The bugs are starting to swarm. He needs to find that path.
If you know how to wend through swamp trees, one minute of walking can take you a considerable distance. He does not notice it, but he can no longer hear his friends back at the shoreline. In his short time bushwhacking he has covered well over fifty yards.
Dan Stephens has been careful to register distinctive points in the terrain. A particular cedar tree, broken near its base. A wrangled fin of large granite boulders bordering one side of the swamp. After one minute he picks a clear point of departure, and then makes a sharp ninety-degree turn to his left. Stephens is sure he will cross the trail. He hikes in that direction for another minute, but it fails to appear. He returns to his departure point, hikes in the opposite direction, but after another minute still doesn’t find it.
Goddammit. They’ll have to paddle further up the shore.
He doesn’t look forward to returning through that swamp. He angles to his left to where the fin of boulders borders the trees. The rocks will be easier walking, and though some of them are large enough to require light climbing, that way is preferable to being eaten among the shadowy, root-plagued cedars.
He is almost a football field from his starting point, considerably astray from the angle at which he entered. From here he can see less than ten feet into impenetrable brush. The bugs are starting to annoy him.
He carefully climbs over a near rim of rocks. His wrenched ankle feels tight. He comes to a large boulder, ascends it, and from that vantage point looks to the next low rabble of stone. If he leaps carefully, he thinks, he can just reach that one in the center. He tenses. He springs.
In the microseconds it takes to cross five feet of air, his stomach registers the miscalculation before he does. And then his feet fall short of the center stone and he topples headlong into granite.
3
The Start of the Trail
Pow Wow Trail, BWCAW, Monday, October 22, 2001
Just after noon Jason is almost finished with his four-hour drive north. He passes the Isabella Ranger Station, a low-hung, dark log structure resembling all the other DNR buildings built by Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps. Jason doesn’t need to stop. He has his maps and the description of how to get to the start of the Pow Wow Trail. And just days ago he had called an 800 number the DNR uses to provide the public with wilderness information.
The ranger had explained that this late in the season, people were scarce in the Boundary Waters. Besides, most people canoed. Jason Rasmussen was hiking. He didn’t need to worry about a camping permit. He would have those woods all to himself.
“Just be careful,” the ranger added, warning Jason about the weather, which at this time of year can turn on a dime.
“I’m prepared for it,” Jason said.
But as he turns off the highway onto Forest Road 177, he sees the two-inch cover of yesterday’s snow spread across the road. In among the trees, deeper patches lie tucked along shaded corners of underbrush. He still has twenty miles of backcountry roads to cross. He makes three turns, driving carefully, meeting no one. Over the next forty-five minutes he cruises through thick woods. In places, on either side of the road, the high pine trunks stand like telephone poles. Sparse, leafless brush bedraggles the forest floor.
The patches of snow worry him. But I’m ready, he reminds himself, remembering the contents of his pack. He has plenty of warm wear. His sleeping bag is rated to ten below. Jason knows it won’t get that cold. But he is also concerned by the absence of recent tire tracks on the road’s sand-and-gravel surface. Not many have driven this way—at least not since yesterday’s light dousing.
He makes his last turn. The road narrows and becomes much rougher than the back roads he’s already driven over. He wonders if his Saturn can take it. He wends carefully over the ruts, dodging left and right to avoid potholes and soft spots, thankful the cold has been sufficient to freeze the ground. After almost an hour he turns a corner and drives into the empty Isabella Lake parking area.
The trailhead parking lot is a scruffy wide spot to the side of the road. There is a sign for Isabella Lake, but there’s nothing marking the start of the Pow Wow. He examines the U.S. Forest Service sign, then looks along the edges of the parking lot. Isabella Lake is to the east. The Pow Wow Trail should cut off west of the lot. He walks over to get a better look and thinks he sees the start of a trail under the trees.
Is that the Pow Wow? he wonders.
