Rachel Hedlund grew up in a family that did a lot of traveling. They took trips around the United States and over the ocean to Portugal, and numerous music concerts regularly showed up on their summer calendars. Adventurous, yes, but not particularly outdoorsy. The exception was the yearly trip they would make up the Gunflint Trail for the Camp Menogyn Memorial Day Family Camp. It was here that Hedlund, at the young age of nine years old, first flipped a canoe on her shoulders. This, she was told, was portaging. And portaging made her sure she wanted to canoe for the rest of her life.

Not many people can relate to this.

The typical story of falling in love with the wilderness involves the call of loons, the openness of wild spaces, self-discovery or the simple thrill of being outdoors. For many ardent paddlers, portaging is a bane. Even the legendary canoeist Bill Mason admitted, “Portaging is like hitting yourself on the head with a hammer: It feels so good when you stop.”

At best, portaging is an acquired taste. A way to stretch your legs, get out of the canoe, work different muscles. For Hedlund, it was a revelation. She begged her parents to let her participate in more camp activities. Initially, they were confused why she wanted to save up money and spend it on a summer in the Northwoods. But before she finished high school, she had spent four summers paddling the Boundary Waters, ventured further north, into Wabakimi Provincial Park in Ontario, and capped her Menogyn adventures off with a 40-day canoe expedition on the Kazan River in the Canadian arctic.

These adventures came about because she put the canoe on her shoulders. It’s a reminder that there are many ways to fall in love with nature, and we don’t always know what will trigger an obsession for wilderness travel.

Many of us are fortunate to have been part of a family or t have been involved with a youth program, church group, or summer camp, that introduced us to the Boundary Waters. Without these crucial first connections, countless number of people who make yearly pilgrimages to the Boundary Waters may never have sat in a canoe or been enchanted by the Northwoods.

One of the biggest barriers keeping young people from experiencing the BWCA is distance. After all, the Boundary Waters is in a remote northern corner of the northernmost state in the continental United States. For many, it’s just too far away.

But living close to the Boundary Waters does not guarantee you visit it. Many grow up within miles of the wilderness but have never camped, canoed or so much as stepped foot in the place.

This became evident in the years after Friends of the Boundary Waters launched our No Boundaries to the Boundary Waters education program, which works with schools and organizations across the state to deliver a Boundary Waters curriculum to students and provide scholarship opportunities for students from diverse and underserved communities to go on weeklong Boundary Waters adventures.

Over the course of several summers and school years, our education team partnered with local guides and community organizations to put on programing with Junior and Seniors from the Ely High School. These programs included instructions on paddling, portaging as well as day trips into the iconic Lake One.

Through working with schools in the Ely Area, Friends’ education staff learned that many local educators were concerned that despite the proximity to the Boundary Waters, many students have never visited this beloved wilderness area.

“The more we talked about creating educational experiences in the Boundary Waters for entire grade levels, which would build up to overnight trips for all the students, the more enthusiasm built for such a program,” says Alison Nyenhuis, education director with Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness. In addition, there was an opportunity to add to the wilderness trips and provide classroom education that could take place throughout the school year.

Further discussions with educators and members of Native Nations near the Boundary Waters, particularly with Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, revealed that they too were just as eager to get kids out there. Many in the Native community also wanted to approach the wilderness through a cultural lens and incorporate traditional harvests like wild rice gathering and maple sugaring. This had the potential to add another meaningful layer to the experience.

As a result, we at Friends developed a program that aims to give students in northeastern Minnesota an immersive experience in the Boundary Waters called The Boundary Waters Is Our Backyard. The program seeks to connect students from Ely Public Schools, Cook County Schools, and the Native Nations bordering the BWCA, to the Boundary Waters through day trips and overnight wilderness experiences. The goal is to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation for the world-class ecosystem right in these students’ backyard.

To make this vision a reality, we applied for funding through the Minnesota State-run Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources (LCCMR), which has funded Friends’ No Boundaries to the Boundary Waters program since 2018. As the grant was championed by those in the northeastern Minnesota communities and throughout the Minnesota legislature, it was fully funded. The next step was to hire the right person to steer the ship – or canoe, if you will.

When Rachel Hedlund applied for the position, she had spent the past six years splitting her time between the Ely area, where she worked for Voyageur Outward Bound, and southern Texas, outside of Big Bend National Park, where she was the program director with Outward Bound.

In the years since she first put the canoe on her shoulders, she had filled out an impressive resume of adventures, including competing in a 444-mile canoe marathon on the Yukon River, dogsledding throughout the winter, canoeing the Voyageur Highway from International Falls to Lake Superior in under 100 hours, and living a majority of her adult life outside.

