Wet Aspen
Credit: Jeff Wells

I heard Per and Tim when they woke up at 4 AM for a hoped-for sunrise (Saturday, June 21) but it was still cloudy so they went back to bed. A few minutes after they quieted (4:20 AM to be exact) a Song Sparrow began lustily belting out his tune right over the tents. Eddie and I were up and dressed in minutes to begin a morning of bird surveys and audio recording. Beating our way through the thick tangle of blowdowns in the forest behind the camp we found ourselves surrounded by bird song—Bay-breasted, Tennessee, Magnolia, Yellow, and Yellow-rumped Warblers, Northern Waterthrushes, Winter Wrens, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Red-eyed Vireos, Swainson's Thrushes, White-throated Sparrows, Northern Flickers, Pileated Woodpeckers. A female Common Merganser flushed from a nest hole and flew around us with low grunting calls. A flock of White-winged Crossbills flew overhead giving their "dit-dit-dit" calls sounding like an old-fashioned telegraph machine.

And all this within two-hundred yards of our campsite at the eastern end of Petawanga Lake.

Listen to some of the recordings:
Common Loon with Magnolia Warbler and Swainson's Thrush (listen)
Red-eyed Vireo and Bay-breasted Warbler (listen)
Magnolia Warbler with Swainson's Thrush and Yellow Warbler in background (listen)

After a late breakfast of Eddie's famous grits and country ham and some strong coffee we broke camp and were on the water by 10:30. Birds were still singing strongly as we paddled—lots more Tennessee, Magnolia, and Yellow Warblers and Northern Waterthrushes; a few Cape May Warblers, a Wilson's Warbler and an American Redstart; and my first Alder Flycatchers, Brown Creepers, and Red-breasted Nuthatches.

We had been able to hear the rapids from our campsite in the still early morning air and within forty minutes we had come to a fork in the river. A right would take us over the rapids while a left would bring us to a portage marked by the guide. I was relieved as I heard Eddie's shout to Per and Tim, "Stay to the left!"

We found the portage trail very easily—the overturned boat on shore helped—but Per was intrigued with another idea. The map showed what looked like a series of beaver flowages that made it all the way around the portage, connecting back to the river below the falls. With this year's very high water from the rains that had fallen regularly over the past few weeks, he thought it might be possible to wade and pull the canoe through. The thought of not having to haul all that gear across a half-mile portage made the idea sound pretty appealing.

So we gave Tim and Per a radio and watched them slide their green canoe over the first beaver dam and disappear into the willows. Eddie and I unpacked our canoe and Eddie shouldered the first load—a large drysack on his back and the food barrel on his chest—while I did a couple of quick point counts (Nashville Warbler and Yellow-bellied Sapsucker were new finds) before following him up the trail.

My untempered back began feeling the strain within a few hundred yards and my attention to bird songs began to fade as the pounding in my head increased. The trail was narrow in places with thick trunks of downed trees across it in spots. I struggled more than once to keep from tipping over as I lunged to hop the heavy pack onto a log so I could swing a leg over.

I was perhaps two-thirds of the way through this nightmare—just beyond a bend in the trail where recognition of a Blackburnian Warbler's song had penetrated through my muddle of pain and sweat—when I saw Eddie coming back toward me. "Yes, the end," I thought, until I noticed that Eddie was still carrying the same load he had left with. Worse yet, he didn't even seem to be out of breath.

"This trail doesn't bypass all the rapids," he said. "We could probably do it fine if we have to…" His voice trailed off in way that suggested a possibility for misadventure. The thought of having to haul my load all the way to where we started almost made me think it might be a good idea.

Almost, but not quite. I huffed and hauled and stumbled my way back to the canoe. That's when Eddie pointed out that I didn't have the straps on the dry bag properly adjusted.

"If you pull these up and cinch this around your waist it would be a lot easier," he said.

"Next time," I murmured as I massaged the furrows in my shoulders.

We called Tim and Per repeatedly on the radio. Except for a few itinerant beeps, we got no response. Later we found that Tim had fallen in the water with the radio in his pocket. We waited and waited some more to see if they would come back or show up down the portage trail. Finally we decided we might as well follow. The trail of green paint marks on the rocks let us know they were still ahead as we pulled and heaved and stumbled through willows and rocks and occasional holes that hit waist deep.

Three to four beaver dams, one drenching, and a few skinned ankles later we were still following the trail of green paint when we came to a boulder field. Per popped up from the downstream willows. "This is the last of it," he said. "And this is the perfect setting for me to get some photographs of Eddie carrying the canoe since there's no other way through anyway."

Portage
Credit: Jeff Wells

A Broad-winged Hawk—a species that reaches its northern range limit on this area-- called as we at our lunch at the end of the portage.

Several hours later we pulled ashore amid light rain showers above a small rapids that the guide had said we didn't really need to portage around. Eddie bushwacked through the woods to take a peek and see what he thought. I counted birds and wiped hordes of mosquitoes and black flies from my hands. "No problem," Eddie said. Not to mention there was no real portage trail anyway.

It wasn't much of a rapid but it was pretty fast and fun and in seconds we were on the other side and into Kawitos Lake. I knew that Eddie had figured me out when, as we were going through the rapids, he suddenly shouted to me from the back of the canoe, "We're going to paddle towards those mergansers on the right."

We made camp that night on a small beach with a Northern Waterthrush singing just yards behind the tents, a Common Loon feeding just offshore, and the biting insect trifecta—mosquitoes, black flies, and tiny no-see-ums—hovering under our cook tarp. A small campfire on the beach and some deet took care of that problem and we ate a meal of pike and walleye as the evening sky turned pink.

Click here listen to the evening chorus of spring peepers at campsite two 

More Photos Below:

Arriving at Camp 2
Credit: Jeff Wells

Camp 2
Credit: Jeff Wells

Portage
Credit: Jeff Wells