So starts a jaunty camp song ringing through the north woods of Minnesota.
If you read and believed some of my other trip reports and stories, you would probably come to the conclusion that I am a competent climber and outdoors person. In order to set the record straight and dispel that notion, I'll present a series of short stories highlighting some of the dumb stuff I’ve done in the wilderness over the years.
John Powell said “The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing” Hopefully you will learn from my misadventures, because so far I’ve been making some of the same mistakes over and over and over.
But first, a story of how I came to love being outdoors and active in the woods, waters, mountains, and clouds. And learned a jaunty camp song.
The year 1970 was pivotal: The Beatles broke up; U.S. President Richard Nixon ordered an invasion of Cambodia; Students protested on college campuses across the nation
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| Anti-war Protest on the University of Minnesota campus |
My Mom with sister Jeanne
While summer camp is a standard ritual for suburban kids in America, it was not part of Chinese culture when my parents grew up. My mom and dad immigrated to the US from Hangzhou (2017 metro area pop. 22 million) and Peking (2017 pop. 22 million) respectively, in 1945. They were not outdoor sportspeople. They came to the United States to pursue educations (and avoid bombs being dropped by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service), not to surf or ride single track. Perhaps if they had settled in Ouray, Colorado or Stehekin, Washington they would have been hammering pitons while climbing in hobnailed boots by the time I was born. But when research of the corn rootworm puts food on the table, a university surrounded by corn fields was the place to be.
Another condition that might have deterred my parents away from outdoor sports are the hordes of mosquitoes and black flies in Minnesota. In order to eat hot dogs on the back patio where I grew up in St. Paul, a bottle of 6-12 insect repellent was as important to have on the table as ketchup and mustard. Otherwise, swiping your hand down your arm would result in a pile of black goo from all of the mosquitoes. That’s no exaggeration. Now that I think of it, the constant immersion and ingestion of DEET probably explains a lot of things about me.
In any case, and for reasons unknown to me, my parents sent me to camp Widjiwagan, administered by the YMCA. The camp was founded in 1929 and still runs wilderness tripping adventures for 12 to 18 year olds. Their mission is "To develop, in young people, respect for self, community and the environment, through wilderness adventure and environmental education." 50 years later I am fortunate to help pass those principles along through instruction of Cornell Outdoor Education classes.
Widji is based out of cabins and structures built on the shore of Burntside lake, about 3 miles Northwest of Ely, Minnesota. Ely is currently the home of Crapola (CRanberries + APples + granOLA), Chilly Dogs sled dog trip company, and about two dozen canoe trip outfitting companies. From what I can tell, that's eight times the number of churches.
The sensation of granite underfoot, sloping up from the mirror waters of a lake, the sky painted a warm rainbow, the scent of pine, the trill of a loon, I have taken this to be my religion.
The region surrounding Ely is known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA): over 1,000,000 acres in size with over 1,200 miles of canoe routes. And over the Canadian Border, the Quetico Provincial Park offers an additional 1,000,000 acres of lakes, woods, and Precambrian-age granite. Plenty of space so novice paddlers don’t crash into something breakable.
Back before the invention of liability and litigation, this camp sent 11-18 year olds into the forests, muskeg, and land of 10,000 lakes on weeks-long canoe trips. No cell phones, no satellite radio links, no GPS trackers, not even reliable flashlights. We were guided by 19 or 20 year olds and traveled in wood and canvas canoes made by companies like Peterborough, Chestnut, and Seliga.
Sometimes we ran them through boulder strewn rapids,
and sometimes the waves and boulders won. Luckily, duct tape had already been invented.
We carried food and camping gear in stout canvas “Duluth” packs, shaped like stiff huge pillows with leather straps. We slept in cotton canvas tents and were taught that if you don’t touch the tent fabric while it’s raining, it won’t drip through. Mostly right. We ate dried foods cooked over fires, and I still remember the unvarying daily “Trail Lunch”: dry cracker (Wasa) , chunk of cheese, chunk of salami, peanut butter, maybe some raisins, and ‘bug juice’ a sugary drink flavored with ethyl propionate and isoamyl acetate or other wonders of cold war era chemistry. Every single day. For 14 or 21 days. Come to think of it, ingesting those chemicals might also explain a lot about me.
At that time (before the invention of beavers evidently) we drank straight from the lakes and streams. That reminds me of a skill: hardly breaking our paddling rhythm, we used to flip our canoe paddle vertically with the blade pointing up, and tip it expertly so the water ran down the paddle shaft right into our mouth : ) Quick delivery of giardia and crypto sporidia!!!
On my first trip, I was accompanied by a friend from school, Peter Schumacher. At some point in our trip, the counselor had to make a detour. To a Forest Ranger station. To drop off one of the campers. To be evacuated. Because he was stealing Darvon from the first aid kit!!! I think the rest of us naive youths spent the day pondering Darvon and wondering why he would take medicine if he wasn't sick. I also recall spending hours learning to untangle fishing line between occasional casts from an open face spinning reel.
Although Peter and I both returned from the 14 day canoe trip covered with mosquito bites, only I was infected by the outdoors bug. I believe instead of a life of wilderness trips, he went on to buy a series of ever louder Ford Mustangs.
The second summer, our trip retraced a route of the French Voyageurs leading from their fur trading grounds to the shore of Lake Superior via “The Grand Portage”. {Wait a minute... since they were trapping and buying beaver pelts, evidently beavers had been invented by 1970! Sacre bleu!!!!!!! we were lucky. Grand Portage Dance! Le Grand Portage est un sentier de 14 kilometres le long de la riviere Pigeon.. Wait a minute!... Francais!!! Sacre bleu, I got caught up in the whole Voyageur thing.
The Grand Portage is over 8 miles, or 2,720 rods in length.
Portages in the BWCA are marked in rods, an old tyme surveyor’s unit of measure. In case you are curious, a rod (less commonly called a perch or pole) is one fourth of a chain, and a chain is 66 feet long. What with rods and perch you would get the idea that surveyors spend their time goofing off, but there’s a good reason for these measurement units. An acre of land is 43,560 square feet. If you lay out a square with each side one chain long, the area in the square is 66' x 66' = 4,356 square feet. Add ten of those squares together and you get a parcel of 43,560 square feet, an acre!!!
: ) Tada! As long as the surveyor hasn't lost a finger while clearing brush with a machete, he or she can count out the squares to make an acre lot.
The important thing to remember is that a portage 320 rods long is one mile. And carrying a canoe or packs that distance is not easy, no matter what the measurement unit. Speaking of not easy, each bundle the Voyageurs carried weighed 90 pounds! And they carried them two or more at a time!! Sacre Bleu!!! Information about the Voyageurs
Video of Life as a Voyageur
My third trip, in 1972, was 21 days long and it rained on something like 18 of those days. Luckily on this trip we had a Eureka Timberline tent with rain fly! Sacre bleu what technology! Speaking of cutting edge gear, I slept in a winter weight down sleeping bag made from a Frostline kit. I remember debating whether to buy the kit that would required a bunch of sewing for $60, or buying a less warm ‘store boughten’ bag for $55. Considering I still use this bag for cold conditions almost 50 years later, I guess it worked out okay.
When you think summer canoe trip, you hopefully picture a blue sky with cotton ball clouds, the sun sparkling on gentle waves... so a down filled winter bag sounds like a night in HE-double-hockey-sticks (pardon my French). Except we were far enough north to wake up to a skim of ice in the cook pot one morning!
How far north were we? I remember loading our packs and canoes onto a Canadian Northern Railroad baggage car, the train stopping at a portage trail in the middle of the woods (those accommodating Canadians!) where we unloaded and headed into the wilderness. Kind of a Canadian working class version of heli skiing.
Here's another bit of north woods information that you can use to impress your friends. When you pop out of the trees at the end of a portage, you put your canoe in the water and load up your gear, climb in, check the map and compass, and you look across the lake in the direction of the next portage. What you see is a ring of green rising from the water. Even as you paddle across the lake, around islands and bays, even as you get closer to the next portage what you see is still a wall of green pine and spruce trees. Portage trails are often hard to find.
So the Voyageurs devised a way to mark the location of the portage trail heads: solar powered organic homing beacons. They chose a tall tree near the portage and chopped off branches until the top looked like a poodle's tail (they were French after all). They're called Lob Trees. Here's how you use it in a sentence: Ohhh yaaa, da Kekekabic portage, yust look fer da lob pine lefta Sven's snōe cōne stand dōn't-cha-nō. you thought I made up the name Kekakabic Lake? Of course there's a book about lob trees!
During those three summers, I probably spent close to 60 days paddling, portaging, and camping. I learned many important outdoor skills and lessons that provided a foundation for future adventures:
A real gem of a movie about Camp Widjiwagan
PS. Sorry about the quality of the pictures. Turns out phone pictures of 35mm slides aren't very sharp.
When you think summer canoe trip, you hopefully picture a blue sky with cotton ball clouds, the sun sparkling on gentle waves... so a down filled winter bag sounds like a night in HE-double-hockey-sticks (pardon my French). Except we were far enough north to wake up to a skim of ice in the cook pot one morning!
How far north were we? I remember loading our packs and canoes onto a Canadian Northern Railroad baggage car, the train stopping at a portage trail in the middle of the woods (those accommodating Canadians!) where we unloaded and headed into the wilderness. Kind of a Canadian working class version of heli skiing.
Here's another bit of north woods information that you can use to impress your friends. When you pop out of the trees at the end of a portage, you put your canoe in the water and load up your gear, climb in, check the map and compass, and you look across the lake in the direction of the next portage. What you see is a ring of green rising from the water. Even as you paddle across the lake, around islands and bays, even as you get closer to the next portage what you see is still a wall of green pine and spruce trees. Portage trails are often hard to find.
So the Voyageurs devised a way to mark the location of the portage trail heads: solar powered organic homing beacons. They chose a tall tree near the portage and chopped off branches until the top looked like a poodle's tail (they were French after all). They're called Lob Trees. Here's how you use it in a sentence: Ohhh yaaa, da Kekekabic portage, yust look fer da lob pine lefta Sven's snōe cōne stand dōn't-cha-nō. you thought I made up the name Kekakabic Lake? Of course there's a book about lob trees!
During those three summers, I probably spent close to 60 days paddling, portaging, and camping. I learned many important outdoor skills and lessons that provided a foundation for future adventures:
- There is a limit to how many blue berries you can eat, if you exceed this personal limit, you’ll throw up
- After 21 days of exposing your face to sun and wind and bug bites and perhaps not washing your face with soap very often, your appearance disturbs people
- If you’re the duffer (a passenger sitting in the middle of the canoe), sit on your life jacket or you’ll get a wet butt
- No matter how much you get rained on from above and soaked by splashing or wading from below, you don’t melt
- A spare pair of dry wool socks is worth the weight dōn't-cha-nō
- Experiencing outdoor adventures with friends and family is one of life's greatest gifts.
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| Richard Smith, Widji counselor |
- and as a paddler, I’m glad I was born after the invention of water, you betcha!
A real gem of a movie about Camp Widjiwagan
PS. Sorry about the quality of the pictures. Turns out phone pictures of 35mm slides aren't very sharp.
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