ABOUT A WINDIGO

        It's about a Windigo.
        The reason I'm staying; the reason the other cabin-owners are leaving. It's about facing the spirit of a season I know only through black and white photographs and colorful stories. Never have I seen the needles of the Tamarack turn gold and scatter over Labrador-Tea; nor have I seen the antlers of the white tailed deer come into velvet; or glimpsed the snow goose set down on the last oasis of open water. I yearn to know, burn to know, where the wild things go when hell freezes over.
        I want to experience the island the way Chief Yellow Head did in the 1800's when he wintered on what is now Henderson’s Point.
        So I'm staying.
        I’ll tap the frozen memory of the landscape; listen for the voices of the past as they blow through leafless ash and maples. Like Thoreau at Walden, I'll “drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.” In September I'll fill my canoe with wild rice; in October I’ll search for the "lost cabins" of 18th-century fur traders; in November I’ll keep an eye out for the dreaded Windigo.
        I'll be alone, but not by myself.
        The local Ojibwe say the island is haunted . . .stalked. It's about a Windigo the reason they don't come out here. Call it superstition. I'll call it as I see it. And I'm staying until I do see it. The Windigo.

. . . .

       In the boreal north, where the crow becomes the raven and the raven creates the world, the Windigo is transformed into a "Weetigo." The creature stands 30-foot tall and brandishes jagged, flesh-eating teeth. The Cree Indians say he roams the Northwoods in search of human victims and is sustained by a frozen heart that pumps ice through his veins.
On my own Windigo Island, where every path leads to a shoreline, three hunters from Yellow Head's historic village vanished without a trace. They were not lost. They were devoured . . .by the Windigo. The horrors enacted on Algonquin tribes by the ice monster are many. An early 19th-century voyageur from Lachine's party observed:

        No crew would press on after the sun was set, less they should see this apparition. Some said he was a spirit condemned to wander . . .on account of crimes committed, others believed the Wendigo was a desperate outcast, who had tasted human flesh, and prowled about at night, seeking in the camping places of traders a victim. Tales were told of unlucky travelers who had disappeared in the woods and had never been heard from again. The story of the Wendigo made the camping place to be surrounded with a somber interest to the traders . . . He feeds on the bodies of unfortunate men of the river, of unlucky travelers and of the mariners.

       If the Windigo were merely a Sasquatch--a Big Foot haunting the boreal forests of Algonquin-speaking tribes--that would be reason enough to re-think solo journeys into the Northwoods. But the Windigo is more than that, worse than that. He's a spirit as well. A condition of madness and hunger, a "Windigo Psychosis" that can possess an individual and stir cravings for human flesh deep within.
        A missionary wintering in the Northcountry during the early 18th century recorded a confession he took from an otherwise stoic Cree warrior.
"Black Robe," the Indian explained to the priest:

       I do not pray, I am not a Christian; on the contrary, I always escape from you because I do not want to give up liquor; but last winter I was seized with horror at a harrowing spectacle which I witnessed. There was among us a woman I witnessed who said several times: "I must have human flesh, I want to eat some human flesh." We did not understand why she spoke in this manner; then, one evening, taking her knife, she thrust it into the breast of her child, and in a state of fury which cannot be described, she roasted him and ate him by the light of the same fire. Seized with horror, we fled from this cursed place.

        So widely held was the belief in, and fear of, the Windigo amongst Algonquin-speakers that at times whole villages were placed on the verge of hysteria. When a Black Robe came to convert a band of Cree near the shores of Lake Winnipeg, he brought with him not only a Bible, but also tales of faraway places. The cleric shared excerpts from his travels to Polynesia and tales of cannibalism among equatorial peoples.
        Not long after the cleric "impressed" his Cree hosts, did "his flock" desert him. The village, from eldest shaman to the lowest camp dog, canoed to a distant island in the center of the great Lake Winnipeg. All were convinced that the preacher's heedless words stirred the Windigo from his den and that the great monster was on the hunt.
        I witnessed first hand the grip the Windigo holds over northern peoples during my stay in the Cree settlement of Fort Albany near the shores of James Bay. The reserve served as the take out point for a 460-mile canoe trip that began in western Ontario. What confounded me was the lay of the land. Why, I wondered, in such a vast wilderness where space is the principle wealth, would people choose to live almost right on top of each other? Government-built houses were arranged in checkerboard fashion, but never off alone along a creek or overlooking the river.
        Weetigo. The outskirts and edges, I soon learned, are where the fearsome creature hunts. The lonely stretches where I took my evening walks were spook central in the Weetigo's territory. Seven hundred miles to the west in the Cree community of Blood Vein, I met a fisherman who spotted a Weetigo swimming across a channel on the outskirts of town. In Little Grand Rapids further north, a hunter saw tracks in the mud three times the size of anything human or animal.

. . . .

       Records of the Windigo's presence on my island are at best incomplete. The last time a person wintered here John F. Kennedy was in the White House and the New York Mets were the team to beat in the National League East.
        That person was Otis Renton.
        Otis was the island caretaker. Mild mannered. Quiet. Even tempered. Otis had all the attributes needed for weathering out the longest season on an uninhabited island. And while he had no Windigo sightings, he did spot a mysterious light in the old Miller cabin on the south shoreline. He discovered no footprints or signs of entry--just a lit cabin on an otherwise dark shoreline.
        More troubling still was the January hole in the ice he discovered off the island’s South Shore. Inexplicably, there were footprints. Those footprints disappeared when they reached the frozen beach.
        Before Otis, John Morton wintered over on Windigo Island. The year was 1954 and Morton had recently finished his tenure with a local newspaper. And while he would later go on to write copy for Dan Rather and the CBS Evening News, it was his wintering on the island that elevated him to mythical proportions among locals. Stories abound about how he fell through the ice and survived the coldest of days by huddling around a candle. Neither story is true, but such accounts are now a part of island lore.

