The Voice of the Boundary Waters

        How is it that motors secured a place in the Boundary Waters: in a federal Wilderness preserved for a primitive and unconfined type of recreation? What is the “local perspective” of nearby residents? Those who have fought for a hundred years to call the lakes their own? These are the questions that I will leave Windigo Island to discover this summer.
. . . .

       The name of our city is Ely. It is located in Northeast Minnesota, a 30-30 rifle shot from the Canadian border and the only Midwest city situated smack in the of a wilderness area. The rest of the United States is our suburbs.
       We've got a brawling, sprawling, roistering history of mining, logging, trapping, fishing, hunting, skiing, snow shoeing and sled dog racing and we aren't about to mend our ways. We've got deep snow, thick ice, slicing 40 below winds, tall pines, roaring waterfalls and cold, fish filled lakes. . .
        Every branch of government the bureaucratic genius of man could invent, from Washington D.C. to the state house in St. Paul, to the county seat in Duluth, has tried to figure some way to scuttle this city and we are still here...tougher and noisier than ever.
        We've got eight churches and twenty some drinking outlets and you can draw any inference from that you want. But we've got more honest to God Christian charity and brotherly love in this town than you can find in any one of those enlightened metropolitan depositories of intellectual endeavor farther south . . . .
        We are clannish, one-way, culturally backward by other people's standards and maybe a little crude, but we enjoy our city and the country around, and while we love to fight each other for fun, we will stop and beat the hell out of any outsider who dares criticize our town or its poorest citizen . . .
        We are quite a community...and the Devil take the rest of the world!

                                                                                                   Jackpine Bob Cary

        Ely, Minnesota . . .as much an argument against federal Wilderness as a town. Charles Kuralt of CBS’ On The Road fame loved the place. Before his death he bought the radio station. Kuralt delighted in Ely’s blueberry festivals, polka bands, cedar strip canoes. He would say of its residents:
  
      Ely is a town full of good people. I know all towns are, but Ely has always seemed to me especially rich in neighborliness and good nature and the salt-of-the-earth virtues. It’s hard to be a stranger there. If your name is Charles, everybody in Ely calls you Chuck.

       Stopping at the first of Ely’s two stoplights, a handsome sign with a varnished and engraved moose comes into view. A pit stop for SAAB-driving urbanites weary from a five-hour drive from the Twin Cities, The Chocolate Moose restaurant and the sign’s signifier is the most popular of Ely’s yuppie hangouts.
        Around mahogany tables, I overhear meaningful conversations about Karl Marx the Oregon Spotted Owl, and Avon Skin So Soft as a deterrent against mosquitoes. Adjoining the Moose is Piragis Outfitters--Ely’s largest. A newcomer by Ely standards, storeowner Steve Piragis was the only outfitter to fly to Washington D.C. and lobby against motor-use in the Boundary Waters. Granted, most of his cliental celebrate the simple rewards of “roughing it” by laying down their Visa Gold for battery heated socks, Gore-Tex rain gear and freeze-dried dinners. But at least they are canoeing.
        On the other side of the tracks--as far distant from double cappuccinos and cheese-filled croissants as one can get and still fall within the city limits is Cliff Wold's Outdoor World. A safe-haven for the sons of labor with crew-cut hair, Wold offers a post-WWII flavor to the outfitting experience. Little has changed in the Wold camp since the fifties—including some of his camping gear.
        Ill-tempered and cantankerous, Wold has earned the reputation as the town crier. At many a public hearing, old yeller and his dated views on Wilderness have made for an interesting spectacle for both young and old. Public enemy number one on Wold’s list is the Forest Service. When the agency proposed reducing the group size in the Boundary Waters from ten to nine a few years back, Wold took out a full page ad and ran what amounted to a political campaign to prevent a provision whose sole intent was to preserve the Wilderness-quality of the area.
        Between Piragis and Wold--Birkenstocks and steel-toed boots--lies a town. For better or worse, when temperatures dip to thirty degrees below zero and churches, bars and bowling alleys become safe-havens from the cold, therein lies a community.
But it is a community in conflict.

. . . .

