When It Was Film, Part VII

Snipe Lake Loon, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness                  

Date Unknown, August 2003

My Uncle Terry has always been generous with his camping gear.  On this trip in 2003, we borrowed his Souris River canoes, one solo canoe and one tandem.  My Dad and brother paddled the tandem, and I explored, for the first time, the beautiful simplicity of a solo canoe.  We fished, we camped, we picked berries, we cooked, and we joked around.  If memory serves me, we ended up on Snipe Lake as an afterthought. Our first night on Missing Link lake was plenty beautiful, but we wished to be off of the beaten path.  The portage to Tuscarora, more than a mile long, had no appeal to us on this trip, so we dared to try something new.  My brother caught a nice pike as soon as we entered Snipe Lake, and that set the hook for us.  We pitched a tent on a beautiful dome rock camp and spent the days watching a wilderness lake that held all of the wild and no other people.

I will never forget the beautiful stability of a Bogen tripod placed elegantly into the belly of a solo canoe, drifting on calm water.   I photographed loons on the water early in the morning, and my lens seemed to be joined somehow to the life aura of each bird.  Blueberries were fairly common in places, but the early August crop of red raspberries provided the real bounty.  My Dad always had a big iron flat skillet, and we gladly packed it in each time.  Aside from pancakes, that skillet touched our fish fillets with a perfect, even heat. In every way, the trip was perfect.

All images were made with a Canon A2 and a Canon EF 300mm f4 L IS lens.  Based on the year, it is very likely that the film was Fujichrome Provia.