News & Articles

Relationships with land, life or people share some similarities. It is often easier to destroy or give up on who/what we love than it is to do the difficult work of carrying on. Silent, untold labor to keep going counts for more than dramatic outburst endings. In my case, sometime along the way I came to love the Pigeon River country. A passion that continued even after the river near killed me.

A week earlier I’d crossed without incident the frozen river above the portages. When the ice gave under me I found swimming while wearing snowshoes hopeless. Luck and fear helped me elbow my way out. What then?  

In earlier times secret places existed, protected by the screening of limited, seasonal use. Back when U.S. citizens could hunt moose near the border several teachers I knew helped maintain a shack. Unless you knew it was there and were looking for signs you’d not know that behind the shore-scrub sat a low-roofed hunting-trapping shack.

As these things went, this one was on the large side. Others I encountered were typically tiny, especially those in Canada with Charlie Cook’s permit tacked inside. Trace back who built, and why, the one talked about here and you find a “Who knows.” I’d guess a variety of users provided the oomph and material needed to keep the roof intact.  

Soaked, the prospect of retracing my steps was not a sound choice. The distance to go was too great. Wet fabric would drain me of heat faster than I could keep up. Moving quickly upriver in hope of better ice, I aimed for the shack that would keep me from an icy conclusion. That, plus as trusted companion who hadn’t lucked into an ice bath were on my side.  

When soaked to the armpits in winter, knowledge of who built and maintained the shack will not be foremost in mind. I was, instead, grateful the shack’s squirrel infestation was there to save me. What? As handy-dandy fire starter squirrel nest is superb. Plus, the tradition of users leaving a store of firewood meant there was fuel to burn.

I can skip details of drying wool stag-type pants and suitable undergarments, socks, etc. Over the next hours shakes from cold and fright calmed. The trip’s intent was over, but I’d be OK.  

In approaching night’s falling temps, dry enough to travel wasn’t dry enough to handle zero and below likely to come. Luckily our camp by the portage hadn’t been set up, so it was fairly simple to load up and head back to the Land Rover for a trip back home. Maybe I’d have cut it camped overnight. Maybe hauling our kit across the river to the shack would have worked. Safest seemed full retreat.  

This is no brave tale of me or my wisdom. It’s not about the Pigeon, its ice nor those who built the shack that saved me, though it is more about those things than about me.

For certain. For a moment step aside to look at the lives of unnamed, unknown others building and laboring at the head of the Cascades. Hard, demanding and difficult work. They didn’t drive home to dinner at day’s end. The Cascades remoteness meant they had to stay; one week, several, until the work was done. Few occupations, such as life on a nuclear submarine, are as compact and focused.

A logger’s life was similarly pegged to winter work when felling and draying logs was easier. Let’s not forget moving wood by water, also seasonal, and quite demanding unless you know an easier way to fetch logs from border lakes to Lake Superior. While the drive was on you went with it. No time off until it was done.  

Lacking detail of the lives busy along the border, we can, as I have, looked to archaeological and cultural remains as evidence. (Keep in mind a nail or stone tool is only a 100 or 1,000 part of the past.) Say you find, as I often did, a flat one pint whiskey, rugged bottles that tell something.

A man who ran a small store told me he’d stock up on vanilla extract in the fall, knowing loggers would buy every bottle. Another source said instead of vanilla extract the bay around the island once home to Gagnon’s store was littered with Hair Balsam bottles. (See Cheyenne Champagne) using whiskey, extract and hair tonic tells something about times, hardships and people, but seen individually an artifact has little meaning.  

Trouble is, detail, context and meaning are easily lost.

I asked Cal Rutstrum about things he’d witnessed but had been too occupied to notice. (I should explain. Early in my writing life I got the bright idea to take Cal and Sigurd Olson on a short canoe trip. I’d come to have some contact with Olson over the BWCAW wilderness at a time my publisher did a book for Cal. Perfect timing. It was.

But, I’d discover Sig and Cal didn’t (using mild terminology) much care for one another. There went that prospect. As I knew them, they were rather different, Sig producing bushels of rose petal prose compared to Cal’s sparse no-nonsense. So canoeing with the gurus never came to be, and I alone am left to tell thee.)  

Viewing the past, I try to “look wide” (there’ll be more) and avoid overemphasis on authoritarian or expert views, useful but unknowingly malarkey. Consider, f’r instance, well over a century of aggressive fur trading and trapping took place before border lake logging meant major alteration of watersheds. That was a huge deal, but was it more impacting than the Bay Company policy of over trapping fur bearer along the border as a way of countering American fur business. This partly hinged on the Bay Company promise to support the native population as a reward for their overhunting.

Wetting a line or glorying in Superior views none today need consider the War of 1812, Bay company, or timbering (haven’t touched events such as Hinckley fire or iron mining) done by those long dead who left, like a gold leaf floating on dark water, mystery for us.