Road Trip To the Boundary Waters (16)

Everything's Going to Hell, Except The Canoes.

16. seagull versus packsack

On my first trip to the Boundary Waters in 1987 I was accompanied by Les Beletsky, a friend from graduate school. We had convened in Madison, Wisconsin--he from Seattle, me from SF--for an academic conference, during the first week of September. We left the conference a day or two early, after we had both finished our oral presentations, rented a car and drove to northern Minnesota.

We were greeted by our host, a friendly man about our age. He and his wife of about the same age had recently established the operation called Seagull Outfitters, named for the lake on which it resided. Our host seemed somewhat incongruously well-groomed for that neck of the woods: pressed and belted short pants into which an Ivy-league-ish knit short-sleeve shirt was neatly tucked. But his attire notwithstanding we soon learned that he was native to the area and had spent many days and nights canoeing in the Boundary Waters backcountry.

Neither Les nor I had brought to Madison anything of use for a canoe trip; we needed to be fully outfitted. By fully outfitted, I mean everything necessary for the weeklong trip. Food for instance, which was excellent. For the first night they had packed steaks in ice. All the meals, except lunches, were planned, complete with menus and cooking instructions. One night we attempted a berry cobbler. That was a mess, but it still tasted good. All the food, the cooking gear, tents, pads, sleeping bags and clothing were distributed and packed by the outfitter in several waterproof packsacks.

That trip had been partly planned over the phone but in the interim our host had decided a somewhat different route would be more appropriate for novices like us, including a layover day. He carefully went over the newly mapped trip with us, indicating larger lakes for which we needed to hug the shorelines when it got windy. High winds are a bugaboo for canoes, partly because if they are not blowing in the direction you want to go, paddling quickly gets wearisome. And partly because wind whipped waves render canoes unstable for all but the most skillful.

While scrutinizing the map, I noticed that the portage lengths were indicated by an obscure measure called “rods”. Our host explained that one rod was roughly a traditional (birchbark?) canoe length. The practice of measuring by rods was retained for tradition’s sake from the days of the Voyageurs. Maybe if I lived in the area and canoed there frequently, I could develop an intuition for rod-based measurements, but that wasn’t going to happen in one week. The best I could do was note the number of rods for our first portage then estimate the relative distances of subsequent portages based on that. By the end of the week, I knew that 100 rods was close to my limit.

The cabin at which we were to stay before and after the trip, was well appointed, and extremely clean. The two beds were topped with comfortable mattresses, pillows and bedding. Our hosts suggested for dinner a small restaurant nearby and recommended their walleye, one of the most sought-after fishes by sports fishermen in the region but a species for which there is no commercial fishery to my knowledge. The walleye, my first ever, was delicious, and secured a place in my piscine pantheon. Les abjures fish, along with many other tasty things. I don’t remember what he ordered, but it was undoubtedly a beef product.

RIP Roger Hahn

While writing this I became curious to know if Seagull Outfitters was still in business. I did a Google search and discovered that it was. I next attempted to determine if the ownership was the same as it was in 1987. It didn’t seem so. A woman named Deb Mark was listed as the sole proprietor. But the name, “Deb”, rang a bell, so I investigated further and discovered that Deb had in fact been the proprietor since just before our 1987 trip. There were many testimonials to her engaging personality and skill in designing canoe trips, which rang true. I also found some pictures of Deb online, which despite the 37 intervening years, seemed familiar, or so I tried to convince myself.

But what about the garrulous guy who had greeted us so warmly? I tracked him down online as well, through an obituary unfortunately. His name, I relearned, was Roger Hahn. He had died in 2016 at the age of 61. I knew he was the guy, because according to the obituary he had (co-) owned Seagull Outfitters until around the year 2000. But I was puzzled that according to the obituary he had lived for nearly ten years in southern California. Why had a man, not just Minnesota born and raised, but a Minnesota resident for most of his adulthood, decided in his middle-age to take a leap into an environment as alien from northern Minnesota as it is possible to get in these dis-United States? Outside of Hawaii, perhaps.

