The 2014 Cubs: Best of the Worst

I wrote this post at the end of the 2014 baseball season.  It is worth another look.  It’s about my Dad, a true blue Cub fan, and the team he loved.  The Cubs, two years after this was posted, are in the World Series.  My Dad, born in 1909, is gone.  But as he always said "You Are Where You Are."

My Dad made obvious statements impossible to refute.  He often brought universal truths into the open,  enjoying them immensely.  They were simple and pure, defying follow up questions or responses of any kind really.  One of his favorite lines was;

“Everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

It’s very hard to argue with that statement.  Mom might be at the kitchen table reading the Bloomington Pantagraph about some Danvers man was picked up for a traffic offense and be surprised at where and when the arrest was made. 

“What do you suppose he was doing that time of night on the South Side of Bloomington?” she would say loudly, implying he was up to no good.  To which Dad might reply;

“Well you know, everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

He never named EGBS, this concept in the acronym.  It could have been Dean’s law of random physical presence, the requirement that our bodies occupy space somewhere on the planet.  For him I think it expressed something deeply existential.  We heard that line and others so much we tended to dismiss them because they were so obvious.  He thought they were funny, and smiled as he delivered the lines. 

Its corollary, which is even better I think, is that sage bit of wisdom;

“You are where you are.” 

That’s certainly true, in every case, whenever said, but it implies something else.  YAWYA, which might be Dean’s law of unavoidable current habitation, carries with it the necessity of accepting your place but at the same time assessing your situation.  We don’t like to do that as Americans.  We like to ignore  reality and live instead in  possibility, as if we were at some place we are not.  Like a poor medical student without two dimes to rub together behaving as if he were already a rich doctor, living in a hovel drinking cheap beer but buying expensive crystal for the day he can enjoy fine wine.  Dad liked to call things as he saw them, encouraged his family and others to do the same, but at the same time offered hope.  He lived through a lot of bad stuff, my Dad.  I like to think he learned these things, YAWYA and EGTBS, the hard way and tried in his gentle way to pass them on to us.

But then again Dad may have learned these lessons as a lifelong Cub fan.

Born in 1909, the year after the Cubs won their last World Series, Dad never saw them as champions during his lifetime.  During his 77 years on the planet he loved to listen to the Cubs play on the radio, and after he sold the cows he insisted on getting a giant TV dish, which we mounted in concrete by the garden, so he and Mom could pull in WGN from outer space and watch the Cubs on Channel 9.  He loved to follow them but never do I remember him joining in the chorus of boos that has followed them all these years for being arguably the worst team in baseball during the last century.  I think he was comforted and helped as a Cub fan by those two principles he embraced.  “Everybody has to be somewhere” and “You are where you are.”

The Cubs finished an entire season of Major League Baseball last night by winning their final game and taking two out of three from the Milwaukee Brewers, as they did from the St. Louis Cardinals earlier in the week.  At the beginning of the season my friend Chuck Maney point out that the Cubs looked good, if they had been playing in the Pacific Coast League.  Sadly they were not.  They were a major league ball club with little resemblance to one.  Did Cub fans have high hopes for their team in spring training?  No.  We expected them to have a losing season.  It was called a rebuilding year from the start, which is a misnomer.  For the Cubs it was simply a building year.  They had nothing to rebuild from.  Rebuilding implies you once had a solid structure to restore.  The Cubs have been in shambles, as far as their won-loss record, since their last winning season in 2008.  They lost 101 games in 2012.  Winning seasons have been few and far between since 1908.  It’s a very sad history to own.  But such is the history of the Chicago Cubs.  They are where they are. 

The Cubs finished in the cellar for the fifth year in a row, firmly occupying last place in of the National League’s Central Division.  Their 2014 record was 73 wins and 89 losses.  Thirty teams make up Major League Baseball in America, fifteen teams in both the American and National League.  The best team in baseball, Numero Uno during the regular season, was the Los Angeles Angels with a record of 98 wins and 64 losses.  The Cubs, looking purely at wins and losses now and not beer sales at home games, tied with the Philadelphia Phillies as 23^rd best team in baseball with a winning percentage of .451.  But then, everybody has to be somewhere. 

For a time I had this crazy hope that the Cubs might claw their way past the fading Cincinnati Reds and finish fourth in the division.  Sadly, that did not come to pass.  They missed that milestone by three games.  The Cubs could be worse.  Several teams are.  The lowly Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West own the title of worst team in baseball and are firmly established there with a winning percentage of .395, 63 wins and 96 losses.  If the Cubs were playing in the West rather than the Central there would be two teams below them, Colorado and Arizona.  But, they aren’t in the West.  They are where they are.

My own personal goal for the Cubs, after they traded off Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hamel to Oakland, was for my club to be the best of the worst, The cellar dwelling team in Major League Baseball with the best record.  Though few recognize it, there is each year a king of the cellar dwellers, the team that happens to find themselves last in their division but with the best record of the worst losers.  It happens this year the Cubs tied the Phillies for the honor “Best of the Worst.”  You won’t find this kind of analysis on ESPN folks.  It’s a shame to allow the title of “Best of the Worst” to end as a tie.  I personally believe it should be decided by a one game playoff.

The Cubs almost made won that crown.  In fact, I’m sure legions of Chicagoans got a push on their bets with friends that one Chicago team or another would have more wins.  The Chicago White Sox also finished the year at 73 wins and 89 losses.  It was predicted at the beginning of the season that the Cubs had a shot at another dreaded negative reverse achievement, the ultimate disgrace, losing 100 games.  HA! Not even close.  Not even 90.  I know some teams have not lost 90 games in modern history, but we’re talking about the Chicago Cubs here folks.  Since 1945 they have lost 90 in a single season 21 times.  They lost 100 games or more three times since 1945, the last time in 2012 when they lost 101. This year they traded practically every pitcher with any value, played kids who may or may not have to shave during the second half of the season, and still won 73 games while losing only 89.  If you’re a Cub fan you hang your hat on that 89.  The Cubs have lost 90 games or more the last three seasons.    Not this year baby. 

I know it’s easy to read this as a Cardinal fan, or a Yankee enthusiast, who adopt as their own smoothly oiled organizations with storied histories and a roomful of pennants and trophies, and scoff.  Laugh even; loudly, boisterously, derisively. 

“Those poor Cub fans,” they say, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes.  “Why would you stay loyal to a team with such a miserable history, an organization that traded Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio, actually believed that Adolfo Phillips would one day become a hitter, and has not had a team in the World Series for 105 years?”  More laughter.  They can hardly stand up it’s so funny.  ROTFLMAO.

