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OF ECHOES, EAGLES AND ISLANDS - THE BWCA'S GIFT OF SURPRISE
Light mist was falling from a gray sky as I trudged the rocky 33-rod portage to Bonnie Lake. Minutes later I hoisted my 17-canoe off my shoulders and embraced the beauty of this 112-acre hourglass-shaped lake, shrouded in fog and beckoning me with an eerie stillness.
Fletcher, my 16-year-old son, and his canoe partner, Kip, were already paddling towards the next portage. Mike, my friend of 20 years, and I stowed our packs and equipment in the canoe and pushed off into the brown-stained water of Bonnie Lake. Halfway across the lake we stopped paddling, almost in unison. It was so quiet and peaceful, the lake's surface glassy smooth as a granite tabletop and the towering spruce and pine trees forming dark walls in every direction.
I wondered if Fletcher and Kip had stopped to experience this magical place. They were approaching the next portage. Calling out to them, I was answered with a marvelous surprise: a perfect echo! I had called, not terribly loudly, "Hey, Fletcher," and the words came instantly back, "Hey, Fletcher."
"What?" Fletcher called back. "What?" the walls of Bonnie Lake repeated.
Every word, every sound, faithfully returned to us, nearly as loudly as we sent the words and sounds out. I felt eight years old again as I recalled the mystery of childhood echo experiences.
I wasn't expecting to hear echoes in the middle of Bonnie Lake this June morning. It caught me by surprise. Later, sifting through the countless memories from this and past canoe trips, I realized surprises are one of the great gifts of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA), the largest wilderness east of the Rockies.
BWCA surprises can be as simple as a loon surfacing unexpectedly next to your canoe, discovering a patch of wild iris in a stream, or watching a sunset suddenly change hues.
One hot, rainy, early summer morning at the end of a long, sweaty portage, I was startled to discover ice deep in the crevice of a split boulder. Another time I stood smiling at a pair of gray catbirds high in an aspen tree as they hopped around and sang a noisy ritual.
A surprise with an historical twist occurred on Knife Lake. We had set up camp early, just after noon, at a beautiful site a mile from the Vera Lake portage. By mid-afternoon Fletcher and I were tossing crankbaits at hungry smallmouth bass. Pausing between casts, I studied the nearby islands - something about them didn't fit the wilderness surroundings. Wild-rose and lilac shrubs in full bloom and lush grass created the appearance of an abandoned farmstead. Circling one of the islands, we puzzled over horizontal log piers bolted securely to shoreline rocks. Then, almost in unison, the answer dawned on us. We were fishing in Dorothy Molter's back yard and hadn't even realized it! Several years earlier, Fletcher and I had watched a movie profiling the solitary wilderness lifestyle this remarkable woman had carved out on these three islands.
Hopping out of our canoe, we eagerly explored the well-worn footpaths on this space Dorothy called home for 40-plus years. We read the sign posted on a tree by the U.S. Forest Service: "This is the former homesite of Dorothy Molter. You are welcome to pay your respects but please no camping."
As I stepped onto a large rock, I thought of the thousands of sunrises and sunsets she must have witnessed, the blizzards and rain storms that most assuredly pinned her inside her cabins, and the moose, beaver, loons, deer, ducks and other creatures that likely regarded her as friend and neighbor. Kneeling 20 feet away, Fletcher was picking through a rusty assortment of bottle caps - Sunkist, Hire's, Dad's, Coca-Cola, Minnehaha Pale. These remnants of Dorothy's legendary rootbeer-making hobby were a find more interesting to us at this moment than arrowheads or prehistoric jawbones.
A bear surprised my father and me early one morning on Pauness Lake. We awoke to grunts and rattling pots outside our tent. A full-grown black bear was devouring two cans of Pringles potato chips left absent-mindedly the night before at the base of a pine tree. Reaching for my camera, I snapped a half-dozen photos that to this day cause me to smile. I pondered whether the Pringles company would appreciate the photos for a company newsletter.
My favorite surprise fish story happened on Fourtown Lake while fishing for walleye pike, Minnesota's state fish. Fletcher and I were bouncing jigs and minnows off the bottom in about 15 feet of water. Nearby, Chuck and his son, Tom, were casting the shoreline.
A solid rap on my graphite rod stung my wrist - this was no frying pan walleye. Ten minutes later, I glimpsed the yellow belly of a 3-foot northern pike, my 3/8th ounce jig piercing its upper jaw.
