Z and I began working together as counselors at a French immersion, wilderness canoe program for 14-18 year olds in northern Minnesota in 1998. We lived in tents out in the woods for 10 weeks at a time. We got up every morning and went to bed each night outside, among the stars and the mosquitoes. We cooked and ate all our meals outside. We taught French songs and outdoor camping skills outside, and when it rained, we put on our rain gear and remained - outside. We were pretty tough when I look back on the experience, and I’m sure it helped make us who we are today. We even had contests to see who could go the longest without bathing, a true test of toughness, but we’ve outgrown that particular brand of bravado by now. (OK, sometimes Z thinks we’re still having that competition in the middle of the winter when no one in Minnesota really likes to take off clothes for the mere benefit of taking a shower, but she’s running that race without me.)
In the early aughts, we eventually stopped spending our entire summers camping and speaking French with teenagers in the wilderness, but we never stopped canoeing or francophoning. Our 2004 trip not only celebrated Z’s scholarly and professional achievement, it was a chance to relive our glory days, but with the novelty of being just the two of us; no teenagers to be responsible for, no schedule to keep, just two girls, our boat, our paddles, and our packs out in the wilderness. It was great, and we did it again in 2009. Taking these duo trips tests how soft we’ve gone as a result of living the civilian city life, with all our adult responsibilities and routines. But in our collective past, Z and I have toughed it out through lightning storms, the 1999 BWCA blow down, medical evacuations, heat exhaustion, hypothermia, black bears at campsites, and whining teenagers. It’s good to find out periodically if we still have that toughness in us. Our 2009 trip confirmed that we do.
We did a four-day paddle out of Ely, and even though the weather was entirely cold and rainy, my raincoat leaked, my feet got soaked on the first day (and in a fit of minimalism I hadn’t packed enough socks), it was a fun trip. Faced with less than ideal camping conditions, we called upon our arsenal of outdoor skills; Z spent 3 hours making a campfire in the rain over which I eventually dry-roasted my soaked socks. I dusted off my knot-tying/rope skills and set up a tarp to shelter our stuff from the incessant rain, and I hung the bear bag each night. (OK, the first night’s bear bag was a joke but that’s because we didn’t get to our campsite until 8pm and we were in a hurry to get into the tent to get dry.) When we went for a paddle in the drizzle one evening we saw an astounding number of birds along the shore of an island – more birds than I’ve ever seen in one spot. There were eagles, osprey, loons, gulls, and probably some teals or mergansers – it was like the Noah’s ark of bird species. They were the only creatures showing any signs of animation out there in the wet cold, them and us, two girls who defied the weather and our wetness to paddle in the evening rain and earn the privilege of seeing them.
The trip presented us with other challeges aside from just being waterlogged. On our last big day of paddling we accidentally took a wrong turn after finshing the Canadian portage. We weren’t exactly sure where we were, but we knew we weren’t on the lake we needed to be on in order to take out the next morning. So we used our (only momentarily-lapsed) map reading and navigation skills to take an un-marked portage back into the correct lake. Problem solved.
The moment that confirmed our un-faded glory for me was when we pulled up to an overgrown portage at a beaver dam. There was a group of wet, bedraggled, unorganized, unhappy-looking teenage boys milling about in a stupor at the portage landing. They were pacing around disgruntled in the calf-high water, submersing their plastic raingear and boots uselessly in the muck. Then here we came, two thirty-something women breezing past them in a rush of competent, unfazed efficiency. We just paddled by, went further up the creek to a second opening onto the portage trail (probably the original landing that had since been obscured by the beaver workings) hopped out of our boat and shouldered our light-weight, minimally loaded packs off across the portage. For logistical reasons we double-portaged, but we finished up our two runs before the first batch of boy scouts reached the other side.
It’s reaffirming to know that even though we don’t lead canoe trips professionally anymore, and we’re girls, our camping mojo is alive and well. Z hadn’t been wilderness canoeing at all since our 2004 trip (and I only make it to the wilderness once a summer these days) but she could still steer the canoe and build a camp fire. More importantly, we knew how to function and have fun in the rain, and we enjoyed our precious days in the wilderness undaunted – something those boys definitely needed to learn how to do. If they had come to our camp we could have taught them a thing or two.
Girls can portage and steer the canoe.
Girls can cross international boundaries in the remote wilderness.
Girls can make campfires in the rain and conquer their own islands.
And girls can tie boats securely onto vehicles.
Here’s to girlfriends; here’s to the wilderness; and here’s to these girls who can still go wild.
Z & me, summer 2000
Z & me, summer 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment