The Lean-to on Famine Lake

Part I

Deep in the north woods of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area sits Famine Lake. It’s a particularly challenging body of water to reach in the daunting wilderness, requiring a strenuous uphill bushwhack on an unmaintained route from Middle Cone Lake.

Even for those passionate about the Superior National Forest, it remains an obscure, out-of-the-way destination. There’s no marked portage or recognized BWCA campsite at Famine Lake, so it’s left largely untouched by adventurers already heavily burdened with canoes and packs. Paddlers and anglers have a host of options nearby on the shores and islands of Brule Lake or the chain of Cone Lakes, and so Famine makes its home where abundance lies.

But many years ago, driven by that sudden urge that makes modern men and women suddenly quit their comfortable city quarters in favor of mosquitos, singing pines and a place of solitude where you’re as lonely as you are alone, I decided to visit Famine Lake during a quick two-night paddling and camping trip with Sparky, my young Collie mix, alongside me. It’s probably only a natural reaction to cut the cord when the only people trying to reach you are spammers.

My only initial determination was to make the 4.5-hour drive from the Cities to the Brule Lake entry point, knowing that’d be easy enough to accomplish if I set out early Friday morning. Then I figured we could take our time paddling Brule and find a campsite around there for the night. But how to spend all of Saturday? Looking at the BWCA using online imaging, the nearby “Famine Lake” struck me as the sort of landmark you’d find on a map of Treasure Island, and there, just to the northeast, was its lesser twin “Poverty Lake.”

That’s where I needed to be.

Here were two grim brothers of the north woods who’d earned their reputations for being a great cause of misadventure to anyone who wanted to fuck around and find out in recorded history. Those early trappers, surveyors and homesteaders who’d, through whatever unfortunate circumstance, strayed from the normal lines of the fur trade and found themselves given up to the elements of this particular backcountry rarely found it forgiving; here is the deep woods, where landmarks, waypoints and bodies of water are obscured by old-growth and towering timber. The ancient conifers block out the sunlight, the mosses and furs quiet your step, and the sentinel Black Spruce stands envelope you in a Witches’ Sabbath.

Beauty here shrouds the harsh realties that are quick to reveal themselves when the screaming wind unleashes the pounding waves, the lightening strike ignites the dry tinder or when the ice and snowpack are a few feet thick in the depths of a desolate February.

Still, it was beauty I was after, and I determined that after spending Friday night on Brule, we could paddle to South Cone and then up to Middle Cone Lake before setting up camp there. That would serve as the perfect base for a leisurely stroll through the dense brush and to what I figured would be the checkbox travel moment of the trip for the posterity of my own shits and giggles: seeing Famine Lake.

The trip couldn’t have gone smoother; the weather couldn’t have been more accommodating. We managed to put in at Brule’s entry point early Friday afternoon, and with very little wind affecting the big lake’s surface, Sparky immensely enjoyed God’s Great Water Buffet from her spot at the bow of the canoe while I serenely navigated us to a campsite for the night.

On Saturday morning we took off towards Cone Bay before floating through shallow waters into South Cone Lake. It took a quick portage to reach Mid Cone, and from there it was a short paddle to the campsite on the lake’s western shore: an old logging road turned into a mushy strip of grass. What was famine and poverty for man was now a haven for ticks.

From there it was a 1.5-mile hike west to Famine Lake, which I was largely counting on Sparky and GPS to deliver us safely to. The bugs were otherworldly, but we charged through the brush while navigating the rocky outcrops and appreciating our place within the interweaving of this supportive world.

When we arrived at the lake, I wasn’t shocked to see that it maintained the golden thread of rugged beauty that connects all of the Boundary Waters. The eyes thrill upon the indomitable walls of pine, spruce and fir brought to a standstill in their slow, silent march by depths of crystalline placidity at rest inside a great glacial carving.

But two things followed that captured my imagination for years to follow and would inspire a second, and final, return.

My first glance at the lake revealed a small, densely wooded island in the middle. Famine Lake is roughly 30 acres in size, so it was out there but it wasn’t difficult to closely examine, and there I saw it: the flash of something like corrugated metal and the rough shape of what had to be some kind of primitive lean-to almost entirely concealed in the middle of the island.

