Shelter

by Sarah Stonich

  Portages are serenaded by buzzing, slaps, grunts, obscenities, and sighs—part and parcel of a canoe trip trudging alongside in fellowship with someone who would paddle-throttle you if they suspected you were hoarding a Mars bar. By nightfall, should it ever come, you’re thrilled to eat a half-cooked, unidentifiable meal charred over butane. Then you pitch sideways onto a ledge of Canadian Shield, too tired to wish for an OxyContin. After five or six such days, campers emerge with stories to tell, women often using childbirth analogies, the only other experience to rival such exquisite misery. But memories warp in the backward lens of time and one forgets, going on to birth more babies or make return visits to the Boundary Waters during the heat of July or the snows of June. If an episiotomy requiring twenty-six stitches can be forgotten, so too might a 260-rod portage in a downpour. Highlights and details of canoe trips often grow more florid with each telling. The actual steepness of rapids grows steeper, the lengths of portages grow longer, a fondly recalled sunset glows every bit as fiery and colorful as the pass of an obstetric scalpel.

  Amnesia aside, when packing for the next trip you might let practicality prevail and leave the espresso kit behind, knowing full well that next time you’d be thrilled with freeze-dried Folgers or a steaming cup of spit if it contained caffeine.

  We embrace the adventure, the romance; admire the beauty of the wilderness, hoping to experience the experience. But shouldn’t we also be wary, even afraid? Occasional stories I hear remind me we are not in charge.

  A seasoned guide told me about being approached by a very young wayward cougar. Knowing that where there is cougar offspring, an anxious cougar mother is not far behind, she quickly stepped in front of one of her group, blocking a woman from Ohio who was reaching for the cute thing. Just then, the momma came roaring into their midst, and the campers went more or less paralytic. Amazed, they watched as the mother simply snatched up her kitten by the scruff and leapt away. The guide did what I would have—wet her pants. In fact, she said, there wasn’t a dry pair on the trail.

  At the laundromat, a very tan girl cramming her stinky clothes into the washer next to mine grew slowly more talkative, as if getting used to her voice again, reporting she’d just had the most amazing shower ever, using soap for the first time in weeks. Her damp hair was plastered to her arms, which I couldn’t help notice were bruised and hatched with scratches. She traced one, saying, “Yeah, you think you know someone …,” then proceeded to tell the story of how she and her best friend from college embarked on a two-week canoe trip, only to discover by day three that they despised each other. But in true passive-aggressive Minnesota fashion, they just carried on, barely speaking. By day eleven, they finally had it out. The girl laughed as she described how they had rolled around “on the ground like trailer trash, mud wrestling—except this was real mud with sticks and rocks in it.” She showed off a nasty bruise on her thigh.

  When our clothes were dry and we were folding, she mused, “Next time we’re gonna go further, into Quetico.”

  “We?” I asked. “Not the same friend?”

  She shrugged. “Well, at least we’ll know what we’re in for.”

  Across from the laundromat is an Internet café, one of the few places in town where locals mingle with summer people, which include campers, canoeists, resort guests, and cabin owners. In the café, I keep both ears cocked, sometimes pretending to be writing a list, which I sometimes am, of people’s words. Folks talk, and if I’m feeling bold, I might lean in with “I couldn’t help but hear you say …” and am sometimes rewarded with the sort of story you hear over the breakfast counter, the bar, or tanks at the bait shop—abrupt stories that get told northern style, with few adjectives.

  A man named Hurly considered his unlit Marlboro in the Portage Bar, telling me he’d been meaning to quit since he promised the Good Lord he would while fighting whitecaps and high winds on the Canadian side of Basswood Lake. “Yup, I says to Him, if I make landfall, that’s it, not another cancer stick ever.”

  Hurly didn’t look like he could even get into a canoe, so I asked when that was.

  “Thirty-seven years now,” he coughed, “give or take a few months.”

