During the last few days we have been paddling in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and even nipped to Ontario for more lakes. But eventually the bad drizzly foggy and otherwise nasty weather pushes us south.
Crossing the American Narrows on our way back to the US we run a maze of old railroad tracks, confusing industrial bridges spanning who knows what, and changing lanes which twist like dry spaghetti. The rain is still coming down in a cold nagging drizzle, the way it did all last week in Canada, and we are hoping for better paddling weather here. But this place does not look promising.
"Have you ever seen a stranger border crossing?" asks John. The U.S. customs' officer does not look too good, either: pockmarked and somber, he offers none of the usual "welcome home" stuff. He takes our passports and asks about any fruit or vegetables we may have with us. John tells him we just ate our last two apples.
"Any onions?" the guy asks, and his expression darkens.
Onions? Onions? How does he know? Yes, we do have one onion. Maybe, like John, I should offer the greatest possible information and tell him that being a crazy mushroom picker I carry onions and sour cream wherever I go. But this guy may be looking for a deeper meaning accessible only to him. Onion rockets? Onion bombs?
"What kind of onion?" he asks. This is getting slippery. "Red. It is a red onion. One," I stress. He startles a bit, as if this revelation confirmed his nasty suspicions, and waves us into a side bay. Two agricultural inspectors, both women, approach our truck.
"So, you've got some onions?" one asks, knowingly. "What kind?
"Red onion," we reply in unison. "One. One onion."
She wants John to dig it out. He obliges and she eyes it critically. "Oh, it is red. That's OK," she says. "You can go."
We wait until her co-worker opens a heavy barrier separating us from the free people who are allowed to keep all kinds of onions. The free people of International Falls, Minnesota. We roll into town and can tell by boarded up storefronts and front yards decorated mostly with old cars and appliances this place is down on its good luck. Large murals cover whatever they can.
The home cooking place is a warm and crowded codgery. This is our name for back country cafes where old codgers sporting stretched suspenders and backs wrecked by decades of farming congregate daily for their refills of truly terrible coffee and some corner-of the-mouth gossip. There is a FREE WI-FI sign but not a single laptop, tablet or a smart phone anywhere in sight: are we in some foreign country? Here you talk. And eat stuff which is definitely bad for you but seems to put heat in your body and keep it there.
Our warmth persists much of the dismal day, so when it suddenly stops drizzling and we find a rapids-free sweep of the Little Indian Sioux River meandering among tall reeds, we put in. Julia goes in the river first, then our gear, and we are off, upstream. Finally!
Not really. Soaring over tall birches, pines and cedars, a flapping wing of rain overtakes us in no time. The rain comes down so fast we get drenched before we yank our rain gear from their dry sacks. For some idiotic reason, we try to flee and paddle like mad upstream to escape the deluge. I have to watch for barely submerged rocks but all I see are fat droplets whipping the river into an array of watery stalagmites, which raise and collapse like miniature pistons. Mesmerized, I want to photograph them, but we come to what appears to represent our senses, and turn back. John hoists Julia on the roof of the camper with seats still attached to speed things up. We throw our soaked gear in. And then it stops raining. Yes. And I do not even have a single picture of beautiful rain stalagmites. Subdued, we pull into a small forestry campground beneath a massive elephant rock.
Morning is overcast. I read the campground's bulletin board and learn that Boundary Waters bears can recognize camping food coolers left unattended in cars. And they rip into vehicles to get to them. Smart bears.
A man approaches our campsite and asks if he can cross it to get to the top of the elephant rock. He cradles in his arms a plastic bag filled with what looks like a fine grey gravel. His face is solemn and I suddenly know why he is here.
"Is this what I think it is?" I ask, and he says yes: these are his mother's ashes. She loved this lake, these rocks, and used to come here often to hunt grouse. A crack shot, she liked to teach others how to do it well. Worked for Honeywell, supervising four engineers involved in the Gemini program and the Apollo. Met all the astronauts. Later in life she suffered congestive heart disease and had to move to a nursing home. But last time he called her she told him she could not talk because she was too busy: she was cooking dinner for all home residents. He managed to tell her he was clearing her house which needed to be sold, and she asked what he did with her bottles of bourbon. She had more than 40 of them stashed all over the place, and he already gave them to her friends. Ah, she said, that's good, but did you find an unopened vodka bottle? Yes, I did, and I put it in the freezer. Great, she said, just bring it over when you come on Sunday. And two hours later the home called because she died. So he will scatter her ashes on the rocks and go for a 35-mile hike. Three days.
I walk over and put my arms around him. "Thank you, Ma'am," he says simply, and I sense this is it. There will be no more words, just his short climb to the top of the elephant rock and the ritual of parting with what can still be touched of the woman who gave him life. She was a crack shot, and loved her bourbon, and this lake, and her life, too. We do not meet him again but late in the evening we climb the rock and see a grey layer of fine ashes scattered on a sloping ledge overlooking the darkening lake.
"Goodnight, Mother," says John.
His mother, too. And my own. Goodnight, Mothers.
©Yva Momatiuk
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