Well to them I say everybody has to be somewhere, and that’s exactly where the Cubs are.  Yes, they have a losing record (though not within the friendly confines of Wrigley field, where they won 41 and lost 40.)  Yes they traded away their best pitchers, anyone with actual with proven value except for Jake Arrieta.  And yes they still have problems with their old ball park.  But where are the Cubs exactly?

The Cubs are poised for success.  They have long term contracts with two young players who had solid seasons and are beginning to produce-Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro.  Rizzo finished second in the National League in homers with 32.  Castro was tenth best among National League batters in batting average with .292 and kept his head in the game all season.  They brought up four promising rookies, Jorge Solero, Javier Baez, Arismendy Alacantara, and Kyle Hendricks, a rookie who pitched himself into the starting rotation.  Who did they get for Samardzija and Hamel?  Addison Russell, yet another shortstop who in 2012 was baseball’s first round draft pick, Billy McKinney the 2013 number one pick, pitcher Dan Strahly and that perennial favorite PTBNL (Player to Be Named Later.)  The Cubs traded known talent for vast potential.  Samardzija and Hamel helped Oakland get to the playoffs this year.  Russell and McKinney may carry the Cubs there often in future years.

Even critics of the Cubs covet the young players now in the Cubs organization including Kris Bryant, Albert Almora, and C.J. Edwards.  They can be developed or traded.  Have you heard of these guys?  They haven’t played an inning of Major League Baseball.  Watch for them.  And miracle of miracles, the Cubs may have actually found an effective closer in Hector Rondon.  God help me if I’ve jinxed these young players. 

So yes it’s always true as my Dad was so fond of saying, that everyone has to be somewhere.  Where are the Cubs?  They finished in the cellar of the Central division with a losing record.  They did not have a good season in 2014.  But fortunately, you are where you are.  The Cubs are loaded with talented young players.  They still haven’t won, but I like where they are.  The “Best of the Worst” is a start.  I can hardly wait till next year.  But then, I’m a Cub fan.  What do you expect?  Dad if only you were here to see this.  The Cubs aren’t there yet.  But next year, or the year after, really could be the year.  Don’t give up hope. 

DCFS in Crisis

After Trump loses the election and those Republicans still standing desperately search for, retrieve, and reassemble the fragments of the GOP, reduced to small jagged pieces like an airliner blown to bits over the ocean, desperately trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it, Illinois will still be in trouble.

We have no budget, no recognizable plan for pension reform, no clear direction on tax policy or revenue, no clue really as to our future.  So while the spotlight has been off Springfield, the trouble has gone on unabated.  In my younger days I might have taken the policy silence booming from Springfield as an indication the major political parties are busy working towards solutions to be revealed in the fall session.  Wiser now, I have no faith that is happening.  I believe we are exactly where we were a year and a half ago when the state budget expired and state elected official dropped into the black hole of crisis management.  All their energy has gone into gaining a political advantage for their party, none of it toward finding solutions to our problems.  All about them, nothing about us.

That is the backdrop for all news in Illinois regarding services dependent on state funding.  On Sunday September 25^th the headline of the Chicago Tribune read

“Why state couldn’t save 11 troubled kids”

I read news about DCFS differently these days.  The Department of Children and Family Services is the state code department charged with caring for abused, neglected, and dependent children in Illinois.  In another related article Tribune writer Duaa Eldeib reported a federal judge approved a plan to keep more kids in stable, homelike settings instead of institutions “as part of an ongoing effort to overhaul the state’s troubled child welfare system.”  The plan was filed jointly by DCFS and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.  Claire Stewart, ACLU attorney who works on the project, is hopeful the plan will ensure sustainable change.

“The Department is in crisis right now,” Stewart said.

OF course it is.  Because I led a private child welfare agency that accepted money and contracts from DCFS in order to help abused, neglected, and dependent kids and their families I was often defensive about criticism of the system.  Three years (and counting) past retirement I am much less so, no longer scared to death of calls from the media or seeing my agency’s name or my own show up in an investigative reporter’s account of the system’s failures, of decisions gone wrong, resulting in kids abused and kids dying in our care.
 

Child welfare is a messy and emotional business.  It’s fraught with risk, muddied choices, iffy decisions, and never enough resources.  Balanced between the competing interests of protecting children from harm and the rights of parents to keep their kids and raise them as they choose, failure is always in the cards.  It hinges some say in how those cards are dealt.   Cynics in child welfare say it’s damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  Fortunately the cynics don’t prevail.
 

DCFS has been one crisis after another for decades, with runs of good years bookended by years of startlingly poor performance.  And now gun violence is spiking out of control in Chicago and other communities in Illinois where our most vulnerable children and their fragile families live.  Of course child welfare is in crisis.  Illinois is in crisis: its budget, its state and local governments, its school systems, and its future.  Would you expect DCFS to escape strong and unharmed?

Investigative reporter Christy Gutowski’s front page story began where the truth about child welfare has always lived, in the individual accounts of children and families in the system.  She based her story on an unfiltered homicide report from DCFS’ Inspector General, an independent fact finding agency designed to expose the agency’s successes and failures.  The Inspector General goes outside the DCFS case file to interview and gather information from police, the juvenile justice system, courts, hospitals, and schools. I was also scared of calls from the DCFS Inspector General’s staff, while at the same time applauding their work, and a reader of that office’s reports from cover to cover.   We learn from failure.  Without objective inquiry we spin our wheels.

Juvenile Court and DCFS are held to high standards of confidentiality, which is a double edged sword.  There is a tremendous temptation to hide behind it.  By protecting the legitimate, humane, and deserved privacy rights of children and families caught in the system we run the risk of also protecting bad practice by those that serve them.  Court reporters, caseworkers, public defenders, judges, and police officers often know the real story but are prevented from commenting publicly.  While the DCFS Inspector General’s report does not identify children and families by name “a Tribune review of other public records and interviews revealed the names behind the complex personal stories.”  Clever and effective.

We’re awash in information.  Is it any wonder the real stories have gotten out?  I now find myself on the side of disclosure, of bringing the light of day to the child welfare system for its own good.  Who would have thought that?  Not me.  ‘They’ll jump to conclusions’ I used to fear.  ‘They won’t understand the complexity’ I used to think.  I’ve changed my mind.  Now that I’m out of the system I’m pretty sure you’ll understand.  I’m sorry I ever doubted you.

Laquan McDonald as you know was gunned down by the Chicago Police at age 17 on October 20, 2014.    The autopsy counted 16 bullet wounds.  You’ve seen the video many times.  Some of those 16 shots hit Laqaun’s body as he laid motionless on the pavement.  Turns out the story began long before that.  I knew then that Laquan had a back story, was a ward of DCFS, but until now the details of his younger life came out only in fits and starts.  The child welfare system, the juvenile justice system, and the school system failed Laquan McDonald long before law enforcement killed him.  Here’s the short story as put together by Christy Gutowski.  She had to dig to get it.  She did a great job.  Her primary source of information appears to be the DCFS Inspector General’s report covering a two year period ending June 30, 2015.  Laqaun was but one of eleven children under DCFS care that died during those two years.

