Left us feeling we were leaving a day early and filled with thoughts of another good time waiting for us in the future.    Also taught me a lesson. Don't know about you but no matter my age, life keeps coming around to point out my shortcomings. On this trip I kept waiting for our fishing luck to return to the wonders of a half century earlier, back when the smallies were all huge and fought over our lures. A part of me knew it'd never been like that but another part of me wanted to remember otherwise. In numbers, this year's last night was better than any day of the past though average size was a tad smaller. Maybe?    During the refinish work I'd scribed a simple ruler on my paddle. There’s nothing like the truth to take the wind out of a fisherman's sails. My hog eighteen incher measured out at sixteen and a half. Brian's twenty incher at a tad over eighteen. No doubt it was the same in '66. The truth hurts. And enlightens. Simply put, on our final evening we caught us quite a few. Good enough to call it quits with light still on the water.    I could say more about the fishing but will leave it at Brian caught the most, biggest and for a middle aged man, sure got excited when he had a rod bender on the line. Though I caught a few, my joy was working the boat, silently drifting the breeze along the shore and watching the fun going on up in the bow. And the inevitable pulling into shore so Brian could free his spinner from rocks, brush, trees and pine squirrels. Accommodation makes the world go round.

   In camp we cooked, ate, putzed, talked incessantly and slept. Had three books between us but limited ourselves to one paragraph, read aloud. But she was a good paragraph, the opening passage of "A River Runs Through It." We might’ve read on but feared a let down. Besides, there was too much to discuss, though what we talked of escapes me at the moment. Most conversation is like that. Comes and goes, passes time and rarely is any matter of consequence settled. But it surely is entertaining. We didn't agree on everything and didn't come to blows over anything. Let's say we again reached a state of balance along the line of, Brian didn't say anything bad about my cooking and I said little about the terrible gas it gave him, though doing so pained both of us.    A man I once worked with was a canoe man. Did dozens of trips into the Boundary Waters and points north. His standard of trip perfection was the trifecta of good weather, no bugs and good fishing. That's pretty much what Brian and I had.    'Bout the only drawback was sleep. We both had quality pads and bags. As in year's past we used our clothes as pillows. Compared to the voyageurs we slept in the lap of luxury. Those old boys slept under the canoe. The wealthy ones could afford softer rocks to use as pillows. I shook my head in disbelief when I first read they rarely got more than four hours sleep when on the trail. Then I gave some thought to mosquitoes and having to sleep under a north canoe. Any more shuteye would have found them short on blood. Doubt they had ponchos to roll up in like we had in Vietnam. The bugs must have eaten those Frenchmen alive.    Sleeping on the ground got better with each night but not our lack of pillows. Clothes may wear soft but folded, they sleep hard. We'd both had packable camp pillows in the past and found them lacking. Could be we'll reconsider. In 'Nam, when I was twenty-two, I wore my helmet in sleep with my head nestled softly in the liner's webbing. Maybe it's not so much the pillow but the age of the resting head? Seemed like the more time we spent on the water, the better we slept. Fatigue induces sleep; just ask the voyageurs.    Our trip out was a comparative joy. We'd knocked down twenty pounds of food, dumped seven pounds of melted ice and burned four pounds of gas. Comparing that to the thirty we could drop the next trip and the future looked bright. 'Course, next year we'd each be a year older. Two steps forward, one back.    I'd like to say it was mine or Brian's idea to make a list of the unnecessary as we revisited Highway 61 on our way home but that'd be a lie. It was Lois on my 'we're not dead yet, just smell like it' phone call who goaded me into being rational. The list now sits on my old desk back home.