. . . .

       It’s still September, so I suspect my first Windigo sighting is still a few months off. Bait fishermen remain on the lake; leaves in color yet hold tight to their stems. This is the first year the back to school ads haven't triggered panic attacks. As a boy, they meant my wilderness world of fishing trips and island walks would soon give way to bus stops and math exams.
        With no obligation save to the season, I watch the transformation with an air of indifference. As society clamors to abide by the artifice of modern time, I sit cross-legged governed by the warmth of day and chill of night. The ivy along the path reveals spots of gold and brown like paper lit by a single match. Above, basswood leaves are fading like sunlit hay. Soon, longer nights and shorter days will slow the production of chlorophyll and the color show will be on. It's the darkness they say, not the cold, which initiates the change. The thought of seeing September and beyond is thrilling. I feel as though I am traveling into an exotic country; a land I have read about, but never seen. Two and a half months from now the lake will be a broad sheet of ice. Plants, flowers, and mushrooms will fold into the soil and that distant land called November will be upon the Northland. I have hiked through the jungles of Nepal; traveled the Mekong River on the Thailand/Laos border; logged over a thousand miles on Canadian rivers, but nothing has prepared me for the strange world of ice that is sure to come.

. . . .

SEPTEMBER 23

       Today is the autumnal equinox--all things being equal. It's the day when Greenwich, Greenland and Brisbane, Australia, The Pas, Canada and Naples, Florida all experience nearly the same twelve hours of daylight. The earth has lent its axis to equilibrium this fine day. People of the northern and southern latitudes experience the balance of light and darkness the way folks on the equator know it 365 days a year. Of course, the angle of the sun is different--the north receiving the bent rays of the hottest star while the tropics take it head on.
        Between the extremes, even the red squirrel is pleasant. You can pass by his perch without being scowled at. An air of deliberateness governs his movement now. Each second counts in his quest to gather and cache nuts and seeds. Anger is energy misspent and energy cannot be wasted.
        In addition to September's being a time of departure, it is also a time of return. Birds that passed through without remaining in spring take pause on their return trip south. Buffalohead ducks and cormorants cruise the cool waters; black-capped chickadees scour the woods for grubs; yellow-rumped warblers parade their winter colors.

. . . .

OCTOBER 2

       Quiet and clear. I can't imagine a nicer place to celebrate my birthday. Across the lake to the east, the sun rises over the distant shoreline through the morning fog. The amber glow serves as the candles on my celestial cake. It was 24 degrees last night so I don't even feign to blow out the warm light. We have lost a total of four hours of daylight since the summer solstice. That means the sun is rising at 7:15 in the morning and setting at 6:45 in the evening. Each unassuming revolution of the planet clips four minutes off our day.
        The attraction of living on a big water lake is watching the change of season reflect off a watery canvas. Here the planetary time clock is read on a 360-degree horizon. Small islands, sand bars, points of land, all mark change. Such is not the case in mountainous country, or in the deep rainforest. I have lived in places where there is no big water; where this house of sky is obscured by a tree canopy; where light a prism experience. Such people live in a different world than I. Life is magnificent, but contained. Sunrise is announced by calling birds rather than being seen; sunset is known only through the hush of forest animals and coming of shadows.
        In places where big water and clear skies dominate, the setting sun entreats people to pause, as if called by a Higher Power. In Hawaii, the full gamut of society finds its way to beachside parks to watch the color show. Businessmen walking home from a ten-hour work day, surf-riders waxing their long boards, homeless people flown to Honolulu on a one-way ticket from cold Chicago streets, all stand as equals before the brightest star. And when that solitary fireball disappears under a distant swell, no one speaks save the ocean. It is beautiful.

. . . .

