First Time in Quetico

Sun warmed us as we paddled our loaded canoe into a light wind across Batchewaung Lake on our first full day together in Quetico Park. We could see hundreds of yards in all directions – water, conifers, rocks. No other canoes. From the stern, I dug my paddle deep into the dark water, imagining 30-lb. lake trout swimming 100’ below. Emilie soaked up the scenery from the bow, occasionally dipping her paddle into the lake to help propel us forward.

Hours later, the sun was warmer as we cruised through a placid, narrow body of water when a horse fly appeared out of nowhere, as they do, and circled my head. I recalled the time when one of those ungainly annoyances flew repeated circles around me until I stuck my paddle blade in its path. The fly barreled into my blade, dropped straight down into the water, and became fish food. I had always considered horse flies to be slow and dumb. One thing for certain, they were relentless. Perhaps having had enough of my attempts to knock this one to the water with my bare hand, it changed course.

“There’s a big horse fly by your head,” I said to Emilie, who in response took a random swing from her forehead backward, knocking off her ball cap and sending the sunglasses I had bought for her just days earlier into the water. I watched them sink slowly, tempting me to jump in after them. “My sunglasses!” she exclaimed. “Let’s pull over,” I recommended. “Maybe it’s not deep here.” It was time to stretch our legs, anyway. I stripped to my bathing suit and slid down the slippery rock that gradually sloped to the water, pushing away from shore at the last moment to avoid any structure that might injure my feet.

“How is it?” Emilie asked, as I squinted and clenched my face. “Feels cold! But great.” I treaded water while adjusting my swim mask, then sank beneath the surface to a different world. After one brief look around, I resurfaced. “Gonna try it again. It’s deeper than I thought.” I took a deep breath and disappeared. The sun illuminated the granite shoreline wall beneath the surface. Yellow, red, and green patches were visible five feet down. Beyond that, darkness. This was a drop-off. After a half-dozen attempts to find the lake bottom, I gave up. I had been in the water for fifteen minutes. “Not gonna find them, it’s too dark,” I said as I climbed out of the water. “We could cannonball right here off the shore, it’s so deep. Anyway, I think I have another pair.”

“Should we have lunch?” Emilie dug her hand back into the bag of snacks she’d been holding. I thought about how she had been eager to mark all of the checkboxes on the snacks section of the food menu our outfitter provided as part of our complete package. I shook my head and smiled. “Let’s paddle a bit more and look for a better spot ahead.”

Twenty minutes on, we grabbed a bag marked “lunch” from our food pack and spread its contents on a rock. I carefully pulled my long fillet knife from its sheath to slice pieces of cheese and salami, its savory aroma something I experienced only on camping trips. As I did so, I recalled stabbing myself on a previous Quetico trip while shooing a horse fly away from the fish I was filleting. Fortunately, my friends and I were only a half-day paddle from a ranger station. I wasn’t going to do that again, especially alone in the woods with little chance for us to quickly find help.

We stretched our legs and relaxed. A light breeze blew across the lake, rustling the pines. Water lapped against the six inches of canoe stern I dared to leave in the water. Thinking of you, Tom…

My cousin Tom once told me about a shore lunch that nearly left him trapped on a remote northern lake island. Tom and a buddy had paddled to an island but neglected to pull their canoe well onto shore, and some minutes later the wind dislodged it. By the time they noticed, the canoe had a good head start, drifting down the shoreline. They gave chase, racing through the island’s dense underbrush and catching the canoe just before it cleared the end of their island and reached cold, open water. Tom and his buddy were lucky to paddle away with just minor cuts and memories.

A while later, Emilie broke the silence. “Your shirt!” her gaze fixed just below my chest. I looked down and saw an area the size of my hand soaked with blood. My mind raced through a mental checklist of the lunch I had prepared moments earlier – sliced salami, sliced cheese, set knife down (away from my body), no flies, so why blood? “What? I know I didn’t stab myself,” I blurted. More incredulous than scared, I lifted my shirt. Amid the bright red blood all over my skin, a small dark spot caught our attention. “Gross, a leech!” Emilie exclaimed. “Yeah.” I didn’t care. But I also hadn’t realized leeches could cause so much bleeding. Suffering no serious wounds, I was content to throw the leech back into the water and get on with lunch.

I looked up at Emilie, who was fixated on the blood, nose scrunched and mouth agape. “Can you believe that?” I laughed. “That’s so gross,” she replied. It was unpleasant to her in the same way mixing yellow mustard with yogurt is gross. Disgusting, that’s all. She didn’t fear leeches. She liked them, wanted them to crawl on her fingers, play with them like pets. She let them attach to her fingers long enough to dangle. “I bet I got it from swimming so long looking for your sunglasses. It’s probably been on me for half an hour. I should’ve kept him for bait,” I replied. “Which reminds me, let’s go see if we can find that place Jim said to fish.”

Jim had promised “the best” walleye fishing on a small, infrequently visited lake. To reach it, he said we’d have to cross a short area of wetland. But when we arrived, we found 75 yards of vegetation clusters, bare mud, and narrow waterways between us and the walleye lake. This mosaic of clumped flora and water foreshadowed an arduous crossing. “No wonder it’s the best walleye lake,” I said. “Nobody fishes it!” Emilie looked back at me from the bow and smiled. “This is cool.”

