Minnesota – Tom's On The Move

October 25, 2015

Enter The Boundary Waters

_MG_7126 — A moose cow and her calf wading near the entrance to Cherokee Lake

Here’s an interesting exercise:

Open another window in your browser and go to Google Maps or some other mapping software of your choice. Zoom in on northeastern Minnesota, where you will see the many, many lakes within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Note that these lakes continue north to Canada. Lakes next to lakes next to lakes.

They go north through the Quetico Provincial Park, all the way to Hudson Bay.Follow the map around, and you will see that most of the northern reaches of this continent consists of lake country — a zone that begins in Labrador, continues west to the Rocky Mountains. The lakes pick up again along Alaska’s north coast.

When my dad and I loaded gear into a canoe on Sawbill Lake at the edge of the Boundary Waters, we were preparing for a brief foray into a vast expanse of water.

The four to five days that we’d allotted ourselves in the Boundary Waters weren’t really enough for us to reach Hudson Bay. Because we were visiting in October, however, our trip was an opportunity for us to experience a measure of solitude.

“You’re out of rhythm. Try to match my paddling,” my dad told me.

“Well then you’re going to have to slow down. I can’t J-stroke that fast. Or pry stroke. Whichever stroke I’m doing right now.”

We are a kayaking family, dammit. I’ll leave it to more experienced hands like Boundary Waters bard, Sigurd Olson to explicate on the finer points of canoeing technique.

This was my first multi-day canoe trip with my father, though in high school, I’d accompanied him on kayak trips on Lake Champlain and the Erie Canal. Though kayaking is clearly what we do best, we found our rhythm in the canoe eventually, the boat cutting north along Sawbill Lake toward our first portage.

For those of you who haven’t been to the Boundary Waters, aren’t among the bazillions of Minnesotans who drive north each summer with Winona Canoes strapped to the roof, you can understand exploring the area if you imagine tracing a connect the dots, but with lakes. You paddle to a portage trail, and then move yourself, your boat and your stuff along the trail to the next lake. Resume paddling to the next portage.

There are a lot of lakes and a lot of trails, but we’d heard that Cherokee Lake was a beautiful destination, and not too far off from the launch site.

To get there we had to paddle a few lakes and make some portages — the later being anywhere from 100 yards to just over a half mile. That might not sound like much, but when the portage requires unloading and reloading a canoe, hoisting said canoe over your head to walk with it, and making two trips to gather up all your stuff, the portages add up. This included going over some fairly rocky terrain, and sometimes sinking into thigh-deep ooze when we got out of the canoe. At least the portages were marked on the map, usually we had no idea about a beaver dam until we saw it right in front of us. Then the game was getting out of the canoe in the muck, working the canoe over the obstruction, and then walking into the muck on the other side of the dam in order to get back into the boat.

_MG_7115 — My dad helping me get the canoe past a beaver dam

The first night, we ate couscous and tempeh along with some kale from my garden. We spent about half an hour wrangling together a bear hang between two jack pines. After it became pitch dark, my dad and I sat by the lake’s edge, talking about what it meant to be getting further from the car, further into the wilderness where there was no telephone service, no medical help close by.

What about getting lost? Getting lost seemed very possible.

There were no marker flags or other handy icons that we could use to identify where to find a portage among the uniformity of trees lining the lakes. It paid to keep a sharp eye on the map as I paddled the canoe, looking out for landmarks like coves and islands that I could use to identify our position.

_MG_7178 — A place for beautiful disorientation. View of Cherokee Lake.

When a lake had several islands, figuring out which one was which inevitably became guess-work.

“I think that’s the island I’m looking at …” I would say.

Sometimes the best thing was just to know that you were heading in the right direction and hope that you recognized the roadsigns in the terrain when they emerged.

What I did appreciate was how this navigation forced the two of us to be attentive to the landscape. We would notice something like a whale-shaped rock, and our noting it would not be a passing curiosity, it would be a vital guide post for us to recognize on the return journey as we sought to hold the right course.

What would be superfluous detail a mile from the car, gained key importance as we moved further out.

It was a relief to put the canoe down after a half-mile portage to Cherokee Creek. It was the morning of our second day. My dad and I took a moment to relish the warming sun as we ate Clif bars and downed peanuts.

I welcomed the creek because the forest would frame us on both sides. One of the best things about being on water is that it gives you a different perspective on the land. We paddled down a golden corridor, with the coniferous tamarack trees turning color before they shed their needles. The creek reflected the tamaracks and the blue sky.

It was a time to paddle as quietly as possible and to simply absorb the quiet beauty of everything around.

The creek opened out to Cherokee Lake.

“Whoa!” my dad exclaimed.

Two moose, a mom and her calf waded through the water.

These were the first of these big creatures I’d seen in Minnesota. Tragically, moose used to be common in the north woods, but are becoming difficult to find. A lot of research has gone into the decline. Guests on my kayak tours will often talk about how they had seen a bear or seen a wolf, but how they would really like to see a moose sometime.

I, like many, believe our warming planet is playing a role in the decline, though the research is complicated, and involves studying how the moose have handled brainworm, ticks, predators and temperatures in high summer.

These moose looked a little scraggly to me, with patchy fur. It had been at least two years since I’d seen a moose. Who knows how long it will be until I see my next?

We floated for a while watching them.

Notes:

Some cursory information on the moose decline:
* http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/moose/index.html

My Dad has already written two blogs about this trip, so I’m the slacker here. Some great reading for you if you get the chance.

http://www.theday.com/the-great-outdoors-blog/20151015/—-serenity-solitude-and-soggy-socks-in-the-boundary-waters-canoe-area-wilderness

http://www.theday.com/the-great-outdoors-blog/20151022/part-ii-serenity-solitude-and-soggy-socks-in-the-boundary-waters-canoe-area-wilderness

October 16, 2015

A Day in the Waves: Part 2

_MG_7068

The second half of my big wave kayak adventure on Lake Superior:

The rising seas sent waves crashing into sea caves, mortar rounds of spray flying out from the cliffs.

A large stone archway guarded the entrance to a recess in the cliffs. I watched the waves slam against the sides, thought about what it would be like to rag-doll against the walls. I wouldn’t try to go through this one.

The Manitou River fell from the cliffs in a frothing yellow fury. The upper falls slammed into the side of the canyon, whereupon the onslaught redirected into a second, even more spectacular drop. There was a zone of smooth water in front of the falls, where the river flow was strong enough to beat back the lake, Further, the water boiled. Lake swells rose higher yet as they crashed and exploded into the face of the current. Birch leaves whirled in the agitation, flashing in and out of the darkness like strange fish.

It was an extremely tempting, if terrifying, place to try and surf a kayak.

The way to do it, was to aim for an eddy behind a sunken gravel bar. It was a spot that was slightly smaller than a modest kitchen, where the water was almost completely calm, a demilitarized zone between the warring lake and river.

I struggled to set up a good approach, wrestling with the river continually trying to push me back and the waves breaking at my stern. I half-surfed a couple waves, stopping to avoid getting thrown sideways or pushed down into the river. After a long struggle, I caught a wave that pushed me over the gravel bar and into the calm place.

It was one of the strangest places I have ever sat in a kayak.

Looking straight up, I could see 100-foot walls, curved amphitheater-like above my head. The falls couldn’t have been more than two kayak-lengths aways. And then there were the rollers coming in, crashing through the arch to the left.

I finally had the luxury of giving the view my complete attention, with no worries about the next breaking wave.

After I punched the kayak back through the breakers, Dave and I continued along the cliffs.

Mercifully, the profile of the North Shore has many projecting points, which create shelter zones where there will be calm water.

Fenstad’s Resort had one such protective point. We took a tranquil beach landing.

We were making great time down the shore with the waves pushing us, and even with the gathering seas, neither of us wanted to hurry.

“The point of a journey is not to arrive,” Dave said.

I nodded. The bigger waves? Let them come! Hopefully, they wouldn’t.

A guy with a mirrorless camera walked up to us to chat. There was some couple he’d heard about, who got swept out into the lake by an offshore wind and couldn’t get back. They died of hypothermia. We told him, we were experienced kayakers, guides actually, and that we’d paddled in these kind of conditions before. That seemed good enough for him, and we ended up talking about wildlife sightings in the area.

It turns out that there was a bear cub in a tree nearby, no mom. She had probably been shot by hunters. leaving the little guy to fend for itself this winter. The cub was probably a yearling, the guy thought, not a good prospect for survival.

The bear had been stuffing itself with apples from the resort’s trees, but the guy left it a fish he had caught so the growing youngster could experience some other sections on the food pyramid.

When the three of us went to see the bear, we found it looking down at us from a tall spruce. After more people went to look at him, he climbed higher and to the other side of the trunk. Then and again, he would peep out to look at us.

There were bright red apples hanging off of one tree, greens on another. They were delicious.

Trout swirled about in two streams nearby. The water levels had come down, leaving them trapped in pools.

