ran into three groups during our passage through Owl, Crooked, and Mora—one man was in the process of reeling in a very large walleye—but have seen no one since we arrived on Little Saganaga. We checked out a beautiful rock-shelf campsite on a bay coming west, but it didn’t have a view of the big lake. Paddled half an hour to another campsite that appeared to be well-situated. It was skimpy and awkwardly arranged. Finally, after rechecking a third site we’d already passed in the distance, we headed for a campsite we used a few years ago. A rather gravelly escarpment, but a great view looking east from thirty feet above the water.

We finally settled in here at noon—put up the tarp, ate lunch, took a swim, set up the tent. Now we’re reading in the shade under the tarp, with an intermittent breeze coming in behind us down the channel.
The lake is quite calm, with the slightest rivulets and waves giving it a scintillating texture.

*

Odo Marquard, In Defense of the Accidental. Defending it in the wrong way perhaps. It’s not as if we have a choice with regard to the accidental. Accidents happen.
What needs to be shown is the necessity of the accidental. A world without accidents would have neither freedom nor development. The space where we exercise our freedom is also the space in which accidents happen.

*

I heard a northern parula, a black-throated green warbler, and several winter wrens during our morning paddle. At the end of one portage we also came upon a loon floating in a pool at the base of a waterfalls. As I came down the hill from the woods he called loudly, once; there was a distant reply. As I unceremoniously dropped the canoe off my shoulders into the water, and then crashed the three paddles and the three packs back into it, he continued to preen himself, seemingly unperturbed, thirty feet from shore.

After a nice 15-minute nap inside the hot but bug-free tent, it seems cool and breezy out here under the tarp.

Marquard. But no argument is given for why accidents predominate—only for why they occasionally occur. Do they predominate in life? It depends on how lucky you are.

So here I am, neither laughing nor crying, under the shade of a cedar tree at lake level. The white foamy flowers of the bog laurel. The meek lapping of an occasional wavelet. A single white seagull soaring past. It’s breezier down here by the water. I hear distant voices though we haven’t seen a soul all afternoon.

*

The moral law? Kant refers to “the moral law within.” An extremely distasteful phrase, I think. As Montaigne so succinctly put it, “We obey laws not because they are just, but because they are laws.”

All sorts of danger and confusions follow from the very common habit of referring to the moral realm—which is very real—in terms of law. Those who do so have in mind a series of “dos” and “don’t”s identical to civil law. Transgressions are similarly punishable, though a different and “higher power” is involved in enforcement.

None of this has anything to do with conscience, however. When we act conscientiously, we are compelled by an inner voice—Where does it come from?—to behave the way we do. This feeling, voice, or sense needs to be examined more carefully.

At the root of conscience, I think, is fellow-feeling. This feeling is sometimes referred to as “compassion” but that word has come to designate an almost patronizing concern for down-and-out folk. Compassion is one among a large gamut of connections that make up “the moral fabric.” One could easily become smug about “obeying the moral law.” It is far more difficult, I think, to convince ourselves we are adding nap to the moral fabric.

*

Frogs croaking. White-throated sparrow singing loudly nearby, almost continuously. All gold is gone from the sky, and that blue-gray wall of darkness is climbing up the sky in the east.
We paddled around the island after dinner. Now we’re reading out on the rocks looking east. Occasional voices way off somewhere. Full moon tonight, though we may not stay up to see it.

*

This morning as I was making the coffee—nice hot little fire—I heard an unfamiliar song. I saw something in the shrubs but couldn’t quite focus on it. Not quite awake. I followed the sound back into the woods and eventually got a very good look at a magnolia warbler. The song he was singing was slightly different from the one I was hearing before. Was it the same bird? I’ll have to look it up when we get back.

Broke camp at eight. A calm leisurely paddle over to Gabimitchigami (the deepest lake in Minnesota, I think) then east to Peter and eventually here to one of our favorite campsites on Gillis. Blueberries and raspberries ripe on the trail. At one point Hilary noticed she’d lost her wristwatch. We returned to the previous portage and found it in the bushes by the landing.
We arrived here at noon. Very hot. We passed only one canoe during our journey, and one group that was camped on French Lake.

*

Went swimming. Ate lunch. Now we’re reading under the trees. Almost no breeze. Two red squirrels chase one another along the shore, and the tiny waves keep wrapping themselves around a flat smooth rock that protrudes only slightly above the surface of the water, creating a mesmerizing pattern of triangular reverberations.