  At the outfitters where we sometimes shower, a woman with an Ace bandage on her ankle was rinsing off her grossly caked Tevas. She’d been portaging with a too-heavy pack, barely able to manage it, when her foot skidded off the path into the maggoty carcass of a deer, trailside kill. She “should have known something was rotten in Denmark” but assumed the stink was coming from just ahead, her husband, who’d been emitting noxious gas from all the freeze-dried food.

  When I first told Sam he was going to camp, he asked, “Wha’d I do?”

  Of course it was fine once he got there. He had fun and went on to attend summer camp, canoe camp, fly-fishing camp, and winter camp at places with many-syllabled names like Widjiwagan and Icaghowan. He can handle a canoe or kayak, can pitch a tent, and has the basics of camping down. Still, he has yet to feel entirely comfortable in nature and may never acclimate to the outhouse and the wolf spiders that occasionally chase him out, his pants not quite up and showing a winking of white bum as he bolts, shrieking a little.

  There are those who come to the Boundary Waters for outdoor adventure, beauty, and solitude, but the area has long attracted other types as well. Perhaps because of the remoteness, there’s always been a fringe population here. Early on it was socialists and immigrants seeking asylum and work, grandparents and great-grandparents of locals. More recent newcomers include loners and eccentrics, dropouts from the big cities, back-to-the-landers, fairy campers, homeschoolers, devil worshippers, fundamentalists, survivalists, cranks, stoners, artists, writers.

  My own identity here often feels murky and undefined; I have a local name and history, but I’m a 612er, a poseur in a flannel shirt with suspicious motives, scrutinizing the place through voyeur’s goggles. There’s no real glue to hold me here with my family gone, and my effort to wedge in sometimes feels futile and even silly, as if my presence puts a finger in the dam of time that I might reclaim some lost connection in hopes my son and I will be happy here and feel at home, have a home. Will embracing this place provide some firm ground from which to launch our futures—will it embrace us? Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s too soon to tell.

  Eight

  When two major mining test sites were blasted on the northernmost boundary of the land, one was called East Lumbering Bear, the other West Lumbering Bear. Why, I wondered? On a map, you might interpret our lake as being partially shaped like a lumbering bear but only if you squint or are drunk. Maybe a bear lumbered through on the day the place was named? Our lake has had more than one name; some maps say one thing, another claims it’s something else altogether.

  There’s lots of waffling around here when it comes to names and mottos, one morphing into another every dozen or so years as if trying to get it right.

  Charles Kuralt dubbed the area “End of the Road” after buying the local radio station. His catch phrase has stuck with those nostalgic for Ely’s brush with celebrity, though it pretty much was the end of the road for Kuralt, who died soon afterward. To me the motto has an admittedly not-so-positive ring, like “bought the farm.”

  I like “The Land of Sky-Blue Waters” best. It’s descriptive and suggests a cartoon bear might come by to hand you a cold one. I vaguely remembered Hamm’s ads of the sixties portraying an iconic version of the north. When I logged onto YouTube to watch a few of the commercials, I was surprised at just how un-PC they were, with tom-tom beats and cartoon rain dances and grinning “Injuns,” but others were alluring for their idyllic take on our wilderness, probably doing as much to promote tourism as alcohol consumption. The hook was that the water Hamm’s was brewed with was the freshest and coldest!—the message being “this is some clean beer.” The subliminal suggestion was that northern Minnesota is one big campground where all trees are pine, and life is a very long fishing trip. My local liquor store still stocks Hamm
’s, though it’s now brewed in another state, and I don’t imagine it tastes any better than it did (like pee, Dad claimed), and the ceaselessly cascading waterfall of the electric Hamm’s bar sign only fools me into thinking I have to pee.

  There’s also “God’s Country,” which works if you’re keen to dismiss millions of years of geology, biology, and evolution. Call me a killjoy for the Almighty, but I’m a killjoy with two feet planted on terra firma that has folded up and folded again and heated and cooled to show off the groovy banded red Jasper underfoot, evidence of just how the place was actually formed. If you insist on throwing some god into the equation, why not call it “Vulcan’s Country"? I try to understand the creationist’s perspective, but when I look around at what nature has wrought, that thinking seems medieval. Even in face of irrefutable science, I feel woefully outnumbered by those who are certain that after death they are bound for heaven—a better version of here with fewer mosquitoes—or hell—a much shittier version where every month is February.

