Wood Lake Boats - getting ready for open water

It’s the beginning of April 2014 and Northwind Lodge cabins and boats are covered in a deep blanket of snow.  It’s a beautiful day outside and the migratory birds who normally make their way up to the north woods from wherever they spent the winter, are filling the trees and cheeping and pecking;  then moving away to greener pastures in this sea of white. 

Spring is in the air, somewhere.  South of here, some 265 miles is the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Pictures of that region show that the snow has all but left and the mushy beginning of spring has actually set in for real.  Those of us in the north know every year that life here is not the same as it is down “by the Equator” in southern Minnesota.   Despite the never ending brilliance of sun, snow and long days, some of us inhabitants of  Minnesota’s north woods are envious.  The month of April is a historically snow/rainy/freezing month with low temps in the morning producing solid snow and ice on the lakes that seems reluctant to leave forever.  This season appears to be no different than last season which had the winter that wouldn’t leave.  Last year spring struggled hard to cling to it’s time slot but was squeezed out by endless winter.  Spring was forced reside in June and the first week of July in 2013. 

The long winters here at Northwind Lodge are nothing unusual.  Growing up as a child here,  working on the resort and getting ready for the fishing opener meant coming every weekend and weekdays after school outside at Northwind Lodge once the snow and freezing finally subsided.  Can’t do anything when it is still freezing and paint won’t dry.  Once winter finally gave up the ghost, there was endless raking, fluffing up flat dirt and grass from the 6 months of snow.  And as always we were trying to find a nice day to paint.

 At a Ma & Pa resort like ours, there was, and still remains, endless square feet of flat and bumpy surfaces to paint.  I remember as a very young child crossing the Wood Lake portage each year to maintain the steel boats we had way at the end of that portage. They were heavy, old and always needed maintenance.  So, every spring, my brother and I would follow our mom and dad down that portage on a nice Saturday or Sunday. 

The trail was always winter-just-left muddy and we wore rubber boots.  My feet would sometimes get cold in those uninsulated boots despite wearing the knitted wool socks that my mom made for us kids.   We all carried our own appropriately-sized packsacks with various tools for the day divided up among us.  They included a hammer, egg-beater-style hand drill ( there was no such thing as lithium batteries/cordless drills back then) drill bits, assorted nuts and bolts, a wrench, a couple wire brushes, sandpaper, rags, a gallon of  red paint, paint thinner, brushes, screwdrivers, lunch, toilet paper, cans of pop,  the keys to the locks for the boats, and an axe or two. 

The woods on the Wood Lake portage always smelled like fresh earth. The air was usually crisp, the sun out but the shadows cold and the new ground was breathing.  With the snow mostly gone and no leaves on anything, you could see far into the woods.  Everything looks roomier in the spring and the brush has a real camouflage coloration to it.  If you stopped walking, but for the footsteps of the rest of the group, you can hear your heart beats.  Every now and then, a raven would fly over "gee-gunk'ing" to check on us while we walked perhaps hoping that one of us would kick the bucket for an easy meal.   Nothing comes easy for ravens.  There was always a sense of calm as we walked with little noise. Having come from a long line of hunters, trappers and outlaws, we were taught by our dad to never leave tracks.  So the walking on the portage meant stepping on solid terrain like the points of rocks and avoiding the mud.  Being little kids with packsacks on and ill-fitting hand-me-down boots, that kind of focus and commitment only lasts so long.   We may have left a few extra tracks behind us.

Once we completed the final rugged decent of the Wood Lake Portage to our boats at the water’s edge, we could survey the damage.  There was always damage.  Not so much to the boats but the crude docks with metal rings we had in place to lock up the boats.  The fluctuating water levels and wicked ice would always rip something apart.  So, we’d struggle to get those heavy boats to the black, muddy, rocky shore and begin wire brushing the rust while Dad wrestling with beating the dock back into place. 

Layers of peeling paint, rust and dust lead to a shiny new coat of red Rustoleum paint from the Ace Hardware in Ely.  Us two kids would sand , brush, and wipe dust and our mom would cover the tracks with her paint brush.  When it finally was time for lunch, we kids were relieved.  Some years, our dad would build a fire and we’d roast hotdogs over it for a busman’s picnic. Other years it was fire and a sandwich.  On one trip that I could not attend because I was in Kindergarten, my younger brother Bernie was so tired, he fell asleep in the bow of a boat after being a trooper scraping rust for as long as a little kid can last out in fresh air doing the work of adults. 

Once the Wood Lake boats were repaired and painted inside and out, they ‘d be flipped upside down and allowed to dry before another trip down the portage had my dad putting them on the water for the upcoming season.  It was just one of the regimens we would follow every year until I was 18 and we finally got aluminium boats that required no maintenance.  It was a blessing to have the amenities of modernity bestowed upon us, but also kind of sad, in retrospect.   We no longer had that ritual to follow and squeeze in between the weather and time.  But needless to say, we had a Ma & Pa resort with many other projects to fill the void.   With a bunch of cabins and a water system that needed to be fired back up after the ice decided it doesn't really like plumbing in spots, there was a never-ending stream of things to do.

Growing up at a resort in northern Minnesota is something that perhaps should be afforded every kid.  It's hard to disagree with spending time in the woods and using tools, isn't it?