I Love Lakes

A year ago I woke up in a tent in the forest in Minnesota.  It was a dark and cloudy morning, and I was nestled in a cove on a lake.

 

I was two miles of canoeing away from my Volkswagen Jetta Wagen, which I had nicknamed the "Wagen Wheel."  A storm was on its way, and I needed to pack up and get out of there fast.  I had been camping alone for two days, my first big camping excursion in the wild during my move from New York to San Francisco.  I was three weeks into my journey, and didn't know at the time that I wouldn't stop life on the road until a total of 100 days had gone by, and I wouldn't leave the tent life and settle in San Francisco for three more months after that.

It had been a glorious retreat into nature.  I'd forgotten my iPod in the car, so I had nothing but peaceful silence and totally placid water to keep me company.  That and a black bear cub that startled me by diving into the water about twenty feet from my campsite, causing me to excitedly prowl the area with my wood hatchet to make sure mama bear wasn't around.  If she was, I would be in trouble.  Luckily, she wasn't, and baby bear swam away just as fast as it arrived.  I spent the second night floating under the brightest clearest coolest starry sky I'd ever witnessed with my eye.

The rains started once I was out on the water, but I kept calm and carried on, and by the time it began to pour I had at least reached the parking lot.  I packed up the car, turned onto Route 326, and drove an hour out of Superior National Forest, having successfully survived two nights alone in the Minnesota Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  It's called the Boundary Waters because they extend up into Canada.

After checking my e-mail at a cafe, I drove through a vicious lightning storm until I reached a state park near Lake Superior.  I set up my tent during a lull in the rain and crawled into my sleeping bag.  This was one of the few examples where smoking grass saved my life, because the resulting paranoia and heightened visual sense made me realize just how vicious this thunderstorm had become, with lightning flashing every three seconds and water starting to fill up each corner of my tent.  I ran into my car, and for a few hours, I watched the most amazing electric show I'd ever seen, until I finally fell asleep in the driver's seat.  The first thing I saw the next morning when I woke up was the Wagen's wheel, just waiting for me to steer her.