Not even photos have ever proven able to capture memory like writing and the act of have. My “true evolution to writer” happened when the act of writing became equal to the product. Writing is a means to make sense, to make art of reality, to make sure certain things do not slip by unnoticed, unremarked, unappreciated, and thus it is something done, rather than something that is.

It is a narrow path to walk. At times I have found my inclination toward written record superseding the living of the life itself. Or even if that’s not true, one is led to believe that constant documenting is in opposition to doing. Or that the mark of true greatness is to be able to do both equally, but yet more fully than mere mortals. Or not. Like I was saying, it is a narrow path to keep one’s footing on.

This weekend brought winter. The air is now dry and frozen, the dark sudden and deep. Six o’ clock feels like the middle of the night and mornings it is an ordeal to extract one’s self from flannel sheets and down comforter. I spent Saturday afternoon washing the big windows in the back of our house. I removed the screens and scrubbed the glass inside and out. They needed it badly and as I cleaned them it was like rubbing fog out from sleepy eyes and I could see outside little pieces of snow wobbling down to Earth, scattered against the sky and the dark green of the white pine in the backyard.

This was not the snow of last week, a sloppy rain-like precipitation that was really a last autumn rain just a little late, moistening dead leaves and making puddles for Lola to slosh through on our morning walk. Saturday’s snow was dry winter snow, sparse and sparing, and I watched the flakes fall to the ground as I washed the windows.

I listened to the stereo quite loudly as I worked; I was all alone for the afternoon. The music sounded great, clear as the cleaned windows and an unequivocal joy to know that when all else is stripped away, there is always music. The afternoon went by as such. No morn nor eve considered, just the gray afternoon, the task at the hand, and the rock and roll on the stereo.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: life, writing

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

“Wilderness is more than lakes, rivers, and timber along the shores, more than fishing or just camping. It is the sense of the primeval, of space, solitude, silence and the eternal mystery.” - Sigurd Olson

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: boundary waters

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Thompson tells me he’s been dreaming about bears.

As the three of us are paddling around the east end of Ensign that afternoon, checking campsites, permits and latrines, nearly every person we talk to has either had bears in camp in recent nights or heard of someone who has. We have secured a site on the north shore. The last site we visit before heading back to camp is our neighbors. They offer us fresh cornbread (which we resist) and tell us that, the night before, they heard the people that were camped at our site yelling and banging pots and pans every two hours, all night long.

In the quiet evening hour after dinner, as we digest and converse, I ask Curt, who’s been a wilderness ranger in the BWCAW for a few years, if he’s ever had a bear in camp before. He says “yes, just once.” I ask him where.

“This site, actually,” he says.

***

***

When the bear finally comes crashing through the brush a short while later, it strikes me as more funny than anything. We yell and throw rocks and otherwise make noise. I never see the bruin, it circles our camp for 20 minutes, obscured by the thick bushes, occasionally pausing and grunting and blowing and growling. It’s the growling that pisses Thompson off, making him unafraid by anger at this ursine affront. At one point he grabs the axe out of the tool bag. Before he manages to unsheathe it, Curt asks him what he’s doing and, without getting much of an answer, tells Thompson to put it away.

Eventually, the bear splashes into the water of our little bay, again obscured by brush, and swims to the next piece of land. That seems like a commitment that it will seek its dinner elsewhere and we relax again.

About dusk, when the mosquitoes are getting bad, we retire to our quarters. I climb into my hammock (which I’m convinced looks like a low-hanging food pack to any bear) and am still getting situated when we hear crashing from the brush again. Goddammit. Thompson and Curt are up and they yell and go through all that. It seems that the bear might just be passing by on its way back to wherever it came from, though at the time I’m sure we will be fending it off every two hours until morning. But, either it is quiet enough not to wake us or it doesn’t return.

I am woken once though, just at the tail end of a long wolf howl from across the lake, its song in my memory from the space between sleep and waking. The howl is followed by the yips and barks of the rest of the pack but it is not repeated.

The next day, we find a much better site on the other side of the lake and we move camp there. After getting camp set up, we are standing on the point, looking a half-mile across the lake toward the campsite we’re about to paddle over to and dig a new latrine. We’re talking about bears. We see a small, black dot run along the shoreline right in front of the destination campsite.

