Continuation Four - conclusion

My "wild" camp on the Canadian shore at the entrance into Rainy Lake

A strip of orange glow had just started forming behind the black stage set of the eastern horizon, when I slipped the loaded canoe from the granite slab into the dark water of Lac La Croix. I stepped into it with my right leg and pushed it off with the left. I seated myself on the soft rolled up mat and started to paddle towards the north, pushed in part by the south-south-west wind, which blew through the whole night and ruffled the surface of the lake into black waves. As I was passing the campsite with the two drawn out canoes, it was dead there. All was still sleeping. Most likely they traveled toward the east and did not have to worry about early starting of the day. Lac La Croix is really vast. The name originates for one from the fact that missionaries erected here a giant wooden cross on one of the islands. But secondly, the lake also represented a cross road of two fur trade water routes. It’s because the later trade route of the Northwest Company, which was leaving Lake Superior up the current of the Kaministiquia, Joined here the boundary route from Grande Portage. My way through the lake followed the line of the border. This wound through the enormous water area, strewn with islands, in a giant horse shoe with both its ends in the south and the highest point of its bend in the north. While I traveled from the southwest end of the horse shoe to the north, I had another chance to admire more native pictographs on high granite walls dropping vertically into the lake. Yet the waves tossed with the boat and made it hard to photograph the graphics. Moreover, the sky had a gloomy overcast, which created a twilight supressing all shadows. The coastlines of the shores and islands on the widespread lake surface thus merged into one black mass that made it impossible to recognize their shape. It so happened then that after infinite hours of paddling, when I already expected my arrival at the end portage out of the lake, but the geographical elements would still not quite agree with those on the map, I ran into a fly-in base of float planes, above which a Canadian flag flew. I landed here to go and ask where I could find the portage. Right away, a chap in a baseball cap came forth to meet me, who, as it turned out, was the pilot of a plane that I had seen landing over my canoe a short while back. He willingly escorted me along the floating pier to his plane, took a pilot\s map from the pocket of the machine and spread it on the deck. Radially spreading pencil lines on it converged into one point, which was supposed to be the spot, where we were just finding ourselves. I couldn’t believe my eyes and at first, I totally rejected the pilot’s claim. It is because I had been totally disoriented. The base was situated in the center of the bend of the horse shoe, on its very highest point. I therefore still had ahead of me a whole half of the length of the horse shoe to the end of the lake and I had no idea, through where I had been wondering off till the time when I arrived at my present position. But now, when I already knew where I was and where the north is, all that remained was to reprogram accordingly my brain. Then I set a hard racing pace, resolved to catch up with the lost time and reach the end of the lake La Croix before dark. The headwind, which I was now facing in my southward movement, was fortunately abating a bit with the advent of evening. I knew from the map that almost at the end of the lake, on the point of the left shore an American campsite should be situated. I only prayed that it be free.

The campsite was to be found on a point that was rather a small island, joined with the main shore by a short narrow isthmus. The spot, which I had taken for it from a distance, as I was approaching it with my eyes glued onto the greyish rock slab satisfied that it looked empty, did not turn up to be a campsite from up close. I already despaired and readied myself for the need of emergency camping. Yet only after rounding the peninsula to its southern side, where it formed a sheltered little cove with the main shore, the right signs emerged. Here was a harbor of a granite platform and higher up in the back on a grassy clearing under tall trees, there was a fire pit with comfortable log seating around and a scenic view of the bay. There was not much time remaining, but all the necessary chores had already become a well-entrenched routine. The tent stood in a blink of an eye and when the fire was already licking the bottoms of the kettles, I managed to even jump into now serene water of the bay and after two weeks wash my hair with a shampoo. This took place already in twilight. I then finished drying myself in the warm radiating heat at the fire, while I finished supper, tea and ate.

