This trip began eighteen years ago, on the sofa with my baby daughter, Geneva, in my arms and a paddling book in my hands. Through the stories I read, I crossed the Atlantic, circumnavigated the Big Island of Hawaii, floated the Yukon, or poked into Baffin Bay between Beluga whales and ice floes in a human-powered boat. When she turned one, I bought an Aquaterra Gemini – an open cockpit, double-seated, beamy plastic boat that weighed about 95 pounds. With fierce determination, I figured how to leverage an end of that boat to the roof of my Isuzu sedan and then twist and rock it into kayak saddles. Eamon sat in the front seat and Geneva between my legs.
Twice a week I’d gather the boat, life jackets, paddles, sponge, water, a plastic container with a new-age maple-syrup-sweetened version of cheerios, raisins, and walnuts, a mylar emergency blanket to tuck around us if things got cold, rainy, or windy. The list of essentials lived on the refrigerator door. I could be on my way with two children, completely rigged and that boat strapped to the car in 15 minutes.
It had to be that fast to fit into a life that included childcare, housework, my PhD research, consulting jobs to help ends meet, and political work to pass a citizen’s referendum to limit development in the Barton Springs watershed. I can’t tell you how I fit all of that into one life. But the list of paddling necessities on the refrigerator door and six hours on the lake every week was what kept me sane.
In 1991 David, Eamon, Geneva, and I made our first Isle Royale trip in late June. The Ferry Queen out of Copper Harbor dropped us at Rock. We made the short portage to Tobin Harbor, paddled across and began an attempt at the Duncan Portage.
What were we thinking? Well, the map says the portage is just a mile. How hard could it be? Hard! The trail climbs to the Greenstone Ridge, 178 feet above the level of the lake. We had two plastic seakayaks that weighed 75 and 95 pounds bare. In addition to the boats and the gear, Geneva, just two years old, also had to be carried. I didn’t get far with a baby on one hip and a kayak on the other shoulder.
We saw the biggest bull moose I’ve ever seen on the island from the boardwalk on that portage. He was about 20 feet in front of us with a rack that looked 10 feet from tip to tip. David still talks about how nonplussed Geneva and Eamon were at the sight of his magnificence. At two and six years old, you see a lot of things you’ve never seen before. You don’t know that a person might live their whole life and never see that again.
The afternoon faded and it became clear that we weren’t going to reach the Duncan Narrows Campground. We gave up the portage and turned back. Too tired to make it back to Rock, we spent the night illegally camped on a rock outcrop on the shore of Hidden Lake. In the dim light of a setting sun and gathering clouds, we watched a baby moose nursing Mom in the shallow
water at the lake’s edge. It rained during the night, filling the rock bowl in which we’d pitched our tent. We woke to find the contents of the tent floating in 3 inches of water!
Never mind the water, we hiked toward Lookout Louise and saw a patch of 30 to 50 magenta lady slippers along the trail. I’d only ever seen 2 or 3 of these orchids and never more than one precious flower at a time. To see them again is the one reason that I’d come back to the Island in June, with its mosquitoes and black flies and before the thimbleberries ripen.
Along with the rain came a storm. We easily paddled the sheltered water of Tobin Harbor, but the waves in Rock were more than our vulnerable and inexperienced crew were going to take on. We spent the next 2 days gazing out across the surf in Rock Harbor from the ferry dock.
Finally the storm broke, the waves calmed, and we paddled a short hop to the Three-Mile Campground. As the sun came out, we sat on the rocks 20 feet above the water. Eamon and Geneva gathered long grass stems and wove them into my hair to create an odd headdress.
The same water that kept us stuck at the ferry dock for 2 days was now glass; so calm and inviting that we risked crossing the harbor and paddling on the Superior side of Mott Island. Any part of the Island with a direct lake exposure has a particular magic. On one side rock towers high above our heads and on the other there is just water to the distant horizon. Beneath my hull I can see the lake bottom 60 feet below.
Rock on these exposed shores carries a special energy that seems to me to be a residual of fierce winter storms, ice and pounding waves. I’ve never seen the Lake under those conditions except in my dreams. But I look at the towering cliffs, the deep and narrow cuts and I can feel in my skin the power of that Lake in winter.
It was just one afternoon, sitting on a rock, paddling that outer side of Mott. But an afternoon is plenty of time to fall in love. Never again would spring weather come to Austin without my dreaming of loading the boats and heading to the far north end of IH 35 and then a bit farther to the ferry dock. And never again would summer weather begin to turn to fall without my wishing that I could squeeze in just one more trip to the island before she is locked in winter’s ice.
