BWCA What first drew you to the BWCA? Boundary Waters Listening Point - General Discussion
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      What first drew you to the BWCA?     

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09/01/2015 07:01PM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
There are always so many fun stories of how people were first drawn to the BWCA. Always brought as a kid - and now still going as an adult, boy/girl scouts, bucket list - a way to deal with grief........

What is your story? What connects you to the hauntingly beautiful BWCA and Quetico?
 
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Savage Voyageur
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09/01/2015 07:07PM  
The adventure of the big woods. I lived in Minneapolis and an outfitter named Way of the Wilderness was the place we first chose. Glad I did because that trip was the start to many trips.
 
LuvMyBell
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09/01/2015 07:30PM  
The possibility of great walleye fishing on a lake with few to no other people.


The canoeing wasn't a factor for me as I prefer smaller rivers and creeks.

The possibility is usually a reality for me because I trip only in the shoulder seasons and travel far from EP's
 
siusaluki23
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09/01/2015 07:55PM  
Fishing, pictographs, relative solitude, no cell or email, waterfalls, big sky, aurora boreal is, woods wildlife...
 
bowfiddler
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09/01/2015 08:04PM  
My wife's parents canoed and camped up there in the early 50's. For medical reasons, they were never able to return, but the area had captured their spirits. It was their reminiscing and longing that drew us up there.
 
09/01/2015 08:07PM  
Boy Scouts were going to High Adventure trip 1n 1989. I had never heard of the place, but they needed a sponsor. I have been every year since except one.
 
Jaymon
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09/01/2015 08:07PM  
My friend Fred drew me. I had cancer in 2014 and he offered to fund an expedition to the BWCA between chemo treatments. He had been many times. This year was my second trip and we are already planning next year's.
 
h20
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09/01/2015 08:40PM  
Reading Sig.
 
cgchase
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09/01/2015 08:44PM  
I spent a lot of time camping, hiking and fishing in my 20's and early 30's - most of it West of the Rockies. After getting married and having 2 (awesome) kids, I really couldn't do my frequent overnight trips anymore. My wife, being super-amazing, decided to bestow upon me an "annual man trip" .. where I get to take off and spend a week or so in the wilderness.

My third "man trip" was to the bwca. I had never really heard of it - I just found it by searching for good fishing areas on-line. I had never been canoe camping before so I did tons and tons of research. By the time I actually got to my EP, I didn't even need a map anymore (still had one, though).

The trip didn't really go as I planned. There were multiple issues - I was in poor shape and found the going difficult, my trip partner hurt his knee and was limping along, there were some 'philosophical' differences between my partner and I that emerged along the way . .yada yada . .we made a good effort but did not complete the mission.

It was enough to hook me, though. I started planning next years trip in my head while paddling to the exit point, lol. This year's "man trip" is definitely going to be a trip to the BWCA and probably every year from now on. In terms of fishing, solitude, wilderness, etc . .it's just hard to beat. We caught a lot of fish, we caught some big fish, we went several days were we saw almost no people. What more could you want?

I think I'll eventually visit Quetico and, at least once in my life, I'll take a float plane trip . . but, for right now, the BWCA has everything I want in a fishing/camping get-away.

 
09/01/2015 09:07PM  
Scouts. For a kid from Illinois, it was pure magic.
 
09/01/2015 09:14PM  
My husband, known here as Spartan1. And some crazy, romantic notions.

It wasn't really the BWCA, but it was the Canoe Country.

How It All Began
 
09/01/2015 09:26PM  
The quiet.

The are other attractive elements, but the quiet is still probably the main reason I return.
 
drrick
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09/01/2015 09:50PM  
BSA high adventure trip 2012, been back 2 times since then.
 
09/01/2015 10:05PM  
It was the northwoods, and the fishing for me. My grandparents had a place in northern wisconsin that I loved as a kid and it grew from there. In the early 90's I remember seeing commercials for Ely with a buddy of mine. Next thing I knew, we had a trip booked.
 
09/01/2015 10:30PM  
An Army buddy introduced me in 1979. I felt something right away. She was beautiful and fun, sometimes challenging but always straight forward with no games. I tried leaving once, but I came back. It really isn't very rational when I try to break it down or try to explain it to my friends. It must be love.
 
Basspro69
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09/01/2015 10:49PM  
The woods were calling me .
 
andym
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09/01/2015 11:18PM  
You can go camping with canoes.
 
Michwall2
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09/02/2015 12:51AM  
There were just a whole lot of factors that combined to make the first trip necessary.

I have always loved canoeing. It is just an elegant way to be on the water. You are physically in touch with the forces of nature. You are required to pay attention to everything around you. Wind, waves, rocks, maps, j-stroke all at once.

My son and I needed an activity that would require us to work as a team to be successful. He was a teenager then. Need I say more? We used those bonds built during those BW trips to work together and trust each other the rest of the year.

I was also in the middle of a personal struggle. I needed a place to be able to step out of my daily life and help me gain some perspective. The BW reminds me of both how small and insignificant we really are in the vast scheme of the universe and yet how the smallest of details in our behavior can have huge impacts on those around us and those who come after us.

That is what brought me there to start. What kept me coming back were all the things above and:

I fell in love with the sound of the loons. To this day, I look to stay on lakes where I think there is a high likelyhood of loons staying most of the night. (If ever you are on SAK, get up in the middle of the night and shine a flashlight/headlamp across the water. You will get such a chorus of loons calling out warnings!). We took my dad the second year we went. He never fails to mention that the Sawbill loons kept him awake all night the night we camped there. They sang all through the night. I have never heard them that vocal since.

Some people go to the BW and say, "It all looks the same, Trees and rocks and water." I don't think that way. To me every lake/river has its own "personality." I suspect that some will understand this and others will think me crazy, but it is why I trip rather than base camp. I also think the perception is personal and it is unlikely that two people will get the same vibe from the same lake.

Sorry for the long post.

 
09/02/2015 01:36AM  
The BW was a mystery to me as I had only heard stories but never looked into it. A buddy asked me along when I was 19 and I jumped at the chance.

I'm 32 now and have been back at least once every summer since. I plan my vacation schedule around canoe trips and spend way too much money on camping gear. I was hooked by lunch on the first day!
 
mastertangler
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09/02/2015 06:13AM  
I had always been a backpacker.........but the backpacking was just to get me to fishing spots. But it was unsatisfactory to bust your tail, get to a beautiful wonderful lake, and then have to bushwhack around the shoreline in order to fish.

Then I got wind of the Boundary Waters.........hey thats a novel concept!

First trip was a fiasco.......we had enough stuff to open a tackle store and a travel plan which was overly ambitious. Lots of tiny lakes, load the stuff, get in, paddle 5 minutes and rinse and repeat. Wrong shoes and lots of blisters!

2nd trip was a bit better.........in at Sawbill but the crowds were thick and a bear took our food (fortunately it was on our last night).

3rd trip was solo to the Quetico (hunters Island loop) and I haven't looked back.
 
09/02/2015 06:56AM  
Girl Scout summer camp. The camp I went to and later worked at took girls to the BWCA every year. I was hooked. After I stopped working there (real life and a career got in the way) I didn't return to the BW for about 16 years. I regret that. But I'm back!
 
airmorse
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09/02/2015 07:42AM  
1993 was our first year. We stayed on fish stake narrows. We had no idea what we were doing.

I had never heard of the BWCA until an uncle of mine told me about it as he just came back from Lac LA Croix. We had always fished and camped and hunted, but never anything like the BWCA.

A few weeks later we were on our first trip and have been hooked ever since.

Our original group consisted of two uncles two cousins and myself. Sadly the two uncles can no longer go due to health reasons but us cousins have continued the tradition. Introducing new people occasionally.

A lot has changed for us. We started using zups as our outfitter way back then then realized that using them meant customs. So we started using Andersons. Now for the past 15-20 years or so we have outfitted and secured permits ourselves.

I will continue going as long as air flows freely from my lungs.
 
BlueSkiesWI
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09/02/2015 07:51AM  
My parents brought me along when I was real little so I didnt have much of a choice there...

But a few years later I went without them for the solitude, adventure, and to unwind!
 
builditbetter22
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09/02/2015 07:57AM  
For me it is the solitude, the ability to get away from the world and unplug for a few days.
 
inspector13
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09/02/2015 08:31AM  

While in college in the early 80’s I was planning to be a field biologist, so when a professor of mine planned a couple non curricular summer trips to the Quetico/BWCA, I jumped at the chance. I’d been canoeing since I was 7 or 8 years old, but not up there before then. I liked the rocky landscape and quiet cedar groves.

 
09/02/2015 08:56AM  
2nd generation camper at Camp Voyageur on Farm Lake mid-70s.
 
Cedarboy
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09/02/2015 09:04AM  
Boy Scouts 1975
 
2old4U
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09/02/2015 09:26AM  
Got out of the Army and wanted to escape and get as far away from people as possible so I enrolled at Vermilion. Grades suffered due to the Big Bucks and Hog Walleyes of the BWCA calling my name. If the Army knew how much GI college money I spent on Beer and Bait they'd throw me in Leavenworth for life!
 