One thing you do a lot on a canoe trip is listen. It’s so quiet that any and every sound attracts your attention. Just now I heard a high-pitched growl off in the woods. Twice. I’ve never heard that sound before, and have no idea what it was. Probably a squirrel. But how about a lynx?
I’ve heard more winter wrens on this trip than I’ve ever heard before, anywhere. Twenty or thirty at least. I haven’t seen any, though Hilary saw one. In August you don’t hear them at all.
The hot part of the day. You move around the campsite, following the shade, then put up the tarp. Reading about early theories of the origins of life. Empedocles sounds best, with his Love and Strife. Not that I buy the whole theory.

Blue sky. Jack pine dark green. Tiny minnows swimming in the shallows, and tiny black shadows following along beneath them on the yellow sand. White clouds, admirably spaced, plump but independent.
As evening approaches shadows grow. We take another swim. Hilary gathers a pint of blueberries while I saw up some dead branches for firewood.

*

Out into the night to take a pee—my only view of the stars. But the sky is hazy. The stars are there, but indistinct, and the moon looks a little more sinister through the skein of thick atmosphere.

*

Morning. Three mergansers spent the night on a rock fifty feet out from our camp. It’s always fun to watch them bed down—one bird always seems to stand guard for five or ten minutes while the others drop off to sleep. This morning two vociferous seagulls arrived, but the mergansers merely moved over to the other side of the rock.

Late last evening two canoes came out of a bay to the south and passed our campsite. Hilary heard one of the campers say, “Gee, tonight’s our last night together.” I presumed that they camped at a site on up the lake, but this morning they were nowhere to be seen. Where did they end up? A complete mystery.

Our course this morning took us through a chain of very small lakes. Eight portages. Lots of climbing and descending, lots of boulders and mud. One portage in particular, we agreed when we’d gotten to the end of it, was marked at 70 rods but was probably 170 rods. We dealt with them one after the other—what other way is there?—admiring the cliffs and lily pads along the way, stopping to eat a chocolate bar or guzzle some water. The sky had grown hazy, and for the first time there were stretches of open water where an adverse wind came into play. Loons, of course. A merlin, a soaring osprey, and the ugliest spider I’ve ever seen—big and purple—taking his ease in the center of a web that spread across the entire landing of one portage. On another portage some small mammal had left a mound of purple scat on every rock—he’d obviously been enjoying the blueberries.

We got more and more tired with all the embarking and disembarking, the heaving up and the dropping down—but Hey! We’ve been this way before. The last two portages were relatively flat, and we emerged on Round Lake with plenty of vigor left to paddle cross-wind to the landing where we’d left our car. We were loaded up and headed down the Gunflint Trail by 11 AM, somewhat sore but not quite exhausted.

*

Lunch at the Angry Trout in Grand Marais. The town is thronging with tourists, and unusually well-stocked with gimcrackery, or so it seems to me. What with the fatigue and mental stupefaction that comes with even a few days in the woods, one inevitably feels a certain discomfort in the presence of all these folk who, after all, have driven up the shore to feel the exhilaration of nature, too. In fact, it’s the presence of so much commotion, rather than the character of the individuals involved in it, that assaults anyone coming in from the wild, where there is no commotion. In the wild there are no people, and the voices you sometimes hear floating across the wide expanses of open water in the evening are the disembodied voices of a dream.
One evening I discovered that when I tapped the bill of my cap against the rock it sounded like someone chopping wood a mile away across the lake.

*

The great thing about coming home on a Saturday night is that you have an empty peaceful day to reassemble your life, enjoy the luxury of air-conditioning, a roof over your head, and a cooking fire that requires no wood. You can read what you want, think what you want, before reconnecting with the world at large. It’s a lovely zone of experience, where you look at the magazine on the table or the vegetables in the refrigerator with the same loving eye that a day or two ago was devoted to taking in the moonrise, the rugged outline of a jack pine, or the shifting patterns created by the breeze on the surface of a sky-blue lake.

II. The Alpine Fire

A major forest-fire broke out on the border a few days after we’d returned from our trip. We thought we ought to head north again to see it first hand.

Saganaga. Englishman Island. North end. One of our favorite campsites. Beautiful view north across the sweep of the big lake. (By the way, the accent is on the first syllable, SA-ga-na-ga, though my neighbor from South Dakota thinks it would sound much better if it were on the penultimate syllable—Sa-ga-NA-ga.)
Last night we camped at Trail’s End campground. A very nice setting, though we could hear the constant drone of airplanes passing overhead on their way to dump water on the Alpine Fire. Quite a few fire trucks drove by too.
We ate pasties and cole slaw for dinner, stayed up ‘til 9. It was cloudy, so there was little likelihood of seeing any of the Perseids. Later in the night I stuck my head out the door of the tent. The stars were bright. I saw three shooting stars in the course of a few minutes, woke Hilary up, and we saw two more before the clouds moved in again.

