On the Water, and Into the Wild

[Valin]

NY Times:

The lakes and forests of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters transport you to a time when nature was not a thing at the edge of civilization, but a world unto itself.

PORTER FOX

OCT. 21, 2016

 

There are no roads here. No towns or airports. There are no gas stations, businesses, cars, airplanes, electricity, phone service. There is water. And if you are not on it, you are in the woods.

 

The lakes and forests of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters are straight from the Pleistocene. Paleo-Indians navigated chunks of melting ice left by retreating glaciers when they hunted woolly mammoths and caribou in the area 12,000 years ago. Mastodons, saber-tooth cats and 500-pound beavers roamed the region then. When the first Europeans breached the wilderness west of Lake Superior in search of a route to China — and then highly valuable beaver pelts — the only way through was in a canoe. The United States-Canada border that wanders along the northern edge of the region, and gives it its name, follows their route almost precisely.

 

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Even with 250,000 annual visitors — and a mining company pushing a $3 billion copper-nickel mine near the southwest border of the park — there are few signs of human presence in the area. From the air it looks like a green carpet, gouged southwest to northeast by glaciers. From the water it looks like another time — when nature was not a thing that grew at the edge of civilization, but a world unto itself in which humans were guests.

 

The local Ojibwe (Chippewa) tribe still lives that way. As do Paul and Sue Schurke. The Schurkes have spent most of their lives getting away from civilization. In 1986, Paul was a member of the first expedition to reach the North Pole without resupply, using dog sleds and technical clothing stitched by Sue. The two have since traveled through remote regions of Greenland, Africa and Russia, with annual trips into the Boundary Waters from their home in Ely, Minn.

 

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