The Boundary Waters

During the summer between junior and senior year we took a school sponsored excursion for 2 weeks of canoeing on the Minnesota – Canada border, The Boundary waters as they are called. The trip with school was alright but it was kind of hard to party much because there were always other people around. During that trip my friends and I decided that we would return the following year on our own when most of us would be 18 and our friend, Chris, would be 19  and we could rent the canoes and equipment ourselves.

You weren’t allowed to cross into Canada and spend the night, but that was exactly what we were planning on doing. We brought with us a half-pound of marijuana, but we were going to want some beers around the campfire as well. You had to paddle quite a few miles but you could cross into Canada where the drinking age was only 19 so that is what we did on our 2^nd day in the wilderness. We bought 12 cases of beer on that first excursion and the next 2 weeks were filled with paddling, portaging, and partying.

The water you were paddling in was also your drinking, cooking, and bathing water but I don’t know if they still do that today. I also wonder if after 9/11 you can still cross back and forth between the U.S. and Canada.

In some ways, this was almost saying goodbye to the group of people that I grew up partying with. These were the people I smoked weed with almost every day for the last 5 or 6 years. Now some of them would go to college, some would now get married and after this things would probably never be the same again. The memories of this trip are some of my most cherished memories.

The Boundary Waters

Trying to Slow Progress

Growing up in Lombard, IL, there was a lot of undeveloped territory. By the end of the seventies, though, the wheels of progress were turning and civilization was encroaching on our territory. Our territory was the land we built our forts on for smoking pot in the winter. It was the fields of prairie grass we could vanish in within seconds if the cops were about. We could walk out our front door and within 30 seconds we were out of sight and tokin’ away. This is where we experimented with growing the shitty homegrown we tried to grow every year.

In the summer of 1978, the construction equipment started showing up and we all wondered what was happening to our partying spots. At first we talked to them trying to figure out what they were doing and how much territory we were going to lose. At that point we found out that we were going to lose everything but we decided we would try and sabotage the construction.

We started with ripping out the construction stakes and once we pulled them all we would build a nice campfire with them and party away. This didn’t seem to slow anything down so we started trying to sabotage the equipment by smashing the controls and levers on the graders and bulldozers.

Our greatest accomplishment though happened when someone left the key in one of the bulldozers. It took us a while (probably longer than it should have because we were stoned) but we figured out how to operate and went on a destruction frenzy.

We destroyed as much of the concrete that had already been poured as we could. We used the bulldozer to push over as many other pieces of equipment as we could and did as much damage to the others as we could. When we were done, we drove the bulldozer into the manmade lake they had built. This would teach them to try and take our party spot away from us. The next day the police were all over us because they knew we did it, but they couldn’t prove it.

Trying to Slow Progress

Smelt Fishing

One of the coolest things we would do in the spring was go smelt fishing along the shore of Lake Michigan in March and April. You use a net to catch smelt because they travel in groups and are too small to make it worthwhile to try and catch them one at a time. Sometimes we would just go into the city and catch the smelt but most times we would drive an hour north to get away from the police so we could smoke some weed and drink some beers while we tried to snare some smelt.

Smelt are best to eat as you catch them because they are small and have a soft skeleton so you can eat the whole fish after you cut off the head and tail. They run along the shore feeding early in the morning while it is still dark out when they are spawning so it is best to be in place and stoned by about 4:00 AM. You should plan on about 15 smelt per person for a good hearty meal and if you plan on staying at the lake you might want to catch about 25 per person to keep the munchies in check throughout the day. You only have about a 2 hour window to catch them so it is fast and furious if you have a lot of people with you.

You always bring with you a grill, frying pan, olive oil, seasoned flour, garlic, tabasco sauce, and of course some pot to keep you hungry. If you like eating fried fish sandwiches you can also bring some bread and maybe some mayo. First, you get the smelt ready by chopping off the head and the tail of the ones you are going to eat. I like to keep the fish alive after I catch them so they are as fresh as possible when you eat them. Coat the smelt in your flour mix, fry em up about 10 at a time for a minute or two and enjoy.

Smelt Fishing

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