Dave thought he might snatch one and leave it for the bear cub.. The guide and I watched skeptically as he waded in, but when he started throwing stones in strategic places, he managed to herd them into one place. Dave might have tried to swipe one out of the water, then thought better of it.

The waves kept building, but weren’t quite at the point where we wouldn’t fool around.

We deliberately took on a couple surf spots above the ledges, usually, opting to get near the downwind side of the ledge to make it easier to steer out of there if we encountered something too big to handle.

At one point, I’d thought I’d missed a wave, only to have the lake drop out from under me. Suddenly, I was surfing sideways, paddle jammed in the water. The stabilizing maneuver, known as the high brace, reminds me of 19th century whaling. I jab the paddle blade at the oncoming beast, lean the boat in and stick it. A Melville quote would have been appropriate here.

“From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!”

This particular breaker took me on a 30-foot sleigh ride before I swung out of the break zone.

At another point, we were kayaking near shore, when a huge wave suddenly reared up next to me.

“I’d hate to be you right now,” Dave called.

But the wave ended up grabbing him too.

We stuck our paddles and rode, until the wave threw us up on a cobble beach. Dave might have been pissed because his fiberglass kayak had just taken a beating, but he laughed.

“That. Was. Awesome!”

The waves kept building.

After another hour on the water, we didn’t fool around much.

Every now and then, a 10-footer would rear up by our kayaks. I would try to angle my boat halfway into them, leaving room to brace and avoid getting flipped over backwards. Most terrifying of all were those monster waves, that broke at the top (but didn’t roll completely over, thank God.) These waves made their own break zones. I found that these half-breakers were technically easier to ride out than the breakers on shore or those that went over a shallow ledge. They just happened to be scarier than hell. If these massive waves started rolling over all the way, I couldn’t imagine how I could stay upright paddling through them.

The northeasterly swells kept me looking over my left shoulder constantly, with little time to appreciate some of the rock formations on shore.

This was a shame because we were going past Tettegouche State Park, home to a massive sea cave near Shovel Point.

I glanced at the formation with some regret. There was no way we would kayak into the cave now with this crazy surf.

Instead, we focused on getting around the cliffs at Shovel Point. Spectators at the rail got to see us taking on the swells and reflector waves.

The waves beyond the point were smaller, if still powerful, giving Dave and I some long-distance surfs.

Then we decided to take a shortcut through a small boulder garden. This turned out to be a mistake for me, when a wave crashed early and threw my boat against a rock. I steered away from the obstacle, only to get thrown up against yet another. I was almost out of danger when a third wave, hit me and flipped the front of my boat on top of a boulder.

Shit.

I tried to flip, back over, but the boulder got in the way of my paddle. Next, I tried pushing off the boulder itself, but I had to take my hand out from the pogies to do this. Just as I was ready to right the kayak, a mother of a wave came and blasted me, ejecting me out of the boat through the spray skirt.

Getting the boat emptied out on the rocks took at least 10 minutes. Submersion in the cold water brought up an urgent need to pee, which I did as discretely as possible (not very discretely) in front of the bystanders watching from the cliffs.

Dave came around and helped me get the last of the water out of the filled-up boat and get me back in. We were determined to get off the lake via the Baptism River, which meant that we would have to surf waves in against the current. The river shot out in an offset angle from between a cobble bar and a rock cliff.

The big-ass waves were crashing everywhere now. I let Dave go into the river first, slowly side-surfing one wave at a time in order to hit the sweet spot. When he got into the slack water, I brought my boat to bear.

The stern lifted on the crest of a huge breaker. As I plunged the paddle in, the wave shot the boat to a wild left and bounced its nose off the cliff. I back paddled on the right.

Here came the second breaker.

Again, I stabbed the paddle into my assailant. This time, the shaft snapped.

Of course, the wave pushed me back into the cliff, and I had to shove off with my left arm.

I held both ends of the busted paddle and paddled them like mad for the river mouth. Fighting the current this way gave me just enough momentum to stay ahead of the break zone, but it was like running top speed up a tilted treadmill. I wasn’t going any further forward and eventually, I knew the current would feed the boat back to the carnage.

Dave had already beached his kayak and jumped in the belly-deep current. He grabbed the loop on the nose of my kayak and got me the rest of the way home. Saved my ass.

We threw our kayaks up on the beach, where there was a corridor of rock piles and some inexplicably well-dressed people milling about. Some of them started asking to Dave about our journey. I stumbled into the shelter of some ledges where I could be out of the wind.

It was around this time that I realized that I was dumb to keep flailing at the water with two ends of the broken paddle. If I had just taken one end and paddled with it canoe-style I probably would have gotten enough momentum to go up current and get onto the beach on my own.

Some of the well dressed contingent came over to spread the cheer.

“We saw you almost die,”

“We didn’t almost die,” Dave said.

“Well, can you please move your boats, we’re going to have a ceremony here.”

A wedding!

And if we had come in ten minutes later, well, both of us would have absolutely surfed right into the marriage ceremony. What? You didn’t get the RSVP? Sorry guys, but these boats are coming in.

I can understand why many of those on shore, might have seen this all go down and thought, ‘Wow. What a couple of idiots to be out in that.’ Maybe some readers feel that way.

I do take issue with people who make rote judgements of how dangerous/safe, something I am doing is is based on a cursory, emotional assessment.

I’ve had people approach me after I get off the water with this automatically superior attitude. They don’t necessarily say, “You’re dumb.” Usually, they relate some passive-aggressive story about somebody who died. Not that it matters that the other guy had no life jacket, no wetsuit and several drinks in the tank. Never mind that I practice kayak rescues, practice rolling, practice bracing and practice in big waves. I constantly ask myself if I am allowing my enthusiasm to cloud judgement.

I’ve also been that guy on the beach. I’ve told a group in a canoe that the waves were going to be much bigger when they got around the point and tried to discourage them from going out on the 40-degree waters in jeans and cotton shirts.

Still, these others, just by knowing that someone has died on the lake, have gained this incredible perspective that I must lack. Thank you, Concerned Bystander, for your considered opinion.

While I don’t always make great decisions, I do resent others lumping me with the yahoos who have no idea what they are doing.

Dave and I used some judgement when we looked back out at the lake and saw mostly big breakers going out to Palisade Head. We had four miles of lake to cover to get back to my car. Could we make it? I thought we could do it if we had to.

But maybe we shouldn’t. Constant bracing had taken a toll on Dave’s back. I was feeling tightness as well. The lake showed every indication that the waves would continue to build.

Dave took out a cell phone and called a friend to pick us up. We hauled the boats up the long steps away from the lake.

The waves stayed rolling in my head for two nights in a row. I felt that I was moving with the swells, bracing into waves, surfing them. Some kind of unconscious learning was happening. Surely, the neurons were making new connections, preparing me for the next trip on the big water.

Here was the trip I will remember years from now: two kayaks, beneath the cliffs, through the waves, staying up.

October 16, 2015March 7, 2016

A Day In The Waves: Part 1

_MG_7068 — Lake Superior’s waves crash against the rocks in a red sunrise at Black Beach, near Silver Bay, Minnesota

Here was the red sky that we’d been warned about: a hot band of mango orange coalescing above the dark waves.

It was just past 6 a.m. and Dave and I were at Black Beach loading kayaks onto his truck for the 23 mile drive up the Superior shore to Taconite Harbor. That would the launch spot. Black Beach was, hopefully, the end of our expedition. I walked down to where the waves rattled the cobbles. Amber beads of spray caught the wind, shone briefly in the evil light.

I ran back to the truck.

“Sorry, I just had to grab some pictures.”

“It’s a beautiful sunrise,” Dave said, “You got everything?”

I went back to my car and double checked. Most of the stuff I would take on the drive to Connecticut was already loaded in there. My kayak guiding season was over, and it was it was time to pay a visit back east.

“I think I’m ready,” I said.

I got in the passenger seat and we rolled out on the gravel.

When I called Dave the night before, I got his voicemail.

“Either I’m kayaking or I’m kayaking,” the message declared. That sounded about right.

Dave, who cuts a wiry figure with a stern face offset by a silver goatee, has been in his paddling drysuit most times I’ve seen him. He goes out on the lake almost every month of the year, stopping only for when the ice gets makes paddling physically impossible.

He’ll be out there with a Greenland paddle in his hands, the traditional paddle of an arctic seal hunter. Such is his enthusiasm for the Greenland paddle that he has a “Rolling With Sticks” sticker on the side of his truck. which shows a stick figure executing an Eskimo roll with a Greenland paddle.

Dave told me he knows how to do 30 different rolls in his kayak, though I’ve never had the chance to watch this.

In fact, we hadn’t done a trip together yet. With me kayak guiding for a resort, and him at the nearby outfitters, most of our water time has been with customers.

Needless to say, neither of us get to take customers out for 20-plus miles in Small Craft Advisory conditions.

This was the kind of trip we hungered for as we wrapped up guided tours for the year. This was the Guide Tour.