OCTOBER 5

       The needles of the tamarack have turned 24-carrat gold to the world. Imagine that. Pine needles falling to the earth like maple leaves to be regenerated in the spring. Ordinary miracle. The trees around Lake Within are in full color. Ash and aspen are yellow as a canine tooth; broad-leafed maples are splashed sunset reds. The colors reflect off the lake water. Quiet, beautiful. Sad, beautiful. It's a shame the flycatchers have left for warmer climates. They would add much to the scene. But there are few insects on the wing in October. The warblers: yellow, chestnut-sided, black and white, they're gone too. No leaves left on the swamp alder to provide camouflage. Only the scratchers, peckers and diggers remain. White-breasted nuthatches remain in the maples; downy woodpeckers in the basswood tree cavities, black-capped chickadees wherever they choose. The land is not yet lonely. But I sense it is coming . . .
        The last of the East Shore cabin-owners nailed his windows shut today. He has actually been gone since Labor Day but is just now getting around to setting the mousetraps. I've been the only one in residence on my shore since September 15th. I'm celebrating my first month of autumnal solitude by walking the entire island . . .even the South Shore--the "trust-fund" shore. The cabin-owners are all at their city office jobs now. Squirrels are back in their cabin rafters.
        The South Shore cabins have undergone a metamorphosis of sorts since the last owner moved out. During the summer months, when the shoreline is abuzz with people, the cabins become like homes--complicated by property lines and matters of privacy. Closed up for the winter, they lead a different life. Self-governed. Dignified. In spite of summer impressions, a cabin is not a house. And an island circled with boarded up cabins is not the same as a street lined with unoccupied homes. The former you see and say, thank goodness they're gone; the latter you merely wonder when they're coming back?
        This is the first time I've walked past the South Shore cabins in two years. Like Thoreau, I prefer to walk toward the West. "The West of which I speak,” Thoreau observed in Walden, “is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World.” Of course today, Thoreau would have to head north to the Brooks Range and Alaska to find the Oregon Country he thirsted for in the 19th century. For my part, I am content to head west around Lake Within and circle back before suppertime. There's enough wildness in that two-mile stretch to tame my wanderlust if at least for a season.
        One by one I pass the abandoned A-frames. When left without owners and under the starlit sky, these cabins become as wild as a broad winged hawk. That's log cabins I'm talking about. The new pre-fab jobs with plastic siding and aluminum steps belong to the world of plastic flamingos. But a log cabin . . .pure art: a member of the same genus as turn of the century hay barns. It may be heretical from the purist’s standpoint, but I've had "wilderness experience" watching eastern phoebes nest under log cabin rafters. The 2x4's that support the wood overhangs have become the "natural" home of the flycatchers.
I've seen that same magic disappear just as quickly with the return of the cabin owner. Every time the screen door is opened by someone in search of a jelly sandwich, the poor little flycatcher zooms frantically to the nearest broad-leafed maple. It's an all-day affair. Like watching a tennis match. So when I'm on the island in May, and now in October, I see the place as wilderness--cabins included. In the peak tourist months of July and August, I see it as a wild place overrun by man. This may all seem highly relative, but you will never discover wilderness apart from culture and individual preference. It's simply not "out there." It may be “my wilderness world” but it is still very much wilderness.
        So I'm having a wilderness experience weaving in and out of abandoned cabins. And that's what my inquiry into wilderness is about. Balance. Figuring out a way to bring humans back into the natural world. Weeding from our cultural vocabulary words like "scenery," "environment," and radical as it may sound, even "wilderness." These words are the signposts for a society alienated from "nature.”
        I'm out to reinvent a cabin culture. Not the variety we have now: one where you have to sell insurance in the urban jungle eleven months a year to afford a getaway on the side. I'm after the cabin as an ideal, as a way of life lived in harmony with the self and the season. I champion a world that produces people and artifacts that pass the phoebe test: a human culture more apt to be nested in by warblers, barn swallows and American bats.
Philosopher J. Baird Callicott's has an idea to help heal our modern alienation from the natural world: replace livestock with "wild-stock." He suggests trading in the cows for antelope and letting DNR lands run wild--antelope steak and eggs for breakfast. The urban banker could spend half the year culling those antelope on the Great Plains . . .another Callicott idea to help put an end to the drudgery of specialization.

. . . .

OCTOBER 20

       I have felt the cold, seen the first hints of ice, and tasted despair, but I have yet to see the Windigo. A creature and spirit powerful enough to drive entire villages from house and home, must, in some form, lay claim to these woods. Still, there have been no bad dreams, no glimpses of a beast crashing through the brush behind the cabin. When will he come? How will he come?

OCTOBER 27

        Toilet water freezes before lake water. That was today's lesson. By next spring, frost wedging will put me out $100.00 for a new john. These things are obvious--still water goes first. It's my timing that's off. I figured I had a good week left. The pipes are frozen as well. The pump as well. Frozen solid. I've taken my last warm bath and the Time-Life series on plumbing is now on my Christmas list.
        More than just the running water is gone however. Something else has disappeared. Some essence I've always associated with the Northland, with wilderness, is missing. Like a tongue in the orb of a freshly pulled tooth there is no feedback. Just an empty reminder of what was. Maybe it's the lack of scent to the land? Olfactory death. Or perhaps it is the gray cloud-cover--two weeks without stars. There's nothing to track across the sky. My celestial compass is closed. And the birds, they’re gone as well . . . massive exodus since August. Massive! A few loons remain but they no longer call to the heavens. Silent night.

. . . .