The next morning, I launched the canoe already at five. The lake was quiet, but the light fog above its surface was this early now already freezing. I paddled in a light insulated jacket with its zipper drawn up to the throat. Even the hat, jammed up to my ears, was filling its task in holding the body heat. At the end of the lake, where I had expected a portage, a small rural house, likely several generations old, with various additional structures as in a small village settlement emerged from the misty twilight. There was mowed grass here and a pier with moored boats. I took it for a private property and searched farther beyond it, but there was already the end of the lake and no sign of a portage trail. It was only twenty past five and I knew that I could not wake up the owner of the property, to ask. Yet at that moment, his voice thundered from somewhere around the door of the house, where I could not see anybody: “The portage is to the left of the pier!” What? Isn’t there just a lawn of a private lot? I could not understand. Again the voice bellowed, this time separating individual words by a short pause for the instruction to sound more comprehensible. “The portage is on the left of the landing pier!” I detected a hint of ire in the undertone yet and thus I obediently turned my canoe around right away to the ordered spot. Only now, I could see that over the lawn led rails to the water for transporting motor boats. Also only now, I noticed a greyish figure in high rubber boots and a ball cap, standing on the entrance porch of the house. From it must have come forth that angry voice from heavens? As I would soon find out, it was mister Beatty and the whole settlement in fact served to the portaging of fishing motor boats between the two lakes. It made a living from the corresponding fees for the service. On the front of a shed, hung a sign burnt into a wooden board “Beatty’s Portage” and the Beatty family apparently acted on the scene here already for several generations. My quintuple non-motorized trek across the property through the morning dew to the water of the next lake naturally was not subject to the price list of the fees for motor boats that were conspicuously posted here and I therefore quickly disappeared from the annoyed Mr. Beatty’s eyes. Who knows, maybe he had had a bad dream.

Now, I was moving to the south, against a south wind. My route today was to describe a big square „U“. I couldn’t wait to have its first leg, aiming south and against the wind behind me. After that, I was to move more or less toward west-south-west, where the wind should be coming from the left side. Some distance beyond the next portage to the Loon River, the route should even bend to the north and thus down the wind. Up to the first corner of the “U” and for a great part beyond it, the route stretches through smaller lakes. Before I rounded the corner, the wind had already changed to south-south-west and I had consequently a bit of a headwind with the strong side waves. But as soon as I entered into the narrow Loon River, which aimed more or less directly to the west, the wind was only seldom directed by the trough of the forested banks against me. Soon I arrived to the second portage, which, as it turned out, also had a set of rails over a small hill for transferring motor boats. It bore the name „Loon Portage“. The trail for the canoes had a small landing here in a cove full of reeds and mud. When I located an extension of the path from the shore into the water in a paving strip of flat rocks, I polled the canoe along its side up the mud with the paddle all the way to the mowed lawn, to be able to step out of the boat with dry feet in hiking boots. It was right at that moment that to the stone strip came a man with a canoe on his shoulders and a huge rubber pack on his back from the other side of the portage. I greeted him and apologizing, I asked him to wait a second, so that I could pull the whole canoe out of the water and make room for his launching. Yet, he assured me that there was no problem that he was O. K. and that he would pass by me. What a shock awaited me, when, having pulled the canoe onto the mowed lawn, I turned toward the water and saw the man standing up to his waist in the black muck in a brimmed hat, the pack on his back and his chest at the level of the gunwales of his canoe, launched next to him. Horrified, I rushed to help him, but again, he claimed that he was O. K., that he did not need any help. Ergo, I delivered my first load to the other end of the portage. I had thought that the man traveled alone, like I was, but soon his wife appeared on the scene with another big rubber pack. They were both around fifty five, dressed by the latest outdoor fashion, in perfect synthetic tops, him in blazing red, her in turquoise, in brand new fast-drying cargo pants with many pockets, excellent mountaineering boots and in glowingly new waterproof hats of the „Outdoor Research“ brand. He, however, after my return stood on the shore wet from the navel down and black from the mud. Yet, he insisted that everything was O. K. When I ran into his wife on the portage, and warned her that right at the water’s edge, there was deep mud, into which her husband sunk up to his middle, she noted leisurely that “This is typical for him. He did the same thing last year!” It was obvious that they loved the nature, but they must have belonged to a city elite without a great deal of wilderness experience and without much physical fitness. On my third return for the canoe, I already saw them paddling in the direction, from which I had come. It did not seem that the man had bothered to change. All was probably O. K.