Maybe an enterprising fisherman? A religious hermit? My mind clouded and darkened: someone who clearly doesn’t want to be found. But there were no signs of any recent habitation; no discernible trails or heavily used footpaths that I’d seen. More importantly, Sparky didn’t have a care in the world. Still, the little hut, nestled in total seclusion but clearly showing signs of someone, at sometime, having brought in materials to make it a little homelier, a little braver in the attritional war against the pervading elements, struck a chord deep within me.

I’m not sure it would’ve reverberated quite strong enough to make me return without what followed.

I’d found a decent spot to sit, snack and read a little while Sparky splashed in the lake and eyed the chipmunks and squirrels. There was a spiritual feeling in that kind of seclusion, but suddenly out of the tranquility, resounding from the opposite shoreline, came the unrestrained, gleeful laughter of a woman.

It was strange enough that I was here, occupying this little visited spot on Famine Lake, but the idea of someone in the deep bush on the other side? There were no campsites over there, no routes to popular lakes, no reasons for anyone visiting the Boundary Waters to be there. Again my mind clouded and darkened, but the laugh, it was just that: laughter.

I waited and waited some more. Maybe to hear the voice of the laugher, or maybe I’d hear a rejoinder from whoever had cause the fit in the first place. Although I stayed near Famine Lake a while longer, that was the only human voice I heard. And when Sparky started looking at me and making motions like it was time to leave, I convinced myself that was only the natural thing to do at this hour and tried to quickly disregard the notion I’d just acquired that someone was watching me.

With the lean-to and laughter etched into my mind, I went about asking questions when I got home.

I have friends who’ve worked as U.S. Forest Service wilderness rangers, Minnesota DNR conservation officers and others who grew up in Cook County and know not only its physical wilds but the legends and learnings that’ve been passed over generations.

There’s not a wealth of information concerning the immediate area surrounding Famine and Poverty Lakes, but there does seem to be a general consensus around a couple things. There’s an agreement that ill-luck has struck many who’ve visited the area, from the early settlers to the popular quip that an abnormal amount of lumberjacks met a violent end in these woods. The remoteness also lends itself to stories of eerie vocalizations and cryptid sightings.

Personally, I wasn’t attributing the laughter I’d heard to any Sasquatch, but the other bit of unanimity I could find (granted, only from a few people) truly piqued my curiosity for a return visit: As far back as anyone could remember, the lean-to had always been on that island.

It’d certainly been augmented and refurbished by its unknowable occupants over the years, no one could quite agree on the details of its layout, construction or original purpose, but there was one local myth concerning the lean-to that propagated on amongst the locality: during the infamous Boundary Waters Blowdown of 1992, when a derecho with winds in excess of 90 miles per hour decimated the BWCA to a final toll of 25 million trees down, 60 people injured and one killed, the wilderness surrounding Famine Lake was tossed and torn in parts, but the hut remained, almost by miracle, entirely untouched.

So the memories of this particular Boundary Waters trip remained vivid within me, and although many years went by, Sparky passed, and visits to other parts of the BWCA were made, the allure of returning of returning to Famine Lake grew stronger and stronger each summer.

Sparky’s death ultimately provided the motivation to return. Looking back through old photos, she looked of a particular exuberance during that trip. Like by innately knowing she was exactly where she needed to be that weekend, she was glowing with a force of illumination that poured forth from within.

Yes, it could be somewhat done in her memory, a return to Famine Lake, and by myself I could make the portage there and actually paddle out and sleep in the lean-to! Here could be my own Listening Point, a place where maybe I could again find a bit of awe in my life.

At least that’s how she looked in photos on big Brule and the Cone chain, although there’s one capture that stands out to me now, only after my second trip. It’s a long shot of the lean-to and island on Famine Lake, and Sparky is off in the lower right-hand side of frame at the near shore. As memory serves, she was simply playing in the water, biting at the tide.

But looking back at the photo, she’s in a very shallow part of the lake and bent down low towards the waterline, body rigid and tail dropped, the fur of her hackles standing on end and her teeth bared exactly towards the camera’s point of emphasis.