I wish I could find the words to tell the whole story behind this set of photographs. This is a recap of my my six-day solo trip into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA), along the Canadian border in northeastern Minnesota.

The first three days were nothing but storms. Rain, sleet, ice, snow, thunder and lightning all at the same time; while the wind created whitecaps on top of whitecaps, and kicked up spray that stung the face and hands like a whip made of fire. Day and night, the storms came in waves, and made the portage trails slick and muddy. There was no relief, no matter where I traveled.

I was recovering from illness when I entered the woods, and three days later, I found myself on my way back to the first portage to call it quits. I was barely able to keep food down, I was weak and sore, and these million acres of wilderness were quickly brewing up a recipe for disaster.

There is no sense in staying if it is going to be like this, I kept telling myself. Out in the woods, alone and far from home, is a very bad place to be sick. It was a strenuous chore just to gather firewood, and I spent most of the second day in my tent , unable to sleep.

It took everything I had just to get to that point, to make the call to pull the plug. When I landed at the last portage, my heart was aching more than my body. I sat there for a long time waiting for some lightning to pass over, and I was torn up inside with my decision. When the lightning passed, I couldn't bring myself to go through with it.

I must have spent a few hours there pacing about, trying to decide what to do next. I knew I didn't have it in me to quit, but I was sick and alone and I could barely lift my pack to my shoulders. Finally I said "one more day," and I turned around and headed back to the north; back into the crashing waves, and against the wind for two more miles back up the lake, to make camp and wait out my illness for another night.

That evening, the winds went calm, and I watched the storms dissipate from the bottom up, as they do when they have sucked the last bit of energy from the atmosphere. Watching them die made me feel like I'd won, and miraculously, the next morning my illness was gone. I could eat, my strength came back to me, and I was able to push on with the next phase of my travels.

It was a day that will live in me forever, a small victory in an unforgiving land. The rest of the journey was made in good weather, and became one of the great defining moments of my entire young life.

Once I found the actual porage to Gull, I started noticing a LOT of bear sign. Fresh scat was everywhere, and tons of it. There were tracks in the mud here and there as well, and given the rains of the day and night before, they must have been very recent. I tried to make as much noise as possible on the trail, and fortunately, I didn't run into any of the big fellas cruising the woods for bugs and berries.

When I got to Gull, there were two other guys there, reading their maps next to their fancy kevlar canoe. I was glad I wasn't the only one with little idea of where I was headed that day, but we didn't get to talking. As soon as I arrived, I dropped the pack, told them, "good luck," and turned around to go fetch the canoe. Aside from two other people spending only Saturday night back on Angleworm, those two guys were the only other people I saw out there.

The next few lakes were on the small side, and fortunately, the portages were short and flat. The wind was still whipping around, but the rains never came again. Some of the bigger water was a bit nerve-wracking, as my overloaded little solo canoe bobbed and weaved with the waves, but she held her own against all of it. Even with the heavy load, I could still get her up and moving in a hurry, and turn on a dime when I needed to. All in all, I am very impressed with the capabilities of my new toy.

I did manage to do some fishing, but not much. I was standing on a rock ledge at the edge of the water, when on the first cast, my reel unspooled funny and left me with a bit of a tangle to deal with. My little Mepp's spinner landed at the edge of the rock I was on, in less than an inch of water. While I was looking the other way, dealing with the mess of line, I heard a loud "swoosh" of water behind me. Something had tried to swipe the spinner from the ledge!

Once I fixed the tangle, I cast out and drew the spinner back along the rocks nice and slow, and sure enough, a keeper-sized smallmouth came up and swiped at it again, but to no avail.

Encouraged, I got in the canoe and started working the little bays and coves around camp, flicking grubs and spinners in between rocks and sunken logs, on the prowl for anything that felt like dancing. On a nice warm summer evening, I might have come back with a whole stringer full of bass, but the cold water and late spring probably still had the fish confined to deeper waters.

To make a long story short, I didn't catch a thing.

The feeling that washed over me at that moment was the most eerie feeling I've ever had. It wasn't fear, but more like humility. I was finally starting to feel like a force in the world, strong as a man against the timeless power of the wilderness, when Mother Nature flashed her ace card and reminded me of my place in the grand scheme of things.

Being out there is like playing poker with the greatest cheat who ever lived. Mother Nature has all of the aces, and we only win sometimes because of the simple fact that she allows us to. She is The House, and The House always comes out ahead in the end. We are good gamblers when the cards are in our favor, but The House always wins.

I will never forget hearing those wolves, and the way it made me feel. That moment alone was worth all of the miserable storms, all of the rough water, and all of the miles spent breaking my back on the portages. I heard the wolves again in the morning, when the sky was starting to lighten, but the sun hadn't yet risen above the horizon.

That same morning, having accomplished what I came to accomplish, and having learned what I had come to learn, I cooked a nice breakfast and then packed up camp and headed for the final portage.

I was disappointed at having lost so much time to being sick, and my inability to make it all the way across the border, but the week was not wasted, not by any stretch of the imagination. Quetico will be there next year (or sooner...?), and I am starting to think about a potential hunting trip in one for the coming autumns. The BWCA is full of adventurous possibilities for the years to come.

I am glad that the federal government had the foresight to protect this area as a designated wilderness area. Lazy people and their lobby groups still push for more of it to be opened to motorized use, which is as absurd as it is offensive. You can run a motor boat and drink beer just about anywhere, on any of Minnesota's 10,000-plus lakes, we don't need to open the BWCA to that sort of use.

That sort of change would be breaking a promise to the generations following ours. As our cities grow larger, and our people become more and more disconnected from the natural world, places like the BWCA become more and more valuable. It is public land, everyone has the opportunity to go there and rediscover what it really means to be human, at least everyone with the will and the fortitude to face its challenges.

We should all be personally committed to ensuring that these places continue to be protected. If we lose the wilderness, we lose everything.

Thanks for stopping by, and remember to Leave No Trace.