 My
skin burned from cold as my mind cracked awake screaming a supermarket
tabloid headline: Magazine Editor Freezes to Death … in June!
Subhead (this is how a reporter’s mind works): Inept camper buys inadequate
sleeping bag.
My publisher had warned me about this. Did I have warm enough clothes?
she fretted before I left for a guided weeklong trek with others interested
in the wolf-moose research on Isle Royale. (The International Wolf Center
in Ely and the Great Lakes Aquarium & Freshwater Discovery Center in
Duluth organized the trip.)
Look, I assured her, we camped a lot when I was a kid. I did many camping-fishing
overnighters as a young - younger - reporter. Not a problem. Until late
the night before I shipped out to the island park. I discovered that I
didn’t have a sleeping bag anymore. Neither did Bob. Our marriage doubled
our dishes and pans, doubled couches, doubled computers … and not one sleeping
bag between us. What had we become? This was wrong. I couldn’t even bring
myself to look for a fishing pole.
My new department-store sleeping bag claimed warmth to 20 above. Fine for
early June; it’s not winter camping, after all. That first night at Rock
Harbor camp, curled in a small tent beside a new friend from California,
I experienced a cold like no other. And it was 30 above. That’s a good
10-degree cushion of comfort, right? Shivering yet with skin afire, I sat
bolt upright and vowed that if I lived, some sleeping-bag tester would
get an unthawed piece of my mind. That bag rated “slumber parties only.”
Grabbing my clothes sack and blessing my polar-fleece sewing sister, I
donned nearly my entire arsenal. Then I toppled back into the bag - why,
I don’t know, I was delirious - and waited for death.
A glorious campsite morning came first. Fond memories of outings with family
and friends rose with the sun. Our small band teased, ate breakfast and
broke camp for a water taxi ride to Daisy Farm where we met researchers
Rolf and Candy Peterson. They fed us homemade pie and stories woven from
decades of wolf-moose research. Then Candy, as worried as any publisher
at my spine-chilling night, loaned me three wool army blankets. She saved
my life (and saved the rest of the group from a week of whining).
Our week filled with bird-watching hikes, moose spotting and wolf-scat
deciphering. Like my co-campers in that brisk Isle Royale “spring,” I never
really removed my warm apparel … except to lift my hat for our group leaders
Jay Sandal and George Knotek - overly anxious, I felt, after the shelter
eaves rammed rudely into my head. With my relatively “low” clearance needs,
the gash it caused was a unique experience in itself.…
Hey, you can’t buy adventures like this.
Ahhhhh, but you can, as two stories reveal in this issue. In one, you’ll
meet some artists who also travel to Isle Royale for a special adventure
… one that they pay for with their talent. In the other, you’ll discover
experienced guides who organize adventures, though most come without the
memorable mishaps. That’s okay, I guess, but I stand by this adage: You
can have everything go right … or you can have some good stories.
Konnie LeMay
Editor
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