Opening Day in the Boundary Waters ~ May 28, 1987

David Heiller

I did something strange on Opening Day of the 1987 fishing season this year. I went fishing.

Fishing used to be a big deal to me, as a kid. I knew every sunfish hole in a seven mile radius of Browns­ville. The town sits on the Mississippi River, and every kid knows those same sunfish holes.

But there was no Opening Day for sunfish. You catch them all year. And I never seemed to make that leap from panfish to walleyes, like most young Minnesota men do as a rite of passage in their teens or early twenties.

So when a friend asked me if I wanted to go fishing on Opening Day for a long weekend, I didn’t really think about the fishing. My first question was “Where?”

And I knew the answer too, because my friend is cut from the same cloth.

“The BWCA,” he answered.

“Sure, count me in,” I told him, without even checking with my wife.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The BWCA. Canoeing, portages, water, white pines, granite. Primeval wilderness, untouched by man. Loons, moose, wolves, and yes, walleyes, too.

Confession time: I am 33 years old, and I had never been camping in the BWCA. There are reportedly only 56 other Minnesotans like me still alive. Well, 55 now.

We left Dave’s house, three of us, and picked up the fourth man in Moose Lake at about 3:30 a.m. Friday morning. We each had about four hours of sleep under our belts, but still three of us sat awake and watched the night pass by the van’s headlights. The fourth man, Paul, has made some 30 trips into the BWCA. He slept on a sleeping bag in the back.

The coveted paddles.
 David did get his own Misukanis paddle.

We put our two canoes in at the end of Fernberg Road east of Ely at about 8 a.m., and paddled most of the day. I took the stern, with Paul working the front. Our canoe looked like a pinball as I tried to keep us straight. Dave and Jim in the other canoe gained on us. Both had custom-made canoe paddles from Vince Misukanis of Moose Lake. One was even autographed. Paul and I agreed that they had an unfair advantage with those Cadillac paddles, but watching Dave keeling in the stern of his Grumman, back erect and shoulders driving the paddle, I knew better and hoped I could do that someday.

We made some 15 miles to Lake Insula by late afternoon, until caught by a thunderstorm. Paul, who was now in the stern and keeping us straight, broached the decision to camp. “If lightning hits them,” he said, nodding to Jim and Dave up ahead, “it will shoot across the water and get us too.”

Paul and Dave on the rocks of the BWCAW.

We pulled in at the next campsite, and set up our tents in the rain.

The next four day taught me a lot about the Boundary Waters. We sat on the boulders in front of our tents Friday night and watched satellites whirl overhead. It was o only clear night of the trip. We cooked pancakes for breakfast every morning, except the last. We ate 10 pounds of turkey-pork loaf. We canoed in the rain, we ate in the rain, we went to the bathroom in the rain, we even lit a fire in the rain, because we figured by Sunday, after 24 hours of solid rain, the fire ban that had been imposed must have lifted.

Jim took a first crack at the fire on Sunday morning. Paul and I lay in our tent, listening to him cracking twigs and striking matches. At one point, we imagined the sound of crackling flames, and the smell of smoke. Then Jim muttered something I can’t repeat here, and climbed back into his tent.

Paul had to show his 30 trips of experience, so he crawled into the wet morning, and 20 minutes later, announced in a loud voice. “The water’s boiling for coffee.” In less than five minutes we were all dressed and crouched in front of a leaping fire, drying out our clothes and warming our spirits.

We caught fish too, plenty of walleyes in the one-pound range, and a couple northerns that went four pounds. My fishing highlight came as I returned from a walk around the point where we had camped. As I walked into camp Dave remarked, “Boy the fishin sure hasn’t been much.” At that very instant, Jim’s pole started jerking toward the lake. I ran forward, and five minutes later, had landed a seven-pound northern. That’s not much by many standards, but except for a 10-pound carp from my beloved Mississippi in 1968, it was the biggest fish of my life.

The gang.

We started home on Monday, and by late that afternoon, were passing through familiar territory for Paul. He must have camped on every spot on Lake Four, as he pointed out fishing holes and good memories. He gestured toward a jack pine that grew on a tiny slab of rock at the edge of Lake Four. The tree grew at a 45-degree angle, a crazy tree growing on a crazy spot.

“That tree has been there as long as I can remember,” Paul said. “See, it points the way to Lake Four.”

Sure enough, coming from Lake Three, the tree was a perfect landmark of the right direction.

“And you know, some day some fool is going to cut that tree down,” he said.

“No, that’s nuts, no one would do that,” I said. “Why would they?”

“Because it’s unique, it’s special, and people like to destroy special things,” he answered.

We pulled into a campsite, and I started to see what Paul was talking about. The site was littered with plastic pop bottles, empty cans, and broken glass. We moved on to the next campsite. I was shocked to see more of the same. It seemed the closer we got to civilization, the more we saw the litter of our fellow campers. At the second site, someone had even sawed off a foot-long section of root from a towering white pine, apparently for fire wood. I thought of Paul’s dire prediction and saw a glint of truth.

The Boundary Waters left me with many other impressions. There’s something special about the camaraderie of camping with three other men. There’s something special about missing your wife and children. There’s even something special about Opening Day, although that was just a pretense. And there’s something special about the Boundary Waters, despite the garbage and destruction we saw the last day, something special that everyone who spends time there is sure to take back with them to the everyday world of work and family. It’s something I look forward to again someday.