I'm on the water before dawn and paddling through a foggy mist. The lake calmed down by morning and I want to get through fish stake narrows and get as far as I can before the thermal winds pick up again. After turning the corner at the narrows I stop to look and take photos of the ancient pictographs then moved on to warrior hill where I've heard the young native Americans in this corner of the world were required to hold a mouthful of water and climb to the top of the hill to reach the status of warrior. I don't recognize any such hill as one hill looks pretty much like the next so I keep cruising south. As I am paddling along I notice a couple tow boats (for shuttling canoeists and their gear) heading up and down this area. Motor boats are legal here on the Canadian side of the lake. I'm very pleased at what a wonderful paddling day it has turned out to be and make my way to the bottle portage and the end of Lac Le Croix. As soon as I land there and begin to unload my gear I see that it is here that the towboats are dropping off their customers. There are a group of eight guys and four canoes and a few minutes later another couple guys from a nearby campsite pull up in a canoe for a day trip. As I carry my canoe across the portage a couple more guys are crossing the portage from the other direction. I decide to stage my canoe and gear up the trail a bit from the landing and let the madness pass by. Going down the bottle river I come upon another one of those rock gardens to navigate through. When I get to the open water of Iron Lake I decide to look for a campsite right away and move around the lake in a clockwise direction. I stopped and talked to a guy at one campsite for a bit and he asks how long I'll be up here I tell him up to three weeks and he says "I think I hate you". I'm truly lucky to be able to spend so much time in such a quiet, beautiful place. I have to go halfway around the lake before I find both a campsite and one that is open. Iron Lake is no Lac Le Croix in size but it isn't exactly a puddle either. I'm exhausted as I set up camp and make dinner. It's mandarin orange chicken which is mostly rice but not too bad. It's the first I've eaten today other than the usual trail mix I eat while traveling. There is some halfway processed wood here next to the fire grate so I finish the job and make my first BWCA fire of the trip as the sun goes down. I saw a couple more swans on the way to the site. Maybe they are the same ones. I would say they are trumpeter swans from the way they are sounding off tonight. Sound really travels well over the lake on a calm night.

On war: When I was young one of my greatest fears was having had to go to the Vietnam War. Thankfully, the war ended before I became of age. I don't think much of war or the soldiers who are manipulated into fighting them. Still, our world is very much is the way it is because of the outcome of wars. Since so much of man's efforts have been the prosecution of war there must be something to learn from it. There was a Prussian soldier, on the losing side against Napoleon, named Clausewitz who wrote an obscure book called "On War". It is now considered a brilliant book that one professor commented, "Like a lot of genius' he thinks the reader is as smart as he is". I have not read this myself nor do I intend to but have heard enough about it to understand the gist of it. The Supreme commander of the allies in WWII, and later President of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower, studied Clausewitz as a junior officer when he was stationed in Panama at the suggestion of his commander. As I understand Clausewitz there are three things to consider when thinking about going to war or the waging of the war once you are in it. First, consider the political attitudes of the civilian population. Second, consider the genius of the military command. And thirdly, consider the sophistication of your weapons. You must take these three things and intertwine them with those same things of your opponent. Also, knowing when to declare victory or concede defeat is important. In America's war in Vietnam, she won every battle but lost the war because of politics. There are many instances in war when a war continues way beyond the original intent only to end in disaster. In the late 1800’s a country called Prussia went to war with another that still exists-Austria. Prussia wanted to unite all of the Germanic countries but first had to defeat Austria to do it. In the decisive battle the Prussians launched a three prong attack but only two of the three armies showed up on time. Prussia nearly lost and if the third army had showed up an hour later than they did then Austria would have won the war and Germany would not have united so there likely would have been no world war one and therefore there would have been no world war two-all because of an hour. What at first seems to be a little thing can sometimes bring about dramatic results at later time. The reason that the world became dominated by the white people is because in Europe the countries were small and numerous. They constantly feuded with one another and when one began to get too powerful the others would temporarily put aside their differences and unite against them. So it went for hundreds of years, nations bankrupting their economies in an arms race to fight wars and in doing so sometimes caused their own civil wars. Finally they all were so much better at war that the people of places like Africa, India, the Americas and even your very own Philippines could not stand up to their weaponry. The white power structure isn’t here because they are better than anyone else. One could even argue that they generally rule the world because they are less evolved than the rest of humanity. For the good people of the world right and wrong has nothing to do with winning and losing. All this may not seem like useful information to you, Mariel, but keep it in the back of your mind as you go through life and have hard decisions to make. Most of being truly smart is relating knowledge to different situation