Sabbath Sunrise

"The moon has a halo, there will be wind."

from Mei Yao Ch'en, "I Remember the Blue River"

















The ebb and flow of newcomers.
At Rendezvous they refresh the mood of celebration.
Old pines bunch together to seek stars.
The great lake a bed of sequins.
Somewhere a claim that across the bay
is where, at midnight, bears dance
to the chansons accompanied by fiddle.

As rum casks near their empty bottoms,
long trains of clouds coast overhead
like puffs of smoke from the mens' rosy pipes.
They sit now, alone, underneath
canoes considering the moon home.
The journey long; the night short.

Rendezvous

Grand Portage was a hubbub
of activity during the weeks of Rendezvous,
as hundreds of Voyageurs
from the interior and Montreal gathered.
There were buildings to repair,
wood to chop, canoes to mend.
What had been all a turmoil of constant water
now looked like, from the shore,
a vast blue celebration of work achieved.
Lake Superior, something of a nemesis,
was but a friend all the while,
feeding them the bottom coasting salmon
and the surprise find of gulls eggs.
Sunshine climbing over the tips
of waves was a natural artwork,
the kind that the men of men,
although they do not know it, well receive.
He took up a casked barrel of Canadian
whiskey, she a small glass of port.
Songs were sung over the glow of firelight.
The world hung in a haze of relief.

Rounding Hat Point

Out of the Sawtooth cliffs
the smoke and clap of cannons.
Men to paddle in unison
to an old chanson, an old song
sung to celebrate arrival
at the Grand Portage Stockade.
What had been the journey?
The thousand miles over as many horizons.
Hat Point under the moon
was a world onto itself,
the end of water, the cold dreams
of smudge fires flaring
from under the Montreal birchbarks.
Great lines of men
and native women stood to salute.
The greenhorn to the brigade
could feel an icy chill
up and down his back.
The old avant, hardened, but soft
to heart, might find a tear
crawling back upwards to ward
away the fear of the end.

Northshore Journal: A Tale from the Degrade

The Voyageurs knew what to do when they pulled into shore at storm (degrade) based on the conditions of the shoreline – or if indeed it were a false shoreline altogether.  Many times, with fog as thick as paste, shore would be called out, but the rocks were nothing more than a stone outcropping from some small desolate island, which would not hold the likes of a brigade in ten foot waves.  If it were the Superior shore, the men would in due order determine how best to secure the fur pack.  This time the squall had reached a fevered pitched quickly.  They tied down the sterns of the canoes and decided to leave the packs on board, for now, and would go back to retrieve them after the heaviest had fallen, then dry them out in the bushes.

One of the middle oarsman would take his sponge to the floor of his canoe and rid it of water.  There was always that time when, as the men congregated up at shore – hopefully accommodating enough to lay upon – when they found themselves having to quickly asses all of their work, all of their paddling to this point, even their entire coming careers, for if the load were to get swamped, or canoes ruined, there was little recourse at this point to regain the load.  The more experienced avants would try to put the new recruits to ease by gesturing to the pipe, singing a rollicking song, or telling a story by a smudge fire.  "It was my own first Montreal Express, many many moons ago, when this very same sort of flash squall came.  We thought that we might find refuge at Cascade Falls, back some range now, and decided to climb the stones of the falls thinking we might find a cave or maybe some blueberries upriver. "  The avant had a grisled but handsome face, maybe fifty-seven, but nobody knew age exactly, and was notorious for his own habit of pipe – he did not wait for the hour or two hour breaks, but perpetually kept his own pipe hanging from the side of his lip even on paddle.  Somehow, the men did not know, he kept it just barely puffing of smoke throughout any given day. "So, we climb up to the top portion of the Cascade Falls.  It is roaring loud, not like anything you have heard.  You could not hear a man yell in your ear if he was next to you, and as we look up, through the rising fog, what is it that we see, face to face?"

"Blueberries," one man cast out in a shout, his hides soaking, his hat sagging all around the brim.  "Blueberries, yes," the avant cried out.  "But also standing there, no farther than I stand to you," he gestured to one man a foot away, "the deepest darkest black bear you'd ever imagine.  I made eye contact with him as if it were a first kiss with a sweetheart," he leaned in and chuckled, holding his pipe to his chest.  "The bear, this is no kidding, opened up his eye lids as wide as gulls' wings, raised his nose in a pucker, and bolted off back into the safety of the woods."  The men, around in a half circle now, looked around in unison over their shoulders to the thick skirt of pine forest that rose up off the flat rocks into a vast jagged fog.