       Picturesque from the air, a closer look reveals the battle scars. In its long-standing attempts to fend off the federal government and to maintain local control over the Boundary Waters many of the local residents of Ely, Minnesota have taken on a rough edge.
Some have attributed Ely aggressions to inheritance—to the war-like culture passed on by the Slovenian ancestry of many residents. Others have pointed to the mistreatment at the hands of the mining companies. Whatever the explanation, four generations of, “iron ore diggers, gypo pulp cutters, lawyers, doctors, nurses, storekeepers, clerks, trappers and guides” have proudly raised their voices in defense of their perceived right to use the surrounding lake country as they see fit. And, more often than not, this means the use of motors.
        One of the earliest battles waged between Elyite’s seeking local control and national Wilderness interests dates back to the efforts of General William Andrews. In 1909, Andrews fought almost single-handedly to set aside 500 acres of Lake and Cook Counties as a Forest Reserve.
        Other battles followed. The designation of the Superior National Forest on parcels of land formerly belonging to Elyites sparked the second major uprising. The 1926 halt on road-building; the 1930 ban on further dam building under the Shipstead, Newton, Nolan Act; and the 1940 flight ban of planes flying under 4,000 feet, all pitted local factions against national Wilderness interests. The 1950’s saw the Thye-Blatnik Act saw the buyout of resorts and private land holdings from the federally designated road-less area.
        Up until the 1950’s, the Boundary Waters was choked full of private resorts and cabins. This was the Wilderness world the people of Ely wanted: backyard barbecues, evening fishing trips, family gatherings and a steady cash flow. The Blatnik Act changed all that. Local families lost their family cabins and resorts to the government, to the new Wilderness.
        Five decades of legislation paved (or unpaved) the way for the 1964 Wilderness Act. Under the authorship of Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Wilderness was officially defined as a place where man is a visitor and the Boundary Waters a place governed and protected by the Act.
        But there was a hitch.
        To get the Boundary Waters included in the 1964 legislation compromises had to be made. The motor-using factions in Ely and the Range had to be appeased. With compromise, the oxymoron of “motorized-wilderness” was born. Motors would continue operating in sections of the Boundary Waters in spite of the 1964 Act’s defining of Wilderness as a place for a “primitive or unconfined” type of recreation.
        With both sides coming to agreement, Humphrey signed off on the measure, mentioning the BWCA twice by name in the historic legislation. The exceptions made for the canoe country included: “outboard motor usage, logging, maintaining small dams and restrictions on air traffic.”
        What Humphrey could not portend in 1964 when he granted the BWCA special status was that his little addendum would lead to one of the grandest, and at times dirtiest, political battles that his home state of Minnesota had ever seen. By 1975, largely as a result of increased motorized pressure on lakes, the quality of Wilderness experience in the BWCA degenerated to an all-time low. With one million visitor days logged per year and 62% of the water surface still open to motors, campsites were trashed, the fishery was depleted and "outstanding opportunities for solitude” were increasingly difficult to find.
        The 1978 Boundary Waters Wilderness Act changed all that. The environmentalists won a huge victory—one that effectively saw motor-usage curtailed to a few key lakes. In addition, the trucks that used to haul fishermen over three key portages were also phased out. It has been over twenty years since the passage of the 1978 Act but the anger over the loss of motorized access still runs deep in Ely. The local people have not forgotten . . .
                                                                 . . . .

