We have been talking about skiing ever since we crested the hill and saw the smooth, white expanse of Bonnie Lake. This small shallow lake had recently frozen and was covered in a thin blanket of snow in the middle of November. The ice was too thin to safely walk on, but we stood on the edge of Bonnie Lake yearning to ski across it, looking forward to freeze up.
As we skied along today I thought about the last time we were on skis and realized we had skied down Newfound Lake last April on the last day of our last dogsled trip of the season. We traveled right past our current campsite with a group of students and their teacher from Chicago. A thin blanket of freshly fallen snow made the travel conditions almost exactly the same as today while we were on our last ski on that fine April day to finish our Wilderness adventure at the Moose Lake landing. As we loaded the dogs into their kennels on the dog trailer and prepared to return to @wintergreendogsledlodge I remember marveling as a petite girl who was genuinely afraid of the dogs at the beginning of the trip muscled an 80 pound squirming, leaping, barking sled dog into his kennel and quickly turned around to grab another.
The Wilderness can teach us so much, it builds confidence, fosters reflection, and we leave the Wilderness different people. “let life cook down, till there is nothing left in the pan but wilderness” – Ben Weaver
That is when the real learning begins.
#wildernessyear #savetheBWCA #BoundaryWaters #wilderness #onlyinMN #minnstagramers #sunset #snow #ski #winter
