Of Mice, Men, and Moose

Last week I was in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area on a rare solo trip into the wilderness. I love going beautiful places with the people I love; I also find it necessary to get away by my self every now and again. This time it was a cold and rainy and wonderful canoe trip off the Gunflint Trail.
Solo trips are hard physically. They can be psychological difficult also. It is so easy to frighten yourself worrying about all the things that could go wrong out on the trail. The trick – the difficult balancing act- is to prepare for everything and worry about nothing. For me, the hardest part of this trip was the simple act of getting out of the car once I had reached the entry point.
It was hard because the early morning drive up the “flint” was dark, cold, and rainy. Since I had just left a warm motel room that looked out over the Grand Marais harbor [next to the Java Moose coffee house I might add] it was hard for me to remember just what is so compelling about the great outdoors. It took every ounce of willpower to not turn the car around and step out into the rain to begin the 160-rod portage to Ram Lake.
Fortunately, the reason I was there came back to me quickly. The smell of the wet fall woods released a years worth of endorphins. The absence of man-made noise was exactly what I had been craving. The sounds were of moose snapping large branches as they moved clumsily through the forest, a solitary loon amusing himself with song, and the damned ubiquitous rain. The striking beauty of Ram Lake even made me forget the threatening weather. The lake has a 300-foot cliff that was being raked by clouds. It’s face was layered with dark green cedars on the shore, gold and red September hues of birch and maple in the middle, and a soft, top course, of light green pines.
I especially love paying attention to the micro wilderness. My campsite for two days was set up on a spot that did not show much wear as a fall blanket of golden pine needles covered it. For protection against the rain, I put up a tarp over what turned out to be a labyrinth. As I sat underneath it, eating or reading, mice would poke their heads out of the ground all around me. Some of them were frighteningly healthy. One mouse was half the size of my fist. Another, with whom I became friends, was tiny. Her ear was the size of this printed “o”. I won her trust by leaving Brazil nuts that mimicked her shape and size near one of the many entrances to this subterranean village.
“Wanna jump up on my lap, Miss Mouse?" I asked. "I'll read to you."
“Whatca reading?” she wanted to know.
“Mary Gordon’s Pearl” I said.
“I’ll pass, thanks”
“Why? It is a fabulous novel dealing with all the important questions for humanity. What is worth living and dying for, maternal and filial love, forgiveness and the unforgivable, and all this set against a backdrop of Irish political history,” I argued.
“Gordon is a man hater,” said the mouse, dismissively. “I bet there isn’t a single sympathetic male in the book.”
“Well…?” and said, since I couldn’t take that bet, “Aren’t you a feminist?”
“You can be a feminist without thinking every living thing with a penis is deeply flawed. What else did you bring to read?”
“Louise Erdrich” I said proudly.
“All right! Now you’re talking… unless it is that book where she joins the cult of Ernest Oberholtzer”
“Perhaps we should just stick to talking about sports and weather”