       Asking different townsfolk about the “local perspective,” one family name above all others is mentioned. Chosa. The elder statesmen of the region, the Chosas are the undisputed “First Family” of the Boundary Waters. Basswood Lake, the contentious stretch of water that has pitted canoeist against motorboater for decades, is said to be “their” lake. As the last family with private land holdings and a cabin in the federal Wilderness, the Chosa's are unique.
       But the Forrest Service wants them out. That’s what the townsfolk say. The 1964 Wilderness Act defined Wilderness as a place where man is a visitor. The government wants an uninterrupted expanse of lakes and pines for the Boundary Waters. Cabins, backyard barbecues, fishing boats moored to wood docks, do not fit their definition of Wilderness. To learn more about the view from the Chosa porch, I will have to get close to a member of the "First Family” . . . I will need to find an introduction to Heart Warrior Chosa.
        Problem.
        Raising her name in Ely is a bit like bringing up the issue of abortion at a cocktail party--no one much wants to touch the subject. A chance meeting with Craig Chosa, Heart Warrior’s 29-year-old son, and I find my introduction. Craig tells me his mother is a “pipe holder” and that she “follows the old ways.” He suggests that I make a gift of tobacco if I wish to talk to her about important matters.
        Combing the nicotine shelf at the supermarket, many different brands stare back. I feel a bit like a teenager shopping for a fine bottle of wine--I have no clue which brand will make an appropriate gift in a sacred ceremony. Although I am anti-tobacco, I console myself while thumbing through the cans that my purchase is for religious purposes. And religion is a funny thing. A few hallowed words and even the most heinous of poisons--tobacco included--can be transformed into a sacred offering. In Nepal a few years back, I met Sadhus (holy men) who smoked and offered hashish to Shiva and ordinary villagers who poked a couple of twigs for arms and pebbles for eyes into a pile of dog shit and worshipped that. The sacred takes many forms I guess.
        But what brand? “Red Man” is definitely out. I'm PC enough to know that Heart Warrior would not find that too amusing. Prince Albert? No. She has little respect for the aristocracy from what I hear.
        Amphora.
        Of course. Grandfather’s brand—its scented leaves will make for good medicine. Placing the amber can on the car seat I exit Zup’s and head to the east end of town. Sandwiched like a slice of wonder bread between equally worn trailer homes, I arrive at Heart Warrior’s humble abode. Potted plants, a small vegetable garden and a half-tamed rabbit nibbling on the greens of her labor announce that I am in the right place. A bit nervous, I secure the tobacco under my arm, walk up the trailer steps, and knock on the tinny door.
                                                              . . . .

       To my delight, Heart Warrior invited me to join her on a trip to her family's property--the last private land holding in the Boundary Waters. A week later, we cross flat terrain pock marked with stunted spruce and mature aspen. A far cry from Wordsworth’s “brooding hills,” it nonetheless has its own Northwoods charm. “My dad was born here,” Heart Warrior announces over the rustle of aspen leaves, still mulling over the historic photographs. “My family is from here. We are probably the only one’s in the area that are from here. I used to have a cabin up on Basswood, you see, I had it fixed up all nice. My dad’s cabin is still there, but his went to hell ‘cause he never did anything for it. They were built back in 1932.”
       "Who built them?” I ask, curious to discover whether the “First Family” had cleared their own land.
      "My Grandpa,” she says, out of breath and sweating. “He built them for his children so that when they got married they would have a place for their kids. That’s where we went when we were real little. See they had a cabin . . .well, they had three cabins and a little trading post at the end of the Four-Mile. It served as a supply store for people out in the bush; a place where the resort goers would come up and re-stock.”
        The reason Heart Warrior’s account is so interesting is that like countless others, I once believed the Boundary Waters to be "pristine." All that is left of the logging era are a few wood trestles. If you are not a biologist, you would never know that half the wilderness here was once clear-cut.
        Heart Warrior’s grandfather was Jake Chosa.
Back in the 1940’s when resorts and private cabins were in operation, Jake was known all around Ely for the free truck tows he provided over the Four-Mile (of course the rich resort owners and tourists had to pay). In Jake’s era, the barren fields left by the turn of the century loggers would have already reverted back to nature. The aspen trees now towering above and replacing the pines would have been sizable, but not yet the aged giants before us. The Four-Mile Portage would have resembled a road in earnest and betrayed ruts left from of busloads of tourists crossing it on a daily basis.
        The footprints from that by-gone era have all but disappeared. Nature is well on its way to foreclosing this unwritten chapter of Boundary Waters' history--a foreclosure that began in the 1950’s with the Blatnik Act.
        But like I said, 95% of visitors don't know the Walleye World that the Boundary Waters once was. They only know the Wilderness that is. And that's the strangest thing I've uncovered in my research: that Wilderness is an artifact. Through intentionally evicting the resorts and cabins, imposing rules and regulations, making man a visitor, the Boundary Waters is as much a human artifact as it is a gift of nature.
      "You tell me the story of this place and I’ll pull your canoe,” I say inviting Heart Warrior to walk alongside of me. Benefiting little from her less than stoic effort to pull the canoe, I figure I might as well get full credit for the work I'm already doing. “How’s that for a good deal,” I add. “I’ll be your ass for the day.” 
      "Fine by me,” she says releasing her hand from the stern of the canoe. “So anyway that’s where my aunts and my dad grew up . . .on the end of the Four-Mile. During the ricing season the Indians from Lac La Croix would come down and rice with my family. See they always riced here before the white man came. They’d have a powwow before they went ricing and a powwow after they riced. In fact, I want to talk to the Lac La Croix band and see if they would like to do it again for old-time’s sake . . .I’m sure the Forest Service would love that!” Heart Warrior pauses to let out a hearty laugh at the thought of the spectacle she aimed to create. “They can’t do nothin’ about it though ‘cause Indians don’t have to have no pass. There’s this thing called the Jay Treaty you see.”
      "What's that entitle you too?”
See the Indians should have free access back and forth across the border. Our people should be able to go up there and their people should be able to come down here. Especially since the Chief in Lac La Croix is our cousin.”