We wanted to need our best technical skills, lake smarts and physical strength. We wanted to end the day beaten up — not from hauling boats or loading trailers — but from testing the actual, whoop-ass fury of the world’s largest lake.

Along the way, we were going to paddle a new section of lake for both of us, stretching past Sugarloaf Cove and out to the falls on the Manitou River. The Manitou is the only major North Shore waterfall that drops straight into the lake. No convenient overlook and interpretive center parking lot here. Tall cliffs and private property keep this gem out of sight from the road. You have to paddle there.

Later, we planned to go past the sea caves at Tettegouche State Park, and then around the 200-foot cliffs of Palisade Head, which has its own tunnels.

I wondered how well I would handle playing in the big waves all day, also how I would stack up to Dave’s expertise. I hoped to show the kayak vet that I knew a few things too.

Orange light marched down the nearby trees and cliffs as the sun peaked above Gull Island at Taconite Harbor. Gull Island and its companion, Bear Island are linked by a long line of quarried stone, which creates a bulwark against the Superior’s waves. Further protection comes from a smaller ring of stones that creates an inner harbor around the small boat launch.

We put the boats down on the concrete and did a last gear check.

Crap! Where were my paddling gloves? Dave lent me some neoprene pogies — a type of glove that attaches to the paddle and you put your hands into.

_MG_7073 — Dave in his drysuit, prepping for launch.

There were no ships in the harbor (there rarely are these days, now that most of the Taconite ore used to make iron goes out of Silver Bay.) Once upon a time, I stopped a tour near Gull Island to avoid crossing paths with the James R. Barker. The Barker had just dropped off a coal shipment at the nearby power station.

The boat is over 800 feet long, and at least as tall as an eight-story building. It lurched, Leviathan-like out in front of our tiny kayak pod, trailing a brown line of haze from its enormous stacks.

Once upon another time, someone asked me just how much coal was onboard a moored barge. I paused in an attempt to calculate the size of the black mountains that pop up near the plant after every new delivery.

“That would be approximately one shit-ton,” I said.

Today’s wind gusts had whipped the outer harbor up with sharp little whitecaps.

The big swells came in from the northeast, cutting past Gull Island at an angle, and crashing into cliffs. Seen at a distance, these waves were slow, blue forms, squiggles on the pink horizon. Each paddle stroke brought us closer to them. Soon we began to feel the lake’s power.

Dave’s kayak appeared and disappeared beneath him between water ridges. As the waves built later in the day, Dave himself would flash in and out from sight as the walls of water crossed my vision.

We grinned wildly at each other. This was the ride we’d waited for all season.

Waves shattered up against 100-foot rock cliffs, broadcasting plumes of spray that dazzled in the orange light. The rhythm of the waves against the boats was offset by the counter-rhythm from the reflector waves bouncing back at us from the walls. Sometimes, one of the reflector waves would smack right up against one of the oncoming rollers and they would pop —their splashes flying into the air.

This dynamic environment required constant vigilance to keep the boat upright and going where it should. Body and mind had to mold to the movement of the water with fast micro-adjustments in the hips and with the paddle. I enjoy the trance-like concentration this demands. I would still feel myself bucking and rolling when I got off the water, would be going up and down the waves when I went to sleep that night.

A golden eagle (or was it an immature bald?) looked down at us from over the cliffs. We would see several eagles along the trip, more than I had seen throughout the summer.

A 20-foot rock nob jutted out from the shoreline in front of our kayaks. It was the point at Sugarloaf Cove, a beautiful piece of parkland where I had led hikes earlier in the year. I was finally able to get a look at a sea cave that I’d often wondered about, though I could never see it clearly from the land. I maneuvered through the reflector waves to beneath the lip of rock where I could see an alcove, maybe 10-feet deep beneath the overlook. I wonder how many hikers stand up there, with no idea of the enormous opening beneath their feet.

Near the alcove, there was a cool rock feature on the cliffs that sent up tall whirlwinds of mist as the waves crashed past. The water made a “shush!” like a mighty exhale.

A nearby mini cave in the rock would take a wave and fire off spray with the thud of a cannon, sending spray out 20 feet into the lake. It looked like a dragon fire.

In fact there was a kind of explosion happening. As an oncoming wave slammed into the air inside the rock hollow, it compressed it, causing the air to blow out at high pressure, blasting shreds of wave with it.

Another natural phenomenon to look for was the surf spot. The Lake Superior North Shore is chock full of underwater ledges that create shallows. A big wave rises up and curl over, as it marches past. These make for fun/dangerous spots for kayakers depending on the size of the waves and the kayaker’s experience.

I look for these surf spots for fun on most days, seeking to ride a good-sized wave in my kayak. Now, these waves were massive, and curling in much deeper water. It didn’t seem like I was looking for surf spots. They were looking for me.

Whale-sized waves crashed on the ledges around Sugarloaf Cove. Dave and I gave them wide berth. The water on the other side of the point was less intense but there were smaller, breaking waves, that carried us long-distance over the shallows near shore.

This was the first place on the trip where I got rocked.

In the semi-shelter of the point, Dave and I had let our guard down enough to swap stories of our adventures kayaking the Temperance River, including Dave’s trip down an upper section I hadn’t tried yet.

“Is that really crazy?” I asked.

“No it’s not too bad, but you definitely need to stay on your toes.”

“Hey, speaking of which…”

The wave was stacked up about six feet high, approaching from our left and getting ready to break. As it curled over, we jammed our paddles into its side so that we could lean into it and brace against.

We were immediately sideways surfing a frothy stampede of water. Though my kayak wobbled in the melee, it stayed upright. And I got a massive charge.

Unfortunately, the wave had also pushed us closer to the rocks, and in a bad place for the next wave. Dave, who was slightly further out, managed to paddle out through it while it crashed over. Not an option for me. I tried to set a decent brace, but before I got there, the wave knocked my boat over like a bath toy. Submerged in the cold water, my immediate thought was, ‘Don’t let Dave see you screw up this roll.”

I fought my blade to the surface and swept it over the water. I got high enough out of the waves to take a breath, but the roll was sloppy and I went back under.

On my second attempt, I took my time getting things right under water (even as I started to feel pressure building in my head) and swept the blade again, flicking my hips and rolling my body to the surface.

I pointed the nose of my boat into the waves and paddled hard, slicing through the next wave of breakers.

Dave congratulated me. Sure, flipping the boat over was a bit of a noob move, but the roll redeemed it. If only everything in life were that simple.

Our course took us past the canyon of the Caribou River and to a sheltered cobble beach where we took a break to eat and go agate hunting. A rough day on Lake Superior is always good for searching out these little geological wonders because it brings a fresh crop onto shore. You know the other rock hounds haven’t been over it. I’m not much of an agate picker. My best find, was a pea-sized pebble, which did have some cool alternating red and white mineral stripes. Dave, who sells agates for a side income, snapped up several, beauties the size of golf-balls.

We were making great progress down the lake, and neither of us wanted to rush the day. Nonetheless, even in the half hour that we spent out of our boats, the number of whitecaps on the lake were building.

Dave turned on his weather radio, which announced that there were 4 to 6-foot waves (Wait, I thought they were supposed to be 3 to 5-footers!) which would build to 5 to 7 footers by evening. Of course, all bets were off when it came to underwater ledges and random mutant waves that rose much higher than their brethren. The Weather Service had issued a Small Craft Advisory for the North Shore, which we already knew about.

“The Small Craft Advisory advises me to go kayaking,” Dave said.

Not far off the beach, we could see an indentation in the cliffs up ahead. This, we guessed, was where the Manitou River dropped into Lake Superior. Soon we could see brown river water that swirled with yellow leaves and flowed out into the blue swells. Could we get up to the falls without getting thrashed?

September 17, 2015

The Lazy Gardener and His Yield

_MG_6942 — Fresh cherry tomatoes ripen on the vine within in my small garden

I’m not a huge fan of the caterpillar holes in my kale, the little green turds that the caterpillars leave, or the sight of their fat, green bodies crawling around the leaves as they chew out sections.

I pluck the leaves anyway, washing them thoroughly before I chop them into my stir-fry.

I’m such a half-assed gardener.

I take my bike out in the morning, peddling over to the greenhouse that my neighbor built, fill watering cans in the rain-barrels and wave them recklessly over the tumbled greenery. If I should cross an unlucky caterpillar, I’ll crush it between my fingers. I acknowledge the invasive Canada thistle and the inroads that it has made among the useful plants. I should take care of that before it gets out of hand.

Two-thirds of the greenhouse is actually weeds. My neighbor, who set up most of the infrastructure I’m using, is taking a year off from organic farming so that he can catch up with other business commitments. I have commitments too: to work, to the ultra marathon training earlier this summer, as well as my recreation and leisure time. The latter can be demanding.

Hence, I’d thought it wise not to try and take the entire greenhouse under my management. The weeds get their portion and I work to make a decent garden out of mine.

