Last Trip to Quetico

The alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m. Waning crescent moon. Clear September sky. I alert my son in the adjoining bedroom. “Jimmy! Time to go!” We gulp coffee and depart hastily, leaving Sandy silhouetted in the glow of the garage light. She has fortified us amply for the long drive: sandwiches, oatmeal cookies, and a bagful of apples she picked in the orchard yesterday. With our shit-brindle brown canoe strapped on top of Jimmy’s van and the interior crammed with gear, we munch our way north up Highway 23 across hilly Wisconsin farmland wreathed in mist, toward Reedsburg and the Interstate. Ten sun-drenched hours later, we pull up to the outfitter’s dock at the end of an inlet on Saganaga Lake, a couple of miles from the Canadian border. This is where the Gunflint Trail, a winding two-lane blacktop, terminates. On the Canadian side, Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park; on the Minnesota side, the Superior National Forest’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Together, 3,500 square miles of unadulterated getaway. More than a thousand lakes, many linked by rivers and historic portage trails. No roads, no resorts, no residents. Voyageur country. Moose country. Wolf country. <a href="https://medium.com/thebigroundtable/last-trip-to-quetico-bbd34476da40">Website</a>