In the open lot he squints in the light, feels warmed by the sun, though it’s a cool 48 degrees. He appreciates the beautiful day. Yesterday had been overcast. The sky thickened and sleet fell in sharp gusts out of thick gray clouds—a harbinger of the coming cold. But for now the sky is clear and the rising temperature is melting pockets of snow and ice.
He returns to his Saturn, hoists his pack out of the back seat, and steadies it on his car trunk. He holds one strap while he turns around and inserts first his right arm, then his left. He bends forward and feels his shoulders pull against the weight. Not bad. It is noticeable, but he feels certain he could hike much farther than the five or six miles he needs to cover this afternoon. He lifts the bottom of the pack, adjusting it until it’s balanced and comfortable. Then he cinches the hip belt, lifting it slightly so it rides on the fleshy muscle above his glutes.
His is the only car in the lot. He’s surprised. But it is Monday, he recollects. Late October. And he remembers wanting it this way, just him and the quiet woods, the entire trail to himself.
He locks his car, pockets the keys, and walks across the lot to where he thinks the trailhead ought to be. He moves into the brush, searching for a path. For several minutes he explores the western edge of the lot boundary, crisscrossing into the woods. Finally, several yards in, he stumbles across a small path that widens ahead. He peers up the narrow trail, decides it must be the Pow Wow, and turns onto it.
Fifty yards ahead the trail becomes surprisingly spacious. His first half mile is as clear as an old logging road, and it looks like it’s going to hold.
During the 1960s Tomahawk Lumber Company logged some of the land around Isabella Lake, including this stretch of the trail. The second-stage forest is thick with alder, black spruce, tamarack, and birch.
Jason’s pack feels good in the early afternoon sun. The wind is low and the temperature perfect. He is entirely alone. He sees no one, there are no recent footprints, and it feels wonderful to stretch his legs in the afternoon warmth, to hear an occasional bird chirrup and hawk cry. A couple of ravens pass overhead, one of them making a sharp caw. He stops and watches them pass. It is quiet enough to hear the sound their wings make as they beat the air.
A mile up the trail, a narrow footbridge crosses the stream that empties out of Isabella Lake. His map shows a small picnic area to the left, but he cannot see it. The sound of water falling away from the lake reaches his ears. A huge boulder in the middle of the cascade reminds Jason of rei’s fake waterfall. While it is architecturally tasteful, it’s no match for the real thing. He looks for fish in the part of the stream flowing under the footbridge, but can only see the dark, tamarack-stained water running over black rocks.
He revels at the heavy pull of pack straps against his shoulders, how it makes him feel clear and independent. This is exactly what he wanted.
Yesterday’s sleet and the ensuing thaw fill the air with the smell of humus. The trail is spectacularly vibrant, and Jason pauses to fish his disposable camera from one of the zipper pockets of his North Face jacket. He looks up the stream toward Isabella Lake. There is a faint haze near the lake. He snaps a photo of the stream falling away from the big water, threading toward him. Then he keeps hiking, looking for the right place to take a trail shot in the long clear path. Finally he sees it and stops.
Creek running out of Isabella Lake, from the Pow Wow Trail bridge (courtesy Jason Rasmussen
)
The leaf-strewn trail runs out in front of him, narrowing in the distance into a brush wall, or maybe it’s a turn. In the left foreground there’s a small balsam fir. Further down there are some popples and a couple of tall, moth-eaten birch. Also on the left, a white pine rises out of the trees, and further on sits a wall of balsam fir mixed with thick young alder. On either side the first-tier forest growth forms an impenetrable wall. The brush is so thick, if a school bus were parked ten feet into it you wouldn’t even know it was there.
He pauses and snaps the picture. The trail is clear ahead, carpeted by a thick shuffle of leaves stretching toward an opaque dome.
Section from the start of the Pow Wow Trail (courtesy Jason Rasmussen)
For most of the 2.6-mile start of the Pow Wow, the path’s openness holds. It is so clear, in fact, Jason doesn’t refer to Pukite’s trail description, his compass, or his more detailed Fisher map. The hazy sky shows no sign of storm. The weather is exactly what he had hoped for. Cool walking in quiet woods, but warm enough to require only his light sweater.
