Tranquility floats in Boundary Waters
AREA WILDERNESS, MINN. >> Every paddle stroke sprinkled water drops, reflecting the setting sun like sparklers across the black, glacier-carved lake.
Just a few hours earlier, I had been portaging on an ankle-deep muddy trail with that 55-pound canoe balanced over my head, shielding me from a chilly downpour.
That contrast is the essence of the wilderness experience in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters.
The physical effort required to explore its offthe-grid remoteness — including carrying a canoe solo on slippery, rocky trails — makes every worry evaporate like steam off woolen socks strung over a campfire.
And once your only concerns become basic — keeping chipmunks away from the breakfast oatmeal or securing tarps against the wind whooshing through the woods — you have nothing to do but soak in the beauty.
Covering over 1 million acres along the Minnesota-Canada border, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness protects more than a thousand lakes, rocky islets, and towering evergreen forests that are usually icefree from May into October.
There are plenty of walleyes, pikes and loons along its 1,200 miles of lily padlined canoe trails, but no electricity, no motors (except on a few big entry lakes), and no cellphone or Wi-Fi signals in the vast majority of the wilderness.
If you want those, or a shower, bed and restaurant meals, there are plenty of nearby spartanto-five-star lakeside cabins and lodges.
Deep inside the wilderness, the luxury is the silence, quieting everything to the same stillness of the glossy lake surfaces that mirror the bursts of stars or the spindly pine trees. Even planes cannot fly below 4,000 feet here.
That fragility makes the Boundary Waters’ soothing moments all the more precious, like watching the moon rise from a rocky outcrop amid the throbbing of the loons’ haunting call, and that of paddle-sore muscles.
But to really get away might just be the ultimate splurge.