Category: Wilderness

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The Land of 10,000 Lakes

Eric views rapids Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell
Nate Newell views rapids
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate Newell pulling in front of canoe Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell
Nate Newell pulling in front of canoe
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate pulls canoe on shore Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate pulls canoe on shore
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate takes a break Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate takes a break
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate Newell with Eric Newell providing rudder Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate Newell with Eric Newell providing rudder
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Portaging Path Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Portaging Path
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Eric and Nate Newell portage canoe Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Eric and Nate Newell portage canoe
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Portaging the Canoe & Contents Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Portaging the Canoe & Contents
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Eric portaging the Canoe Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Eric portaging the Canoe
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Nate in Front Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Nate in Front
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Minnesota, in the Dakota language (mnisota or mní sóta) translates to “sky-tinted water.”

A year ago, my alarm blared in the pitch-darkness of the bunkhouse at Packsack Canoe Trips on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

5 AM comes fast.

I turned off the alarm, swung my legs out of my sleeping bag, and planted my bare feet on the cold plywood floor. I turned on the light. My adult son, Nate, squinted at me from the adjacent bunk. Flashing a groggy grin, he muttered, “That was a short night.”

The day before we drove from Minneapolis to Ely, Minnesota. After a late start and a dinner stop, we drove the last couple hours in the dark, down State Highway 1—the Voyageur Highway—a narrow two-lane strip of asphalt, with no shoulder, and crowded in on either side by endless forests.

Our forecast was for highs in the 40’s, a stiff wind, and scattered rain showers. If I didn’t live 1400 miles away, I would have been happy to wait to paddle for another day, but this was the window of time we had. And, as the Eagles sang so profoundly, “We may lose and we may win, but we may never be here again.”

Most canoe trips into the Boundary Waters are days to weeks long, but you can get a good sampling in a long day on the water.

By 7 AM we were at the Fall Lake boat ramp where our rented Kevlar canoe was waiting for us, as promised. All our good paddling gear was back in Utah, so we placed our day packs in garbage bags to keep them dry, and pushed off into a headwind, which also meant no mosquitos.

Traditionally the homelands of the Anishinaabe people—also known as the Ojibwe or Chippewa, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness includes more than 1,000 interconnected lakes, extends for 150 miles along the US/Canadian border, and adjoins Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park. Combined with Voyageur National Park, the three areas create nearly 2.5 million acres of internationally protected land, lakes, forests, and waterways that connect to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Ocean. In April, a twenty-year mining ban in the vicinity was overturned that poses a risk to the pristine waters.

The Boundary Waters is the most visited Wilderness Area in the United States, but not on a day like this. Nate and I zipped our jackets up, put our heads down, and paddled towards an island ahead that provided some refuge from the wind and a chance to rest. We continued picking our route this way, finding the sheltered coves and shorelines when possible and powering into the wind when we had to.

We portaged Newton Falls in a drizzle, then worked our way across Newton Lake, and portaged Pipestone Falls to Pipestone Bay on Basswood Lake. We paddled to an obscure portage route that led us to Azion Lake—a small lake 150 vertical feet above Basswood Lake. We ate lunch on the shore in light rain. The wind died down and we paddled a lap around this double-lobed lake on glassy water with several loons.

For our return voyage we had a light tailwind or no wind. The portages were long enough that we were grateful we paid extra for the Kevlar canoe rental. All in all, we paddled twelve miles, made six portages (three each way), paddled on four lakes, and I plucked three ticks off my pants. Nate seemed unbothered that they liked me more than him.

Though we were a bit soggy, both of us were smiling as we finished out, just a father and son paddling in sync, moving across the dark glassy water, tinted by a gray sky overhead.