NOVEMBER 6

        Queequeg.
        That indefatigable cannibal turned whaler in Herman Melville's Moby Dick. I see him sitting cross-legged on the floor of his bunkhouse, half-naked, tattooed, and chanting a mantra born of warmer seas. I wonder how he coped with the oppressive cold and darkness of the northern winter? Last night the temperature dipped into the single digits. A thin layer of ice now covers the protected cove on Lake Within. It is so very cold.
        Queequeg is a fictional character of course, but in this age of modern transport there are many equatorial peoples weathering the northern winter for the first time. The local college in nearby Missinabi, the coldest place to get a four-year degree in the lower forty-eight, has a host of Malaysian students in-residence. Their hometown, Kuala Lumpur, is the "polar" opposite of Missinabi. I've been to "KL" as the travel agents call it and it's as hot and oppressive year-round as Missinabi is cold in the winter.
        Each autumn, a recruiter from the small school makes the long trip to the tropics with brochures and pictures of beautiful Minnesota: green grass, Lake Missinabi at sunset, Canadian geese feeding from a child's hand in a nearby park. In small print at the bottom of the brochure are the words: Summer on the Missinabi campus.
        So they come. The Malaysians. And for six long months they lean against tables in the town pubs and pool halls. They winter around pitchers of Budweiser and unemployed loggers wearing Stihl Chainsaw hats. At times I wish I were on the warm side of a beer pub window looking out upon the frozen world. But that's not what I'm here for . . .not why I'm staying in the Northwoods. I'm here to see the Windigo in whatever form he may take. I want to touch the spirit of winter. Still, it is so very cold and the cabin so very empty. If I had a fire roaring all-day things might seem different. But there is no fire. And there is no insulation in the high walls.
         To fend off the cold I have wool socks for my feet, long johns and sweat pants for my legs, a fleece jacket for my torso and a ski cap with an orange dingle berry for my head. Grandmother’s goose down comforter covers me at night and that’s about it. My face and hands are the ambient temperature all day long.
        Some of my suffering is self-imposed. I realize that. But sitting by a roaring fire or under an electric blanket all day seems like cheating. I want to know what cold weather is personally. Down deep cold. I have a small stash of emergency wood should Alaska pay a visit.
        When I read the accounts of early fur-traders wintering on the shores of Hudson Bay I want to understand their plight. When they say that it is 13 degrees below in their cabins I want to have a glimmer about what they’re talking about. I want to know what the life I have idealized for so long actually felt like. I suppose I naively want to walk in their snowshoes.

                                                                  . . . .

NOVEMBER 13

        It's twelve degrees outside.
        It’s sixteen degrees in the cabin. The wind blows hard and cold off the window. I would call this incessant gale a storm save that it has been blowing so long that I’m more apt to call it November. I haven't left the cabin save to relieve myself for two full days. Last night not even that function was an outdoor one. A coffeepot found a higher calling owing to its forgiving shape.
        My canned food comes out in frozen blocks; my dishes are scraped instead of washed. I store milk in the unplugged freezer to keep it from freezing. Doesn't work. It is so very, very, cold. Millions of critters, crawling things, those with wings, and other summer visitors are dead or gone. There has been a die-off on a catastrophic scale. You can say it’s all part of the cycle of life; that ecologically, winter defines summer; that nature knows best. But damn it, the forest has become a graveyard. I am lonely in a way I have never known. I look upon the bare trees and feel incomplete. Is it not appropriate to feel loss? Loss for moths on the porch screen in June; loss for the columbine that no longer blooms; loss for the sunlight departing so soon. A part of me is in mourning. How cruel and shiftless this thing you call winter. Balance.
        Above my sink, I tack a photo of a turn of the century Finnish logger. Sitting on a tree stump in a driving snowstorm, the old-timer shovels cold food into the warm hole of his mouth. "Ole," as I have named him, with icicles matted to his beard and hair, is my patron saint of cold weather. There is a hint of desperation in his face as he stares down at the pile on his fork. In those same blue eyes, resignation. As if his world, the world, could not be otherwise. As if to say "it's cold and dark in Finland, it's cold and dark here . . . so what." Funny those eyes. You don't see that expression much these days. His are the eyes of Old Man Winter: Finnish blue even in the black and white photo. Blue, aged and resigned.
Some of the sons, grandsons and great grandsons of that old Finn run a family mill just outside of town. Their office consists of wooden chairs facing a barrel stove in an old wood barn. Last May, I shook hands with three generations of Jorgensons as I waited for boards to be cut. The two old-timers, brothers Jonas and Karl, wore suspenders and smoked cob pipes. Joseph, the youngest grandson, wore an earring and Michael Jordan Nikes. In spite of the generation gap, all looked out at the world through the same Finnish blue eyes. Eyes like the logger above my sink. Eyes like Old Man Winter.

    . . . .

NOVEMBER 17

       On the radio station they announce the temperature every hour on the hour. There's no expression in the announcer's voice, just a statement of fact: i.e. there are seven days in the upcoming week. Not a great career choice if you asked me. Now I've been listening to those summer temperatures subconsciously for all of my years on the island: "it's 89 degrees in Missinabi, it's 77 degrees in Missinabi, it's 64 degrees in Missinabi."
        A low-pressure system has just rolled in from the arctic north and I’m under my down blanket aching from the cold. To top off my plight that callus, lackluster son of a bitch has just proclaimed to the listening public that "it's 0 degrees in Missinabi." Homeless people are walking the streets in this cold; people with homes, but no wood to burn are trapped under duck feathers. Is it too much to ask for a little emotion and expression?
When you're alone, a long time alone, you don't just muse, or "think to yourself" about such things, you act your drama out as though solitude was a Broadway stage. Bursting to my feet I yell out at the radio: "How about saying it's zero friggin' degrees out there folks . . .Or, burrrrr listening public, bundle up and find a loved one, we've reached the big goose egg.  That means it is cold, cold, cold out there."
        For god's sakes justify my suffering. Zero is one of those numbers that deserves comment. When used in certain contexts it can cause the brain to short-circuit. It’s like the year 2,000 problem faced by computers . . .too many zeros. If it's zero degrees out there the damn world should just disappear. Bad things happens at zero. People use it when something is ready to vanish for good. There's zero chance of survival; we've reached ground zero; the bomb will explode in 3,2,1, ZERO. I curl back under my feathers, close my eyes, and wait for it to come. Death. No life. Zero.

. . . .