North Shore Journal: Brigade in the Fog

No sooner had the men imagined their coming feast at the sight of the flashing silver below them along the bottom, than a thin long mustache of fog had formed around the outcropping of the rushing gully of a creek at shore.  At their near manic pace of some 40-60 strokes per minute, they had outrun one brief storm only to find themselves entering a warm pocket slipping down the emerald mountains and piling up at shoreline which shortly disappeared.  "Whoa," the gouvernail whaled out loud.  They had great momentum, a plan that all agreed upon, to locate the gull island, all the while trailing a fishing line to snatch what they knew was a fleeting school of salmon.  All of the milieux (middle oarsman) lifted paddles unwillingly, unfazed by encroaching danger.  These men would oar through ten foot waves if they must – would leave it up to the avant, a more experienced Voyageur of these northern waters.

Yet all knew the true dangers of forcing a Montreal Brigade over waters at dawn hours.  Water already reached all but six inches from the top of the birchbark.  Hundreds of pounds of furs, all wrapped and sealed, would not take kindly to overexposure at this stage to water.  The mens' stomachs growled.  There had been no 'pipe' in hours.  What had been before them a great animated picture of shore and offshore islands, the horizon line in gray tones to the south and virtually every ironed out wave, had turned to a senseless panorama of monotonous fog.  As they drifted, the avant and gouvernail deliberated whether to degrade (rest at shore) or push forward.  The brigade held steady together, the men holding the sides of one another as the canoes tipped side to side in rolling waves, making a large raft.  "Hush, now," said the avant, a short, pesky man, but with a voice like a launching cannon, who no man crossed in argument of the ways of the wilderness or the natives that inhabited it.  They were alive this far, all the way from Montreal, through all sorts of weather and calamity, no reason to beg for change now.  "Listen for the shriek of the gulls."  A faint, mellow smell of wildflowers filled the air.  A sharp stick of lightning stabbed in through the gray sheets.  "We are near land.  Rocks dead ahead."  The men wondered what it was that he could see that they could not.  Sometimes predictions might lead to traveling in the precise opposite direction than what they intended. As if out of nowhere, enormous jagged stones moved in among them.  The oarsmen knocked themselves loose with the end of the their paddles, then pushing off.  Waves lapped up over smaller rocks and churned spray up over the bow.  "Degrade, Degrade," the avant called out.

North Shore Journal: Gull Eggs

The day of paddling had been long.  Hands of the men began to cramp in near unison.  Pipe bags, hanging off of the belts began to stir and all could feel the long of the pipe for they had decided to pass over the last session for the prospect of gull eggs for dinner.  The dried pemmican before noon hour tasted just the same as the rubbaboo they stewed only a few hours before.  They had been skirting the shore closely until they could see that the storm was following behind them and not to come ahead of

them.  This gave them some relief, for the paddle, if all clear, was nothing more than nightfall before they reached the Great Bay, at Duluth, and then overland to reach the fur machine north of Saint Anthony Falls.  One of the Canadians, a round shouldered fellow, larger than the rest, at least six foot three, had been the one who yelled out that they should wait for what he remembered as a gull island, a great rocky island which rose up from an easily landable shore.  There, he said, they could find the gull eggs and use them for his own concoction of galette, or bread, made by mixing the eggs with flour, then frying the dough in a pan.

From there, on a full belly, only another hour at a swift paddle until the great shore, where there would be rest of the arms for many days.  They drifted off the shoreline some and although the sawtooth mountains atop were clear in their crisp green jagged shapes, the shoreline had lined some with night's coming mist so that it looked like, if a paddler chose such distraction, as though the mountains were afloat, a sort of green roof to the world.  One sternman began to sing a common lyric to pass the time.  A small wind twirled behind them as if an accompanying whistle.  Afloat on a jewel, one of the men remarked that they could still see down to the bottom through the aqua green ripples where a flash of

 silver moved.  "Salmon,"  one man replied, not the large Canadian, but a metis, mixed blood, from the Montreal Lachine, and he held his hand up high in a motion to stop despite the rush to the gull egg island.  It dawned on the men that the salmon could be caught and smoked alongside the gull eggs on the pan in only a short while.  The fur packs loomed large on each man's mind.  The pipes nearly sung from their neck ropes.  Feast had not been a part of this life for many moons.  A third man, a quiet leader from out of the Grand Banks, the fishing shore of the Atlantic, pulled out his thread and a homemade spinner made of true hammered silver.  "There is one that will be mine," he said, with an arrogance that only a born fisherman can boast, and threw out his line as if by strong magic alongside of the birchbark...

A Gull Island off the North Shore near Lutsen

North Shore Journal

20 June

It had been a notorious north shore day of rain and lingering fog – Grand Marais, although quite bustling in attendance for the annual Summer Solstice Festival, was damp, and folks crowded more in small cafes than the Folk House for the boats or the shore for free schooner rides.  We trekked further north, toward Grand Portage, to see if the pictures of the famous Naniboujou Club at Arrowhead could

hold up to being there.  It certainly did: the old Ojibwe native colors lined the arch walls in celebration of native culture, as if entering into an enormous jeweled hut of sorts, overlooking the crashing north shore whose very rocks piled artfully to the largest handmade fireplace in the state.

We assumed hikes might be out of the question on this day and so passed the Judge Magney Forest across highway 61, back down through Grand Marais – a quick stop to see the Voyageur Brewing Company – and on back to Lutsen.  Yet something stopped us at Cascade Falls, maybe it was the easy access to the trail and a sign that said the falls itself was no more than 300 feet from the road…whatever it was, we stopped and began an hour long climb up one of the more majestic trails we've ever been on.

The roar of the Cascade River could be heard from the trail all the way up, small unofficial trails meandered down onto pine needle beds where rock birch climbed out of the rock standing, as if set on purpose, for the sake of holding onto to enjoy a better view of the dramatically stepped river roaring below.

The blurring of the fog and the near glow of the pine forest allowed for an imaginative step back in time, where one might be able to see the Voyageurs of old carrying the birchbark over the shoulder knowing that the violence of this patch of rapids would be too much for the nimble craft to handle, portaging along these same banks awaiting the ease of descent down to the shores of the great lake below.

Voyageurs: Bound for Grand Portage, painting

Our kayak instructor was asked about the dimensions of Lake Superior and he put it like this, he said his predecessor, another paddling instructor, decided to kayak around Lake Superior the summer before 

and it took him ninety-three days.  There might not be any particular current to fight, he said, but there is always a wind of some kind, two foot waves can be common, and it's not out of the ordinary to find

three to five footers at sea.  The largest recorded wave on Lake Superior was thirty-one feet, which lapped the bottom of a bridge at Duluth, known to be thirty-one feet in measured height, but those are just the waves we know about, he reminded us.  Over 350 shipwrecks have been recorded on the third largest

body of fresh water (total volume), on the earth.  So cold the lake is annually, that those unfortunate enough to be apart of such wrecks may be fully preserved at the bottom of the lake. Storms are frequent here and come up on you quickly; the old Voyageurs, on their way from the Montreal fur bases to Grand Portage (1,200-mile voyage, six to eight weeks of paddling), could quickly become

An Al Capone Boathouse used for moonshining, a quarter of a mile from Lutsen Resort shoreline

separated from the shore and have to endure a settling fog and rising waves, often paddling blindly, the entire payload in danger, at least one man dedicated to bailing the birchbark canoe bottom with a sponge.  If lucky, or by a good degree of wise foresight, the voyageur might strike a small island or have taken a turn to shore at an inlet and set anchor for the night in the relative safety of the protective rocks.

Voyageurs: Running the Rapids

As you walk along the craggy granite cliffsides of the north shore Lake Superior, you see it would be no small feat to travel a steep stretch of any number of wild rivers down into a rocky cove of the Great Lake.

Poplar Creek at the shore of Lutsen Resort

The necessary system of inland portages came as result of the rocky terrain which feed the creeks that the Voyageurs tried to traverse, many times unsuccessfully, in hand crafted birch bark canoes, sometimes 36 to 40 feet long and six feet wide, depending on the fur haul purpose.  The common

Voyageur, ironically, tended to be a relatively short man with a sturdy center of gravity so to maintain hours upon hours of hunched over paddling; yet many of these men could not swim, "Running a rapids could be a wild, exhilarating descent.  The canoe men  steered their fragile vessel around rocks, through boiling eddies, and over sudden drops.  A slight miscue could destroy a canoe or cause damage forcing the whole brigade to stop for repairs…"

Northshore pebble beach

Unlike the seamless fiberglass canoe of today, the birchbark was constructed from nothing more than a rough mold to start, large sheets of birchbark sewn together with watup (split spruce root), shaped, and laced to flexible gunwale strips and over stern and bow sterns, with extra ribs of white cedar for support.  "To prevent water from leaking in, all the sewn seams were covered with pitch that was boiled and mixed with tallow and charcoal…En route, a large sponge was used to bail out water."  The birchbark, then, was flexible enough to withstand violent rapids, but light enough for four men to carry over portage, glide over calmer waters, then serve as cover at night against the nightly elements.

Voyageur: "Five Pipe Lake"

The French Canadian Voyageur endured some of the most difficult daily labor imaginable for any time period.  These particularly hearty travelers were, almost literally, under the gun by Fur Company shareholders who, in their own minds anyway, could not spare a single fur or a minute once the Grand Portage MN spring came, the ice broke up in the Great Lakes and loosened the river roads for paddling.  It is well known that the Voyageur – usually French, Canadian, Native or of mixed blood (metis) – would often carry two ninety pound packs over land, strapping the bottom pack around their foreheads for stability, in order to get to their next navigable water passage.  Once in canoe, Voyageurs would sleep at night no more than 3-4 hours.

Mosquitos and black flies were so thick, the men would build smudge fires under tipped canoes and sleep in smoke, frequently causing respiratory problems and eye damage.  No breakfast was taken, not until several hours progress had been made, then the first meal, almost always dried buffalo (pemmican), might be stirred over a pot (rubbaboo) or eaten raw.  Back underway, the men were reported to keep a brisk pace, up to 40 to 60 strokes per minute – nearly a stroke per second!  Terrain and conditions constantly varied, these small outfits of canoe  men would maintain this pace from the Grand Portage to the meeting destination and back up through the Lakes and onto Upper Superior coast at Pidgeon River, some hand full of miles north of Lutsen and Grand Marais.  The one respite in the sheer monotony of labor the men enjoyed was what was joyfully called 'the pipe.'  "The length of a long portage trail was measured in poses, or resting places.  These were spaced about one-third to one half mile apart, depending on the difficulty of the terrain....On the water, distance was measured by a different method: in 'pipes,' or resting times.  The voyageurs might paddle from 45 minutes to two hours at a stretch, until the guide's command "allumez" (light up!) was given.  The paddles were

immediately laid down and clay pipes were quickly filled with tobacco and lit.  The canoemen smoked, chatted, and relaxed for ten to fifteen minutes before resuming paddling." Moving from one end to another, a great expanse might be called a "five pipe lake" – many of these breaks taken drifting without stopping in order to avoid the biting insects.    

Nature Journal

13 June

At the end of what we called Frog Road

Surrounded by the threat of storms in all directions, we headed out to the Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge a bit past noon.  We parked in at the Elmaro Vineyard gravel lot and unloaded the
bikes, packed up the bike bags, and headed down Delaney Rd. onto Prairie, then into the Refuge.

Tremp. Prairie Oak Savannah

There were few if any others on the trails today, a flat bottom here or there and a couple of poles tugging at lines over a backwater bridge.  The Prairie Loop Trail, possibly the most dynamic trail we've been on, skirts around an Oak Savannah Prairie, one of the last of its kind, maintained yearly

