Every Journey Begins Before A Single Step
I was 18 years old and it was the end of the summer, just before Rosie was to depart for her sophomore year at UW-Madison and I would head the opposite direction a few weeks later to my freshman year at the University of Minnesota-Morris.
Despite my best efforts, we weren’t dating at the time. But, our extremely close, but platonic, friendship had reached a new peak at the end of that summer when we had spent many evenings and weekends going to-and-fro as one does in the summer. I remember the beaches of the St. Croix River, the dam on the Kinnickinnic River at River Falls, late nights swimming in my parents’ pool (yes Mom and Dad, while you were in Bosnia) and all the other things you do the summer of your eighteenth year.
Demonstrating the beautiful frenetic recklessness of that age, we decided to go to Lilith Fair at Canterbury Downs the night before we would leave for the canoe trip. Actually, she decided to go and, as per my style, I tagged along. It was a long day in the sun, I remember Mary Lou Lord on a small stage, and Natalie Merchant on the main stage who declared that she could barely perform for being so upset over the beginning of U.S. airstrikes in Yugoslavia.
If we had been able to drive home right after the show, we might have gotten enough sleep. As it was, traffic was horribly backed up in the parking lot and we were on the far side of the Twin Cities, so we each got to our own beds after 2 a.m. But, by shortly after that August dawn, Rosie was in my driveway.
The Part My Parents Aren’t Going to Like
We headed north in her Geo Tracker. Soft-top. Tape deck. Rusting. In fact, rusting in such a way that the receptacle for the gas nozzle had separated from the frame, so when you tried to insert the gas nozzle, it would just push the receptacle back. Which meant one of us had to reach under the car and hold the receptacle with a pliers while the other pumped the gas.
It was just such a trip.
This is the part where the story gets funny. Not feeling like making it easier on ourselves, we had chosen Saganaga Lake as our entry point, which happened to be located at the very end of the Gunflint Trail. And we elected to be in Ely that afternoon to welcome my friend Canoeman back from a six-week canoe trip above the Arctic Circle in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
Readers familiar with the area will see the humor in this. Those who are not might take a look at this map.
(The green marker is Ely. The blue one is Superior-North Canoe Outfitters.)
What the map above illustrates is that Ely is on one side of the BWCAW. Superior-North on the other. As the crow flies, the two outposts are about 40 miles apart. As the car drives, which is from Ely all the way back to the North Shore via twisty Highway 1 (approx. 60 miles), up the shore to Grand Marais (approx. 50 miles), and then all the way to the end of the Gunflint Trail (approx. 50 miles), it comes to roughly 160 miles.
Obviously we didn’t plan this very well.
But don’t forget I was but 18.
And in love.
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