Taking a Trip by Canoe Into the Wilderness : Outdoors: Minnesota’s Boundary Waters area is special and pristine. That’s why some want the Forest Service to put a limit on the number of visitors.

There is no traffic because there are no cars, no pollution because there are no polluters, no sounds except the splash of a paddle and the haunting call of the loon.

The forests are green, the waters blue, and at the right time of the year there aren’t any bugs. Some say you can even drink the water.

Clean, quiet and uncongested--this isn’t somewhere over the rainbow, but only a day away.

But there are trade-offs.

You can visit, but you can’t live there. But then, you might not want to. No electricity means no ice machines, TV or microwave cooking. Domino’s won’t deliver--no phones--and you can relieve yourself in the woods, with the bears.

It’s called a wilderness--the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of northeastern Minnesota, among the first to be established when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Wilderness Act 25 years ago this month, setting aside some 9 million acres as areas “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”

At its silver anniversary, the National Wilderness Preservation System has grown tenfold to include 4% of U.S. public land--2.1% exclusive of Alaska--and the basic rules of the act remain: no roads, no motors, no airplanes, no form of mechanical transport, no commercial enterprises, no structures.

But there is unrest in the wilderness. The next step would be no people. Some who earn their livings by outfitting folks for the Boundary Waters say there are those who would take that step, too, in the cause of saving the environment, if the act didn’t stipulate that “wilderness areas shall be devoted to the public purposes of recreational, scenic, scientific, educational, conservation and historical use.”

One outfitter, John Schiefelbein of Ely, was quoted by the Duluth News-Tribune as saying in 1986: “If a resource can’t be enjoyed, it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist.”

To many people, the Boundary Waters area doesn’t exist. It is so special that it remains an unattainable, unimaginable myth.

The U.S. Forest Service limits access to about 400 permits a day, with a maximum of 10 people per group, from mid-May to Sept. 30. Environmental organizations, such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Boundary Waters, want to cut the quota and tighten other restrictions.

But, according to Barbara Soderberg, USFS wilderness specialist, although the Boundary Waters area has the heaviest use of all U.S. wilderness areas--about 10% of the total--less than half of the permits available are used annually.

Since the average stay is 6 1/2 days, that’s no more than 1,300 people spread out over 1,700 square miles of forest and 1,000 lakes at any given time--and that doesn’t count the many who paddle north into Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park, which is almost as large with a fraction of the entries.

Certainly, to a first-time visitor, the BWCA shows few signs of being trammeled.

Tom Ware, who with partner Woods Davis outfits canoe trips from Moose Lake, the major access point 20 miles from Ely, says 85% of their business is repeat, and that “there is a misconception that the Boundary Waters is overused.”

Cliff Wold, president of the organization of 17 outfitters in Ely, said: “This is the only area of its kind in the United States--in fact in the world--where people can use a recreation area such as this for canoe camping.”

They think more people, not fewer, should be taking advantage of it.

“We don’t feel our competitor is another outfitter in the area,” Ware said. “We think our competitors are the other recreational outfits in the United States--Yellowstone, the High Sierra, Disney World.”

But even to seekers of solitude, can such a place really be? Even to recent visitors from the city, it’s an unreal memory of a pleasant dream, more than an experience.

Over waters once traveled by Cree, Sioux-Fox, Chippewa and fur traders, one can paddle and portage an entire day without seeing more than a dozen other canoes. You meet people only at portages. The single-party campsites are at least a half-mile apart. Airplanes must stay above 4,000 feet, and none may land. You may see one or two a day.

But in a society accustomed to modern conveniences and security, the wilderness experience may be self-limiting. To many, isolation is not necessarily desirable and may be intimidating.

I don’t know how to paddle a canoe.

Will I get lost?

How do I start a campfire?

What’s a buzz box?

What if it rains?

What if I get sick?

How do I keep the bears from eating my food?

Or me?

A flight to Duluth, via Minneapolis, and a 115-mile drive north to Ely puts one at the doorstep to the Boundary Waters in the Superior National Forest.