I am Eric Newell and I am wild about wild lands in Utah and beyond.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin and Anderson, Howe, and Wakeman.
Text: Eric Newell, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University
Additional Reading: Eric Newell

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah Pieces by Eric Newell

Boundary Waters Canoe Trips & Log Cabins In Ely, Minnesota, PackSack Canoe Trips and Log Cabins by Nicholas Ott, https://www.packsackcanoetrips.com/

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, 2026 Explore Minnesota Tourism, MN.gov,
https://www.exploreminnesota.com/destinations/boundary-waters

Explore Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness,
https://www.friends-bwca.org/explore/

Quetico Provincial Park, Camp Quetico, Atikokan, Ontario, https://queticoprovincialpark.com/

Voyageurs National Park-Minnesota, US National Park System, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/voya/index.htm

Save the Boundary Waters , SavetheBoundaryWaters.org, Northeastern Minnesotans for Wilderness (NMW), https://www.savetheboundarywaters.org/

Lawrence, Beatrice, Why mining in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters matters to Wisconsin, Wisconsin Public Radio, April 30, 2026, https://www.wpr.org/news/why-mining-minnesotas-boundary-waters-matters-wisconsin

Kraker, Dan, Trump ends ban on mining near the Boundary Waters, Minnesota Public Radio News, April 27, 2026, https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/04/27/trump-ends-ban-on-mining-near-the-boundary-waters

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John Muir Didn’t Wear Tevas

Three Teens Returning from the Wilderness Courtesy & Copyright Emma Mecham
Three Teens Returning from the Wilderness
Courtesy & Copyright Emma Mecham

Wasatch Rambling July 7, 1989 Dromedary Peak Summit Whitney Leary & Eric Newell Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Wasatch Rambling July 7, 1989
Dromedary Peak Summit
Whitney Leary & Eric Newell
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Morning Light Big Cottonwood Canyon July 7, 1989 Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell Morning Light Big Cottonwood Canyon
July 7, 1989
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

My Journal, July 6, 1989 Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell My Journal, July 6, 1989
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

My Journal, July 7, 1989 Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell My Journal, July 7, 1989
Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell

Our 15 year-old and two of her friends just returned from their first backpacking trip without adults. When she hatched the idea, my wife and I were supportive of this big voyage, knowing all the growth that happens when you venture out on our own into the wilds for the first time. We asked questions and provided all the support she and her friends asked for—but we didn’t overdo it. This was their adventure.

They were giddy as they shouldered their packs at the Logan Canyon trailhead and set foot towards a popular lake for two nights. When my wife picked them up three days later, they had stories to tell.

When they are old, like me, they won’t remember the TikTok videos or Instagram reels they might have watched during that span. But they will remember trying to stay warm in their hammocks, sleeping by a mountain lake under a trillion stars, the crispness of the air, and that feeling of being out there on their own and all the uncertainly and joy that goes with it.

When I was sixteen—after finishing another of John Muir’s many books, Wilderness Essays—I decided that if John Muir only took a loaf of bread, an overcoat, and a wool blanket with him into the Sierras, that I could do the same. Certainly John Muir wasn’t—to use a John Muir word—”hardier” than I was. This wasn’t my first backpacking trip without adults, but I learn my lessons the hard way. After all, good judgement comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgement.

So I took a wool blanket from the closet in the basement and left a perfectly good sleeping pad and twenty-degree sleeping bag at home. My friends and I only wore Teva sandals when we hiked or backpacked at the time and I didn’t pack any socks. It was July after all.

Now, I am certain John Muir did not wear Teva’s. He wore socks and boots—even in July. He also built big fires and cut pine-boughs for sleeping on that would insulate him from the cold ground. Wanting to leave no trace, I did neither of those things.

That was a rough night next to a lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon. Aside from shivering on cold, hard bedrock in the darkness, I was constantly under attack from swarms of mosquitos because I couldn’t fit both my head and my bare feet under the small blanket at the same time. I also learned that if you only eat a loaf of French Bread from the Albertsons bakery for dinner, you get a lot of gas.

It turns out John Muir was much “hardier” than I.

I got “out” of my wool blanket well before dawn that morning to move my body and warm up. I watched the light show on the 11,000 foot peaks above and the reflection in the dead-calm lake below.

