Due to a complication five days ago, I'm blogging today instead. And that's not going to do any good for most of my audience, because apparently you all left for Crowduck on Tuesday. But, this'll be here when you get back.
-First, I'm going to kind of write what I'm thinking now that you're actually all going to Crowduck. I didn't think too much of it before I decided to come here, but now that you're all gone, and I'm here, I'm feeling down about it. I knew it was going to be a risk coming here, because I wouldn't know if I liked it or not. I think I like it, mostly, but there are those things that bother me. One is of course the shoes, for which you've all been teasing me. There are maybe a few others in the stuff I'm going to write up ahead about my time so far. But there's also other stuff: No matter how fun it is, it's also work, whereas Crowduck is just a complete vacation. And, I don't really know anyone here that well - I've been away from my family so long I'm feeling a bit alienated. Hm. I'm going to run with that second thought a little while. I went off to college, and only came back for a little while during some vacations. Then I finally came back home for the summer, except that then I just left again. Meanwhile, I keep getting thrown into new situations. I wish I had a little more stability, I guess. I'll have that when I get back home, so that'll be nice. I keep thinking it's pretty funny how nomadic my life has become recently: One house to a new house to college to the new house to college to the new house to college to the new house to Camp Manito-wish to all these little campsites every night. I'm going to like being home for a month and a half before college starts.
-Anyhow, I'm supposed to be writing about what I've been doing. So far, I've been on trail 14 days, about to hit the trail again to make it 22. The first 4 were my training trip, which I believe I mentioned already. Then, I did a 5-day trip with a guy named Bill, who's one of the few Williams of my age going with Bill. I admire that. We took four campers out, consisting of two pairs of previous friends. One pair, Charlie and Ryan, had a really interesting friendship built around Charlie yelling at Ryan, and then Ryan making fun of Charlie. Alex and Tyler had a reglar friendship. Anyhow, we did the Trout Lake Circle, which was just beautiful. Bill's been coming to Manito-wish for 10 years, the last 4 of them as staff, so he knew is way around and made the trip run really smooth. We had so much fun. I made friends with the kids through card tricks and other stuff. They think I'm pretty cool. So, I really enjoyed that trip.
-The second 5-day trip I'm a bit more ambivalent about. The first three days were pretty great. Day five was also fine, because it's really just a morning - we paddled in at 9 this morning. But yesterday, day 4, I could seriously have done without. I'll start from the beginning of the trip. The counselor for it, Alex (as distinct from the other Alex I mentioned), is on his first year just like me. We paddled down the Manitowish River the first day, which was awesome; the water is so high this year that we just floated straight down some rapids that we would definitely have to walk in a regular year. The kids were Clay, Oliver, Caleb, Ben, and Will; only Clay and Caleb knew each other before camp, though they'd all been associating for five days in the cabin. They were a pretty solid group. They could all paddle well. The only real drawback was that only Caleb could carry a canoe, and even then only for a hundred yards or so. So, Alex and I had to do all the carrying on the portages. Which was fine, because most of our portages were pretty easy, except for a two-mile one on day 2. And except for yesterday, which I'm getting to. Altogether, though, we made good time on the water, and worked really well as a group.
