Growing up, living and working on a Minnesota resort, Northwind Lodge near Ely, MN presents challenges, wildlife, and some interesting stories next to the BWCA.
My dad turned 83 years old yesterday and just to make the younger world feel diminished, I dragged him all the way down the Wood Lake portage and forced him to catch fish on Wood Lake for the day. The portage is 210 rods long or .58 miles long and it was muddy and rugged after yesterday’s heavy rains which is par for the course on portages. For an old guy with a fake knee and a double bypass some 15 years ago, he does pretty well.
Of course, I brought along my sidekick Delilah.
Once we hit the trail, she began her Wood Lake portage routine of blasting ahead at full speed, turning off the trail into the woods and running parallel back along the trail only to come out behind me. From that point, she snorts past me again, tongue flopping and nothing but a blurry streak of fur to do it repeatedly for the entire trail. I figure that she runs about three times the length of the trail every time we walk it. In the back of my mind, I’m waiting for the moment she drives out a momma bear and cubs to meet me, but that hasn’t occurred….yet.
As I walked the trail carrying my oars, our rods and my pack, I noted the fresh tracks in the mud – two people ahead of me. As a boy, I was trained to not leave tracks – not in the figurative sense connected to symbolically saving the BWCA, but instead, for real. Hunting and trapping as a kid, we never wanted to be followed and the best way to avoid followers is to never leave tracks as best we could and we still do this to this day. As a result, I observe this telltale “flaw” in others all the time and today’s tracks in front of me were no different. I could tell both were men, in their late 30’s to early 40’s, weighing about 185 lbs. each. They wore big floppy hats, mosquito head nets, blue, white and black, paddling gloves, and brand new long sleeve, nylon button-down shirts with brand new nylon, zip off pants. As Delilah blasted silently down the portage, about 150 feet in front of me, up a hill and around a curve, I heard her let loose with the most ferocious, attack-dog bark her nine pound body could muster! First I thought ” bear” but that was immediately corrected. There was a scream and panic as a voice-in-terror yelled, “Gggaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! GET OUTTA HERE! GO AWAY!!!! ” as Delilah stopped them in their tracks. I tried to call her off, but she was unrelenting, so I picked up my pace to see two guys decked out in nylon shirts, zip-off pants, trail boots, blue-white-black paddling gloves, big hats and bug nets. Delilah finally shut up as her job was done attacking the space aliens. I chuckled and said when they passed, “I bet that scared the crap out of you!” to which one replied “Maybe a little…”
Delilah looked back at me all proud and alert for taking down the “aliens” with a good, solid whoopin’. Then, she blasted down the portage once again. When we hit the water, we endured a beautiful day with moderate catching but enough to keep up busy all day long. In a pretty true test, we found that live bait and artificial lures ended up producing about “neck and neck” . There was no real, obvious gain in using live bait over lures. Later in the day, the wind picked up and screamed from the west making for about 1.5 hours of tough rowing with a significant chop and some whitecaps. I put together this video called “A Landing Net’s Life” since the I had the camera stuck to the net. Upon returning to the parking because not much wears Delilah out, she took off and chased a 70 foot long semi roaring past on the Fernberg Road. The present road crew tried to catch her but she blew past them, returning to me and prompting a parking lot visit by a concerned, but laughing foreman looking for “a little brown dog that was chasing one of their semi’s down the new asphalt.” Delilah stood up on the truck seat and smiled at him. Good dog, Delilah. Never give up.