After breakfast, I spotted a couple of mountain goats on a pass above the lake and we scrambled up to have a closer look. When we arrived at the saddle we decided that since we had come this far, we might as well continue on and figure out the tricky and exposed route to the summit of Dromedary Peak—in our Teva’s.
I’m glad my parents weren’t there to save me from my own naiveté.

It is often hard for parents to let go and give their teens the chance to venture out into Edward Abby’s “back of beyond” to be responsible for themselves and to learn from their own mistakes. But I’m glad my parents were willing, and I have found satisfaction supporting my children, and other people’s children, on their own adventures.
Edward Abbey said it well, “It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there and…mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space.”

The average 18 year-old high school graduate today has spent approximately four-years of their lives on screens. Four years. Four years of childhood that they will never get back. Our children need wildness now, more than ever.

Maybe our public lands will save us from ourselves—if we don’t sell them off to the highest bidder.

I am Eric Newell, and I am wild about Utah and our wild public lands.

Credits:
Images: Courtesy & Copyright Eric Newell, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Shalayne Smith Needham & Courtesy & Copyright © Anderson, Howe, Wakeman
Text: Eric Newell, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University
Additional Reading: Eric Newell & Lyle Bingham

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah Pieces by Eric Newell

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Utah’s Public Lands

Utah's Public Lands: Canyonlands National Park Courtesy Pixabay, Contributor: Sharon Kehl Califano, Photographer
Canyonlands National Park
Courtesy Pixabay, Contributor: Sharon Kehl Califano, Photographer
One might justly conjecture we have been cursed by Utah’s magnificent wild landscapes, which have caused such division and consternation among our political leadership and their constituents. Some see vast sweeps of our national public lands as having little to offer for recreation or scenery, waste lands of little value beyond mineral extraction, or selling them to the highest bidder. These lands have been a hot issue in Utah for most of our state’s history. Absentee landowners continue to be viewed with a jaundiced eye. State and local control is championed, which is often in opposition to the majority of Utah citizens.

Preeminent naturalist John Muir stated, “The bottom third of Utah should become a National Park!” He was overtaken by its rugged, unadulterated majesty. Many other prominent authors and naturalists have spoken in its behalf- Terry Tempest Williams, Ed Abbey, Wallace Stegner, Steve Trimble, to name a few.

More recently, our Native people have jumped into the fray- Navajo, Paiute, Ute, Shoshone, and many other tribes. Following years of relentless negotiations, they finally have been offered a seat at the table on how these lands should be managed.

“Our ancestors knew that this land is not just our home, but a place that sustains us, nurtures us, and connects us to something far greater than ourselves, If we do not stand together, our children will never know the beauty these lands hold.” Louise Fernandez

I too have real affection for our national public lands. The first part of my existence was in Michigan farm country surrounded by “Keep Out” signs. There was little opportunity to escape to open space. Thus, I view these public lands in a very different lens from many of the “locals”, who perceive them as restricting their rights to use these lands as they see fit. Two very different cultures and lived experiences.

As a naturalist educator, I have led my students and others into many of these wild spaces. The experience is often transformative. Never before have many of them experienced such beauty and untrammeled landscapes. One of my international students was nearly brought to tears, reminiscent of his cattle herding days in the rural landscapes of Egypt.

Beyond serving as recreational and inspirational retreats, these incomprehensible, uncompromised wide-open spaces serve as bulwarks for clean air, healthy watersheds, and as a sanctuary for an abundance of species beyond our own, some threatened or endangered from creeping human contrivances.

As I write this, the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected Utah’s attempt to gain state control over 18.5 million acres of federal BLM lands, representing about 1/3 of our state’s area. The fight will continue, just as the seasons will continue in these priceless, sacred lands.