NOVEMBER 18

        The air in the cabin is starting to get to me. It's like being in a sub-arctic library. Still and dry. Vacuum sealed. Contained. I turn the overhead fan on just to get it moving again. The fan just makes it colder, adds a wind chill factor.
        My idea of wilderness is changing with each foggy breath. Confinement is wreaking havoc with how I envision my relationship to the natural world. When man confines himself behind computer terminals, check out lines in supermarkets, penthouse apartments, it's easy enough to discount such worldly fare from the realm of wilderness experience. But when nature confines . . .pins you up against a cold cabin wall for days on end, it's hard to understand what your relationship to the natural world is. Are you living in the wilderness?    
         Or merely surviving in a bubble of human culture?
        In 1829, Royal Navy Captain John Ross and his 23-man crew aboard the steamship Victory, experienced the ultimate case of wilderness confinement. Stationed off Baffin Island, near the magnetic north pole, Ross was attempting to discover the great, if not mythical, Northwest Passage when his vessel became ice bound. Forced to winter on the ice pack and in some of the most inhospitable conditions known to man, the British sailors learned first hand about confinement of the wilderness sort.
        Snow started falling during the first week of September. The ice was thick by October. By the winter solstice the sun disappeared altogether. Ross lamented: "The weather rendered it seldom possible to show ourselves above the roof of the deck." In a January journal entry he observed: "The 29th was very fine, the first time we had seen the sun in 74 days."
        Entertainment under the ship's deck was hard to come by. Commenting on the month of February in a single journal entry, Ross noted:

       "The summary of this month is more barren than usual. It had been cold, particularly toward the end. It was little more than a schoolboy's experiment, to fire a ball of frozen mercury through an inch plank; but possibly this had not been done before."

       What had been a summer of exploration, freedom, and possibility, deteriorated into the lowest common denominator of ice, cold and dark for Ross and crew. "There was not an atom of clear water to be seen," he observed.
        "Wearisome snow was visible all around the horizon . . .. the land of ice and snow was a dull, dreary, heart-sinking, monotonous waste, under the influence of which the mind was immediately paralyzed, ceasing to care or think. Nothing moves and nothing changes. All is forever the same, cheerless, cold and still."
        Things only got worse for Ross. The following August, after a full year of being ice bound and enduring wretched conditions, the polar ice failed to abate. The explorers groped with realization that a second winter aboard their vessel loomed on the horizon.           Surveying the icy confines Ross lamented:

        "Today was as yesterday, and so will be tomorrow. Of course the ice remained unaltered. We were ever waiting to rise and become active, yet ever to find that nature was still asleep and that we had nothing more to do than to wish and groan and hope."

       Hunkered under my duck feathers, I am a far better off than the crew of the Victory. I still have precious hours of daylight. I can rest assured that the storm outside will eventually pass. And, perhaps most importantly, I have a gallon of Food Service peaches to stave off scurvy. I'm cold, lonely and suffering a bit, but I've still got a pot to piss in. It's a coffeepot I'll grant you, but it's still a pot.

. . . .

       It may seem callous, but what interests me most about the Victory expedition is whether or not the winter hell the crew experienced lent itself to "wilderness experience." Trapped in my cabin, this seems like the eternal question. On a personal level, I want to live close to wilderness all year long. Period. If confinement negates wilderness, then I must re-think my life’s ambition of being a Northlander. On the philosophical level, if winter transforms the Northland so thoroughly as to render it different in type and kind from the summer fare, then perhaps we need to rethink our tendency to define wilderness as a place.
According to the 1964 Wilderness Act, wilderness is place "in contrast with areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape . . . where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man . . . generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature . . . (and) has outstanding opportunities for solitude . . .” By such a definition, every experience the crew members of the Victory had should lend itself to "wilderness experience" owing to their remote locale. The glory of pioneering new lands was theirs, solitude was theirs, untrameled land was theirs. All was wilderness save one detail. Confinement. Stick your head out the porthole and you become a Popsicle. Imprisoned beneath the hand-hewn planks of the ship, the men passed nearly two years in close quarters where social roles were determined by ship's rank. What they knew was a prison term, not a wilderness experience.
        Surviving on provisions born of distant lands, the crew was not of the land. The image is haunting: men clinging to life in a bubble of culture afloat on a vast sea of arctic ice. These were trapped men dreaming of their homelands, pastoral fields and ship harbors: places a thousand times less wild than the country around them; places a thousand times wilder than the world of plank board ceilings and social roles in which they were confined.
        What does this mean for the idea of wilderness? And what does it mean for my personal inquiry? It means that wilderness, in human experience, cannot simply be defined as a "place." What the crew of the Victory experienced was a death of sorts. "Nature," as known through the senses, folded up shop when they disappeared under the deck. Direct contact with the "environment:" space, fresh air, depth of perception, becomes critical in defining wilderness. You are more apt to have a wilderness experience in an Iowa cornfield than in the dark confinement of the arctic during that same month.
        Perhaps I understand for the first time what naturalist Sigurd Olson meant when he warned: "Beware of houses. They have a way of putting their arms around you and not letting go." And what of the animals? How great is their contribution to wilderness! In May I was alive and taken with the ten thousand lives around me. I knew the daily patterns of squirrels, woodpeckers, and raccoons. During this, the season of cold and dark, the few animals and birds that remain are distant: not an everyday part of my life. Without their exchanges I have fallen into torpor. Like Ross and crew, confinement has lent itself to a condition, "where the mind (is) immediately paralyzed, ceasing to care or think."
        To be confined is to leave the landscape. You cease to be a member of a community--human or otherwise. You no longer identify with township, county, state, or country. You could be anywhere really: Maine, Louisiana, Buenos Aires, Bangladesh. Like a satellite, you circle in your mind apart from all that is necessary and real. You are confined. You are nowhere at all. And when it is wilderness--the atmosphere and landscape--which pins you down, you are given over to thinking about your captor at great length. Certainly Ross and his crew gave it consideration. From his journal entries it may be inferred that after the first winter, he no longer considered the arctic as a place--a stable, unchanged, enduring entity. Rather, he seems to have envisioned it as a series of places, or more accurately, conditions. June does not survive November. Or, to put it in the more poetic words of the Zen Master Dogen: Firewood does not become ash: first there is wood; then there is ash.
By the same token, an island surrounded by ice is no longer an island. The idea that an essence, a wilderness, remains and endures in a place where all else changes is untenable.             As I stare out at this foreign land of ice and snow, I can't help but ask myself where the hell am I? First there is the planet in June. Next there is the planet in November. There is no becoming. The failure of our current idea of wilderness is that it can't keep up. It's stuck in place and that place has changed.
        Nomadic cultures who adjusted to seasonal change never posited a wilderness idea rooted in place. Wilderness, if it was anything at all, was the spirit of life, a quality of existence that was changeable. Arising here, disappearing there, like the aurora borealis in the midnight sky.
                                                                    . . . .

