My Final Canoe Trip
(This 906th Buffalo Sunday News column was first published on August 3, 2008.)
I spent a happy evening with Bob
Bugenstein and his daughter Anne
at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis
just a week before Bob died on July 16, 2008
(This column was nearly completed when I learned that my friend,
Bob Bugenstein, died just days after we returned
from our 25th annual venture into the Minnesota Boundary
Waters Canoe Area. I dedicate the column to him.)
Cherokee
Lake in the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area
Sadly,
it is time to quit. Those four days finally made it clear that I can no longer
carry my fair share on canoe trips. Given that decision (strongly supported by
my wife), it seems appropriate to compare this last trip with my very first, 65
years ago.
That
earlier trip was in Algonquin Park north of Toronto, but those lakes, forests,
wildlife, portages and campsites are so much like Minnesota that I defy anyone
to differentiate them. Both parks represent pre-Columbian North America.
Each
trip was designed for four days of travel, but the earlier one was more
challenging, especially to a neophyte assistant trip leader still in high
school. The Algonquin trip involved 33 miles paddling, 7.5 miles portaging; Minnesota,
16 miles paddling, 3 miles portaging.
In
Minnesota we had e-mailed our food preferences and everything was ready when we
arrived. Most food was freeze-dried, thus very light. The outfitter also
provided our tent, sleeping bags, mattresses, stove and other camp equipment,
four packs and the two 50-pound Kevlar canoes for the four of us. We loaded
everything, including our personal gear into those four packs. Thus portages
included six loads for four people: the two youngsters, Anne Bugenstein and
Larry Fries, doing almost all of the doubling back for second loads. (Such doubling
thus means multiplying each portage distance by three.)
On July
5th we watched a moose rise out of Kelly Lake in northern Minnesota
We
did our own outfitting for the Algonquin trip. There were nine of us, three
leaders and six Camp Pathfinder campers, in three 100-pound canvas canoes. The
middle paddler, Bill Swift in my canoe, would kneel on packs. We planned our
meals and obtained bags of flour and sugar and cans of stews, fruit and
vegetables from the camp outfitter. No stove: we would cook over open fires.
All this food was packed into a wooden box called a wanigan that was then
wrapped in the canvas tarp under which we leaders would sleep.
In
those days there were no down sleeping bags. Each trip member had a heavy
Hudson's Bay blanket that he folded and pinned around the edges to make a bed
roll. The food cans were distributed, aligned and rolled up in this blanket, the
resulting cylinder stuffed into a duffle bag. All this gave us nine duffle bags;
three big packs for tents, food and equipment; and the three canoes to portage.
Today
pack weight is shared by your shoulders and waist. On that earlier trip most of
the weight carried was on your head. The duffle bags and packs were wrapped
with a six-foot leather strap called a tumpline. Campers carried one, two or
even three duffle bags across their shoulders with broadened areas of the tumplines
against their foreheads. We counselors carried the canoes and doubled back for
the packs and remaining duffle bags.
The
canoes we also carried on our heads, the paddles strapped against the thwarts
only to give balance. Although we used padding, I still recall running my
finger along my skull going over the ridges left from the cross struts of the
canoe. Today the lighter canoes are carried on your shoulders with your head
completely free.
On
the modern trip we carried only one lightweight tent for the four of us. In the
old days we carried two heavier canvas tents for campers. We three counselors
slept under that canvas tarp based against a tipped canoe and held up by
paddles and tumplines. "Mattresses" were hemlock bows and mosquitoes
were a problem.
Today,
except for what you eat, everything packed in is packed out. In those old days
each campsite had its nearby can dump. At night we would hear animals rooting
around in them: were they bears, wolves, the Wendigo? Later those dumps were
filled in and for a time we sank cans in the center of deep lakes. Today,
thankfully, canned goods are no longer allowed in either park.
Thank
goodness the trips got easier as I got older, but every one of them represents
a happy memory.-- Gerry
Rising