The snow flew sideways, lashing the campers huddled by the fire. It layered on coats, turning people into snow sculptures. The crackling, twig-fed fire struggled to throw warmth, but the harsh wind overpowered it, blowing fat, white flakes onto bare faces.
In the silence of the camp on Fourtown Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, glowing ash drifted from the flames, settled on nearby logs, but burned out swiftly on accumulating snow.
Nightfall brought a dense darkness to the woods and waters of northern Minnesota, turning the lake and shore trees invisible. A half-dozen paddlers investigating the remote terrain hoped for mild weather in early October. But the leaves and weather both were turning for the season.
Even the loons, who usually romantically serenade exploring paddlers, were gone for the winter.
“That says something about us when it’s too cold for the loons,” Scott McPherson said.
Toes and bones started to freeze, but still the glowing blaze mesmerized the cheerful group until Dan Kitrell abruptly asked, “If you were home and it was doing this, would you be sitting outside in the back yard?”
Enough. Campers scattered to their tents.
A magic land
“It’s just a magical place,” McPherson said of the Boundary Waters. “It’s probably my favorite place in the world.”
This was his 21st trip to the region–19 using canoes, two with dog teams–since 1972. McPherson, 41, a Chicago public relations executive, was the trip organizer, the self-described “chief cook and bottle washer.” All but one of the paddlers lives or did live in the Chicago area, 600 miles away.
“I always wanted to bring people from Chicago who hadn’t been here,” said McPherson, who is enough of an adventurer to take trips also to Greenland and Iceland this year. “It’s the closest true wilderness to the Chicago area. It’s a timeless place.”
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is located within Superior National Forest. Combined with adjacent Quetico Provincial Park of Ontario, the area covers 5 million acres. Black bears, moose, timber wolves, lynx and beaver roam the waters, forests and bogs. Bald eagles fly overhead. Loons are common in warmer months. About 200,000 people a year cruise 1,200 miles of paddling routes across the thousands of lakes and streams connected by short stretches of land.
On this trip paddlers made repeated portages carrying 60-plus-pound packs, as well as the canoes. The rocky, dirt trails were measured in “rods,” a rod equaling about 16 1/2 feet, and approached a half-mile at times. Canoes made of kevlar that are 18 1/2 feet long were rented from Piragis Northwoods Company, one of many outfitters in Ely, population 3,800. It was another10 miles from town on narrow, increasingly rough road, to the closest lake.
McPherson is hardly alone in his rapture over the lure of the motor-free Boundary Waters.
“You travel under your own power and with the aid of ancient and elegantly simple tools,” wrote Paul Gruchow in his book “Boundary Waters: The Grace of the Wild.” “The canoe, the paddle, a pair of boots. Someone was traveling this way 10,000 years ago, and someone may be doing the same 10,000 years from now.”
The Boundary Waters might have 10,000 years worth of trips in it is–it’s not hard to get lost, even with a map. But this trip was four days and three nights. Long enough to forget civilization, long enough for muscles to earn their aches.
Weighty issues
Mudro Lake was almost too shallow to negotiate as the group launched three two-person canoes near the Chainsaw Sisters Saloon. In less than 30 minutes, paddlers became pack mules. The enormous “Duluth” packs were crammed with so much equipment and food it felt as if they were toting boulders.
“I can’t wait until these packs are lighter,” said Bart Biernat, an environmental health specialist for Anoka County in Minnesota, who is 6 feet 4 inches and weighs 270.
Even he fantasized about pack downsizing via big appetites following an exhausting 140-rod hike over a tree-lined route.
“That was a beautiful portage,” replied McPherson, who is husky, but not nearly as tall as Biernat.
“You mean you saw anything but your feet?” someone asked.
A break to mop up sweat and snack on apples was interrupted. A scruffy, slender man traveling solo and balancing his own heavy pack, his canoe, and a rifle, hiked up. No banjo music, although later the movie “Deliverance” was mentioned.
The somewhat taciturn traveler reported the disappointing news: fishing was almost non-existent. Not what McPherson, who has caught walleye, northern pike, smallmouth bass and lake trout on previous trips, wanted to hear.
The water was inky black on Fourtown Lake.
“Is this Lake Superior?” someone joked.
A few paddlers sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
A slight wind rippled the surface. Then, as the canoes approached a wider, unsheltered stretch, it increased in velocity. A plan was hatched to drive straight across the open water to the nearest shore, paddle close to land around a bend, then advance to the next island before camping. At times the steady paddle into the wind seemed like running in place. Arms and shoulders strained as paddles sliced through foot-high waves.
“Feel like you used something you haven’t used in a while?” said Kitrell, 39, who attended St. Cloud State with McPherson and has made many journeys with him. Kitrell, accompanied by wife Jenny, was on his fifth Boundary Waters trip.