"Keep the line tight...easy...don't take it too fast" - pages of fishing-magazine advice rushed through my mind.
"What'cha got?" Chuck called from his canoe. "It's a giant northern," I hollered back. "You better get over here." I seldom take a landing net to the BWCA but at that moment it would have come in handy. What to do? The northern was staying deep and stripping line at will on my light spinning rig. The idea of extending my hand anywhere near its mouthful of razor-sharp teeth didn't appeal to me. Chuck's plan sounded better - he would attempt to life the northern two-handed into his canoe. The plan worked. With a almost-graceful two-arm sweep, Chuck cradled the 16-1/2 pound northern, then plopped it into his canoe.
Early one morning, I was surprised in a spiritual way enroute to a fishing spot a friend had marked on a map. Scanning the shoreline for landmarks to guide our return trip, I paddled through a narrows and checked my compass. My destination lay several miles to the east. Halfway across the expanse of water, due east and glistening in the sun, a towering, dead pine tree in the perfect shape of a cross marked my route. I wasn't in my Minneapolis church home this Sunday morning so God brought my church to me!
I experienced a "sensory overload" surprise on tiny Trinity Lake, a 40-acre jewel that isn't on the way to anywhere. Stepping through the portage's thick foliage, Mike and I were greeted by the first sign that this place belonged to Mother Nature. A full-grown buck deer, snorting his disapproval, ripped through the underbrush just feet from where we stood. Minutes later, we were trolling crankbaits and catching and releasing feisty Trinity Lake northerns.
From behind the green wall of foliage, we could hear the thump, thump, thump spring-mating ritual of grouse. I set the hook on a nice-sized fish just as three loons, swimming 200 feet to our right, took a nosedive. A beaver was swimming towards us from the left, toting a 6-foot branch. Two merganser ducks came flying from the east, seemingly intent on landing in our canoe.
Suddenly one of the loons surfaced an arm's length from our canoe and then, seeing us, instantly dived back into the ore-stained water. The commotion from the loon caused to mergansers to change course and triggered an explosion from the beaver as it slammed its tail with a loud thwack on the water's surface. And the 4-pound northern on my line broke water, did a short tail dance, then spit the crankbait back in my direction.
In an instant, everything returned to silence, save for the muffled thumping of the grouse. The surprise of it all lives on in my memory, beckoning my return.
My most startling surprise took place on Insula Lake's Cedar Island (we named it Cedar Island because it has more cedar trees than any place I've visited in the BWCA). Following a noisy night of howling wind and heavy rain. I welcomed the morning break in the clouds. By mid-morning, the glorious sun was warming my spirits as I set out exploring.
Walking around this small island, I inhaled the rich fragrances and wetness of wilderness in its early summer prime. The rain had dampened the turf and sticks, making it possible to walk almost in silence. In places, I had to leave the rocky shoreline and step into the trees in order to continue circling the island. Passing through a thick stand of cedars, I swung my leg up to climb a 6-foot boulder. For a split second, I stood eyeball-to-eyeball with an adult bald eagle. "Split second" may be stretching it - what I remember more clearly is the eagle's departure. Activating its 7-foot wingspan, the eagle created a wind like a departing helicopter. Bits of moss and twigs showered around me as the eagle launched through the low-hanging branches.
Bald eagles and humans are not supposed to meet face-to-face in the wild and neither of us was prepared for the encounter. The eagle landed high in a red pine and I began walking in its direction to get a closer view. But this time, the eagle was watching me and quickly took flight for a more-distant pine.
Some of my most joyful surprises have come from watching my children grow in their love of the wilderness. Kids seem to have a gift for luring dragonflys and butterflys out of the sky to light on their fingers (it never happens to me!). Many times I have marveled at my son, straddling a boulder, whittling on a stick for hours. More than once I've smiled affectionately at my son or daughter sleeping peacefully on a log in the center of camp. At night, my kids and I have shared the surprise of dazzling northern lights and shooting stars.
Surprises don't always involve nature or mystical experiences, of course. Once my camera surprised my daughter, then in junior-high school, while "taking care of business" on the latrine behind our campsite. I still have that memory in a photo album. She's in college now and maybe I'll mail the photo to her for April Fool's Day.
The BWCA is a mystical, magical place where surprises are just across the next portage, around the next point, at the top of the next tree, or under the next rock. Some nights, just before I drift off to sleep, I think of that bald eagle telling his friends about the surprise he got the time he came eyeball-to-eyeball with that bald-headed fellow on Cedar Island.
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