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The Last Voyageurs

Page 18

by Lorraine Boissoneault


  Lake Forest, Illinois

  November 29, 1976

  Gary Braun, alias Jean du Lignon, crawled out of his shelter and was greeted by the frigid embrace of the air. Another freezing morning. The tents might not smell particularly good after a night of sleeping—a mixture of smokiness from the campfires and farts from the beans they all ate—but at least they were warm. As cook for his module, Braun had to be out of bed with breakfast ready before the group departed. Getting up was more of a challenge now that winter had set in. Both Braun and the fire starter, Chuck Campbell (a name no one but reporters used anymore; everyone on the crew just called him Roadkill or RK for short), wriggled out of their sleeping bags and into a damp layer of clothing, then set to building a fire and cooking the food as soon as they heard Lewis’s wake-up call. Sometimes if RK wasn’t able to get the fire started right away, he’d head over to Sam Hess and ask for a couple of coals from his module’s fire. The method didn’t matter to Braun, so long as the result was burning hot and steady so that he could get to work.

  Being cook had its ups and downs. It was fun to experiment with recipes, and he could compare his results with his good friend Mark Fredenburg, who was cook for another module. Braun learned to make pancakes over an open fire and improvised new recipes whenever someone donated fresh fruit and vegetables or meat to supplement the crew’s regular supply of flour, oats, beans, peas, and cornmeal. He came up with dishes such as apple cobbler and cheesesteaks with fried potatoes. But the job had its own set of challenges as well. He’d burned his hand on the Dutch oven while making sagamite, a thick corn porridge, and he always had to be up first thing in the morning. There was also the stress of preparing something that the six other men in his group would want to eat. He couldn’t do much to make the peas and beans they ate each night for dinner in Georgian Bay more appetizing, and a good breakfast was dependent on good ingredients from the liaison team or generous communities. Most of the time they just had plain old oatmeal or cornmeal, both cooked with water and maybe a little sugar or raisins. Personally, he couldn’t stomach oatmeal. Maybe it was the texture. He’d cook it for everyone else, but he always stuck to bannock on oatmeal mornings.

  Breakfast was normally a fast affair, and today the crew had ten miles to cover to get from Waukegan to Lake Forest. The temperature was a good motivator for moving quickly onto and off of the lake: only seven degrees and a windchill of minus twenty-three. Braun was the avant for his canoe, sitting in front of Marc Lieberman and Dick Stillwagon. He was by far the shortest of the three—both Lieberman and Stillwagon were more than six feet tall—but that didn’t stop him from being an effective wave blocker when the boat was pushing through chop. It was the catch-22 of being a bowman. All the avants had to be shorter or slighter than the other men in their boat to balance out the canoe, but their smaller stature also made them more susceptible to getting cold, and the avants usually got wetter than everyone else because of their position in the boat. Waves crashed over the bow or spray blew on them, and if they miraculously managed to stay dry all day, that would end when they jumped out of the canoe during landings. Getting doused hadn’t been a problem when the sun was out and the temperature was above seventy. Annoying, but harmless. Now it was dangerous. No one wanted a repeat of the incident at Washington Island. The water had only gotten colder since then.

  Curtains of steam rose from the lake as if the water were boiling as the crew set out for the day. The transfer of energy occurring between water and air was, in a sense, similar to a pot heating on a stove. At thirty-eight degrees, the surface of the lake was balmy compared to the air above it. The water turned into vapor in the cold air, resulting in steam fog. Clouds curled off the tops of waves like phantoms trailing their ragged cloaks across the smooth surface of the water. It was an eerie phenomenon and made it that much more difficult for the avants to keep an eye on the other canoes and any debris in the water ahead. And now there were more potential hazards than ever.