  “Gateway to the Wilderness” is the literal brand, as evocative as any chosen by committee, reminding me of the Minneapolis motto in the eighties that insisted, rather defensively, “We Like It Here!” (even if you don’t!). “Mesabi” is what the Ojibwe call the region, anthropomorphizing the place in numerous but similar ways. I gave up after five translations. “The Giant’s Place,” “The Grandmammy of All Places,” “The Sleeping Giant,” “The Sleeping Grandmother,” “Big Grandmother” all convey about the same message: be warned, pioneer—think twice before trying to breach this dame’s backyard.

  “Incredibly Rocky Place” is one name you don’t hear, yet it’s hands down the most descriptive. Rock is the defining characteristic; there’s more of it than water or trees. This land is nothing if not geological. The only stonier place I’ve seen lies off the Irish coast, where the Aran Islands hump upward in postcard images of cobblestone lanes and stone fences encasing rocky pastures and stone cottages. Most of the soil on Aran is actually man-made, a mixture of composted seaweed and fish offal, sand, manure, and human urine to break it all down. The rest was hauled over rough seas from the mainland in little skin boats called curraghs. Just as stony is the famous Burren over on the mainland, a place Oliver Cromwell and his men considered an inhospitable nuisance in their crusade, calling the Burren “a savage land, yielding neither water enough to drown a man, nor tree to hang him, nor soil enough to bury him.” You’d think stoning might have occurred to them, or maybe just dashing the heretics and monks to the ground.

  The first of our own numerous confrontations with rock came when considering an outhouse. Hindsight is a wise teacher, as are the mistakes of others. The traditional two-seater at our old family cabin was down a path that seemed long but was in reality only about thirty feet from the cabin, probably not far enough in the eyes of the county inspector. A journey to the outhouse at night was best embarked on with some bravado and a sister. It helped if Dad stood outside the cabin watching until we reached the door so Sasquatch couldn’t pluck us from the path. A sprint and door slam and we were inside, where flashlights cast shadows where there were normally none. Above the bench was a sign: This is a High Class Place, Act Respectable. The only other adornment was a painting predating the black velvet tourist variety: a cockatiel on his perch with real, actual feathers glued to it. Since there was so little to look at in the outhouse, every detail of that bird picture is etched to memory, down to the carved scallops of the frame, which at some point got painted the same mint sherbet color as the walls. The outhouse always had dated copies of Time, Newsweek, or Reader’s Digest, but we weren’t about to be there long enough to read anything at night, not even cartoons. An upside-down Maxwell House can protected the toilet paper from rodents, and if ever someone forgot to cover the roll, the next morning the outhouse floor would be festive as a snow globe. We had to wonder, did the mice and voles really patrol every night in the hopes some stupid human had forgotten the whole coffee can routine?

  I have a frame-worthy photo of the outhouse in its last stand, crowded by spruce, a closet-sized building painted a color not found in nature, a clownish aqua clashing with its roof of olivey, bumpy moss. It leans, not a little.

  The practicality of a two-seater outhouse still eludes me even after old-timers have explained the concept—that you sit on one side until the thing is full, then you sit on the other side. Mix it up! Since the seats are all of a foot away from each other, I find this doubtable and suspect there were more people into companion toileting than I care to imagine, though at eight years old I was thrilled to have a pee buddy. The tired joke then was about a two-story outhouse with one hole upstairs and another on the main floor belonging to the fill-in-the-blank-with-an-ethnic-slur neighbors. In these parts, those would have included Polack, Bohunk, Wop, Canuck, Kraut, and Swede, which either didn’t warrant a slur or was considered one on its own. In all its years of use, our old outhouse was moved onto a newly dug pit only once. Where did all that going go?

