by Marshall Collective member, Cynthia

We woke up at a reasonable hour to a lovely view of the lakes and trees. Everyone seemed to be in a putzy mood, reading, writing and swimming drying off in the sun that shone directly on our camp. Breakfast was leftovers—soup, cinnamon rolls, and corn bread from the night before. Josh, Marci and I started a conversation and realized the longer we talked the more work was getting done—without us doing anything! (Thanks Emily and Angie).

We finally headed out into alpine-esque waters with rocky shores and plenty of pines. Our portaging was minimal—a basket-carry first and then one real portage of 80 or so rods. I have now perfected my single flip-down, and thoroughly enjoy doing it. The people we met on the portage trail basket carried their canoe the whole way across, and seemed impressed by our skills. Josh thought of offering to help them, but decided against it in the end. At our second to last lake, we decided as a group to do the paddling and minimal portaging route—despite my offer to carry both of the canoes over the 105 portage. We circumvented a couple of beautiful islands to get a closer view of the moss, rocks and plants.

Throughout this time period Josh repeatedly tried to steal Barbie from me for unknown purposes. What was perhaps most disturbing was Josh’s inability to ask Barbie if she wanted to come play, and instead resorted to grabbing her or dragging her towards him with his paddle, smashing her into the bottom of the canoe in the process. These attempts continued through lunch, and were eventually successful when Josh and I traded places in order for Josh and Marci to navigate white water while Angie, Emily and I lined the rapids. Once Josh obtained Barbie he was mostly respectful, although there was one altercation where Josh held her under the water until she agreed to do what he wanted. Finally Barbie was safely returned to her dry-bag with her dogs, and the rest of the trip went peacefully for her.

Josh and Marci looked great on the white water, and three rapids led us to our destination lake that still required several miles of paddling. The wind had picked up substantially at this point, and we faced significant waves. We even saw a couple of canoes that had dumped in the waves. The waves and wind ultimately provided a good finishing challenge for our group. We paddled for a few miles, trying to find wind breaks along the way, and having a good time talking in our separate canoes. We finally stopped to have a break on shore which led to people putting moss and pine needles in each others’ hair. First Josh in Marci’s, followed by me putting similar things in Josh’s, while he was doing the same to Marci. We ended our time on shore with my demonstrating my spitting/fountain impersonation skills, in which more ridiculous pictures were taken of me (hopefully future employers will NOT be checking out this website before they hire me).

At this point we had finished the most challenging paddling, and headed into much more still waters that did not require nearly as much effort. We got confused in our navigation because of closed down camp sites and the difficulty of navigating through islands. We found one legitimate campsite, but it had only rocky and bumpy tent sites. We paddled to another site that was not longer and official site and ended up camping there as it started to rain and get dark. Our outlaw band cooked a good dinner of spaghetti and noodles, and all piled into the 4P tent for story time. I read another story from A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, during which nearly everyone fell asleep after a hard day of paddling.