Paddle-a-thon 2009

The 2009 Paddlers before the big day.

The paddlers being silly.

Route selection

Making sure we were prepared.

Making sandwhiches to take a long.

The van and canoes are ready – are we?

Getting our gear in the morning before heading out on Moose Lake.

Greg and Zeb before they head out. Smiling.

It really was dark when we started at 4:00am.

As it gets light, navigating is much easier.

Nearing the end of a portage.

Entering a lake at the end of another portage.

Thunder Point is behind those cupcake like islands – you mean we’ve almost paddled 15 miles already, and it is only 9:15am.

A well deserved lunch break at the top of Thunder Point on Knife Lake.

One of the few sunny moments.

These are gentle clouds compared to others the day shared with us.

We thought we could, we thought we could. WE DID!

Greg and Zeb on their return. Still Smiling

On  Tuesday, July 28th, 12 men and women from all over the  United States  spent the day paddling canoes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This wasn’t a short, leisurely day paddle, nor was it the beginning of a week long trip.  This day would begin early and end late, the day would cover a total of  165  combined miles, and the day would gently remind the paddlers of their motivation.

These 12  paddlers joined together for the 2009 Paddle-a-thon because they all carry a mutual love and respect for wild places and for the ways  in which Wilderness Wind has nurtured this love and has connected them to the wilderness .

Four canoes began the journey on Moose Lake Tuesday morning between 4:00 and 5:00am. The first few hours were cloaked in darkness, with bats swooping to eat bugs and a sliver of moon shining over us. As the morning progressed the sky traded its cloak of darkness for a cloak of  grey. Clouds and mist hung over us much of the next 16-18 hours. We experienced wind at our backs, swirling gusts of wind, and hours of hard paddling to make head way as the wind came directly at us. Wind was our ever present companion .  And the wind carried other companions: the song of loons, the smell of campfires, and soaring bald eagles (the end count was 13).

After 16-18 hours of paddling, all 12 paddlers returned to the starting point safe,  tired,  and feeling the deep contentment and joy of  accomplishment. Sleep would come soon peppered  with dreams of the wild.

As one of the paddlers on Tuesday I was honored to participate in what was my fifth paddle-a-thon to date.  I would like to share a few thoughts from a writer and lover of the natural world. “Wilderness is more than lakes, rivers and timber along the shores, more than fishing or just camping. It is the sense of the primeval, of space, solitude, silence and the eternal mystery.” Sigurd Olson (a writer from Ely, Minnesota), articulates what each of us have experienced in one way or another while traveling in the BWCA or in another wild area of the world.  Stepping apart from our daily lives, from schedules, stuff, cultural messages, technology, and stepping  into the simplicity and spaciousness of the wilderness  can ultimately set us free. These experiences  can remind us of what has always been and of what will always be; community and dependence, belonging, diversity and beauty,  life and death, and what Sigurd Olson calls the ‘eternal mystery’.  Sigurd Olson writes of spending time in the wilderness, “Then a great peace came over me…and I seemed to hear the pines and the rocky shores say to me, ‘You…lover of the wild, are part of us.” It is true. Though we worked hard, and traveled far on Tuesday,  I  felt the ever-present  embrace of the woods and waters . And I was once again called, “sister” by a white pine growing on a rocky ridge in Northeastern Minnesota.

My prayer today as I sit at my desk : Holy One,  May  many more be given the opportunity to know the wilderness.  May the love and respect for wild places be nurtured in  many more hearts and minds.  May the presence of the ‘eternal mystery’ be felt by all. And to borrow the words of  Mary Oliver, “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” May we all be gifted by knowing our place in the family of things. Amen.

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