Wilderness Wind Paddle-a-thon 2006: Travel Log
A circle route from Moose Lake to a few of the Agnes Lake pictographs and back
What is it like to paddle 50 or 60 miles in a day? At Wilderness Wind, we decided to find out. The idea came from a mixing a fun fundraising event with personal challenge. The funds raised for this year's event will go towards scholarships and operating costs. This travel log will give you a glimpse but without the muscle screams and sore backsides! Read on and visit some of the sites and smells. Laugh with us, realizing that tiredness made us laugh very easily. Imagine yourself in the canoe. It was a momentous day. One that we won't forget. Dip in your paddle and feel the rush.
2:00 am -
I(Kathy Landis) wake up. It is too early to wake Aubrey and Mary Ruth. My attempts at being quiet only result in knocking things over. It is hard not to laugh at the reality that I am quieter when I'm not trying so hard.
2:20 am -
I head to the bath house to rinse my hair. The moon is full and all is alight. No need for a flashlight. The sinks I can use are outside and after washing my hair I notice a brown mark in the neighboring sink. I assume it is chipped enamel, but when I put my glasses back on, I realize it is a tree fromg coming in for a morning drink. The tree frog hangs out at the sink for a while then wanders over to the half-wall surrounding the sink, climbs up on it and rests on top. Interesting little creature with so much detail on its small body. Then it surprises me. It takes its front right let and wraps it over its right eye then does the same with its left leg. Then it takes its right hind lef and rubs up the middle of its back and right side, then does the same on the left. I am intrigued as we share our morning cleaning rituals. But after a brief pause, it continues by stretching both back legs out flat but within line of its body, and rubs each leg along the other as it finishes its full body stretch and cleaning. The morning of a grand-scale trip is captured in the moment of a tree frog's morning dance.
3:10 am -
Aubrey Helmuth and Mary Ruth Kamp join me at the van. We eat a few pieces of our coffee cake and laugh at how "quiet" I was this morning.
3:45 am -
Paddles finally reach the glass-like moon-lit water. As we paddle along, the water moves into gentle waves. We are astounded by the sleekness of our canoe (a Wanonah Minnesota III)and the ease of which it paddles. We start to sing in a round: Under the full moon light, we dance. Spirit dance, we dance. Joining hands, we dance. Joining souls, rejoice. We paddle under the light of the moon. We hear the repeated call of a nearby loon, but cannot see it in the blackness around us. So much life happens beyond what our eyes can see. We hear the call of an eagle. We pass the eagle's nest at the corner of Sucker Lake. Many times we have passed this tree over the last few years, and this pair of eagles has continued to call it home. It is still too dark to see the eagle, but it's call rings out loud and clear. I laught because it reminds me of Amy's comment on staff trip that the media has replaced the call of the eagle with the call of the hawk. It seems that the true eagle call was just not majestic enough for what we want from this one of our nation's symbol.
4:55 am -
We are in the back bay of Sucker Lake. The bats are swooping for their morning feed. Hmmm. There are so many of them, multiplied by their reflections in the water. They come two by two. One is in the air, the other its water reflection mirroring the quick antics of the one above. They are inseparable. Reminds me of our inner and outer worlds. It is so true that our innner world of concepts, beliefs, and self-understanding affects how we see, experience and engage in our outer world. The same is true the other way as well. I wonder what the inner world of a bat is like.
5:15 am -
As we approach Prairie Portage, the point where we cross into Canada, we approach the falls. We notice that the dark moon-lit water is covered with many swirls of oil. We are taken back for a minute and then realize that all the water that we have paddled through so far is heading to this point, this bay, as it travels to the falls and heads into the non-motorized sections of Canada.
5:50 am -
We arrive at the mouth of Sunday Bay on Basswood Lake. To our right sit three sentinels. These eagles surround the bay each perched in their high dead tree. This time there is enough light in the sky for us to see them.
6:25 am -
The portage trail into Burke is beautiful, beginning at a large sandy beach. There seem to be more sandy beaches on the Quetico side of this wilderness area. We stretch a bit on the other side of the portage and comment on how casual and lacksadaisical we have been thus far. With Burke behind us we traverse the two small portages between Burke and North Bay of Basswood. The morning is just starting. We hear canoes ahead of us as they are lowered from someone's shoulders but they are nowhere in sight.
7:00 am -
Paddling through the sandy stretch of an unnamed waterway, the water is low enough that I get out and walk. We notice the moose prints int he sand. As we paddle through, we hear the movement of brush, but we see nothing and the brush becomes quiet. We continue on to the portage and meet the people who we heard a half-mile ago. Sound certainly travels well across water even in this small narrow channel. We turn to see what was rustling in the bush. A doe and fawn have come to the water for their morning drink.