  A lake in the process of freezing poses far more challenges than a warm one, and it comes with its own sets of rules to obey. On top of storms that can roar in without warning, there are snow squalls and steam devils. The latter had only been described four years earlier, in 1972, by two scientists out of Wisconsin. Walter Lyons and Steven Pease compared the whirling towers of steam to dust devils, which are significantly less powerful than tornadoes on land, just as steam devils are less powerful than waterspouts.7 Nevertheless, the funnel clouds of steam were ominous to behold, even if they were probably less hazardous than a blizzard to the canoeists. The real threat to the integrity of the boats was ice. For now, the hardest ice with the sharpest edges was limited to the shoreline. It posed a problem only when the canoes set out or came back in. Out on the water the boats slid through skim ice, a thin layer of frazil crystals frozen together that couldn’t yet form a thick, cohesive surface. The patches of slushy ice became strange sculptures in the rolling water. As waves broke the thin layer of ice, large pieces snapped against each other in the sloppy mess of surf. Each collision scraped off a less-than-solid edge, until the ice was round and rimmed like a lily pad. The discs were called “pancake ice.” They’d been appearing in greater numbers lately, which could only mean the lake was getting closer to its freezing point.

  Although the winter of 1976–1977 was proving to be colder than average for this time of the year, everyone on the crew had known they were going to be crossing the Midwest in the middle of winter and prepared accordingly. Their layers of wool clothing were warm and kept them comfortable even in the wet clouds of lake steam. Although some people questioned the expedition’s decision to wear handmade period clothing instead of relying on newly developed synthetic fibers, wool was a tried-and-true insulator. The wool shirts, pants, scarves, and mittens had repeatedly proven their worth on the water. The men always wore two pairs of mittens when they were canoeing because the outermost pair was constantly getting splashed as they dipped the paddles in the water. Instead of soaking through to the skin, the water on the outside mitten froze and created another layer of insulation that kept their fingers warm and dry. The downside to this type of insulation was that the men had to chisel their hands off their paddles at the end of the day, since the ice fused the two together.

  Wool is a hygroscopic insulator; it can soak up lots of moisture without feeling wet, a natural trick performed by the tiny pores on wool fibers that wick water away from the skin. At the same time the structure of the fibers, which are crimped instead of lying flat, create protected air pockets that prevent circulation. Wearing wool clothing helps trap body heat next to the skin, while pulling moisture away to keep the body warm and dry. There was nothing the men could do about the wind, though. Braun’s canoe in particular had trouble in headwinds, since only three men were propelling the boat forward instead of four. Wind also increased the risk of hypothermia—when a strong wind came blowing into their faces, the men froze. The majority of the weather days the crew had taken thus far had been due to the wind. They called it being “windbound.”

  There was a slight breeze on this particular day’s trip, but the crew was able to push their way through it. They covered ten miles in two short hours and landed in Lake Forest just before noon. From their landing site the men headed to the local elementary school for presentations and lunch. When they walked in, they were met by the stunned gazes of dozens of children. It was a reaction they’d grown accustomed to along with the winter weather. Their wool-clad limbs were covered in a veneer of ice that crackled and crumbled as they moved. Some had ice encrusted among the hairs of their beards. They walked slowly to avoid slipping on the wet floor in their leather moccasins. Wherever they went, they were sure to leave behind huge puddles as the ice melted off their clothes and leaked out of the wool fabric. It took a couple of hours to get the wool dried out by the fire every night. The process occasionally resulted in singed wool socks that reeked of burnt hair and sweaty feet.

  From the awestruck elemen
tary and junior high schools, the crew was taken in vans to Ferry Hall, a private boarding school. The large fireplaces and ornate chandeliers looked like they could’ve been pulled from Victorian England. Until recently, Ferry Hall had been a private girls’ school. Two years earlier it merged with Lake Forest Academy, a local private boarding school for boys. The performance the crew gave that night was applauded by a huge audience of students, parents, and community members. It was always gratifying to see the number of people that turned out to see them and learn about the French voyageurs’ exploration of North America, especially when the weather was terrible.