The Loon was narrow, like a small river. It wound through a land of mixed forest, along occasional meadows of waist-high grass and weeds with lonesome old oaks – trees, which in Alberta, where I live, one does not see. On the inside of the curves, shallow sand bars formed, not once, I had to avoid an into-water-fallen tree. There were signs of beaver here, every once in a while a pair of ducks appeared. At one time a trio of kingfishers held a step with the canoe, who flicked their bluish wings in a swinging flight from one river bank tree branch to another further and further down the current. When I at last rounded a ninety-degree turn to the right and to the north, I finally had the wind in my back. It was an unusual luxury, which I had to really appreciate. I paddled in long strokes on some fifteen meters wide river, passing above the water leaning white trunks of birch trees, shore line rushes and occasional granite outcropping. . As a typical feature of the “rivers” of the boundary water route, neither here one could discern any current, except in a few narrows. I again paddled stripped to my waist, like a redskin under the blue cupola of the sunny Indian summer day. Just then, a roar of a strong motor in the back announced to me that soon a motor boat would show up. I squeezed into the sparse reeds by the right bank and I paddled on. In a moment, a large boat of outfitters from Minnesota emerged, in which about eight men with serious looks of experienced outdoor professionals were sitting ranging in age from some thirty to sixty five. It was evident that surprised, they all admired my appearance of a seventy-one-year-old, paddling by mighty strokes with a bare, sun-bronzed back with no life jacket, but a hat on, in a solo canoe. As they advanced closely along my canoe at a reduced speed not to make overly large waves for me, one of the younger men lifted a transparent plastic window flap of the boat’s canopy and with one raised finger on an outstretched hand expressed a query by his questioning grimace: “Are you traveling alone?” I understood. When I positively nodded, all in the boat stretched the corners of their lips down the pushed out chins in an appreciative nodding, some of them with a “V” of raised fingers in a recognition. It was the most effective injection of boosting my self-confidence and a shot of courage into the further lonesome rough coexistence with the wilderness.

And of that courage I indeed needed more than a few bunches in the not too distant continuation of my movement to the north. That’s because the river widened up after a while, first into a large lake Little Lake Vermillion and later into an even bigger Sand Point Lake. This was already afternoon and the wind at that time had already gained the maximum strength. It now blew from the southwest. In the narrow sections of the river aiming north, it got expressed as a tail wind, but on the open water of the lakes, it sent strong waves from the rear left. Two motor boats, which I met in the middle of Little Lake Vermillion, moving in the opposite direction, were forced to reduce their speed to a minimum, because the waves and the wind threatened to throw their bow over the stern. They looked surprised seeing a lone canoeist fighting the waves in the middle of the vast spread of the water like a rodeo cowboy in a bull ride. They too signaled with the “V” of raised fingers, wishing me victory. Yet, however crazy seemed the continuation of paddling on the lake, I could not afford not to take advantage of the natural force, which was driving me forward for free. Who knows, how long the wind would continue blowing from the back in this part of the route? I was prepared to persist in moving for as long as it would be possible, perhaps even till dusk. Between four and five, when I normally start looking for a campsite, the waves were overwhelming, but the near shore, which was the Canadian one, still was not offering any suitable spot. I had passed the whole coastline of a large island, where I had hoped to camp, in vain searching. The lake was now opening a broad bay to the northeast, where I did not see its end. My route called for a diagonal crossing of the lake to the northwest, to a point on the American side, distant about five kilometers across the open water. For a long while I hesitated pondering whether to risk, but at a momentary weakening of the wind, I suddenly gathered courage and set out for a