I can almost see the Inspector General’s report the Tribune reporter read, 119 pages of grief and mayhem bound like a catalog and delivered across the state to child welfare agencies and “the system” like a bomb in a padded envelope.  The Inspector General’s reports exposed us, Illinois’ child welfare practitioners, as we were without spin.  It methodically listed all our faults, shortcomings, misdeeds, and worse, our lack of devotion to the missions of our organizations which at times resulted in the death of the very children we are here to help.   This was the homicide report.  I read all the Inspector General’s reports each and every time they were issued to learn how other agencies failed in hopes I could keep my agency from doing the same.  Here’s what Christy found out about Laquan that was hidden away.

Laquan McDonald was asked this open ended and simple question on an evaluative test while psychiatrically hospitalized at age 11:

“What does every child get?”

The standard answers, probably your kids’ answers, would be benign responses like: hugs, food, toys.  On his own and without prompting the preadolescent Laquan came up with this answer.

“Punched.”

Laquan’s mother was 15 and in DCFS custody because of a caregiver’s drug use when she had her first child,  baby boy Laquan.  She raised Laquan for three years before he and his 8 month old sister were taken into DCFS custody due to accusations of inadequate supervision.  Her children were returned to her but taken away again when Laquan was five due to allegations of corporal punishment.  During those years DCFS twice placed Laquan, briefly, in foster care outside his family.  Both placements were short, one and two months.  During the second placement Laquan said he was beaten, barely fed, and touched in a sexual manner.

After that Goldie Hunter, his great grandmother, was given legal guardianship of Laquan.  He lived with her for ten years until her death at 78 in August of 2013.  During her 78 years Goldie Hunter, a retired laborer, married and widowed, with a seventh grade education, managed to care for at least 12 children, her own and others from the family’s younger generations, including Laquan her great grandson.  She raised those kids in Austin, one of Chicago’s tough west side neighborhoods.  The report reveals that Goldie Hunter realized Laquan’s problems were beyond her ability to help, as she grew older and more ill, and wanted more for her great grandson.  Laquan was never given therapy related to sexual abuse despite being an angry child with aggressive tendencies and knowledge of sex far beyond his developmental age.

Here’s what Laquan got.  He received special education services in school.  However his disruptive and aggressive behavior, truancy, suspensions and eventual involvement in gang life made progress dismal in the six or so schools he attended.  Any services delivered through the school system would have been spotty at best.  Attention to Laquan came mostly from police and probation.  He became one of the many kids with a file in both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems, but real help from neither. He was arrested 26 times in three years.  Seven drug possession cases advanced to juvenile court referrals, only one resulted in a conviction.  He was placed on home confinement, probation with electronic monitoring, ordered to attend school, perform community service, and attend outpatient mental health and drug treatment services.  It’s easy to order services, quite a lot harder to make them happen.

When Laquan’s great grandmother died he was not placed in the care of the great aunt listed in the back up DCFS plan but in the home of a young single uncle whom the inspector general’s office described as ill equipped to supervise him.

A year before his death, Laquan’s mother petitioned the court to regain custody of her firstborn son.  She had regularly attended therapy and was making progress at a local clinic.  In an attempt to reconcile mother and child Laquan was assigned by DCFS to attend the same outpatient clinic his mother was attending.  He did not attend the program for three months.  It was 14 miles from his uncle’s house.  The DCFS paid foster program serving Laquan at that time, supervising the placement with his uncle, did not transport him there.  Instead he was referred to another program closer to his home.  He died before attending.

Laquan’s story is only one.  It has become famous, gone viral as we now say, but don’t be confused.  The many other young men and women who die on the streets of Chicago have equally compelling stories.  I applaud Christy Gutowski for finding a legal path to share that story with you.  Her article is longer.  It chronicles young lives beyond Laquan’s, those that did not make the news, which did not result in videos you could watch on your smartphone.

What does Laquan’s story tell us?  It tells us we know who needs help.  Persons outside Laquan’s family, specifically DCFS, knew Laquan needed help since he was 3.  In the 14 years that passed from Laquan coming to the attention of our state’s child welfare system till his death he got very little.  Laquan was a challenge to serve.  And he lived in Austin.  Another kid from Austin who never got the help he needed.

Have we written Austin off?  Has Austin joined Englewood and East St. Louis, the west side of Rockford, and (you know your part of the state best, insert the name of an abandoned community near you here _______________) as places we’ve given up on?  Do you ascribe to the general wisdom that says ‘You can’t fix those schools, you can’t supply enough cops, you can’t create enough foster homes, you can’t provide and pay for enough therapy and drug treatment, there's not enough money’? Are kids simply being abandoned to streets on which kids like Laquan are born, live a short time, and then die?

There’s always hope though.  I was encouraged by the plan agreed to by DCFS and the ACLU to once again bring reforms to the system.  They haven’t given up.  Those plans have the added advantage of a federal judge ordering the state to spend in areas the ACLU and DCFS agree are needed.  With that agreement behind them DCFS may have a chance in this awful budget climate to force the legislature to spend real money to fix the problems that plague DCFS kids like Laquan McDonald and their families.

Back to the Trib.  Duaa Eldeib, who I am guessing is young, had either the good fortune or the moxie to talk to Peter Digre, who has to be old by now, perhaps older than me but I won’t guess his age.  She quoted Mr. Digre, who came from a small private agency in the 80’s to help then DCFS Director Greg Coler put together a system of services for kids not yet in the system, which is as we speak being strangled and dismantled due to lack of money.   While I stayed in Illinois Pete left and helped other states, and has returned to Illinois as a DCFS associate director.  That was a good hire.  Pete must have said this to Duaa who wisely and effectively closed her article with it. 

“The overwhelming reality that confronts us is that every single child, every single youth needs to know that they have a committed and consistent adult who is theirs and is making a lifetime commitment to them.”

That commitment Pete is talking about may be the bond you have or had with your Mom or Dad.  If you are lucky you had that commitment from both of them.  If your kids are lucky they have it with you.  I had it in spades.  I was the youngest in a big family.  Though I rarely needed to do so I had no doubt I could call any of at least ten people who would help me no matter how badly I screwed up.  My life has been awash with committed and consistent adults.  That is what we have to give kids like Laquan McDonald.  It’s not easy.  We have no choice but to keep trying.  To do otherwise would be to declare moral bankruptcy.    

