Monday, September 10, 2012 I woke up to a stiff breeze and thought that I was wise to have pushed onto the more sheltered part of Basswood. I would only have about two and a half miles to get to the Back Bay portage for my one PM pick up, so no sweat! Well, as Yogi once said…. The winds really picked up as I pushed off at 10 AM. Of course I was paddling into the wind now.

I rounded a bend and got off the intended path by mistake but that was fortuitous. Upon approaching a bare rock slope into the lake three otters suddenly burst out scrambling down into the water not more than 30 feet ahead of me! After hitting the water one otter surfaced as to check out where this human was and yikes! he poked his head up about 10 feet away from me. Gotta get outa here, he thought!!! I searched the area for minutes with camera in hand but they all had disappeared.

Later, I approached Lewis Narrows and it seemed that all of the air in Jackfish Bay was being pushed into those narrows. I paddled as hard as I could and the shoreline just baaarellly changed! Island up ahead! Shelter! Puff, puff, I sucked in the air then turned my boat to quarter the waves to the shoreline spot the portage should have been. I guessed right and whoosh my boat scrapped into the gravel-sand shoreline at the portage. I made it! Whoopee! There at the other end of the portage was my tow waiting. An older man was stretched out on the seat sound asleep. He turned out to be “Jeep” LaTourell, a 78-year-old man who knew, he said, Justine Kerfoot, Dorothy Molter (knew her very well having many times supplied her at her Knife Lake cabin), Benny Ambrose, Sig Olson, and Walter Mondale (guided him once on a trip in the BW). He started Wilderness Outfitters and then built LaTourell’s Resort and Outfitters on Moose Lake that his twin daughters and their spouses now run. Jeep helps out now and then. He cannot quit the backcountry despite suffering a stroke that leaves one side of his face drooping. Oh, the Back Bay portage used to be traveled by military ducks after the Second World War and then after many hours of digging dirt and gravel from trailside pits and spread along the portage, the portage was transformed to a wide, smooth cart portage for boats until the Boundary Waters became a wilderness area in 1964. ‘Yesiree, I lived through the transformation of the area from the postwar on!’ he essentially said from our conversations back to the resort and while at the resort. What a conversation we had! This was a fitting end to my trip! I scrubbed off a few pounds of dirt at Voyageurs North Outfitters and got a late start on my trip home. I did it! I did it! Boy was I proud of myself!!

Final Words I doubt that I will ever again attempt, at least solo, such a trip again. It was harder than it was just three years ago and ageing accelerates as life wears on. Even on a tandem trip I would have to lean on my partner if I took a similar trip in the next couple of years. But it has been a good life for me in all of my Canoe Country travels. I never have suffered any significant mishap in all of my many years of wilderness canoe tripping (first one at age 16) though the opportunities for mishap have been abundant. I have nearly always been careful. I saved the last trip as the best perhaps? The deer and otter sure were unusual events to happen in one trip. But, no moose, darn it. My, Moose Bay is aptly named but there were no moose in the Bay while I was there. Is the moose population on such a decline in the Canoe Country? Back in the 1960s on my trips into Quetico we frequently saw moose. The country is constantly changing, I guess. Water levels go up and down, people come and old men go. That is life.

"Jeep" LaTourell Mindy LaTourell in truck