Jim and I were paddling across the east end of Vera Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area last Friday when Jim let out a holler. “There’s a bear in our camp!”
We were about a quarter mile away. You don’t realize how slowly a canoe travels until you paddle toward a campsite that contains your food pack and a bear in the same tree.
We bore down on the camp. “Paddle Dave, paddle!” Jim said. I wasn’t exactly dozing in the sun. We started yelling. The bear must have heard us. It dropped out of the tree and scampered happily into the woods.
We had hung the food pack in a tree, like we always do on our annual trip into lake country. We knew a bear would come calling. The day before, it had left teeth marks on a few dry food items by our fire grate. Things in plastic bottles that we don’t usually hang, like rice and salt.
It struck pay dirt on that first visit too: we had accidentally left out a quart of Heiller’s Pure Maple Syrup. It bit through bag and bottle and licked it up. That made us as mad as it made the bear happy.
Then Jim and I had to watch from the water while the bear hung like a double-jointed gymnast and picked out other goodies, such as the blueberry pancake mix and Cindy’s chocolate chip bars.
It gets worse.
Early Saturday morning the bear returned. We heard a crashing noise by the lake. Jim crawled out of his bag and shined his flashlight on a very big black bear on the ground below the food pack. It raced away, but not before taking a jar of Tang and a bag of apples and the last of the bread.
That was enough for us. He was eating us out of tent and campsite. We figured if we stayed any longer, he’d take over the cooking duties for Dave, and Dave is pretty touchy when anyone growls about his cooking.
So on Saturday we headed for new territory. Before we left, Dave scratched on a rock: Beware bear. I hope that bear can’t read.
Blame it on the new guy
It’s all Steve’s fault.
Steve took the place of Paul, who had traveled with Jim and Dave and me for eight straight years up north. We hadn’t even seen a bear in those eight years.
Then along comes Steve, who had dreamed about a bear just a week before the trip. And a bear comes and takes all our food? Pretty suspicious.
In fact, it might have even been Steve up in that tree. It’s been a while since he’s had a shave and a haircut.
 |
| Steve, Jim, Dave, and David: different crew, slightly; different shenanigans, slightly. |
Steve isn’t much of a fisherman. He caught a lot of things, but none of them were fish. Mostly he caught trees and rocks and logs and a lot of good natured ribbing, most of which he gave himself.
Sometimes when Steve got a snag, Jim would coach him off it. Jim missed his calling as a sports announcer. We didn’t catch many fish, so Jim had to practice on snags. “Come back the other way with the line, Steve,” he would say, while Steve’s rod bent against a 10 pound rock bass. “Keep it tight. Now jiggle your rod tip. Now pull from the other side.”
Steve attracted gnats. They may have thought he was a bear. Every evening, he would sit by the fire and a cloud of bugs would settle on him like a hair dryer. Steve would put on his sunglasses to protect his eyes, which worked great for the gnats but didn’t help him see his way around too well by the light of the campfire.
When it rained, Steve donned his new rain suit. The coat fit fine, but the pants were an extra large, something which Steve is not. So the crotch of the rain pants came to his knees, and the hem came out somewhere near the lake. He looked like a little kid in big, rubber-coated pajamas. We all laughed about this too, including Steve.
A lot of laughter and exploring
Laughter is a main ingredient of a good canoe trip. There’s plenty of serious conversation, and times when we don’t talk at all, like on a lake at night when the loons are calling back and forth.
 |
| A new canoe partner for David. |
We recalled Paul trying to keep warm on our first trip, soaked and bedraggled to the bone while he insisted everything was just peachy. And Jim stripping off his clothes and washing up in the lake, then giving us the play by play of what it was like.
And Steve’s rainsuit.
Another part of a good canoe trip is exploring new country. We did that when we canoed down Knife Lake one clear, calm morning. The water was a beautiful emerald green. You could see down 10 feet. We sat in the sun and Dave cut thick slabs of meat and cheese for sandwiches. We climbed Thunderhead Point and could see for miles and miles.
We visited Isle of Pines, where Dorothy Molter lived for 60 years. We found a pile of her old bottle caps. I felt the spirit of the Root Beer Lady in the wind through the huge pine trees and her little lilac bushes.
We didn’t catch fish that day, but Dave put it best when he said it was a perfect day to not catch fish. It was a perfect trip too.
Except for the bear.
No comments:
Post a Comment