Road Trip To The Boundary Waters (15)
The North Woods
My general plan when leaving Sioux City was to cross Minnesota diagonally—as much as possible—from the southwest corner of the state to Ely, which lies in the vicinity of the northeast corner. That way I would see much of the state that I hadn’t seen before and experience the transitions between Minnesota’s main ecological zones: the Tall Grass Prairie, of the southwest, the Eastern Deciduous Forest in the midsection, and the North Woods of the northeast. But from even a cursory look at the map it was apparent that taking an entirely diagonal route through the state is impossible. Roads generally run north to south or east to west. So there would be zigs and zags. The last quarter of the trip, though, would be satisfyingly diagonal.
From Morton I headed northwest toward St. Cloud, formerly positioned at the boundary of the Tall Grass Prairie and The Eastern Deciduous Zone, now mostly the latter. The deciduous forests (also called hardwoods) of Minnesota very much resembled the forests of the Catskills in New York, among other places in the Mid-Atlantic region. I crossed a section of the uppermost Mississippi River and continued generally north into the North Woods, signaled by the increasing number of conifers, mostly hemlocks and pines. The North Woods are a unique mixture of conifers and deciduous trees.
I resisted the temptation of a side trip to Lake Itasca, where the Mississippi originates, and proceeded to Grand Rapids, well into the North Woods, and where the diagonal portion of the trip to Ely commenced. Grand Rapids, Like St. Cloud is on the Mississippi, but closer to its source. The sobriquet “Big Muddy” doesn’t apply to the Mississippi River there, the water still virginal.
Of Rocks and Bugs
From Grand Rapids to Ely, I was looking at the rocks more than the trees. At Hibbing, I paid silent homage to Bob Dylan without stopping. Dylan’s hometown exists solely for the extraction of iron ore from the Mesabi Range of the Iron Mountains. Outside of town is the largest open pit iron mine in the world. I have seen my share of open pit mines, and I would be happy never to see another. The environmental destruction is breath-taking. The toxic wastes alone are well beyond our capacity to contain, and leach through the soil into the groundwater (Think Love Canal on a much larger scale). Abandoned open pit mines are some of the largest superfund sites. Those still in operation, such as the one at Hibbing, will soon join the list.
Once I got to Highway 169, I slowed down below the speed limit to better view the roadcuts, displeasing some locals. I pulled off the highway whenever I could but there weren’t many places to pull out for a vehicle like mine. I was looking for 2.5 billion+ rocks, called Ely Greenstone, which was once basalt, such as you would find in Hawaii (Big Island) and Iceland today. But the Ely basalt cum greenstone erupted underwater and therefor cooled instantly, forming piles of smooth elliptical boulders, called pillows. Pillow basalts are quite unlike the ragged Aa (pronounced ah ah) or the ropey Pohoehoe (Pa hoy hoy) basalts that continue to ooze, fountain and flow from the vents of Kilauea.
Basalts don’t spontaneously metamorphose to greenstones when on the surface, even after a couple of billion years. They must be buried, deeply buried, to a depth where the heat and pressure are sufficient to recrystallize the minerals it contains, sometimes transforming one mineral into another. This is what happens when tectonic plates collide, in this case plates that merged in the final phase of the construction of the Superior Craton.
In Ely, on a side street, there is a fenced boulder of Ely Greenstone. It is dated as 2.7 billion years old. You can still see some of the rounded pillow structures from the original basalt. Ely is proud of its Ely Greenstone, as it should be.
The city hadn’t grown much since I was there last, 37 years ago, almost to the day. But there was an International Wolf Center that hadn’t been there before, and a North American Bear Center as well. I made a mental note to check both out after the canoe trip. I had had fond memories of Ely, and my return didn’t disappoint. It was good to be back, and back in the North Woods.
There are varying interpretations of what counts as the North Woods, which the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources calls The Laurentian Mixed Forest. I’ll use their criterion according to which the North Woods are the transitional zone of mixed deciduous and conifer trees between the predominantly deciduous forests to the south and the predominantly coniferous boreal (Taiga) forests to the north. As a transition zone the North Woods provides wonderful fall colors as in much of the northeast, but the forests don’t look dead in the winter.
There are two major regions of North Woods in the U.S. and adjacent areas of Canada, the eastern North Woods and the midwestern North Woods. The midwestern North Woods includes northeastern Minnesota, the northern half of Wisconsin and the Northern half of Michigan. In Canada, the Midwest North Woods region is mostly in Ontario, in the vicinity of the Great Lakes.
The eastern North Woods includes the Adirondack region of New York, northernmost Vermont and New Hampshire (including the White Mountains), much of Maine (Including Acadia National Park and Baxter State Park, and the St. Lawrence River region of southeastern Ontario and southern Québec (up to Quebec City), including the Laurentide Mountains. I had explored all those areas while living in New York City. The midwestern North Woods, were much less familiar to me. And my early experiences there had been fraught. Mainly because of the superabundant black flies and mosquitos.