hard race across the water. I knew that I had to reduce the time to be spent in the middle of the lake area, kilometers from the nearest shore, to a minimum. I suspected that the wind and waves could only worsen with passing time. I truly paddled as in a race, with my eyes burning a spot in the red-black rock point on the horizon. Yet it seemed to be remaining at the same distance. When at last it seemed that, perhaps, only half a kilometer remained to reach it, the wind grew mad in an obsessed effort to prevent my possible victory. Every once in a while, an even much bigger foaming wave came from the left side, which threw the front of the canoe high above the water and at the same time, it tried to capsize the craft to the right. As I was forced by the wind to paddle on that side, my body weight happened to also rest more on the right. Only with heavy support from the paddle, as I stroked mightily against the water, I managed to resist this tendency. Perhaps even the rock cliff of the point itself was compressing the streaming of the wind along its wall, so that in the moment, when I neared the point to ten meters, and considered the battle as almost won, its climax was yet to come. Moreover, the waves, reflected from the wall, made sure that the boat moved toward the point forward and backward in an infinite snail pace of a see-saw struggle.

Oh, what a relief, when finally, I rounded the point and found myself temporarily in its lee from the wind and waves. This was, however, already just before six - a high time to immediately look for a campsite. I was passing a low, narrow, extended sliver of a granite island, which, in an absolute emergency could allow a sleep over, yet I wanted to explore better possibilities a little further. I wished to as much as possible approach the hidden narrows, which was to reveal a tomorrow’s access to the next lake, which was a vast Lake Namakan. I hid from the wind by moving through narrow gaps between islands, when, to my disbelief, in a small cove of a small island to my left, through the evening half-light, I discerned a brown sign on a post, on which a symbol of a tee-pee seemed to be depicted. Is this to indicate a campsite? I almost passed the site, but now I returned to it. Indeed, there was no doubt that the sign was marking a campsite. This even had a name: „Norway Island“. Under the crowns of tall pine trees, on sandy soil, here were two pic-nick tables, a metal fire pit, four leveled base platforms for tents, a shelter-less plastic commode toilette and even sheet metal cabinets for safe storage of food from bears. A noted curiosity of the island was, that everywhere around grew a bounty of king bolete mushrooms – the most prized by European mushroom picking savants. Thanks to their island isolation, they all evidently shared the same mutated gene that gave their heads a very light beige color tone. The whole island was void of people, it was only waiting to soothingly cradle my aching body and help renew its strength and energy for the battles of the near future. I had a pleasant evening here. For the usual swim, there was neither time, nor mood. The strong wind was especially now already too chilling. One important thing distinguished my current water voyage from the previous ones: That is this time, I carried a small electronic device of the pocket wallet size, which allowed me to send an e-mail message via satellite each evening to a list of recipients that I had myself determined. I was able to broadcast an information, if I was O. K., or if I needed help. The gadget of a “SPOT” brand had besides buttons for sending out the messages: “I am O. K.“ and “I need help“ also an “SOS“, button protected by a snap cover that had to be flipped out before its pressing. This would activate a full-fledged rescue mission from the appropriate international authorities. One could be responsible for the financial cost of such an operation, should he have light-heartedly abused it. He thus have to think twice before pressing the “SOS” and make sure that the request for a rescue action is really the last resort for his survival. In any case, Milena had a message from me every evening that “I am O. K.” Besides these words, (which, again, I could compose myself, but only before the trip), the e-mail message also contained an interactive Google map with a pin head indicating my exact position with the GPS bearings and the date and time of the broadcast.

