The campsite where we stopped was on a point, the other side of which faced east and across another big bay. On the other side of that bay was a campsite I had heard good things about and had hoped to spend the night. But, staring at the bay from where we stood on shore, the whitecaps increasing in size and frequency, we decided to make ourselves comfortable around the site and see if things might calm down. We didn’t unpack or set up camp, but got out books and fishing gear and set about passing some time.
An hour or two went by and the wind was unabated. We fished from shore on both sides of the point and ate lunch. We were starting to like the site more and more, it was big, flat and with a tent pad protected from the relentless wind. It also had beautiful views in three direction, including across that tumultuous bay we had hoped to cross before calling it quits. Sometime in mid-afternoon, we decided to make camp. There was nothing we could do about the wind, and neither of us felt like confronting the violence we could see from the shore. Besides, it was a nice site and we felt comfortable there. A few days later, we would only wish that we could have waited out the wind at a campsite, any campsite.
We quickly set up the tent and a clothesline to dry out some of our gear that was still damp from the previous day’s rain. So far today, there had been a couple of barely-noticeable sprinkles, but it had been otherwise dry. As the afternoon progressed, the clouds started to thin out and then blow away altogether. Sometime in the early evening, the lake calmed down considerably and the sun (seen for the first time of the trip) set the trees in a burned area on the far shore ablaze in oranges and reds.
It was too late for us to consider pushing on for the day, especially to just make another mile or so when we already had camp set up. Nonetheless, the sight of calm water enticed us to get into the canoe and try fishing in some of the deeper water. Knife Lake is renowned for its lake trout, a fish neither of us had ever caught but that has a special allure in canoe country. Although the Boundary Waters is also well-known for walleye, smallmouth bass and northern pike fishing, the lake trout, residing only in its deepest, coldest, cleanest lakes–known for its reclusiveness–a fish of great beauty and of legends, of stories of early spring fishing (the one time a year it can be found in the shallows while spawning) while snow is still on the ground or even in the air–is a fish unto this land.
We didn’t catch a one.
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