The answer to that puzzle seemed to be in the phrase “the love of his life”, evidently Roger’s description of the woman to whom he was married at the time of his death, who was clearly not Deb. I don’t know why the news that the love of Roger’s life was not Deb saddened me, other than that they had seemed like “a perfect couple”. Upon reflection, I had to chuckle, recalling that the “perfect couple” thing had been said of me and my second ex-wife. (Though never, to be clear, said of me and my first ex-wife.) How could I, a veteran of two failed marriages, be surprised and disappointed that the union of Roger and Deb had floundered. I continue to be mystified by myself.

In the Land of Trump Once More

Our outfitter for the current canoe trip was called Packsack Outfitters. It was located in a town called Winton, a few miles northeast of Ely but culturally much further. There were Trump signs in front of every house, sometimes two, one on each end. My dread of the impending election plunged deeper.

This was far from the first time I had been made aware that for many of the places to which I am most attracted, the human element is unappealing. And increasingly, threatening. Especially so if you come bearing a California license plate. The autumn before last (2022), I was warned by friends in Helena Montana to avoid the area around Kalispell in the northwest corner of the state. I had planned to visit the area, as I had several times before. But things had changed. Right wing extremists, including white supremacists, had increasingly emerged from the bushes to proudly proclaim themselves, strutting in quasi military attire, their handguns implicit. The right-wing extremists were always there, but since 2016, when Trump was first elected, they have been disinhibited. Now that Trump has been reelected the social environment will only worsen. (As will the natural environment.)

I took heed of my friends’ advice and didn’t stop in Kalispell. But I had to refuel in Sandpoint, Idaho, not far there, I was confronted by a man as I exited a small convenience store with ice for my cooler. He asked me “is that your car”, clearly eyeing the license plate. I affirmed that it was. He then said, “you’re a long way from home”. I wish I had had a snappy retort; the best I could do was “I’ve been a lot further”. In the car driving away, I came up with much better replies, such as “you need to get out more”, or “my home is wherever I pitch my tent”, or “America is my home”. I mentally scratched that last one because it is no longer true. If it ever was. (It was this exchange that inspired the “Far From Home” title for this section of my posts.)

When I arrived at Packsack Outfitters around 6:00 p.m. I was surprised by the number of automobiles in the dirt parking area. Mine was the only sedan. Fortunately, most had come to fish. In front of the main building there were two canoes on the grass. They were made of a quite different material than the canoes Les and I had used in 1987. The canoes then were aluminum, these were some kind of synthetic material, Kevlar it turned out. I lifted the front end of one and was impressed by the absence of weight. Canoe technology had obviously advanced. I didn’t know how this new technology would facilitate movement on the water, but I recognized that a Kevlar canoe would mean less arduous portages.

Portage is the not-so-fun part of canoe trips. And even in this region of North America where there seems to be more water than land, the waters are separated by terrestrial spaces of varying distances over which all gear, canoes included, must be carried--the portage. Portages are generally of short distances by hiking standards, but when carrying a canoe and packsacks full of food, clothes and camping gear, subjective distances seem very much longer. Or so it seemed when portaging with the aluminum canoe in 1987.

It was apparent then that transporting our canoe overland was a two-man job, one in the front one in the back. We instinctively took opposite sides and bore the weight of the canoe on our shoulders. It didn’t take long, though, for those shoulders to get sore, requiring a switch of sides. Our first portage was fairly short, but surprisingly steep, laborious going up, precarious going down. (Tripping and slipping were hazards when carrying the canoe on every portage then.) It was a relief to unburden ourselves of the canoe at the end. But there was still the matter of the four packsacks left on the other end. Their retrieval took too more round trips. (Eventually we learned to double up on the packsacks by wearing them front and back, so that each portage required only two round trips.)

In examining the Kevlar canoe on the lawn in front of Packsack Outfitters, I could see that it was meant to be carried by a single person. There were padded areas in the midsection for ease of transport. Portages seemed to have become much less daunting since 1987. The outfitter operation, though, was much less inviting than what I had experienced with Seagull.