8:15 am -
We head to the back bay of North Bay on our way to the S-chain lakes: South, Shade, Summer, Sultry and Silence. The mouth of the bay is full of water lilies. THey are just beautiful as they tip their purple hats to us. It is amazing to see this without the wind to tip them up. This field is simply captivationg.
9:15 am -
We head across South Lake. KD has this feeling that the guys are getting close. As we leave the portage and head West, we hear a Zeb-like holler. We press on, wanting to reach our goal before they catch up. Now the race is on, we paddle assertively now, for the first time all day. There are distinctive white stripes that run through the dark rocks along shores of West Lake and we are greeted by a loon in the narrow channel of another unnamed lake. The loon is so close we can see its green head and red eye. But we decide to press on rather than taking photos. Interesting how even out here we sometimes forget to savor the moment in our focus on reaching the goal.
9:30 am -
The guys catch us and we stop for a gorp break. Aaron and Zeb tell us Marshall has something to tell us and as we ask what that might be, Marshall smirks a little and says, "Well, there's this little thing about a map." Somehow they didn't have the middle map they were to use much of the day. They had proceeded cautiously, but had gone off the map to catch us. After we push off, the two canoes paddle together for several hours, sometimes close enough to build community with each other, sometimes far enough apart to continue building community within each canoe.
11:50 am -
The petroglyphs were one of the main things we want to see on this trip. This is the only set of petroglyphs within the Minnesota Boundary Waters and Canadian Quetico. Petroglyphs are images created by carving or pounding into the rocks rather than painting on the rocks which are called pictographs.This image is of four caribou. Caribou? But there aren't any in the north woods, you say. Caribou once lived in this area. When white settlers moved into the area, they logged off the forests. The new open areas attracted deer that otherwise stayed farthur south. The deer carry a brain worm that can cross to other animals. The deer are resistant to the deadly affects of this worm, the caribou are not. Reminds me of Henry David Thoreau's comment, "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." We truely can't add anything to ecosystems or our lives without something being exchanged. Do we as individuals take this into accound as we make decisions? Do we as a culture? As a global community?
12:20 pm -
We stop for lunch and wonder how we are doing on time. We check our maps and it seems we haven't even come half way. How can this be? And when does that mean we will get back. We decide we will add the additional mile and a half in order to see the pictographs further up the lake
12:44 pm -
We visit the pictographs at the north end of Agnes Lake. One never tires of seeing these images no matter how many times one has seen them.
1:00 pm -
We leave the Pictographs thinking we have 14 miles with wind in our faces as we go south on Agnes. The guys push ahead.
2:15 pm -
As we pass the cliffs along Agnes Lake, I think of Christina Dodwell's quote, "Traveling has taught me to look and to listen and to give thanks."
3:45 pm -
We stop at Louisa Falls. Two years in a row, the three of us have traveled together. Each year the landscape is different. Each year the company is richer and perhaps wiser. As I sit in the falls surrounded by a rushing mass of water, I am reminded of the words, "I am living water" as well as the words of St. Patrick, "Christ beside me, Christ above me, Christ below me." As we prepare for another leg of the journey, and eat another treat created by our cook Marolyn Heatwole, Aubrey looks at the map and discovers that the grid has a different scale than the actual scale of the map. Interesting concept of map design. So where we through we had 14 miles to cross Agnes, we really only had 10. Suddenly the rest of the trip feels attainable as we know we won't be paddling until midnight.
4:30 pm -
We leave the falls. Images of water continue to wonder through my mind, images of it being within all things, knowing it supports all life.
5:26 pm -
On a portage at Sunday Lake, I spot an old growth tree that is too big to get my arms around.
7:40 pm -
Prairie Portage. It is time to head back to the "Motherland" as Lars Akerson, another of this year's staff, would often say. The thunderheads we saw earlier are moving in on us. We stop for supper and talk with a few of the maintence folk at Prairie Portage before continueing on with new focus and determination.
8:30 pm -
Crossing Newfound Lake we acknowledge that it isn't as dark as it was last year as we crossed this stretch of water. The wall of thunderheads that cover 180 degrees of the horizon to our right and behind are present in our eyes and our minds. The paddlin strokes are rather efficient at this point in the day.
9:17 pm -
Back at the put-in, we celebrate a paddle well done. Not only the day, but also the last jaunt with 7 miles paddled in an hour and 20 minutes... at the end of the day no less. The guys greet us at the van and we continue to swap stories. We come back to a poem we read to begin our day.
Today
I
Do not
Want to step so quickly
Over a beautiful line on God's palm
As I move through the earth's
Marketplace
Today.
I
Do not
Want to touch any object
In this world without my eyes testitying
To the truth
That everything is
My Beloved.
Something has happened
To my understanding of existence
That now makes my heart always full of wonder
And kindness.
I
Do not
Want to stop so quickly
Over this sacred place on God's body
That is right beneath your
Own foot
As I
Dance with
Precious life
Today.
-Hafiz