-Yesterday, we had the Dairymen's Portage, through the Dairymen's Country Club (I believe is what it's called). This is the crown jewel of dreaded portages at Manito-wish. It's four miles long, though it can be broken up into two-mile sections with a paddle in between. So, to start with, we had a sort of warmup one-mile portage from Crab Lake to Round Lake. We just pulled the canoes out of Crab, and then followed a gravel road to a dirt path that came off from the left. Here's the thing: the dirt path didn't match up with our portage map at all. We wandered around for a good hour or so, sometimes with a canoe or two, sometimes without, trying to find a path to Round Lake, but the path disintegrated into the woods wherever we looked. After a long frustrating time, we decided to split the portage into two smaller portages, an alternate route indicated on our map. So, as we were taking the canoes back to go to Little Crab Lake, I noticed: That road goes off in the same direction, and we passed it, didn't we? It turned out to be the right road, clearly. We all turned onto it, having wasted an hour. It didn't get that much better, though, because this dirt road had all sorts of forks, all uncommented-on by the portage map, and Alex had to find his own way. Moreover, Oliver had gone missing, and one of our canoes was still back at the wrong road. I took Clay and Caleb with me, and we finally found Oliver - he had been lagging when we turned onto the road, so he didn't see us and instead went to Little Crab Lake like we'd planned. Perfectly reasonable. He was a little shaken, but all right. I also went and got the other canoe. I left him and Clay to catch up with the rest of the group (Clay had been down the road before, so that wasn't rash), and took Caleb with me to get the canoe. When we got the canoe, we went down the road and promptly took a wrong turn down a blocked-off snowmobile road, walking an extra mile. Finally we came back and found some of the other group, and learned that Alex had found the lake and laid down arrows pointing us to it. So we followed those, and finished the portage. One mile: three hours. I like to call it the Comedy of Errors Portage.
-We paddled briefly down Round Lake, which is round, and came to Rice Creek, and thence took off on our next portage. "Took off" is too strong a phrase. In fact, this was the delightful section known around here as Vietnam. A quarter mile through woods that are completely lacking in trails; the only thing we get to guide us is sparsely placed red (or, confusingly, blue) blazes. Also, the gound is soft and covered with the corpses of trees that gave up, and we have to carry canoes and heavy packs, and of course neither of us has ever been here before. Have at it. We stumbled and fumbled through the mesh of trees, with a lookout ahead sighting blazes, and walked until we found a place. It was very debatable whether it was actually a place, actually. It was just different terrain, covered with hip-high ferns and shrubs, and on a big hill that we climbed up. Still no trail. We laid down the stuff, and Alex and I went off scouting. We didn't see it until I had practically walked onto it, but there it was - the gravel road really did exist.
-Realizing we'd never find the portage entrance again if we went too far, we picked up our stuff from it and carried it to the gravel road, then followed real paths - what a concept! - for the other 1¾ miles to Little Crooked Lake. Not that that was easy, either. Recall that only we counselors were able to carry canoes. Also, figure in a canoe that's about fifteen pounds butt-heavy, so it requires a helper to carry it, and makes the portager's shoulders sink into his sternum. And, we were running pretty low on water. But, we walked. Occasionally we wondered where this fabled turn was, but we always came upon it eventually, usually twice as far away as we had hoped. We were about ready to give up when it appeared that a + intersection on our map had given way to an L intersection in real life, but then I cleverly realized that it was a bend, not an intersection, and we walked the short rest of the way to the creek where we would leave our stuff. And fill up our bottles. Creek water isn't the best, but Potable Aqua kills anything but the taste.
-And then we walked back and did it again with the other half of our stuff. Finally we came to the lake. HA! We're, uh, halfway done with the Dairymen's Portage.
-We stopped at Evergreen Lodge, and a nice guy there let us fill up our water and use his picnic table. The second two-mile half had no Vietnam, but here's the thing: we started a little after 7 PM. So, by the time we got our first half to Boulder Lake, it was 8:15, and then we started off with the other half right around 9. The result - we did half the second load in darkness, using flashlights and headlamps. But we did it.
-We night-paddled to our campsite, which is against the rules, but it's not as if we had a choice. In fact, I discovered that I love night paddling, because it gives me the chance to watch out across a lake to see lightning storms hundreds of miles off. I saw lightning flashing through a sunset that had long gone by us. Above, the stars were perfectly clear. Our campsite was unmarked, but we knew where a marked one was, so we stayed there, in the process waking up everyone already camped there. I think we were entitled to something like that. We stayed up swapping stories of disastrous portages with the other counselor and TA, though we let the kids sleep while we made them trail pizza. They ate around 2; we went to bed around 3.
