Eighteenth Installment: The journey's end

I woke at 5 a.m., at the first sign of dawn, and switched on the small TV. The weather forecasts reported a major storm front lined up on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border, moving east rapidly. No forecast pinned down the exact time that the severe weather would arrive, but it sounded like it could reach Lake Butte des Morts by early afternoon. This final paddle of the trip would be about eleven miles, five of those miles on the very open water of that lake.

Lake Butte des Morts, named “Hill of the Dead” by the French for an nearby Indian burial mound¹, was large, about five miles long by three miles wide, or almost 14 square miles (36 square kilometers). Being shallow, the wind could quickly whip up large waves of short interval. One guide book was specific: “In windy or uncertain weather, Lake Butte des Morts is not safe for canoeing.”² It was imperative to start early so as to beat the worst weather. I did not have a “bomb proof” roll in case I got tipped – far from it, and I did not relish trying to right and reenter a loaded kayak on a storm tossed lake.

I had half packed the night before, and now, in the wan light of early dawn, I wolfed down the last of my power bars and quickly dressed. In a few minutes more the kayak was packed and I was wheeling it down to the boat launch. As the boat slid into the current, my watch said 6:10.

The last leg of my journey would end in Oshkosh, where the river entered Lake Winnebago. Winnebago, approximately 30 by 10 miles (48 by 16 km) is the largest lake in the United States contained entirely within a state. The lake is the terminus of the Upper Fox. The Lower Fox drains Lake Winnebago. Only 39 miles (63 km) long, the Lower Fox is a much larger, faster, and more developed river. It passes through half a dozen large cities and 17 locks while falling 164 feet (50 m) on its way to Green Bay, an arm of Lake Michigan.³

But here, on the last stretch of the Upper Fox, the river slowed and broadened as I went. By the second mile, marsh edged both sides, and roads, cottages, and homes disappeared. At about mile four, the Fox began to open into Lake Butte des Morts. Here the river skirted the 8,857 acre Nickels Marsh to the west. I paused and called my father on my cell phone. I told him to meet me in Oshkosh’s Rainbow Park in about two hours.

Dredging had formed a long breakwater along the east side of the Fox as it entered the lake. The channel and its wall continued for three quarters of a mile northeast into the lake. With each paddle stroke, the storm front built ever higher and darker behind me, sucking in a strong wind from the south east, the very point I needed to head into. So, I kept the break-wall close on the right. It provided some shelter from the wind.

Gulls covered the breakwater. As I passed each group, they broke into clamorous braying, announcing my progress as the channel slowly arched east. Roundeding the end of the wall, I found myself in the middle of the lake, the wind now blowing unimpeded across four miles of lake, which it was whipping into a short chop. The swells were running nearly two feet high, and the interval between waves was less than the length of my baidarka. The boat was most stable taking the wind and waves head on, but this meant constant, hard paddling for four miles right down the middle of the lake. The shores to the north and south were each a mile or more away. I felt awfully small and alone on a very big water.

The lashed framework of the hull rode and flexed over the waves like a living being. I made my profile low, leaned forward into each stroke, and kept in the rhythm of paddling. The blade work was constant as the wind was unrelenting. Spray from foaming wave tops soaked the deck and me. It took an hour and 40 minutes to cross the four miles of lake. I was spent by the time I passed under the Highway 41 Bridge and back into the river, heading just a mile further for Rainbow Park on the near-west side of Oshkosh. I arrived at 9:15.

I nosed the kayak onto the cement boat ramp. Hoisting myself out of the cockpit, I left the river for the last time this trip. One hundred miles traveled; eight warm June days behind me. The baidarka had proved that it belonged in the Fox, not hanging, beached high and dry, in my garage.

In his book from which my kayak was born, Wolfgang Brinck wrote: “Aleut kayaks of early construction had spirit … lines carved on the inside face of the gunwales. The spirit line is like the digestive tract, the circulatory system, and the nervous system of an animal all rolled into one. Since a kayak is a living thing, it needs a spirit line.”⁴ I too had carved a spirit line on my baidarka. And I had given it a journey. I hoped the journey had nourished it, allowed its spirit to taste life, to surge, arching joyfully, over every wave. The journey had nourished me too. When I was deep in the cockpit, the kayak riding low in the surface of the Fox, its gunwales barely breaking above the river’s skin, I felt the pulse of the river, felt the history, the time immemorial that it had flowed through the hearts and lives of the people along its banks.

In A River Runs through It, Norman Maclean wrote: “Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”⁵ The Fox River, this river, had its own stories to tell. A few, those common and new, were shouted by the river. Most were whispered. I had to submerge myself in the waters to hear the murmurs. Sometimes the words were so soft that the tale was felt more than heard, like water sliding over the hull of my baidarka. Sometimes I had to look under the rocks for the words. But they were there - the words of the Fox, the stories of timeless, quiet beauty - and they haunted me.

I pulled my baidarka from the Fox. I draped my gear over the pavilion‘s tables, and waited for my father. He arrived at 10:30 a.m., cheerful and obviously full of questions about the trip. Always a welcome sight, he had come just in time, as the first drops of rain began to fall.


1. Kort, Ellen. The Fox Heritage: A History of Wisconsin’s Fox Cities, at page 25. Windsor Publishing, October 1984.

2. Svob, Mike, and Elizabeth McBride. Paddling Northern Wisconsin: 82 Great Trips by Canoe and Kayak, at page 16. Trails Books, 1998.

3. Wikipedia. Fox River (Wisconsin). Revised October 5, 2011. Accessed October 29, 2011. http://www.omro-wi.com/a-brief-history-of-omro.html.

4. Brinck, Wolfgang. The Aleutian Kayak: Origins, Construction, and Use of the Traditional Seagoing Baidarka, at page 61. Ragged Mountain Press, April 1, 1995.

5. Maclean, Norman. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. University of Chicago Press, May 1976.