Day 3
Monday September 19, 2022
I woke up in the dampness of the evening rain. Just enough to make you feel like you’re in a rain forest and to keep dry eyes at bay. Perfect for me. But this rain forest is cool. Jacket weather. This lonely place, lonely in the lovely sense, is devoid of numbers. No weather station or thermometer. No miles to travel, just lakes to connect. Should we count the rings on a downed tree? Why? This ancient forest is as old as my eyes. No numbers needed.
Terry asks, “What day is it?” I want to know, “Will we run out of coffee?” This is pragmatism. We should let it go.
Today we leave everything except a PB&J behind and head for North and South Lakes. We paddle north to our first portage 63 connecting us to Section Pond. So easy sans gear. I feel I need to know the difference between a pond and a lake but I can’t find that out, and why would I? I’m living the pond and the lake.
The paddle starts as a narrow channel of knocked down reeds in the middle of a pond of reeds. So this is pond. But it opens into what looks like a small lake. So this is a pond too. We’re looking for the next portage 73. This will allow us to reach North and South Lakes both because they’re connected. In this vast wilderness there are no signs anywhere. You know the approximate location of lakes, campsites and portages by reading a map.
We’ve become quite good at finding portages. “Oh look, I think it could be there. There’s something that looks like a possible landing area with a bit of opening in the trees.”
So there we were on the other side of the portage in between North and South Lakes. We head north hoping to find a passage to Snow Bay or Lac La Croix, which is divided down the middle between Canada and the US.
We had to follow the parted waters in a field of water lilies some of them still holding blooms. A ways up we found the passage blocked by a beaver dam and decided to turn back. We headed down to South Lake which could have been a copy of North Lake but it ended in a stone wall with a loon in the water diving and making it’s occasional call.
We reversed our travel to head home before any rain fell. Our evening offered fishing, meditation, and campfire glow. Shortly after we started the fire, we needed to douse it as the daily rain finally made it to us.
Mountain Peace 