By 5 p.m., after covering 7 miles of terrain, canoeists had become campers, raising tents, rolling out sleeping bags. One scavenger emerged from the woods bearing large, downed branches for firewood. Another forager came out of the woods and held up a twig.
Dan Kitrell glanced from one to the other and said, “If you were going to vote someone off the island, who would it be?”
McPherson glanced at the mini-tent city and approved.
“Home, sweet, home,” he said.
Then he noted another benefit of a late-season Boundary Waters canoe trip.
“No bugs,” McPherson said.
Apparently a straight player trade: loons for bugs.
A day earlier in Duluth, McPherson had attacked a grocery store with a supply sergeant’s savvy. He is not a freeze-dried guy. Years of experimentation have taught McPherson how to scratch together hot meals on frying pans. Kitrell said that on a New Zealand trip a stranger observed McPherson cooking creative dishes in rustic circumstances night after night and finally said, “You know we all hate you.”
This night, brats, plus bagels with butter, garlic and Parmesan cheese, were served.
After dinner, staring at a fire so large it seemed like something Mrs. O’Leary’s cow started, Kitrell said, “Let’s see, what’s on Channel 3?”
In truth thoughts focused more on isolation than technology. Food had to be raised high in trees to discourage black bears. And besides the fire, the glitter of stars was the only light for miles.
Tasty treat
Breakfast was eggs sprinkled with odds and ends.
“Gopher chunks and bear brains,” said Kitrell, the cook.
“Hunting all night, Dan?” McPherson asked.
The omelets actually contained sausage, pepper and onion.
The air was brisk, noted particularly by those who heeded the call of the wild and visited the open-air bathroom facilities. Dan Kitrell is an expatriate Chicagoan who lives in Eden Prairie, Minn. He works in marketing and joked that selling naming rights for Boundary Waters latrines seemed like a worthy pursuit. “The Gap” was the most popular suggestion.
Jenny Kitrell reported a local high school football score. How did she know?
“She’s clairvoyant,” her husband said.
Perhaps so, but she also had a radio. More relevant was the weather report. High winds, around 25 m.p.h. A stay-at-camp day. Dan Kitrell and McPherson broke out hammocks, tying them between pine trees as the wind whistled through. It was so cold McPherson, already wearing a parka and knit hat, used his bag as a wrap.
“You look like a giant larva,” Kitrell said.
Jenny Kitrell, a former forest firefighter in the West, and the only woman on the trip, hiked off, hugging the shore in search of a stable, promising fishing spot. She had a single minnow for bait, eschewing an artificial lure.
“They know it’s rubber,” she said.
A group of three went into the woods. Dan Kitrell chopped down saplings, others broke down the wood with a saw, and Kitrell labeled the team “The Three Amigos Lumber Company.”
The wind kept up all day, and clouds moved through at high speed, bringing snow off and on all afternoon.
After a dinner of pizza wraps that contained sauce, cheese, pepper, onion, mushrooms and pepperoni, everyone sat around the fire until Dan Kitrell reminded them they were turning into icicles.
Back to nature
Snow coated the ground the next morning, but the sun was bright.
“This is what I was hoping for,” Jenny Kitrell said.
It didn’t hold. All day, headed to Horse Lake, the weather was as changeable as the leaves. One minute it was sunny, one minute snowy.
Whenever the paddlers portaged, Jenny Kitrell, 37, who is only 5-3 and weighs 115, shouldered backs that amounted to 50 percent of her body weight. Biernat was astonished. She lifted as much as he did!
Two paddlers tried fishing. A smallmouth bass and a northern pike were caught. They were breaded and deposited in McPherson’s frying pan. Biernat snared the pike, but only after dropping his rod and reel overboard. When he scooped the gear back into the canoe the fish was on.
The lake soothingly lapped the shore at the new camp. Trees deflected some wind. And now fish, too. Nature seemed bountiful. Still, perhaps not for everyone.
Dan Kitrell said once his brother brought a date to the Boundary Waters and she and her friend split after a day when they realized there was nowhere to plug in hair dryers.
Campers heard mice scurrying around camp, or across tent tops, frequently, but the last night a couple of campers thought they heard a big animal march through camp. No one looked out. Better not to know if it was a bear. Better not to anger it if it was a moose.
The temperature fell into the teens, challenging the capabilities of lightweight sleeping bags.
Jenny Kitrell built a last fire, piling after stick after stick on the blaze.
“Fire Goddess of the North,” McPherson said.
Steam hovered over Horse Lake as the sun broke through. Smoke hovered over camp as Dan Kitrell dried wet socks and boots. Pretty soon they were smoking too.
He grinned and said, “I’m a happy camper.” Everyone was.
The sky was clear, snow a memory. Completing the paddling and portaging circle, the group crossed Sandpit Lake, back to Mudro Lake and Ely. Boundary Waters paddling was definitely easier without a headwind.
But somehow, no matter how much everyone ate, the packs never got lighter.
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lfreedman@tribune.com