Maintaining a small empire allows me to improve on domestic policy rather than wage costly (in effort) foreign wars on the weeds outside my borders. I provide my subjects with water, pruning and some weeding and insect pulling. I tax them by harvesting their leaves and fruit.

I walk among the ranks of kale when I get back from work in the early evening.

If my garden were Dubai, the kale would be the oil coming out of the ground. It keeps on giving. I’d emptied out the entire packet of kale seeds at the start of the season when I figured that this would be the best way to make sure that something grew. Also, I don’t mind eating kale all the time. In fact, I eat it almost every night.

Behind the kale in productivity, I have my cherry tomatoes, which add color and panache to my cooking. The fruit grows in orange clusters — and I’m not just using the technical sense of the word when I call it fruit. It is deliciously sweet, the way an orange or apricot is sweet, but in its own tomato-y way. I’ll eat them off the vine, or put them in a stir-fry, leaving them whole in the frying pan to trap the flavor beneath the skin.

The peppers are small and few, an occasional treat. Small cantaloupes and muskmelons fatten on the vine.There were about a dozen ears of sweet corn also. Not the best yield by Monsanto’s standards, indeed not a great yield for the standards a dedicated gardener, but for I’ll take what I have.

It can be hard to find the chance to tend garden when you live life on the move. Because I rent in this state, haven’t been here long, and plan to move again soon, it is hard to motivate myself to build soil beds, erect fences, or undertake any such long-range improvements that can only benefit me for one season.

If I stayed in one place, I could allow improvement to build upon improvement. The work put into bettering the soil one year can improve yields for years to come.

On the flip side, it is harder to build on success when you are starting over each season. There are the many hours of repeat work that goes into new fencing, new pots, new work clearing a plot of land for planting. The gardener who stays rooted in one place has more time to learn the challenges and character of the land.

The rooted gardner is also in a better position to comment about the changing environment. Such people have an investment to protect. They develop what naturalist Aldo Leopold describes as a “Land Ethic,” wherein farmers, hunters and gatherers learn to protect the land not only because they profit from it, but of the love they develop for it over time. That relationship drives them to stay and fight where others would look for new soil to dig up.

It is easy for rooted folks to distrust the drifter, someone who could chop down the family orchard for a quick buck, and move on to the next venture.

Now, more than ever, our money and our sense of gratification, move at light speed. A package from Amazon arrives far quicker than the time it takes a flower to become a fruit. We can reward ourselves with a thousand clicks online with less effort than it takes to cook dinner.

I realize, though I loathe admitting it, that this impatience is very much a part of me. Many times, when I was digging the ground or putting seeds in, I wondered if I would get distracted by something and let the garden fall by the wayside.

It was the sight of those first green shoots pushing up through the dirt that built my commitment. If I neglected the garden then, I would be failing the life that I had propagated. I needed to keep it around long enough so I could eat it.

One blessing I found in the garden, was that the plants I’d put in the ground had their own interest in being alive. As the plants began asserting themselves, I had less work to do. Perhaps, I had put the kale seedlings a little closer together than ideal for growth, but this helped crowd out the weeds.

And eventually, even my half-assed gardening yielded food, mostly the kale, which has come in fast enough so that I can eat it every night. And why not? It tastes great in stir-fry, it’s healthy, and a few bug holes don’t ruin it.

Fresh veggies are expensive here in Northeast Minnesota. Taking this one expensive item off my grocery list has saved me hundreds of dollars without compromising healthy eating. The cherry tomatoes, which develop quicker than full-sized ones, are a nice investment too. If one cherry tomato goes bad, it’s far less of a loss, than if it had been a beefsteak.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t think about how much more the garden could have given if I’d put more time into it. The other day, I helped tend a garden at a nearby home where potatoes, beets and onions grew in abundance. Such root vegetables, seemed like a pretty good investment for a small amount of time.

I can look at that well-manicured garden and think, “good job,” reflecting that hard work was rewarded in kind by nice yields. Those fruits are worth more than mine, because they were tended with an abundance of love, focus and dedication.

My garden could be a parable of human failure, how our throwaway society has instilled in us the fallacy of expecting much reward for little work. But I am in no mood to expound upon the garden I don’t have. The treasures from the real garden, however modest, motivate me better. It is a lazy yield, but it is my own. Therefore, I will take that bite of caterpillar-damaged kale, stir-fried with cherry tomato, and I’ll think, “Not bad.”

June 19, 2015

From my Doorstep to Onion River Whitewater

My path was a narrow, windy one, closed in by thick stands of spruce and balsam fir.

On my right, 35 pounds of whitewater kayak hung off my shoulder blade, padded by a life jacket but an uncomfortable and awkward burden nonetheless.

To my right, the canyon dropped away, hiding the Onion River, which roared in the depths unseen. It was what I had come for. At least that’s what I told myself.

It would be good to know what I wanted, because, man, I had been carrying the kayak for a while now. Before that, I’d paddled it about five miles down Lake Superior, making slow progress in the short-hulled craft. It had been built for maneuvering in tight places, holding an edge going into rapids. Long distances over open water? Not so much.

The idea for this adventure had been kicking around in my head long before I set out of course. The summer before, I’d glanced at the 12-foot drop into the plunge pool, and thought it looked scary, but doable. Since that time. I’d climbed up the Onion River Falls, gone skinny dipping there, ice climbed the falls in winter (http://tomsonthemove.com/two-ice-axes-one-bike-no-car-good-times/), and even cross-country skied down the canyon, taking skis off for the sketchier drops.

But I hadn’t kayaked anything yet. Thus, I had obvious motivation to take on the next adventure. Better yet, I wanted to make it a doorstep adventure, meaning that I would eschew motorized transport between home and the adventure destination.

Why throw in the extra miles of kayaking, very slow kayak miles at that, when I could just drive to the parking lot at the base of the river and haul my kayak up?

It would have been too simple that way. I also don’t accept driving and flying as a matter of course when it comes to an adventurous lifestyle. Burning fossil fuel can be a necessary evil sometimes, or maybe just an evil which I can rationalize away in the face of an epic opportunity for adventure. However, when there comes an opportunity to go on an adventure without putting more pollution into our atmosphere, or enriching abusive oil corporations, I’m all for it.

We can lower our demands if we are not in such a hurry to get places. The road can be as exciting as the destination if we keep our eyes open for wonder just as there are all kinds of things that we miss driving by at high speed.

The sea caves on Lake Superior for instance.

After I biked down to the launch beach, I only needed to paddle a couple miles to come across some of these phenomenal openings in the basalt cliffs along the shore. These are probably only a quarter mile from Highway 61 as the crow flies, but they were a world away from all that when I bobbed the nose of the kayak beneath the overhanging ledges, listened to the slap of water echoing off the walls.

Some of the things I enjoy about these caves include that I can paddle backwards into one of them and let the walls create a frame for the Superior landscape. Miles of forests and cliffs stretch out along the shore until they recede at the horizon. The horizon often changes with distant fog banks and false islands. Much closer, I can admire the shimmery amygdaloids within the stones. These jewel-like nuggets are scattered throughout the igneous stone along Superior, a legacy of the ancient lava flow.

The caves hold wonders to match some of the most storied wonders of the North Shore, though I doubt even one-percent of the people who go on their long journeys to and from these places have any idea of how close they are to such an amazing destination.

It’s harder to write a rave review about the squadrons of pissed-off gulls living near the caves.

They dropped out of the air when I got near and went directly at my head. I flailed my paddle at them to fend them off. The gulls have chicks now, that look like dirty wads of cheeping drier lint. The parents are protective ones, and my kayak passing by provoked a keen sense of of stranger danger.

I had also been a target of aerial bombardment a week earlier when one attacker dropped a nasty payload that splattered against my sprayskirt. I should write a product endorsement: “It kept seagull crap off my legs!”

The worst part was I would have to go through the gauntlet again on the return trip. At that time, the wind picked up further out in the lake, presenting me with a dilemma, not unlike that of Scylla and Charybdis out of Homer’s Odyssey. I could avoid the wind and waves by staying closer to the rock walls but it would mean that I would once again become a ripe target for the squawking, aggressive birds.

I ran my boat aground near the mouth of the Onion River — about a mile from the caves. I took the time to eat some lunch and left some of the gear I wouldn’t need behind to pick up later.

I traded my floppy sea kayaking hat for an orange whitewater helmet, hauled the boat up to Highway 61 and looked both ways before I crossed. There was a lot of traffic, trailers and what have you bombing down the road in search of whatever kicks they had waiting for them. My destination was only about a mile walk, though it would be start as a steep climb.

The trail went passed the lower falls. People have run these fearsome drops in kayaks, one of which a writer on American Whitewater has identified as “Tears for Fears,” but that is above my skill caliber and risk tolerance right now.

Whether the upper canyon was within these categories remained to be seen.

I put my kayak down several times during the walk, trying to peer down into the canyon and get a sense of what I was up against. Mostly I looked for fallen trees. The narrowness of the canyon and the thick vegetation made it difficult to see anything, and sometimes scouting meant walking out on crumbly slopes above the abyss, reaching for support on dead trees with shallow roots.