Postscript on Century Lake

Not all my travel writing comes from personal observation.  I mix in research as long as it’s not too difficult.  I was anxious to find out more about Century Lake when I returned to the shack: its size, history, estimated fish population, whatever I could turn up.  Google makes it so easy to identify sources and shop facts these days.  My search however turned up nothing.  A search of Century Lake Ontario quickly devolved into various shipwrecks over several centuries found in Lake Ontario.  There is a Century Lodge on Eagle Lake Ontario.  But Century Lake, the one I came to know?  No footprint at all on the web.  Pretty amazing.

I found a lot of general information.  There are an estimated 3 Million lakes in Canada, 250,000 of them in Ontario, and 3,899 of those greater than 3 square kilometers.  Ontario Province lists but 155 lakes on its lake management webpage, which leads me to believe Century Lake and others like it are unmanaged.  The Canadian Wildlife Federation page had one of those (who cares?) discussions on the definition of a lake versus a body of water in a larger flowage system, which I stopped reading quickly.  Wikipedia only listed Ontario lakes greater than 150 square miles in surface area.  The on line maps didn’t help.  Many, no most, of the lakes in Canada are unnamed.  So far I have no objective proof that Century Lake exists save for the tiny laminated map we carried in our boats put together by our outfitter that shows only the east side of Century Lake but does contain the name.  That and the fact that my friends and I fished it.  Others surely know about it.  But there is nothing specific to go on.

At first I was frustrated at finding no information but then grew to like the fact that it is obscure, has escaped notice in this new world of so much data.  I hope I don’t contribute to its fame.  I don’t think this blog is much of a threat.  However in searching for something particular I learned a lot in general.  That happens a lot here in the shack.  Here’s what I know.

Century Lake is near these coordinates: 51.4603 N and -94.795189 W.  It’s in Ontario’s Woodland Caribou Provincial Park.  A guy in Red lake at the outfitters told me Job Lake, within miles of Century Lake, is about 52 miles north and west of Red Lake as the crow flies, although if I’m not wrong it is too far north for crows.  What look like crows up there are ravens.  And “as the crow flies” is the only practical way to travel.  There are no roads.  Birds and float planes have it the easiest.

 

My personal history with Century Lake is limited to eight hours, and my experience in the area only 21 days, three annual fishing trip of a full week over the past three years.  Century and its neighboring lakes have been there a lot longer.  Much longer as it turns out.  Way before rods and reels were invented that’s for sure.

As I fished I became obsessed with how long walleye as a specie has been living in Century Lake, but no one seemed to know how long fish have existed let alone walleye.  At some point I said who cares and moved on.  But my hunch was that walleye and Century Lake go together like bread and butter, and have for some time.  Time is, of course, extremely relative.  I devoted an unusual amount of it studying the genesis and development of the main elements of my trip:  the lake, the fish, and the men who catch them.  In doing so I learned a lot.

My curiosity was kicked off by a history teacher on the trip who said while talking in the car (it’s a long drive) that the Canadian Shield, a huge rock cap covering the earth in the area through which we were driving, was Pre Cambrian rock.

“What’s Pre Cambrian mean?”

He explained by describing an exercise he used while teaching to illustrate geology and time in the minds of his students.  He would put a timeline on a long banner of paper wrapped around the walls of the school gym with different colors representing the earth’s various geologic periods up to the current year.  The earth’s Pre Cambrian period was the timeline’s longest section, 7/8ths of the history of the earth.  Man’s time on the earth was but a narrow strip in contrast.

“What’s Pre Cambrian mean when you talk about rocks?”

“It means the rocks contain no fossils whatsoever.  From that they assume the rock existed when the earth was first formed but before life as we know it existed on earth.”

“No kidding.  So Pre Cambrian rock is how old?” 

“Anywhere from 4.5 Billion years old, when we think the earth was formed, to the beginning of the Cambrian period which started 540 million years ago.”  (A billion, for those of you who forget like I do, is a thousand million. 9 zeroes.)

“So what first showed up in rocks that changed Pre Cambrian to Cambrian?”  I wish I could have been a student in that gym to see for myself.

“Simple stuff that began in the sea.  The sea leached minerals out of the rock and it became something of a soup that grew bacteria.  Algae.  That was all there was for about a billion more years and then multi celled organisms began to evolve.  More complex life forms.”

“Wow.  And the lakes up here formed when?”

“Well, glaciers advanced and retreated several times over Ontario and the Great Lakes area.  After the last one subsided these lakes we fish would have been formed.  Hard to tell exactly when they first showed up as lakes really, but a very long time ago.  Five million years I’d say.” I checked.  He was right.

The Cubs’ World Series drought sounds a lot shorter when you think in these terms.  When you talk about geology and the beginning of life you’re talking about big, big stretches of time.  They’re hard to imagine.

“When did walleye show up in those lakes?”

“I have no idea.”

The story on fish is a whole other thing.

 

Fish started in the ocean when an organism like coral, commonly known as the sea squirt, changed into something else and remained something long and tube like for a hell of a long time.  If men existed then, which they didn’t, they would have had little fun catching those fish ancestors.  Catching the earliest form of fish fish would be like hooking a worm.  Ironic isn’t it?

I’ll spare you the details, but it took at least 121 million years million years, from 541 mya to 420 mya (mya is short for million years ago) for fish to develop jaws, which is a big deal to the folks that study the evolution of fish.  They’re pretty sure jawed fish were flourishing in freshwater 383 mya, but after that my sources went off detailing how fish grew feet, evolved to breathe air, became amphibians, walked on land, and then morphed into mammals.  That’s all fine and good but it’s a hell of a long story and I just want to know where and when walleye came about.  It turns out to be complicated.  Fish back then had a tendency towards going extinct, dying off and coming back differently, messing up everything linear.  We love stories that are linear. 

One of the oldest fish now alive, the fish with the longest evolutionary winning streak you could say, is the sturgeon, which lives and looks today just as it did 245 mya in the Triassic period when it was first identified by fossils.  Did walleye come from sturgeon?  I don’t know.  Let me put you directly on the walleye track.

The walleye we were catching on Century Lake are one of five species of the genus Sander, ours being Sander Vitreous.  Sander Vitreous has two sub species, make that had two subspecies as the blue pike was declared extinct in 1983, whereas the yellow pike subspecies (like #82 from the previous post) lives on.  Shit happens still, like the blue pike’s extinction from changing weather patterns and overfishing, in the world of fish.  Evolution goes on.

From fossils the experts have it figured that Sander diverged and became its own species 24.6 mya, and that the European and North American species diverged 15.4 mya, making the walleye in Century Lake a relative rookie to the fish game compared to the Sturgeon.  I digress, but I got this material from some biologist’s dissertation on the 4^th page of a Google search.  In it I also learned that the North American walleye have a higher level of genetic diversity suggesting “fewer Pleistocene glacial bottlenecks” in Europe.  You learn something every day. 

