As a kid in the sixties, I sold chocolate thin mints each winter to go to a YMCA Camp each summer. Once I reached a certain age, I was able to go on a canoe trip up to the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area for a ten day trip. One year was especially memorable thanks to the other boys I was with.
There were two boys from Sweden along for this trip, and I was lucky enough to share a tent and a canoe with them for the trip. They spoke acceptable english. The only Swedish I knew was a few words that my family used, and they were not words that would help on the trip, so I left them home.
Freeze dried food was recently affordable, so that is what we ate for most of the trip. Freeze dried eggs, freeze dried something made with beef heart for dinner. Lunch time was unique though. After paddling a canoe all morning on that wonderful meal of freeze dried eggs, and water, lunch was a veritable feast!
Lunch was four pieces of Rye Crisp, which are small crackers made out of rye flour. One those four pieces of Rye Crisp was the treat for the day. One piece had peanut butter, a second piece had jelly, and the other two pieces had a slice Spam between them. This came with a glass of Kool Aid to drink! By the third day we all felt like kings, eating such a great lunch!
The way to get around the BWCA, is you paddle your canoe from an entry spot to an exit called a portage which went to another lake or river. The portages were not fun. It meant carrying a seventy pound canoe, a back pack almost as heavy, or the paddles and life preservers, and anything else that needed carrying. This was carried through the woods and swarms of starving mosquitoes, and deer flies. By the third day, you rarely noticed the bug any longer because you were bitten so many times already, a few more bites did not matter.
There were another type of portage we came across too. This portage was unique to the rivers we would travel on. Paddling down a river we would see a posted sign that would read, ‘Dangerous Water Use Portage’. That sign meant what it said, usually some very rough water that a canoe was not built for. Generally these signs meant we would pull in, unpack, haul everything around the rapids, put the canoe back in the water, repack, and continue.
We started to notice that some of the rapids, were not so dangerous that they could not be navigated, especially by ‘professionals’ such as ourselves. Being kids, and having no leaders present to make decisions for us, we saw others in our group who paddled down the rapids instead of portaging around. We talked it over, and decided that if they could do it, we could too.
One afternoon, I was the bow paddler, one boy who was duffer (in the middle, enjoying the ride), and a boy named Jon Sebinas was in the back paddling, and steering for us. We were on a river and had ran some portage sign rapids. We were doing well, and had not bothered to portage. We were discussing perhaps they were feeling extra cautious on this river when they put up the signs because the rapids were not that bad.
We went around a bend, and there was a portage sign. We could not see anything, and Jon stood up in the back of the canoe, and said to us, “Oh ya, ve can make it.” It looked fast but simple from my bow view, and the duffer agreed too. The water moved faster, and there were boulders to miss as we shot down the river, but it was fairly easy. Then I noticed the river sort of disappeared about fifty yards ahead. Waterfall! It was a painful drop, and we spent the next few nights sleeping in wet sleeping bags.
Over the years, I use that day, and result as a decision helper in my life. Oh ya, ve can make it, rings through my head on many occasions when I find I am feeling nervous.