Alrighty, then... Just got back from Wood Lake - at 8:03 PM. The same party of lodge guests was there today, four in two canoes and two guys in one row boat. The four in canoes...who had been there before, all came back at 3:30 PM. I waited for the two in the boat to come back until 7:30 PM, but no sign of them availed itself. The fact that we're burning daylight puts me in full alert mode. I went to check with the rest of their group at their cabin and asked if either of the two guys had ever been to Wood Lake before. No, was the answer. I was a bit incredulous at the sheer lack of planning, but I had a gut feeling that this would be the case when I went to visit them. In fact, that was why I went to see them. Wood lake is a a 453 acre lake in the BWCA. It's easy to get turned around and I supposed that if they were lost, they weren't terribly lost because tonight was a nice calm evening. Nonetheless, I'd rather have extra time on my side than not enough so I make the decision to go immediately. One of the younger guys (age 69) volunteered to join me in crossing the portage and heading out on the lake. I grabbed my guiding oars (I never lend them to anyone, ever), some PFD's, the boat key and Delilah. I didn't want to leave her home as Annette was visiting a friend and the concept of cleaning up the house after the little dog went nuts was less than appealing. Cookie was her usual sound, calm self, but she has no control whatsoever over Delilah. (I don't think she really even tries. She's a bit lackadaisical in areas of guidance and counsel and running far and moving for approaching cars, etc.) With Delilah snarling at the strange-to-her guy in the truck, we took off. Got to the Wood Lake parking lot and their vehicle was still there. Bad sign Number One. I take my oars, the guy grabs the PFD's and off we go. Delilah is on the leash and as I'm moving fast, I'm really wondering if this was my smartest move of the evening. She's never been in a boat before. Cookie freaked out last time I put her in a boat. I figured I might have to tie Delilah to a tree and go. I get to the water's edge some 210 rods later and see Bad Sign Number Two: no boat with two guys in it. I unlocked our second boat and pushed it out and my partner piled in. That guy moves pretty well for a 69 year old for his second round trip on this portage in one day. I loaded Delilah and he took the leash. After a some initial bouncing around, she stood on the floor of the boat like she's been doing this forever. Whew! I turn the boat around, pull on my oars and head the boat down the river towards the opening of the lake. I just round the first "S" turn and am about 200 feet out in the river and there they are. Whew, again. I didn't have to row very far this evening. My partner asked if we could just say that we were "out for some exercise". I smiled and said "Sure!" I turned the boat back around and brought it in to shore where I locked it up. That was a really short trip. We were happy to see the two newbies coming in completely intact with no issues. The one guy had two walleyes and lost a third having had no landing net. I locked up the boats, and told the three guys that I would be heading back, One of the guys in the boat asked me if we were the "scouting party". I said that I was "just out for some exercise". I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me. I took off up the trail, oars on my shoulder, dog on leash. Nothing like the Wood Lake Workout to burn some calories off of my layer of winter fat.
Well, spring is in the air I think. Yesterday morning was 25 degrees F when I got up and standing water had ice on it. However, Jasper Creek is really ripping hard right now and the water everywhere is high. We are at the point where it'll be good to see the leaves starting to come out as they drink up a lot of water. The ground in the woods is pretty wet yet.
Two days ago, I went to Wood Lake to check on our boats. I took Delilah on a leash to get her used to seeing new things and still remain with me or as least near by. Good thing I had her on a leash. I walked a fast pace over that 210 rod portage, skipping around big muddy sections, looking for rocks to land my feet on to keep dry. Delilah followed along in a trot but every now and then she would blast off in a direction of a squirrel or "perceived" animal of the woods. With a firm grip on the end of the leash, she would wind up doing an undignified backflip when she accelerated herself to the end. She remained unflappable (and unable to learn, apparently) in the whole "running out of rope thing" as she did it several times. She's still a puppy.
After about 12 minutes of walking on last year's leaves on top of this year's mud, we made it to the hill above the water. Only at this time of year with no leaves on the branches, can one see out into the endless muskeg towards Wood Lake from the overlooking hill. I could see that the water was really high. There is a waterfall behind the hill that comes out right where our boats are locked up and it, too, was roaring loudly. Delilah was obviously having a ball with so many new sights and sounds in focused oblivion smelling every scent of every animal that came this way.
I made my way down those same rocks that I have now crossed for an entire lifetime. At the water's edge, I turned starboard to use the little path that takes me to our boats and tied Delilah's leash to an alder branch. I flipped the boats upright and checked them over to make sure nobody shot them up over winter. As a young lad, when we had our boats down there and Deer Trail Lodge had theirs, I remember the constant struggle with their lodge guests using our dock because it was built better than Deer Trail's. Then, their guests in utter laziness would sometimes simply lock a Deer Trail boat to the back handles of our boats so when our guests would get there, they "could" go fishing but would need to drag along a Deer Trail boat which was generally frowned upon as a viable option. Our lodge guests would have to come get us, we'd have to call Deer Trail. They'd have to send somebody down the portage with their key. We'd have to go there as well. It was a gargantuan pain sometimes. Everybody ended up doing a whole lot of walking because of one clueless individual with a lock. Those boats from the other resort would truly drive us nuts. One year, the owner took his four green boats in the fall and stacked them upside down in a pile directly across the end of the