Fish Lake.
As I write this, I realize its already passe’. The cold depicted in the photograph above, chronicling a wintery scene on nearby Fish Lake, has been replaced by piles of thawing dog crap, pools of snow melt, brown grass, and puddles of water atop lake ice all caused by unseasonably warm March temperatures. But two weekends back, such was not the case in my neighborhood of the world. Two weekends back, winter was still in control. Two weekends back, an old man with a bad back, a sore tooth, and inappropriate camping gear slept out in below zero weather.
Understand, I didn’t take on the proffered assignment due to idle curiosity or some great urgency to replicate my only other winter camping excursion, two nights in a tent with Boy Scout Troop 67 (Piedmont Heights) back when I was fourteen years old. Two weekends ago, I plodded across the snow-covered, wind swept ice of Fish Lake because I am an Assistant Scoutmaster in Troop 106 (Hermantown) and the Scouts were headed for an overnight. In my role with the Scouts, I’m also the merit badge counselor for the citizenship badges (Community, Nation, World) so I understand the difference between a duty (something a person feels morally compelled to do, such as vote) versus an obligation (something a person is required by law or contract to do, such as pay one’s taxes). I had no obligation to sleep out in a tent at sixty years old with a group of Boy Scouts but, as one of their adult leaders, I certainly felt a duty to accompany them. And so I did.
Scouts ascending.
The slog across the frozen lake was taxing. It was above zero, a beautiful winter day with clear skies and ample sun, but the notion that one can tote his or her belongings across ice in a plastic sled without spilling gear and packs and tents along the way, was, in retrospect, overly optimistic. Our small group (six Scouts and three adult leaders) arrived at the Beldens’ home on the shores of Fish Lake a bit after 8:30am on Saturday. Jim Belden, our former Scoutmaster and wilderness guide extraordinaire, had ventured out to the island that would be our overnight home and set up his wall tent, complete with wood stove, just in case the night became unbearable or a Scout ended up too chilled to sleep in an unheated tent. 
Before we began our one and a half mile journey over the ice, I handed out four walking sticks carved and decorated by my pal (and former Scout) Mike Town to the four Scouts who were present. Two more Scouts would join us during the day, bringing the total contingent of boys who slept out to six. The three adult leaders would be joined by three additional mentors, making the total on the ice six kids and six adults, the sort of supervision that would guarantee a minimum of shenanigans.
I led the boys and adult leaders across the frozen lake. After my Duluth pack repeatedly fell out of the plastic slider I was pulling behind me, the snow thin and not really suited for snowshoes but just crusty and thick enough to make walking tedious, I stopped, pulled my arms through the pack’s straps, hoisted the rucksack on my back, and, with the aid of my own wooden walking stick (one I had carved to steady my gait while trout fishing the North Shore streams I love), I soldiered on, my eyes riveted on the island that was to be our home for a bit more than twenty-four hours. After mucking around the base of a steep rise, I found the wall tent Jim had set up and began ferrying tents and equipment up the hill. In a short period of time the Scouts and the adult leaders had their tents set up, their sleeping pads and bags unrolled, and the camp set up for the night. While others sorted food, I found dead aspen and balsam limbs to build a fire in a metal fire ring we brought with. Across the ice, the roar of snowmobiles could be heard. Dale Scheer and his son Luke arrived, pulling an ice fishing house, a propane auger, and fishing gear. Holes were made in the thick ice. The ice shelter was set up. Scouts took turns dueling each other with their newly acquired walking sticks, fishing, and watching the antics of a singular wayward critter that came to the kids’ attention.
“We found a baby beaver,” one of the boys said as lunch was being prepared.
“Where?”
“Down by the lake.”
I scurried down the slippery path to a gaggle of boys reclined on their stomachs in the snow. The Scouts were attentively peering into brush along the base of the hillside.
“Where’s the beaver?”
“Right there,” Luke said, lifting a balsam branch to reveal the shiny coat of a small creature furiously digging frozen dirt in an attempt to escape the cold.
“That’s not a beaver,” I said quietly, watching the animal’s desperate bid for survival. “It’s a muskrat.”
