We awoke and quickly set out to get away from the bugs. After paddling the length of Sunday, we realized we had overshot our portage and backtracked through the choppy wind-fueled waves to Singing Brook Portage into Burke Lake. Since I had built an extra day into our trip for weather, we still had a day and a half before we had to be back to Prairie Portage. We decided to set up camp on the large island in Burke facing the Yellow Brick Road portage. And what a camp it was.

Someone had left a nice pile of dry wood near the fire pit, and directly behind camp there was an inviting rocky hill whose summit offered the best views of the trip. A small clearing at the top was too much for Bird to resist, and he pitched his tent right there.

We had arrived at camp at 2 p.m., and so we spent the day relaxing and recovering from the earlier nightmarish portages. As time passed, the day's earlier challenges faded, and we shared the rest of the day talking, exploring the island, swimming, and fishing (which was fruitless but relaxing).

By afternoon, the wind had become nothing short of ferocious and blew in a nasty storm which lingered until late evening. However, not even the torrential downpours could quench the fire in our spirits, and we all shared a little bit of Quetico magic around the campfire in our rain gear as the skies opened up on us. Perhaps it was the feeling of accomplishment of fighting through the day's portages, or perhaps it was the relief of knowing that we would only have to carry our cumbersome canoes just once more, or perhaps still it was knowing that we had all shared in something special and memorable the past 4 days...but we all connected in a way that stormy night that we hadn't the rest of the trip. Although our sleeping bags were slightly damp, we slept well.