portage. We were simply astounded by the apparent lack of concern for anyone else using that portage, namely in the winter. Lots of people would snowmobile to Wood Lake to go ice fishing as did we. Coming off the portage with a "gate" built out of 14 foot long, steel, green boats made for some fancy maneuvering and cussing by a lot of people forced to crash through the surrounding brush with their snowmobiles. A clear, open portage would have worked a lot better. That winter, those boats didn't fair too well. They ended up riddled with bullet holes -lots of them- through all the important parts and not one fired by us. Apparently, someone took out their anger - boat rage - on those Deer Trail boats. Based on the caliber, we're pretty sure we know who shot them up but we didn't have proof and nobody was terribly surprised that this happened. (Plug the portage with boats, somebody shoots up the boats? Nah!) Well, except for Deer Trail Lodge - they had to do a lot of repairs - they were probably upset. After that incident, however, he always flipped them over off to the side and had no more trouble with bullet holes. And, that is one of the things I think about coming down that hill to look at our own boats. Over the years, we've had bullets holes and shotgun blasts with birdshot from fall grouse hunters who couldn't find a bird so they shot a big red steel boat. We've always done our best to keep them tucked away off the beaten path and have been fortunate to not have a lot of vandalism. They were fine on this trip as well. Another thing I think of when I get ready to walk down that final hill is a story my dad told. When HE was a kid, some of his guests went to Wood Lake for the day back in the 40's. Back then, personal flotation devices were not required but people brought along those old kapok boat cushions because even in the 40's, the seats got hard after a while. Sitting in one of our floating boats were some of our guests who were just getting ready to start the motor and head out to the lake. They suddenly heard a loud shot and felt the impact as a 30 caliber bullet tore under the middle guy's backside cutting a 14 inch groove in the seat under his boat cushion and then making an exit hole out the side of the boat 4 inches below the gunwale. It missed him completely. Everybody ducked, squirmed and yelled when they realized that someone actually took a shot a them with a 30-30 Winchester! What the...? It was spring time - NOT deer season! Who the heck is out there shooting and why?!
As it turned out, there were two escaped convicts from some faraway prison who were on the run. For actual motives unbeknownst to my dad and grandpa, they fired one round at our guests and narrowly missed a seated man's hip and butt by mere inches. Then they took off. It made no sense -shoot at unarmed people once without warning or robbing them and then take off into the woods. The authorities eventually apprehended these guys and caught them with the rifle. Initially, nobody could figure out what they were doing at the end of the Wood Lake portage in the middle of nowhere. Then it was surmised that they were interested in taking the boat and heading to Canada with an ill-planned escape trip. It made sense because we're are pretty far north and the border is only a hop, skip and a jump away. However, one would need canoes to quickly cross the portages at Hula and Good Lake to get to Basswood. Maybe they only had one bullet left and missed killing the guy so the other two would not have been very cooperative. Who knows? It made for an interesting day of fishing in the area that was eventually deemed God's country by the federal government or AKA, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness some thirty-plus years later. Unbeknownst to the vast majority of visitors today, many things happened in the BWCA when it was a just a mere wilderness instead of a federally-designated wilderness - which the same but with more rules. To all of us at those times, it was just rocks and sticks and water in the middle of nowhere without all the government restrictions and the fancy title. This story, and my dad running into bears on the Wood Lake portage resulted in me carrying a .45 cal. 1911 pistol for the first several years of my guiding career on Wood Lake. As a kid, I used to pull that heavy pistol out of my pack and clip its army-issued leather holster around a gunwale bracket of the boat right next to me. My new clients would usually gasp audibly and then stutter as they asked if the pistol was "real". "Yeah, it's very real" I would reply. "Is it loaded?", they would query hesitantly. "Yup!" would be my answer. "It's ready to go." I would always tell them it was for bears on the portage. Some of the clients would nervously smile or show facial trepidation to their buddy on the other seat. Then, after the shock of having a 15-year-old with a loaded cannon sitting next to him in the boat subsided, they would ask incredulously as an after thought, "There are BEARS here?" "Well, of course", I would reply and then tell the Cliff notes version of how my dad and his friend John Butorac had a big momma bear chasing them around in the dark one night on the Wood Lake portage. Coffee can of gasoline wired to a forked stick for a torch, stumbling through through muskeg, wet up to their armpits, feeling with their hands for the portage in the pitch black, not knowing where that 350 lb. angry bear was, etc. Fun times! It seemed that nobody ever lolly-gagged on the Wood Lake portage on the way out.
Since I was young and guiding many "off the road" people (who weren't staying with us and we didn't know them), I never told them I carried that .45 mainly for them. Nobody messed with me ever, not that I ever felt that any of my clients would. But who knows - I had a .45 right next to me a all times so it could have been a real disincentive. For the most part, they were all nice people. When I finally grew bigger and surlier, I left the .45 at home. It was extra weight that I happy to live without on the portage. An oar would have worked pretty well, had I needed it.
So, I checked the locks, floated the boats and untied Delilah. Back up that hill we went with the little brown dog tirelessly sniffing the ghosts of many seasons past. There were leaves to be raked, water lines to be turned on and remnants of a hard winter that needed to be put to rest at Northwind Lodge so we headed home. Our first people would be arriving tomorrow.