Muskrat.
The boys left the animal to its panicked work. I decided to walk around the island, a task I was warned might take some time. I knew that there was a Minnesota Power campsite on the far western tip of our island home. The campsite we were using was not officially a MP campsite though, from the paint marks on the trees around our tents, it appeared a campsite was being planned for where we were bivouacked. After a Scout-cooked meal of chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese (I downed three!), I cleaned my mess kit, donned my gloves, picked up my walking stick, and headed out on the ice to circumnavigate our island.
To say the sky was blue is an understatement. At one point, so enthralled with the brilliance of the sunlight on the snow and the openness of the heavens, I laid down on my back and snapped a picture of the azure vault with my iPhone. An hour later, after checking out the campsite on the far end of the island (and finding idiots had stripped many of the birch trees of bark as tinder for campfires, denuding the trees and leaving ugly scars), I tromped my way through thigh high bullrushes and crusted snow to arrive back in camp a sweaty, yet satisfied man.
Cooking dinner.
Jim and Julie Belden arrived later in the afternoon. Once night descended, Dale and the boys worked to create a wondrous treat: fried walleye caught, not in the two feet of water below Dale’s ice house on Fish Lake, but a few weeks’ earlier on Red Lake. By 9:00pm, I was done in and left the campfire and the din of teenagers for the comfort of my tent. I’d earlier rolled out a tarp, a foam sleeping pad, and two mummy bags. I felt I was ready for what was surely going to be a below zero night on the lake but I’d failed as an Eagle Scout in one respect: I hadn’t followed the scouting motto, “Be Prepared”. I hadn’t carefully inspected the bag I’d borrowed from my son, Jack. When I stripped down, intent on scrunching my mummy bag inside Jack’s mummy bag, I learned that the zipper on Jack’s bag was broken.
No biggie, I thought, I’ll just snug into my bag and pull Jack’s around me.
That approach worked for about two hours, until the cold ground forced my sixty-year-old bladder to empty. I got up, padded outside the tent in my boot liners, did my business, and then returned, intent upon closing my bag against the chill. I pulled hard on the zipper and felt the device give way. The metal tab of my mummy bag’s zipper launched across the interior of my tent, not to be seen until morning.
Shit.
Indeed. Without a working zipper for either bag, I was forced to toss and turn all night, battling my chilled urinary tract and the cold that sneaked into my bag.
Next time, I’ll check the bags.
Sleep came in fits and starts. I considered how serious a mistake my failure to “Be Prepared” could have been had we been winter camping in the BWCA. I had the luxury of knowing, first, that I was only going to suffer one night of restless sleep, and second, that, if things got really bad, I could sleep in the heated wall tent a few dozen feet away. I pondered the fact that, while I was spending one tortured night below zero on the ground, one of our Eagle Scouts, Rudy Hummel, had made national news by sleeping out of doors for an entire year. Yes, that’s right: 365 nights either in a tent, under the stars, or in a snow hut, where Rudy braved over seventy below-zero nights. Our troop has recognized Rudy’s feat in a number of ways, including instituting the “Zero Hero” patch, an award given to any Scout or adult leader who manages to survive a below-zero night sleeping outside.
At least I’ll get the patch.
Morning came. I pulled on clean undies, wool socks, insulated Carhartts, and began packing away gear. When other adults in the group, including Jim (who slept sans tent, somewhere out on the ice) asked “How did you sleep?” I didn’t fess up.
“Fine,” I lied, breaking one of the twelve points of the Scout Law. 
The other leaders checked their smart phones, intent on determining whether or not the boys and the leaders who had not earned the Zero Hero patch were now entitled to the honor.
“One below,” Jim noted. “Zero Heroes for all.”
Well at least that’s something…
We cleaned up the campsite, loaded gear onto Jim’s ATV and onto sleds pulled by the two snowmobiles, and set off across windswept ice. As I trudged towards my car and a likely afternoon nap, I propped up my aching, tired old body with my walking stick and marveled at the fact that winter seemed so set, so ready to continue on. But that is not what happened: Again, I’d miscalculated.
Peace.
Mark