       We as a culture, have to reconsider Wilderness. Not the protection of lands from economic exploitation, but how we confine wildness to reserves the same way that Ross and his men were confined to their ship's cabin. Set Wilderness free to wander I say. Release it from the bondage of place.

       . . . .

NOVEMBER 20

       Finally the storm is over. The wind that hurled wind and snow and hapless gray at my cabin windows for days has taken its torment south. It's not any warmer out there, 13 degrees, but the misery has abated. I cautiously pry the front door open to make sure the stranger is gone. Outside is a monochrome landscape--white snow on gray tree limbs. The once sandy beach is covered by drift. But there is light in the eastern sky, a brilliant glow through wisps of fog--the cold smoking gun of the storm. The water is a blue I have never seen before. Almost purple. Call it cold blue.
        I walk over the two-inch ice lining the shoreline and meet up with the trail that circles Lake Within. Through the trees, black-capped chickadees move from empty branch to empty branch. The storm has done little to dampen their spirits. And I hear a white-breasted nuthatch with its usual whine--steady and remittent like the warning signal of heavy equipment.
         Further on I meet the downy woodpecker resting on a birch limb. His ivory and black feathers against the pattern of the bark would make for a good Beverly Doolittle sketch. I frame it in my mind. Add other imaginations to the scene: a dalmation, zebra, bovine milk cow, all patterned in black and white like the woodpecker, like the forest.
I'm starting to feel like I'm in wilderness again. The walking has helped . . .so too the birds. Can it be so transient? Wilderness? Does it really come and go with my mood and the changing season? Or am I the little boy who creates and destroys the world by placing his hands over his eyes.
        Lake Within has all but frozen over. A reservoir the shape of an uncoiled garter snake remains liquid. Steam emerges from the pond giving a false impression of warmth. The last of the waterfowl cruise the life-giving pool: buffalohead ducks, mergansers, golden eyes. I see the cluster of life and think of the Serengeti: elephants, hyenas, wildebeests and crouched lions. I see high plains drifters converging on the last of the life-giving pools during a drought. I never thought of snow and ice as drought conditions, but seeing the huddle of waterfowl, the image doesn't seem far off.
        I venture out onto the lake ice. I shouldn't. But I do. Not past waist deep though. Beneath my feet a school of shiner minnows twitch along the sandy bottom. They don't seem to notice that a man is walking on the frozen lid above them. My god I'd go absolutely crazy having a cover put on me. But I guess the fish aren’t planning to leave the pond. Once snow insulates the ice, the shiners will lose their shine. They’ll live in a world without light.           Five months of black cold water.
       I guess that's what I'm learning out here. The real citizens of this island lead very different lives come winter. I have only known the minnows of summer. I suppose I always imagined that the sun reflected off their golden scales. One more storm and their world of light will be gone. Like Ross and crew they will be confined. I feel sad for them. I suspect they see things differently than I however.
        It's funny how we flip through the journals of pioneers: Lewis and Clark, Daniel Boone, Alexander Mackenzie--and amaze ourselves by what those brave and fortuitous men saw and endured. We are transported back in time and believe we can glimpse a world more astounding than the one we see today. But under my feet and around this lake I see bravery everywhere. My struggle with the cold and dark has led to admiration. The critters that see winter as the norm, and the brief explosion of sun and life as the oddity, are survivors. I'll never bait up one of those minnows again. They’re modern day pioneers. They’re one of only a handful of species to adapt to the icy waters of a Northland winter. That's Jeremiah Johnson and Jim Bridger down there.

. . . .

