The Beaten Path...

One last Bounday Waters story before I start on my adventures in my current local...Okinawa, Japan, the poor man's vacationland (as I have recently learned), or to me- the adventurous.A map can bring many emotions, joy, confusion, and in my case in the heart of our trip in the Boundary Waters- anticipation of exhaustion. After just paddling for 15 minutes, I realized the neccesity of packing a map in your canoe. Not just smart, but essential in survival. Every "different" body of water looked too oddly similar. I found myself repeating the same dialogue with little vairation, again and again like a curious five-year-old, "Did we just go in a circle, because that rock looks very familiar?" "Are you sure we aren't in the same place?" After the first five questions, the answers shorten "I don't know" until they became nonexistent. This however, was only the beginning of my love/hate relationship with the laminated, roll of paper. The abhorrence truly began, with the start of day two. We packed up camp, pushed off the large rock, and only five strokes of paddling later, the rain that would continue to tinkle annoyingly the rest of the day, began. We touched dirt and then treked up the rocky landscape to view the magnificent "Root Beer" Falls. In Meg and I's opinion, it looked as if root beer was flowing from a tap and this is where the phrase "bottled at the source" was coined. Our next stop, unfortantuly, was not so spirited, the first long portage of the day and trip. The map read 250 rods. A novice in the Boundary Waters and canoeing lingo, I had no idea what rods translated to, but I was not looking forward to finding out, after I saw my seasoned father of 15 trips, silently grimmace. Later I learned the concern was not directed toward the first portage of 250, but rather the cumilation of the warrior title worthy length of the three portages. The three came to a total sum of 840 rods. 320 rods equals a mile. Then if you calculate into the equation the double portages, the total is sickening to most anyone who has emerged from the BW, especially considering the individuals were two old men and three college girls. But the task needed to be done. The portage demanded focus, strength, and endurance. Hauling the giant blue bear-proof food tub and two buckets transformed from cat litter containers, I struggled to reach the half-way point without breaking my shoulders from the hefty weight. But after years of sitting idle observing children swim in the Logan pool, as a lifeguard. I was trained to entertain my mind for hours. In that moment, I began a mind game with myself that would continue the rest of the portage and trip. Not so much as a game, but a story. As I gingerly stepped among the mud piles and wolf scant, I began telling stories in my mind, ones that would land my pen name and picture in the national publication proudly. I'm saving my next personal challenge to brainstorm my alias, aka Nellie Bly style.