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PASSAGES

Saving the best for last

Overnight trip to the BW settles the unfinished business of fatherhood

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 5/20/15

Time slips away. That’s the realization that has weighed on my mind in the past year or so as our son Max, now 20, is on the verge of leaving home, almost certainly for good.

It’s the …

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PASSAGES

Saving the best for last

Overnight trip to the BW settles the unfinished business of fatherhood

Posted

Time slips away. That’s the realization that has weighed on my mind in the past year or so as our son Max, now 20, is on the verge of leaving home, almost certainly for good.

It’s the ultimate goal of parenthood, of course, to prepare our kids for happy and productive lives of their own. And, on that score, I know we have succeeded. Still, I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that I had left a few things undone.

I still remember the day he was born and recall more than one experienced parent telling me to relish each day because kids grow quickly. At the time, I thought of all the years of his childhood still ahead of us, and the experiences we would have. Summer trips to the northern Rockies, canoe trips in the Boundary Waters, fishing trips to Canada. These were the memorable events of my own youth, and I was determined to make time for Max to experience such things, even with the unrelenting pressures of running a small-town newspaper.

And then life happens, and the pages on the calendar disappear with ever-increasing haste and before you know it, that little kid is graduating from high school, heading off to college, and now, headed to Cornell University, where he recently accepted a position as a research and teaching assistant as he pursues his masters degree in entomology (the study of insects, in case you forgot). He moves to Geneva, in western New York, next week, where he’ll spend the summer at Cornell’s research station before switching to Ithaca in the fall for the start of classes.

We had a trial run as empty-nesters the past couple years, while Max attended UMD for his undergrad degree. Even so, he never seemed far away. And then he graduated early, last December actually, and has been living at home the past several months while he made his arrangements for grad school. I realized it was one last chance to make up for lost time.

For Max’s high school graduation, I had arranged a fishing trip with me and his grandpa to Lake of the Woods, and it was an opportunity to tick off one of those personal goals I had set for Max’s outdoor edification. And last June, Max and I spent five days camping, hiking, and wildlife-watching in Yellowstone National Park. Northern Rockies? Check.

But it occurred to me recently that a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters was the last thing on my list that we had never completed. Sure, we had done plenty of day trips into the BW, which are easy when you live nearby. But an overnight trip into the wilderness is a different animal, a different experience, and it was one that Max was eager to take on when I suggested it last month.

So we went online and made reservations for a three-night trip into Stuart Lake, and started planning, packing, and watching the weather. And as the forecasts grew increasingly wet, we adjusted our plans. As it turned out, we had a two-day window of decent weather last Friday and Saturday, but the prospect of that 460-rod beast of a portage to the Stuart River seemed increasingly onerous for a one or two-night trip.

So we found an alternative, and made plans to head into Bootleg Lake, an isolated lake in the Trout Lake portion of the BWCAW. It’s an often-ignored section of the Boundary Waters, comprised of about 100,000 acres located south of the Echo Trail. With the exception of Trout Lake, most of the lakes here are relatively small, and most require long portages to access. The Little Indian Sioux River flows from the heart of it, and, buoyed by recent rains, it became our portal into the wilderness on a cool, cloudy and calm Friday.

While other Boundary Waters rivers can be crowded at times, on this weekend, heading south towards the headwaters of the Little Indian Sioux, we had the entire area all to ourselves. We found Bootleg to be an interesting lake— the eastern shore is crowned with high pine-studded ridges, typical of most of the BWCAW, while the western shore is a mix of birch, oak, and jack pine, a forest more often encountered there on the far western end of the wilderness. We picked the campsite on the lake’s western shore, which was surprisingly grassy and open, a fact that the abundance of beaver on the lake helped make possible. Beaver-felled birches and oak offered up plentiful firewood and even a slight breeze seemed to keep the few early season black flies at bay.

Bootleg is a lake that appears to attract few visitors— in part because it’s not on a route to anywhere else. From what we could determine, we were the first people on the lake this year. For those who do make the journey here, it’s usually to fish. It has a good population of northerns and large-mouthed bass and we caught plenty of each working the shore with spoons. Being Minnesotans, we tossed the bass back and kept the northerns.

That evening, the lake turned to glass and the silence was amazing. Though we live out in the woods, we can still hear the occasional sound of a vehicle on our gravel road or on Hwy. 1 a half mile to the south. But there at our campsite, there was nothing but bird song, or the sound of Max casting a spoon from shore, to break the quiet. Later, after dark, the pair of loons on the lake’s south end began an extended chorus of their own that echoed off the ridges across the lake, creating a loon cacophony that seemed to go on for several minutes.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Max, who was lying in his sleeping bag next to me, when it was all over.

“Yeah,” he said, with a note of incredulity in his voice.

It’s experiences like that which separate a day trip in the Boundary Waters from an overnight.

The next morning dawned clear, with a heavy mist on the water. Max got up early and cast spoons from shore, picking up another nice northern as the fog slowly lifted. I watched him with satisfaction as I drank a cup of morning tea. This was the trip I had wanted for him, and even though it was just a single overnight, I knew it would be a memory he’d take with him on his new life, wherever it leads him.

To me, it was like the closing of a chapter. I’ll always be Max’s father, of course, and he’ll certainly be back to visit on occasion, but from here on, it would be short trips home fit within the busy schedule of a research scientist. While it’s nice to think of future trips into the wilderness together, I know too well that life happens and time slips away. But at least when he leaves us next week, there won’t be any regrets. Just excitement for his limitless future.

So, from the vantage point of experience, for any new fathers out there, I’ll simply pass on that same piece of advice I received those 20 years ago. Don’t take the time you have with your children for granted. They’ll be leaving long before you’re ready.