                                                              . . . .

       “This is my rest stop,” Heart Warrior announces as we reach the halfway point in our journey. Putting a rare hand on the canoe she brings us to a halt.
        "It’s a special spot,” I say surveying the life-filled rim of Rice Lake. “Reminds me of a woodland pond near my cabin.” Stalks of wild rice move in concert with the waves breaking on the shoreline. In the twentieth century, Rice would always be known as, “the lake beside the road in the Wilderness.” With the closing of the Four-Mile to trucks and the slow reclamation of nature, the twenty-first century will again see Rice return to being a remote Wilderness lake--one far distant from the din of man.
        That’s just how the environmentalists want it.
        The Four-Mile is a chapter in the Boundary Waters history they want to see wiped off the landscape. For Heart Warrior however, the eclipse of the road will be yet another groove scratched from memory. The Four-Mile Portage is the dusty corridor linking a Chosa present with a Chosa past. Each rest stop, each blaze in the trail, contains memories. Recollections such as the time Heart Warrior and her son Christopher encountered a mother bear and her cub just a few paces from where we now sit. With only twenty feet between them, the eyes of both mothers met and the eyes of both cubs met. Two mothers and two cubs going about their daily affairs: that’s how Heart Warrior saw it.
        Much will be lost for the Chosa’s when the “white man’s foot”--a non-native weed--takes over the dusty trail and the government takes over their land on Chosa Point. The end of their reign on Basswood is near. With the passing of her last living aunt the government is poised to step in. But for now there are still pebbles to be removed from shoes and stories to be heard.

                                    The Vision

I am walking. . .
Spirit walking on the path of my ancestors through a corridor of aspen
whose high branches meet as arms embraced.
I am walking. . .
Between the quartz crystals of two granite walls and a dusty land that holds
the footprints of generations past.
I am walking . . .
White man’s foot is growing. See it feed upon the dust at the trail’s edge.
Four-Mile Portage I am walking . . .
Trail is fading. Have I been down this path before? Not sure.
I am standing . . .
Stomach is churning. Little voice whispering. Beware. A red squirrel runs for cover.
Wind blows through the aspen canopy. Can you feel it moving?
I am running . . .
Stone magma is flowing. Granite walls are closing. Run for the lake.
Basswood.
I am paddling . . .
Basswood.
Behind me a four-mile throat of granite closes. With each steady stroke I push on.
To my cabin. Safety.
I am seeing . . .
My cabin. The familiar landing. Home.
But the land is poisoned with movement and granite. And the bushes have
marble eyes through which a stone man watches. Roman. Venus.
Rock solid but with a severed penis.
I am flying. . .
Stone man is dying. His head cracking and crumbling he slumps to the ground.
White man’s foot. Land. 300 hundred miles an hour towards Ely.
Catastrophe. Eight churches, twelve outfitters, ten bars.
Whirlpool. Magma. Disappear.
Catastrophe.