JimmyJustice
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09/02/2015 09:38AM  
A buddy asked me to go...so I went. Glad I did!
 
09/02/2015 10:16AM  
quote Basspro69: "The woods were calling me ."


+1 .... and they haven't stopped calling.
 
09/02/2015 10:42AM  
I went because of scouts. It was our summer high adventure trip in 1997 ('96?) and we went in at Ensign, looped up through Kekekabic to Knife and back to Ensign/Splash. We went in late June I think and I remember it raining a lot with ferocious mosquitos and I broke the tip on my rod, twice but still fished and didn't catch a lot because I didn't have a lot of time to fish and didn't know what I was doing then. I was hooked. Around 2000 my dad and I went and did basically that same trip, with much better fishing, much better weather, and the same mosquitos. A few years later we went to Quetico and I've been going ever since pretty much every year, or close to it.

The clean air, clean water, the wilderness all pulled me in. Those things still have me going, with the added draw of the fishing now that I know what I'm doing.
 
riverrunner
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09/02/2015 11:32AM  
We were a outdoors family my dad took us there in 68 liked in from there on.
 
09/02/2015 12:32PM  
Back in 1972, between my first and second year of high school I participated in the Twin City Institute for Talented Youth in a Creative writing class. The first week of that class was always spent in the bWCA to open the mind and get the creative juices flowing. I was a naive 16 year old conservative middle class kid with little outdoors experience and the group was mostly liberal long haired pot smoking skinny dipping guys and gals. The whole experience blew me away. I had no idea anything like the BWCA existed and loved it right from the start. Went again the next year with the same organization, a little wiser this time, and loved it just as much. One thing we were encouraged to do the second year was do an overnight solo on a nearby island or point where we were dropped off with our pack. They came and got you the next morning. Freaked me out but I learned a lot.


First year we entered at Lake One and went to Insula and the second year was out of Snowbank, in the Ensign/Disappointment/Frazer/Thomas area. After those two trips I began leading my own trips with groups of friends who all fell in love with it nearly as much as I did. Obviously the BW/Q was a much less popular place back then and we would routinely go days without seeing anyone else and never had to worry about finding an open campsite. The trees, rocks, water, loons, fishing, solitude and wildlife were all part of the draw as was the physical nature of the experience. At the heart of it though was just a feeling of life being right and the way it should be up there.
 
09/02/2015 02:29PM  
In Minnesota with my wife, in October of 2006, I was researching my family's roots in that state. While we were there my wife wanted to take the opportunity to visit the Mall of America.
After a quick look around, I planted myself on a bench just inside the main entrance while my wife continued to shop. Concerned that I might become bored, she showed up with a handful of brochures for me to look through. One of them was something like "Fishing in Minnesota" and another one was about canoeing and fishing in the Boundary Waters.

I was already making plans before we got back to our parked car. My first BW visit occurred the following July.
 
mr.barley
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09/02/2015 06:16PM  
My brother wanted to go on his first trip and asked me if I wanted to go. I said ok because I was stoned......;-) That was 30 years ago and I haven't missed many years.
 
09/02/2015 08:16PM  
Watching my grandfather spending hours studying his book of Fisher maps way back when I was a small boy. It fascinated me that there could be so many lakes just waiting to be explored. Also, when Hamms beer put out those beautiful commercials back in the day.... Just thought it looked magical, and it is...
 
QuietWaters
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09/02/2015 08:19PM  
In 1996, my two younger brothers were planning their second canoeing trip and I asked them if I could go with them. Although my childhood vacations were spent at our grandparents' lake cabin near Park Rapids, I had never slept outside or been in a canoe. I was approaching my mid fifties and was missing time spent outdoors, so was surprised and glad when they said yes. The next six months were spent reading everything I could about canoeing, camping, buying gear, practicing air paddling to learn the technique. They gave me a couple of trial runs on the Mississippi and evidently I passed.

We had a very eventful trip to Quetico with a number of mishaps, but I loved the challenges and especially the solitude and peacefulness of the north woods and lakes. I've gone on a number of trips since then and in July I spent my 72nd birthday windbound on Alder Lake with my son and his two girl cousins. This may have been my last trip, but their plan is to return in 3 years with me to celebrate my 75th. Keeping my fingers crossed that I'll make it.
 