  The evening indoors passed quickly and in relative comfort, although more than once crew members had been overcome by nausea after being inside for too long. Even if the air outside was biting, it was also fresh. Buildings felt small and confining after having spent so many days on the open water and so many nights with nothing but a thin layer of canvas between them and the sky.

  Making the fresh air even better tonight was the slowly rising temperature. It was only twenty degrees, but that was a lot warmer than the seven degrees it had been in the morning. Since the crew had an excessive amount of firewood, they decided to build up one enormous bonfire at their campsite. Between the waves of heat that came wafting off the huge fire and the full moon and the rising temperature, three men convinced themselves it was warm enough to go for a swim.

  Keith Gorse, George LeSieutre, and RK were all members of the “swim of the month club,” an informal gathering of lake connoisseurs who had agreed to go for a dip in the water at least once every month. Though he was a close friend of LeSieutre and in the same module as Gorse and RK, Braun chose to stay back with the rest of the crew in the relative warmth of the night air. The crew watched as the teenagers stripped down to their underwear, bolted into the frigid water up to their heads, then promptly shot back out and ran up to the fire. Gorse slipped on the climb up and fell into a pebbly hill. The small, frozen rocks burned and clung to his wet skin until he got to the fire, where the rocks thawed and began falling back to the ground. The crew members who had watched this spectacle hooted at their lobster-red friends. It was an excellent way to end an enjoyable day. Even with all the new obstacles presented by the winter weather, the modern voyageurs wouldn’t let the frigid temperatures and decreasing hours of daylight keep them down.

  Belmont Harbor, Illinois

  December 8, 1976

  Seeing ice stretch out to the horizon at 5:00 A.M. after three hours of sleep wasn’t the best way to start the day. The crew had been driven to their hometown of Elgin the day before to do a series of presentations in their high schools, a detour that allowed little time to visit with family and friends. At least they’d be in the Chicago area for almost a week and have the chance to visit more. The only downside was their exceptionally busy schedule, which meant no one would get as much sleep as they might like. This morning everyone was staring blearily at the iced shoreline anticipating a change to their original plans. The expedition was expected in Chicago in the afternoon. Canoe builder Ralph Frese had organized an outdoor banquet and welcome reception for them on the lawn in front of Adler Planetarium, complete with crystal glassware and china plates. The crew had planned to spend the day paddling the fourteen miles between Evanston and Adler, dodging ice floes and admiring the Chicago skyline. They would land at the 12th Street beach. But the thick layer of ice lining the shore meant that instead of making a triumphant entrance into the great city, courageous and proud beneath a layer of frost, icicles hanging from the gunwales of their handcrafted canoes, they’d have to be bussed in. Two dozen voyageurs climbing out of a bus didn’t have nearly the same effect as a fleet of six boats coming over a steaming, icy lake. There just weren’t any other options if they couldn’t get past the ice. Put the boats directly in the ice and their hulls would be gouged to shreds by the jagged edges; try to walk the boats farther out and the men would risk breaking through thin spots in the ice and plunging into frigid water.

  Never one to be daunted by the weather, Reid Lewis went with Stillwagon and some of the other adult crew members to scout the shoreline a few miles to the south . They came back around 10:00 A.M., just when most of the crew members had resigned themselves to a day of repairing moccasins and working on odd projects until they were driven to Chicago. The scouts had found a spot to the south along the shore where the ice wasn’t too thick and didn’t stretch out far into the lake.

  “We’re going to portage a mile and a half, then paddle the fourteen miles to Adler and arrive right on time at four,” Lewis told the crew.

