Having the luxury of leisure, Lisa and Travis made a decision to spend the entire day exploring vast Knife Lake. This was their first time in Canada, albeit barely over the border, and they wanted to linger awhile.
After breakfast they broke camp, loaded their canoe, and prepared to head out. Travis perfunctorily stripped naked. Just as quickly, Lisa stripped off and stuffed her clothing in her backpack. But, as always, she kept her T-shirt handy to toss on, just in case they crossed paths with anyone.
Travis aimed his Minolta SLR at Lisa. Faking embarrassment, she flashed an exaggerated, bug-eyed, open-mouth expression and hid her bits with her hands. Travis was laughing so heartily he figured the photo had to be blurry so he snapped another. He mounted his SLR on a tripod. Using the camera's self-timer, he snapped a photo of the two of them together with the lake in the background. He brought lots of film: nine rolls of Kodacolor, 36 exposures each, and a roll of black & white infrared film loaded in his other camera. In college he had experimented with infrared film and liked the way it gave otherworldly appearance to ordinary scenes.
They pushed their loaded canoe off the pebbly beach and ventured onto open water, dipping their paddles forward and swinging them back.
Dip, dip, and swing . . .
By now, four days into their journey, Lisa had come to appreciate the joy of trekking nude in the great outdoors. How glorious it felt, the sun and wind kissing her bare skin. How wonderfully free and alive she felt. A thought popped into her head: How foolish I've been not doing this on all those trips down Sycamore River.
From the put-in point at Beech Hollow, an easy all-day float on the Sycamore delivered trekkers to Shawnee Springs, the overnight stop. People with canoes and kayaks weren't the only ones who re-created at Shawnee Springs. The popular swimming area was accessible on foot from the trailhead on Forest Road 407. During the hot, hazy, humid days of summer, scores of people backpacked the 2 mile trail and spent the weekend, or longer, camping in the woods, relaxing on the sandbar and swimming in the river. And the vast majority didn't wear any sort of bodily covering. Those who thought the river wasn't cold enough could retreat to the shady limestone grotto whence flowed the springs. There, the shallow pool was bone-chilling cold even in the middle of summer. After dark, friends, and brand-new friends, socialized around campfires and imbibed adult beverages. Those who brought guitars strummed familiar standards while others, if moved, sang along. In the morning, back on the river, another easy all-day float to the take-out point: the covered bridge at Horseshoe Bend.
Lisa conjured images of those weekends she and Travis canoed the Sycamore and placed herself in the scene, naked in view of hundreds of people. And she wondered: Would I actually do that? She pondered only a moment before concluding: Prob'ly not.
Knife Lake was shaped roughly like a wishbone: The 'sternum' and one 'leg' defined the international border stretching 10 miles west-to-east. And the South Arm, extending 7 miles southeast into American territory, formed the other 'leg.' The shorelines everywhere were highly convoluted, featuring myriad nooks, crannies, coves and side bays. Moreover, looking at a topographic map of Knife Lake and the entire Boundary Waters Canoe Area, it was difficult to ascertain whether the landscape was pocked with hundreds of lakes of various sizes or the inverse: thousands of square miles of watery wilderness with bits of forested land scattered here and there.
Hugging the north shore, they paddled slowly, stopping occasionally to just sit and listen to the symphony of the wilderness: wind in the pines, waves lapping the shore, and the calls of songbirds, unseen in the forest.
Late morning they rounded a rocky point and a big cove came into view. Travis steered the canoe to the right and entered the cove, a quarter-mile wide and half-mile deep. The shoreline therein was scalloped, a random spacing of rocky points capped with evergreens, interspersed with pebbly beaches. The scene reminded Lisa of the Maine coastline where she had vacationed in her youth.
Floating in the center of the cove, a huge assembly of loons turned their heads and watched the humans stop paddling and drift closer and closer. As if on cue, the multitude took flight, hundreds of wings churning the air, a loud WHOOOOSH
,
as they leaped into the blue summer sky. "Awesome!" Lisa smiled broadly. Displays of raw nature always satisfied her deep down. From out of nowhere, she was seized with the feeling they were being watched. She looked around. No canoes or kayaks were beached anywhere in the cove. No people ashore. It's just my nerves, she told herself.
"Damn," Craig muttered under his breath. He had come to this cove to photograph loons and these two buffoons ruined his shoot. From the concealment of his camouflaged duck blind, he swiveled the long telephoto lens on the tripod and studied the interlopers through the viewfinder of his Nikon SLR. That the couple was naked didn't surprise him. In this watery wonderland, many people considered clothing to be superfluous . . . unless the weather turned stormy.
Craig Monroe, 37, freelance writer/photographer, was on assignment for Wilderness Life magazine. He had been paddling his kayak around the Boundary Waters much of the summer, taking notes and snapping photographs for a feature article slated for publication in October. He had photographed lakes, streams, waterfalls, rock formations, wildflowers, trees, and many species of animals including black bear, elk and moose. He also had photographed people and listened to their tales of adventure in the wilderness.
Nature photographers needs two things: patience and luck. To capture shots of a black bear he sat in one spot for three hours waiting for a bruin to find the chunk of spam he placed for bait. The time wasn't wasted; while he waited, two topless young women paddled their canoe past the rock on which he sat at water's edge. He snapped a photo of them. They weren't offended; they smiled and waved. He snapped another photo and waved back.
The loons Craig was intent on photographing had arrived in the cove only ten minutes before they were scared away. Bad luck? Nay. Ever the opportunist, he switched gears and began photographing human wildlife in its natural habitat. Snap . . . snap . . . snap . . . .
"How 'bout we stop here for lunch?" Travis suggested.
"Sure. You pick the spot."
