Day2

A couple restless hours later I woke to twilight and a light rain. This was not quite the ‘bright & early’ start I had imagined and so I abandoned that in favor of dozing in the warm bag for another hour or so. Eventually I pulled on my rain shell and took a run to the can. I sat in the car and had breakfast: a banana and two doughnuts. It really is a luxury to savor the sugary calories without guilt- knowing you have long days of paddling to burn them off! When else can you ever get away with eating two doughnuts?? A hot coffee would have really countered the cold rain, but that gear was packed and I decided that cooking at the EP might cross the line into illegal ‘camping’. Anyways, I was starting to get excited about heading out. I took a solid 30 minutes in the rain outside near the parking lot to just organize gear in the canoe and carefully plan how I would handle a pack/portage routine by myself. This turned out to be time well spent. Finally, 25 rods from the car I was able to get on the water with a paddle in my hands.

I have to talk about the canoe:

After research on the forum and much internal deliberation I rented a Northstar Magic…. and it was. Oh wow, this canoe was something! My comparison has been plastic and alum river boats and kevlar tandem trippers, but the Magic must be the ferrari of canoes. It’s light, sleek, fast, sexy. It has a mid-engine placement. It held myself and gear with stable poise and handled well. The rather extreme tumblehome is awesome- it felt like I could almost sweep my paddle directly under the center of the boat. In calm water I found a 4-stroke/switch rhythm to track straight and fast. It was downright fun to paddle.

I blew by tandem groups, knowing that 2 paddlers should be faster than 1 (okay, most were youth groups, or people not pushing hard like I was...but still it felt cool) At times I was the brave warrior silently stalking in my canoe with nary a splash, or sometimes turning toward the opposite shore with breakneck speed that only the fastest messenger has. I was by myself so the trip could be anything I wanted and I could change pace on a whim to quietly observe a shoreline or push to make camp a little further away. I had taken both single blade and double blade paddles with the boat rental, thinking I would use both. It turns out I didn’t like the kayak paddle at all: It was difficult to hold a heading with any sort of wind, and no matter where I put the drip rings I got a ton of water in my lap and in the boat. It spent the majority of the trip bungeed under the seat. I used the Wenonah carbon lite bentshaft paddle 95% of the time. Even at the end of the day it felt like a weightless extension of my body; switching sides effortlessly without breaking rhythm. 53in was a perfect length for me. I liked the paddle so much that on return I asked Piragis if I could buy it as an end-of-season closeout and they gave me an amazing deal. The magic canoe was my sleek chariot of freedom and, as I was to find out, would be my time machine.

I barely remember paddling through Mudro, Sandpit, TinCanMike: all smaller and somewhat protected lakes. I did see a group camped on sandpit- presumably still sleeping-in in a soggy camp. It was the entry to Horse lake I remember because I got my first taste of a wind reaching south across the lake. I was paddling the double blade and having a heck of a time keeping a course. The fight kept me warm, though and I rolled my pants up and vented the jacket. By the time I entered the Horse river the rain had subsided. About the river: it flows North from Horse lake towards Basswood. My voyager map showed three portages but I only ever encountered two. The water level was at its normal September low and research told me to be prepared to line the canoe at some points. I never did this, but there were at least three little riffles through narrow areas and boulder fields that were tricky to pass. With a kevlar boat and carbon paddle i felt like I had no sturdy tools to guide myself through the meandering flow between rocks. I was certain to put some deep scratches in the boat or bust the paddle, but I passed relatively unscathed. The best strategy at times with the narrow boat was to hang one leg off each side in front of me and brace my feet against rocks as I kept the bow pointing downstream. In retrospect I am left wondering where exactly the third portage might have been.

