When It Was Film, Part IV --Elements

Gordon Lake Cliffs, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness                       

Date Unknown, 1996

Cliffs of Gordon Lake, Boundary Waters Canoe

 Area Wilderness, MN, USA

Gordon Lake is a beautiful and wild lake situated between three iconic Boundary Waters lakes, Cherokee Lake, Long Island Lake, and Frost Lake.  Gordon is not so much of a destination as it is a passed-through, even overlooked hub of open water between destination portages.  Reaching Gordon Lake, a traveler has most likely been traveling all day through wilderness, packing, portaging and paddling, and has just a few more lifts and a few more brisk minutes on the water before settling into a camp spot for the night.  If not that scenario, then it is the first challenge of the day, having just slipped from camp in the morning light and completed the first portage of many in a day of rugged wilderness travel.  Either way, this lake is just something in the middle, and many people run through it without purpose of seeing or feeling its beauty.

The reality of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is that beauty is found everywhere and in an endless variety of shapes, patterns, movements, and lives.  Traveling slowly through this wilderness, approaching the path more in the way of a hunter, opens the senses to the importance in the changing land forms, the different characters of water, and the diverse plant, animal, and fungal communities that change from place to place.  Sometimes, like so many others, I set a point on a map, a goal to reach, and I paddle hard with my head down.  Sometimes, like so many others, I portage the pack with relentless fury, intent only on the other side of the trail.  Mostly, though, I try to drink it all in, aware of my life and all around me, slowly stalking, smiling with the surprises around each new peninsula and rocky point. 

This photograph was a small part of the trip, but the serenity of the cliff, the complexity of the lichens, and the symbolic memory of how we took in the landscape of our travels makes it one of my all-time favorite photographs.  I like it for its lines, traveling and meandering through the rocks like our own journey through the wilderness. While the rocks are powerful, strong, and weathered, they also support small splashes of color and life.

This image was the result of a slow and steady touring pace.  Cindy and I spent around 14 hours per day traveling.  Camping was merely sleeping.  The joy was in the traveling.  We saw a few moose on this trip, including a young bull on Cross Bay Lake, a cow foraging for aquatic vegetation on Pencil Lake, and a couple of other young moose that I barely remember.  We dragged our canoe over a beaver dam, down a rocky rapid too shallow to paddle, and we paddled out into giant, clear lakes, one of which had pines that began growing before the United States Constitution was written. 

I made this image, handheld, from a canoe using a Canon EOS Elan, 100-300 kit lens, and Kodachrome 200 film.  It is the first in a series of images of rock and water that I title "Elements."