I was 21 years old. Three of my closest friends and I decided to go on an impromptu ten-day camping trip in the Boundary Waters - a series of smallish lakes and islands between Minnesota and Canada. At least two of them were experienced outdoorsy guys, and one of them already had quite a plan put together. What could go wrong?
Heh, it occurred to me as I created that link above how helpful it would have been to be able to "Google" this place ahead of time back then. Ah well.
NOTE: Everything that follows is true, or at the very least, how I genuinely remember it.
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So the morning comes, and we set out on our 6- or 7-hour drive. We have tents, sleeping bags, food, canteens, clothing, camp tools (e.g., fold-able poop hole shovel), and backpacks. The plan is to catch fish for our dinners, so the food we bring is either intended as a "side dish" or snacky stuff for during the day. We bring things like granola bars, cheese, salami...and potatoes. 80 pounds of potatoes. Because they are gonna be really good with all the seasonings and butter we also brought, served alongside all our yummy fish. But we'll get to that later.
We are set! We are excited! We are ready to go! As we get close, we come around a curve and have to brake quickly to avoid hitting a bear that's standing in the road. This is gonna be awesome!
We get there, and the way it works is, you park your car, check in, and begin your adventure. This is not a campground or anything like that; this is genuine, old-fashioned roughing it. You need to have thought of and brought whatever you may need, because there is nothing there once you go in but Nature. You get your canoe (one per two people), put your stuff in it, pick an island, and head out. When you get to the island, you take everything out of the canoe, put on your (heavy) backpack, pick the canoe up over your head, and portage up, down, and across the island. When you get to the other side of the island...rinse and repeat. You do this until you feel like it's time to pick an island to make camp for the night.
It is beautiful! Amazing! Peaceful! We see the Aurora borealis several nights, so close that it feels like we could touch it! It is even, some might say, genuinely life changing: it is immediately after this trip that I stop eating red meat (and this lasts a whole two years!); and, it is not much later that I become a Christian for real. Of course, all of this may have something to do with the fact that the four of us almost don't make it out of these beautiful, majestic Boundary Waters, but who can say for sure?
Remember how we had planned our ten-day trip around catching fish? In ten days, we catch...wait for it...three fish. Three. For ten days. For four young guys, who are canoeing and portaging all day, every day. Now, while they are the best tasting fish I have ever eaten in my entire life, before or since(!), they are, as you can imagine, not quite enough. By day three, we've caught one fish, so we are rather hungry. We start asking ourselves, what do we do? Do we turn around and go back? Remember, there is NOTHING out here (well, except for bears apparently); and at this point, it will already take us three more days just to get back.
Ha, nonsense! We decide instead to start rationing the snacks -- one slice of cheese, one slice of salami, and one granola bar apiece for lunch -- and keep going. There have to be more fish in all this beautiful, clean water! We just haven't found them yet. Besides, it's fun! At one point, Jim is walking just a bit behind me and I hear...something. I go back, and as I round the bend, I see Jim's canoe on the ground, with Jim inside it...upside-down, with his legs flailing in the air, laughing and calling for help. I should rush to his aid, but I just can't...because I too am on the ground, laughing way too hard to be at all useful. After finally getting myself together and everything (and everyone) right-side-up again, we continue.
A couple days later -- so day five or so -- we discover that we're almost out of granola bars. Somehow, we've gone through them a lot faster than we calculated we would. For a moment, we all get upset because someone must be eating more than his share! The next moment, however, we all realize (at about the same time I think) that none of us would do that. Then Mark, examining the box, realizes that the "serving size" is one bar, but they come two per package. So, as we've been eating a package apiece, we have gone through our granola bar supply twice as fast.
And we stink. Only Matt is brave enough to go into that freezing water to try to clean up a little. The rest of us just accept our natural stench and move on. We're way too hungry to care about such piddly things, anyway. Speaking of which, remember the 80 pounds of potatoes? Yeah, so, we've now been rowing and portaging with all our equipment, plus 80 pounds of potatoes, for five or six days. Why haven't we eaten them by now, you ask? Why, because we are SAVING THEM FOR WHEN WE CATCH FISH!!
By day seven, we are now on our way back, and we are famished. We are a little dazed, and everything is funny. We have eaten pretty much all the potatoes, partly because it was just time, but largely because the night before was our second and last time catching fish -- two split between the four of us. Someone -- Mark I think -- had brought some sort of astronaut rice with him. Unfortunately, even with all the seasonings and butter we brought, it is still so nasty that only one of us eats it. The good news, though, is that our rowing/portaging load is now a lot lighter, made so even more by the fact that we've all lost a good amount of weight.
Finally, we make it back. As we check out, we ask if there are any restaurants nearby. The lady helping us tells us -- I'm pretty sure with a slight smirk -- that there's a Pizza Hut down the road a bit. I think at least two of us are about to break into tears of joy right there. All four of us do start laughing, probably more than a little from delirium. At Pizza Hut, the waitress tells us we are far from the first to come in in our current state. We order:
Heh, it occurred to me as I created that link above how helpful it would have been to be able to "Google" this place ahead of time back then. Ah well.
NOTE: Everything that follows is true, or at the very least, how I genuinely remember it.