   

Ontario and the Great Lakes area being one of those glacial bottlenecks, when Century Lake emerged from the glacier that covered the part of North America now northern Ontario, walleye as we know them were ready and waiting to live in it.  Walleye had 10.4 million years, give or take a few I’m sure, to perfect themselves before taking up residence in Century Lake.

The final piece of this puzzle not explained is how and when fishermen arrived.  How did we get there, other than the obvious and smartass answer “by plane”? As it turns out man is by far the biggest newcomer.  Here’s that story in a nutshell.

Somewhere a sturgeon is laughing.  256 mya sturgeons were the same as sturgeons today.  At that  time the closest thing to man was a mammal like egg laying reptile.  It would take another 36 million years for an animal with a constant body temperature and milk glands to evolve up.  Finally at 85-65 mya (what’s 20 million years?) a flying lemur that lived high in the forest canopy and only came out at night showed up with digits that grasp and was hailed as the ancestor of primates.  65 mya ago and man’s ancestors are not yet down from the trees.  Skip forward.

 

·        25 mya                 Your old world monkeys and apes show up

·       10 mya                 Chimps and bonobos join the party

·          7 mya                  Something different with a larnyx appears-Hominina

·        3.6 mya                A hominid foot print found in Kenya means it walked upright

·        2.8 mya                Homo Habilus, with less body hair uses stone tools

·        1.5 mya                Homo Ergaster controls fire (1.3M years to figure out fire?) 
  500 ka                  (500,000 years ago) Neanderthal appears

·        160 ka                  Homo Sapiens evolve, and learn to FISH

·        40-25 ka              Neanderthal dies out

·        20-16 ka              other humans die out. Homo Sapiens=the only game  in town

Whew.  That was a quick trip through human evolution. But it still doesn’t get people to Century Lake.  That didn’t happen for a while.  If experts are right about this (and who am I to argue?) man began in Africa and made his way to Asia and Europe a relatively short time later.  North American human habitation?  Probably after that, 16,500-11,000 years ago.  The most popular theory is the land bridge deal. You know this one too.  It was damned cold. Water was sucked up into ice formations, the sea retreated, human beings could walk from Asia to North America across a 1,000 km. wide strip of land (roughly where the Aleutian islands now are) without the sea in their way, and they did.

You saw a drawing of them in your social studies book.  People wrapped in animal skins, snow blowing around them, walking into a new land.  That theory is pretty well nailed down these days.  In 2007 a DNA test concluded that virtually all North American indigenous people share the genetic code of Eastern Siberians. Tough boogers those early men and women, and adventurous besides.  They could have been looking for someplace warmer, but most likely it was a quest for better fishing.  That is the McClure theory by the way, with absolutely no evidence of any kind to back it up.

Those that made their way to Ontario 9,000-8,000 years ago were later known as the Cree, Algonquin, and Sioux people.  When you travel to Northern Ontario you are well aware of their presence.  Although they lost control of their country and their culture was forever altered as a people they maintain their native rights to fish and trap the lakes and rivers that are leased from the Canadian government by individuals and companies(primarily white people) to promote the tourism and sport fishing industry.  On Job Lake we put our boat on shore one day to stretch our legs and look at a campsite local native people established there and no doubt frequent when the season is over.

On previous trips to other lakes in North Ontario we have seen native trapper’s cabins jammed with steel leg traps and other gear.  In the wilderness of North Ontario I feel as if I am trespassing on native land.

South Ontario is much different.  The southern portion of the province has cities like Toronto and Ottawa.  The land is arable and farms dominate the countryside.  But both people and soil thin out dramatically as you head north towards Hudson Bay.  Our band of fisherman cross the border at International Falls and go  north stopping at Dryden on the Trans Canada highway to buy groceries.  In the 216 kilometer 2 1/2  hour drive from there to Red Lake we encounter no more towns and few farms.  90% of Canadians, it is said, live within 100 miles of their border with the U.S.  I’m not sure there would be a road North to Red Lake if it wasn’t for the gold.  Red Lake is one of the world’s most prolific gold mining districts.  In 2015 the area produced 375,700 ounces of high quality gold.

The town of Red Lake, now with a population of 4,700, boomed in 1926 with the discovery of gold.  In addition to gold mining and light logging Red Lake has become as an air hub for fishermen, canoeists and kayakers exploring the wilderness inside and out of Woodland Caribou Provincial Park.  The highway essentially ends at Red Lake, though a dead end spur goes west to more mining sites.

Here’s the good news.  The miners, and the French and British fur trappers and loggers that came 300 years before them, though changing forever the life and culture of native peoples, appear to have done little damage to the land and lakes of North Ontario.  Henry Hudson claimed the region in 1611 and in 1670 the British Government essentially honored that claim granting the Hudson Bay Company free rein to develop the area.  But they did little.  Historically it seems in North America an area’s best protection against the rape, pillage, and exploitation of white men occurred when white people couldn’t figure out a way to wring money from a locale.  They took out a lot of beaver and mink.  But the mining industry is interested only in what can be extracted from shafts deep below the beauty of the Red Lake district.  The wilderness with its Pre Cambrian rock shield, pine forests, remote lakes, the walleye, the moose, the bears, the ducks are relatively safe I think.  Unless I’m wrong no more roads are slated for construction.  The fishermen are growing old from what I observe.  If a huge boom in flights to fly in fishing camps occurs in the future among young people I would be very surprised.  There’s no Wi Fi up there, or cell phone service of any kind.  Besides, the camps are equipped with outhouses.  They manage to get lake water running to a faucet in the cabin but flush toilets and septics are safely out of reach.  They’re not going to build a Hilton up there.  Thank God.

And the white people flying into the lakes, an industry that began in earnest after World War II with the development of safe nimble airplanes, barely scratch the surface of history.  60 some years of fishing from May to September?  I think it has altered the area little.  Our group, American immigrants of Scotch Irish, German, Norwegian, Mexican, and assorted lineages were mere visitors to the wilderness for seven days.  Hardly a blink in the enormity of time.  In that gym illustration of the history of the earth we would be a barely visible.  A slender streak of color drawn by a Sharpie. I don’t think we matter much in the grand scheme of Century Lake.  I hope not.

 

I think of Century Lake now when I’m home.  The ducks (Buffleheads? Mergansers? We’ll never know now) will be flying south soon along with the loons.  The Whiskey Jack, cousins of the Blue Jay, whom we fed peanuts in the shell on the deck railing, will stop hanging around the cabin and go back to the woods where they’ll hunker down for the winter.