Purple Prairie Clover

by prescribed burn. Enormous rounded green fields full of bluestem and Indian grasses, Spiderwort, Purple Prairie Clover, with the occasional ancient oak looming on the soft ridges of the hills.  The trail itself is a ground gravel that doesn't become muddy and easy to bike over in all weather.  Lookouts line marsh edges and benches are placed on prairie trails moving inland.  We stopped by Listening Point to rest and listen to what was listed on a sign as at least 4-5 species of frogs chirring or burping in the painted underbrush.  As we sat there momentarily, we could hear an orchestra of more wildlife than we could ever keep track of.  Marsh birds song merged with the throttle of frogs and click of crickets.  An inchworm on a white flower next to us made no sound but it stood out all

the same.  We got back on bikes, finished the Prairie Loop, then ducked back off onto the Great River Trail towards Bluffs Siding.  Here, in regular intervals, there were piles of smashed white eggs which we could tell had been found by the digging of some small animal.  As we went along we saw what seemed a hundred chipmunks and wondered if they hadn't been the culprits to uncover turtle eggs buried at higher ground.  As we circled back, we took an old built-up dike road out to the water's edge.  Hundreds of frogs leaped from the center of our path back into the swampy underbrush.  As we parked and looked out onto the marsh shallows stocked full of lily pads and the occasional great blue heron, frogs scattered at every step.  The slenderest of blue dragonflies helicoptered in swarms over the lush green bushes.  At one point, I looked straight out onto the water only to see one of these flying blue threads hovering directly in front of my nose looking at me wondering what was this creature, then flew off out of sight onto more exciting leaves.

Blue Dragonfly

 

Winnebago

Painting depicting Winnebago Indians at Prarie du Chien c. 1835

The waters flowing around the great land masses at Goose Island, La Crosse show good reason for early settlement to the area by the Winnebago Indians.  The waters would provide much natural wealth and transportation, offering, later, a source for furs to trade with the French a few miles downstream at Prairie du Chien, upstream at Prarie La Crosse, and further at the Perrot trading station.  We put in our kayaks at mid island and could see, as the natives would have, the rolling protective hills like great broad shoulders cradling a river which would have teemed

with life in the years previous to the fur trade to a degree that the modern traveler could hardly fathom.  The first quarter of our own trip was downstream.  Water trails met in between small grass islands whose tall reeds and long blades filtered the naturally muddy river nearly clean, and in places, where shallow, even clear, revealing the sandy bottom.  The Winnebago would have paddled their prototype birch bark canoes, which the Voyageurs of later years would emulate.  Light, agile, coasting across the surface of the water much like a crisp floating leaf, the birch bark is still considered the supreme river paddling machine of all time.

 The Winnebago, like many other native tribes, although often perceived as serious and stolid, enjoyed many competitive games such as the canoe races depicted above.  The men here are standing in a sprint position much in the same way we do today in order to stand-up paddle board.  In 1805, the famous Zebulon Pike had been commissioned to explore the upper waters of the Mississippi and came across the first reported scene of the Winnebago playing a peculiar game, which we have come

A flat prairie, much like La Crosse would have been pre-settlement

to call La Crosse, "Came up with prairie la crosse, so named from the ball game played on it by the Sioux.  This prairie is very handsome.  It is bordered by hills similar to those of the prairie des chien

... it is altogether a prospect so varied and romantic that a man may scarcely expect to enjoy such one but twice or thrice in the course of his life."

We paddled easily downstream, the current virtually dragging us, spinning us at swells if we didn't maintain good paddle rudder direction.  Coming back along the banks of the backside of Goose Island, although upstream, was not as difficult as it might have been out on the main channel, where there were not as many guards against the heavy current.  Turtles were the primary source of wildlife on a hot mid-afternoon, a carp jumping in the sodden weeds more towards land at hwy. 35, or the ever present red-winged blackbird screeching its trespassing call marking off its territory.  At one point, though, something fabulous, as we approached quiet and slow, as if on our own version of the birch bark – up in the distance, shimmering like a badge of metal off a willow limb a small white crested bird who flit up into the air and in a loop dove down directly into the shallow water, re-emerging with

a small squiggling tadpole.  The Kingfisher disappeared into the tall reeds only to reemerge at the same perch and, as wishfully predicted, did the same thing again as we silently floated underneath.  As we moved deeper into the back side of the island, the boat traffic reduced to only an occasional flat-bottom buzzing through the weeds, it would be easy to imagine the hundreds of such scenes enjoyed by the native family, the wigwam erected perhaps at a clearing on the banks, the ground dug out to reveal dried dirt instead of the mosquito swarming underbrush where, when hungry, a simple

tossed line might catch dinner in an instant, just as the fishermen of today lining the campground banks hope for the same thing.