-So, there's a day. That's pretty much as bad as I expect it to get here. By the way, my grand total for ticks pulled off of me yesterday was 53. Today I pulled in and we cleaned our stuff, and I showered. I was so lethargic. Still am, to an extent. I have blisters on my feet, because I wore my scuba booties for the entire day of portaging. Next time I have a long portage, I'm going to change into my dryshoes first, the other pair that we bring along for in camp. These things are just not for walking a lot. I'm feeling it, and they are too - they wouldn't survive another Dairymen's Portage in one piece. I actually admire them for staying together this long.
-Meanwhile, I've got my next assignment. I have the evening off, and then I'm leaving again tomorrow with friend Alan on a NICE, EASY trip, which will give me time to recuperate, since I'm all congested because of Vietnam and walking so much, or something. After Alan's trip, I'm doing a turn-and-burn, which is where I take my stuff out of one canoe and put it in another, and go off immediately on my next trip, a five-day with someone I don't yet know. I really hope it's not the Crab Lake Circle again. But if it is, I guess I'll be prepared. That's optimism for you.
-Really, I don't hate it here. I only hated yesterday, and there were even parts of that that I liked. Like, when I was a mild hero (mostly it gave me a sense of pride) because I found Oliver. And the night paddle. I'm still having fun. Probably I would rather be at Crowduck, because there are no rules at Crowduck nor any schedules or responsibilities (beyond bringing home enough fish for dinner). But, I wouldn't get paid for going to Crowduck. And, this is good job experience. Every job wants you to list a leadership experience. If I can describe the Dairymen's Portage like I've done here, I'll be hired.
-My feet hurt.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Yep, they do have the internet here
Hello, everybody. I've been pretty busy and haven't written anything, but they do indeed have the internet here, so chances are I'll use a few of my 24 hours off each week to write something or other around here. So, here's the sort of thing I've been up to.
-All us newcomers started off our time here with Wilderness & Water Safety training. That was fun; it entailed learning some techinques for rescuing people from the water, and some other things, and after that we put these new learnings into practice. The thing about that was, winter here ended in early May. So the water was somewhere in the upper 40°s or lower 50°s, probably. Even so, we all survived the training, with the help of the state-of-the-art sauna in the Far South bathhouse. I never knew what the big fuss was about saunas until I tried this one for about the third time. That was the time that I stayed in for the right amount of time, and then I came out and felt so cleaned out. I'll be using the sauna more over the next month here.
-After WWS, we did Wilderness First Aid, more commonly known as WooFA. Manito-wish is a haven for acronyms and abbrevs., some of which get pronounced (usually awkwardly). There's WWS, WFA, the TLC (Trout Lake Circle), the PO (Program Office), OC (Orange Crystals - they're like Kool-Aid) PFDs (Personal Flotation Devices, occasionally called PooFDahs), and a slurry of others. Quite a few aren't actually shorter than the thing they abbreviate. For example, TL has exactly as many syllables as "trail lunch" (and fewer than a simple "lunch"). A lot of these things are come up with on the spot, when the speaker feels that he's running out of time to complete his sentence, I guess. It's a little bit bewildering, and I'm not sure I care for it, but it seems to be here to stay. WFA, to return to my point, was a barrage of facts about wilderness first aid, all crammed into two days, but we ended up proficient enough, and we also got to watch some pretty cool videos about hypothermia featuring one Dr Gordon Giesbrecht, a Canadian known as the hypothermia guru. So that accounted for days 3 and 4.
-The next days were staff training, things about what we do here and how to make a cabin that stays together well, and other stuff. The camp is divided into four age groups, from 11-12 to 14-15. There are also off-camp trips they run, called Outpost and Voyageur trips, that run in Alaska and Canada and other cool places for up to 40 days or maybe more - I don't really know. This is a pretty active camp. People associate with it for a long time. They grow up with it. I don't know what age group I'll be with, but probably 12-13.
