Life is All About Lakes and Portages
OACO 06/28/17 - 7/12/17
“I have learned to think that I am only ever one of two places in life: I am either on a lake, or I’m on a portage trail.”
Life can be hard. It can kind of suck sometimes - but it’s also great, too. It’s somehow a complicated mix of two things. When life sucks, a piece of advice I have learned is to embrace the suck. The advice means to come to acceptance with hardship as long as it is with a purpose. This may be known to others colloquially as saying “suck it up”, but the concept to me is deeper than disingenuous discomfort for discomfort’s sake, which is why I generally disagree with this version of the concept. In the context here, what I am suggesting is that sometimes we have an end goal in mind, but to reach it, it will take a period of unpleasantness or time spent ‘in a grind’. One could avoid ‘the suck’, but it might come at the cost of never coming to a great destination. I learned this lesson about life by canoeing.
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In 2017 I took a canoe trip out of Northern Tier, one of the Boy Scout’s 4 main High Adventure bases. This base is located in the very north of Minnesota, focusing on the Boundary Waters of the United States and Canada. They offer a lot of programs, two of which I’ll note. One was the Wilderness Voyage, which would be a trip through the US territory of the Boundary Waters. The other was the Canadian Odyssey, which would be a trip into the Canadian territory through their national park, The Quetico Provincial Park, which is the one I took.
These two programs specifically are OA High Adventure treks, which I should probably explain. It means they’re custom treks for Order of the Arrow members. They come with limits but get special perks as well. They’re not the same experience a group of friends from a troop, for example, would experience signing up to go together. In general, all OA High Adventure treks are extremely discounted, involve ‘half work half play’, are for solo attendees only, (meaning its by design that you don’t go with people you know already), and have one unique program element they try to add that other treks wouldn’t experience. For that reason, they ask that you don’t ‘spoil’ those specific unique experiences. They’re meaningful, but not secret. Contact someone important and they should happily spoil it for you, since this experience is only for people in a very limited range: Scouts… in the OA… age 16-20, etc etc… Its a very small group at risk of spoilers; plus I’m sure it changes.
I did Canadian Odyssey: Two weeks in the wilderness of Canada: one week of trail maintenance on a portage trail, and one week of a custom trek. The two week adventure cost me $200 because of the volunteer-work nature of the program. Not counting needing a passport, and travel to the base. So what’s the value of a 14 day trip to the Northwoods? A lot more than what it cost me.
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In this region there are thousands of lakes, just ask anyone from the area; they’ll tell you. It’s mentioned on every Minnesota license plate, lest you forget. Someone told me that they count puddles as lakes, so I’m not sure of the count. Anyways, these lakes are close enough together that these portage trails exist to connect them, which thanks to this protected wilderness, we get to experience.
How does a canoe trek like this work? There are three canoes, six bags, and nine people. There are three people to a canoe and you rotate seat positions as well as rotate who carries what after each lake. The person in front provides the main power to the canoe. The person in the back steers as they paddle. As for the person in the middle? The person in the middle does nothing. This is called the duff. There’s a lot of different Boundary Water slang, turns out this term might actually not be one of those. I thought it was named after the brand of cushion you rested on, but only now after searching the slang online, I may have been wrong about that. In either case, I mean to refer to it named after the cushion you sit on, because I like that metaphor of being nothing but a resting cushion.
Each canoe has two packs in it: one green and one black. The black is the crew’s personal gear. Everyone is limited to what they can bring on the voyage to two stuff sacks. One of your stuff sacks will be your sleeping bag, the other will have your one set of dry clothes in them, and quite frankly, only a ‘few’ other things. Whatever you can compress in that bag is what you can bring. Which isn’t much. The green bags are the crew gear or the food pack. One has a tote in it, which you won’t believe fits, where the cooking gear and etc. is found. The food pack contains packages of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. These are merely labels. Sometimes you will eat your breakfast at sunset. Don’t let labels tell you what to do.
When you canoe up in the Boundary Waters it is extremely fulfilling, but it absolutely sucks, too. It’s somehow these two things, and much more.
When it rains: embrace the suck.
Many things have a give and take relationship. Climbing a mountain sucks, but the view from the summit is great; so, people climb. Doing the dishes sucks, but eating the food was great. I imagine having a baby probably sucks, raising a baby, however, some might say, can be great. Likewise, canoeing on a lake is great, but there comes a time in every avid canoer’s adventure when the lake runs out.