*

The morning was cold and gray. We paddled out through the junky cabin-lined channel, past a burned over area that was strangely attractive, like a hilly chunk of Arctic tundra, and out into the teeth of the wind. We crossed the bay toward the leeward side of Munker’s Island, with the sun appearing and disappearing at intervals. Along the backside of that island we passed eight campsites, all of which were taken, which struck me as unusual, though I suppose the fact that traffic on Seagull has been curtailed by the fire-fighting—and the fire—would explain it. In any case, when we arrived here at 10:45 and found the place unoccupied we decided to take it.
Clearly this is going to be a different kind of trip—less of the intimacy of the inland waterways and less of the silence and solitude, what with the rumble of planes in the distance and the more than occasional sight of motorboats passing by a half-mile out with canoes strapped to elevated racks and cheerful canoeists enjoying the ride underneath, while avoiding the three-hour paddle we just completed. All the same, the campsite is very fine, the view out to sea is spectacular, and there is no site further on down the lake that would be better.
It’s remarkable how the wind has been whipping itself up to violent levels, then dropping to a whisper fifteen minutes later. Then back with force.

On our drive up yesterday we spent some time in the Duluth Pack Store and we also stopped to eat just west of Beaver Bay at a place called Northern Lights which has a spectacular flower garden—not visible from the highway—and a menu that offered things like torsk, Swedish meatballs, lefsa and boiled potatoes with lingenberry sauce.
We stopped in Grand Marais, too, and went out on the rocks beyond the Coast Guard station. As we were walking along the gravel path I caught a scent that brought back memories of my first visit to Grand Marais with the Boy Scouts more than forty years ago. A combination of sea air, pines, and maybe the smell of blooming tansy? I don’t know, but I was instantly reminded of how pleasant that first encounter with big water and handsome rock cliffs was. Beautiful and challenging and peaceful all at once. I simply loved that environment, which exposed me to an entirely new and poetic dimension of experience.

*

Sitting under the canopy of the pines, reading A Hind in Richmond Park by W. H. Hudson. A hardcover edition. A first edition, in fact. Why bring such a valuable book out into the woods? I looked it up on-line and discovered I could buy a first edition with dust jacket for $8.00. I was tempted to place the order just to see what the jacket looked like.

This is the way I sometimes feel when I look at the whitish-gray rocks that make this part of the world so distinctive. They’re covered with flakes of pale green and yellow lichen, and there are pale thin blades of dead grass rising up from the cracks between them. In the evening as the sun streaks across them, with the deep blue water rippling in the background, they have a clarity and a tactile beauty that is seldom captured in photographs. Besides, when you’re looking at a photograph you’re usually thinking about four or five other things at the same time. Out in the wild you settle into things far more deeply.

The wind has risen a notch and the open lake is full of whitecaps. It has also taken on a darker and more sinister tinge. But at the same time, as the sun drops, everything becomes lovelier—the fine needle-clusters on the white pine, the roots stretching across the terrace of the campsite so elegantly. The day has been cool, the air clear, and I’ve been walking around simply admiring how splendid everything looks.

*

We’ve eaten our dinner—chicken-and-rice with added Parmesan cheese, followed by a hot cup of powdered swiss mocha. The sun has set. It’s 8:30. And the pink is gone from the few fluffy blocks of clouds remaining in the sky to the north of us. The wind has dropped considerably. It’s almost peaceful here. Hilary has her hood up. We haven’t seen a soul out on the big lake for several hours. A few loons. Earlier this afternoon a family of red-eyed vireos moved through the trees near shore.

*

Saturday. 3:30 PM. Northern lights last night. Very beautiful broad band of shimmering white. I saw them out of the door of the tent. We watched them for half an hour, I suppose, lying on our sides inside the tent, amazed yet half-asleep, opening the screen to get a better view then closing the screen instinctively to keep out the bugs (there were no bugs) then opening the screen again...

*

This morning we broke camp at 8:30, headed south through Red Rock Bay. We passed no one, which is unusual for that popular stretch of water. In Red Rock Lake we got our first glimpse of the fire, with smoke oozing up from the forest like mist. We paddled nearer. It was a fascinating sight—a half-burned stretch of woods, smoke rising here and there, but no flames except in one place where a big log was burning brightly. We paddled almost right up to shore. The landscape was ominous but not really threatening.