-After a few days of staff training, there was the training trip. I'm going to use only first names when I talk about other people here. When there are two who have the same first name, I guess I'll use a number. Fortunately, on the trip all our names were different. It was led by Ryan, who's been here for a while; he led a retinue of seven guys: me, Ben, Josh, Jason, Alan, Scott, and Bill. We're all going to be counselors. The trip took us through several lakes, most connected to the previous by a stream. The weather stayed just perfect for us, and in different ways. One day, it was warm but overcast, so we didn't have to worry about sunburn. Another day, the sun was out but with big, friendly, puffy clouds overhead to give the sky almost a storybook feel. We paddled down the Manitowish* river and over two lakes and saw bald eagles and a beaver or maybe an otter, and practiced our canoeing strokes, and just generally had a great time. At camp we had chili mac and a lot of free time to hang around. The next day we paddled a few more lakes - actually a few more than we were supposed to, and ended up on a simply incredible campsite on Jag Lake. Jag is small, clear, and has perfect beaches with sand and small rocks of all different colors. Our campsite is excellently open, and the wind was blowing into it at high speed just perfect for drying out my wet socks. We all went swimming and loved the place. We ate "Mexi-Fest", which was dehydrated refried beans ("reefers") with rice and chili powder and some other stuff, all in tortillas - delicious. The next day we portaged out of camp back to the Manitowish river, and paddled up it until we got to our campsite for the day, probably less than a mile from camp, on the same lake. We arrived before we even had lunch, so we had a whole day to just goof off there. Fortuitously, there are three campsites just there, and other trips were staying at the other two, so I got to play some cards with Alan and Josh and Lloyd (from the other camp, and he brought cards, good because mine had gotten soaked). One of the camps had too much food, so after we ate our "Chicken Fric" (I guess technically it was fricassee, but not really), we helped them get rid of theirs too. Josh and I specifically did that, because we're always hungry. The only day I didn't like so much was today. It's a bad start when you get woken up by ravens at 6:50 AM. They would not move on! That is, until Ryan got sick of them and yelled some unkind words out the tent at them. We all enjoyed that. For the rest of the day, everyone from those three camps was going "CAAAWGH!" at each other, often across the bay, because those ravens were so annoying and ridiculous and hilarious. The weather had turned really cold, not June sort of weather, but we managed to stay alive okay, and we paddled back into camp at 2 PM after making cinnamon rolls. On second thought: we had cinnamon rolls. Today was okay. We cleaned all our dishes, and got all our stuff back to our cabins, and that brings me to now. I'm on my 24 hours off for this week, as is everyone else. I think I may try the BBB in town (Boulder Beer Bar - I hear they have excellent pizza and cheese curds) tonight, thought it's raining again. Well, I've got rain gear. I'll see if anyone else is planning on going. Tonight ought to be fun. Even if all I end up doing is finishing the book I'm reading while lying in bed.
*The camp name is taken from the river name; the camp hyphenates its name to draw attention to the "wish", for some reason. I think it's kind of stupid, but it's the right orthography, so I'll abide by it. Also note it's pronounced "man-i-too-wish".
-All us newcomers started off our time here with Wilderness & Water Safety training. That was fun; it entailed learning some techinques for rescuing people from the water, and some other things, and after that we put these new learnings into practice. The thing about that was, winter here ended in early May. So the water was somewhere in the upper 40°s or lower 50°s, probably. Even so, we all survived the training, with the help of the state-of-the-art sauna in the Far South bathhouse. I never knew what the big fuss was about saunas until I tried this one for about the third time. That was the time that I stayed in for the right amount of time, and then I came out and felt so cleaned out. I'll be using the sauna more over the next month here.
-After WWS, we did Wilderness First Aid, more commonly known as WooFA. Manito-wish is a haven for acronyms and abbrevs., some of which get pronounced (usually awkwardly). There's WWS, WFA, the TLC (Trout Lake Circle), the PO (Program Office), OC (Orange Crystals - they're like Kool-Aid) PFDs (Personal Flotation Devices, occasionally called PooFDahs), and a slurry of others. Quite a few aren't actually shorter than the thing they abbreviate. For example, TL has exactly as many syllables as "trail lunch" (and fewer than a simple "lunch"). A lot of these things are come up with on the spot, when the speaker feels that he's running out of time to complete his sentence, I guess. It's a little bit bewildering, and I'm not sure I care for it, but it seems to be here to stay. WFA, to return to my point, was a barrage of facts about wilderness first aid, all crammed into two days, but we ended up proficient enough, and we also got to watch some pretty cool videos about hypothermia featuring one Dr Gordon Giesbrecht, a Canadian known as the hypothermia guru. So that accounted for days 3 and 4.
