Waiting for the Last Gasp – Adam Overland

I took to the northwoods last weekend, along with thousands, maybe tens of thousands of other Minnesotans. Along the North Shore near the popular and photogenic bear and bean lakes—which, since Instagram, seem to have more traffic than New York City—cars lined up waiting for a turn on the six mile round-trip hike last Saturday.

I still remember the first time I saw those lakes 20 years ago. It was an accident, really. Some friends and I went on a three day backpack trip and someone maybe had heard something about some cool lakes somewhere. We got lost the first night, and drunk. The second night we got drunk again, but we made it to bear and bean lake, and it truly was magical. We met locals on ATVs, shared beers and weed, even though most of us didn’t smoke weed. But what the hell? Trout were caught. 

I’ve not yet done the bear and bean hike this trip, but I’ve caught a few beautiful rainbow trout and had trout for dinner twice so far. All the state parks and pay campgrounds are predictably booked, fully so on the weekends, and so I went the rustic campground route. There are something like a dozen of them up here officially, most equipped only with an outhouse, which allows the riff-raff like me in. I’ve got solar and 40 gallons of water, so I’m set here at Hogback Lake rustic campground, where two of the three spots are taken. But even if the rustics are full, there are plenty more campsites without names along gravel roadsides, and so you just drive until you find one, which I did on Friday and Saturday night, having arrived too late even to find a rustic spot. 

Because not only is it leaf-peeping season, but the salmon are running, the trout are biting, and it’s evidently grouse hunting season as well. It’s a full house in Northern Minnesota, but right now I’m sitting on a lake with a million dollar view in a comfy RV for the price of propane for heat and the gas money it took me to get here.

So far I’ve seen the half moon’s reflection on the glassy water at twilight, the clouds holding onto the last red remnants of the sunken sun. One night I saw red northern lights that seemed to pulse, the next night green and shimmering. I scared up a grouse in the brush alongside a hiking trail–gave me a short-lived rush as they sound bigger than they are when suddenly flapping their way through underbrush. 

I’m realizing that when I go camping I turn into an animal, something wild and poorly groomed, untrained in table manners. This is who I am underneath. I’ll eat with my plate in my lap from a campfire chair, stab my food with the point of my Old Timer and wipe the blade on my pants. I’ll wear those pants all week. Social interactions are limited, no one around to see or smell you. What interactions you do have are generally neighboring campers or hikers you see outdoors where the wind dissipates whatever olfactory baggage you’ve gathered about you. Thoughts of laundry are a distant memory, and what I recall of it makes no sense. When I’m at home I’ll wear something once, then wash it. With your laundry options limited in the woods, coupled with reduced showers (because camper water is also limited), it seems almost foolish, and definitely wasteful, to be incessantly washing everything. As though we are not born into this world dirty and screaming and leave it silently buried under more dirt. 

And I’m one step closer to it, turning 47 on Monday of this week. 

In the fall when the leaves turn and loosen their grip, at least by this lakeside, the wind takes them by one and by many, a breeze or a gust at a time. Here it’s mostly the small yellow leaves from the aspens, those early departers. They scatter to the ground, drift into the water, float then sink like coins to the lakebed, then fade into the muck. The trees sway and creak as I hike the trails and look up to see them leaning against each other like drunken pals late in the night until someday one falls down, while the other waits his turn. And when the wind picks up suddenly, sometimes to me it feels like the end, and sometimes it feels like the beginning. But of course, it’s both.