The part of the canyon that really worried me were the narrows, where the canyon simultaneously squeezed and dropped, where the water roared through like exhaust through a rocket nozzle, dropping anywhere from 10 to 15 feet on a more that 45 degree angle. The water would slam into a wall. It seemed likely that I would too if I tried to go down the same way.

These sections came after the aforementioned 12-foot waterfall. That distance was intimidating to me, but I also remembered an experience from my time in Galway, Ireland six years ago when the kayak club guys pushed me over a bridge that was at least that high. Aside from a loose spray skirt and a boat full of water, the landing had gone just fine.

This particular drop was in an isolated pool, so if I ended up flipping out of my boat, I would be able to get to shore well before any downstream rapids.

The put in was worrisome, because I had to safely lower myself and my boat down a steep crumbling bank. I lowered myself on wet rock and loose dirt, then reached up as high as I could to grab the front of the boat. I could barely grasp it without toppling over backward into the river. I inched it forward gradually, taking care not to give it too much momentum and take both of us for a wild ride.

When I finally got the boat lowered, I placed it in a small eddy out of the main current. This was where I got in. I started in on attaching my spray skirt to the cockpit, though this was slow work considering that every couple of seconds I had to bat the water with my paddle in order to stay out of the current.

I had already rehearsed the moves, now it was time to see the execution. I paddled out against the flow, letting it whip my boat around as I braced with the paddle. There was the problem of the tree across the river, but I ducked under pretty much where I had planned to.

Whoops! Hitting that submerged rock hadn’t been part of the plan. I recovered and sank a couple solid strokes into the river before it dropped from under me.

The instant of pleasant weightlessness gave way to the gentle deceleration of the boat sinking into aerated water. The foam came up chest high and then I was out. A war whoop escaped my lips.

The next sections of river were far less dramatic. The low water meant that I was scraping rocks. At times, I used my hands as much as I used the paddle in order to crawl my way along the river bottom, refusing to admit that it just might have been easier to get out of the boat in places.

The rapids in the narrows could have been hellishly, difficult in high water, but in these conditions, they were more like sledding down steep, wet rocks. The water would pile up on one side of my boat and create a cushion between the wall and me, helping me steer away from the wall before I hit it. Still, I ended up pushing off one wall with my hand.

The excitement of the day was definitely the fast kayaking moves needed to get through the drops.

I loved that feeling when the current brought me toward the wall and I felt my body move with its own will to make the right moves (oh so much can depend on those right moves) and I thought, “I’ve got this.”

May 24, 2015May 24, 2015

Hitting the Meat

DSCN0101 copy — That’s me going over the last rapid in the Cascade River before it empties into Lake Superior. Photo courtesy of Chuck and Sheila Noel.

I’m still afraid of going under.

That’s what I realized as I sat at the edge of a gravel bar in my new whitewater kayak, studying the rapid in front of me.

It was pretty straightforward. Shove off, hit the waves beneath the bridge, aim right, paddle like a lunatic as the nose of the kayak drops out, hit the standing wave and hope that it doesn’t tilt the boat over, leaving me thrashing in the icy water of Lake Superior.

This was the end of the line for the Cascade River just west of Grand Marais Minnesota. Immediately downstream of me was the bridge where Highway 61 passes over. It created a beautiful archway, a frame for Superior’s cold horizon, just a hundred yards away. Upstream were the real falls: 20+ foot drops that real life lunatics actually run. So what I was doing was kids’ stuff basically.

There were no rocks to dodge at the last minute, no undercut canyon walls or gnarly branches to get hung up on. The boiling piles of water might have flipped a boat, but weren’t going to recirculate me and drag me under.

Still, my mind was haunted by a primal sense of unease, as I waited on shore, an unwillingness to accept that I wasn’t exactly sure what would happen, and I would have to let myself find out.

It was just like how Tom Petty sings it, in his lame-ass song: waiting is the hardest part.

So I shoved off and embraced the irrevocability of the current.

“Remember, that you are actually doing this,” I told myself.

The boat passed beneath the shadow of the bridge, waves slapped over the cockpit. I steered right to avoid the strongest part of the hydraulic at the bottom of the rapid, what we called “the meat” during my summer of rafting two years ago.

Then the yak tilted downward, and I paddled for what I was worth.

Chunk!

The wave came up against my boat. The nose plowed through. But then the rapid pulled a dirty wrestling move, twisting the boat and jerking me sideways in the current. I slapped the water with a low brace and came back up.

Gentle waves from the lake lapped up against my bow as I bobbed along the current. The river created a brownish path through the Superior’s blue waters. This was the tannic acid dissolved from fallen pine needles and leaves. This also created the tiny dancing bubbles, which make me thirsty for a pint of nitro stout.

I spun my boat around to look at the churning brown maw of the rapid.

“Chicken,” it said. “You didn’t hit the meat.”

“I’ll show you.” I told the river. “I’m going down again, but it’ll be when I’m good and ready.”

The second run, I also avoided the meat. I hung entirely to the right this time and hit the wave at the bottom straight on. This time the rapid didn’t even come close to flipping me.

There was no excuse to not hit the meat now. I was prepared to flip and had brought a paddle float along to rescue myself if necessary.

The kayak, went over the edge again. I aimed at a glistening wave in the middle of the river, bumped over it and went down, following the triangular tongue of dark racing water to the center of the meat. The white boiling water raged up and now it was ride or die baby.

Wham!

This time the water slammed up to my chest. As I pulled out of the wave, the kayak did a wheelie. For a second I was worried that it was going to dump me backward, but again, the river god had mercy.

A couple of RV’ers on the river bank had seen it all go down, asked me if I wanted to do another run and get my picture taken. Well, playing to my vanity seldom fails.

The run went much the same as the previous one, only I tilted a bit at the end and had to brace myself against a flip. Having photo evidence from the couple was another nice plus and I was glad they were gracious enough to stick around. Of course, I seem to remember the rapid looking bigger and more terrifying than that. Funny thing, memory.

Having hit the meat, I knew that I could sleep easier that night. But, I still had another thing to take care of: I hadn’t flipped yet.

I needed some more practice with my Eskimo Roll. I grimaced and turned turtle in the 38 degree water. I leaned back, snapped my hips and thrust my paddle down. I was about 80 percent of the way there, when I felt that fiend gravity pulling my back. It was then that I felt my paddle blade connect with the stony lake bottom. The tiny shove was enough to send me the rest of the way upright.

I sat there with a colossal brain freeze thinking about how the roll didn’t count, how I cheated and needed to do another one with better form. Then I needed to paddle straight back to the meat and fight it and flip, fight it and flip and fight it until I became a real whitewater kayaker.

I considered this, and then thought, maybe next time.

I was done for the day.

*******

You want to see what some real courage in a kayak looks like?

I was moved to hear about the recent Paddle in Seattle against the Shell Oil rig which is in port now. The rig is Alaska-bound with the blessing of the Obama presidency, which just made the shameful decision to approve Shell’s oil exploration in the Chukchi Sea — part of the Arctic Ocean.

Many others have pointed out the irony that there is a rush to drill oil in the Arctic Ocean as the ice caps have receded due to the global warming, which is a direct consequence of — hold it — oil drilling. But you knew that already. And you probably already know that oil has a nasty habit of spilling, like that time in the Gulf of Mexico, also in California most recently. Oil has spilled a lot these last couple years in the midst of the oil boom, and I’m sure no one will be surprised if it spills a bunch more times, destroying a few rivers, ecosystems and peoples’ livelihoods along the way.

So I’m just here to say that I, like you, think that this arctic oil drilling decision sucks. The stupidity of the decision, like so much policy these days is rooted in incredible short-term selfishness that fills me with despair.

And now, to everyone who had the courage to get into the boats, I want to say “thank you,” because you help me turn back some of that despair and because I think it is a responsibility of folks who love the outdoors (including me) to stand up for these important places and ultimately the planet that we live and breathe.

You took up that responsibility by getting out on the water and surrounding the rig, letting the world know that it wasn’t welcome in your harbor. Some would argue that this was just a gesture. And yet, even if that rig ends up despoiling habitat and contributing to climate change, it would have been far worse for it to gone off unchallenged with approval by default from citizens like you and me.

I wasn’t there with you, but I feel like you were there for me, and for that, I owe you one.

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/environment/paddle-in-seattle-protesters-gather-against-shell-oil-rig/

May 13, 2015

The Trail is My Dance Partner

Where’s the motivation?

I woke up with the sound of howling wind bending the tree branches, the patter of rainfall on the roof of my Minnesota apartment. Temps were supposed to be in the high thirties that day. I was also planning to hit the trails for a weekly long run, putting in the miles that I’d need to compete in a 50-mile trail run on July 25.

If I was going to race this thing, I was going to have to train ruthlessly, to laugh at rainy days, hail, heat and other obstacles that stood in my way. I ate my large oatmeal breakfast and procrastinated the next couple hours inside reading Robert Frost poems.

