Of Mice and Canoers and Rain

It was going to be an awesome trip--four nights in the Boundary Waters with my wife and dad. First week of October--the colors would rub our jaded city eyes like a rainbow massage. Dad was a lifelong Minnesotan, yet this would be his first trip--had to mean things would go well. The saying goes something like Mother Nature is a sweet seductress to newcomers, though once you commit she regularly pummels you. But this was the old feller’s first trip so surely we'd be fine.

It rained for four days--a cold sopping deluge--when it wasn’t fog or drizzle it was coming down at a rate to worry Noah.

Another thing we saw much of was mice. At our final camp I left a food bag out while cooking dinner, then stashed it my wife’s and my tent. We ate, lied about how the weather would be the next day and turned in when the rain recommenced.

Tucked in our bags we heard sounds of unseen nocturnal scamperings. Every time I turned on my light there was nothing. Burrowing back toward sleep came a noise very near. I raised my head and saw a mouse on my chest. I sat with a start and shrieked as it ran onto my shoulder, across my neck and down my other arm. My wife shot up and we managed to chase it out and settle in finally for some sleep. But as soon as our headlamps were off, the rustling was back and louder. Lights back on, there at our feet were two sets of bright glistening eyes. As we then surmised, three mice had crawled into the foodbag in its brief minutes of accessibility.

Sometime in the wee hours I tested my hand for dryness against the nylon floor. I did it again to make sure, because what I was feeling was a waterbed--three to four inches had accumulated in a pond under the tent. I woke my wife and we piled our gear into the highest corner. It was a well used campsite and all the tent pads were worn depressions in the thin soil. I donned my rain coat and began digging a trench to drain the new lake.

The rain stopped for a while in the morning, but started by the time we were on the water. Reaching the final stretch, a few mile paddle across large Brule Lake, raindrops were shooting straight into our faces. By now our gear was wet, so the prospect of hanging out for the wind to die was infinitely inferior to the hot tub and sauna waiting in Grand Marais. The headwind made the paddling a crawl and the cold rain sapped strength and soaked clothes. By the time we reached the end of a bay the waves were smashing over the bow. My wife was huddled and praying (something I’d never seen her do) in the center of the boat. Dad shouted through the blow that we should turn around and retreat to a small island recently passed. We lay hard into our paddles and spun the canoe in the trough between two waves and shot into the calm water behind the island.

We spent four hours shivering in a tiny clearing amongst dripping cedar and pine boughs. Looking toward the lake, trying to gauge whether the water was flattening, I mistrusted my eyes because I had urged us to go the first time. Finally we couldn’t wait any longer and launched. We rounded the island were cautiously excited then giddy at the much calmer water. We still paddled manically, afraid at any moment a giant sweep of water would arise to quash our hesitant relief.

My wife and dad both had to work early the next morning and I figured they’d want to begin the long drive home immediately. But (like mine) their dreams of warmth in the wet cold outdoors had vented from visions of hot sauna steam, so in town we dined on burgers and slipped into the local sweathouse for a restorative cook before the dark return.