She was up for the challenge. I pointed our bow toward water that looked most likely to carry us deep into the wetland without having to get out of the canoe. When our weight finally caused our canoe to bottom out, we carefully stepped into an expanse of irregular, spongy mounds of plant life and found our footing. We stood and looked around, listening to the light wind. “Do you think we’ll see a moose?” Emilie had wildlife on her mind. I was just hoping for enough water between us and Jim’s lake to keep our canoe buoyant. “Maybe,” I said. “I hope not too close though.” I imagined a moose calf standing near her overprotective mama, viewing us as a threat. “But if a moose can get through here, we can.”

I paused to think about what I had just said. “On the other hand, if a moose sank and disappeared, no one would know.” To Emilie’s mind, I had issued a challenge: Cross without sinking. “We’re professionals,” she said matter-of-factly, with no doubt we’d pass this wilderness test. Gingerly placing one foot ahead of the other, we walked while pushing our canoe. Any mound we stepped on could sink under our weight. When it was no longer possible to walk across firm ground, we got into the water. Bubbles from trapped gases in squishy wetland bottom broke the water’s surface. Emilie held the bow while I gripped the stern. There was no telling whether a drop-off lay in wait.

The first one hit me like a mixture of startlement and fun. I slipped from knee-high to chest-high water without my feet touching anything. This was an adventure we would undoubtedly write about in our tent that night.

Emilie later shared what she was thinking: “If he sank, how would I survive by myself? If he goes down and I can’t pull him up, I’m alone in the wild. What berries will I eat? How will I forage for wild rice?” I realized I was paddling with an outdoor lover.

We continued on toward walleye lake. At one point, my foot slipped out of my Croc sandal that had lodged itself in the muck. I dug into the wetland bed with my bare foot until the Croc came loose and floated to the surface. “Amateur.” Twelve years old, and she was already on her way to mastering sarcasm. Emilie didn’t say a lot, but her mind was always in gear and attuned to her surroundings. We didn’t have to carry on a conversation to tell each other this was fun.

Having reached an area of water sufficiently deep to paddle, we slowly climbed back into our canoe, Emilie first, then me. The distinctive smell of sulfurous wetland followed us. We paddled onward through the diminishing clumps of soil and plants until we reached the lake, the glorious walleye lake, teeming with walleye, of course. It felt worth the effort. But then, a different dilemma arose. Sunken tree limbs and stumps dotted the water. I surmised it must represent fish habitat, and yet I also knew that walleyes prefer to hang out around rock piles and weed beds. Here, I saw neither.

We paddled to a large rock wall, cast our artificial leeches and jigs, allowed them to sink to the lake bottom, and began the slow retrieve. Immediately, we both felt strikes, and for a brief moment, I thought Jim was right. Instead, our lures had caught tree parts hidden underwater, and we were snagged. I hated having to break our lines – it meant polluting the lake with a lead weight and risking harm to diving loons by leaving fishing line behind. But there was no other choice, and I’d already donned on my swim goggles for a futile search and rescue.

Either we were amateurs, or this lake was a dud. Probably both. I tied floating lures to our lines, but those snagged, too. After an hour, fishless and down a handful of artificial lures, we decided to head back across the wetland and look for a campsite. I didn’t recognize at the time that laboring through boggy water was as much dad-daughter bonding as it was adventuring. As for the fishing, it was more fun when it didn’t matter whether we caught fish, when I didn’t feel pressure to land at least a few walleyes after our outfitter sent us to one of his most productive lakes. I mentally filed away the skunking, knowing Jim would ask about the lake when we returned to his place.

We marveled at pine trees lining the lake and bugs skittering across the water. Free from the bog and with another hour of paddling behind us, we found an island with a flat, open area to pitch our tent. Talk turned to our food pack – what snacks it contained, and what we’d have for dinner. Emilie knew the snack count. Without fish to clean, we chose freeze-dried lasagna for dinner. Emilie spied powdered pudding in our bag to rehydrate for dessert. I lit our small gas stove to boil water.

“Let’s go swimming,” Emilie stated. I sighed, not really wanting to get into my suit again. Eating, relaxing in the tent, and falling asleep seemed like a winning idea instead. “C’mon, we have to swim!” she affirmed. “Is this a rule?” I asked, slowly conceding. She was adamant: “We have to swim every day.” “But we just walked through a wetland, twice,” I said, knowing that it didn’t count. “That doesn’t count,” she concurred. I removed the oxygen absorber from the lasagna pouch, poured in the boiled water, stirred the contents, and sealed the bag. “Okay, this will be ready in 12 minutes. Let’s do it.”

We crouched and slid down slippery rocks at the shoreline. The drop-off came quickly. “Can you touch?” she shouted with a mile-wide grin. I laughed at the beauty of it all, proud to see that Emilie was having a blast. The lake was all ours. I scanned the deep woods, believing that somewhere beyond the shoreline roamed moose, black bears, timber wolves, beavers, and white-tailed deer. I stared at our tiny nylon home, capable of keeping out only mosquitoes and rain. It looked like a haven. “Yeah, I can touch, you silly goose,” I said. “So can I!” she shouted, the chill in the water evident in her voice. “This is beautiful,” I replied, hearing the chill in my own voice. “So refreshing.” “Yeah.” “Ready to go in? I think our dinner is ready.” “Yeah.”

And so, on just the second night of the first time Emilie and I ever camped in the wilderness, she established a ritual. Every day, no matter what, we swim.