The blazing light of the planet Venus in the role of a Morning Star in the east and the cold constellation of Orion above the southeast horizon were welcoming me, when, still in the dark, I left the comfort of the tent and started packing. It was necessary, to find a very inconspicuous narrow canal in among the wooded shores and islands of a large lake into an even much bigger one. Then I was to move on Lake Namakan for a large distance directly to the west. I studied the shape of the coastline leading to the narrows in the last light already yesterday evening, after I had walked across the island from my camp to its west side. Now I moved very vigilantly on the surface of the lake in the dawn twilight, so that I wouldn’t miss the passage. All was successful, though, and I entered Lake Namakan victorious. It was still relatively early in the morning. The wind had not calmed down completely overnight and it blew with a reduced strength still from the southwest. I thus paddled closely along the south – American – side of the lake, where the waves were smaller. Only once at the end of the lake, I started to curve the course to the right, north, where I was to enter another narrow passage of an inverted “S” shape. This was supposed to finally lead me to the largest and final lake of the route, Rainy Lake. The wind rose to its full strength on Lake Namakan at the time, when I was already aiming northwest to the passage through the narrows. I thus fought again a life and death battle with the side waves from the left and with a howling wind. Only with an utmost exertion and with a sizeable dose of luck, I at last reached the calm in the passage and now, I paddled for a longer period in a relative wind shelter to a site called Kettle Falls. Its name hinted that it was to represent waterfalls, even if my map didn’t show any further need for a portage on my route yet. I first heard the name from Dean, the lone water traveler in the opposite direction, with whom I had met on the portage to Ottertrack Lake. He was then curious, how I was intending to overcome Kettle Falls, but I followed my time-proven philosophy, which I had adopted on my water voyage, not to worry about possible problems, until actually facing them. And so, I continued paddling along the border, until warning signs forbade my further progress because of a dam ahead. I did not see any instructions posted on how to circumvent the dam and I thus started guessing, where most likely the portage around it could be. I backtracked from the arm of the dam and entered an n adjacent bay on the American side, where I had seen motor boats disappearing before. Soon I viewed a grouping of small buildings with a number of water craft tied at several harbor piers. I did not see any rails here, but I guessed right that a smooth dirt road over a crest represented the portage for powerboats. Those were transported here on a trailer behind a truck for change. I had accordingly repeatedly transferred my livelihood under the dam and set out. After a period of lost wandering due to a brief disorientation in the correct direction, I did find the right channel and at last, I floated into a lake of an enormous spread - Rainy Lake. The name comes from the name of the outflow river – the Rainy River, or Rivier La Plui as the Voyageurs called it, because a short distance below the lake, it had a big waterfall with a water spray which precipitated all around as a never-ending rain. Today, the site is obscured by a hydro dam. But now, I had a long way to that end of the lake and this straight to the west. The sun was low now and the only prospect of a campsite, which remained for me, was a wild campsite on the Canadian side of the boundary. I thus searched on the right, “licking” in the canoe the right shore. After some period of scrutinizing, I indeed found a gorgeous spot, which did not bear any signs of being previously used. It had all the right attributes: a low flat granite platform for landing with and disembarking a boat, a higher granite terrace a short distance away with a carpet of soft moss and lichen for the tent, abundance of dry wood everywhere around for fire, which I located in rock cavity so it would be sheltered from wind and conserve its heat by reflecting from the walls. The tent was soon up next to a “whale skeleton” of a fallen pine with bleached stubs of its branches as ribs. The wind quieted down with the evening and the late sun rays reflected from the smooth water surface into the camp. In it; it was pleasantly warm. The edge of the harbor slab was falling off to a considerable depth and so there was a natural access for my traditional swim. Yet, in spite of the seeming closeness to the finish of my journey, I seriously worried about what obstacles would the giant vastness of the water area place ahead of me, which I was to traverse to reach Fort Frances. That was the town of the destination of my voyage and it was situated at the outflow end of the lake. At that time, in all honesty, I was not sure, if this lake would not stop me.

