I was a newly minted First Class Boy Scout when I got the opportunity to serve as a Counselor-in-Training (CIT) at the Northwoods Summer Camp in Mid-Michigan, Near West Branch. I’ve since learned it was sold to a property developer private owner. Sigh.
Anyway, I was maybe 15 and spent a delightful summer helping the old scoutmaster run the shooting range and running errands for any adult scoutmasters who managed to catch me in a spare moment. It was 1969, so I also managed to be ferrying a scout troop to their “Primitive” camp across the lake after they came in late. So was able to look up at the full Moon where the astronauts had just landed, while I rowed the big rowboat back and forth across the lake taking the multiple members of the troop and their gear, and in between trips across the lake, ran into the Mess Hall to watch the little black and white TV show the preparations and actual moment when they first stepped out onto the Moon.
Then, as I was leaving camp at the end of the summer, the Scoutmaster who ran the shooting range came to me and told me he was planning on leading a two-week canoe trip to the Boy Scout Wilderness program at Boundary Waters in the summer of 1970, and would I like to join? He was able to watch thousands of Scouts as they went through the summer camp program at Northwoods and was able to choose boys he thought would be valuable participants of a canoe trip in Boundary Waters.
A few quick phone calls to my parents, and I was scheduled to go to the Charles Sommers High Adventure Scout Base in Ely, MN in July of 1970.
I was packed and ready to go early in the morning when we drove to the rendezvous point in downtown DeWitt and the school bus, on loan from the Eaton Rapids school district, met us and I said goodbye to my folks and got on to meet the rest of the scouts.
There were 13 of us, plus the Scoutmaster and an assistant Scoutmaster and all our gear as we headed up US27 to the Mackinac Bridge and across the Upper Peninsula toward Ely.
We stopped for gas in Harrison, and as I looked out, I saw the strangest cloud formation rolling towards us. It looked like a huge black rolling pin that stretched from horizon to horizon, rolling from the north to the south, maybe a thousand feet above the Earth? After it went by, the temperature went from the low 80s to the high 50s within ten minutes. Strangest cloud I’ve ever seen. I’ve since found out they are a rare type of cloud called a “roll cloud” and happen in different parts of the world often enough to have been photographed and classified.
We made it to Lake Superior and stopped at a lookout point high above the lake for a potty stop, and a snack. One of the guys thought he’d be funny and ran up to the rock wall at the edge of the parking lot, and jumped over without hesitation, yelling: “See ya!”
He came crawling back a couple of minutes later, on hands and knees along the 6-inch ledge between the rock wall and the cliff face, which he had barely managed to land on after jumping over the fence. He spent the rest of the trip being somewhat overly cautious.
We arrived at the Scout Base in the evening, and after being shown to our bunkhouse, told to unpack our packs and take out half of what we had brought, and leave it on the bus, as we wouldn’t be allowed to take it with us in the canoes.
So, there went my plans to read “War and Peace,” Volume 12 of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and Volumes 9 through 14 of “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” while on this trip. Edward Gibbons would have to wait for another time, I guess.
We met our Guide for the trip, and his assistant, who was training to be a full guide in his own right. We discussed our Scoutmaster’s plans for the trip, but put them aside when our Guide said we looked like an extremely competent group of scouts, and he thought we could do a trip he had been thinking about for a couple of years – a circumnavigation of the border of the entire Boundary Waters/Quetico Provincial Park, a distance of some 400 miles for our two-week trip. We would see parts of the area that rarely get visited.
From Lake Agnes to Kawnipi, to Kiwili I will go
Where you see the loon and hear his plaintive wail
If you’re thinking in your inner heart
There’s a swagger in my step,
Then you’ll know I’ve been along the Border Trail.
It’s the far Northland that’s a calling me away
As take I with my packsack to the road
It’s the call on me of the forest in the north
As step I with the Sunlight for my load.
It’s the crack of beaver slapping tail
And slipping neath the waves..
It's the far northland that's a callin' me away,
as take I with my packsack to the road.
It's the call on me of the forest in the north,
as step I with the sunlight for my load.
Chorus: From Lake Agnes, by Louisa, to Kawnipi I will go,
Where you see the loon and hear his plaintive wail,
If you're think'n in your inner heart there's a swagger in my step,
Then you'll know I've been along the border trail.
We slept in the bunkhouse that night and had pancakes and eggs for breakfast in the Dining Hall the next morning.
Where our guide informed us that, sadly, we needed to unpack our currently half empty packs, and leave half of the rest of our gear back on the bus, also.
So, there went my fishing gear, my telescope, my pillow, my chocolate candy bars, two extra pairs of socks, my extra pants, an extra shirt and my pocket “Flora and Fauna of North America” identification book.
