Rendezvous in the Bush
by Jim Carrier
The tales and our camaraderie resumed. QP and Woods Walker told us about climbing a fire tower. They displayed well-marked maps of Quetico containing references to Message Caches, pictographs, fishing holes, camp sites, little-known portages, and more. Intrepid Camper impressed us with her wilderness savvy and her extraordinary "lean camping" skills. We learned she lives on an island just outside the BWCA and makes several solo trips into the park each year. Magic Paddler wandered over after ensuring his brother was safe and warm in his bag. Their day had been particularly gruesome and soggy. They had been especially glad to see the "pink beacons" of our camp. To my further embarrassment, he ceremoniously presented me with an "inflatable" pink flamingo!
I winced again. My notoriety as a collector of useless lawn ornaments had clearly approached mythic status!
Everyone began to relax. The group got chummy. Much to my red-faced son's embarrassment, I was coaxed into rendering impromptu verse from an art form I liberally call "Bushwhacker Balladeering". My "ballads" are not likely to rate Top Forty radio time in the foreseeable future. That I was actually encouraged to recite more than one ballad was a "first' for me and showed me how kind these folks truly were! We went on to exchange canoeing stories, camping tips, addresses, and other personal information. It was an awful lot of fun just putting faces on well-known but previously unseen Internet friends! All the while, Mother Nature spewed her blasts just an arm's length away.
We wondered how others "out there" were faring. Were they approaching the interior from the Kawnipi side? Is that where bushwhackers like Stumpy or Hexnymph or Pittsburgh Portager were right now? Or, would they or others yet miraculously appear out of the gloom, drawn to Flamingo Island - before the evening light was gone?
Later, as we lay in our bags that long, wet night, Ben and I likened the impromptu Cairn Lake "happening" to the fabled Voyageurs' "Rendezvous" of old. We had shared a cheery, lively campfire with a colorful company of like-minded souls. All of these folks shared a common thirst for adventure and passion for the Quetico wilderness. We drifted off to sleep. Sometime in the night the pounding rain finally stopped.