The last night of the trip, the rangers paddle away at dusk to check up on a group that was stretching the definition of “nine-person group size.” The three of us volunteers have just finished hanging the food pack high in a white pine when they return. It is almost dark. We are standing around talking when Andrea, the other ranger, calmly says, “there’s a bear.” I look up toward the area around the fire grate and see a big black shadow recede back into the night. It doesn’t seem to go far away and we again are left to hoot and holler and throw rocks into the bushes. After a few minutes, we no longer hear it and we relax. Twenty minutes later, we hear yelling and pots and pans banging from the next campsite over.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: boundary waters

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

For what it’s worth, I just completed editing my first newsletter for the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. While you won’t find my byline in this one, I think some of you might still enjoy it, and just know that my editorial influence is all over it. There are articles on all sorts of issues regarding the Boundary Waters, as well as a really interesting examination of the essence of wilderness.

Members of the Friends should see it in their mailbox in the next day or two, but it’s also available as a PDF here.

Our next newsletter should see a lengthy report by me on an adventure I have planned for later this summer… a stint as a volunteer in the bow of a canoe with a Forest Service wilderness ranger in the stern. I’ll be helping with routine maintenance on portages and campsites in the Boundary Waters. It should be interesting to see what all goes into preserving the wilderness character of the BWCAW, though it will also be a big change to work in a place where I usually go to play.

Lastly, there was a nice opinion piece in the St. Paul Pioneer Press last week about the state of the St. Croix River, 40 years after it was declared one of the inaugural Wild and Scenic Rivers. Written by John Helland and featuring the words of former senator and vice president and perpetual St. Croix aficianado and advocate Walter Mondale, it talks about the treasure that is the St. Croix, and the very real threats it is facing from development and pollution. The article was spurred by a May meeting of river advocates that I had heard whisperings of a few months back. It sounds like the outcome was the one hoped for: interest and energy regarding the formation of a new advocacy and education group that would work to protect and preserve the St. Croix. You can read the article here.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: boundary waters, conservation, miscellaneous, st. croix river, writing

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 6 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: photography, summer

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

I zipped down the side of my bag and began to move very quickly, pulling on all the clothes that were in reach. It couldn’t have been more than 30 degrees and I knew about the white stuff that was blanketing the ground outside, weighing down the tent walls. I had crawled into the tent the night before seeking refuge from a steady rain. When I woke in the pre-dawn hours to pee, I no longer heard it beating against the tent. Only on opening the door did I realize why: the precipitation was still coming down. It had only turned to snow.

Bundled in clothes that would never substitute for the comforts of my zero degree bag, I unzipped the door and stepped into the world, almost every surface concealed behind a white film of the wet, sticky snow.

I was all alone in this campsite at the end of the Gunflint Trail, some 50 or more miles from the nearest town, Grand Marais. Standing by the tent, I could look west and see the Boundary Waters Wilderness. Only the narrow corridor of the Trail — winding through the woods east toward Lake Superior — prevented me from being surrounded by the wild.

And I was twenty-eight years old this morning.

I walked up the short trail to the parking area and got my cook kit out of the cab of Brian’s truck. He was sleeping in the back. As soon as I opened the door, his dog, Cookie, made sure that was no longer the case. Heading back to the campsite to make coffee, dodging slushy puddles on the trail, fighting painfully cold fingers, I couldn’t help being enthralled by the white scene of winter and spring in open conflict everywhere I looked.

###

We had driven north the day before via a long wandering detour along the back roads of the Superior National Forest. I have always loved remote roads and for once got to dedicate some time to exploring them. No matter how remote the road I am on might be, glimpses of other roads that dive into the woods — often no more than two-lane tracks — intrigue me as I drive by. I always wonder what is around that first curve. On Friday, we frequently stopped the truck and got out to walk down some of those trails. Around that first curve, we usually just found more woods.

It rained almost the whole day. A cold rain that blew sideways and drove us back into the truck as soon as we had seen whatever had lured us out of it. It was still early spring in these northern woods, even though it was May. Any body of water big enough to be called a lake was still frozen solid, but the rivers were running high and fast, out of their banks and moving ever forcefully to their destinations.

