Up at 6 again, to admire some mist on a totally calm lake, with a completely clear sky overhead. It promised to be a warm day.

We had our hot chocolate first as we always do. Then I cooked a “use by 2008” Back Packers Pantry Denver Omelette that I decided wasn’t fit to eat. We have always liked the Denver Omelette in the past, but a few years ago I bought too many, and this is a case of “live and learn”. When they say there is a “use by” with powdered eggs, I will believe it from now on.

So Plan B was another tasty breakfast: bacon (I always take the pre-cooked bacon), pancakes with chopped pecans added to the batter, good Minnesota maple syrup, and coffee. With Tang. And a cup of decaf. A loon was calling but we still couldn’t see it.

Still longing for flowers, I photographed a purple aster on the biffy trail.

Kawasachong Lake was smooth as glass.

We decided to take a day trip. Paddling up the stream to Stringer Lake looked promising on the map, but it soon become obvious that in the dry weather and low water this stream was too shallow for us, even with an empty canoe.

Spartan1 tried to fish, but all he caught was weeds.

We stopped at what my journal records as a “crappy, hot dry campsite” and ate our lunch under a little tree. The fire grate was right out in the sun, so we scouted along the side to find a sheltered spot, but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t very sheltered, either.

The stripe in this rock looks almost like someone colored it on with chalk:

I enjoyed my PB and crackers in the shade of the small tree:

and I photographed a few flowers and seed pods on the biffy trail:

We paddled around the little bay to the portage that leads up to Polly and beyond, and then explored the lake a bit before heading back “home”.

After we returned I decided to bake a chocolate cake. This was from a recipe that I had found on the Hershey’s cocoa box, and a half-recipe made just enough for the small Jello-mold oven that I use. It baked well on the stove with the diffuser, and our local squirrel decided that it smelled good enough to come out for a sniff and a look-see. He was never a problem, however. They can be sometimes, so it was a relief that he wasn’t aggressive.

At 3:00 it was breezy and hot. Not a cloud in the sky. It felt more like July than September, and for us, that was disappointing. So much for wool-shirt weather! I think our temperature was easily in the mid-eighties.

We decided to clean up a bit, and had our bucket baths in a clearing in the woods (otherwise known as the second tent pad). I amused myself later on by sitting by the shore and trying to take photos of dragonflies in flight. They aren’t fantastic, but they are the best I could do:

Spartan1 read his book in the chair. And our pet bird wandered around in the warm evening light.

The bird was around for a long time, and the squirrel came back briefly. There hasn’t been much excitement around here, which is a good thing. I don’t want a bear or a wildfire, but I must confess a moose would be nice.

As an aside, I didn’t know then what I know now, obviously. I knew that a wildfire was burning, but I surely didn’t know that it was on the level of what has now raged through the very part of the BWCA where we were relaxing on this warm, calm evening. Our campsite is now burned, and our crippled little brown bird is no doubt gone forever. Those “photogenic trees” on the island that we enjoyed in the morning calm have probably burned beyond recognition. Just writing this report now, less than a week later, has a bittersweet quality about it that none of my trip reports have ever had. After a trip, I always want to remember it as it was. . .but this time, it really isn’t “as it was”. And I know that. It isn’t the same, only a few days later.

After the dishes were washed, the packs hung and the nightly camp cleanup chores accomplished, we went for a brief night paddle in the moonlight. It was very quiet, and very lovely. We could hear soft voices from the only other campers on the lake, just down from our campsite, a couple we had seen out fishing earlier in the evening. But the stillness was palpable; and the peace was wonderful.

We paddled back to our campsite, scrambled up onto the shore, and found our tent by the light of the moon. It was a warm night, and we never zipped our sleeping bags all night.