Finally, at 11:30 am, I knew I could wait no longer, lurched outside with my guts sloshing from the big meal and started jogging up the pavement towards the woods. Nothing cramped or puked, so that was a good start.

I wore my Boston Marathon tech shirt, running shorts, a thin balaclava and my iridescent orange shell. I placed a small tube of Vaseline in the right pocket, along with some athletic tape (to prevent chafing and to splint any catastrophic ankle sprains respectively.) For the left pocket, I put a small baggie full of Trisquits. There was a compass strung around my neck too. It was probably unnecessary, but what the hell?

Soon I was cooking underneath all of my gear as I ran uphill.The rain had turned even the tiny streams into torrents, surging brown and furious as they flushed sediment down the slopes. One of these would almost be good for a kayak run, I thought, thinking of my new eight-foot whitewater boat that I was itching to use.

I traded the pavement for a logging road leading up into the woods, felt the ground squelch beneath my feet. The shoes would get soaked real thorough-like on this trip.

I kept running uphill for about a half a mile until I reached the Superior Hiking Trail (Also called the SHT or SHiT.) I turned north,towards nearby Leveaux Mountain and Oberg Mountain. I planned to run up the two of them and loop back home. This particular section of woods had a lot of maple trees growing and that meant that it was prime territory for wild leaks. I saw huge clumps of them, glowing radioactive green amidst the dull colors of the leaf litter.

I also saw puddles. Sections of the trail were completely submerged. It was possible to scamper delicately from root to rock to board and cross these areas with dry feet. This took too much time and there were too many puddles so I adopted a “fuck it” attitude for them.

The water splashing up my legs was cold, but not frigid and a nice antidote to the sweaty heat I was building up inside my shell.

I scrambled beneath the cedars at the base of Leveaux Mountain where the roots made for fancy footwork, jumped a fallen tree and bombed down a steep hillside to the Onion River, which was wild with rapids. Newly submerged boulders seethed with foam.

I ran up the other side and through another mile of puddles until I got to the parking lot at the base of Oberg. There was the loop I was planning to run; there was the sign pointing to the Lutsen Mountains ski resort in 6.8 miles on the SHT. I had to climb over Moose Mountain on the way. How ambitious was I feeling?

I pulled the Triscuits out of my left pocket and munched them while I pondered this. The run left a few permutations, including just going as far as Moose Mountain in less than three miles and turning back, or running down the ski slopes and down to the bike trail that could take me back to my apartment in eight miles.

I decided I’d figure these things out as I went.

Going past Oberg took me beneath two-hundred foot basalt cliffs on a windy downslope.

Trail running sometimes feels less like running and more like skipping and dancing. It really does.

I find myself putting my feet down to a weird rhythm and flinging my body around in a way that — well it isn’t dancing — but it feels like I’ve tapped into the harmony of the trail. You can call that a bunch of sentimental bullshit, but I mean it. The trail is my dance partner.

I know I look far from graceful out there, I flail my arms and I fall down plenty, but I love trail running for its weird contortions. There’s the stutter step before hopping a log, there’s twisting a foot at a weird angle to land perfectly between two roots while angling my body to divert my momentum away from the tree trunk. How satisfying it is to use mind and body together in order to navigate a sudden dip in the trail. The same principles apply to mountain biking, sking — well pretty much all the sports, but with running it’s just you and the shoes doing the work.

The trails are a nice change from road running where consistency of form is crucial to success. Out on the the trails, I feel at liberty to be delightfully irregular. I will jut an arm out to balance myself on a steep curve or drop into a crouch after a steep jump. I will swing my head out of the path of a tree branch before it slaps me in the face. I even switch to power hiking on the steepest hills, where I find that I can keep the same speed at a walk as I can hold running and with less effort.

Trails are obviously much slower for me than the roads, but I also feel like I can stick it out for longer on trails where there is plenty of variation in form an intensity. Those windy trails only let me go so fast in places and sometimes I’m happy for the enforced break.

The summit of Moose Mountain was draped in freezing fog, buffeted by wind. I found shelter in a ski patrol cabin where I ate more of my Trisquits and left some crumbs for psychological sustenance down the trail. When I stepped outside,I discovered an untied shoelace and barely had the strength in my freezing hands to re-knot it. The trail wound beneath basalt overhangs, then it crossed some of the black diamond ski runs. The machine-made snow hadn’t melted yet, was still packed firm against the slope. I was loathe to take that ride to the bare rock and brush waiting at the bottom. I broke a tree branch and used it as an ice axe (well, more of a dagger) and kick steps into the snow. I was able to cross two slopes like this no problem, but met my match on a patch of wet brush. The reeds all pointed downhill and down I went.

I descended the rest of the way down the mountain with greater caution. In the disorienting fog without a map, I used my compass to point myself north in the direction of the ski lodge.

Up from the valley below came the roar of the Poplar River. And lo! What a beautiful stretch of whitewater. The rapids looked like a healthy Class III with no obvious hazards (at least until the deadly canyon narrows that waited further downstream.) I feasted my eyes and even took some time out to do a bit of scouting.

Verily, there was a bounty of exciting opportunities for my new kayak and I, but that is a story for another day.

The trail switched back over various bridges, so I could drool into the whitewater, then I veered off to climb a miserable scrub hill in the direction of the road I wanted. In a short while, this road goes back to the SHT right where it crosses the river again at the place I like to call You Will Die Falls. There are a series of cascades here, boiling with angry water. Maybe a real pro could take this on, but on a high water day like this the name definitely fit.

I went back to grooving and jiving my way up Moose Mountain when the hunger hit. I drank my remaining Trisquit fragments and licked the precious salt off my fingers. I drank out of a creek halfway between Moose and Oberg, putting my head down in the silty flow. I wouldn’t have done this a year ago, but I’ve heard from many authorities that the risks of contaminated water in the wilderness have been greatly exaggerated.

Soon after, I found a half-trampled wild leak lying in the trail where a forager must have dropped it. I ate the bulb. ‘Wonder how long I could live on these things if I stayed out here,’ I found myself thinking.

The bonk was definitely coming on now. I knew the slightly out of body, fairly stupid feeling that comes at the end of a long workout where I haven’t refueled enough. Basically, the exercise had stolen the glucose that my brain would have been using otherwise, and now my brain was taking a vacation in La La Land.

“La la la,” I sang to myself.

I pictured someone paddling on the easy stretch of river leading up to You Will Die Falls.

“La la laaaAaaughh!”

The brain was draining, but I was familiar with the feeling, and this made it easier to deal with. I tried not to think hard about anything and pooled all my mental resources onto the Tripping and Falling Avoidance line item.

There were still miles of muck to spat through before I finished. It would be at least a 20-mile day and would take up about four and a half hours. Though I was tired, I knew from experience that I had enough to make it through.

I crashed through puddle after puddle and the cold water splashed up to my knees. I was long past giving a damn.

March 1, 2015September 22, 2015

Walking on Ice

_MG_5128 — Waves carved this small cave into the ice alongside Lake Superior.

It’s important to stand in the right place, get the angle right.

Come over here and look this way, out over the miles of ice that stretch clear to the horizon. If you’re patient, you might see one of the snow devils, 15-feet high whirlwinds, silent and barely discernable against the clouds. It’s the closest thing to life that you’ll see out there — at least through squinting, sun-tormented eyes.

In the foreground, see how the wind has smashed the ice into itself, forming curious piles that flash iridescent blue from within. It’s beautiful, but reminds us of the treacherous nature of our location. Even now, we hear the occasional grinding of ice against ice and the loud “chunk” sound beneath our feet. Perhaps we shouldn’t stand here.

This ice has only been around for a few days. Before that, it was open water. Before it was open water, it was a field of ice much like the one we are standing on. The winds came out from the north and blew that ice over the horizon in one night. The open water looked deep blue and innocent, as if it had always been that way.

Turning back toward the mainland, a very different world comes into view. Now we see the rental units at the resort, where guests can take the in the drama of the Lake Superior ice from a cozy armchair, maybe a Jacuzzi.

_MG_5154 — LeAnn explores another ice cave

OK, so were not in Greenland. We won’t be sleeping in an igloo tonight. I’m thinking about renting a movie before we go back to my apartment with its hot running water and heated floor. I’m grateful for the conveniences at my back, but also glad that I can make them disappear if I look in the right direction.

The biggest ice walls are at least 12 feet high. They were born several weeks back when six-foot waves crashed up against a thin ice layer along the shore. The bay looked like a churning field of broken glass. When all those shattered pieces smashed up against the beach, the waves bulldozed them into massive piles. The freezing spray welded it all together and added more height to the already impressive heaps.

If we climb over those heaps to the other side, we can really make the shoreline disappear. Plus, there might be some cool caves and alcoves worth exploring. We should take these ice axes, firstly because ice axes are badass, but also because we can use them to tap the ice in front of us and see if anything is suspect. If one of us did fall through, an axe could be a useful self-rescue tool. Hopefully, this will not be necessary. I hope I’m not being an idiot.