For some four hours we navigated the backroads. I was buried under maps of varying descriptions and detail, all useful for their own purposes. We didn’t see another vehicle the entire time.

###

By mid-morning on Saturday we were standing with 25 others at the Seagull Guard Station, receiving instructions on moving across the land — charred by last year’s massive Ham Lake Fire — as a team, planting red and white pine seedlings as we went.

The view from the forest road where we parked our cars and commenced planting was unbelievable. From on top of this ridge, one could see solid square miles to the south and east, all of it barren and treeless, just the spires of burned trees against the horizon. The thin layer of snow on the ground only made the landscape more alien and lifeless.

Our team leader organized us into a line of pairs along the road, spaced eight feet apart, and we set out across the rocky ground, planting the little seedlings wherever we could find the necessary mineral soil.

By lunchtime, most of the snow had melted off the ground, blue skies prevailed, and there were already a lot of trees in the ground. And we were all a little tired.

When we were done eating, it was back into the woods. Or what once was and would someday again be the woods. Just a tangle of blackened limbs and logs now, though when one looked closely, there was life and color present, mostly within a foot of the ground.

We planted our way over a ridge and then filled in another area, ending up a good distance from the vehicles. Another woman and two young guys were nearby but no one else was. We had a few seedlings left but struggled to find somewhere to put them. We had stumbled into an area that had already been planted earlier in the day. It was amazing to realize how many acres were now blanketed by the bright green seedlings at eight foot intervals.

###

We got back to the campsite about 9:00 that night. In contrast to the previous evening, the skies were perfectly clear. No rain or snow to drive us into shelter. I retrieved 12 beer bottles that I had stashed in a nook in the river below us, finding that only 11 still contained beer. Someone must have come across them while we were away, helped themselves to one, and then recapped it and placed it back amongst the others. We admired that funny little act of class and didn’t begrudge someone what must have been a pleasant surprise.

We had a ridiculous pile of firewood and, both of us tired, proceeded to burn it as quick as we could. A clear night like that in the north woods means cold and this night was no exception. Where the previous night brought snow, this one was considerably colder. The big fire was not just an expedient way to burn wood, but a necessity for comfort.

One of the guys who had been planting near us earlier and who was camped nearby stopped by and we three enjoyed an hour or two of quiet campfire conversation of rivers and lakes and conservation and stone masonry.

###

It was still cold in the morning. The water jug was half-frozen and every puddle too. I was breaking down camp and making coffee when Brian walked up and said there were a couple moose on the campground road nearby.

I grabbed the camera and followed him. And there they were. What appeared to be a cow and her yearling, though I’m no expert on such things. They stood by the side of the road, by turns grazing on a cedar tree, nibbling roadside grass, and staring blankly in our direction. They certainly gave me plenty of time to admire them and take some photos and only finally disappeared back into the woods as a car drove up the road.

Driving back down the Gunflint, we stopped at a side road and set off on foot to see where it went. Further than we expected, ultimately. At a clearing in the woods, it seemed to dead-end, except for one unused spur heading deeper into the woods. Brian headed up the first hill and around the first bend and I paced around the clearing. Eventually I sat on a rock in the sun and remembered how good it is to do so. I laid back with my hat over my eyes and listened, then sat up and continued to listen to the scattered bird songs and other sounds of the morning forest. And I remembered how listening is one of the best things you can do in the woods.

When Brian got back, we hiked back out a bit and then up another spur, this one a long sandy road that went over several hills. Having been walking longer than planned already, we maintained a good pace up, whether going up or down. It felt good to be reminded of the distance one’s legs can take you.

The road was frequently cleaved by moose tracks and accented by their droppings. Then we noticed paw prints in the road far larger than those of Cookie, Brian’s dog, and realized they were those of a wolf. You could even see where the claws had indented the sand.

###

The night around the campfire, it wasn’t long before sleep tempted Brian and our other companion to their beds, leaving me alone beneath a sky full of stars as brilliant as I’ve ever seen. There was no moon and above me was pure vast blackness punctuated by infinite clouds of light. Though tired, I resolved to spend just a bit longer by the fire.

