Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir by Jim Landwehr

Author:Jim Landwehr [Landwehr, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: memoir, outdoors, nature
Publisher: eLectio Publishing, LLC
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Portaging

Part of the beauty of the Boundary Waters is that in the more remote areas, you can paddle for days without seeing another soul. Getting to those areas requires portaging between water bodies. This involves transporting your boat and gear across short, and sometimes not so short, stretches of land. The terrain, trail conditions, and how well you packed often determine your experience. For the most part, though, it is not for whiners or slackers. Having participated in enough portages, I’ve drafted my own definition of portaging you won’t find in Webster’s dictionary, and it goes as follows:

Portaging (pōr-tij-ing)

A voluntary death march across godforsaken terrain in the name of transporting a boat from one body of water to another exceedingly similar body of water.

A self-inflicted hardship involving backbreaking labor, often producing random hallucinations and coarse language.

It is hard, sweaty, thankless work.

The portaging experience begins with you and your canoe buddy deciding who gets to hoist the canoe overhead and carry it to the other side. Because we usually went three or four portages deep on each trip, we alternated who would take the canoe and who would take the packs and other gear.

The process of loading the canoe ranged from a thing of beauty and grace to one of an Olympic sport gone bad. The canoe hauler began his hoist by centering himself on one side of the canoe, where the shoulder-padded yoke was. He grabbed the yoke at the opposite side from where he stood, took a deep breath, and lifted the canoe so that the gunwale nearest to him rested on his thighs. From there, using a turn and a bench-press motion, he lifted the yoke over his head and set the pads on his shoulders. This sometimes resulted in the stern or bow banging on the ground as the handler struggled for control. What was intended as a one-two-three motion often turned into a four-five-need-some-help-here-six motion. Eventually, though, liftoff was achieved and the canoe-bearing Sherpa began his trek.

While loading the canoe on our shoulders was always a treat, walking the actual portage trail was when the real fun began. It wasn’t so bad when we were moving the canoe across those short, flat, straight stretches we rarely encountered. It was those hilly, rocky portages strewn with ankle-turning roots that made us question our use of vacation time. Portages that we swore were cut by drunken, practical-joking Forest Service employees, designed to weed out the weak and uncommitted.

Some of the longer portages even had two or three canoe “rests” along their length. These were locations where some merciful worker fashioned an overhead hook where people could set the canoe to regain the feeling in their shoulders and perhaps receive CPR or stress counseling. There were a couple of these rests where, by the time we got to them, we were seeing visions of the Virgin Mary, Jerry Garcia, and Elvis. Trails like these were life changing.

Hilly portages required a great deal of strength, grace, and balance. A third lung helped, too.

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