  The men received the news with less enthusiasm than Lewis would’ve hoped. Braun was livid. In general, he was easygoing and rolled with the punches. He wasn’t often ruffled by the decisions made by the expedition leaders. But setting out at 10:00 on an unplanned portage, then paddling fourteen miles through icy water and expecting to arrive by 4:00 P.M. was crazy. He guessed the portage would take at least three hours, loading the canoes for a paddle would take another hour, then the paddling itself would be at least three more hours, meaning they’d be landing at 5:00 P.M. or later, and in the dark. It was risky to be out on the water past sunset when the temperatures were this low and the water was filled with so many little icebergs. But what could he do, what could he say? His opinion wasn’t going to change anything.

  Disgruntled as they were, the men gathered their gear and set off down the shore through Northwestern University’s campus. It was a disorganized mess, and it took almost four hours to travel the mile and a half to the open bit of shore. When they arrived, the beach was still full of jagged ice, but they were able to launch the boats without too much difficulty. At that point the sun was heading down the horizon and the cold was sinking into the men’s bones. Spiky blocks of ice bobbed around them as they paddled. It was becoming rapidly apparent that they weren’t going to make their welcome ceremony at Adler Planetarium and that staying on the water much longer was dangerous. The weather was just too cold for their clothes to keep them warm on a dark, frozen lake.

  After two hours and about seven miles of paddling, the decision was made to find an appropriate landing site and make camp wherever they ended up. They were closest to Belmont Harbor, a sheltered marina near the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. There was nowhere to land but a five-foot break wall. The men made the landing and struggled to pull the boats out of the water without causing any damage from the rough surfaces. Lewis hurried off to the city to make phone calls and rearrange their schedule. He came back to tell them they’d missed the meal Frese had prepared for them, but they were on time for a cocktail reception at the National Bank of Paris. The crew shuffled off to a bus to make their appearance among the ritzy, glamorous attendants of the bank’s party, feeling angry and exhausted. Guests at the event would later say the temperature in the room dropped when the men entered wearing their ice-covered woolen clothes with pink cheeks and frost in their beards.

  When they returned to camp after sleepily schmoozing and dethawing in the well-heated bank, it was time for a crew meeting. The meetings were supposed to be a chance to make plans for the next day, as much as such things were possible with the ever-changing weather conditions. But lately they had devolved into unproductive shouting matches where everyone threw their conflict resolution training out the door. Tonight Cox let loose on Lewis, shouting about the insanity of paddling in the dark, in the cold, without knowing if there would be anywhere safe to land. Were they going to put the schedule ahead of the crew’s safety for the rest of the winter? Would they regularly be on the water past dark? Gradually the conversation became more constructive and the crew turned away from arguments to discuss what options they had besides continuing the slow paddle across the southern shore of Lake Michigan. Maybe they could follow the Chicago River to the Des Plaines. It would mean changing their schedule and canceling performances in towns in northern Indiana and southern Michigan along their published route, but it might save
them a lot of trouble. For now, though, they’d give themselves some time to mull over the decision. The expedition wouldn’t be moving anywhere until they were done with all their obligations in Chicago. In the next three days they’d be visiting the La Salle Bank and the Chicago Academy of Sciences, and giving numerous presentations and media appearances.

  That night Braun went to bed in a temper. He counted the day among the worst so far on the expedition. What a difference a week made in his outlook on the winter, on the expedition as a whole! He didn’t understand how decisions that put him in danger could be made without any input from the “student” crew members. They weren’t students anymore, and the age difference between them and the adults had long ceased to make any difference in their day-to-day interactions, but they still weren’t taken as seriously as the adults when it came to making important decisions. How much further would Lewis push them?

  For his part, Lewis had no desire to see any of the men get hurt, and he knew traveling on the lake was risky. But the point of the expedition was to take risks, push themselves further every day, show people that modern man was capable of great deeds. It seemed like more and more crew members were willing to ease off now that the weather was colder. In Toronto, no one would quit, no matter how badly it hurt. Now, taking a day off when they weren’t feeling up to their task had become the honorable thing to do. The phrase everyone used was, “Let’s be considerate of ourselves.”

 

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