09/02/2015 08:32PM  
quote mr.barley: "My brother wanted to go on his first trip and asked me if I wanted to go. I said ok because I was stoned......;-) That was 30 years ago and I haven't missed many years."


hahahahahahahahahahahaha!
 
mr.barley
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09/02/2015 09:01PM  
quote mooseplums: "
quote mr.barley: "My brother wanted to go on his first trip and asked me if I wanted to go. I said ok because I was stoned......;-) That was 30 years ago and I haven't missed many years."



hahahahahahahahahahahaha!"
thought you'd enjoy that.
 
Grandma L
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09/02/2015 09:05PM  
All girls Camp(Trelipe) in 1961. Came home and bought my first canoe!
 
ozarkpaddler
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09/02/2015 10:20PM  
It was all about fishing for me. During the trip, however, everything changed. The quiet, the loons, the moose....... No place like it and I was smitten with the first trip
 
bottomtothetap
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09/03/2015 11:55AM  
I had heard of the BWCA and understood that it was some kind of a "special" place but was not that familiar with it. I was invited by a home-town friend to be the fourth person on a trip he was organizing with a couple of his college buddies. I had not been exposed to camping very much as a child but found new enjoyment with it in my later teens. Even so, this wilderness thing seemed a bit much but I was up for the adventure and said yes to my friend, deciding to try it "once". I fell in love immediately and will be taking my 23rd trip this year.
 
MrBreeze
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09/03/2015 11:01PM  
1951 International bus. Oh that's what drove us there, it was in Boy Scouts in 1977, We went all over in scouts, Philmont, Colorado Rockies, Appalachian Trail. Moved to St Paul in 89 and picked up where Scouts Left off.
 
09/04/2015 02:18AM  
i had done 1/2 dozen fly-ins in ontario, and a coworker/friend asked if i wanted to do a BWCA trip(1987) i said sure,(it's fishing) having a cabin and a 10hp on a 16' lund is nice but the BW experience i found to be very special.
 
09/04/2015 06:51AM  
After many years fighting fires out west I decided it was time to come back to MN. I transferred to the Tofte Ranger district and ran the fire engine out of the Isabella work station. I didn't do many BW trips when I was there. I do more BW trips now that I transferred to Detroit Lakes USFWS. I transferred to AK and am now enroute there, it will be 4 years till I'm back.
 
09/04/2015 08:08AM  
My parents used to stay at Kirks lodge on moose lake, now part of the BW, they were bought out. We stayed there every year, rented boats and did day trips out of the lodge, mainly to basswood, over the mechanical portage. Was fun, and I learned there were a few other lakes out there to explore, and started tripping in canoes.

Went motor canoeing until the regs changed, that still was the most fun, 10hp motor on 17' square stern aluminum grumman, you flew. However, portaging motors and gas = not much fun.
 
09/04/2015 05:01PM  
The year was 1976, I was 12 years old, and it was my first trip to the BWCA without my Father. I was at summer camp and we were headed into the BWCA for seven days. Our fathers had grown up together and now their sons were going to spend a week together in the wilderness. I knew all but two of the kids on that trip and we all got along very well. Everyone pitched in, did their jobs and the rest of the time was dedicated to fun.
We started our trip on Hungry Jack Lake with Rose Lake as our first destination. On our third night, after the fire had dwindled down to embers and all that remained was a few yellow flickers of flame, we decided to sleep out on the rocky point. We grabbed the heavy flannel lined sleeping bags from our tents and headed for the slab of stone that would serve as our mattress for the night. It was my first time sleeping under the stars and it became a night that I will never forget.
As luck would have it, the sky was clear and there was no moon. It is amazing how when you look at a night sky under just the right conditions you feel like as though you are among the stars. You can almost feel the rotation of the earth. A late night meteor shower began sometime after midnight. Ten twelve year old boys stared in amazement by this awesome sight until we drifted off to sleep.
None of us said much that night; we just watched the celestial show, maybe thought about the trip so far or what was to come, maybe of home. I don’t remember. I just know I will never forget that night.
I have shared that story with my sons, with a dream to recreate it for them. There were many nights that came close to that experience, but I don’t think any will ever surpass it.
I have been going ever since...
 
09/04/2015 05:47PM  
Boy Scout and family family trips to the BWCA and surrounding areas in the 70's and early 80's
 
09/04/2015 06:52PM  
My dad had Fisher maps from the 50's down in his shop. From a little kid I studied them and knew I'd go there some day.
 
09/04/2015 07:47PM  
I do not think there is anything "haunting beautiful" about any area. Rather, I think there is a natural beauty that draws me in. The trees, the water and the water are all that gather my soul. It is, for me, primarily about the water. The water is magic.
 
andym
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09/04/2015 10:19PM  
Jeriatric wins for more most unusual story!
 
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