Some regulars bypass the outfitters, using their own canoes and packing their own food, but most visitors go to Moose Lake, where they are provided with a canoe, basic instruction and three packs for food, camping gear and personal necessities. Several years ago, the outfitters ruled out bottles and cans, and the USFS later made it official policy. But beer and booze in plastic containers can be had in Ely, proving that man can still adapt to the wilderness.

Jim Hinds, a U.S. Forest Service wilderness specialist in Ely, cautions: “If you’re not willing to accept the fact that you’re going to be more than five minutes from the local hospital, you’d better rethink your trip.”

Only the most extreme emergency would merit rescue by motorboat or--heaven forbid--by air. Wold once had to send a team in at night by canoe to retrieve a customer for an emergency at home. He later received a letter from Chief District Ranger Roger Baker that for the difference of a few hours, “a death message is not an emergency situation.”

The international border bisects the region and runs down the middle of some lakes. On the U.S. side, travelers must stay at designated, primitive, shoreside campsites, which the USFS provides with a rusty fire grate and a latrine box with a lid 50 yards up in the forest, open to all of nature.

Regulars say that to understand why they’re called buzz boxes, one must be there in the heat of summer, when insects are around.

Although the outfitters’ brochures promise that “the traveler may drink right from the spring-fed, crystal-clear lakes,” Hinds advised boiling it or at least drawing it from the middle of a lake to avoid risk of giardia, a waterborne parasite. The best course is to take no chances. Draw it from the middle of the lake--then boil it.

On their side, the Canadians allow visitors to camp anywhere but give them credit for the good sense to build their fires safely in rings of rocks and to attend to nature’s calls as nature intended, without buzz boxes.

Neither side provides picnic tables. One may choose to sit on a rock, a log or even a canoe, while consuming his freeze-dried meal cooked over the only real, optional convenience: a Coleman stove.

Despite warnings, there seems little to fear from wildlife.

Hinds said: “About three years ago, we had two different individuals attacked by a black bear . . . the only (incident) I’m aware of. We don’t have grizzlies.

“We do have (an average of) six fatalities a year in the Boundary Waters, the primary (causes) being drownings and lightning. I’ve always been surprised that we don’t have more drowning accidents. We’re a water-based resource with a lot of inexperienced people. It’s a wilderness area for novices.”

In the week after Labor Day nobody reported seeing a moose, a bear or even a deer--only a beaver or two and loons. Lots of loons.

The duck-like loon, elegant with its black coloring, is the state bird of Minnesota. Although abundant, it’s not a game bird because, locals say, it’s not very good to eat, because it feeds off the bottoms of lakes.

Nonetheless, its indifferent behavior and repertoire of high-pitched, mournful calls, echoing across a still lake on a moonlit night, inspire poetry:

Hail to the loon, A northern bird; Your call arouses an urge. But when we point our cameras, You immediately submerge. While travelers are advised to hang their groceries high between trees to keep bears out, one soon finds that bears aren’t the main problem. The wildest life seen in four days were the red-tailed chipmunks that stole the soap and the Canadian jay, or “camp robber,” that landed on the hot rim of a pan frying bacon on the Coleman stove, plucked a piece in its beak and flew away.

A word about the food packs: one quickly learns that to find a specific item, go immediately to the very bottom, because that’s where it always is.

And a word about portaging, which is not played up big in the brochures. It’s the toughest part of the expedition, carrying a 50-pound canoe over your head from one lake to another over an uneven, rocky path, then shuttling the gear across. On your map, the portages are measured in rods, and a rod happens to be the same length as a standard canoe: 16 1/2 feet.

Somehow, presented that way, it doesn’t seem as far--until you have to carry it all. This no doubt discourages some potential canoe campers, and a move to remove mechanically assisted portages has become a raging issue in the Boundary Waters.

Generally, with a little practice, a canoe is easy to paddle at a leisurely three knots, except when a wind is blowing whitecaps in your face. But the good times far outweigh the inconveniences. The fishing is good for walleyes, Northern pike and smallmouth bass, but it’s not necessary to enjoy the area.

Paddling through a submerged birch forest into your own personal lake, stopping for lunch and reflection in the clover on your own tiny island, you wonder, which is really the real world?