Parts of the trail are wet. Some areas are a little boggy, and he is careful to step on the high points, keeping his feet dry. Otherwise the way is clear, and after just an hour and a half hiking he crosses over a large marshy area. There is water to his right, backed up by an enormous old beaver dam. He crosses on what must be the top of the dam, then enters into a stand of jack pine.
On one of the largest trees is a familiar wooden marker. It isn’t much: a dark brown, six-inch diamond of wood with clear yellow arrows pointing in opposite directions.
He is at the Pow Wow circuit juncture. To the left, the arrow points clockwise, wending in a west-northwesterly direction. To the right, the trail is just as clear, but strikes off in a more northerly direction.
He turns right, hiking north-northeast, and immediately the trail narrows to a thin footpath. He walks on a damp, moss-covered path through the trees. It is cool in the shade of the trees. After a quarter mile he is glad to notice an opening ahead. But as he approaches it, he sees it is a long beaver dam, its outer edge built directly over his path.
He skirts its back side. There’s plenty of seepage beneath the thick mesh of remarkable engineering, but enough high spots to enable him to keep his feet dry if he moves carefully.
He pauses at the dam’s apex, looking out over the still, clear water. An assortment of leaves litter the pond’s surface. Its bottom is a mosaic of fall color. The dam itself is so long and thick—its back side laid out in a gentle slope of branches and sticks, some of them over two inches in diameter—he wonders how many beavers there are. He scans the surface of the pond and sees, tucked back into a far corner, a beaver lodge grown over a bank.
He watches for a while. Water seeps from beneath the massive dam, trickling in hundreds of narrow rivulets on its course through the woods. He is surrounded by the music of water. He pulls his camera out of the pack’s side pocket and snaps another picture.
Over the next hour Jason traverses three more beaver dams. The whole area is marshy and wet, and though he has tried to keep his feet dry, he can feel his right foot damp along the boggy trail. He hikes carefully, pleased by this minor trail obstacle—something unexpected and interesting.
When he passes another dam, the path widens. He pauses, looks up. An unexpected thickness to the sky has come in from the west. The day is still mild—warm by late October standards—but the bright glint has faded to a flat, metallic hue.
Jason still has no reason to consult his map, compass, or Hiking Minnesota’s description of the trail. His path is clear. The day feels good. The walking is relatively easy. After more than two hours of hiking he crosses the last beaver dam and continues along the path, which is narrow but still clear.
In fact, the part of the trail that hooks up with the old Pow Wow—the eastern branch abandoned years ago—is clear and straight in front of him. The place where Jason is supposed to turn is covered over with weeds.
But Jason recollects from his earlier map reads that it is just about time for his ninety-degree turn to the northwest, toward Pose Lake, and there is a faint opening to his left. He studies it, but when he compares the gnarled, grass-covered rise to the broad opening in front of him, he is uncertain which path to follow.
In the days when lumber companies foraged trees through this part of the Boundary Waters—before it was the BWCAW—small logging camps were set up at key points in the forest. The open, straight path in front of Jason is the old trail to Calamity Lake camp, over two miles further east. After the camp was dismantled, the trail served as the northern loop of the old Pow Wow, before beavers had their way. Over the years, enough men, horses, logs, and hikers traveled over the spot to make it easily discernible through the trees.
Truth is, the entire area is crisscrossed by old trails. But Jason knows nothing of old logging camps or abandoned hiking paths, and there are no clear markings on any of his maps—not, at least, the ones he carries with him.
Finally, he decides to turn left, continuing along the new Pow Wow until he feels certain he has made the right choice. But he is somewhat puzzled by the straight clear path from which he veered, which was too big to be a game trail. Still, the afternoon is quiet and haunting, and he quickly settles back to enjoy the scenery, the hike, and the rare luxury of abandoning himself to his own random thoughts.