The ground hog that lived under the cabin, the squirrels, the wolves we heard howling at the Northern Lights, will prepare for the coming cold.  Bears will hibernate.  The walleye will slow down and spread out in the lake but live comfortably under the ice and snow that will cover the surface of the lake, as they have in that lake for how long?  5 million years?  In the spring when the ice goes out they will school up, be ravenous, spawn, and get fat s the days get long.  Occasionally during a few months of summer out of shape fishermen will pull old boats off the sand, catch walleye but let them go, and leave laughing.  It’s life.  I hope it goes on forever.

Fishing Century Lake 2

I loaded my backpack with gear and swung it onto my shoulders. In one hand I held only the light portage poles in their cases, the other hand free.  My companions, younger than I, carried more.  They carried the coolers and a two gallon can of gas for the portage boats if needed.   We started by going up and over a boulder by the river, and then the path plunged straight into the woods.  Saying it was a path may be an overstatement.

There is more rock than soil beneath the boreal forest of Northern Ontario.  Sheets of rock cap and individual rocks of all sizes dominate the forest floor.  A ribbon of worn dirt as we imagine paths is seldom seen.  On top of and between the rocks moss, lichens, and pine needles form a spongy carpet underfoot.  Trailblazers had tied bright purple plastic on brush and branches showing the line to walk, taking us around obstacles like large tree and boulders.  Fallen trees and limbs lying across that line had to be negotiated, stepped over or scuttled under.  Mature jack pine, white and black spruce, and an occasional birch or balsam blocked the sky while seedlings and saplings crowded beneath them.  The trail rose and fell.  In the low places we discovered the worst hazard, bogs of standing water.  Do they have a bottom these bogs?  Surely they do, but how deep?  Trees had been chain sawed leaving stumps, other trees dead and broken from wind storms left sharp spears pointing up.  And ever present were tree roots.  It was a path obviously seldom taken.  Getting injured in a fall was a real possibility.  If I manage to hurt myself in here, I thought, and can no longer walk my friends will have a hell of a time getting me back to camp.  We made our way slowly.

After making our way down a drop in the path we turned a corner on a surreal sight.  Over a watery bog strewn with small logs was a wooden sidewalk of new weather treated lumber, three feet wide, twenty five feet long, flat as a pancake, on stringers set on concrete pads.  How they got the materials there and constructed  so perfectly is still a mystery to us.  Back at the cabin after the trip we entertained the notion someone had dropped it into place from above with a helicopter. Given the canopy of trees that’s crazy, but it’s equally unbelievable that they carried in the deck lumber by hand, the concrete mix, the long stringers of doubled up 2x8’s.  What a task that must have been. 

On the crude map they gave us every portage was a straight line of indeterminate distance.  We had no idea how long that walk actually was.  But it wasn’t any hour that’s for sure.  After the new footbridge there was another older bridge, with split logs as treads, some missing.  After that it was just logs across the muck.  My balance isn’t what it used to be.  When I stepped on logs and felt I was about to tip I simply stepped in the muck.  Yeah it went over my shoes, up to my pant legs, mid calf once.  I almost had a shoe sucked off so I stopped and tied them as tightly as possible.  I pressed on, keeping up by and large with the rest, and I didn’t fall.

One of us men strung out along the trail remembered that 25 years ago they carried outboard motors and cases of beer over trails like this.  When my son was in 7^th and 8^th grade, twenty years ago, I crossed long portages in the boundary waters with a canoe on my shoulders for Christ’s sake.  Sometimes we made two trips.  What’s wrong with me that I worried so about a relatively short walk to Century Lake?

I think I’m old that’s what’s wrong.  I think I’m old and I worry.  If I’m not careful I’ll worry myself right into limiting my activities and get even older. I’m 65.  No more and no less, and my physical abilities are what they are.  I have a friend who is 80, very active, and thinks I’m young.  I came to the realization on that portage, as I stepped over a log, that I was relatively OK, stronger than I thought, and with work and discipline I may be able to get stronger.  I vowed to let that walk to Century Lake be a lesson to me.

What’s the lesson?  One day I may no longer make the portage to Century Lake.  There may also come a time when I decide I can no longer make the trip to Ontario to fish.  It happens to every person that endures.  If we live long enough we give up things: golf, long trips, driving, living independently.  Unless we die before our time, old age can, and does slowly narrow and limit the world for each of us.  Age can rob us of all that once made us feel free and alive.  I want that time to come not one day too soon.  I do not want to give up my freedom until I absolutely must.  And I certainly won’t abide talking myself out of it.  Life as I know it now is very good.  I’m staying with it as long as I can.

*****

You can tell you’re getting to the end of a portage because the sky brightens beyond the trees as the next open lake shore nears.  We walked parallel to the shore for a while, wondering why, and then turned down to the lake.  There were the two boats we were looking for, pulled up on a sand bar and tied to trees.  We put our stuff down, congratulated ourselves, and had a rest.  Then we loaded our gear and pushed off into new territory for all of us.  We had made it to Century Lake.

The lake didn’t look special.  It was small.  You could see every shore from the middle. There were a few islands, some rock points extending out into the water from the islands, and a rock wall on one shore.  We had no depth finders so we had to fish the old fashioned way, guessing where there might be structure holding fish under the water  and drifting over that area hoping to get bites.  My partner and I started at a rock point off one end of an island.  The other boat went to the opposite shore.  It was a warm sunny day with a decent breeze.  I rolled up my pant legs to dry off my legs.  We put our poles together, tied on jigs, baited them and got them in the water.  Our day of fishing had begun.

“Let’s count what we catch,” my partner said.

“Good idea.  I can’t imagine we’ll beat a hundred.”

“That had to be a fish story.” 

“No kidding.  Why do people do that?”

I caught fish one and fish two within five minutes.  While fish two was on my line fish three announced his or her appearance by bending my partner’s pole.  Five minutes, three fish.  I don’t do a lot of math in my head, and when I do its not complicated.  But there are 12 five minutes segments in an hour.  If you caught three fish in each of those five minute segments that would be 36 fish an hour.

 

“What time is it?” I asked my partner.

“About ten.”

“So if leave at say 4:30 we’ll be on the lake six and a half hours.”

“Yeah.”

“You know a hundred fish may not be so crazy after all.”

We kept a running total and did not stay at that pace.  Somewhere around noon, we were at 41 and getting hungry.  I’d made two ham and cheese sandwiches and packed apples.

 

“You ready for lunch?”

“Sure.”

While I rummaged in the cooler for two beers and sandwiches I kept my line in the water.  We fish for walleye with a worm on a quarter ounce or heavier lead head jig trailed by a colored rubber twisty tail.  We debate the best color.  Anything bright seems good.  Because walleye feed near the bottom I let my jig go down till the line is slack, reel it up and few turns, and jig it occasionally.  Jigging is twitching the line, raising and lowering the pole.  My pole was lying across my knees while I cut the first sandwich in two on an oar.  I thought I saw the end of my pole twitch.  I picked up a sandwich half and laid it on the knee of my partner, who was likewise intently studying his line.  Picking up my pole I felt another tug, gave it a solid jerk setting the hook, and reeled up fish number 42.  He fought like hell and danced on the surface of the water with his tail.

After getting the fish in the boat I measured it and found it to be 19 inches of healthy, beautiful, fat game fish.  The walleye on Century seemed lighter in color than the fish we were catching on Job Lake, with whiter bellies and more golden sides.  I silently thanked that nice fish for selecting my bait and released it so it could return back down there near the bottom with the others.  I imagined a sea of walleye roaming the lake bed searching for food.

About the time I released my fish my partner, chewing the last of his half sandwich, was reeling in number 43, which could have been my fish’s  twin.

It kept up like that, steadily, so much so that we didn’t eat the second sandwich till almost two, and we didn’t eat the apples till we were off the lake and heading back to the cabin.

We were slowed at times.  Because we were fishing for walleye the northern pike caused us trouble.  They are bigger and more aggressive. When we fish for northern we use stronger line with steel leaders so the fish can’t cut the line with their teeth.  Horsing the bigger northerns into the boat is harder without a net, so we lost a lot of jigs, the northerns cutting our line, which  added more time time retying jigs.  Sometimes we felt the slightest tug and our lines would wave up out of the water, a northern simply gliding by and cutting our line.  When you fish for walleye you hate northerns. They keep you from your intended fish.

 

The wind came up, the sun was hot, and the fishing slowed a bit.  We repositioned the boat, traveled across the lake and back, and tried new spots.  Slowed is a relative term.  We were always catching fish, just less frantically at some times than other.  By 3:30 our count had reached 59.  A hundred fish seemed clearly out of reach.  We pulled up and traveled to our companion’s boat, which had been in the same area for a while.

They had lost count of how many fish they had hooked, but were giddy with their success.  You could feel and hear the fun coming from their boat.

“This just doesn’t quit,” our friend running the boat said.  “Move upwind about thirty yards and drift across this rock point.  We get five or six fish every pass.  It’s unbelievable.  And beautiful fish, nothing more than 20 inches, but nothing less than 16.  Get in there.  There’s plenty for everybody.”

We got in line.  As they passed the point and began to turn around we were halfway down the drift.  It was true.  We were constantly catching fish.  We consulted and agreed we should pull out about 4:30.  At 4:15 our count stood at 72 fish.

 

“We’re going to hit eighty.  Can you believe it?”

“We’ll do better than eighty,” my boat mate said.

It’s so hard to stop fishing when you’re catching fish at that rate.  At 4:40 we caught number eighty.

“Can we hit 90?” I said laughing.  ”It’s just ten more.”

“Hell, we could make 90 on one pass.”

We repositioned the boat, put on fresh worms, and let the wind carry us down for our last drift.  My partner caught 81 and I caught 82 at the same time.  A double.  The sun was getting low in the sky and sparkled on the water.  I began to fully realize what a day it had been.  As I grabbed the jig in the walleye's mouth and hauled it over the gunwale I looked 82 in one of its big eyes and spoke directly to it, in an attempt of sorts to commune with a walleye.  He seemed to be looking back at me. 

“Hello 82.  It’s an honor.  Thank you for being here.  I hope I didn’t hurt you.”  I had hooked him through the top of his upper lip, all gristle, no blood.  He would be fine, as would the other fish we caught that day.

Fish aren’t dogs.  They make iffy pets, and this was after all a wild fish.  82 looked frantic, but at the same time confident I would do the right thing.  Unlike some of his friends that had cut me with their gill plates and poked me with their fins, this fish stayed still while I worked the jig out of his lip.   I lowered him back into the water and let him swim away.

“It’s an amazing lake Gary.  And an amazing day.”

“Yes it is.”

We caught eight more fish on the remainder of that pass to bring our total to 90 for the day.  90 fish, two men, one boat.  I didn’t think it was possible. We had our boats back at the portage by 5:00, made the trek back, which was of course just as arduous but somehow easier knowing what lay ahead.  As we pulled into camp back on Job Lake our friends came down to the dock to help us with the boats.  We were tired. They had the steaks ready for dinner.

After dinner, those who braved the portage were the first to bed.  It was a beautiful day on Century Lake.  I hope to be back.

Fishing Century Lake 1

A brace of ducks skittered off the water as we rounded the first bend in the Musclow River.  We had eased slowly into the river from the west side of Job Lake.  The ducks flew low with the pines as background and then rose, clearing the tree line into a blue sky where we could see them more clearly before they flew out of sight.  Buffleheads we thought, maybe Mergansers.  Four of us in two boats were on our way to fish Century Lake.  We were worried about the portage.  At least I was.

I was one man in a group of seven on the fourth day of a week long fishing trip in Northern Ontario.  On the dock in Red Lake while we were loading the plane for the flight out, we asked the pilot about that portage to Century Lake.

 

“We finally got rain a while ago so the water should be up, rocks not a problem.  But it will be soggy on that portage.  Party I flew out a few weeks ago said it was a slow go.  An hour or more.  You gotta be in shape I‘d say.  Be careful.  The fishing should be good though on Job and Robert.  Century is catch and release. Can’t keep ‘em you know.”

We knew that.  It wasn’t the keeping but the catching that appealed to us.  We’d heard great things about Century Lake.  We all wanted to fish it.  But that report discouraged us.

Our flight out of Red Lake in an old De Havilland plane with a new turbo engine was delayed by low clouds.  Fine with us.  We prefer our pilot not take chances.  But because of the wait we didn’t get unloaded, sorted out into our bunks in the cabin, and into the boats with our gear set up and jigs in the water till almost two.  Despite the slow start we fried fourteen walleye that night for dinner along with salad and beer.  The eating was nearly as good as the fishing.

We follow the rules up there in Canada. We all bought eight day conservation licenses which allowed us to possess each day various numbers of fish by specie.  We were fishing for walleye and the daily limit was two.  Between ourselves we decided to release anything under 15 or over 18 inches long.  No young fish with a future and no old fish that are most important for breeding.  We harvested only the mid range fish, and they were abundant.  We take no fish across the border going home. The walleye were hitting hard that first day.  It was good to feel them on the line again, nearly a year since I’d felt that much anticipated tug.

We each kept our best two fish on stringers only on days were needed them for dinner.  We released them immediately on the off days.  We ate walleye fried, baked and served with a butter caper sauce, and in fish tacos with a choice of homemade Mexican red and green sauces.  We ate well up there, and decided to mix up the menu more than in previous years.  We brought steaks as always but also chicken breasts marinated and frozen in Jamaican jerk sauce, and penne pasta with a good homemade meat sauce.

Breakfast featured bacon nearly every day.  We order bacon from the outfitter in Red Lake that is cured and cut by a local butcher. I don’t know why it’s so much better than our bacon at home but it is.  We had bacon with pancakes and eggs, bacon with omelets, biscuits and gravy (skipped the bacon that morning and suffered a few complaints) along with BLT’s for lunch.  Some summers the tomatoes don’t last in our local gardens till Labor Day but this year we had plenty, along with home grown garlic and freshly picked Illinois peppers.  I almost added bacon to the homemade chili for Wednesday’s lunch but decided against it, believing that would be extravagant.  I can’t imagine groups in other cabins eating better than us.

The cabin was equipped with four boats.  Three boats switched off partners each day and one of us fished solo in the remaining boat.  Everyone fished with everyone.  On the day I fished with Bob, the only one of us with prior experience on Job Lake, we went down to the river leading into Robert Lake to fish the shallows and also to travel the river and see how the first portage into Robert Lake looked.  Bob had heard rumors of moose sightings in the river, so he put the motor up a notch and ran shallow and slow, carefully keeping the motor at the same speed so the noise from it became a steady drone rather than a rise and fall more noticeable to a moose.  Better to sneak up on them grazing the river. 

Moose who stand on those long legs in the shallows, often with their head in the water, are eating plants like wild rice.  There were big beds of wild rice in the Musclow, but as quiet and stealthy as we were we encountered nary a moose.

We did encounter two fishermen, the only other humans within miles we believe, staying in a cabin on Robert Lake, who had made the portage from there and were heading up the river to fish Job Lake for the day.  As their boat neared we began to talk.

“Have you seen any moose?” Bob said.

“Not a one.  Thought we saw some tracks on the portage though.”

“How are the fish treating you?”

“Good, especially on lower Robert.  How is the fishing on Job?”

“We can’t complain.”

“Have you been to Century?” I said.

“Went yesterday.  It was unbelievable.”

“How was the portage?” I said.

“Not as bad as we were told.  They built a new bridge platform over the worst stretch.  It only took us about half an hour.  You have to go slow and watch your step, but it is more than worth it.”

That was a different story than we’d been told.  Maybe the pilot was trying to discourage us?

“The two of us caught a hundred fish between us in one boat.”

“You’re shittin me,” I said.

I’d never heard such a thing or imagined the possibility.  A hundred fish.

“Swear to God.”

Fisherman and the truth are easily separated, even among the most religious of anglers.  But if it the fishing was anything close to that good, even accounting for the brag, I knew I had to go.  Our boats were passing out of earshot.

“Good luck fishing Job,” Bob yelled.

They hollered back, their response faint.

“Go to Century Lake.”

That night over Bushmills Irish whiskey and Molson Ale we planned the trip.  Four of us would go first and advise the other three as to the rigor of the portage and the advisability of going.  The youngest and those in the best shape would go first.  I fit neither category.  I was the oldest and of those four and definitely the most gimpy. 

“I’m going to have to go slow,” I told them.  “I got this right knee and left ankle thing.  I’m telling you, I could hold you up.”

They wouldn’t let me talk my way out of it.  The plan was to free our hands, mostly mine, carrying as little as possible so we could grab onto trees and stumps and break our fall if we stumbled on the trail.  We wouldn’t take full tackle boxes, stringers, depth finders, or nets and we would use backpacks to carry bait, boat gas, jigs and only a little tackle, lunch, and small coolers.  We had two portage poles, which broke down into four pieces and fit into short cases so they wouldn’t catch on trees and brush.  We would go in early morning, fish all day, and make the trip back while there was plenty of light.  We had only to hope for good weather.

 

Most days started still and cloudy, cleared up midday as the wind picked up, only to have the clouds return by evening.  We’d been hoping for clear nights.  You never see more stars than when you are way up in the north woods.  That night the sun set and the sky remained clear.  Our necks got stiff from looking up.  It was a waning crescent moon, just a sliver.  As it got darker more stars came out.  Before we turned in for the night the Milky Way was a bright carpet across the eastern sky.  The big dipper was huge, the front two stars of the pail pointing to the North Star.  Cassiopeia was there, like a big W, and I thought I saw the seven sisters.  I wish I knew more.  I wished I was a kid back home on the farm.  We would turn off the pole light and I lie on a blanket in the front yard next to Mom.  She knew them all.  We’d follow her finger, squinting with one eye, and pretend we saw them too.

We had a standing agreement that if anyone got up in the middle of the night and saw the Northern Lights they would wake the others.  That night, I don’t know when, I heard the call.  It was a cold night and not everyone chose to come out, some stayed in the warmth of their sleeping bags.  As I stepped onto the deck and looked north a dancing finger of pale green light, eerie and otherworldly, made its way through the middle of the big dipper.  No one among the small group standing in the cold spoke. The silence was intense. As we looked at the sky wolves howled far off. 

   

The sky was still clear the next morning.  After bacon and eggs with pancakes, four of us in two boats headed to the west side of Job Lake where we entered the Musclow River and scared up the Buffleheads (maybe Mergansers).  The trip down the river was short.  By the time we reached the falls the sun was still hidden behind the pine, spruce, and birch forest that surrounded them.  Job Lake is some twenty-five feet higher than Robert.  The river falls and tumbles nicely over large rocks before it opens up into Robert Lake.

We nosed our boats into the bank at the top of the falls and tied them next to portage boats placed there for fishermen camped on Robert heading the other way, like the ones we met the previous day.  We didn’t take extra care in packing up for the walk around the falls.  It was less than a hundred yards.  At the foot of the falls two boats awaited us.  We took them a short distance straight across the upper portion of Robert Lake and entered the river again, winding our way into Moose Lake, hooking around the first point to the left and finding the portage to Century.  It was obviously much less traveled.  There were weeds around the tie in.  The bank rose steeply.

It was getting warm as we began to organize for the long walk.  I took off my jacket and flannel shirt.  As I did I told myself that my right knee, although it may send shooters of pain up or down my leg from time to time, doesn’t really give out.  When it feels as if it does that’s just my brain automatically trying to take weight off the joint to avoid the pain.  It will hold steady even though it hurts.  And my left ankle, despite not allowing my foot to fall flat when I step nor bend as much as the right, won’t turn or throw me off if I am deliberate and careful.  I would not hurry and hope for the best.