        Heart Warrior had a vision . . . A gift that transformed a welfare mother into an aspiring politician. A direct descendent of Sacajawegobiweek--Heart Warrior inherited the
gift of the night. In her vision, the Four-Mile Portage in Minnesota's Boundary Waters Wilderness collapses; a naked statue of a Roman man appears mysteriously in front of her dad’s Chosa Point cabin only to crumble before her eyes; Basswood Lake disappears never to be seen again and the town of Ely subducts into the earth’s mantle.
        Heart Warrior's 1986 vision is fantastic . . .that is a given. Still, flowing through her veins is the blood of a people, Ojibwe people, who are powerful dreamers. A few generations ago, the Ojibwe’s sway over the spirit world made them the most feared of the Algonquin tribes. Their Cree neighbors to the north, and Sioux neighbors to the south, avoided them at all costs.
        Eight years passed before Heart Warrior acted upon what the Great Spirit revealed to her. She knew the days of weenie roasts and campfire songs in the Boundary Waters were numbered. How many of the 200,000 annual visitors to the region would perish? What of the animals? The fish in Basswood Lake? The old timers in Ely, Minnesota? The yuppies?
        She had to do something.
        But what? An Indian welfare-mother passing out flyers warning of the Armageddon (and worse still, a shortened fishing season on Basswood) would hardly garner much sympathy. Heart Warrior knew this. She knew the skepticism of the white man; their inherent mistrust of Indians and woeful lack of understanding the spirit world.
        Anyway, what could she tell them? Her vision did not detail the specifics . . .including what course of action to take to avoid such a disaster. What is more, she had yet to find a medium to convey her warning to the populace. She desperately needed a channel to broadcast her message; a frequency even the most spiritually bereft of white folk could understand. She had to rouse her trailer park neighbors.
        There was only one way.
        In a word, Heart Warrior needed proof! In the old days amidst her own people, short demonstration of spirit possession and apoplectic shock would convince doubters that Basswood Lake was doomed. Such a time had long past however. Her audience would include scientifically schooled naturalists, bib-wearing taconite miners and anyone else who would notice a catastrophe of biblical proportions.
        Proof. The only way. The white man’s God.
        Fortunately, Heart Warrior had an ace in the hole. Her great uncle Leo Chosa--one time portage concessionaire, one-time conspiracy theorist--published a manifesto choked full of proof. Like his great niece, Leo also forecast Armageddon. His vision did not include the town of Ely folding into the crust of the earth or Basswood disappearing, but it predicted doom for the border wilderness nonetheless.
        In Leo’s 1952 self-published pamphlet Isolate and Exploit, the seeds of woe were detailed: Following plans, well and diabolically laid, along the pattern of “isolate before exploiting” this beautiful canoe country will be dammed (and damned) without the public’s knowledge or consent. With the principals well hidden in the background, crafty little hirelings, stoogies, and quislings with the aid and prestige of the United States Forest Service (four words that cover more skullduggery than any other four words in the English language) has put on a propaganda campaign to set aside this country-where only the canoeist would be allowed to enter . . .
        Writing in the early fifties and during the time when Sigurd Olson and the Izaak Walton League were gathering steam to purge the Wilderness of resorts and private cabins, Leo saw the trouble it spelled for his family business and the land he held title to. Leo’s fear of the area being dammed never came to pass. But his suspicion of the Forest Service turned out to be founded. The Pigs (to use Heart Warrior’s terminology) torched Leo’s camp and appropriated Prairie Portage. Leo’s daughter watched helplessly as the stories, memories, and legacy of her father’s reign went up in smoke.
        In the fire a torch was lit. The more Heart Warrior thought about it, the more her uncle’s explanation of isolate and exploit illumined her still dark vision. Proof began to reveal itself. And in the months following, she set out to discover the seeds of deceit. She went after, “the principals,” “stoogies,” and “crafty little hirelings,” that her Great Uncle warned. At stake was nothing less than the preservation of her country, the burial sites of her elders, the town of Ely. On her quest, she discovered a plan so heinous, so utterly despicable, that it confirmed the content of her vision. In documents hidden from the general public, she discovered the white man’s burden . . .the burden of proof.