____________________________________________________________________
So the morning comes, and we set out on our 6- or 7-hour drive. We have tents, sleeping bags, food, canteens, clothing, camp tools (e.g., fold-able poop hole shovel), and backpacks. The plan is to catch fish for our dinners, so the food we bring is either intended as a "side dish" or snacky stuff for during the day. We bring things like granola bars, cheese, salami...and potatoes. 80 pounds of potatoes. Because they are gonna be really good with all the seasonings and butter we also brought, served alongside all our yummy fish. But we'll get to that later.
We are set! We are excited! We are ready to go! As we get close, we come around a curve and have to brake quickly to avoid hitting a bear that's standing in the road. This is gonna be awesome!
We get there, and the way it works is, you park your car, check in, and begin your adventure. This is not a campground or anything like that; this is genuine, old-fashioned roughing it. You need to have thought of and brought whatever you may need, because there is nothing there once you go in but Nature. You get your canoe (one per two people), put your stuff in it, pick an island, and head out. When you get to the island, you take everything out of the canoe, put on your (heavy) backpack, pick the canoe up over your head, and portage up, down, and across the island. When you get to the other side of the island...rinse and repeat. You do this until you feel like it's time to pick an island to make camp for the night.
It is beautiful! Amazing! Peaceful! We see the Aurora borealis several nights, so close that it feels like we could touch it! It is even, some might say, genuinely life changing: it is immediately after this trip that I stop eating red meat (and this lasts a whole two years!); and, it is not much later that I become a Christian for real. Of course, all of this may have something to do with the fact that the four of us almost don't make it out of these beautiful, majestic Boundary Waters, but who can say for sure?
Remember how we had planned our ten-day trip around catching fish? In ten days, we catch...wait for it...three fish. Three. For ten days. For four young guys, who are canoeing and portaging all day, every day. Now, while they are the best tasting fish I have ever eaten in my entire life, before or since(!), they are, as you can imagine, not quite enough. By day three, we've caught one fish, so we are rather hungry. We start asking ourselves, what do we do? Do we turn around and go back? Remember, there is NOTHING out here (well, except for bears apparently); and at this point, it will already take us three more days just to get back.
Ha, nonsense! We decide instead to start rationing the snacks -- one slice of cheese, one slice of salami, and one granola bar apiece for lunch -- and keep going. There have to be more fish in all this beautiful, clean water! We just haven't found them yet. Besides, it's fun! At one point, Jim is walking just a bit behind me and I hear...something. I go back, and as I round the bend, I see Jim's canoe on the ground, with Jim inside it...upside-down, with his legs flailing in the air, laughing and calling for help. I should rush to his aid, but I just can't...because I too am on the ground, laughing way too hard to be at all useful. After finally getting myself together and everything (and everyone) right-side-up again, we continue.
A couple days later -- so day five or so -- we discover that we're almost out of granola bars. Somehow, we've gone through them a lot faster than we calculated we would. For a moment, we all get upset because someone must be eating more than his share! The next moment, however, we all realize (at about the same time I think) that none of us would do that. Then Mark, examining the box, realizes that the "serving size" is one bar, but they come two per package. So, as we've been eating a package apiece, we have gone through our granola bar supply twice as fast.
And we stink. Only Matt is brave enough to go into that freezing water to try to clean up a little. The rest of us just accept our natural stench and move on. We're way too hungry to care about such piddly things, anyway. Speaking of which, remember the 80 pounds of potatoes? Yeah, so, we've now been rowing and portaging with all our equipment, plus 80 pounds of potatoes, for five or six days. Why haven't we eaten them by now, you ask? Why, because we are SAVING THEM FOR WHEN WE CATCH FISH!!
By day seven, we are now on our way back, and we are famished. We are a little dazed, and everything is funny. We have eaten pretty much all the potatoes, partly because it was just time, but largely because the night before was our second and last time catching fish -- two split between the four of us. Someone -- Mark I think -- had brought some sort of astronaut rice with him. Unfortunately, even with all the seasonings and butter we brought, it is still so nasty that only one of us eats it. The good news, though, is that our rowing/portaging load is now a lot lighter, made so even more by the fact that we've all lost a good amount of weight.
Finally, we make it back. As we check out, we ask if there are any restaurants nearby. The lady helping us tells us -- I'm pretty sure with a slight smirk -- that there's a Pizza Hut down the road a bit. I think at least two of us are about to break into tears of joy right there. All four of us do start laughing, probably more than a little from delirium. At Pizza Hut, the waitress tells us we are far from the first to come in in our current state. We order:
- one large pizza, each;
- one salad bar, each;
- one pitcher of beer, each; and,
- one pitcher of soda (to share).
____________________________________________________________________
Short of something like dementia, I will never forget this experience as long as I live. I loved it, every moment of it, even when I thought my best friends and I might just starve to death on some random little island in the middle of a bunch of lakes between two countries. I loved it so much, in fact, that I tried to get Mark, Jim, and Matt to do a "reunion" trip a couple years ago.
Short of something like dementia, I will never forget this experience as long as I live. I loved it, every moment of it, even when I thought my best friends and I might just starve to death on some random little island in the middle of a bunch of lakes between two countries. I loved it so much, in fact, that I tried to get Mark, Jim, and Matt to do a "reunion" trip a couple years ago.
They said no.
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