The morning was gloomy. The tent fly was dry unlike on other mornings, when it would be wet from the morning condensation of humidity. Black clouds rolling in from the southwest thickened the pre-morning darkness. The air smelled of rain. It was the first time in a long while that I decided to stretch the spray cover onto the canoe. I was hurriedly loading and just as I was unfurling the rolled up cover from the bow to the stern in haste, a downpour started. It managed to form a few small puddles in the bottom of the canoe, before I finished covering it securely, but the rain definitely managed to drench me, before I found time to don my Gore-Tex jacket and my hat. I will have to dry by body heat while paddling. I again licked the south - American coastline of the lake, to avoid big waves that were being whipped up farther on the open water. I could imagine, what kind of a sea surf must be pounding the distant Canadian shore that was visible only as a thin black line in a misty distance. The first rain shower passed after some while, yet the clouds only grew and new showers were coming one after another for the whole morning. From the map, I had worked out a strategy, which was to take advantage of a narrow passage between the American coastline and the adjacent islands up to a place, where it was necessary to turn northwest and aim across the open water toward narrows, which divided Rainy Lake into an eastern and western parts. The constriction had a name - Brule Narrows. The passage between the coastline and the islands was supposed to protect me from wind and waves. When I reached its beginning, the sun had merrily blazed for some while yet, as by some miracle, it found an opening in the wallowing clouds. Here was a quiet lee of the coastline and I thus stopped for a quick snack in the boat. For the cases, where I hadn’t had time in the camp in the evening to make the tea, I had as a backup a filtering straw. This is a plastic tube with a sucking mouthpiece, inside of which is a smaller coaxial ceramic tube as a filter. With this device, I could draw water to have a drink directly from the lake without worry about contracting bacteria, or Giardia infections, etc. Before I could finish my refreshment, though, the water surface around me started getting dappled with little rings from rain drops. At first, the sun was still out and it seemed that this was only a passing whim of an errand tatter of a cloud, but the rings were steadily getting denser and I packed away my food in a hurry, put on the Gore-Tex jacket and closed the skirt of the spray cover up to my armpits. I pulled down the bottom edge of my jacket over the spray skirt just when it started pouring. Now, the sunshine was already replaced by gloomy half-darkness. When I looked up to the sky, with horror I saw above the black tips of the spruce on the left bank of the passage a menacing black wall of the rapidly rolling storm clouds. From their violent interfolding were shooting crooked lightning bolts and above my head exploded thunder claps. Right away, I knew that this would not be something that one could somehow escape. In the blink of an eye, the storm was above my head. The rain turned into a waterfall, which, together with a wild wind flogged my back and drove my boat down the channel like a broom n violent gusts, which chased along the surface of water waves of white frying boil. I merely squeezed to the right shore under the protection of the trees in lieu of lightning rods. I was not going to represent the highest point on the open water, even if I had noticed that the lightning bolts were being mutually exchanged only between the clouds and not between them and the ground. The wind and rain pushed me in my direction without paddling. I held the paddle crosswise in my lap and leaning slightly forward, I tried to roof over the waterproof map case with my body. Yet, it immediately rested in a rain puddle on the spray cover anyway. An idea of leaving the canoe and seeking some refuge on shore was totally out of the question. The rain water accumulated in puddles on the spray cover and poured from my hat down my back at the same rate as if somebody poured one bucket on it after another. I couldn’t keep up in lifting the spray cover in front of me and behind the seat, to dump the accumulated water in it over the gunwales and it was again sagging under the load of litres of new water. When I already thought that there had been enough and that, perhaps, the end should be coming, a yet more berserk fit of the Nature’s insanity would arrive. When at long last the worst wrath of heavens had passed, I again started paddling. With the help of the still driving wind in my back, I soon reached the end of the narrow passage. Here I turned to the north along the shores of the islands that I had earlier predetermined as my navigational guides. The storm then had moved over the main area of the lake in the north-easterly direction. The scene of the lake landscape possessed a funeral atmosphere. Under the leaden sky, all the shores looked black and islands merged with the mainland into one black mass surrounding the open water. No shape of the surrounding coastlines was distinguishable. Yet, after the passing of the storm, the surface of the lake miraculously calmed down and sat quietly, like the eye of a