BWCA

BWCAW (Boundary Waters Canoeing Area Wilderness)

Many moons ago, my friend, Kathy, and I decided to travel to the Boundary Waters, a wilderness area in northern Minnesota, on a canoeing and camping trip. We were straight out of graduate school, broke, and had little to no experience in camping, much less “wilderness” camping. But, I vaguely remembered a presentation I saw in high school that really captured my interest… and I had read a book. I mentioned to Kathy that I wrote a will which I had been meaning to do for quite a while and felt that this was a good excuse to finally put it on paper. Kathy howled over that one and asked just how dangerous this venture was going to be. However, weeks later, when I entered her apartment, I found that she had taken it to heart. As I walked in, I noticed sticky notes (although back then it was probably scotched taped notes) on many of her possessions. Upon inquiring of their purpose, Kathy informed me that she wanted people to know what they should get if she doesn’t return. Now, it was my turn to howl with laughter.

We had perused several suggested packing lists for this undertaking which we discussed ad finitum on the phone, but we still had to look through everything and make final decisions. This is a really important part of the preparation because whatever you bring goes on your back during a portage. And whatever you don’t have, you can’t run down the street to get. So we had to be wise in our inexperienced choices. After some intense decision making, we packed up her Golf Volkswagon and were off. Driving straight through was no problem (even though it was a good 12 hours) as we had both been working at new jobs and Kathy had recently moved to Springfield. We joyously chatted away, excited about our upcoming adventure. By late evening, we arrived in Ely Minnesota, and decided to stay in the town’s park for a good (and cheap) night’s sleep. After all, Kathy’s car seats could go all the way back – a novel idea back then. Even though we did not reach REM, we enjoyed complaining and just chatting. Bright and early, we visited a gas station restroom to clean up. We had some breakfast from our food in the cooler and got our last minute items – food, postcards, a camping saw and lures – and drove to the ranger’s station to get our reservation. In those days there was no nightly cost to camp, but there was a nominal fee for the reservation. There are about 87 “put-in” points where one can start a trip, but the number of campers is kept to a limit in this more than one million acre wilderness. Similarly, the number in a party is limited. All this is done so we do not over-impact the breath-takingly beautiful natural environment. You can only camp at designated areas identified by a fire grate and a latrine off in the nearby woods. (I think it’s just a ploy to get us out of the canoe time after time to search for the fire grate.) There are very strict rules about what people can bring into this protected wilderness – no cans or glass (remind me to tell you about the illicit exploding single serving can of spaghetti O’s for my 4 year old), no firearms, no soap within 50 feet of the shoreline, take out what you bring in (yes, you end up with one smelly, but small, garbage bag) and, of course, life jackets are required. During dry hot times, you cannot have a fire for fear of it spreading, so you cook with the small portable stove you brought (that is, unless you decided that fire restrictions were so unlikely to occur that you kept it at home, you didn’t want to schlep it and the fuel on your back, and/or you like eating lots and lots of granola, beef jerky and cookies). Then there are my favorite rules: only take pictures (don’t take rocks, plants, leeches, snakes…) and leave your campsite better than you found it. The latter generally means to clean up the residue in the camp ashes, pick up any garbage in the site and leave lots of firewood.

We did not have a clue what we were getting into, and that was part of the adventure. For example, we packed enough food for a month, making wild guesses how far we would travel on Hunter’s Loop each day. We were out 14 days. We packed our sleeping bags in stuff sacks figuring that they would keep dry that way. It rained for 13 out of 14 days … and everything got wet. On overcast, but not rainy mornings, we hung toilet paper on bushes and damp sleeping bags from tree branches to dry – kinda. We knew that we had to pack our food in garbage bags and hang the food sack high in a tree and out on a limb, so bears wouldn’t be attracted to our site. The first night we crammed all our food in one bag (weighing a gazillion pounds), got out the diagram, found two trees almost the right distance apart and huffed and puffed to get it as high as we could with an elaborate system of ropes. We managed to get it right at bear height – he wouldn’t even have to bend over to help himself. All night that first night, we heard a bear going through the bag. “He found the cereal. There goes the bacon. I think he’s into the cookies now.” Fortunately, at the break of dawn, all was as it had been at midnight, just two tired campers ready to face another day, relieved that there was still food to be had.

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