** Day 7 **
Maybe around 4, the canoe alarm found its way BACK to our camp – IN our camp – not 10 FEET from our tent. It was loud, obnoxious, and had to go! I didn’t even bother to put on any clothes or shoes, nor think about the snake or whatever else was there – I unzipped the tent and was out in a flash - grabbing whatever rocks or gravel were just outside - and threw them in the direction of that silly bird – letting him know in a hurry to SCRAM. He did, and I felt like a champion, until he started right up again, in a tree just a tad downshore. Ugh!
We snoozed on and off as he came and went, and finally stirred out of the tent around 7:30-8:00. At extreme leisure, we began to break camp, eating a bit of breakfast and enjoying coffee and cocoa as we worked. We noticed that Matthew’s pole down by the canoe appeared to have fallen. It was bowed over like the tip had stuck into something. He went to check it out and almost immediately called for me to hurry down there.
The pole was laying over against the rocks, with the tip almost to the breaking point, the very end bent right into a hole in the exposed roots of a tree there. Matthew picked up the pole, both of us figuring it had fallen and by the most extreme coincidence had landed just perfectly, and gotten stuck in the hole. As he started to pull it out, it was obvious something had a hold of it. “Something has the worm in its mouth…I think it’s a snake!”
Not being too anxious, and with steady pressure, he finally got the culprit to appear. It was a snake, and sure enough, it had that lure securely in its mouth. Needless to say, neither of us volunteered to reach out and touch someone. After several minutes of resistance, the snake finally allowed Matthew to pull it out of the hole. It was a good three feet in length, and as it cleared the hole, another snake’s head poked out, as if to see what was going on. No telling how many more were down inside that mass of tree roots in the rocks.
Matthew did the best he could to get the snake off the hook without injuring it, but there was just no way around it. I told him if he had cut the line, it would have just ended up swallowing it and died anyways. As soon as it realized it was “off the hook”, it zipped back into that hole like white lightning, but not without bowing up like it wanted to strike first…prompting us to step well back.
We weren’t sure how to properly record that first-time catch…but it will definitely have an asterisk next to it. Later we asked our outfitter what kind of snake it was, and he said it was probably just a common race, and harmless. Matthew and I laughed, remembering how we BOTH had jumped when IT did! All we could figure was that in foraging around in the night, saw or smelled that artificial worm, somehow got a hold of it suspended up in the air, and then dragged it back down into its hole.
We finished breaking camp, being especially careful down around those rocks, and packed everything up, killing time as best we could – watching several groups come in from the Mudro entry, most of them heading past us towards Sandpit.
One single canoe seemed surely bound for Fourtown, but then began to veer towards our camp. We didn’t think anything of it – maybe they just wanted to check the FT portage, and were headed for Sandpit. I was digging in my pack when Matthew said “They’re gonna ram us”, and laughed. I looked up, and sure enough, they were about 40 feet from shore now and headed directly towards us. As they reached the shore, we could tell the guy in the back was trying to figure out how to stop or turn the canoe, and the woman in front seemed clueless as to what was even going on at all. Bam! They ran right into the rocks on the shore beside some trees.
I thought this was probably the first time for either of them in a canoe before, and as much as I wanted to holler down “Can we help you?”, the look of embarrassment on the man’s face told me to just leave it alone. They finally pushed back enough to clear the rocks on shore and began to zig-zag their way along our camp shore, and towards Sandpit. After they disappeared, Matthew said, “They are gonna have a LONG week”. I replied, “Maybe not – if they stay on shore.”
We loaded up, and pushed off about 10 towards the entry point. A loon flew over just as we paddled off from camp and gave us a friendly “goodbye” call. It was a bittersweet reminder that this year’s adventure was nearly over for us.
Even though we took our time crossing Mudro, and going through the crooked creek section out towards the Pickett portage, we found ourselves there in no time.
We drifted up to find 4 canoes, all sitting side by side, being loaded simultaneously by a group of men, taking up the entire put-in, in absolutely no hurry to do anything. They were looking at their maps, discussing how to load, where they were going, etc…even saw us sitting there, but made no effort to clear a spot.
As we sat there, hoping no one ELSE came down the trail behind them, or came up behind US, we contemplated paddling UP the stream towards Pickett, the same way we floated down 6 days ago. But, we could already tell the water was a bit lower, and paddling upstream in that moving water wouldn’t be as easy as the other. Plus, we had our poles out and still together, and didn’t want to risk catching any of the low-hanging branches. So, being in no rush since we were running very early today, we just waited patiently until they were satisfied to have talked everything through while standing there, and paddled in as they finally clambered in, and pushed out.
The trail up to the lot was a very easy 30, and we stashed our gear on the Picket side of the road, then set up our chairs there in the shade. We took a brief moment for prayer and offered our gratitude for the week.
We fished a bit there on the end of Pickett, Matthew more than me. He even caught one more nice Northern just above the drain, over in some reeds. As he reeled it in and pulled it out of the water, a young boy whose group was unloading on the other side of the drain watched him with big wide eyes, and a smile. I figured he was hoping for that kind of luck soon.
Because we started the day on Mudro, and not Fourtown or TCM, we got to the EP much sooner than we had planned and had to wait a bit for our outfitter. It was no big deal. He turned out being earlier than we had discussed at drop-off anyways. The waiting gave us time to reflect on the week together, and for Matthew to help me with any details I might have forgotten for my journal. We read through it and tried to fill in any details that we didn't want to forget.
We loaded our gear into the Suburban, hopped in onto those glorious cushioned seats, and gladly took the cold soft-drinks he had brought for us. *** Mudro Lake, Picket Lake ***