In 2002, I asked my sister if she would consider taking me to the Boundary Waters. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is 1.1 million acres of lakes and forests on the border between Canada and Minnesota. This refuge was set aside, after a contentious battle, as a place where Mather Nature reigns supreme.

Visitors must secure a permit and enter on a specific day at a specific entry point. There are no signs in the Boundary Waters. No one checks to see if you are doing OK or if you actually do know how to read a map. The only full time inhabitants are moose, bears, wolves, beavers, and loons. And, of course, ticks, mosquitoes, and black flies.

After she finished laughing, Nancy agreed to give one trip a try.

My sister and I are five years apart in age. I regarded her as the spoiled baby of the family and she regarded me as a stuck-up intellectual cream puff. But I had changed. After walking across England (190 miles) with my husband, I was amazed to find that I really loved a physical challenge.

Nancy had made two Boundary Waters trips previousy with her young sons and church groups. So off we went in a rented canoe with my newly purchased children's life vest ($9.99) and a borrowed paddle. My useless childhood sleeping bag (a.k.a. The Kleenex) required me to wear all my clothes and sleep wrapped in a garbage bag to survive the cold and wet nights. Our tent leaked and it rained most of the time. Lightning striking close to the tent made things extra interesting.

AND we had a blast!

We went out paddling in our canoe and explored portages that bears evidently used, but no humans had been on for quite some time. Along the way we pulled each other out of giant swamp sink holes, survived a flipped canoe (I did it when I didn't check to make sure Nan had both feet in the boat), and generally laughed at adversity.

We were hooked by the serenity and the challenge of the Boundary Waters. We have returned for ten days each Fall and Spring. We are eagerly anticipating Trip 18 this Spring and spend an amazing amount of our time thinking and talking about our upcoming trips.

I now consider my sister my best friend as we have truly "had each other's back" in some interesting situations. We have experienced a moose breathing on our tent and silently asked him to please go around and not through it. We heard a bear snuffle past our tent and convinced another not to take our food pack in the night. We met a moose with a huge rack on a portage and politely waited, with no room to step aside, while he decided he would take an alternate route.

We have come ashore with just enough adrenaline left in our systems to heave all three 50-pound packs on to the cliff above our heads and drag the canoe out of the thrashing water. We have paddled in disorienting fog and with pounding rain filling the canoe. We have watched our food (and toilet paper) supply diminish each day as we waited and waited for an endless storm to blow out. Then we paddled twenty miles and made twenty portages in one day when said food and TP reached an end.

We have seen stars too numerous to count, so close that you swear you could touch them. We have spent days without seeing or hearing another human. Floating in our canoe, we watched moose feed on lily pads, beavers talking and working, mink scampering along the shore, and eagles soaring effortlessly above our heads.

There is time to write, to take thousands of photographs, and to just sit and listen to the quiet.
It is this quiet that steadies our souls and our hearts and draws us back to the Boundary Waters each year.