       I have seen water turn to ice once before. But that was contained water in a manmade reflecting pond. During my first year of college in Portland, Oregon, I used to venture down to the sailing dock on the Willamette River and drop a line for carp. A buddy of mine came up with the idea that transferring a fish that outlived the dinosaurs into the school reflecting pond would be an interesting, if short-lived, prank. For two full miles "Cecil-Carp" sloshed back and forth in an oversized plastic bucket as we hauled him up Palatine Hill to his new home. Not a very nice thing to do.
        For the month of November, the poor carp sat like leaf litter at the bottom of the shallow pool hoping to return to the Willamette via the sewer system. By December he became something of a school mascot. U.C. Santa Cruz had their banana slugs, Lewis and Clark had its "Cecil-Carp." But when a January cold spell froze the pool solid, we gave up hope for the carp. There he sat. Frozen solid in the shallow ice, on display like a museum piece: a frozen fish stick in the waiting. Hockey games, sliding contests, and makeshift curling matches all took place inches above.
        I left the college that winter, but when I returned the following fall, I found Cecil-Carp alive by the drain. A natural form of antifreeze secreted throughout his vitals prevented a complete shutdown of his nervous system and kept Mrs. Paul at bay. Cecil-Carp is a pioneer as well. I just hadn’t suffered enough at the time to appreciate his feat.
What will become of the fish in the shallows of Lake Within? Frozen or not? We idealize religious men who achieve stillness for short periods during prayer and meditation, so why not pay homage to the true masters of stillness: the fish of our northern lakes and ponds? Are they not the true practitioners of one-pointed concentration? A mosquito bites a man in prayer and he scratches; the bitter cold bites into the flesh of a northern pike and he remains perfectly still. I am starting to realize what a helpless child I am in this serious season of ice. I am out-matched and out-witted. A stranger in the forest I call home.
        On the edge of Lake Within a family of otters sunbathe on the ice. What will come of them when the last puddle of water freezes? They seem awkward on land. How will they survive? This frozen world before me is a book of questions. Will the downy woodpecker stay the whole season? The chickadees?

. . . .

NOVEMBER 24

       I'm heading off the island for the first time in ten days. I had beans and cheese for dinner last night, beans with no cheese for breakfast this morning. Time to re-supply. The big lake could go any day now. Freeze completely solid. If I'm going to stay longer I will need to stock up on provisions. Already the ice has formed along the shoreline and there are ice crystals in the lake.
        The metal clip mooring my boat to the buoy is frozen solid. Cold hands suffer. Boat is free but the motor won’t start. The shaft is solid ice. Time to stoke the emergency fire.
Re-supplying is not against the rules of wintering. Even Thoreau walked the dirt-lined path to Hartford now and again to stock up and enjoy the good company of a store clerk. My favorite in-town activity is retrieving the mail. Dwayne, the postmaster, has been handing me letters since I was six. Our meetings are about as Norman Rockwell as I get. Dwayne used to drive the mail boat on Red Cedar Lake. As kids we used to sit on the dock every morning waiting for him to come. All aspired to be like Dwayne . . .to make $19,000 dollars a year and captain the mail boat.
        The last delivery came in 1983 owing to cutbacks. Now Dwayne hands me my mail under florescent lights. He doesn’t smile much anymore.

. . . .

         It's 6:30 P.M. My town visit has cost me the precious last hour of daylight. I'll have to cross the lake in the dark—not a pleasant prospect. But 6:30 P.M. dark is the same as 11:00 P.M. dark so I head over to Gussy’s Bar to tip the elbow.
        Tonight I will confront the bar owner about something that has upset me for years. You see Gussy’s is sort of the town bar. When people think of Red Cedar Lake Township, they also think of Gussy’s.
        Herein lies the problem.
        In a word: bumper sticker. His sticker reflects poorly on our town. Now I am of the opinion that a bumper sticker is a rare opportunity in life to make statement. Think of the countless hours spent following cars with politically charged messages. Pro-lifers in particular have mastered the art of “sticker shock.” They remind: “It’s a child, not a choice.” Environmentalists too have seized the opportunity to say something meaningful. “Non-breeder” is my personal favorite.
        It is this once in a lifetime opportunity to be heard that I want to talk to Joe about. For you see, Joe’s sticker—proudly displayed on ’79 Chevy Impalas and ’84 Dodge Dart’s all over town--conveys the dubious message: “Gussy’s: EAT LOTS. SHIT BIG!” That’s how our city is known. Montana is Big Sky Country; we are Big Shit County. As much as I want to understand planetary origins, I am more consumed by the question of WHY this is our town’s message to the world. I tell you, this winter thing has put me in a foul mood.

                                                                 . . . .

