Friday, March 18, 2016

A Story From the Life of Alice T. Ghostwritten by her grandson, Alden T.

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Photo courtesy of Marianne T.
A Story From the Life of Alice T.

Ghostwritten by her grandson, Alden T.

My Adventure In the Great Outdoors

“Come on, Alice! Pick up the pace!”

I was a young girl at that time, and I was exhausted. It was our first day out on a canoe trip with me, my brother Sam, my sister Mary, my father, and Ed, a family friend. We were on a two week-long trip in Quetico Provincial Park, which is just above the Canada-Minnesota Border. This was the first of five canoe trips, and I didn’t know it yet, but this one was the most memorable of them all. Because of my experience on that first canoeing trip, I developed a great love for the beauty of the lakes and woods and appreciation for the fact that it was unspoiled by civilization. Being in the wilderness was wonderfully peaceful, and it made me realize it's very important to have undeveloped areas available for people to visit to get close to nature and appreciate God's creation.

We planned this trip carefully, as we were going to be traveling through numerous lakes while carrying all of our equipment, but no amount of preparation could prevent how much our backs would hurt. Ed really enjoyed going on trips like these, so he had prior experiences and knew what to expect. Although Sam, Mary and I were camping novices, we had come prepared. My father and Ed were very good at reading maps, and that skill proved very valuable throughout the trip. Everything was made as lightweight as could be, and all of the food and supplies had been carefully rationed so we only brought precisely what we needed. We brought no water, as my father and Ed deemed the lake water safe enough.


When any one of us wanted water, we would simply tie a string to a tin can, lower it down to about six feet deep, and drink the water we brought up. Looking back, the water might have been relatively safe then, but it is most certainly not safe to drink now. All visitors to the park would bathe in the lakes, and over the years all the bacteria would accumulate into god-knows-what amounts. Still, there was something interesting about drinking lake water, as every lake tasted different. One was cold as ice, while another tasted very fishy. One was salty, and had a metallic aftertaste, while another lake had an earthy taste, like dirt. I remember a particularly nasty one that tasted and smelled like old, rotten vegetables. We didn’t stay at that lake long, that’s for sure.

Also, I found the many baby toads in the area adorable, how tiny and cute they were, and I collected them in our water can. I found the miniscule amphibians irresistible. Mary, on the other hand, did not. Mary was repulsed by the idea of drinking from a can that formerly housed anything living.  As our group passed from lake to lake, It was a challenge to find a campsite. You needed to find spacious, even ground for the three, two-man tents, but you also needed trees nearby to tie the tents to. All of those factors made it made it hard to find a good place to set up the tents. Even after carefully setting up your campsite, you could still run into problems.  On our first night out, after everybody fell asleep, a foraging bear wandered into our camp.

It was the middle of the night. A bear was raiding our cooler and woke up my father. He rushed to our tents, shaking us awake while yelling “Get up! Get up now! There’s a bear!”. Half-asleep and bleary-eyed, Mary and I rushed outside and heard something big crashing around in the underbrush about 25 feet away from us. While I never saw it, it still was positively frightening to be so close to a bear.

Sam, Mary and I grabbed pots and pans and started banging them again and again and again. The bear lumbered off, startled at the sudden noises, and we breathed a collective sigh of relief. My father warned us to keep banging the pots, otherwise the bear would return. We did so while my father and Ed rushed around, gathering the essential supplies and preparing the canoes. We needed to move fast, as we had no idea if or when the bear would return. As soon as the canoes were ready, we scrambled on and hightailed it out onto the lake, letting out a breath we were unaware we were holding. But as much as we might wish otherwise, we still had more problems ahead. We needed to find an island, but it had to be far away enough from shore so the bear couldn’t swim out, and large enough for us to comfortably fit on it. Adding to our problems, it was pitch-black outside and the darkness was highly disorienting. My father had to use the north star to figure out the map and find an island. After plenty of paddling, we managed to find that island out in the middle of the lake. Sleepy and exhausted, we spent the rest of the night there sleeping on the branches of bushes. As frightening as our encounter with the bear was, we were one of the luckier ones. We heard from other people (you meet others on portages and trade tips and stories) that some bears were not easily frightened by noise, and that some people had felt very threatened by them and had to leave their food supplies behind for their own safety.


Bears were not the only animals that we encountered during our trip. For cooking, I was assigned breakfast, and Mary was assigned dinner. For lunch, we simply ate pre-packaged food. Anyways, one night Mary had burned the mac-and-cheese she was preparing for supper, and had to fill the pot with water to clean it out. The next morning, my father woke to quite the surprise, as some mice had gone into the pot in their search for burned macaroni and had drowned. We also encountered other wildlife such as beavers, deer, turtles, loons, and even though Sam said he saw a mountain lion, I didn’t believe him.


At the beginning of our first 2 week-long canoe trip, I was excited to be visiting unblemished wilderness, and to get away from civilization for a bit. But what really surprised me on that trip was the sheer amount of peace and splendor that the lakes possessed. On that first trip, I developed a great love for nature and realized the importance of preserving the wilderness so that all people and animals could enjoy it. When our first canoeing trip finally and sadly concluded, I was happy to know I would eventually return to nature on our next trip.

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Photo courtesy of Marianne T.