Jason hikes for another hour, lost in the beauty of the afternoon, traversing some messy low spots as he walks. He passes a few more old beaver haunts. Beavers can significantly alter landscapes within a matter of two to three years. He assumes, judging from the poor state of the trail, they’ve been at work here. He keeps walking in a straight northwesterly line, happy to be in the woods, oblivious to the passage of time.
He reaches another key point in the trail, where it bends left—not quite in a ninety-degree angle, but significant enough to be noticeable, at least on the map. But he is not looking at the map.
Because this turn in the trail is especially difficult to find, someone once built a stone cairn at the spot. Over the years, wild growth covered the cairn, like everything else in the area, and now it appears to be nothing more than a glacial pile of stone. In fact, the turn onto the new, western, proper Pow Wow is little more than a narrow gap in the forest tangle, easily disregarded. A hiker would have to be searching for the turn, knowing when to expect it. Jason is enjoying his afternoon, lost in his thoughts.
Since he’s not anticipating the radical shift in direction, he keeps to the obvious path that lies before him, still wide and clear. There was a time this was a main trail, the old portage trail to Insula Lake, and part of an old logging road. A mile ahead it links up with another old logging road, angling east into another old timber camp. That was fifty years ago. The wide path before him is the only trace of the camp or the acres of harvested timber.
For now, it is the clear choice. Unaware that he has missed his turn and is gradually hiking deeper into impenetrable brush, dangerous bogs, and a landscape beavers have had decades to transform, Jason continues walking.
4
Lost
Bell Lake, Quetico Provincial Park, Wednesday afternoon, August 5, 1998
Jerry Wills sits in the middle of his canoe and studies the map. He sees where Dan headed into the trees, but as he hovers in the water he thinks Dan’s point of departure is off by about fifty yards. Further down the shore, there’s a huge cedar twisted out over the lake’s surface. It obscures the shoreline behind it. He and his Scouts paddle down around the tree, and they find what appears to be the start of a portage trail.
Wills remembers the ranger’s warning, and he won’t bushwhack a portage if it isn’t apparent. But this definitely looks like the start of something. He and the Scouts get out of their canoe and examine the path. It appears flat and wide enough to be the portage. They beach their canoe and hi
ke in to have a better look. After forty yards, Bell Lake’s blue waters come into view.
“Let’s go back and tell ’em,” he says, triumph in his voice. The three of them return to their beached canoe and hoist the heavy Duluth packs out of its hold.
From around the side of the overhanging tree the prow of the seventeen-year-olds’ canoe spikes into view. Matt and Jake Span have paddled down, searching for Mr. Wills.
From up on the bank, Jerry smiles down at them. “The portage is over here,” he says, pointing toward the start of the path.
“We can’t find Dan,” Matt says. There is concern in the young Scout’s face.
“Where did he go?” Wills asks.
“Into the woods up the shoreline, looking for the trail. But he hasn’t come back.”
“And it’s been awhile,” Jake adds. He looks down at his watch. “Almost half an hour. Mr. Jones wanted us to find you.”
It was not uncommon for Dan to scout the trail. He needed to find it and then be sure there were no fallen logs or places where the path petered out or disappeared. But he’d never been gone more than ten minutes, and this portage was a short one.
From up the shoreline Wills hears Tim Jones and David shout Dan’s name. He tells the others to unload the canoe. Matt and Jake get out, haul their aluminum craft up onto the narrow passage opening, and start to unload. After the packs are out of Wills’s canoe, he and Justin paddle back to the shadowy bank of cedars.
Tim Jones is happy for the parental reinforcement. “I guess he’s still looking,” he observes. Tim is concerned, but at this point he expects Dan’s momentary return, or at least to hear his answer through the woods. Finally, one of the Scouts finds his whistle, raises it, and blows. Three long piercing signals cut through the afternoon air. They all pause, waiting for a response. But there is only silence and the interminable insect whine. It is as though the canopy of dark boughs has opened, swallowed their guide, and then closed up behind him.
Lost in the Wild Page 4