. . . . 

      “Are you sure you want to know?” Heart Warrior said, hinting that merely listening to the explanation of what she discovered on her search would make me vulnerable.
      "I gotta know!” I said unflinching, eager for an explanation while pulling the canoe. I simply had to know if this calamity was a blind act of nature or a punishment handed down from the heavens?
       “They’re going to off the whole north!” she said emphatically, with a hint of desperation in her voice. Looking over at me she continued, “Over a hundred mining companies have leased out northern Minnesota from Lake Superior to the North Dakota border! That’s where the Vermilion fault line is. All for mining. It’s the whole north and the whole north depends on tourism. And I’ve got copies of their research! The Environmental Quality Board published a comprehensive study in 1979 that documents the copper/nickel interests in the area. Lady Bird Johnson is out for the copper and nickel; Honeywell and Pillsbury are out for the gold and uranium . . . They hired over a thousand scientists to do all this research and I have their executive summary! It gives a blow-by-blow description on which trees would die first, the fact that all small fur-bearing animals, all aquatic life, and consequently all of the tourist-based economy would be gone. They need to log all the trees before they begin the mining and that’s what they are doing right now . . . dead trees are no good to logging companies. I also have a uranium study that Blandon funded. So the big paper mills are in on this. They’re all in it together . . .And they want all the sphagnum moss too!”
        Sphagnum moss?
        The next task in her search for proof lay in uncovering the “principals” and those with an eye to isolate the Boundary Waters. It was not the 1950’s however. More than 200,000 people visited the canoe country annually. As the most heavily used unit in the Wilderness system, countless citizens were on the watch. Included in this vigil were twenty plus Wilderness advocacy groups. Heart Warrior had a long way to go to fulfill the second part of Leo’s vision. To isolate the Boundary Waters would take nothing less than a fantastic player to turn on the ecosystem. Other than the institution of the presidency there was, in the Chosa way of thinking, only one other organization with the power and influence to topple the canoe country.
        The Sierra Club.
        On a trip down to the Twin Cities she discovered one of Great Uncle Leo’s “stoogies.” A wolf in sheep’s clothing, Leo mentioned the Sierra Club by name some forty years ago. As we walked she explained the connection. “I found out that the Sierra Club works for the big companies . . .in Alaska, Virginia, California and Wisconsin they have a track record. They get in the name of saving the environment but that’s not what they’re up to. One example is the Flambeau River in Wisconsin. They said, “these houses are too close to the river and are polluting the river . . . we want them out.” Then they handed the land over to the Forest Service who then leased it to Kennecott Copper and now they are happily mining copper there. The Forest Service, Sierra Club and the big companies are all in this together.”
        Learning of her research, the Sierra Club invited Heart Warrior to their Twin Cities office. She refused. She worried she might “deck the mother fuckers.” As the Voice of the Boundary Waters, she defined Sierra Clubbers by their, “little pasty white hands . . .and people have never been in the woods.” Perhaps it is best that she didn’t go.
      Her research confirmed the plausibility of a catastrophic event in the Boundary Waters. A U.S. Geological Survey map showed a major fissure and fault line running directly under the Four-Mile Portage! The geological mapping of the area showed the probable path of destruction; the discovery of mining interests in the border region pointed to the cause. The collapse of the Four-Mile, the disappearance of Basswood Lake, and the fiery end to the city of Ely would not be a random act of nature. It would be intentional--one brought about by Lord Man for turning the earth inside out in the name of mining. Nature plotted against the alien flea causing her itch. One good tail slap and the colony of parasites would be finished.
      Heart Warrior, winded from the long walk, put a hand on my shoulder and let me in on a secret: “When they come for the gold,” she said with a knowing eye, “that’s going to be the trigger. I’m not going to tell you where, but it’s in the Boundary Waters. And when they go for that area its curtains . . .All they have to do is look at it or gesture towards it in there mind’s eye and that’s when it goes.”

 

Order Season of the Loon to learn the resolution of Heart Warrior's fight to remain the Last Chosa in the Boundary Waters Wilderness.