Travel Deals – Winter strips the wilderness of color: white snow, gray ice, the Dalmatian spots of paper birches. The somber green of pine and spruce and claret stems of red osier are vivid in comparison. Simple forms stand in high relief: a black pool of open water flanked by snow, daggers of ice plunging from slaty rocks, low sun, long shadows. The effect is striking, as austere and beautiful as an Ansel Adams print.
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My wife, Susan, and I and our friends Steve and Karen Lucas had driven up from the Twin Cities to snowshoe and bushwhack the trails and lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. We arrived in Ely, departure point to the wilderness, in late afternoon. Were it summer, cars and trucks carrying Kevlar canoes would have jammed Sheridan Street. Campers just arriving would be stalking Piragis Northwoods Company for maps, freeze-dried food and bargains in camp clothes. Canoeists on their way home would wait for a table at the Chocolate Moose. But in late January, tourists were few. Townsfolk scurried about on errands, bundled against raw, subfreezing weather.
We had rented a cabin on the edge of the wilderness area. We drove now through town to rendezvous with one of the owner’s employees, Brian Klubben, and his friend Tom Reis. They led the way down the Fernberg Road and swung onto a snowy trail to Kempton Lake. We loaded gear onto plastic toboggans and crossed the small lake in waning daylight to a log cabin on a rocky point. Dragging sleds up the shore, we stashed snowshoes and ski poles on the porch and gear in the cabin — warm clothes, mainly, and two coolers of steaks, vegetables, eggs and chorizo, a box of red wine, trail lunches and other essentials. Brian and Tom had already started the wood stove and hauled in drinking water in plastic jerrycans. They showed us how to light the auxiliary propane heater and gas lights, and then pointed out where they had drilled holes through the lake ice to draw wash water.
“See any wolves out here?” I asked Mr. Reis.
“I saw three on my lake,” he said. “And when we came out this afternoon, we saw some tracks here on this lake.”
The cabin was cozy, the logs expertly fitted against drafts. But apparently I had neglected to mention the lack of electricity and running water, and the outhouse down the hill. “Did you know this?” asked my wife in a way that begged something other than a simple yes or no. I had, I guess, but the details seemed unimportant. Clearly a mistake. Both Susan and Karen had brought blow dryers. Neither ran on propane.
“The outhouse is kind of quaint,” Karen said. She was being kind, though a sheet of insulating foam on the seat did keep the backside toasty. Read more »
