Lost in the Wild

by Cary Griffith

  It is mid-morning, and Jerry Wills is tired and already strained from the paddling. When he considers his group, he thinks the boys’ faces show the same signs of fatigue. Before they left the Sommers Canoe Base, the group sat in the Great Hall with all the other groups and watched a video about paddling techniques and safety precautions. One section of the video showed paddlers lashing canoes together to make a flotilla and raising a makeshift sail against the wind. Jerry Wills remembers how the pair of connected canoes leaped easily across the water.

  It only takes the engineer a second to make the connection. This Man Lake is their longest paddle in the Chain. The gust is at their backs. He thinks of the rain fly they used to stake out over camp, on the few occasions the skies had darkened. It is lightweight waterproof nylon. It would make a perfect sail.

  Jerry tells the group he has an idea. The boys and Tim Jones quickly buy into his plan, thankful for anything to ease the morning’s labor. They have miles to paddle, and their backs and shoulders already ache with the effort.

  The three canoes come alongside each other. The boys lay their paddles across the gunwales and grip them, making connecting supports. Jerry Wills gets out the rain fly and lashes its corners to the bows of the two outside canoes. He fastens long lengths of nylon rope to the rear corners of the fly. They’ll use the ropes to hold onto their fly so it can billow and capture the wind.

  Now all they need is a mast to raise the sail so it catches the breeze. The middle riders thrust the narrow ends of two paddles up into the edges of their makeshift sail. A small pocket of nylon fabric catches the wind, and suddenly the entire fly billows with the breeze. The three-canoe flotilla surges forward.

  A cry of triumph goes up. From the rear of the middle canoe Tim Jones rudders the flotilla with his oar. In this way the small group steers down the three-mile length of This Man Lake, skirting occasional islands and the near shore. Sometimes they skim over the water so quickly they can hear the rush beneath their canoes. They are thankful for the respite. They all wear broad smiles and cheer the rapid progress.

  Some time after noon they come to the end of the lake and are again blessed by a portage that is easy to find. There are two portages from This Man Lake into No Man Lake. The one to the east is thirty-two rods. The one to the west is sixty rods. While both appear flat and relatively easy to hike, the thirty-two-rod portage will leave them with a hundred more yards to paddle. Still, they prefer paddling to struggling with unwieldy canoes across uneven paths. They take the shorter portage into No Man and quickly reload their canoes.

  No Man is a mere half-mile crossing. On the north side of the lake there is a campsite below a prominent ridgeline. They decide to beach their canoes at the campsite and give the radio another try. Then Tim and Justin can scale the ridgeline and hail base camp. The others will have a chance to rest and eat.

  Atop the ridgeline Tim switches on the phone. There is a slight spit and crackle as the receiver turns on. Then he hears the usual white noise. He tries to raise base camp three times, but there is no response.

  “Closer?” Justin asks.

  “That, or this damn phone isn’t working.”

  Discouraged, the two climb down off the ridgeline and join the others. They can see by the look of their troopmates they were hoping for better words.

  “We need to get closer,” Tim Jones says. It’s an answer they all understand.

  Across a lowland opening, Dan Stephens feels a light breeze. When he can see them, high pillows of cumulus drift across an azure dome. He crosses the opening to the other side and pushes through more brush. The dense weave is sometimes so thick he raises his arms in front of his face for protection. His forearms start abrading like his legs. At one point he bends down to avoid a branch and gets poked in the eye. The scratch is watery and painful. Blinking, he struggles toward the next rise.

  He feels aimless in the swampy bogs south of wherever it was he stepped into the bush and kept walking. He feels desultory and lost. He thinks he is heading southwest. He positions himself by the sun. Whenever he stops to drink he pauses long enough to peer at the sky and check his direction.

  He feels relatively certain he’s heading in the right direction. But hiking the lowlands is like walking through a shallow hell. The bugs are pestilential, the brush is thick, and the day progresses windless and hot. And now the vision in his one eye is blurred. He still feels a huge, periodic ache on the side of his head.