On the portage into Alpine we ran into two fire-fighters who told us the fire had advanced only a few acres the previous day. These two men had just set up a series of sprinklers along the portage trail, just in case the fire started heading that way. But the wind had shifted to the northwest and it was expected that the fire would burn back on itself and run out of things to consume.
Here on Alpine we nosed into an attractive rock-shelf campsite just to look it over and decided to stay. Two female rangers showed up a few minutes later and we chatted with them for half an hour about the fire, the permit violations they’d come across recently, and various lakes and entry points we’d used or been on over the years. One of the women was from Cook, the other from Ely. Their job was to paddle around talking to folks about the fire. But there seemed to be no one around except us.
After they left we paddled down to Jasper Falls, ate lunch, and came back here. The high-bush cranberries are starting to turn red.
Patches of bright hot sun, but even longer spells of windy gray shadow, make it hard to relax. I set up the tarp so we’ll be able to cook if it starts raining. Planes fly overhead now and again, much lower and closer than before. That’s because we’re camped about a mile from the fire. But we’re up-wind and the smoke is almost non-existent.
Every canoe trip is different. I have to remind myself of this when considering whether to bring along one of those throw-away cameras. On the one hand, who needs twenty-seven more low-quality pictures of rocks, water, and trees, all of which look pretty-much alike? Yet whenever I bring one, I always run out of film well before the end of the trip. That moose in the bog by the side of the Gunflint Trail. The harbor in Grand Marais. The beautiful expanse of Saganaga. Our fabulous campsite there. I took two pictures of the Northern Lights. (Some people would consider it absurd to take a picture of such a distant and elusive sight in the dark with a camera that has an automatic flash, but I say, “Hey! What if it turns out!”) Three shots of the forest fire. Then you have the firefighters, the firehoses running through the woods. You never know what you’re going to come across.
This campsite is an absolute gem. It has a nice open grassy patch (for playing boules) many cascading rock shelves, a cooking area surrounded by cedars, and a 180º view of the lake.

*

The wind has dropped. It’s been drizzling for an hour, off and on, but the sky to the northwest looks pretty blue. It’s 6 p.m., probably 60 degrees. Eight or ten canoes have passed by in the last quarter-hour—the firefighters from Red Rock Lake returning to their campsite, probably further east down Alpine.

*

7:15 p.m. Calm, blue sky, very few clouds, bright sun on my face. I’ve shed two layers of clothes. There are no planes within earshot. This is the quiet zone that we’ve been missing, though experiencing the forest fire close-up has been ample compensation.
I can feel the sun burning my forearm and cheek. It feels good. The trees on the islands out in the bay, half-shaded, half brilliantly lit, look wonderful, with pale blue sky above and deep blue water all around. We’ve seen only one loon and one seagull on this lake. Two chipmunks. No mice so far. In the woods behind the campsite lots of yellow birch leaves are already scattered across the underbrush.
We’ve used our fuel container eight times so far. One more pot of coffee and we’re home free.

Now the night is coming. Slight breeze coming in from the west. We add the layers we took off an hour ago, take down the tarp, and hoist the food pack up into the trees, more concerned about rodents than bears. A loon was calling a few minutes ago. Now he calls again. Three short giggles, or neighs. I drag the canoe up and flip it over. The classic echoing bang of aluminum on rock, followed by deafening silence. Quiet mournful evening. Darkness closing in, reducing our world to the width of a flashlight beam.

*

Perfect quarter-moon out one window of the tent last night. Perfect stars out the other side. The Northern Lights were a vague pulsating sheen rather than a bright white shimmering band. We spent quite some time with our heads out of the tent, admiring the brilliantly lit firmament and watching for shooting stars. We saw only a few, but the stars themselves were intense, and while we were thus engaged we heard a chorus of loons, distant but very clear, some laughing hysterically, others keening in a three-note dirge that seemed designed to establish the most powerful dissonance possible. A rare and unforgettable moment.

*

This morning we paddled south to Rog Lake portage—the more direct route back to Seagull had been closed due to the fire. I had the dual distinction of missing the correct bay on the way in, and then falling flat on my face while carrying the canoe.

The lower end of Seagull was spectacular. As we were paddling a pontoon plane appeared in the distance. It eventually landed a few hundred yards ahead of us and taxied to shore. As we passed it we saw a stack of duffle bags on a rock and a few firefighters chatting jocularly. They were being evacuated.

Smoldering areas of the western shore, some of them devoid of vegetation, came into view as we turned the corner into the big lake, but most of the shoreline—thank God—is still green.

*

Crowds and slow-ups on the freeway. Messages, requests on the voice-mail and in the email banks. We heat up a pizza, drink some wine, gather together the newspapers that have collected on the doorstep and begin to read about the fire-fighting planes that were passing over our heads a few hours ago.