As fast as we were going to have to be traveling, I wouldn’t need that stuff anyway.
All the other scouts were having similar discussions with themselves about what to leave behind.
The guide stopped by and helped several of us make those decisions. He brought along a sample “Duluth” pack that we would have to be carrying across the many portages we would encounter, and we discovered that we would be responsible for carrying our portion of the group camping equipment – our portion of the tents, the cooking gear, the food, the ropes and such that our group would require. This encouraged us to leave rather more of our stuff behind once we thought of having to carry all of the equipment.
Oh, did I mention that our guide was studying to be a chef at college, and besides the normal food and cook gear that a troop carried, he had his own bag of special spices and, um, additives that he had along to spice up the trail food.
He especially liked food coloring. We had fluorescent blue oatmeal a couple of days. We had bright green reflector oven pizza. We had passion pink mashed potatoes. Stuff like that. But it tasted good. I mean, we were all teenage boys, after paddling 25 to 50 miles all day. We would have eaten anything.
Soon after we had repacked and brought our gear to the launch site on Moose Lake, we packed the real canoe packs, separated into groups of three to a canoe and set off on our grand adventure on a bright day filled with hope and sunshine. Towards Birch Lake, several portages to Meadows Lake and our first camp in Canada.
The next day we made it to Lake Agnes, a 30-mile-long lake that runs pretty much north/south. There was a stiff wind blowing from the south directly north, and since we wanted to go north, it was a good wind. The guide must have thought it was a good omen, and taking leave of his senses, or developing hubris from thinking he had a great group of capable scouts, had us tie several of the canoes together in groups of three, and got out the tarps and used them as sails being held up by spare paddles.
The swells were three and four feet high as we set sail heading north along the length of Lake Agnes which we accomplished in a couple of hours.
Unfortunately, the north end of Lake Agnes ends in quite a severe cliff, nosing out into the end of the lake, and we had to rush desperately to take down the sails and untie the boats before crashing headlong into the rocks at speed.
We managed to separate and save ourselves before being dashed to pieces on the rocks, and found the next portage to a quieter lake.
It's the flash of paddle blades a gleamin' in the sun,
a canoe softly skimming by the shore,
It's the smell of pine and bracken comin' on the breeze
that calls me to the waterways once more.
Chorus: From Lake Agnes, by Louisa, to Kawnipi I will go,
Where you see the loon and hear his plaintive wail,
If you're think'n in your inner heart there's a swagger in my step,
Then you'll know I've been along the border trail.
From: The Far Northland, by Carol Preston
The guide had a standard set of responses to questions that we asked him, such as: “Guide, how long is this portage?”
“49.”
“49 whats?”
“49 rubber bands.”
Or
“Guide, how long is this portage?”
“Well, God has made it so that every portage fits EXACTLY the right distance between one lake and the next”
Or
“Guide, this is a national park, right? Who mows the lawns?”
“Oh, there’s several crews they send out every summer. You could apply, when we get back, call up the National Park service and tell them you would like to like to apply to be a lawnmower in the Boundary Waters.”
That night, the guide took out the reflector oven, and made us pizza. He rolled out the dough on the bottom of an overturned canoe. Of course, he added fluorescent green food coloring, so the pizza looked like cow shit, but tasted great.
After making the pizza, he rolled out more dough and made cinnamon rolls in the reflector oven. He continued to make cinnamon rolls every night of the trip. After they had cooled, he would cover them and keep them until the next morning. We would wake up, wash faces and brush teeth, and then break camp and pack pretty much as soon as the Sun rose. As soon as we were packed and ready to go, he would bring out the cinnamon rolls and we would eat them as we talked about the plan for the day. We would stop and make a hot breakfast around 10. He didn’t believe in staying in camp until after breakfast, as he said it always took too long to break camp when people did that.
The cinnamon rolls tasted exactly like what you get today at Cinnabon. I’d be willing to bet that our guide had something to do with Cinnabon, because they match perfectly with my memory of the cinnamon rolls we had on that trip.
The bottom half of the Quetico portion of the BWCA is actually one very large island, with several rivers (or one large connected one) completely surrounding an area of about 100 miles wide and 80 miles north/south.
Our guide wanted to travel some of that river, but then strike out north and reach the very north section of Quetico park before heading back down and coming back around on Sturgeon Lake, Lac La Croix, Crooked Lake and Basswood Lake and back to Moose Lake.
Our third night, the campsite we wanted was already occupied, so we had to travel on to find a place big enough for our entire troop, and when we got there as it was getting dark, and set up tents, we discovered that there was little available firewood to cook our meals. I went exploring along a cliff and found a downed tree about 30 feet long, but no real way to get it back to camp but drag it through some intensely dense brush.