  The new outhouse was being built at Lars’s sawmill. It was a thing to behold and built like Fort Knox, as if to protect its contents from being stolen. Inside, the seat was so high it required a step, like a real throne. Still undetermined was what would happen underneath it. Options to consider included a hand-turned compost chamber with active and inactive compartments, which works by letting waste accumulate for a week or so, adding with each go just the right amount of untreated sawdust of just the right texture and dryness (acquired from a lumberyard). After a week, you open the door to both compartments from the outside and shovel the contents from the active side to the inactive, “curing” side. This is the most environmentally sound and grossest option, and one I’ve had firsthand experience with. As one of ten or so women in a retreat group for over a period of eight years, I spent time on Mallard Island in Rainy Lake, the former home of conservationist Ernest Oberholtzer and now a foundation hosting creative and environmental groups. Near the end of our stay, we drew straws, and us losers donned our grungiest camp clothes and tied perfumed bandanas across our faces, reasoning that we might as well gag on Jovan Musk than our own efforts. We grabbed shovels, breathed through our mouths, and just did it. On a Bad Toilet Day, the problem was usually liquid in nature so that on the ensuing Bad Poetry Night there would be lines inspired by the moments of our chore as sublime as “turds forlorn and floating corn.”

  Building a composting chamber on our site would require a cement mixer and running water, which we did not have. Plus the outhouse would have to be built atop the chamber, which likely wouldn’t be sturdy enough for the behemoth that was taking shape. So manual composting was a no-go. An electric composter would have been ideal, but there wasn’t solar power yet, and even if there were, it wouldn’t be reliable or constant enough.

  A few outhouses around the lake employ a chemical liquid method with plastic barrels sunk as deep as possible into the ground, topped with an elevated structure, the end result much like a taller, more attractive porta-potty. After a season, the local honey wagon—in this case, Royal Flush—comes and pumps out the barrels, same as pumping a septic system. In theory this is the best option, but to get anywhere near these toilets is to realize either the chemical ratio or the ventilation isn’t right because rather than masking the odor of waste, it’s somehow enhanced, an acrid stench that makes hand-turned composting a bed of roses in comparison.

  With some hired help, Lars dug the hole, but just when they hit bedrock, his back gave out. He could have called in Boulder Busters, the local rock eradication service, but that might have seemed akin to giving in. I couldn’t help but think a dynamite charge like those used to blast Lumbering Bear might be the ticket. The hole didn’t look like it was going to get any deeper, and Lars went in for back surgery.

  Apparently we’d have the standard, old-fashioned outhouse I grew up with—a hole in the ground with a building squatting over it. Once planted, the outhouse wouldn’t be going anywhere; there would be no sec
ond hole. I could only hope that the shallow dent would suffice until we had an indoor bathroom, when the outhouse could become optional, or a shed, since we still didn’t have one.

  A conventional outhouse is actually fairly environmentally sound and doesn’t stink when treated properly. A percentage of the waste seeps away, and the rest breaks down with the aid of time and lime (calcium oxide). Lime is nasty stuff. When Henry III was defending English shores, his army defeated the marauding French by hurling lime into their eyes and blinding them. In the battle on stink, lime is sprinkled down the outhouse hole after one’s efforts. Though it’s a natural substance, lime, if inhaled, can scar or destroy a septum as efficiently as a hill of cocaine. It can also sear skin, and applying water or ice only raises its temp to 150 degrees. This is one of the few instances where leaving the toilet seat down is the offense; any lime left on a seat can blister a painful ring on delicate flesh. If only “flush” were an option.

  A girl can dream.

  Nine

  “Stonich is an Ely name. You otta put a sign out there at your driveway: that way your place won’t get vandalized.”

  “Even the meth heads know enough to not trash a local’s cabin.”

  “Sometimes you gotta do a little name dropping.”

  “Even if it’s just your own.”

  This sound advice comes from two fellows in Dee’s Lounge on Ely’s main street. One had been in the mines with my Uncle Ted. They told me that if I was just asking questions, their names were Juri and Earl, but if I was planning on writing anything that their wives might read, revealing they’d been in Dee’s all afternoon with some female, then they were Mutt and Jeff. They howled over their joke and took it further by correcting anyone who came in and addressed one of them, “He mighta been Juri this morning, but he’s Mutt now!” Earl (Jeff ) slapped his knee.