Monday photo feature

I didn't spend a whole lot of time in Minnesota last month, but I thought the landforms along the state's north shore of Lake Superior were interesting.  In particular, the many rivers and creeks running off the terrain into the lake caught my attention.  It had been raining a lot and all these streams had healthy flows.

This area of Minnesota seems to be most commonly known as the Sawtooth Mountains, a part of the Canadian Shield.  The streams that drain into Superior are generally short, but many of them have steep gradients with whitewater ranging as high as Class VI in difficulty.

Sadly, I really wasn't prepared to do much whitewater paddling.  I did have my whitewater boat on the truck, but I hadn't done any research or reached out to anybody in the local paddling community--very important tasks for somebody who wants to run lesser-known wilderness streams that are only runnable during rainy periods.  I also didn't have much time: by the time I reached Minnesota I was in the final days of the period I'd allotted for vacation.

The reality is that I've fallen out of the whitewater world--not completely out, but pretty close.  With one exception, I really don't know any regular whitewater paddlers anymore.  And it doesn't help that I live in a whitewater-poor part of the country.  Here in Memphis I'd rather paddle my surfski because it's a much more fun boat to paddle on the riverfront.  A decade or more ago I felt that I could just jump in the whitewater boat and paddle it any time I wanted, but in recent years I haven't felt so confident of that.  These days I'm convinced that I have to ease my body into anything the slightest bit different from what I normally do.  Is that true, or is it just in my head?  Hard to say.  It's an aspect of aging that I'm struggling with.

Whatever the case, my days of whitewater paddling aren't over yet, seeing as how I've got a trip through the Grand Canyon on the calendar about 13 months from now.  A chunk of next year will be dedicated to getting my body ready for all the stresses that will be imposed on it in that environment.

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