We woke up to a beautiful morning, packed our lunch, and headed out for a day trip to see the pictographs at Fishdance Lake. This turned out to be one of the most beautiful, exciting, and awe-inspiring days I’ve ever spent in the BWCA.

While my girlfriend paddled, I trolled a diving rapala as we headed into the western arm of Malberg. Just before the portage, I hooked a large pike. This fish wasn’t epic, but it’s my biggest yet and the fight was exciting. Once I got him in the boat, I reach for his throat and made a big mistake. Somehow the pad of my thumb pressed up against his sharp gill plate. He thrashed and cut open a big flap of skin. I pinched it closed and held it over the water, feeling blood drip from my fingers. The shock and pain and blood made me feel faint and woozy.

Luckily, my four companions were all in nursing school. During the mayhem, the other canoe had paddled over and fixed themselves to ours. My girlfriend ripped a piece of her shirt off and peeled gorilla tape from her water bottle. In less than five minutes, she had wrapped my thumb tight and stopped the bleeding – while this pike flopped on the boat with a lure still buried in its toothy mouth. Even once I was bandaged I still felt like crap, so, as our companions in the other canoe fed me M&M’s picked out of the trail mix, my girlfriend took the lure out. (Can you tell why I’m with this woman?! What a badass!!) At that point he was brutally banged up from his thrashing and so we decided to clean him for dinner.

We portaged into the muddy inlet where Record Creek empties into the Kawishiwi River. After that, we had a long a beautiful paddled (with only one other portage) all the way down the Native American pictographs on Fishdance Lake. The weather, scenery, and varying width of the river was so beautiful it distracted me from my throbbing thumb the rest of the day.

At Fishdance, the pictographs were time-stopping and the view from the top of the cliff they’re painted on was breath-taking. We relaxed and ate lunch. Then, after carefully swimming around the bottom of the cliff, four of our party took the big jump from the top! Exhilarating! Just before we started our journey back, a squall passed over us. From the top of the cliff we watched wind and rain move across the surface of the water. As we got back in our canoe, the sun came back out to guide our way back to camp.

That evening, we enjoyed an incredible sunset from camp. We ate the pike in delicious burritos. I got a very professional dressing complete with antiseptic ointment and Steri-strips. Over the dressing, I wore a long latex glove that went half-way up my forearm and kept the wound completely dry for the rest of the trip. (Nearly a week later, the doctor told me he definitely would have stitched it up, and that he was amazed the skin flap had stayed attached and healed so well. Again, what an amazing woman!)