Conscious Choice: Dip Wood, Paddle Water

July 1995

Dip Wood, Paddle Water

by Mark Long

I am often asked by friends who live in the West how I am able to live in the flatlands of the once-plains, with their lack of vertical relief or large wilderness areas. While I have to admit that there are times when I long for the mountains and expanse of the west, still the land of the Inland Seas offers some of greatest opportunities for wilderness escape in the country — if, that is, one’s chosen route out of the city is on the water. There is no other region of the country which offers such extensive and various opportunities for playing on, in, and around liquid wilderness as the Great Lakes basin.

Beginning with the Lake Michigan beach — one block from my house — my daily life, politics, imagination, and sense of place is intricately entwined with the water-ways of the Middle West. Whether taking a late-night swim in the lake, kayaking the islands of Lake Superior, canoeing the pristine lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, or risking life and ego in the raging torrents of northern Wisconsin’s rivers, I have come to feel at home in my adopted region, primarily as a result of the time that I have spent playfully enjoying its waters.

In an effort to share with you the pleasure, excitement, and tranquillity that I have found in paddling these areas over the years, I offer a very brief description of a few of the areas and activities in which anyone willing to pack a dry bag and hoist a paddle can share.

Inland Seas
The best way to explore and enjoy what the Great Lakes have to offer is from the seat of a sea kayak. These boats are very different from their better-known offspring, the white water kayak, in that they are larger and more stable and are designed for long-distance travel. Lakes Michigan and Superior provide the novice and the experienced paddler alike with endless miles of shoreline to explore: from easy day trips to challenging extended trips with large open water crossings.

Chicago Lakefront: The best view of the city I know of is from my kayak looking west as the sun sets over the Chicago skyline. It may be a far cry from a wilderness setting but, given that we live here, it’s an easy way to enjoy the pleasure of paddling in big water not far from home while finding relief form the noise and crowd of urban life.

Door County, Wisconsin: The Door Peninsula, which creates Lake Michigan’s fabled Green Bay, contains a fascinating variety of rocky coastline, sandy beaches, and a quickly vanishing glimpse of once-thriving Great Lakes fishing villages. Day trips along the shores of Peninsula State Park are a perfect way to hone paddling skills or to experience the beauty of Lake Michigan without the tower of Sears occluding your vision of a once wild lake. Pseudo-backcountry trips can be had at Newport State Park, which provides campsites along the lakeshore for paddlers and hikers alike. Or, if you’re slightly more adventurous, you can paddle to Rock Island State Park, a few miles off of the end of Washington Island. There you can enjoy the solitude of an island that is accessible only by boat.

Lake Superior: If you can conquer the fear of paddling a seventeen-foot boat in the waters that ate the seven-hundred-foot Edmund Fitzgerald, Lake Superior offers what may be the best freshwater kayaking in the country. The Apostle Island National Lakeshore contains twenty-two islands with remote campsites for kayakers. These sandstone islands, once the hiding place of Great Lakes pirates, have sea caves large enough to paddle your boat into, beautiful lighthouses, and black bears aplenty. These waters can also serve up some fairly inhospitable conditions for a small craft and should be treated with caution by novice paddlers. Isle Royal National Park also provides some spectacular paddling opportunities, as well as moose, wolves, and — in the right season — all the berries one cares to eat.

Obviously the first and fifth largest fresh water lakes in the world offer many more places around which to nose a kayak; but, since half the fun of adventure is charting your own course, I will leave the rest for you to discover on your own.

Wilderness Lakes
BWCA: The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is considered by many the premiere wilderness paddling destination in the country. Established as a "wilderness area" by an act of congress in 1978, it has retained much of the wild quality that the French voyageursmust have encountered when they plied these waters with their furs two hundred years ago.

The BWCA is home to the largest wolf population in the lower forty-eight, which stands as a testimony to the quality of its wilderness. It is also home to moose, black bear, lynx, and other critters of the northwoods amongst which one is privileged to travel. Perhaps best of all, in spite of the obligatory warnings from the Forest Service, you can still drink the water from the inner lakes without the intrusion of water treatment that you find in every other backcountry destination in the country. There is something magical about dipping your cup into the lake and drinking long and contentedly from the seat in your canoe.

Sylvania Recreation Area: This "miniature" BWCA in the Michigan’s upper peninsula provides an experience similar to its better known neighbor, but with a much shorter drive to the put-in. It also offers some of the largest tracts of old growth forest left in the Midwest as well as a dense black bear population. This land was once a private hunting reserve for wealthy Chicago businessmen and was thus spared the logger’s ax. Fortunately it has reverted to public ownership and can now be enjoyed by unwashed types like you and me.

Rivers
If you are a bit of an adrenaline freak, and quiet lake paddling is not enough to slake your now-growing urge to paddle, the rivers of northern Wisconsin may be what you need to round out your aqueous play. What were once feared and deadly rapids for loggers attempting to float their winter tree harvest to the mills are now some of the premiere stretches of white water east of the Mississippi river. Beginning paddlers can learn and perfect their skills on relatively easy but beautiful class-two rivers, such as the Pike, and can work up to the challenge of class-four and -five sections of the Peshtigo and Wolf rivers. In any case you are guaranteed beautiful northwoods scenery and are likely to catch a glimpse of a bald eagle winging its way downstream in advance of your boat.

If moving but "quiet" water is more your speed, there are numerous creeks and streams, within a day’s drive of Chicago, where you can forget, momentarily, that you are near the third-largest population center in the U.S. The Chicagoland Canoe base (see below) has published a small booklet describing many of these streams as well as giving pertinent logistical information for each.

While there is always a danger in "loving wilderness to death" it seems to me that the greater danger lies in perpetuating the false distinction between what is human and what is natural. There is hardly a more human instinct than the instinct to play (in spite of the fact that our society has done all that it can to repress and control that desire). What is important about playing in wilderness is that it enables us to develop a deeper, more personal sense of our role in the natural world and how we may fit into it. It is also true that, as a matter of utility, people tend to save that which gives them pleasure. That is to say that not every trip on the water should be a vision quest; sometimes it’s important to just have fun. If we rely on the natural world around us to provide the playful relief from our culture’s daily grind that we all need, sooner or later we will begin to understand in our own way what we want to work for, and why.

Midwest Resources

Boat Retailers:
• Active Endeavors, 1527 Chicago Ave., Evanston, 847-869-7070
• Chicagoland Canoe Base, 4019 Narragansett Ave., Chicago, 312-777-1489

Guide Services:
• Great Lakes Explorers, 847-969-1196
• The Northwest Passage, 847-256-4409
• Whitewater Specialty, 715-882-5400

Clubs:
• Chicago Area Sea Kayak Association, 847-803-4575
• Chicago Whitewater Association, 847-328-0145

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