hurricane. In the southwest, I could see a portent of another wrath of heavens. I now had to cut across about four kilometers of open water to a narrow channel leading to the next part of the lake and I knew that I only had a short time window for it. Should I get caught out there in something similar to what I had survived in the passage, it might likely sink me. Naturally, under the present circumstances, I discerned no narrows in the black line of shore on the distant horizon ahead of me. I just set a rough azimuth of the desired course to it from the map and from the north on my watch and I commenced the race. I glued my eyes to a lighter spot of some rock outcrop on the distant coastline, but as I progressed along the water surface, I more and more tweaked my course to the right in an effort to rather possibly miss the narrows toward the Canadian side and return along its shore left to it. Just when I at last approached the coastline in front of me to perhaps three hundred meters, the gale of another storm roared in from my left. In the ensuing waltz of the devils, furiously paddling, I reached some protection in a gap between the coastline and a near island. Driven by the wind through the gap to the right, I was looking for another gap on the left, through which I could return to the sought after narrows. It seemed that several were available here. I was cruising through their network for quite a while. Yet, the topography that I could see, did not agree with the one on the map. I determined the north from my watch and to my utter disbelief, it was exactly on the opposite side than where I had assumed it to be. I fished out a busola from the bottom of the electronics dry bag and it confirmed the testimony of my watch. I was yet again disoriented, this time thoroughly. I had a very hard time trying to reprogram my brain to comprehend the present position. When I finally emerged onto open water, and assumed that due to a sheer luck I had passed through the narrows into the next part of the lake, from under the edge of the cloud cover on one side peeked out the sun. That had to be by now in the west, where I was supposed to aim. Against my instinct, I thus turned to the right, in its direction. Yet on the left, where I had planned to follow the American coastline, there was no shore. Everywhere on the left, as far as the eye could see, only a vast lake was spreading. I paddled uncertain for another half an hour against a strong headwind. After a while, when I had already known that something was seriously out of order and I could not continue, a small island appeared in front of me with a small cove of a harbor on the shady, lee side. A Canadian flag flew here above a cottage in pines. I headed directly to it in hope that I would ask its owners, where in fact my position was on the map. But the place was deserted. I was exhausted, chilled to the bone from the cold wind and from the wet clothing that never had a chance to dry on me from the rains and the drenching of the previous and the recent storms. I based an emergency camp on the grassy flat at the harbor. Even into my waterproof map case, water somehow found its way and the maps in it were a soggy mess. I peeled them carefully apart and spread them to dry. In the meantime, I tried to use all possible means that I had to my disposal, to determine my position. I pulled out the GPS unit and I determined my bearings. These I transferred onto my very non-detailed topographic map, which was wet, but was the only one that had the degrees and minutes marked along its edges. Yet it did not have a corresponding set of grid lines inside and I therefore only estimated the cross-secting of the transferred coordinates by eye. This gave me a nonsensical result, according to which, I should have been finding myself on the Canadian shore, still somewhere in the part of the lake before the narrows. I refused to take this revelation seriously. I charged the IPhone, and tried to open an App, which was supposed to show me my position on a map in it. The App, however, always crashed my cellphone in all repeated attempts. But then, I suddenly noticed that I had one bar of a telephone signal. I attempted to call Milena and … a miracle! … her voice answered. Wisely, she suggested that I sent her my SPOT signal and she would call me back with a description of where I was. I was a little skeptical about Milena’s sense of orientation, who in her orientational handicap could normally take “east” and “west” for baking ingredients. Yet, as usually in a critical situations, Milena outdid herself. She confirmed to me that I was indeed finding myself at the Canadian coastline still in the part of the lake before the narrows, thus to the east of it. She informed me that she clearly saw in the satellite view on the map my island with the cove of the harbor and the cottage. She even had the guts to joke that she could see me there. To my amazement, she even described, how I should move to get to the Brule Narrows. I had her repeat everything several times and in the end, I believed her. Everything now meshed. It would cost me an extra day, but now, I started feeling confidence that with prudent vigilance and self-discipline, I had to successfully reach the finish of my voyage. The lion’s share in it belonged to Milena’s encouraging words.