Although most of the branches had been scraped off by the brush by the time I got back to camp, no one else had been able to find more than a handful of sticks, the tree I brought back was barely adequate to cook our meal, and the cinnamon rolls for the next morning.
The next day was blustery and chilly, and I was sitting in the middle seat not paddling for most of the morning and got very chilled, to the point of hypothermia. When we stopped for lunch, we were on an island with a pine forest with no underbrush and clear line of sight for half a mile or so, and I asked the guide if I could go running to help warm up, which he agreed. Thankfully the long run helped me warm up and probably saved my life.
FRIED FRED
The guide told the story of a Scout troop being led by a Scout guide named Fred. They were out on their fifth or sixth day, and fairly distant from any exit point, or getting back to the Scout Base, when Fred was paddling along enjoying the Sunshine and poopdecking (i.e. sitting on the rear deck of the canoe) with his feet dragging in the water when essentially, by all accounts, a bolt of lightning came out of the clear sky and killed him.
This was, of course, before the days of cell phones, or emergency beacons, and Scout troops and guides were essentially out of communication with civilization until they returned.
The Scoutmaster and Scouts decided to do their best, and bundled Fred up as best they could, and headed back to base carrying Fred with them, a journey that took another 4 days. You never know.
We were past Kawnipi, and heading to, I think, Lake Jean, when we found a portage that didn’t extend exactly from one lake to the next. Somehow over the years or decades since the last group had been through this lake, a vast amount of swamp loon goo (black swamp muck, too thick to drink, and to thin to plow) had accumulated at the north end of the lake and we spent several hours trying to paddle through it to get to solid ground. After a while the guide had us stop our positions, and he would try to wade through the swamp to find the portage that was marked on the map.
He got out and stepped on a tussock of swamp grass, and took a step to the next tussock, and sank into the goo, as the tussock went down under his weight. He climbed back up and hopped onto the next tussock, and then the next, and the next one took him down to his arm pits. We watched as he climbed back up, and went hopping from one tussock to the next. About 200 yards away he hopped onto a little tussock that sported a small tree, and as he was sinking into the swamp, he grabbed onto the tree and the tree went down with him.
We broke out snacks and water and waited for him to return. It took a couple of hours, and when he came back, he sadly informed us that he had found the blazes for the portage, but there was no way we would be able to paddle or drag our boats to it and we were going to have to turn around and find another way.
As we had spent most of the day here already, our plans for the grand tour were ruined, and we were going to have to make different plans.
We decided to take a rest day and fish and swim for the day. After a fairly successful day of fishing, we ended up with 6 Great Northern Pike. Each between 2 to 3 feet long, and enough to feed the 13 of us very hungry growing boys, the Scoutmaster and two college age guides. They weren’t hard to catch. The water was so clear you could see the fish from 20 feet away.
We had them in a live trap along the shore which was essentially a corral about 4 feet in diameter made of rocks in about 6 inches of water. As the fire was getting going and we were getting ready to cook, somebody yelled: “Hey, Eagle!” and we all turned and watched as an eagle swooped down, grabbed one of our fish, and took off with it.
I’ve got to admit, although I’ve never liked fish before, sauteed fish over an open campfire, fileted and fried within five minutes of being taken out of the live trap, is Food for the Gods.
That night we were treated to the courtship dance of the loons and went to sleep with the loons laughing out on the lake until dark.
The character of the individual lakes were quite different, with some lakes open and expansive, with beaches, and some with rock cliffs that border the shore, and continue to deep water so that stepping out of your boat onto a rock ledge carries some amount of risk that if you tip, you will suddenly be in 30 feet of water. Some lakes are small and swampy and carry bacteria and parasites, so you don’t dare drink out of them, and some are crisp and clear and drinking directly from them carries no risk at all.
The next day was rather windy with a constant gale, and we were paddling along a cliff face and rounded a corner to see the wind coming around the corner in the cliff had created a waterspout. As the weather wasn’t stormy, but rather just a constant gale, the Sun was out and shining on each drop in the waterspout as a shining gleaming crystal vase about 200 feet tall. And me without my camera.
We finished the trip with a series of days of hard paddling, excellent and plentiful food – albeit colorful, and good humor. The guide continuing to make his flavorful meals and cinnamon rolls.
I think I slept most of the bus trip home.
It’s the flash of paddle blades
A gleaming in the Sun
Of canoes softly skimming by the shore
It’s the tang of pine and bracken
Floating on the breeze
That calls me to the waterways once more.
From Lake Agnes by Louisa to Kawnipi I will go
Where you see the loon and hear his plaintive wail
If you’re think’n in your inner heart
There’s a swagger in my step
Then you’ve never been along the border trail…
See you On the Water
Harmon