Ely is a quiet town. Too quiet. The population has shrunk in the last decade by about 2,000 to 4,820. Mining and logging businesses were permitted to continue under the original Wilderness Act of ’64 but were wiped out by the subsequent Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Act of ‘78, forcing two large sawmills to close.

Now there is high unemployment, and civic leaders are so desperate that there has been talk of opening a gambling casino.

The town depends on tourism for survival. Outfitters line the main street. It seems every other vehicle has a canoe on top.

Hinds said: “Controversy has surrounded this area for a long time . . . logging at the turn of the century, hydroelectric in the ‘20s. Fly-ins (for camping) were banned in 1949, long before the Wilderness Act.”

But the latest proposals have put the USFS squarely in the cross-fire between environmentalists and outfitters.

The environmentalists want to close the three motorized truck portages that currently transport towboats and visitors’ canoes and camping gear across difficult stretches between major lakes. The outfitters say that their businesses already had been crippled by the ’78 legislation that also cut back severely on the motorboat routes over which their towboats packed visitors’ canoes and gear partway into the wilderness, reducing the paddling time.

Ware said: “It changed the nature of the area from a multiple use area to more of a dedicated canoe area. Much of the clientele, rather than convert to canoes, just went somewhere else.”

Gary Gotchnik runs Wilderness Outfitters and has a concession at one portage that has been operating since 1891. He said: “If we lose the (motorized) portages, it’s going to devastate the community economically--not only the outfitters but the restaurants, the gas stations, the bait shops, the motels, the souvenir stores.”

The Forest Service conducted on-site trials to determine if non-motorized means of portaging with man-powered carts was feasible. Apparently, it was possible , but feasible involves disputed degrees of difficulty.

USFS Chief F. Dale Robertson planned to announce the decision today. Whichever way it goes, Hinds said, “We’ll be sued by one side or the other.”

Mike Vosburgh, who has six cabins to house people for day trips into the Boundary Waters, said: “If they close Prairie Portage, I’m gonna put ‘em in court.”

If the Forest Service doesn’t close the portages, the environmentalists will go to court--and probably win, Wold said.

“They’ve won everything else in court,” Wold said.

Vosburgh’s grandfather once ran a small fishing camp on Moose Lake.

“I started my business based on access to Basswood Lake,” he said. “I send ‘em out for the day. There are people that want to be in the wilderness but can’t paddle, don’t want to camp anymore. They want cabins. If you close that portage, there’s not gonna be any towboats carried across (to Basswood Lake).”

Wold calls the environmentalists “grabologists.”

“They’re from the life-science field . . . ecologists, botanists, biologists, wildlife managers. They want to make this into a biosphere reserve. They want control of this area. Nobody would go into this area at all.”

Vosburgh said it was bad enough when the ’78 act reduced the motorboat routes and cut outboard motors from 100 to 25 horsepower.

“They limited our number of (boat) motor routes from seven or eight down to one. It was self-defeatist. They crammed all these people into one spot. (The area is) so large that it takes time to get into. You see 10 towboats now with 25-horsepower motors carrying two or three canoes, maximum. It used to be we had 100-horsepower motors, so you saw one towboat carrying six canoes and 10 people. Now it’s just a constant thing of towboats. Now they want the portages closed, so you’re gonna put even more pressure on less land.”

Asked if, overall, the BWCA was better or worse for the Wilderness Act, Vosburgh said: “Worse. People are basically lazy. They want the wilderness experience--especially these preservationists--but they don’t want to have to work for it. They want to drive their car to the wilderness and experience the wilderness instantly.

“It all boils down to education. You have to educate people on what the wilderness is, how to take care of it and what to expect. If you want a wilderness, you don’t have these buzz boxes up there on the campsites. They put those in rather than educate the people on how to be clean in the woods.”

Picnic tables were provided for a while. Now campers must live, literally, off the land, but it doesn’t take long to become comfortable with a relatively primitive life style . . . although, one admits, it would be nice to have a daily paper or some ice in a drink.

Then, one night at dusk, when the plastic dishes are done and the campfire is bright, comes an urgent call from high above: ahn . . . ahn. A Canada goose is leading his flock of about 80 birds due south in perfect V-formation.

Fall is coming, then winter. It will rain tomorrow. The visitors will be leaving, too.