I ate lunch at the end of the last portage and took a bit of a rest as no one else was around. I noticed some bright red rose hips off the trail and picked a handful to take home. (I brew beer, and had a berlinnerweisse aging at home and thought the wild rose hips would add an awesome flavor to the sour beer.) As I was packing the canoe a guy came down the portage trail with a pack. I said hi and paddled on my way. The second half of the Horse river is a flatter and wider path through the grass. I was paddling fast to stay away from the group behind me. Somewhere I must have hit 88mph with 1.21 jigawatts of power as it was here I had the first time-travel experience of the trip:

July 8 2015: I could hear the falls long before I saw them. Exiting the Horse river and paddling across the small lower bay of basswood lake- The large sandy canoe landing was visible from the opposite shore, and it is located just upstream of the falls. JUST UPSTREAM. I was thinking of the boy that was swept over this year and required a 7 hour rescue as the taco’d canoe had him pinned at the base of the falls. From the upstream side you can clearly see the lateral current drawing towards the cascade. It is easy to imagine how an inexperienced paddler might get into trouble: a large group of 4 canoes all approaches the landing at once, but the one furthest left is a little too close to the falls: the paddlers cease to paddle as they approach the landing: perhaps waiting for a spot to land. In an instant they realize their peril as the boat is drawn sideways away from the landing. They make a last-ditch effort to paddle hard but it is too little too late and just enough to point the canoe towards the landing: they must have gone down sideways or backwards. It would have been terrifying to experience or even to watch from shore. There is power in these falls. The water turns a 30 degree corner as it rushes through a chasm to the spinning lake 30 feet below. And this is in Fall with lower water levels. Lucky is a mild term. Even the prospect of a 7 hr pin between canoe and rock before a successful rescue is daunting: the roar of the water is loud, and with a sharp yell you would still have trouble communicating with people up on the bank. The scene was playing out before me in a very real sense as I watched the water cascade down into Crooked lake, and the news blurb I had heard 2 months before was suddenly live before me in vivid detail. The falls are beautiful, but were screaming of danger as I was imagining that day.

It was around 3pm and this was my planned camp for the night. No one was here. I quickly scouted three of the campsites around the falls and decided on the one due west (directly across the bay) from the falls, on a low bluff over the start of Crooked lake. I went about setting up camp and at some point rearranged the rocks around the fire grate into a much better kitchen. One other group portaged the falls later and camped at the site right next to (South) of them. I really didn’t see or hear them the rest of the evening.

I got back into the boat and fished the area around the falls a little. The clouds had broken into a partly-cloudy sky with occasional rays of evening sun. It was beautiful as the golden colors came out of the rocks. It was too light out for any long-exposures of the falls and, not finding things quite right for any photographic inspiration, I tried to pose for some self-portraits.

When the sun was below the horizon I returned to my camp and prepared dinner. Some hot water over the alcohol stove and I was soon eating cranberry chicken and rice perched over lower basswood falls. I was happy. I reflected on the day that was never bad, but had seemed to get better as each hour passed. I hope my toddlers aren’t driving their mother crazy, and I hope I can share this with them someday. I sipped some good Rye I had brought with and sat, quite content. Throughout the trip, in fact, dinnertime was meditative and something I enjoyed every day.

Once darkness fell I retired to bed- quite early by my normal schedule but there wasn’t anything else to do in the dark. Being that the weather was good, I had the hammock up in the open with the tarp still wrapped up in the skins. I was worried I’d get the heebie jeebies my first night out, but I was tired and had no trouble falling asleep. The dull noise of the waterfall was pleasant.

A while later I woke up for no particular reason. I heard an intermittent noise to my left and of course assumed it was a scary monster animal. I had to pee anyway so I got up to take a look. The sound turned out to be the mild waves of the lake lapping against the shore...(but it could have been a giant bear)… On my way back to the hammock I saw the unmistakable glow of the aurora borealis. ...and not like I’d ever seen it before. No pillars, or lines, or flashes- but a solitary blob of green that just shifted around and changed shape. Very cool to see it in the wilderness with no internet or satellite data or anything. I was very excited and took photos for awhile and went back to bed. Things were starting to get kind-of dewey so I staked out the tarp for the rest of the night.