  After a twenty minute rest he re-examines the sky. Dan double-checks his position, glances off through the trees in what he thinks is a southerly direction, and again strikes off through the bogs.

  Progressively, Dan Stephens comes to feel as low as the country he traverses. He has a vague notion he needs to angle toward the Man Chain, veer toward the possibility of finding a portage trail and maybe staying put until the next group of Scouts comes along. But he also has doubts.

  Before leaving the canoe base with his Chattanooga group, he had asked others about his planned route. But he could not find anyone who had made the wide circle through the BWCAW, then up through the Quetico, then turning back around to come down through the Man Chain. He doesn’t know of anyone who has come down out of the Cache Bay Station in quite the same way. It could be awhile before anyone else came along. And then he would be waiting on a bug-infested stretch of trail, for how long he has no idea.

  He’s thinking well enough to know he’s not entirely lucid. An aching cloudiness hangs over him, muddling his thoughts. His vision is still bleary. He is trying to maintain his rhythm, moving carefully through the brush, parting the sharp branches with his stick, moving forward, always moving south. But he is uncertain, and through the long midday his spirits ebb to a wavering crawl.

  The Chattanooga group crosses the quarter-mile distance to their next portage, and this, too, is easy to find. They are blessed, but only slightly. The portage from No Man into That Man Lake is a blistering 101 rods. The climb isn’t high, and the path is straight, but at over a quarter mile, it is one of the longest portages they’ve crossed. By the time they reach the other side, they are exhausted. Back at the campsite on No Man Lake, Tim had told the group there was something more than the normal white noise, at least when he first switched the set on. Now they are keen to give it another try.

  Tim is doubtful, but willing. They are at lake level, but they’ve closed some distance. And from this vantage the extreme length of That Man opens empty in front of them. Maybe the clear space will make a difference.

  He extracts the phone and flips it on. The light blinks, and the receiver sparks with more static—at least a little more than they heard on the ridgeline over No Man. Surprised, Tim presses the transmit button and speaks into the phone.

  “This is Group Number 801C,” he begins. He releases the button, waits. The receiver is silent.

  “They ain’t even listenin’!” one of the Scouts moans.

  “Quiet,” Tim says. He again depresses the transmit button. “This is Group Number 801C,” he repeats. “We’re at No Man Lake portage, about to enter That Man. Does anybody read me?”

  From the other end of the line not even a crackle. And then the light blinks off.

  Tim Jones can’t help himself. He cusses, says, “Looks like it went dead.”

  The other Scouts take the news hard. The two youngest boys’ eyes start to water, and they look away, embarrassed.

  “We’re on track,” Jerry Wills finally says, trying to reassure everyone, trying to be optimistic. “Let’s keep moving.”

  Well after noon Dan Stephens comes to a small stream. On the other side, the forest rises to another rocky outcrop. He kneels to drink. Tannin dyes the slow-moving water the color of dark tea. He has already crossed a half-dozen small streams like this one. He can barely see six inches into its murky depths. It looks shallow enough. He steps into it, expecting to hit bottom
.

  For the second time in two days his stomach registers the miscalculation before he does. He watches his foot disappear into murk. He waits for it to grip bottom. He is already too far in, with too much weight moving forward, to pause or retract his step. One leg is still on the bank and the other disappears into the stream and in half a hiccup he falls forward into the narrow, deep water. He plunges forward up to his neck before his feet sink into the muddy bog bottom.

  “Goddammit,” he cusses, thrashing through the deep, mucky water. What in the hell is it going to be next, he wonders, struggling to reach the other side.

  9

  Rasmussen Hikes South

  North-northeast of the Pow Wow Trail, Tuesday, October 23, 2001

  He drops the pack in a meager clearing, takes out his water bottle, and drinks. He is thirsty. He’s been working through these trees, and he hasn’t realized just how thirsty he is. He almost drains the bottle, knowing he can filter more when he needs it.

