The view is every bit as unique and spectacular as the viewpoint.
I am standing 20 feet above Lake Superior with arms outstretched to steady myself. My form fills the dark, rectangular defile cut into the rock face of South McKellar Island.
Like me, the men who carved this mine adit—a horizontal tunnel burrowing roughly 450 feet into the heart of this tiny outcrop—were on a fervent search. Where they sought silver nearly 130 years ago, I am looking for a healing peace. To me, the true treasure here is the lake itself, as gentle this day as an outsized millpond.
Below my feet, our three kayaks are lashed to a giant iron staple driven into the rock. Looking landward toward Pie Island, the view is of stunning headlands, sheer cliff faces and rugged shores cloaked in spruce. In an exchange of roles, the lake seems to have switched with the land as a place of refuge. Sky and water ap- pear interchangeable. It is a peace-giving place, and that is precisely why I am here.
I slammed the door last summer on a 29-year career as a special education teacher serving deaf and hard-of-hearing students, terminally fed up with administrative bureaucracy.
A mutual passion for paddling has connected me with some amazing individuals over the years. On this two-week trip from Pigeon River to the tiny hamlet of Rossport, Ontario, I travel with a lifelong speleologist. We poke our bows and noses into every rock fissure, mineshaft and sea cave.
Stillness of the Paddle
Keep your senses open and your ego in a box and you have quite a lot to learn from the company you keep out here. What you see on the surface is rarely all there is. This is as true of the wilderness as it is of the people passing through it.
We are blessed with another ethereal calm on the morning we make the 10-kilometer crossing from Pie Island to Thunder Cape through the heart of a busy shipping channel. The huge lake freighters steaming in and out of Thunder Bay will not even see a kayak, much less adjust course for one.
No one speaks as we paddle. We are all keenly alert for ship traffic, but there is so much more to this stillness. Gulls, cormorants and calling loons are the only witnesses to our passage. I will remember this fine morning as one of the most peaceful I have ever experienced kayaking.
I am a bit past middle age right now. There are certainly many other waters to explore. However, in the time I have left to paddle, it is my choice to travel deep rather than travel broad. The peace I find kayaking on Lake Superior is a gift that can be shared only between intimates.
Tim McDonnell lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he is busy savoring retirement and dreaming of his next Lake Superior kayak trip.
This article first appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
