Living life out of a packsack

By Staff | on June 02, 2023

As a canoe guide (summer only, and not any longer), I lived out of a packsack. This simple sort of life suited me well for decades. A quick rinse and dry (performed as weather permitted) of the basics, such as socks, for next-day use was all a guy needed for comfort. I felt no hardship.

If it rained all day, my feet were wet until my boots dried. That's how it was. Honestly, I lived with and enjoyed it. I didn't need much worldly material or ease to enjoy life's fullness. A day paddling was a good day. A simple cooking fire and an evening on the water with a popper going after smallmouth were the whipped cream and cherry. A good life spent guiding others was all the better being kept uncomplicated and easy.

Eventually, and with no regret I must add, the toll of toting double packs plus canoe led to wear and tear on joints. The younger me, who was taught by Dorothy Molter to flip a canoe overhead in a single sweeping move, knows better than try repeating the act these days, at an elevation superior to the teacher I saw as "old" when I was age 15. So much is perception and time of life, isn't it?

At the time, I felt respectful of instruction by an elder who was also impressive in her abilities. I never became like Ollor Snevets—reputed to take two canoes over a portage in one go—but I was decent enough. Was it work, real labor? Yes, but also no. There was definite effort involved, but also satisfying to judge just when to ease the portage yoke one way or another to relieve a cramp and keep going. It felt good to "dance" along a damp trail and not fall prey to this slick root or that mossy rock.

This reminds me. Canoeing as I did it was neither sport nor recreation. It was a vocation or, at the very least, a seasonal occupation. I was paid for providing equipment, food and service, but my activities didn't feel like work. How could it be work if I felt so immensely happy swinging a paddle all day and going up and over portages? I loved what I did and enjoyed making a "wilderness style" (my terminology for a certain kind of camping experience) canoe trip available to urban guests.

Time as a Boy Scout on the Range gave me a head start not available to someone in Peoria. There was no special skill involved in roughneck youthful campouts. Over time, you simply learned what worked and didn't. If you planned to cook a get-going breakfast, you’d better make sure you had wood set aside and covered beforehand. The simplicity of wilderness-style camping rests in knowing the game and staying ahead in preparation.

Aside from tricks (they weren't) of the trade—loading, handling, and paddling a canoe—the other essential was recognizing the tricks (again, no trick involved) of aiding people in a wilderness setting. I’d slept on the ground often enough to know the value of getting loose stones or pinecones out of the way. Telling guests was sufficient, not so for the outdoor privy with no walls or door. I was used to that. The typical camper from Austin was not, so we had simple guidelines to make that less daunting for the first-timer. They weren't dumb for being uneasy on the privy or tucking in with a layer of nylon between them and an imagined bear. Essential as providing the right gear and food, a guide had to set a tone of calm, steady, and appreciation. You simply had to help others get more from their new experience. A little recognition of human nature helped.

I miss the days of life without walls, when a circle of light ‘round a campfire was all the boundary there was. Other than the times fierce winds threatened to uproot tents, I never feared what was in the dark night. For me, fear was internal, not external. I was often asked about bears and big feet. An honest answer (people can tell if you’re fudging) is all you need about the habits of bears and the presence of the large foot. I avoided areas where bears became habituated to people and kept a tidy campsite free of enticing odor. The pesky red squirrel was my main food pack nemesis. If you did hang food in a tree, that might make it handier for Mr. Red to get at. I had patched packs to prove it. When guests understood the local villains were a foot of body and one of tail, the dread of bears in the black was put aside.

A wilderness guest wasn't dumb for not having had my opportunities to grow up in the outdoors. I knew and loved the canoe country because I was lucky enough to be here. Put me in a farm field and I was experientially lost, not knowing what was going on. Real or actual experience often has some cost.

A canoe adventure is apt to include some days of rain or storm, and almost for sure will come complete with mosquito hordes. Things that can't be done away with need to be adjusted to and lived with. Years as a guide helped me appreciate people while also recognizing a built-in urge many of us have to speak without understanding and fix what doesn't need fixing. How many times did I hear, "This would be so nice without these mosquitoes." Go ahead. Take the pest away and watch as the dominoes fall and nature shrinks.

In contemporary society where experience is sometimes virtual and few have read by kerosene light or carried water indoors, there is a corresponding lack of "real." By that I mean not enough recognition of what is and that messing with life areas as if they were parts of a game, scenario, or strategy will not only often fizzle out but will fail to see the consequences of acts.

In contrast, "simple" camping was much about consequence. Push or draw on one end of a canoe and there's a result at the other. No matter how much a person might wish or desire it, the light end of a canoe is never the one to put into wind or current. A century ago, there was a general worry in society that people, especially youth, were becoming too disconnected from the land and nature. Those worries helped spur many educational and social movements, notably the Girl and Boy Scout programs.

You could say, without fear of being too off-the-mark, that contemporary society is even more removed from nature than the people of a century past. A plain old dumb canoe guide looks at some things and simply knows. No amount of grand idealism will make a good plan of two 10-year-old kids in a canoe together on a windy day. If you didn't know that, you might look for people who’d ask around before making the commitment. (By asking around I do not mean the ever convenient and satisfying pooling of ignorance we see so often.)

Canoe guide experience asks, "What's behind this? Has anyone done this?" Put in the Iron Range form I grew up knowing and battling, it might go like this: "Maybe, if you’re going to make a plan about farming, you might want to have an actual background in dirty hands farming." Wishing, insisting loudly, or standing unmoving on beliefs won't change facts. (Except, that is, for those who twirl fact and feeling into a cone of imagined reality.) A law requiring spring to start sooner won't change nature.

But now to the reason I began at the bottom of the packsack. Not much down there. If given a good shake, a balsam needle and some grit might drop out. The packsack itself won't say how many miles and lakes it's traveled or give its age in years. Age doesn't matter very much if the packsack remains sound.

A Duluth Cruiser can live and work a darn long time. But what of experience? Is that shown in the pack. Basically no. Experience (or we could say human worth) isn't vested in things. It's in us. The ever-watchful "busybody" down the street can be seen as a nuisance or useful watchdog. Which depends on us, on you and me. We can dismiss the importance (experience) of others. What's gained? What's lost? The bottom of the packsack shows wear and stains. Experience of the useful kind tends to have some scars. The bottom of the packsack telling us what not to do might be worth listening to alongside a projection of what hasn't happened.

I must tell you, however, an old beat up packsack can be hard to part with. The gear I relied on became trusted associates, almost entities in their own right. The handmade Frank Powell paddle I used for years over uncounted miles and countless waterways was eventually given up, sent on to another life, but not without sadness and not without gladness. Travels and travails of canoe camping leave marks. A frayed strap shows a time when a red squirrel found the strap of interest on a pack well-marked from years of useful use. Rips, tears, and stains; without them there is no happy ending.

Harry Drabik lives in Aurora. His family moved to Hoyt Lakes in 1957. He graduated from Aurora-Hoyt Lakes High School in 1962, then went to the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He has worked as an outfitter guide in the BWCAW and also did archaeological surveys in Canada for more than a decade. Harry lived on the North Shore until moving back to the Range five years ago.

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