  He has to figure out how to recover the trail and get back to his car.

  He returns his water bottle to his pack’s side pocket and takes out Fisher Map F-4: One, Two, Three, Four, Bald Eagle, Insula Lakes. He spreads it out before him and squints over the yellow and blue features, trying to figure out his location in relation to the trail.

  Lowland swamps are marked by small swatches of speckled blue. The lake water is solid blue. When he looks at the map, gazing over the top of the Pow Wow, he thinks it could be Hush Lake. That would mean he hiked farther west than he thought, camping last night between Pose and South Wilder lakes. Had he wandered off the trail and headed northwest? If he were further west could he have hiked northeast?

  He stares at the elevation numbers. Math and science have become Jason’s strengths. Since junior college, academics have usually come easily to him. Map reading is simple. But trying to discern his own peculiar location from the myriad striations in front of him is difficult. When he gazes over the map, he assumes Pose Lake is someplace near—within an hour hiking, tops. He gazes over the Pow Wow circular trail and realizes he could have strayed south of the trail. He gazes south and sees Hump Lake, almost in the middle of the twenty-six-mile circular Pow Wow.

  And then he gazes even farther south, to the vicinity of the Isabella parking lot where his Saturn sits, patiently awaiting his return. He notices the forest road he used to drive here. It runs the entire length of the trail, due south of it, probably less than four miles. It is not exactly straight but it’s long enough so that if he hiked due south, eventually he would have to cross it. And Jason knows to miss a road would be impossible. If the bottom half of the Pow Wow is more discernible than this top half, he should cross it long before reaching the road. When he crosses the trail he can hike east, pick up the spur that brought him here, and be back at his car in two or three hours. And if he misses it—entirely possible, given the state of the trail he’s seen—he will eventually hit the road. He cannot miss a road.

  He fishes his compass out of his pocket, holds it flat, and lets the needle resolve itself. When he locates due south, he looks up into the impenetrable trees. It feels south. He can see himself hiking through the woods, only this time he will keep the compass out, checking it regularly to insure his constant southerly direction.

  He squints again at the map. If he is near Pose Lake, two or three miles should bring him to the bottom of the Pow Wow. He examines the key, measuring off the distance with a finger, moving it south over the yellow terrain. If he misses the trail, he still crosses the forest road by late afternoon. And once he hits the forest road, he hikes back to his car. Either way, he is back at the car well before dusk.

  It’s a plan, and he feels better after resting and making it. He likes using the compass, knowing his location—at least in regard to magnetic north. He is not looking forward to all that bushwhacking, but now that he has the compass out—and it will stay out, he tells himself—he won’t double back on himself. He will check it regularly and keep moving due south.

  He gets up and hoists on his pack. He straightens the shoulder straps and shifts the weight of the pack until it’s comfortable. He folds his Fisher map and decides it should be handy. The inside of his North Face jacket has a pull string he can tighten around his waist. He tucks the map inside his coat and pulls the string taut, zips his jacket shut, takes another compass reading, and then looks up. He peers into the thick brush and strikes off through the trees.

  For the next two hours Jason struggles through difficult terrain, climbing up and over small ridges. The lower parts sometimes hold small pockets of water. He steps over them carefully, skirting boulders and rocks, tree roots, pushing through the heavy brush.

  The bushwhacking is difficult. But he keeps his promise to himself. He constantly checks his compass, navigating carefully through the woods. He follows the narrow point of the needle due south. He is good about maintaining his ragged direction through difficult terrain.

  After two more hours of hiking, he’s getting tired. He pushes through another block of impenetrable brush. He is weary and wet, and he knows if he stops longer than five minutes he will start to get a chill.

  He pushes through the back end of the block of brush and suddenly it opens. He can’t believe it. He stares across an almost seventy-five-yard length of bog. A bog, for Christ’s sake. He’s stunned.

