Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the skies,
Throwing shadows on our eyes

I’m still trying to catch up at home after two weeks away. But I want to write down a little about my trip to Quetico before it gets to be old news, because I had a wonderful time.

There were nine of us in the rather eclectic group put together by Dr Starr Bowen, who is a canoe builder who goes to Quetico regularly.  Five were women, including his daughter who is a documentary film-maker in London and three of her friends from England, two of them recent Oxford grads.  There was a college sophomore and a 16-year-old and the rest of us were middle-age guys.  It was an interesting mix and made for some good campfire conversations.

Quetico Provincial Park is just barely across the Canadian border from Minnesota.  It is a pristine wilderness where no motorized vehicles are allowed, a huge maze of lakes and conifer forests. We put in our canoes at Beaverhouse Lake, on the left in the map below and followed the black line for ten days, camping out mostly in a different place each night, before exiting the…