The fall of 2012 was a time that I will never forget. Thinking about it makes me nostalgic. I met many new friends and fell in love with a new neck of the woods. Conserve School is where it all occurred. Conserve is a semester boarding school in the north woods of Wisconsin and has an emphasis on the outdoors and environmental studies. With the help of the Lowenstine Academic Full-Ride Scholarship, I was able to gain many great experiences there including after school activities, weekend adventures, and two longer wilderness experiences.
One weekend, the environmental science instructor along with five others including me set out to collect data on one of the lakes in Sylvania. Sylvania is a wilderness area that's adjacent to the Conserve Campus. We measured water depth at around the lake and marked our points on GPS.
What makes this day stick in mind is the weather pattern that we experienced. It was raining at the time that we were getting ready to leave so we had put all of our gear in dry bags. The temperatures were a little chilly with the rain so we dressed appropriate with raincoats to keep us dry on top of other warm layers. We set out in the canoes with a positive attitude. Even when the wind started to gust and the rain came pounding down on our sides did we stay with good attitudes. Paddling in the wind and the rain created a sort of rush that I cannot begin to describe, one that I have felt many times in my days kayak guiding in the Apostle Islands. It was somewhat awakening, but in a rejuvenating way.
Portaging from lake to lake wasn't to much work as the lakes were all tightly chained. Only once did it get messy due to the mucky shoreline by one of the put-ins. Cub lake's water level had fallen enough to leave a muddy beach around its perimeter. Foggy green and murky loomed the waters pigment. After collecting our data on Cub Lake, we headed back. We were wet cold, but the day was good. We got the data that we needed, even though we could hardly read the wet smudged and smeared paper, and we were able to get yet another moment enjoying Mother Nature. A wise man once told me,
Portaging from lake to lake wasn't to much work as the lakes were all tightly chained. Only once did it get messy due to the mucky shoreline by one of the put-ins. Cub lake's water level had fallen enough to leave a muddy beach around its perimeter. Foggy green and murky loomed the waters pigment. After collecting our data on Cub Lake, we headed back. We were wet cold, but the day was good. We got the data that we needed, even though we could hardly read the wet smudged and smeared paper, and we were able to get yet another moment enjoying Mother Nature. A wise man once told me,
"Mother Nature is the greatest chess player of all time, you can come to a truce, but you will never win."
I still believe it to this day, and paddling in the rain was just another reminder of how powerful she really is. We put the equipment back in its place and registered our data into the computer after returning. It felt good to get a bite to eat and a nap after a days work.