  Jason knows about bogs. If at all possible, you should avoid traversing them. They are deceptive islands of grass hummocks and small forest growth, and they can float over depths of water black as tea. If sphagnum lips part, if he falls through, and if it is deep enough, his death will be fast and agonizing, and the bog will swallow him whole. No one—not his parents, not rescuers, not seasoned hunt-ers with dogs—will ever have a chance of finding even a hair.

  He suspects he is being overly dramatic, but he has read about bogs. He knows you’re not supposed to cross them. But he has a plan, and he has promised himself he’ll stick to it.

  He looks to the left. Maybe he can walk around it. But the bog appears to have no western or eastern edge. It looks like one large bog river, and he sees no way of maintaining his direction other than striking straight out across it.

  It is such a large bog he wonders if it is clearly depicted on his map. He unzips his jacket, reaches in to pull out his map, but there is nothing. He feels around the inside of his coat, around his sides, above and below the coat’s waist drawstring, but the map is gone! God damn it! He lost his goddamn map! He contemplates turning around and looking for it, but realizes that in the last two hours he could have lost it anywhere. Finding the missing Fisher map in the thick brush he has already traversed would be almost impossible—and that’s if he were certain he could hike back over the exact trail he used to get here.

  He remembers the map, at least most of its larger features. He remembers the trail and the way it wends over the terrain. And he still has the Hiking Minnesota map. It is cartoonish in comparison, but at least it gives him some sense of the trail, and the most notable lakes.

  He’s angry at himself for losing his map, but realizes there’s nothing to be done about it. He looks up and knows he has to cross this bog. He peers over the grassy hummocks. In places he can see water seeping through. It’s black. He knows it is acidic, having stewed for eons in a vegetal brew. He thinks he discerns a relatively clear trail, higher than the other parts. He starts out across it, moving very carefully, one slow step at a time, testing as he moves.

  Before, when he was bushwhacking through dense wood, he thought he was moving slowly. Compared to how slowly he moves across the bog, his hike through the woods was a virtual sprint.

  He steps to one mound, testing it carefully before placing his full weight onto it. It holds. Sometimes it starts to sink, like a very slow spring. But eventually, every step is solid and true. It takes him more than half an hour to cross it, stepping very s
lowly and carefully. Finally, he reaches the other side.

  He pauses long enough to enjoy a momentary sense of relief. He knows he has been lucky. He hopes he won’t have to cross more bogs. He thinks he is making good progress south and expects to pass over the southern side of the Pow Wow at any time. Providing it is wide and obvious, he reminds himself—unlike the northern part of the trail—he’ll be able to take it, hike due east, and get back to his car in plenty of time.

  It’s after 2:00. The skies haven’t altered since he first looked up. They have been gray and thick all morning, but thankfully not weeping. If it started raining, he knows he would have to stop and set up camp, get out of the rain. It looks like it’s just going to be one of those overcast days.

  Jason hacks his way south, attending to the bold S of his compass, letting it guide him through boulders and thatch, continuing to push through the wet wood. He cannot remember a harder day hiking—and with fifty pounds on his back. He is going to deserve that dinner. He relishes the thought of the warm car and his drive down a wide, open road, providing he can reach it before dark.

  After almost two more hours he still hasn’t crossed the trail, but panic is a long way off. He keeps expecting the Pow Wow to appear over the next rise, an open and obvious trail through the trees. But he also knows that he is holding to his plan, moving south, and that even if he misses the trail he will eventually, probably before dusk, cross the forest road that brought him here.

  And then he pushes down a thicket slope to an edge of black spruce. And once through it, there’s another bog. He can’t believe it! Another goddamn bog!

  He does exactly what he did this morning, knowing if there is any other recourse he should take it. He looks left. The grassy hummocks recede around a bend as though a river of moss is flowing down the contour of land. When he looks to his right, the same. It would be impossible to hike around this bog. And he remembers he is keeping to his course. He has to maintain his direction south.