The next morning, I took off again at the first signs of daylight. Yet, I still fought against a strong southwest wind. A low sun, clearing the eastern horizon, finally illuminated the entry into the narrows. The progress through the passage to the west was once more a Sisyphus struggle. When at last the more western part of the lake opened up in front of me, I closely followed its American coastline, seeking protection behind every projecting point and a near-shore island in a prolonged battle with the headwind. I constantly, scrupulously studied and verified my current position on the map, so that I would not again lose my orientation. I some places, I advanced meter by meter against half-meter waves. Towards the end of the day, I strayed into a dead end channel and had to backtrack, but in the end, already in the dusk, I set up an emergency camp on top of a rocky point of an American island. My tent stood under a huge cross of some religious organization that must have owned the otherwise empty property. I was satisfied that I had accomplished a significant advance toward the final destiny of my journey that day. Venus and Orion once again welcomed me in the morning, as I was folding the tent and carried gear from the top of the point down to the canoe. I paddled through the morning twilight vigilantly, because I was to pass through another narrows of the lake, leading to its final western spread. I was on a keen look out for the direction of the movement of occasional powerboat traffic through the channels and gaps between islands. I was following some kind of marine signs, which seemed to delineate a shipping channel and appeared roughly about every kilometer in critical locations. The shores were getting more densely populated with cottages and in the background, industrial noise started to be noticeable. Dense fog rolled in before six, but by around seven, the sun and blue skies had triumphed. Suddenly, I sailed into wide-spreading open water. I could not believe that I had had the narrow passage behind me, but this would turn out true. Now I just paddled in stretched out, mighty strokes with my eyes focused onto the hazy line of the most distant coastline, where tiny light squares of building walls started getting distinguishable. It was Fort Frances. Once again, I raced to reach it before wind would awaken. It did wake up, when I neared the coast. The battle especially intensified, when I had to enter the outflow river, the Rainy, and continue paddling on it up to the municipal marina. Had I started paddling an hour later in the morning, I would have never reached Fort Frances today.

I grasped the edge of the wooden pier from the canoe, as I pulled parallel with it, and I called the taxi driver, Doug, on my IPhone. His hoarse voice, which responded, betrayed that I probably just woke him up. After all, it was only eleven thirty in the morning and it was a Saturday. He might have likely had hectic business last night and drove clients till wee hours of the morning. “Hi Doug, this is Jan, How are you?“ “Hi Jan, where are you?“ “I am here, in Fort Frances at the marina pier.“ “You must be kidding! Already in Fort Frances? I am there in a couple of minutes!“ Doug did not appear in two minutes, but he arrived in mere fifteen minutes with my Jeep. What a relief that everything ended well! He wanted to help me with disembarking and loading into the Jeep, but I thanked him. “Doug, thank you, but I am going to work slowly and methodically. I have to savor the feeling that I have all the hard exertion behind me.“ I offered to give him a ride home, but he lived only a block and a half away. I thanked him again, we shook hands and Doug strode off in his jeans and cowboy boots. Seating myself in the Jeep and setting the course to the west, came as the sweetest reward for me and both, a mental and physical relief. I had a long road ahead of me, “yet, so what, the whole way, I will be only sitting and I won’t have to paddle at all. “

My arrival in Fort Frances