An update from Lake Superior: Fires, drought, and canoe trips

Warm sun and scintillating breezes propelled us out of the house on September 7 to canoe the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The closest access site is on Sawbill Lake, a mere half hour from our home. Together with my brother and his wife who were visiting from New Jersey we packed  a lunch of sandwiches and fruit, filled wet bags with extra jackets and water bottles, and after collecting my husband from a meeting headed up the beautiful Sawbill Trail -- an old logging road that was widened a few years ago and provides wondrous views of hillsides and valleys turning the colors of fall, and a few surviving stands of magnificent old white pine. The Sawbill Canoe Outfitters provided us with two lightweight canoes, identified the Kelso Loop as supremely rewarding, showed us how to portage, and sent us off for a half-day package. "Should take you around four hours," they told us. That sounded great to us. Half a day on the beautiful inland lakes surrounded by nothing by wilderness.

While undertaking the portage between Sawbill and Alton Lakes, we met two young men returning from a bear-hunting expedition. "Alton Lake is really rough," they warned us. "White caps and big wind. Best to stay to the west side of the lake." But to get to the west side we had to cross the lake, which required some tricky maneuvering through strong wind and responding waves. I found comfort in the sight of a mother loon carrying a chick on her back. She was negotiating those waves with apparent ease but it looked asif she was trying to get the chick to swim on its own. Several times she turned her head and the chick would disappear off her back, only to hop back on again. A blue heron stood among the grasses on the other shore, showing us its elegant long neck and regal profile and looking supremely confident and not at all interested in the loon and her chick.

There on those lakes, warmed by the sun and challenged by the wind, we exerted ourselves to the max and loved every minute despite the blisters forming on our hands and the aching backs. We arrived back at the Outfitters several hours past their estimated time-table, exhausted by totally satisfied. While stopping to buy cold beer at our local liquor store, we learned that a fishing boat with four men aboard had overturned two miles out on Lake Superior. In yesterday's paper I learned that the capsized boat was a fishing charter owned by a neighbor and that the heroism of another neighbor -- who single-handedly braved 8-foot white caps in his fishing boat -- saved them. There is a great article in the Cook County News Herald on this rescue, a local story that I have not found covered elsewhere. (I am having trouble linking through Gather so I will post the address here: http://www.grandmarais-mn.com/placed/index.php?sect_rank=1&story_id=225276 )

Meanwhile, 30 or more fires are now burning in the Boundary Waters near the Gunflint Trail because of the drought and heat of the past month. Two of these fires are forcing evacuations from the Gunflint. The stage for these fires was set when a blowdown in the Boundary Waters in 1999 turned millions of trees into fallen kindling for lightning strikes and careless campers. The smoke from those fires has not yet reached us. It rained for 1/2 hour this morning but I doubt such a smattering will do much to dampen those fires or fill our rivers which have diminished to a trickle and the water levels of our lakes which are dropping dramatically.