the dharma blog

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.

As we trolled slowly around the lake, dragging big spoons as deep down as we could, the closest either of us came to hooking up was when Rosie’s line from the bow came a little too close to where I was in the stern and I gave it a quick jerk, eliciting such an excited reaction that I immediately confessed it had been me and not a fish and apologized profusely. Rosie was not amused.

The breeze was still blowing some and our efforts to anchor (using a mesh anchor bag filled with rocks from shore) were brief as the wind jerked us around. We headed in while it was still light, unsuccessful in our efforts.

Dinner that night was a dehydrated meal of Italian sausage pasta. It was one of the least pleasant dehydrated meals I’ve had, way over-seasoned with garlic, onion and salt. Alas, we ate it all anyway, as we carried a limited amount of calories in that food pack and needed all of them, and because it’s a pain in the you-know-what to dispose of leftovers in the wilderness.

For the second night in a row, we finished eating dinner and got the dishes washed just as darkness started to come. We found it went very quickly from full light to dusk. Our Orikaso fold flat plates not only worked well as dishes all week (just make sure to use your hat or something else as a hot pad when eating really hot food out of them), but were also the easiest dishes I’d ever had to wash. By unfolding them, it was easy to rinse, scrub with some pine needles, and rinse again, and they were clean.

Once we got camp tidied up and pretty squared away for the night, it was getting dark and the skies were clear so we went down to the water’s edge to look at the emerging stars. We weren’t standing on the shore very long before we noticed something moving in the water down the shore a bit, making its way in our direction. We watched it coming and figured out that it was an otter. It stopped right in front of us, just a couple feet out from shore and no more than 10 feet from where we stood. It lifted most of its body up out of the water and stared at us for a moment. As soon as I slowly started to move for my camera on the rock behind me, it dropped back in the water and continued on along the shoreline.

We sat down against some rocks by the campsite’s landing and leaned back, finding it to be a perfect starwatching bench, putting us at just the right angle to look at the sky. Because we were facing northwest, a glow from the sun still lingered in the sky for a long time, slightly lessening the intensity of our view. At the same time, what seemed to be high, thin clouds started to slowly inch their way across the sky from the north. Shoot, I thought. Not only was it going to interfere with our starviewing, one of my favorite parts about a trip to the Boundary Waters, but it meant that maybe the next day wouldn’t be the calm, sunny traveling weather I was hoping for.

Except, note that I said “seemed to be” clouds. As we continued to lay against the rocks by the water, the clouds seemed to be doing strange things. For one thing, I could see stars through them in places that didn’t make sense. And then they started to subtly change shape. And then they would be gone from one part of the sky and suddenly in another part. And then it finally made it through my skull that it was the Aurora Borealis, the northern lights, not clouds. The display was very subtle and never rose to the point where half the sky is lit up with multiple colors all in motion (as it can), but I’ll never complain about witnessing the northern lights, one of nature’s most amazing phenomena.

We didn’t know what the morning would bring. Maybe more wind, maybe rain. Day three had been planned as one of our longest travel days, all the way to Kekekabic, and if we kept to that goal it would be even longer than planned because of our stymied progress today. If we couldn’t make it to Kekekabic, I knew we would have to seriously consider changing our planned route. Not knowing what was ahead of us, and with no way to predict it, had introduced a lingering anxiety into my mind. Ever since we battled up Knife Lake, feeling myself struggle to muster the necessary power, watching Rosie rise and fall in the swells, my gut had been tying and untying itself in knots. I felt alive and inspired, but I also felt responsible for keeping us both safe, and I know Rosie was feeling a lot of the same.

Far, far down the lake in the direction from which we had come earlier, a campfire was burning. At maybe two miles of distance, the orange speck was about the same size as some of the brightest stars in the Milky Way above. It was that sign of human company, and the illusion of relativity, that provided a distraction to me as we sat together a bit longer on the rocks at the edge of Knife Lake.

Previous Installments:

• Prologue: From Planning to the First Portage
• Part One: Commencement