THE LAND NORTH OF SUPERIOR

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At the best of times when you’re in the wilds you have a lot to contend with.  Having a breakdown, through carelessness or lack of foresight, when you’re thirty miles off the pavement can be a life threatening situation.  There are however times when laughter is the best medicine in the land north of Superior.

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There was no question it had been a bad day from the word go.  A savage rainstorm had almost cancelled the trip in the morning.  We had sat at the dining room table sipping coffee and watching sheets of water sluice down the picture window.  Four guys hungry for lake trout on a Friday morning had little to laugh about.  It was our only chance to get in a few hours fishing this weekend.  The radio station playing quietly in the background repeated the forecast, showers in the early morning�?.clearing by noon�?sunny breaks for the rest of the day.  RIGHT!!!

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Whether it was my imagination or not I persuaded the guys to have one more cup of coffee.  I thought I had noticed a lightening up of the sky.  We listlessly flipped a few hands of poker.  There it was, Tom noted that the rain was no longer cascading down the windowpane.  Even as we watched the world outside brightened up, the rain stopped as if a tap had been turned off.  A quick look to the west, from our kitchen window, confirmed bright blue sky splotches.  The trip was on it was quickly decided.

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Outside puddles dotted the back lane.  There was one puddle we hadn’t counted on; Tom’s boat was almost a quarter full of water.  His boat pissed water from the drain hole as our two vehicle convoy headed out of town.  We caught up with the rainstorm and as per agreement we pushed on.  Turning north from the highway our trucks and boats were soon covered in mud.  Tom’s boat was now pissing brown water as he led us further off the highway.

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An increasing sponginess in my steering prompted me to pull over and take a look.  My passenger side front tire was very low!  A hand passed carefully over the exposed part of the tire didn’t reveal anything.  We could however hear a slow hiss.  There was no choice, unload part of the gear from the back so we could get at the spare tire and the jackall.    With boat seats and tackle boxes littering the wet grass at roadside we slipped and slide our way to a tire change.  While we sweated in the warming sunshine the pests swarmed in.  Mosquitoes of all descriptions stung exposed skin and tried to crawl into eyes and ears.  I didn’t even complain about the mud on the truck seats as we got back underway.

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We found ourselves looking at a couple of tents and trucks when we got to the lake.  I had some difficult manoeuvring around the campsite to get to the launch but did finally get backed down and the boats floated off the trailer.  Tom was ready to launch his as I parked my truck and trailer off to the side.  Not using his trailer nearly as much as I did, Tom had discovered that a trailer hitch mounted to his front bumper was much easier to work with and steer.  He was already half way down to the lake when I came back from parking.  The launch was just a power saw cleared strip, full of rocks and many holes, that allowed trailered boats to be used.  Up until 2 years ago only hand launched boats could get down the steep embankment we had used to access the lake.

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We watched as Tom guided his trailer down to the lakeshore.  His trailer was almost to water’s edge where he would need to stop to take the tie downs off when everything happened at once.  The truck lurched into a whole as a trailer wheel found another one.  As this happened the tongue of the trailer landed on a large rock……the trailer hitch lifted free from the ball.  Two bounces of momentum and Tom’s boat was floating in the lake with the trailer still attached!  With a wind and the push from the truck it was rapidly getting away from shore.  I looked at Tom sitting in his truck�?his eyes were bulging and his jaw hung slack as he watched his boat drift away.

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We three roared with laughter as Tom lurched out into the water to try and grab the nose rope of the boat.  He stepped four times in and then with the fifth step he found the drop off.  A strangled curse was all we heard as he disappeared below the rippling water.  He came up sputtering and using words of some foreign language.  As he looked back at us he seemed to shrug and swam out to the boat.  He grabbed the rope and swam back.  We got ourselves under control enough to help Tom lift the hitch onto the front ball of his truck.  This time we made sure the hitch lock was down!

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That little bit of laughter and horseplay directed at Tom seemed to change the whole day around.  We got things organized and off we went.  The lake trout co-operated, Tom dried off and we all had a great story to tell.  It could have been a lot worse�?that moment of carelessness�?not locking the trailer to the ball.  We had got away with one in the land north of Superior.