There’s a reason Sigurd Olson called our beloved Boundary Waters, the singing wilderness and gave that title to his first book. This singing, he wrote, “has to do with the calling of the loons, northern lights, and the great silences of a land lying northwest of Lake Superior.”  On the 60th anniversary of the 1964 Wilderness Act, which was an important step in preserving the Boundary Waters as a wilderness, it’s good to be reminded of the music that fills canoe country, and what this music can do for all of us. 

I’ve heard the music often. Two years ago, when myself, my wife Diane and our daughter camped on Pine Lake with our two granddaughters (this was their first Boundary Waters trip) the singing was particularly intense. We spent an afternoon laughing on our campsite’s shoreline, building an imaginary village of fairies and trolls stacked from rocks and sticks. Stores, shops, houses, gardens, figurines, you name it. Then a rainbow poked through the rain, arching over the lake. 

The Boundary Waters excites such wonder and joy. Don’t we each hunger for a sense of wonder in our lives as much as we hunger for food? Don’t we need a place to frolic as well as to pray, where our lives are renewed in body, mind, and spirit? I have been in the Boundary Waters while grieving the death of my beloved son Kevin. On the same waters, I have experienced incredible joy through sharing the wilderness with those I love. Here we draw as close to the heart of the world, and in this singing wilderness, when all is alive and the world is, as Olson wrote, “wet with dew and still fresh as the morning,” we return to our more playful selves. 

There’s a bit of alchemy in the music of canoe country, changing the lead in our spirits into shiny gold.

My history as a Boundary Waters “groupie” began 57 years ago in 1967, just a few years after the Wilderness Act was signed.

I was 15, had no idea what I was doing, and on that maiden voyage I flailed my paddle in an attempt to steer the canoe, scribing on the surface of the lake every letter of the alphabet before I discovered the efficacy of the J-stroke. My high school friend and I canoed Pine Lake that trip, took the portage to Stump Lake, and stayed one night. 

The next morning, thinking we could save time returning by a different route, we mistakenly portaged down a dry creek bed, bushwacked through uncharted forest, and arrived eight hours late to an anxious family. 

But what an introduction to the Boundary Waters! Imagine the excitement and relief rolled into one journey! To be lost, then found. Is there a better feeling?

Canoers talk about the “wet boot” policy of wading into a lake far enough to flip the canoe without hitting rocks on the shore. You could say I jumped in with both feet into the Boundary Waters. 

Following my graduation ceremony from college, I drove off with a canoe on top of my car to Seagull Lake, where I would be a counselor and guide at Wilderness Canoe Base. Here I canoed with youth groups from all over the country. Back in those days we could paddle with four canoes and ten people. Sometimes the name of a lake was marked with a wooden sign at an entry point. Long portages might have brackets attached to trees to lean a canoe against. One trip took us to Knife Lake to buy root beer from Dorothy Molter. Another trip was interrupted on the first day when a forest ranger informed us there was a fire ban. With no portable camp stove, we ended up cold soaking our food in lake water the rest of the week.

To say the Boundary Waters became part of my life is an understatement. I proposed to my wife Diane in 1980 on Mountain Lake, on the eastern end of the BWCA. We honeymooned in that area a year later. When I became a grandfather, I introduced my three grandkids to Boundary Waters camping. In 2019 my wife and I scattered some of our son Kevin’s ashes on Pine Lake. One day I will have my ashes join his. 

For twenty-one summers in a row, I paddled and fished the Boundary Waters with my son Kevin. Together, we sat around many campfires late into the night. When he died from an accidental overdose of opioids on February 25, 2019, I not only lost a son I loved dearly, but I also lost my beloved canoeing partner.

Five years later, we still feel his presence while casting a line in a lake, gathering firewood from around a beaver lodge, or when stoking the campfire under a stary night sky. He’s right there beside us. 

By returning to the Boundary Waters and fishing and canoeing in places I shared with my son, I have found peace. I believe my presence in the Boundary Waters gives Kevin peace as well. It gives him confidence in knowing that, until we meet again, I’m doing well.

I know better now that the past is never really past. It stays with us. People mistakenly think we “get over things,” but a life that was a part of our lives, always stays a part of our lives. I’ve learned a lot about loss. And in the Boundary Waters, I’ve learned that when we leave, we are not forgotten. Eternity is planted in our hearts.

One time, when pointing out a painted turtle near a fire grate, my then three-years-old granddaughter asked who painted the turtle? What a laugh! Wouldn’t that be a fun summer job, painting turtles in the wilderness? That reminded me that I heard someone once inquire how turtles get into their shells. 

It makes me wonder if perhaps the goal of canoeing in the Boundary Waters is to get out of our “shells,” painted or not, and open ourselves to a new way of thinking and living. 

My three grandchildren (ages 7, 10, and 12) are my new canoeing partners. Together with their parents and my wife, we have paddled the lakes of Pine, Sawbill, and East Bearskin over the last three summers. 

The kids all want to return next year. They have drawn in the pure, fresh air and felt the magic of the Boundary Waters for themselves. Paddling, they know, is a practice of breathing deep with the wind and the waves. On a trip, we inhabit a piece of the Boundary Waters, and it inhabits us as well. 

I say, whatever your age, go ahead and stretch out your arms to the rising sun, throw back your head at the stars above, clap your hands at the sound of a loon, and savor the relationship you enjoy with the Boundary Waters. Offer a poem to your paddle. Give a prayer of gratitude for your life vest. Sing a song to your canoe. Thank them for those stories and memories you hold dear. We remember their steadfast love for us over the wilderness landscape of our lives.

Let’s celebrate the 60^th birthday of the Wilderness Act and the Boundary Waters! There is wonderful optimism and delight to share our beloved Boundary Waters with others. Let them know that they too can hear the singing wilderness. That’s what brings us back time and again. We renew our bodies, minds, and spirits on these lakes. When the wilderness sings, we sing along because this music is joy. But it is more than joy: Singing is defiance. A kind of stunning boldness, with paddle-gripped rebellion against the winds of defeat and sorrow. 

Something deep inside us insists on song. It demands that we sing. When we hear the singing wilderness, the music burrows down into our very being. It gives voice to our souls and flight to our hearts. We can’t listen to such singing and not be different afterwards. We are changed. We come alive! The singing wilderness takes over and it becomes us. 

There is a correlation between the song we sing and the way we live and work. When we are in tune with the singing wilderness, we become what we sing. Our longings and desires are transformed, and we are redirected toward what is healthy for nature and for our living. In the singing wilderness, we hear our name called in music and something stirs in us. 

I know that with my late son Kevin, suffering from addiction and pain, sometimes the singing wilderness was not easy to hear. And yet, when the singing would break through, the whole cosmos throbbed with rhythm, with harmony, with everything in synch. This is why our canoe trips in the Boundary Waters were so vital for him. And why they are so vital for all of us.