       Returning to a slab of ice doubling as a shoreline, I survey the black space where the lake used to be. No moon. If the island's out there it will have to be reached by faith and a mental compass. A blustery northeast wind means big waves and a wind chill factor of about ten below zero. I have no money for a motel room.
        From the marina, the island at its nearest point lies two miles to the northwest. From the shoreline to the cabin is another two miles. Total travel time given the conditions is about 45 minutes. While I still don't know the rules about frostbite--my guess is that this trip will make me a candidate. The treacherous part of the journey will be crossing the channel.  
        When a wind blows from the northeast, there is eight miles of open water that waves can build over. But how big? It’s hard to tell. It tends to get rougher near the middle.
In minutes, the shoreline disappears behind me. The wind blows harder. The waves get bigger. The universe gets smaller. My outboard motor coughs with each roll of the small 14-foot boat. Water surges over the bow and soaks my face. If it's ten below with the wind chill, what's the temperature as measured by soaked skin? What's the wind-on-wet-skin chill factor?
        My hair is frozen now. Long strands dangle like frozen chopsticks from my scalp. My hands ache from holding a tight grip on the throttle. Under the weight of the season, the lake and the island have become two separate countries. What summer united, winter has divided. Each lay governed by a different set of laws with the lake being the more treacherous and unforgiving of the two--a watery Tibet of sorts. In the summertime, the channel provided an easy pathway to my cabin home. The lake completed the island, defined it and made it what it is. But in this treacherous cold, the lake belongs to itself. To reach the island means defying the lake. Defying the lake means risking the ultimate punishment.
        Wilderness has become a battlefield.
        I seek to conquer this lake as my forefathers conquered the great continent. And what of my motor and its effect on the wilderness? When the lake was summer still and a cool breeze welcome, motor noise cast profanity across the water. Compromised the wilderness. Under the swells of November, the coughing, sputtering, surviving, outboard seems but a toy for the great lake to play with; a mouse to be batted around, tossed, and teased. There is no division of man and nature on the lake tonight. I am too small and the lake is too big. A Forest Service employee once defined wilderness as an uncivilized place where man must rely on all his technology to not only access, but to survive. Red Cedar Lake is that place tonight. I rely on my Evinrude not to conquer, but to live.
        Mid-channel. The pain in my forehead is excruciating. I cover the skin with my hand to add some warmth. Now the pain in my hand is excruciating and my head only hurts like hell. But pain is the least of my problems. About two minutes ago I crossed into what some would call a life or death situation. The island is now closer than the mainland. I think. I'm a hell of a long way from both. The lake is rolling four-foot waves at my boat. I cannot see them, but a blind man can smell death before it comes. The lake water is ceaseless.
        For the first time in my life I am terrified of this lake.
        One wrong turn of the motor, one deep trough followed by one high crest and near freezing water will fill the boat. What am I doing out here? What compelled me to challenge this lake? I am completely at the mercy of the water and cold. I look out at the rolling depths and see the lake for what it really is. Indifferent. The fate of my crossing may have been decided an hour ago with the birth of a single wave on a distant shoreline. One swell nurtured by the right combination of wind and topography will end me.
        From the depths of the lake I hear Grandfather's voice and the final words he spoke to me in his St. Paul home: "I buried the three Hansen boys who thought they were bigger than that lake. You remember that come November."
        The rabid wind has transformed Red Cedar into a frothing stranger. The further I plunge into darkness, the more I sense I am entering someone or something's territory. A presence not altogether human, not altogether natural looms. Am I being hunted? Stalked? Is this the spot where the Hansen's boat overturned? What if they didn't just swamp? What if something held the gunnel down and let the water in? What if a presence reached into their lungs with an icy grip and ended them. Maybe the Hansen's had an encounter, not an accident.
        But it's so dark. Only the spray is visible . . .sometimes a white cap in the distance. I close my eyes and try to contain my fear. I count. One-one-thousand, two-one thousand . . . The roll of the boat, the choking of the motor, the pain in my hands and forehead, the north and blowing wind. Someone, something, is orchestrating it all. I feel it. There is territory here. The winter spirit has come for me. I'm sure of it now. There's a Windigo in this water. I invited him into my life in September; dared him to show his face in October; and now in   November he has come. It's the Windigo I tell you.
        The motor roars over my thoughts as waves crash over the bow and soak my face. If the Windigo senses fear, he'll devour me; just as he devoured the three lost Indians from Yellow Head's camp. He'll feast on me just as the Cree woman feasted on the flesh of her own child. I must overcome the fear. Open the eyes. See nature. See the lake. Ordinary water and waves, not a skeleton of ice. Not human flesh dangling from teeth.
        I SEE WINDIGO!
        Out there in the black water. Not a skeleton, but a shadow moving through the waves. Black and shifty. Lifting the water higher and higher. Dark shadow. Windigo. I turn the throttle and try to outrun him. The boat crashes violently into, then over, the huge swells. The boat meets a wall of water and I feel my head crash hard into the aluminum seat in front of me. I lay helpless at the bottom of the boat in ankle-deep water. The motor and boat continue on course. The great haunt of far away places is here. Like moonlight on rippled water he follows.
        In each cold, dark, wave, in the northeast wind, in the water soaking my body I feel his grip tighten on me. This is my doing. I asked to see him, asked him to come. Now he's here to show me what the Hansen boys saw twenty years ago. The waves grow bigger. The sky gets darker. The Windigo becomes stronger.
        I have no faith to turn to: no one to call for protection. Red Cedar Lake has been my Higher Power for twenty-six years and now the lake will end me. How can something so beautiful be a killer? The boat takes on more water. The motor submerges, growls, then breathes again in the frozen air. Survival depends on my motor. Irony. Turning to an outboard for religion. Praying to civilization for salvation. Irony.
        The cold has bit into my eyes now. I can barely keep them open. I squint just to maintain a 90-degree angle against the mounting waves. My pant legs and jacket turn to ice. Is there no end to the lake?

. . . .

       I hear it—the scratch of reeds under the boat. The motor chokes as fibers wrap around the propeller. Like a frozen phoenix half emerged, the gray shoreline of Windigo Island comes into view.
       "The lake is the landscape’s most beautiful feature . . .” Thoreau penned on the shores of Walden. But Thoreau never heard of the Hansen boys. And he never crossed Red Cedar Lake in November. There’s a Windigo in my lake. A black cataract obscuring the “all-seeing eye of the universe.”