I sat staring down into the flames and coals, hypnotized as so many have been by their flickering, illuminating paths deeper into my mind and the world and the woods. The night was silent except for the muffled rushing of the rapids of the river. Again, I felt every mile of the distance between me and the world of my day-to-day life, that land of concrete and steel, but also of my wife, my family, my friends, my dog. And my comfortable bed.

And all I could think was, “So this is how I start my twenty-eighth year on this amazing planet.”

And I looked up at the stars and down at the fire and listened again to whatever there was to hear.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 18 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: boundary waters, the woods

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

I’m well aware it’s been a long time since I’ve posted on here, much less with any frequency. I blame quitting one job and starting another. A winter that overstayed its welcome by about three weeks hasn’t helped any either.

But, I decided that if spring is going to be reticent with signs of her arrival, I’ll take matters into my own hands and mark the season myself. Namely, by putting a paddle in the water.

My new colleague Brian and I canoed about 10 miles of the St. Croix yesterday. We had both been commiserating over our shared paddling itch since we first met when I interviewed in late February and this trip had been proposed not long after, keeping us in check while winter clung (and clung and clung) to Minnesota. Having worked together for three weeks now, it was good to finally share a canoe.

While my instincts for a day trip such as this one are usually the six or seven miles of river from Osceola to Copas, we instead paddled from William O’ Brien State Park to the Boom Site landing. It is a wonderful stretch of river, but I’d only paddled it once before (with Rosie) a few years ago.

The beauty of the section is that boats aren’t allowed to travel north past the Arcola High Bridge as a means to prevent the spread of Zebra Mussels. So, all the pleasure boats from Stillwater have to stay south and the only other boaters you share the river with are those who also come down from landings upstream. But, south of the bridge, the absence of boats above is usually well compensated for. On Rosie’s and my previous trip, the last miles had been stressful as we dodged the wakes of the plentiful boats of a summer weekend.

Which is why Brian and I paddled it today. It isn’t quite pleasure boating season.

Putting in at O’ Brien, we found the river way out of its banks, its waters even sojourning into the parking lot by the landing. We loaded the canoe at a spot where one might normally park the car and we shoved off. A woman pulled up just before we departed and started setting up an easel and other accouterments of painting. Though the scene of islands of leafless trees sunk under gray water under gray skies had a certain stark beauty to it, I was struck by the thought that she could probably find an identical scene in November.

No sooner had we paddled out of the parking lot than we were being swept downstream at no mild pace. The river was flowing above 15,000 cubic feet per second by the gauge at St. Croix Falls and high, fast water had been part of the recipe (last July, the daily mean was just over 1000 CFS). It was why neither of us planned on having to paddle too hard. And why we each had a waterproof bag of dry clothes at the ready.

We progressed along limestone and sandstone banks, admiring their White Pine crowns and ephemeral waterfalls that spilled the season’s meltwater into the river. Flocks of Barn Swallows were flitting over the river everywhere we looked. Beautiful birds with iridescent blue on their backs, they would be near-constant company down the river. At the time, though, we could not have imagined the sorts of feathered company we would have an hour or so later.

It wasn’t long before we were cruising by Marine on St. Croix, giving us ample opportunity to fantasize about calling one of the riverside cabins our own (any of which would have served either of us as ample full-time abode). Though enjoying these fantasies, I was a little disappointed by the sheer number of structures along the stretch of river. Most of them have been there since long before the river was designated Wild and Scenic and I don’t begrudge their presence, but it did increase my appreciation for the much less developed shores upstream.

We were making rapid progress down the river and soon the valley broadened out. Somewhere unseen along the Wisconsin shore, the Apple River entered, concealed by sunken islands. We first wandered a back channel along the Wisconsin shore, carefully dodging some strainers and pushing through a couple shallows, then we found ourselves immersed in a most amazing scene.

In a watery plain at least a mile wide — the High Bridge visible in the distance — there were birds simply everywhere. The Barn Swallows were still present, but they were now overshadowed by vast flocks of all kinds of waterfowl. Geese sent up mighty cacophonies from perches on top of beaver lodges, loons quietly cruised amongst the grasses, flying flocks of unidentified ducks blackened the skies, a Great Blue Heron crossed the river in front of us, a stick in its beak, heading for a rookery on an island a ways off. I had really never seen anything like it, much less paddled through it. All these migrating birds stopping here in some sort of garden. We were both simply in awe and frequently put down our paddles just to admire it.

