On the moonlit waters of Lake Insula ~ May 26, 1988

David Heiller

The moon slid above the western horizon about a third of the way into the sky before Paul spotted it through the pine trees. He and we three other men turned from our seats around the campfire to peer at it, yellow and soft in the spring haze. It didn’t throw much light as it approached its first quarter stage last Friday, May 20.

“Let’s go out on the lake.” I threw out the suggestion to my three companions, much like we threw out bait from the big rocks in front of our campsite on Lake Insula in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, hoping for a fish but not worrying about it.

“I remember once when we canoed in with a full moon,” Paul Dwyer said. The Duluth man was a veteran of this neck of the North Country.

“You couldn’t portage though?” I asked.

Paul answered with a healthy expletive, one not too strong for the campfire, but a little heavy for a weekly newspaper. “It was beautiful. Everything looked like a negative image of a picture.”

“So who wants to go out?” I repeated.

“Yeah, I’ve been out in a full moon like that,” Dave Landwehr answered, crouching over the cast iron grill that had “U.S. Forest Service” molded on top. “It’s nice.”

The Sturgeon Lake man’s voice said it was nice indeed, but it added a tone that said a soft seat on a boat cushion by a fire was nicer still.

Jim in the BWCAW

“C’mon Jim, whatdaya say?” I said, turning to Jim Ryczek for my last hope.

The Wisconsin man looked at the fire. “I don’t know,” he hesitated.

“Go,” Paul and Dave said almost simultaneously.

“I guess that's not such a bad idea,” Jim agreed.

We walked past our two tents, down to the bank to Dave’s 15-foot Grumman. We grabbed our Misukanis canoe paddles. I crawled in first, walking easily down the middle while Jim steadied the bow. It was easy keeping balance with none of our 100 pounds of gear on board.

Jim put one foot in the boat and pushed off with the other, leaving the shore without much notice. In that instance, we were in another world, a world of dark water and shadows and pale stars and that yellow, banana-shaped moon. For the past two days we had seen blue skies and bluer water. We had seen an eagle nesting atop a white pine. We had startled two moose, a cow and a spike bull, off an island hide-away, and paddled respectfully after them as they stretched and swam across a channel to disappear into the brush. We had seen mergansers mating, and 10-pound northerns flopping on the end of our stringers.

But the moon seemed to pull us to the dark water, and quickly showed us another side of the Boundary Waters.

We paddled west at first, seeking as much faint light as we could. We circled around a small bay, off the main western body of Insula. A thick shadow lay at the edge of the water, where the jack pines met their reflection.

“Get a little closer to shore,” Jim said, pointing his paddle to the northern shore. Butterflies rose in my stomach as we steered toward the trees, looming ever larger until they seemed to grab at the moon with their tips and smother what little light we had.

“I can see,” Jim said. “We’re fine.” Did he sense my butterflies, or maybe have a few of his own.

The whole crew.

We paddled along the edge of the bank, perhaps 10 yards off, maybe 10 inches. The darkness was too thick for me. But we could hear the shore, hear the closeness of the paddles as they dug into water, and the water as it split the front of the canoe and dribbled off with a metallic sound.

We cleared the bay and paddled across lake toward two islands north of the campsite. We could see the campfire’s red glow now, and see the two men lying on their pads alongside it. The water split up ahead, and we caught a blur out of the corner of our eyes. Then came a heavy ker-PLUSH, as the fish returned to the dark water from a high jump. The sound was repeated to our right. Some powerful northerns were showing off for us, and as their bellies hit the water with that heavy ker-PLUSH, I could imagine they were even bigger than the 10-pounders that Jim had pulled in three hours earlier a short distance away.

We continued on, around another island, losing sight of our campfire. But the moon stayed with us, following us south as we talked softly and paddled on. We came into view of the campsite again. Is there anything so reassuring on a dark, silent lake? We put our paddles down and floated. A slight breeze, barely noticeable, pushed us south, rocking the canoe slightly.

Then a loon called from the southern part of Insula, perhaps half a mile or more away. The cry was two syllables, the second longer than the first. The sound carried across the lake and bounced off the shore and back at us softly, so that the echo was repeating even as the first call hung in the loon’s throat.

Another loon to the north answered with a higher-pitched series of cries, like a gull, only deeper and richer. The sounds layered the lake, with the echoes adding to the spell. Their calls are hard to describe. Maybe they have to be heard on such a night to understand why the loon is the unquestioned master and symbol of the Boundary Waters.

The moon had climbed higher, now nearly overhead. Jim and I both sat up in the canoe at the same time, and headed back to the glow of the campfire. We had been guests of the moon and the water, the loons and fish. And we felt very lucky indeed because we knew we had been given something more precious than a fortune, an experience and memory to take back with us as we left the moonlight and the Boundary Waters.

It’s a memory we look forward to reliving, and exploring in a new light, again.