Among the few things I know for certain is that wet wool has less insulating value than the experts claim and that Kraft Macaroni-and-Cheese is one food that tastes worse cooked over an open fire. And I know that bumper stickers are right when they say that a bad day of fishing is still better than a good day of working.
That bumper-sticker wisdom was proved true recently during a visit to a friend's cabin near the end of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where upper Michigan pokes into the fat belly of Lake Superior. It's a place so far removed from Detroit--both in miles and spirit--that they might as well be on separate continents. Though I live about halfway between those two extremes of Michigan, my sympathies definitely lean north.
I drove there on a day that began as bright and promising, but north of L'Anse the sky clouded up and a light drizzle began to fall. By the time I reached Jim's cabin near the northern point of the Keweenaw the rain was falling in a steady downpour. It didn't stop for two days.
Jim and Ron and I hadn't seen each other in nearly a year, so that first day there was plenty to talk about. We kept a fire going in the stove, threw together a memorable meal, and caught up on things. The weather was truly dismal--cold wind and relentless rain, the kind that turns gravel roads to oatmeal and two-tracks to twin rivers--and better suited to cribbage and fat novels than to outdoor pursuits.
We were patient that first day, but after 24 hours Ron and I couldn't sit around any longer. Jim wasn't keen on going out in the rain, but he told us about a good lake nearby--he's a conservation officer and a native Yooper who's been stomping around in the Keweenaw most of his life--and plotted a course for us on a topo map. Ron and I put on our raingear and went outside to load Jim's canoe on the truck.
I admit I was a little disappointed in the canoe. It was short and squat, made of dented aluminum, and painted army green. Strips of foam had been glued to the inside of the gunwales for floatation, and an outboard-motor mount was bolted to the stern. One seat was broken and had to be propped up with a chunk of two-by-four. But we were in no position to be choosy. We threw it on and tied it down. Jim waved from the door as we spun up the driveway.
We found the lake at the end of seven miles of overflowing two-tracks. It wasn't pretty: 100 acres of whitecaps and weed beds with drowned cedars ringing the shores. Gray clouds scudded past overhead, tattered by powerful winds off Lake Superior. A few miles away, the shore of Superior was being battered by enormous waves. Even in the woods you could sense the immensity out there.
The little lake was supposed to be full of big northern pike so vicious they would charge our lures like Dobermans. We couldn't wait. We ran the canoe to the shore, tossed our gear in, and pushed off.
The canoe caught the wind and sailed. Even with rain slanting into our faces and wind yanking the rain hoods from our heads, our guts clenched in anticipation. We cast our lures with the conviction that our discomfort would be rewarded. We cast into shallow water and we cast into deep water, tried deerhair poppers and outrageously gaudy streamers and Daredevls and Mepps Spinners and Rapalas and Bombers and a muskie lure twice as big as most of the brook trout I caught last year. But we caught nothing. Not a thing. In three hours and 300 casts we did not have a single strike.
At some point we realized, to our surprise, that we liked the little canoe. It was fat and ugly, it was broken, it may have been designed by a military engineer whose previous experience had been with portable pontoon bridges, yet it was responsive and deft and stable in the waves. In spite of our paddles--inexpensive wooden beavertails, the varnish long vaporized, one with a blade split lengthwise and warped so that it looked like a big lobster claw on a stick--we made good progress against the wind. We found ourselves laughing and singing as we paddled. On this bad day of fishing there was no place we would have rather been.
At noon we pulled up on the shore of an island and found one of the world's finest pine-sheltered campsites. The ground was spongy with a couple centuries' worth of needle drop and you could look out in three directions and see water. We sat on old stumps with the rain falling around us and ate a lunch of bread, cheese, liverwurst, and crisp McIntoshes. Ragged flocks of ducks rocketed over the lake, then wheeled and set their wings and came in hard against the wind and the whitecaps. Ron and I looked at each other and grinned. Poor Jim was back in the cabin alone, reading a novel, missing this. We couldn't wait to rub it in.
Copyright (c) 1996 Jerry Dennis. All rights reserved.
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