While I knew photos would utterly fail to capture the scene in any way, words similarly fail to really convey it. I couldn’t help being reminded of an African savanna, vast and wild, fertile and rich, host to as many birds of feather as a savanna might be to gazelles or zebra. Thinking about it now, there is no such place upstream or downstream for many miles. This wide spot in the river must have been a welcome refuge for these thousands of birds as they made their way to northern summer homes, the current in this shallow expanse was slow, predators few, and there was ample room for everyone.

The river ultimately swept us through this world of birds and we found our way to the main channel along the Minnesota shore. Before long we were at the High Bridge, where we finally found dry land where we could pull up and have lunch. We ate sandwiches in a stand of cedars and pine, the ground dry and soft with needles, the air fragrant. The afternoon was still cool and damp and we both bundled on more clothes as we sat eating.

We were about to set off again when a guy mucking around on the banks with two kids struck up conversation and ended up showing us some Pitcher Plants he had discovered. Brian pointed out some green skunk cabbage coming up next to the plants. Though both still hunkered close to the ground, they were nonetheless a welcome sign of imminent spring.

The river below the High Bridge narrows into one primary channel and follows a fairly straight path toward Stillwater. The sandstone bluffs on both sides tower over the valley with distinctive White Pines topping them. The pines seemed to be filled with their own light, the green aglow against the drab backdrop of cloudy gray skies and leafless gray trees.

We had this section of river almost entirely to ourselves, a drastic contrast to the summer weekend day when Rosie and I paddled it and dodged boats and their wakes the whole way. We continued to paddle infrequently, instead spending a lot of time just enjoying the quiet and peacefulness of being back on the water after a long winter.

Rounding a last point, we both paddled hard for the landing, which was in sight now, without saying a word. The canoe leaped across the water

There is a feeling I get when out on that river or on a wilderness lake that I never know how much I miss it until I feel it again. Yesterday it washed over me and I felt a peacefulness so strong that it seemed to originate deep in my body, in my shoulders that awoke to the paddling, in my hands cold with river water and wind, my eyes and ears filled with the days sights and sounds.

From my body, the peacefulness traveled to my mind, inspired and collected the thoughts of the day, and all of it traveled on to reside in my heart.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: paddling, spring, st. croix river

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

For those unfamiliar with the film or the man, upon retirement at age 51 in 1968, Proenneke headed to Alaska. He proceeded to build himself a cabin deep in the wilderness, using only hand tools, and filming the whole thing.

The combination of Proenneke’s incredible skills at carpentry and woodcraft, his steady and patient hand with his 16 mm camera, and his enlightened, lyrical narration has made this film a classic.

edit: unfortunately, the video’s no longer available. But, you can (and should?) buy it here.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: the woods

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

She walks next to me and she runs ahead. The snow is melting; water above, water below. Pools in low spots are the color of pee over the snow. In the shade, a crust of snow and ice freezes over puddles.

The four o’ clock sun of March is still strong enough to set off on a short Sunday afternoon walk under. Down the old rail grade we go, the dog criss-crossing the trail in front of us. No one else in the park. Just the dwindling daylight of the dwindling weekend and the quiet talk of woods and meltwater, soggy snow seeping into the earth.

She slips her hand into mine. She runs ahead.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: spring

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

In that over the course of my brief life so far I have spent a bit of time weighing the different things I enjoy and have a relatively stable idea of my priorities, this literally could be my dream job.

It will demand writing about topics that are of great importance to me, working for something I deeply believe in. I will seek to engage young people, who are abandoning the outdoors at a frightening rate, finding ways to make an honored tradition of love for wild places relevant to natives of this crazy digital world today.

Basically, I will be doing the type of work I enjoy most to help protect one of the wildest and most beautiful places in the lower 48. And I will be doing so with a group of people I liked and respected from the moment I met them, and joining an organization that has a long history of fighting the good (and hard) fight.

And, oh yeah, I should also mention that wilderness canoeing will now be all in a day’s work.

© Greg for the dharma blog, 2008. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: conservation, life

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh