NOVEMBER 27, 2022 – (Cont.) Although “Big Water” Grindstone Lake warrants a “noticeable blue dot” on a modest map of the United States, its configuration (basically oval, but in detail it’s like a Pilgrim’s shoe in profile) is such that you can’t get lost on it—at least for long. If you find your way into Williams Bay on the west side, you’ll find your way out quickly. If you venture behind the islands in the extreme southwest corner, you won’t have far to sail, motor, or paddle before you’re in the clear again. If you’re in the middle of the lake and can’t distinguish one part of the shore from another, just head for any part of the shore, then circumnavigate up to 12 miles and you’ll eventually reach homeport. Avoid the channel at the extreme southeast corner of the lake, however. It leads to Lac Courte Oreilles, which is an alternative universe, where you could very easily get lost.
But unlike the Boundary Waters Canoe Area along the Minnesota – Ontario border, this neck of the woods “down south” in northwest Wisconsin has plenty of “permanent settlers.” In a pinch, you could go ashore and ask for directions.
The smarty pants reader might raise a hand to say, “Or just use your phone.” And I’d say, “Smarty pants.” But then to recover some dignity I’d ask, “What if you forgot to charge your phone before you left? Or . . . or . . . it fell in the lake . . . or . . . or you’re renting a place and everyone in your rental party is with you?”
Speaking of phones, getting lost, and . . . the BWCA, there was a time when I got terribly lost—on really “Big Water.” It was a lake more than four times the size of Grindstone Lake and three times bigger than Lac Courte Oreilles, with no fewer than 289 islands and who knows how many hundreds of miles of shoreline. No, it wasn’t Gitche Gumme. It was the largest lake in the BWCA.
I was all of 10 when I got lost there, but not to worry—I was with my dad; yet then again, worry, because he was just as lost as I was, and he was supposed to be in charge during our week-long canoe trip in the wilderness.
For months Dad had been planning re-enactment of the Boundary Waters canoe trip he’d taken when he was 10. From Dad’s account, it sounded like a spur of the moment operation; an unplanned side-trip that my grandpa and my great uncle Sigurd, with Dad and Dad’s cousin Harry in tow, had decided to take after several days of camping along the North Shore of Lake Superior. It was long before cell phones, of course, and apparently even pay phones then were a rarity in Minnesota’s Arrowhead country—the men hadn’t phoned home to Minneapolis to inform their wives of the side trip; one that would produce ample adventure, including a near-deadly thunderstorm as the terrified men paddled frantically across Gunflint Lake while the two boys huddled under an oil-skin tarp in the middle of the wooden canoe. There were no life jackets aboard. (Cont.)
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