Practicing portaging at base camp.
When a lake runs out, a canoer has a couple of choices: Stay on the lake, end the voyage and return, or choose to continue on to a new lake. To continue means to move from one lake to the next lake over land. This would be called a portage, a French word in origin meaning to carry a canoe overland. Portages aren’t sunshine and rainbows, they kind of suck, honestly. However, you cannot get to another lake without a portage. Portages have purpose.
I have learned to think that I am only ever one of two places in life: I am either on a lake, or I’m on a portage trail. The lakes are great, the portages are rough. When you get to the end of your lake, what will you do? Will you be content with the lake you have found, will you return from where you came, or will you continue on even if it means a period of hardship? This is the lesson - to embrace the suck.
The Routine
Here is a generalization, from my experience, of what a typical routine for a canoeing trek might look like. You start your day by waking up and immediately changing into your wet clothes - clothes that never fully dry hanging up from the day before. The hardest thing you will ever have to do in life, you will realize, is the process of putting on your wet wool socks, and stepping into your squishy hiking boots first thing in the morning. It seems to take forever, the cold fabric doesn’t welcome you, and it is discomfort through the whole process. Moments ago you were warm, happy, and comfortable. You will not want to put these clothes on; power through it anyway. The moment is sucky, but you must move on. It will be hard, but life is hard. Later your focus will be elsewhere.
“The hardest thing you will ever have to do in life, you will realize, is the process of putting on your wet wool socks, and stepping into your squishy hiking boots first thing in the morning.”
Feet wet and squishy, you next grab your canoe and wade out into the water, only setting it down when you are at least knee deep. Why not stay dry and push off from land? This is because if you lay the canoe on the edge off the shore and step in, you will cause slight damage to the bottom of the canoe with scrapes and brushes every time. If everyone does it this way, the canoes won’t be there for future voyagers. You’ll also leave a trace of the canoe behind, and this wilderness should stay without our mark as much as possible. Therefore, do not compromise on your standards. Embrace the suck, if it means sustainability.
“The privilege to paddle.”
You paddle for hours, but you will not be dry. You will be at best, damp. You’ll sit on the aluminum bench and paddle on the calm water because it’s better than being a duff, which is to say, you try to be useful. There are times to duff, but try not to duff through your life.
Then you run out of lake, because good things aren’t meant to be forever. You may be dry at this point, but honestly, it’s better to still be wet so you don’t have to regret what you must do now. You will jump out knee deep into the water, take the gear pack or the canoe, and then step up on land. Never run aground with your canoe on shore. Do not compromise on your standards.
The Portage
On this trail, called the portage, you either have a 100-pound gear pack or a 55-pound canoe. I prefer the canoe, because it obstructs your view of how much further the trail has to go. Embracing the suck is the lesson, but do not confuse embrace with needless anticipation.
“I prefer the canoe, because it obstructs your view of how much further the trail has to go”
You are now on land, taking your turn of the canoe or one of the two gear packs. Now you proceed to walk on land, while wet, on a trail which is, of course, now also wet. Big rocks make up a good portage trail because they give traction and they are the alternative to dirt tread, which becomes mud when wet, which will be what you are. Be cautious though, they can be slippery. A trail built out of dirt becomes mud; a trail built of rocks becomes slick. Both options suck - but when embracing the suck, it does not mean to deliberately choose ‘suckier’ or ‘suckiest’. It means to understand that with good must sometimes come bad. The rocks are more stable ground, so choose the rocks. Like when stuck on a metaphorical life portage, going cautiously is still a good tactic.
Rocks make up a good trail because it leaves less room for mud.
mud pits, or ‘moose muck’
There may be areas of what is called moose muck, which are large mud pits where you sink in. These are formed because a trail gets muddy, and hikers step to the side to avoid the mud. This exacerbates the problem, growing the mud pit wider with each traveler. So, embrace the suck. Never walk around them. Always walk right through them. Do not compromise on your standards. Even if everyone else around you leaves the trail does not mean you need to agree.
The biggest danger of the portage trail is deep moose muck that can have obstacles like roots that really lock you down. Be careful. When you find yourself stuck in moose muck, it is in this moment, you will realize that you were wrong about the morning. Putting on your socks and boots was not the hardest thing in life – this is.
