(Posted May 26, 2010)
Last weekend my youngest son, Jack, and I paddled one of our family canoes down the Cloquet River. Our route took us from our house on the river to Hunter Lake, a small oxbow lake off the Cloquet. It was a nice, summery May evening. There were no bugs. The wind was at our backs and the current was mild. That’s important, the current being mild, because we both knew, come Sunday when Jack’s Boy Scout campout was over, we’d be paddling upstream.
We arrived at Hunter Lake to a cacophony (an overused word, I know) of thirty five boys between the ages of eleven and fifteen setting up tents, unloading gear, and engaging in general mayhem. Jack and I landed my Old Town Discovery and muled three heavy packs uphill before pitching our tent, unrolling our sleeping pads and sleeping bags, and making camp. Friday night, I sat around a campfire with the other adults, listening to loons calling on the water, kids shrieking in the woods, and outboard motors gurgling on the darkening lake.
Prior to the campout, the Scouts were charged by patrol (eight to ten boys each) with creating menus for their meals, purchasing the food, and then cooking the food themselves. Saturday morning. Jack’s patrol, the Batz, ends up eating blueberry pancakes with no syrup or butter because they forgot to buy it. The Old Goat Patrol (the parents and scout leaders) are treated to Chef Don’s excellent dutch oven culinary cuisine. Breakfast, the envy of the still-hungry Batz, is an egg souffle baked over the coals and served hot and fluffy. The boys drool as the adults scarf. We do share, but only after every adult has eaten his or her fill. This dissonance in meals continues throughout the two days we’re in camp. I eat well. Jack eats whatever the Batz throw together out of whatever meager supplies they bought.
The boys work on rank advancement with the ever patient Julie and Jim Belden and other scout leaders. Jack completes the requirements for First Class, the last of the beginning ranks. He’s on his way to Eagle if puberty, girls, and fast cars don’t divert him from his goal.
Jack and I fish Hunter Lake and the river. We catch a few northern pike. One ginormous fish, a lunker that stays on the river bottom like a lead weight, breaches and spits the hook. Likely the mother of all Cloquet River northerns, the fish swims free. Jack laments his loss. His only consolation is the image of an enormous tail breaking the placid surface of the water that he’ll never forget.
The biggest fish actually caught, a pike over ten pounds, is reeled in by a ten-year-old girl, the sister of a scout. I take some credit for the catch since she and her dad used my canoe and my net (which was shredded in the process) to land the kraken.
Rain threatens but never arrives. Both mornings, I rise from my slumber, my back in knots, my hair a mess. I stumble down a deer trail to the water’s edge and wash my face and hair and brush my teeth. As I refresh myself, I note that the camp on Hunter Lake is tranquil despite its close proximity to year-round homes and seasonal cabins. There are no jet skis, no big boats disturbing the valley of the Cloquet. Only the mournful wail of the occasional train crossing the river on a trestle downstream, the satisfying squeals of boys having the time of their lives, and the throaty rumble of small outboards plying the lake remind me that this isn’t wilderness, that this place is only a stone’s throw from town.
We pack up on Sunday and paddle home. As Jack and I work against the river’s weight, we encounter pairs of mallards and teal and wood ducks and Canada geese intent on species continuation. A bald eagle soars above us; a cousin to the osprey we watched fish Hunter Lake the day before. A muskrat makes its way through black water and disappears in river bank. We fight through slender chutes defining the rapids just below our pasture. And then we are home.
Peace.
Mark