Many working in the outdoor industry need to scrabble to piece together seasonal jobs, often in different parts of the country. Moving multiple times, a year is normal. For many young people, this is an adventurous way to make a living. “Camping 250 days a year is awesome. It was a fun rodeo for a while. But I got to point where I wanted more of a plan, wanted to know what tomorrow would bring, and also, to be in a position where I could really be part of a community,” says Hedlund.

When she applied for the position as Northern Community Education Coordinator with Friends, it was a chance to have steady, year-round employment, and an opportunity to settle down in a town she loved.

“I think Ely is an incredible place, a mix of people who have lived here for generations and new arrivals,” says Hedlund. “The community and the proximity to the BWCA has kept families here and brought families here. It’s a wonderful, and fun, place to be.”

Since joining Friends in February of this year, Hedlund’s daily tasks have involved managing registration for trips, planning trip itineraries, and dealing with the administrative work of organizing expeditions. At the core of her daily activities is reaching out, making connections, and building community.

To better get to know students, teachers and administrators in the Ely Public Schools, Hedlund has gone on outdoor education field trips with classes. This has given her both a tighter connection to possible participants and allowed her to have a firsthand look at where many of the students are with outdoor travel.

A key partner has been Ely Community Resources (ECR), an organization that fosters youth development through mentorship and community building in the Ely area. Friends has been doing overnight trips with ECR for the past two years, and it has been a relationship that, with Hedlund in the Ely office, Friends has been able to support and deepen.

Ryan Stewart, the Family Resource Facilitator with ECR, has been gradually building an outdoors club in Ely over the past three years.

He initially began an after-school program that introduced middle school and high school students to activities like fire starting, hiking, ice rescue, wilderness cooking, and grew the program to include seasonal trips for kids on the Superior Hiking Trail, winter dogsledding and snowshoeing excursions, and, most impactful, multi-day canoe trips into the Boundary Waters.

“For a lot of kids this is their opportunity to go fishing for the first time or go paddling for the first time or see a moose for the first time,” says Stewart.

From the teachers who were enthusiastic about outdoor education and helped build a cohort of kids who regularly showed up for outdoor events, to outfitters like Ely Outfitting Company and Piragis, and organizations like Outward Bound and Big City Mountaineers, the community made this program possible.

“I’m super grateful for the collaboration. It’s great to be in town with outfitters and opportunities and so many people excited to get people out in the woods.”

In May, with ECR, Hedlund participated in a sleepover at the International Wolf Center, an experience that exemplified the collaborative nature of wilderness education.

“The community wants to see more kids get outside. They want these opportunities to exist. Even people who might have mixed feelings about the Boundary Waters or want to see copper-sulfide mines open in the area are supportive of getting kids outside. People think that it’s great to have kids take advantage of the surrounding nature.”

The first canoe trip out of Ely took place this summer from June 3-7. In partnership with ECR and Spirit of the Wilderness outfitters, this trip had a little bit of everything — sun, rain and rainbows, sweaty hot temperatures and chilly nights. Kids caught fish and even sighted a moose. The route took the crew from Lake One to Little Gabbro and west onto the North Kawishiwi River, meaning the crew had some serious days of travel.

“One of the best things to see was the kids who didn’t hang out with one another during the school year or in town, connect and have an incredible time,” Hedlund says.

Hedlund has been coordinating trips for several northern communities this summer, including trips from Fond du Lac, Barnum, Willow River, and Voyageurs Expeditionary School in Bemidji, all of which are going out this summer, Hedlund, Stewart and others are looking at ways to improve the experience. With the hopes of improving these trips, they have begun to survey teachers on what their “dream outdoor class” would look like, whether a field trip or a multi-day excursion. The survey results will allow them to better create classes and lessons that meet students and teachers where they are and thereby tailor the experience to community needs.

With growing support for The Boundary Waters is our Backyard from local educators, even the superintendent for the area is actively involved in the planning process. Over the next three years, the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness plan to provide day-trip experiences for 1,060 Northeastern Minnesota students and overnight experiences for 480 students in the Boundary Waters. By collaborating with local schools, community organizations, and wilderness outfitters, the program seeks to create a lasting impact on the region’s youth and their connection to the natural world.

Chances are, among those hundreds of students, many will have powerful personal experiences connecting with the wilderness. Maybe, for a few of them, it will be the weight of the canoe on their shoulders, the burn in their legs and sweat on their brow that gets them hooked on the Boundary Waters.