I want to give credit to a staff member at base camp, Ted, I think? He told us some life advice in the form of a story similar to this: He said sometimes in life it feels like you are knee deep in moose muck, trapped on a root, gear pack on your back, and holding a 55 pound Alumacraft on your shoulders, feeling like there’s nowhere to go. He advised us in a speech to embrace the suck, and power through, I think. It’s been a few years to recall the right words. Suffice to say, it was the definition of a sucky situation. On your trek, nothing will be worse than your portage trails.
The Payoff
Hearing all this up to this point, this isn’t a great selling point, and I haven’t even mentioned the bugs: (It is because I do not remember them. My focus was elsewhere.)
You surely may scream, “Why then? Why go on a canoe trek? Why put up with this discomfort?” The reason is because of what comes next. It is worth it. Like climbing a mountain, doing dishes, and raising babies, it is worth the payoff. It’s a beautiful thing you have to experience for yourself for this next statement to make sense:
Clip: The moment you see the lake through the trees.
When you are exhausted on the portage, holding up that canoe, there will come a moment when you will tilt backwards so you can see up ahead, and you’ll begin to see a lack of trees. You’ll wonder if this is it - if this is the end of the portage. If the trail doesn’t curve, which it might, then what you’ll experience next is among the greatest feelings you can ever feel in life. You will see the lake; the next lake. In this moment, few things could be better than the sight of it. Only by enduring so hard is this simple sight of a body of water so majestically relieving. You will embrace the suck of wading into the water, you will climb in the canoe, and you will get the privilege to paddle.
For now, you are on the lake.
For now, you are on the lake. It’s hard for your seating position on the aluminum bench to bother you when you slice a paddle stroke through blue freshwater. Your wet clothes hardly seem to matter when you can’t even see the entire lake end to end, or the miles of untouched wilds around it. The moose muck of the past will not enter your thoughts as you watch eagles fly and nature thrive.
Dragonflies, Loons, and Eagles.
A lake is a natural purification system, with the center of the lake, below the surface, being the freshest water source. Beaver dams will mean you shouldn’t use water from that lake, and the taste of purification tablets won’t bother too much. The trick for grabbing water is to keep your water bottle upside down when you plunge it down so that you don’t grab the water near the top. You don’t want giardia; it sucks, and you don’t need to embrace that. To this day I have a bottle full of Argo Lake water somewhere.
You will learn that dragonflies are a welcome companion, not to be shooed, for they are the solution to mosquitos, so you become thankful for them. The only time bugs become a problem on a lake is during that first hour after sunset. Hope for the dragonflies.
Even a rain, even a pouring rain, will seem comfortable, because rain only is a bother when you are dry. You will find secrets few people have seen hidden in the dense wilderness: lakes with small islands on them, islands with their own waterfalls, rapids, large rock formations around them, and other sights humans have been, thankfully, restricted from ruining. You will paddle until sunset then pick any island you find a fire pit on and borrow that island as yours for the night. If every voyager is considerate, this fire pit will be the only sign of human impact you see for your entire adventure. No towers, no trash, no structures anywhere to be found. Only one fire grate to designate an assigned campsite to keep human impact contained. You will hang up your wet socks and be excited to start tomorrow. Here on the lake, seeing is believing. You can now believe that the lake is always worth it; the lake is worth embracing the suck.
Rainbows on the lake
My own personal best memory happened during the pouring rain of one lake. I was on the lake, it was pouring rain, but I don’t recall feeling miserable. I imagine I had already been wet, as almost always, so I don’t think I would have felt the discomfort of rain. I was on the lake, it was pouring rain, and what I do remember, is someone calling out to look behind us. As if the rain was responding, it calmed down to a comfortable drizzle, as I turned around and I saw from the entire left to right of this lake, a massive double rainbow behind us. In the rain, I saw where all four ends of the rainbow ended, for it was here, on this lake. Perfectly centered around us, it felt like it arrived with our perspective in mind. If you looked very carefully the double rainbow may have been a triple, a faint one may have been between the two. People wonder where rainbows end, I hope it is always at a lake, because that moment was the greatest treasure. We turned back around to face forward, and the sun was now bright ahead of us resting in clear skies. Behind us was the rainbow, around us was the drizzle of the now fading rain, and ahead of us was clear skies. We knew where we needed to paddle toward. It was all so clear. Everything was so very… incredibly… clear. In the aftermath of the rain, I sat, stared, then let out an uncontrollable laugh. For a moment in time, I was happy, free, amazed, tired, and wet at the same time. That lake was worth its portage. How many more would I see?
