8 minute read
Back to the Boundary Waters
A Beloved Tradition Returns
It is said that legends never die. Sometimes, those legends are not a person, place, or thing but a combination of the three that creates a legendary experience. Many Ensworth alumni from the ’80s, ’90s, and early aughts remember the Quetico canoe trip as one of those epic adventures that provided life-changing experiences and lifelong memories and stories.
And it all started with a Time magazine cover.
Bill Arthur was an art teacher and coach at Ensworth from 1983-2015. His dear friend and colleague, Robert Inman, had started the Out West trip as a culminating experience for students after their eighth-grade year. Mr. Arthur was an avid outdoorsman himself, and when he saw how well the Out West trip was received, he imagined he could offer something similar to help get students out of their comfort zones and into a relationship with nature.
Bill was reading Time magazine one day, and his attention was captured by an article highlighting two young men canoeing the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota. “I saw a photo of the men canoeing on the lake in the middle of July wearing flannels, and I thought, that’s where I want to be, somewhere I can wear flannel in July,” says Bill. He immediately wrote the Chamber of Commerce in Ely, Minnesota, asking for a list of outfitters he could potentially partner with for the trip. They sent back a list of three, and he chose Canoe Country Outfitters, a group he ended up staying with for the entire 28-year run of the trip.
In the summer of 1986, Mr. Arthur embarked on the first Quetico adventure with fellow teacher Lane Miller and a group of 12 students. “I never set out to do something special,” shares Bill, “just to do what I loved and share what I loved.” It was a 14-day trip, with 10 nights and 11 days on the water, paddling, portaging, and camping.
“Quetico is unforgiving, but so beautiful,” says Mr. Arthur. “You don’t know what’s going to be thrown at you, but you become comfortable with figuring it out. In one sense, the trip stayed the same, but in another sense, it was different every year. Each was its own adventure.”
For Mr. Arthur, the most important aspect of the trip was the opportunities it provided for students to push their limits and develop confidence in their own abilities: “I think our culture often does kids a disservice. They can do so much more than they think they can if given the opportunity. They need to learn to fail in order to move forward and fall down in order to get up. I showed them how to do things, but I wouldn’t do things for them.”
He shares an exemplative story from one year, “I was coming back on a trail, having carried my canoe through. It was a very steep, rocky portage. Three girls coming up were carrying their canoe. A loud boom echoed; they had dropped their canoe. As I walked by, one said to me, ‘Mr. Arthur, can you help us?’ As I continued on to get my pack, I encouraged them, ‘You’ve got this.’ As I returned with my pack, they were still on the steep slope, maybe 20 yards further. Again they asked for help, and again I encouraged them, ‘Almost to the top, then it is downhill to the next lake.’ That night, we were in camp after dinner sitting alone on a rocky point, watching an amazing, wellearned sunset, enjoying the fatigue in our shoulders, the stillness and the quiet around us, knowing what it took to get there. One of those girls wrote me a note after we were back in Nashville: ‘Mr. Arthur, thank you for taking me out of the craziness of this world and teaching me more than I ever thought I could do.’ I didn’t teach her anything; Quetico did. I still have that note and always will. It epitomizes what the trip was all about.”
Unfortunately, when Mr. Arthur retired in 2015, the trip retired with him. But the legend lived on. High School English and Theatre teacher David Berry ’91 and TJ Wilt ’91 (Ensworth parent and former trustee) were boatmates in their seventh grade year, and they often reminisced about their experience and discussed the possibility of bringing the trip back. But they knew they would have to find the right person to lead the effort.
In 2019, Logan O’Connor joined the Ensworth faculty as a Middle School Art Teacher. Married to an Ensworth alum, Kitty Ganier ’97, Logan had often heard Kitty’s friends talking about the Quetico trip. One day, he mentioned the canoe trip in an art class, and one of his students, Eli Wilt, said, “You should really talk to my dad about the trip.” Logan happened to run into TJ on campus the next day, and they made the connection.
After consulting notes from Mr. Arthur’s previous trips, learning more about the boundary waters, and finding a new outfitter that was experienced in working with middle school-aged kids, Logan proposed the idea of reinstating the canoe trip to former Head of School David Braemer. David gave the green light for the expedition to move forward, and then…COVID hit.
Once the whirlwind that encompassed the 2020-2022 school years subsided, Logan revisited the idea for the summer of 2022. Although it was originally intended for some students to participate, it was decided that the initial trip would be adults-only to assess the new outfitter, explore the route, and iron out any wrinkles. Logan and TJ assembled a crew that included fellow Ensworth Art Teacher Evie Coates, and TJ’s friends, Tonya, Allen, and John (unfortunately, David Berry’s schedule kept him from attending).
The group set out from Ely, Minnesota on July 19th. Logan had asked the outfitter to put them on a route slightly harder than the one the kids would experience, but the guide ended up changing it to a route that was twice as difficult. With only four days on the water, the crew had significant mileage to cover, and they paddled from 8 AM-5 PM, with 8 or 9 portages each day. They fished out of the boat and cooked their catches for dinner at night–and even caught sight of a bald eagle enjoying some of the leftovers from one of their fish dinners.
“It reminded me of why this trip is so important,” shares TJ. “I remembered that it was the worst trip, in one sense, because it was so incredibly challenging. But then it was the best trip, because it was life-changing and foundation-building.”
Logan learned valuable lessons from the exploratory excursion to incorporate into this summer’s experience. The group will stick to the campsites on the US side, as they tend to be better kept and have designated facilities, and they will have more downtime for camping and connecting as a group. At this time, ten students have signed up for the summer 2023 trip. The group will embark on their adventure in June and spend six days exploring the area known as the “land of 1,000 lakes” along the US/Canada border.
The hope is that these students will return from the trip with renewed strength and confidence as those who went before them did. “I remember the second trip, we had a boy that only weighed 72 pounds, and his canoe weighed 72 pounds,” says Bill. “We were in a little store, and a fisherman asked him where he had been. He responded that he had been canoeing Elk Lake. The fisherman looked at him with a sense of admiration and said, ‘Boys your age don’t go to Elk Lake.’ At that moment, that child became 7-feet tall because he had done something he should not have been able to do. That was the beauty of this trip. They didn’t know they couldn’t do it, so they did.”
Tiffany Townsend Director of Marketing & Communications