-The next days were staff training, things about what we do here and how to make a cabin that stays together well, and other stuff. The camp is divided into four age groups, from 11-12 to 14-15. There are also off-camp trips they run, called Outpost and Voyageur trips, that run in Alaska and Canada and other cool places for up to 40 days or maybe more - I don't really know. This is a pretty active camp. People associate with it for a long time. They grow up with it. I don't know what age group I'll be with, but probably 12-13.
-After a few days of staff training, there was the training trip. I'm going to use only first names when I talk about other people here. When there are two who have the same first name, I guess I'll use a number. Fortunately, on the trip all our names were different. It was led by Ryan, who's been here for a while; he led a retinue of seven guys: me, Ben, Josh, Jason, Alan, Scott, and Bill. We're all going to be counselors. The trip took us through several lakes, most connected to the previous by a stream. The weather stayed just perfect for us, and in different ways. One day, it was warm but overcast, so we didn't have to worry about sunburn. Another day, the sun was out but with big, friendly, puffy clouds overhead to give the sky almost a storybook feel. We paddled down the Manitowish* river and over two lakes and saw bald eagles and a beaver or maybe an otter, and practiced our canoeing strokes, and just generally had a great time. At camp we had chili mac and a lot of free time to hang around. The next day we paddled a few more lakes - actually a few more than we were supposed to, and ended up on a simply incredible campsite on Jag Lake. Jag is small, clear, and has perfect beaches with sand and small rocks of all different colors. Our campsite is excellently open, and the wind was blowing into it at high speed just perfect for drying out my wet socks. We all went swimming and loved the place. We ate "Mexi-Fest", which was dehydrated refried beans ("reefers") with rice and chili powder and some other stuff, all in tortillas - delicious. The next day we portaged out of camp back to the Manitowish river, and paddled up it until we got to our campsite for the day, probably less than a mile from camp, on the same lake. We arrived before we even had lunch, so we had a whole day to just goof off there. Fortuitously, there are three campsites just there, and other trips were staying at the other two, so I got to play some cards with Alan and Josh and Lloyd (from the other camp, and he brought cards, good because mine had gotten soaked). One of the camps had too much food, so after we ate our "Chicken Fric" (I guess technically it was fricassee, but not really), we helped them get rid of theirs too. Josh and I specifically did that, because we're always hungry. The only day I didn't like so much was today. It's a bad start when you get woken up by ravens at 6:50 AM. They would not move on! That is, until Ryan got sick of them and yelled some unkind words out the tent at them. We all enjoyed that. For the rest of the day, everyone from those three camps was going "CAAAWGH!" at each other, often across the bay, because those ravens were so annoying and ridiculous and hilarious. The weather had turned really cold, not June sort of weather, but we managed to stay alive okay, and we paddled back into camp at 2 PM after making cinnamon rolls. On second thought: we had cinnamon rolls. Today was okay. We cleaned all our dishes, and got all our stuff back to our cabins, and that brings me to now. I'm on my 24 hours off for this week, as is everyone else. I think I may try the BBB in town (Boulder Beer Bar - I hear they have excellent pizza and cheese curds) tonight, thought it's raining again. Well, I've got rain gear. I'll see if anyone else is planning on going. Tonight ought to be fun. Even if all I end up doing is finishing the book I'm reading while lying in bed.
*The camp name is taken from the river name; the camp hyphenates its name to draw attention to the "wish", for some reason. I think it's kind of stupid, but it's the right orthography, so I'll abide by it. Also note it's pronounced "man-i-too-wish".
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