Arrival

We have arrived, deep in the sprawling Superior National Forest, at the southern edge of the vast Canadian boreal forest biome, dead center in Minnesota’s Arrowhead. We left spring in the Twin Cities, where the most delicate greens danced in the trees. Here, the woods have not a thought of turning green yet. But there is no snow, which is unusual for late April.

So now you know where I am.

More specifically, however, I am on a high, thin isthmus between two lakes, aligned with a kettle lake named Gunsten to the south and riverine Swallow Lake to the north. Old growth red and white pine tower overhead, at their feet glacial erratic boulders dressed in lichen of many colors. With the leaves gone it’s easy to see the unreasonable ruggedness of this country. Anyone who wants to see the forest will travel in a canoe. 

The last 20 feet of the 5.5 mile logging trail that is our driveway rises sharply to the top of the hill, where there is a constantly shifting, shrinking woodpile and a path to the outhouse that cuts to the east. The cabin is weathered cedar, and the roof is brown metal. A deep and tall screen porch--the best part of the cabin--dangles over a steep drop to the south, then wraps around the side of the cabin, essentially doubling our living space in the warm months. An ancient white pine throws her feathery arms around the corner of the screenhouse, allowing us a view into the canopy from our rocking chairs.

The cabin is off-the-grid. We have a fine set up with a Honda generator that charges a long-life battery, which in turn keeps us in electricity for three to four days at a time. The cabin has light switches and outlets like a normal house. It does not, however, have a refrigerator. Instead, we have a high-performing cooler. An old white enamel cook stove is hooked to a propane tank, and a small wood stove keeps the 470-square-feet toasty and sometimes too roasty. If you’ve ever had a crappy wood stove, you’ll know what I mean. You can’t regulate the temperature in the cabin, but you try a lot. 

These things came out of the car: A man, a cat, a dog, four eight-gallon water jugs (No water, either, I forgot to tell you.), a gallon of gas for the generator, clothing for two seasons, new fishing poles, a new laptop, and two shoulder bags full of my writing and work. We are here for the “season,” as they say in the Hamptons. 

In the midst of unthinkable chaos, I am experiencing unspeakable delight. This is the second summer I will spend at the cabin. Last summer I was an anxious covid refugee, leaving my apartment just blocks away from ground zero riots stemming from George Floyd’s murder, my wide-eyed white shepherd mix in the back seat next to a new chainsaw. My best friend Val flew in from San Diego, joining me on the porch after the first month. We stayed until the leaves started to show early yellows. It was a gift I am still opening, so generous were the experiences and lessons that summer brought.

This summer Greg is my company. And my new partner. He and I rather plucked each other out of the ether last fall. We met online in September, met in person in October, and moved in together in November. After our first call, I hung up knowing it was him. As in, He who I have been waiting for. He felt similarly, and we have been together 24/7 since the day before Thanksgiving. I can’t do anything but expect this companion and this summer to be just as grand as last year. 

I am working remotely. I toggle my computer to my phone’s hotspot, and I am able to work two jobs from my small desk. I have attended meetings from my phone, from my kayak, from the flat water behind an island on Shallow Lake. I just didn’t turn on the camera because that would be rude, showing lily pads and maybe loons behind me, when I should be in a stuffy university office building. There should be a word to describe this secret Zoom behavior. It’s not cheating, I tell myself. I tell you, and so have revealed a dark truth. 

All this is to say that I am here, in the woods, with a red canoe on a small bog lake that shows herself to me for the eighth year. I came to these woods in 2013 armed with a fair bit of knowledge about that/those with whom I would be sharing space: I knew the names of most trees, a fair amount of shrubs, and had a sense of the order in which flowers and berries appear. 

Since then I have been studying. And I’ve learned quite a bit. Mostly, as these types of endeavors trend, I’ve learned how little I know. 

To love a bog lake, you have to love what most people don’t. Namely, bugs, muck, carnivorous plants, strange off-gassing. But also you have to be comfortable in a world of in-between. You have to love the ambiguity of margins. It’s not land, but it’s not water. It’s hard to know where the shoreline starts, where the boundaries exist. The bog is the transition area between water and woods, and is both and neither. We humans are hungry for tidy categories, but a bog isn’t interested. If you're a curious sort, like me, the bog will be a beautiful garden of ideas and curiosities. It is the margin between the known and the unknown.

But there is also this: I paddle with questions and willingness to be shown into the next phase of my life. I sit in my boat with the paddle across my lap, staring into the bog. Sometimes at the water finding its way through that beaver dam, or watching the underwater mud trail of a disappearing otter. I resume paddling. Slower this time.