I do want us to use the axes, but mainly to see if we can climb up a formation I call “The Blowhole.” When the waves were crashing in a couple weeks ago, spray had erupted through this opening in the ice like a miniature Old Faithful geyser. Now that the waves are gone, I’d like a shot at going up myself.

_MG_5150 — The frozen Lake Superior as seen from another ice cave. A few days later, all of the flat ice would be open water again.

Before we get to the climb, however, there’s plenty of other cool stuff to check out, including all these caves. Right next to the dock I’d kayaked under in the summer (it’s completely caked in ice now) there is a small cavern barely tall enough to crawl through and even then I don’t go far because I don’t want to bring all the icicles on top of my head. What is really striking is the sapphire glow from within the ice. It reminds me of photographs of containment pools for depleted nuclear rods.

You whoop at the wild isolation of our locale. I’m glad you’re so adventurous and that you take so much joy in this simple outing. You climb up into alcoves for me to take pictures, taste the murderous-looking icicles above our heads.

Climbing up the blowhole won’t be so difficult, I realize, when I see it from the bottom. It starts as a gentle slope, and the fact that I will be ascending in a cylinder offers numerous holds for both axe tips and the crampon points. Nonetheless, I strap my crampons on and take both ice axes. It only takes me a few seconds to wriggle up and flop out onto the bright ice.

I come back around so that you can try it yourself. You elect to skip the crampons, and clamber up, no problem. Fine. I’ll skip the axes and climb out of there with crampons alone. I manage, though it takes some awkward footwork.

We spend another twenty minutes exploring the network of caves and alcoves. I try another climb above an overhang. It gets tough when I have no ice to sink my crampons into, and eventually I reach out and grab a knob of ice to pull myself up the last stretch. Eventually, we leave to drive to another point along the shore, which supposedly has some other impressive formations.

Indeed, when we arrive, there are several piles that look like shattered plate glass. Most are about six-inches thick and anywhere from a foot to seven feet long. It is possible to pick one up and look right through it like a window — or marvel at the tiny trails of bubbles in suspended animation.

You talk about building a fantastic see-through igloo. I’d be tempted to try if my feet weren’t so cold. There’s so much more to explore and do, but right now I’m getting cold as all hell.

We walk out to the far point, which is a defiant stone bulwark jutting out against the lake. The waves have absolutely pummeled this rock. It is about 25-teet tall and utterly draped with ice. 19^th century traders traveling along the shore called this the “Sugarloaf” because the rock resembled one of the old sacks of sugar that they would have shipped up the coast. The white ice glaze certainly goes well with this name. Of course we have to climb it.

I’m too cold to put crampons on, so we go around to the easier sloping side. My jaw and other muscles are clenched tight against the cold. You seem to be doing just fine. It figures. You were raised near this latitude.

The wind howls from the other side of the stone. I make the first ascent, semi-clumsy with cold and eager to get back to the car before that tingling in my feet becomes frostbite. The wind smacks me head-on at the top, rips away at what little warmth I have left.

I beat a fast retreat, allowing myself to butt-slide on some of the gentler sections of ice. I hop from foot to foot as you make your own climb.

Perspective is everything again. From down here, the barren stone outcrop looks like it could be some oxygen-starved peak above the Tibetan highlands. It is easy to imagine the month-long trek, the thousands of feet of elevation gain, lost toes and fluid in the lungs — all for the chance to stand on some godforsaken rock. I say that as someone who loves to climb thousands of feet to stand on godforsaken rocks. It was one of the things that I worried about when I moved to Minnesota, with its shrimpy mountains. But latitude has a way of making up for altitude. Here, we can have our rock within a 25-foot climb. The miles of tortured ice are a bonus. Also, I have someone to enjoy it with.

You reach the summit; raise the axes in a war whoop. It might as well be the top of the world.

December 13, 2014December 17, 2014

Two Ice Axes, One Bike, No Car, Good Times

_MG_4697 — The view, halfway up the Onion River falls

It’s only a couple miles from my apartment to the Onion River, so I prefer not to drive there if I can help it.

I prefer not to drive if there is an inch of snow on the bike path, and I’m going to be pedaling through that snow carrying crampons and ice axes in my backpack. It’s all for the greater glory of the adventure, the doorstep adventure.

Doorstep adventure? That’s the term I’ve started using to describe any adventure that starts under my own power from the minute I leave the door. If I run from my apartment to the top of nearby Carlton Peak, that’s a doorstep adventure, but if I were to drive a couple miles up the road to the trailhead, than it’s not. The part where I was in my car wasn’t part of the adventure. That was driving.

Lately, I’ve been trying to make as many of my adventures into doorstep adventures as I can, whether it means running somewhere from my door, biking from my door or — eventually — skiing from my door.

It would be really cool if this blog were some influential publication that everybody read, because I think it would be neat to make the doorstep adventure into the hot new trend. It has that extra challenge of requiring people to cover more territory under their own power. Plus, it forces people to put more value on what is near to them, rather than coveting some far away place that they will need to burn many gallons of fuel to get to.

_MG_4762 — Little holes in this rock along the Onion River were caused by hot gasses in the lava before it cooled

By cutting cars, planes, aircraft carriers, whatever out of the adventure equation, the doorstep adventure keeps pollution out of the atmosphere. This, many would argue, should be kind of a goal for those who take the time to appreciate the natural beauty that pollution threatens.

For this particular adventure, I sought to fill a couple of hours traveling to the river, climbing up its frozen waterfalls, taking in some scenery and biking back from whence I came. Hardly a major expedition, it was far less of a commitment than some of the doorstep adventures of my past such as when I biked from the doorstep of the raft company where I’d worked in Utah and went out to Washington and Oregon; or more recently, when I left town with my girlfriend in October to spend five days on the Superior Hiking Trail. Kids’ stuff compared to the badassery of Göran Kropp who biked from home in Sweden to Mt. Everest, climbed it, and pedaled back.

Perhaps the greatest peril that I would face would be the ice patches along the bike path. Often people’s footprints or a tire tread coming out of a driveway would leave icy zones where I didn’t dare turn the handle bars or hit the brakes. Arguably, the breakdown lane on nearby Highway 61 would have been a safer travel option, but I was in no mood for huffing exhaust from semis or from all the non-doorstep adventurers traveling up the North Shore.

Progress was slow, but I made it to the trailhead without wiping out.

_MG_4708 — Reverse icicles as seen underneath a ledge along the falls

The Onion River carves a canyon a couple hundred feet deep through layers of dark gray basalt and pinkish rhyolite. Both types of stone are remnants of the billion-year-old lava flow that formed the basin where Lake Superior sits today.

The main trail went up and to the east ridge of this cut in the rock; my path was along the riverbed below.

Here I could look up at the gnarled cedars whose roots extracted their meager sustenance through cracks in the canyon walls, cedars that had grasped the walls in unreasonable over-leaning perches for centuries.

In places, the rock looked almost spongy, beset with tiny bubbles that had once been hot gasses fizzing out of the lava. When quartz or calcite sediment infiltrated these chambers, they left little stones within the stone: amygdaloids they call them. There were places where I could see constellations of these tiny gems embedded within the duller rock above my head.

The river itself was a scarce trickle beneath slabs of ice. There was the occasional place where the ice cracked and exposed a small piece of the rushing water beneath. Here, I would find animal tracks.

As I got further from the highway, I began to hear the murmurings of the hidden river. In places it thrummed like a drum, elsewhere, a quiet gurgle.

_MG_4741 — Icicles beneath a small overhanging ledge

I threw my pack off at the base of the frozen falls and dug out my gear. I made sure to sit on the pack, not the snow while attaching crampons to my feet.

It wasn’t a particularly steep climb, but going up the slick ice would have been next to impossible without the crampons and ice axes. I was wary of a couple places where I could see the water flowing beneath the curtain of ice. It would certainly suck to break through and get sprayed with cold water, or lose my grip and fall over backwards. Fortunately, there were other places where the ice was solid and the climbing was easy.

At the top of the first cascade was a plunge pool where the ice was a cracked, mushy yellow. Steep cliffs climbed up on both sides. I knew from swimming there in the summer that the water beneath that ice was well over my head, and was in no mood to go through with a backpack on my shoulders and a camera around my neck.

Either I would have to take my crampons off and Gollum-crawl along the steep ledge to get to the next falls, or I could trust the ice on the far left side, which was tilted slightly and looked sturdiest. I chose the later option, banging away at the ice in front of me with an axe before I trusted it with my weight.

The second set of falls was steeper and higher than the first. From the left side of the plunge pool, I had a somewhat awkward ascent between the weak ice where the water was flowing and an overhanging ledge — not a lot of elbowroom.

Stalagmites of clear ice lay beneath the ledge, including some that were wicked sharp at the point. Like some inlayed dagger, they shone with beauty and malice both.