What does it mean to embrace the suck? At the time, I thought putting on socks was the hardest thing I would do, but I was wrong. I thought enduring a mile long portage was the hardest thing I would do, but during it I had a profound thought: Could this presumption be wrong, too? If so, maybe I would be wrong about other presumptions I make about my life? Could it be that in the moment that things seem sucky, when passed, they turn out to be part of a worthwhile journey? I used to pray before each Board of Review hoping that I would have what it takes to get the questions right for my rank advancements. I used to stress about assignments, deadlines, and projects. So many times in the past I “thought” I was dealing with the hardest thing in my life. I was wrong every. single. time.
These thoughts hit me on Horse Portage, thought to be one of the harder portage trails in the Quetico than others, at more than a mile long. As I look back, I think this is the moment I truly understood what it meant to embrace the suck. It means that in the present it is hard, it is so very hard, but if you can get to that mindset of the future, while still in the present, you’ll see how incredibly easy it is. Embrace the suck, because it is nothing. Not anything. It’s nothing compared to what you’ll one day be conquering. So I took it and grabbed it. I grabbed it like it was a canoe paddle on Basswood. Or like it was a canoe on Horse Portage.
Portages are necessary because they are productive. They aren’t great, but they’re still wonderful. Can they be both? They are meant to be paths between lakes. Being on a portage means you should be working hard to progress on the trail, or else you’ll be stuck there in the mud. When you want to be on a lake but you’re on a portage, there are no skips. You cannot check out of reality, wait for time to pass by, or hope that an external rescue comes to move you to a different place. You must embrace the suck. Keep moving on the portage and that will get you to the next lake. Do not mistake activities for portages that are not portages. If it is not a productive suck, then it’s just a suck. Distractions are what keep you stuck on the trail. Don’t mistake them for the portage.
Some things in life are worth the suck. If you didn’t put on your wet socks in the morning, you would have missed the lake. If you didn’t endure the hard portage, you would have missed the next lake. How many other lakes could you be missing in your life? The only way to know is to embrace the suck. Do not stay home because of wet socks. Do not turn around because of a long trail. Seek your own rainbow lake, whatever form it’s in for you. You may have suspected by now that when I talk about lakes and portages, I am talking about more than just lakes and portages. Portages suck, but they make the lake mean more to you.
In life, I believe you are either one of two places; you are either on a lake or a portage. You cannot have the lake experience without enduring the portage. This is what it means to embrace the suck. Why? That next lake is always better. You have suffered the portage, and that inspires growth. I have never experienced anything in my life as physically demanding as some of the portages from my memory. When I endure hardship, I compare them to my past portages and it makes it seem trivial. I know I can surpass them because I’ve made it through portages before.
If you find yourself on a portage, my advice is as follows: lean back if you have a canoe and can’t see ahead of you, so you can get a line of sight of your situation; look to the tree line for clues. Stay focused on the ground under you; take each step of the trail carefully, choosing rocks over mud. Don’t widen the trail for convenience or hurt your canoe for comfort. Embrace the suck, for the next lake is ahead. This trail leads somewhere.
I spent a few years of my life recently stuck on a portage trail, unmoving. I didn’t realize I was even stuck in moose muck until I looked back and realized how much time went by without any progress. However, once known, I know to look for the signs of a portage ending. Ever cautious, I’m looking forward to reaching my next lake. I was stuck on a portage, now, I wake up and I tell myself one thing: Today I choose the lake – even if it means wet socks. Then, I move.
Everything shown here was captured by me on an action camera. I know the quality is lacking at times - it’s fine. This is for me. I can put myself back there. I’ve uploaded many of these clips online so that I could link to them. Here is a playlist for people interested. Fair warning, its just all clips with no context. I hope at least it gives a sense of the routine. As for the story here, the theme, or message, is certainly not unique or new. Its the lesson we learned on trek, for sure, and its a life lesson shared in many other stories. So uh… I’m not about to sit here and try to claim the correlation between working hard and having rewards. This is the completion of a series of drafts I had sitting around years ago.
Playlist:
