Shh. Listen to the Quiet
“Each night we sat there looking down the waterway, listening to the loons filling the darkening narrows with wild reverberating music, but it was when they stopped that the quiet descended, an all-pervading stillness that absorbed all the sounds that had ever been. No one spoke. We sat there so removed from the rest of the world and with such a sense of complete remoteness that any sound would have been a sacrilege.” Sigurd Olson, a writer and naturalist who explored the North Woods by canoe for many decades. Excerpted from “Open Horizons,” first published in 1969.
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The North Woods of Wisconsin and Minnesota is mostly boreal forest, a rich mix of softwoods and hardwoods amid lakes galore. Lightly populated, even today.
Let’s go.
My wife and I visited from Connecticut in early June to mostly unsettled weather, plenty of showers, temperatures on the cool side of normal.
We stopped first in Neenah, Wisconsin, so Susan could visit her childhood home for the first time in 60 years and get together with some of her childhood girl friends. We had lunch with Jan Buchta Bigalke and her husband, Terry, and breakfast with Mary Hilton Richgels and her husband, Don Richgels. Good people, great start to the trip.
From there we headed in our rental SUV to the North Woods; Apostle Islands National Lakeshore on Lake Superior in far northern Wisconsin.
I arose early the next morning with rain threatening - it was foggy and misty already - and drove to one of the park’s signature hikes, the Lakeshore Trail, a five-mile path of ups and downs that mostly hugs the Superior shoreline.
Given that there was indeed occasional light rain, that I started very early, and that it was a weekday, I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised that I saw only three hikers in more than two hours on an otherwise popular trail.
Foreshadowing what was to be a theme on this trip, the woods were stunningly quiet, peaceful. The familiar song of red-eyed vireos was a near-constant companion - sort of similar to that of a robin - and crystal clear. The sounds of widely scattered raindrops falling softly on leaves was almost the only background to the bird songs. Nashville warblers. Ovenbirds. A Canada warbler at trail’s edge, its black “necklace” crisply outlined against its yellow throat and belly. I found myself smiling.
Apostles Island National Lakeshore in Wisconsin juts into the western edge of Lake Superior. In places, the shoreline of Superior and its islands drops off sharply, with intricate caves and rock formations on the cliffside, created by wind and crashing water over the centuries.
On a boat tour of Superior the next day, we got great views and photos of the caves along Devil’s Island, one of the 21 Apostle Islands that make up the national lakeshore.
About a four-hour drive from the national lakeshore, is Voyageurs National Park on the Canadian border in Minnesota, named for the incredibly rugged fur traders of the late 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries.
Mostly French-Canadian, the Voyageurs traded for furs - especially the highly desired beaver pelts used in England - following wilderness waterway routes that were cold, dangerous and exhausting, from Montreal to the far western provinces of Canada, including Lake Kabetogama, a major part of the national park.
Bordering Canada, Kabetogama is about 18 miles long east to west, with more than 200 miles of shoreline. It and the forest surrounding it are near-wilderness.
I paddled a kayak on the Ash River, which flows into the lake, and hiked a half dozen trails in the national park and, as at Apostle Islands, ran into but a few other hikers.
On the Blind Ash Bay Trail, a footpath through thick boreal forest with plenty of roots and rocks to keep things interesting, I hiked to a rocky promontory with big views of Kabetogama, a little over three miles round-trip. I met a couple from Tennessee. I took photos of them, they of me. Other than our brief exchange, it was me and the birdsong. Lots of red-eyed vireos and warblers, once again.
Among the coniferous species, which were abundant, are three kinds of pine, the eastern white pine, the red pine and, a pine of the north country, the jack pine, which can be scraggly and is notable for its small, curved cones that sometimes only open if exposed to fire. At the overlook was a jack pine that surely was a good example of this species. Stunted, crooked, with abundant little cones that it seemed unwilling to shed, it nonetheless expressed itself as it knew best in its familiar habitat - often growing on little more than the thinnest layer of soil. In its own way, a stoic and healthy part of this ecosystem.
The next day we arranged a private boat tour of Kabetogama with a guide named Larry, who proved deeply knowledgeable about the region.
He pointed out wilderness campsites, and a historical old portage route. We saw loons and an eagle, natch, and a historic tiered rock garden that the National Park Service has maintained. We were out for nearly two hours and slowly passed by many miles of shoreline, all but a tiny smidgeon of shore was wooded and uninhabited.
What does Kabetogama mean? Larry says most people translate the indigenous name as “lake of angry waters.” With the right wind, Kabetogama can quickly rage with big waves.
Larry told us what I already knew to be true, that the North Woods can be a kind of quiet that is unknown in cities and suburbs. He’s had clients who asked to be dropped off at wilderness campsites and within a day or two contacted him to come and get them. They found wilderness quiet disturbing.
Larry doesn’t. And neither do I. Peace and quiet in nature was part of the reason for coming to the North Woods. Surely, the national park - created in 1975 and totaling 218,054 acres - has helped keep noise down.
Leaving Voyageurs, and knowing the beginning of the Mississippi River was nearby, I had to see it, paddle it. I’ve wanted to paddle a piece of the upper Mississippi for years, add it to all those other American rivers I’ve experienced.
We rented a cabin on the shore of Lake Itasca in Lake Itasca State Park in Minnesota, accepted today as the headwaters of the river. The river flows from the foot of the lake.
Itasca, a pseudo-indigenous moniker, was fashioned from Latin words for “true” and “head,” by a 19th Century explorer, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who claimed to have discovered the Mississippi source. It was known to Ojibwe people as Omashkoozo-zaaga'igan, often translated today as Elk Lake. Lake Itasca is best described as the “culturally accepted” beginning of the Mississippi. It can be argued that there are even smaller sources - or that one of the Mississippi’s major tributaries, the Ohio or the Missouri rivers, are the ultimate source.
I first walked a wide path to the rocky outflow of the infant Mississippi, took photos, then rented a kayak and paddled 4 miles of the lake. Goal achieved. I visited and paddled the beginning of the Mississippi, at least the culturally accepted beginning.
While I traveled through the North Woods, I reread “Songs of the North,” selected essays from Sigurd Olson’s books. Olson spent decades exploring the North Woods lakes and rivers of northern Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Canadian wilderness.
I first read Olson in the 1970s; some of his essays were first written in the 1950s - and he complained about omnipresent noise then.
Many decades ago he and friends camped on a small island on a remote lake as night fell, listening to the musical, charming cry of loons, the only sounds his small party could hear. When the loons stopped, there was quiet… pure quiet.
“I think the loss of quiet in our lives is one of the great tragedies of civilization, and to have known even for a moment the silence of wilderness is one of our most precious memories,” he wrote.
Even now, in the first half of the 21st Century, well over 50 years after Olson lamented a too-noisy world, you can experience quiet in the North Woods. Not everywhere to be sure, but it is still possible to find real quiet.
At dawn one morning on Itasca I brewed coffee and took a cup to the porch of our cabin. A loon issued its yodel-like song. Next to my coffee was Olson’s book, which I had been reading. When the loon wasn’t calling, there was silence. Beautiful silence. A red-eyed vireo issued its song close beside the porch, and it was as if it was the only sound in the world at that moment.
There are many people, myself included, who believe that the constant noise of society today is an unending stress that permeates and degrades lives. But little is done. One of the “great tragedies of civilization” continues.
Thank goodness for big forests and wild waterways.
Stretches of rocky shoreline in Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin were sculpted by wind and waves over the centuries. This shoreline is part of one of the Apostle Islands, Devils Island, in Lake Superior. Click to enlarge.
Growing to the edge of the National Lakeshore Trail in Apostle Islands National Lakeshore were abundant wildflowers in bloom, including these bluebead lillies, common in the North Woods. Gentle rain made the leaves glisten. Click to enlarge.
I didn’t see another hiker on the Sullivan Bay Trail in Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota. But I repeatedly heard the melodious song of the wood thrush. Click to enlarge.
For the most part I had these vast North Woods forests to myself, seeing few hikers on the trails. Here, at a Lake Kabetogama outlook on the Blind Ash Bay Trail in Voyageurs National Park, I ran into a couple from Tennessee and we took each other’s photos. Click to enlarge.
The jack pine is a pine of the northernmost states and Canada. It can be scraggly and tends to hang on to its cones for years, as with this tree in Voyageurs National Park, Minnesota, on the Canadian border. Click to enlarge.
Our guide, Larry, who operates a private tour service in Voyageurs National Park, gave us a custom tour of Lake Kobetogama, sharing his deep knowledge of the lake with us. Click to enlarge.
The Mississippi River as it leaves Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota. From here it flows 2,552 miles to the Gulf of Mexico. Click to enlarge.
The Mississippi River in northern Minnesota moments after leaving Lake Itasca. Click to enlarge.