I swung the axes into some solid holds and kicked my way up to the top of the ice, turned around to see the blue of Lake Superior shimmering above the birches.

_MG_4746 — Cedar trees along the canyon edge

That might have been a satisfying enough conclusion to the doorstep adventure. A spur-trail went back up to the main path and to where I’d left my bike. But I was curious about exploring further up the canyon.

While I had hiked along the top of the upper section here, I hadn’t gotten down to where the river moved between the narrow walls. Now the frozen water offered an easy way in.

Some things are worth waiting for. The canyon here had all the feeling of a sanctuary, the air still and soundless between the walls. The droning highway noise in the background as I climbed the icefalls was gone. One could well pretend that humanity itself had vanished in such a place. The only voice was the occasional gurgle that issued from some kettle beneath the ice.

A three-foot mound of frozen foam stood at the base of one falls. I nudged it with my axe and the blade moved through it as if through icy feathers.

Here and there, I saw overhangs, places where the canyon could offer shelter in poor weather (though the broken rocks at the bottom of these overhangs would make me think twice.)

_MG_4744 — Cedar needles dropped on the rock make for excellent moss-growing conditions

In another spot, a shallow cave lay a few feet above the riverbed. No doubt an earlier course of the river had carved that cave, its momentum coming down from the hills had brought it crashing down against the bedrock. I crunched up a small tongue of ice to crawl inside. I turned around to survey the scene from the cave mouth: tall, proud bulwarks of stone, the majesty of cedar and white pine growing out from the cliffs.

It was probably only a mile to the highway as the crow flies. Thousands of noisy, polluting cars went by here each day transferring people to the places they had to go, the places they thought they wanted to go.

Here in the canyon, I’d left the only set of human tracks.

_MG_4755 — A monument of frozen foam stands in the center of a plunge pool

June 22, 2014

A Marathon in Fog

Other people who have run Grandma’s Marathon told me that the worst part about the race is that you can basically see where the race ends from 10 miles out.

The finish line is right next to Duluth, Minnesota’s classic lift bridge, a hulking steel behemoth that is easy to spot approaching town from the northeast on Lake Superior. Many runners see the bridge and it’s like the horse smelling the barn, so I’m told. They pick up the pace; it’s way too soon; and they pay for it over the last miles.

Other runners see the enormous bridge as a tiny blip in the distance and realize that they still have a loooong waaaaaay to go. This brutal fact seeps like poison into their brains, as sure as lactic acid will seep into their struggling muscles.

There would be a reprieve today however. The lakeshore was swallowed up in a soggy blanket of 45-degree fog. I wouldn’t see the bridge until I was downtown, chugging through the last example.

The lift bridge may sound like a silly thing to worry about, but the runners’ stories made sense to me. I know that the mind can go on weird loops when it’s under severe stress in a repetitive activity like marathon running. For me, this often takes the form of a question: “what if I dropped out now?” which I ask myself every quarter-mile or so. Doubt amplifies this.

What doubts would I have?

For starters, I knew there would be virtually no chance that I would set a personal record on the course. I simply hadn’t done the 80+-mile weeks and the speed work that had set me up for my 2:38:19 finish in Boston back in April. My longest run had been 18 miles, and I had felt pretty dead-legged at the end. I had deliberately avoided the marathon book and logging my miles because I figured that if I compared my last effort with this one, I would have lost all motivation. I hoped that I would finish in the 2:40s, that I wouldn’t bonk mid-race, or realize that I should have ditched running for the last couple of months and done something better with my time.

I think back to the oft-quoted line from 5K wunderkind/tragic figure Steve Prefontaine: “To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift” — no doubt, inspiring words to the five-year old sewing them onto a T-shirt in a Bangladeshi sweatshop. Cynicism aside, I’m sure Pre was sincere about what he said. The sonofabitch showed it when he hit the track.

Pre’s immortal quote didn’t sit well with my actual Grandma’s Marathon training plan, which was to do what I wanted after Boston and then work out semi-diligently in the weeks leading up to the race without trampling over other life-commitments.

For starters, I had my adventures in Utah to take care of. After that, I drove north to Minnesota where I started work as a kayak guide on Lake Superior’s north shore. The job certainly doesn’t make it impossible to run, but sometimes, after a day of hauling boats and giving instructions, it can be nice to save some time for cooking a good dinner or catching up with reading – not lacing up for another 12-mile run with a 6-mile pick-up.

When I did run, I felt a stiffness and sluggishness no doubt left over from Boston training. The soles of my feet ached when I went downhill. Some days still felt strong, but there were fewer of these days than there had been earlier in the year when I was hungry for a Boston PR.

If I wasn’t going to put the same time and effort in that I had reserved for earlier races, maybe I would have been better served spending more time kayaking, hiking or writing. And yet, I still believe that running doesn’t have to be the center of one’s life in order for it to have value. I was interested to see how I incorporated a less demanding running regimen into my daily schedule.

I found myself taking time to enjoy some trails and to stop once or twice to admire views of waterfalls around Lake Superior, or the lake itself. I wondered if I should let Boston be my fastest marathon and move on to other life goals.

The start line was the usual horde of people in bright synthetic clothes, cloaked in garbage bags for warmth. The chill gray sky and drifting fog reminded me of so many autumn cross-country meets, so did the mud. Enormous speakers blatted out “Eye of The Tiger” and the “Rocky” theme, while runners spread plastic bags out on the sodden grass so there would be somewhere dry to sit.

At least half of the racers were lined up at the portable toilets at a given time. I went through one line, but relegated myself to the woods for subsequent trips. Yeah, it wasn’t what the race planners wanted. Maybe they should have rented some more fuckin’ toilets.

The race started with an airhorn. I took a shuffling start amidst the other runners. Since the race start was self-seeding, people were supposed to follow the honor system and line themselves up at the start according to what they thought they would run. Me, I put myself just in front of the 2:50 mark. Not everyone had been so honest, I thought as I weaved through the shufflers.

My first mile was 6:40. Conservative. I was pretty sure I could hold a faster pace on the way to the finish and started turning my feet over faster.

Over the next miles, I started drifting up through the ranks. I felt the first edge of fatigue come on around eight miles in. No doubt, that would hurt plenty by the time I got to 20 miles.

At least I didn’t have any hills to worry about. Grandma’s is mostly flat, with the only the gentlest of undulations as the course follows the shoreline. Race veterans (the same ones who warned about the lift-bridge) told me to look out for Lemon Drop Hill at around Mile 20. I drove over it the day before, and barely noticed the rise.

A slight tailwind nudged me along the course.

I waited for the death twinge in my muscles or a massive bonk to come down on my shoulders and crash my good times, but felt pretty with it. A few groups of runners passed me, but by the time I was 15 miles in, I was gaining more places than I was losing. I chugged a couple cups of Powerade so I’d be able to dodge the wall.

By 19 miles, I had to make a stop to void my holdings at a porta john.

I dropped a couple dozen places while I was busy, but got most of them back in the next miles.

Somewhere along the sidelines I heard a burst of radio and heard the words “course record,” but couldn’t put them into context.

I took on the much-feared Lemon Drop Hill without much pain and agony. The course wound into downtown Duluth, packed with screaming spectators.

I got a lot of “You can do it man!” and “Stick with it!” cheers, a sure sign that I looked like hell.

Well that was fine. I had more in the tank. I turned my legs over faster, letting myself scowl and grunt. At a certain point, I was sure my stride would buckle if I picked it up any more. That was probably the point where some real marathon training would have made the difference.

A sudden stitch poked into my side. I scowled as I fought to draw wind through the abdominal pain.

The course veered off Main Street around Mile 25 right next to a heavy metal band rocking into a brutal “Eye of The Tiger” riff. I gave them the metal sign and the beastliest scowl I could muster.

The last mile took me up an overpass, along the Lake Superior piers and down a final stretch past a phalanx of spectators. I threw down the best sprint I had left and finished in 2:45:10 for 130^th place out of 6211 racers.

It was my sixth marathon, and third best time.

The winner? Dominic Ondoro of Kenya.

He not only won the race, but also set a new course record, beating out Dick Beardsly’s 1981 record by 31 seconds with a 2:09:06 finish.

I got in front of the top master’s female finisher, Valentyna Poltavska, 42, from NYC, on the final stretch. Right behind her, the top grandmaster, 64-year-old Tim Freeman of Port Angeles Washington brought it in for a time of 2:45:57. I only managed to catch up to him in the last mile. 18-year-old Jacob Young took the top of the minors’ division in 2:46:05.

I’d name the people who finished in front of me but memory escapes me now.

I got the ribbon around my neck, the space blanket and anesthetizing pint of beer.

Yeah, no P.R. but I still look back on the last miles with a kind of relish. I don’t often push myself that hard.

I’m not going to do another marathon any time soon. I’m going to spend some time messing around with other stuff. But I know damn well that after a couple of months of not training for anything, I’m going to get the itch again, and find myself right back on the start line somewhere.