This is Jack Greene for Bridgerland Audubon Society and I’m wild about Utah’s Wild Lands

Credits:
Image: Courtesy Pixabay, Sharon Kehl Califano, Contributor https://pixabay.com/photos/canyonlands-canyons-desert-6600504/
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver, Courtesy & © Anderson, Howe and Wakeman,
Also includes audio Courtesy & © J. Chase & K.W. Baldwin
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Jack Greene & Lyle W Bingham, Webmaster, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Jack Greene’s Postings on Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/author/jack/

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Nature Therapy

Nature Therapy: Delicate Arch, Arches National Park, Courtesy Pixabay, Mike Goad, Contributor
Delicate Arch,
Arches National Park
Courtesy Pixabay, Mike Goad Contributor

Bighorn near Jones National Fish Hatchery, Dinosaur National Monument and Vernal, UT. Courtesy US FWS, Erin Falk Photographer Bighorn near Jones National Fish Hatchery, Dinosaur National Monument and Vernal, UT. Courtesy US FWS, Erin Falk Photographer

During the COVID days, there was an explosion of outdoor activity as we found an escape from being locked in buildings. Sporting good shops soon sold out of most of their outdoor gear. Our local recreational lands and waters, including national and state parks, soon became overwhelmed with outdoor enthusiasts, most of which has continued to this day.

The intrinsic value of connecting to nature has been realized and capitalized. It’s becoming more common for health workers, both mental and physical, to subscribe nature as a potential cure for many ailments.

From a human evolutionary perspective, our 300 thousand years as a species has been spent outdoors. We were intimately connected to natural landscapes and all our Earth Mother provided. Even over the past ten thousand years, most of our ancestors have been farmers, living close to the land and its fickle moods. I’m sure our biophilia is imbedded in our neurological network. Thus nature deficit disorder looms large once this vital connection is severed.

For a deep dive, the Child & Nature Network is bursting with research on this topic. Beyond our immediate health, having access to natural landscapes enhances academic and work performance, and reduces the number of sick days registered. Many countries beyond our own have structured programs such as forest bathing and goat yoga. I have yet to try goat yoga, but find it alluring- love goats and yoga!

I designed and ran an outdoor adventure program at a youth ranch in Michigan for troubled youth. It became very popular and effective, especially when we invite parents and care givers to join us on some of our adventures. The Utah Conservation Corps had a program for Latino high school students, some of whom were struggling as adolescence often do. Again, the program was transformative for many of the participants, who continued on to higher education rather than becoming high school dropouts for work.

I now volunteer with the International Friends Program where I lead an outdoor program for USU international students and scholars. It’s become very popular where young adults find friendship and engage in new outdoor activities, including hiking, camping, canoeing, Nordic skiing, ice skating, and many others. Something about escaping to the indoors and engaging in stimulating activities on land and water allows walls to disappear and rich conversation to flow.

I’ve also had recent outings with Common Ground Outdoor Adventure, a marvelous program that serves all abilities- both mental and physical. The joy it brings to their lives is a joy to witness.

A new PBS program “America Outdoors” with Baratunde Thurston takes you to different states where you witness natures impact on struggling individuals in gorgeous landscapes. Virtual immersion in earth’s offerings, including an extraordinary episode on Utah! https://www.pbs.org/show/america-outdoors-baratunde-thurston/.
Being a naturalist, I always include information on the local geology, ecology, and natural history. I find it enriches the experience and allows new ways of interacting with the natural world beyond its astounding beauty.

Jack Greene for Bridgerland Audubon Society, and I’m wild about the natural healing Wild Utah affords!

Credits:
Images: Delicate Arch: Courtesy Pixabay, Mike Goad, Contributor, https://pixabay.com/photos/delicate-arch-arch-delicate-utah-3768200/
Images: Big Horn: Courtesy US FWS, Erin Falk Photographer
Audio: Courtesy & © J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin, https://npr.org/ and Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Jack Greene, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Lyle W Bingham, Webmaster, and Jack Greene, Author, Bridgerland Audubon, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading:

Children & Nature Network, https://www.childrenandnature.org/

America Outdoors with Baratunde Thurston, https://www.pbs.org/show/america-outdoors-baratunde-thurston/