I had never heard of black flies until I moved to the east coast, which has—or had—a well defined season, traditionally Mother’s Day to Father’s Day. In my innocence I went on a camping trip to Algonquin Provincial Park--in southern Ontario, Canda--in early June. Algonqin was known for its healthy wolf populations, and I hoped to hear them howling. That hope was short-lived. Immediately upon exiting the car I was set upon by the tiny black fly hellions, which were only visually perceptible in the aggregate. Their no-see-um-ness is part of the problem. Their bites often seem to come out of nowhere. You feel the pin-pricky bites right away but if that were the whole of it black flies wouldn’t be so reviled. It’s the aftermath, which kicks in sooner than mosquito bites and can last longer. While biting, they inject saliva to which our immune systems overreact. After the red pimple, comes oozing clear serum and the initial puncture can become inflamed for days. Simultaneously itchy and sore. And if you’ve been bitten by one black fly, chances are you’ve been bitten by many more, often very many more.
I was back in the car within a minute, along with a hundred black flies. I seriously contemplated sleeping in the car, but a breeze just before sunset sent the black flies to shelter. I knew I needed to set up quick. But that wasn’t in the cards. The tent was new, and I had to follow written instructions, during the reading of which the breeze dissipated and the black flies returned in force. By the time I got the tent stabilized, it was too late to worry about the rainfly. (The fabric that is secured an inch or two above the tent and which provides protection from rain.) Once inside I was in for the night. Psychologically there was no going back out for any reason, except heavy rain. Had I known then what I do now, I would have emerged after dark, enjoyed a leisurely dinner and secured the rainfly. Like mosquitos, most black flies are crepuscular. Which meant that when I emerged from the tent early in the morning, they were all over me again. I dismantled the tent in haste and jammed everything into the back of the car—minus a few tent stakes, it turned out—and drove. No More Algonquin for me.
Having learned of the black fly season, I returned to Algonqin in late July a few years later. And there were no black flies. Just innumerable mosquitos, at least as many as I experienced while camping at Flamingo in the Everglades, and at Kakadu National Park in Northern Australia. (Australian slang for mosquito is mozzie. I bought a T-shirt in Darwin that had printed in front:
Welcome to Darwin
mozzies
mozzies
and more fuckin mozzies.)
The Algonquin mosquitos though, while extremely annoying, were endurable. I would happily exchange a plague of black flies for a plague of mosquitos. I even played with the mosquitos while secure in my tent, tried to see how many I could entice to the mosquito-proof mesh at the front of the tent by breathing heavily. (They are attracted to carbon dioxide.) It was too many to count. I enjoyed teasing them, placing my index finger to the mesh, which caused mosquito frenzies. But when I felt the urge to pee, the word that came to mind was Karma.
Thenceforth, I confined my visits to the North Woods to late August through October. The exception was on a cross-country trip from California to New York City in 2009. The western half of the trip was to be spent camping, the eastern part devoted to cities I wanted to revisit, including museums and breweries. The first city of the latter half was to be Duluth, just because I love the city, then on to Minneapolis (Walker Museum and Surly Brewery), Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago, Field Museum of Natural History, Shedd Aquarium, and Half Acre Brewing, Goose Island Brewing), Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts), Cleveland( Cleveland Museum of Art, and Great Lakes Brewing), Pittsburg (Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Natural History), and Buffalo (Albright Knox Museum). But I couldn’t resist the temptation of a side trip to camp at Voyageurs National Park—though in city mode—while in transit from Grand Forks, North Dakota to Duluth. (Like Algonquin and the Boundary Waters, Voyageurs, is a renowned North Woods destination.) Big Mistake.
I wanted to spend a night stargazing under some of the least light polluted skies in the United States. But that wasn’t in the cards. It had been raining for days and continued to be overcast. The rain had given the mosquitos a second wind.
There’s no camping in Voyageurs N.P. without a canoe. So I had to find a campsite in the nearby Superior National Forest. It was probably a fine campground under non-deluged conditions but when I arrived it was a muddy quagmire, even the grassy areas partially submerged. I eventually located a relatively high grassy area. I would normally have rejected it because of the slope but these were desperate times. I waited in the car for the rain to abate. When it did, I immediately began to set up the tent, one with which I was familiar and proficient. But the end of the rain meant the return of the mosquitos and I was swarmed, acquiring dozens of bites before the base tent was up. Though safe inside, I still had not set up the rainfly. Given the weather, that had to be remedied. This time I decided to wait until it started raining--hopefully lightly, so my sleeping bag wouldn’t get soaked--jump out of the tent, grab the rainfly, which was in the tent, and quickly stake and fasten the rainfly to the tent. I planned each step in my mind, so when the rain started up, I was in virtual autopilot. But even working fast as I possibly could I still sustained a bunch more mosquito bites. Once in the tent, I spent a half hour systematically smashing the dozens that had entered with me. I found this perversely satisfying, especially the ones that left smears of my blood. That was more retrospective revenge than prophylaxis.
I decamped in more rain but fewer mosquitos, all my gear wet, some muddy. When I jammed everything into the car trunk, I transferred the water and mud throughout. But there was no way I cold dry and clean once the rain stopped if ever, because then I would be dealing with the mosquitos. Next stop Duluth, then cities and hotels all the way to New York City.
The North Woods Without Bugs
In Ely, on September 3rd, there was nary a bug in sight. This was the ideal time to be in the North Woods, and perfect for a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters. There were only two downsides to the bug free season, as I had learned on my previous canoe trip here, 37 years prior, almost to the day. First, the absence of water lily flowers; second, the loons were largely gone as well, on their way south to their wintering grounds. I would especially miss the loons, their haunting vocalizations the audible essence of the North Woods. But the temperature was ideal, and the skies clear. I was very much looking forward to tomorrow.