Dennis Anderson: Being in the Boundary Waters is true to winter

This story contains no boxscores. But there are numbers. Twenty-nine. That's how many degrees below zero the thermometer registered when Stu McEntyre and I wrestled our sled anchors from the snow alongside Moose Lake, northeast of Ely.

Six is the number of dogs I ran, while Stu sent nine ahead of him.

The incessant barking that precedes a dog team's rocketlike takeoff tortures the ears and suggests a kinship with the wild moon-howlers that have roamed these forests since time began.

"Ready?" Stu screamed above the din.

He expected no answer, and could hear none anyway.

Jerking my anchor from the snow, I felt my sled's weight draw quickly taut against the dogs' traces.

Onto Moose Lake's frozen whiteness we charged, the dogs sprinting at first, then loping and trotting alternately, racing toward a destination about which they cared nothing.

They wanted only to run, and whatever inner peace they might know, they enjoyed now, the snow and ice against their outstretched paws a quieting balm.

In the distance, the frozen lake that groaned beneath us rose to meet a brightening sky.

Progressively diminutive, the shoreline's pines, balsams and birches fell distant behind us.

All was silent, save for the hushed whoosh of sled rails skimming atop snow.

• • •

Stu and I first met many years ago when I lived in Ely and he was a kid, or pretty much one, racing sled dogs from Alaska, across the Canadian Arctic, to New York.

Our trip on this day would include no racing. We would instead travel about 17 miles through and on top of deep snow to Knife Lake, where we would fish for lake trout.

Trophies with fins, lake trout are a fish like no other, a designation that grows only truer in winter, when swimming beneath thick ice they suggest existences of deep primordial mystery.

So slowly do lake trout grow that not uncommonly specimens 8 or 10 or 15 pounds might be decades old.

Thus, anglers' possession limits are low, with Minnesotans allowed only two of these fish.

Before Congress amended the 1978 federal law that governs the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, snowmobiles were allowed in certain parts of the wilderness, including along a route from Moose Lake to Knife Lake.

Anglers placed considerably more pressure on Knife Lake's trout then.

Now the lake can be reached only by paddling, skiing or dog team.

Knife Lake also is where wilderness woman Dorothy Molter lived until her death in 1987. Long ago, Ely men traveled by snowmobile in winter to help Dorothy cut and put up the ice she needed to keep her foodstuffs -- including the famous root beer she sold to paddlers -- cold in summer.

Over the years, I canoed a handful of times to stay with Dorothy, sleeping on her porch and listening during summer's short nights to waves lap against her island shoreline.

She was not, as the Saturday Evening Post once proclaimed her, the world's "loneliest woman."

"I live alone, but I'm not lonely," she said.

This winter's deep snow and lake slush have made slow going of dog travel across the north. But on this morning, Stu and I ran generally light enough to stay atop the snow's crusty surface; a great relief to us, and especially to the dogs.

In our sleds, we carried four tip-ups, an equal number of jigging rods, a hand auger, fishing jigs, frozen ciscos for bait, food for the dogs, a Coleman stove, a day's food for us, emergency gear, aluminum folding chairs and a dog medical kit.

"How are they doing?" Stu asked.

We had allowed the dogs to rest after descending a steep portage.

Jumping with both boot-clad feet on the sled brake, holding it back to avoid a wreck, the dogs, the sled and I had nonetheless fishtailed down the portage.

"Eager," I said.

Stu's dogs are not thick-boned huskies. They are wiry canine amalgams, part husky, part greyhound and other running dogs, but mostly the product of generations of breeding by racers and, among others, Inuits who in the far north know the value in winter of fast, tough dogs.

"They'll burn thousands of calories on a day like this," Stu said. "I feed them twice a day a mixture of dry food, fat, fish and beaver. We buy beaver from the local trappers, paying about $5 apiece for carcasses."

In three hours' time, Knife Lake unfolded before us like a north woods diorama. Dorothy's island lay in the near distance, and beyond it, a lob pine overshadowed a rocky point, rising from timeless beds of granite.

Above, a lone raven squawked its welcome. Otherwise all was still and cold, the temperature not yet approaching zero, and nothing moving except, soon, our auger turning holes in the ice.

• • •

Securing the sleds and their charges to trees to ensure they stayed put, Stu and I watched the dogs curl readily in the snow, their noses tucked inside their rear legs.

They slept, but with one eye open.

A short distance from shore, I cranked four holes in Knife Lake.

"Two feet of good ice," Stu said.

More than 150 feet deep, Knife Lake, cold even in summer, was colder now. The holes froze over nearly as fast as I drilled them.

Stu and I built a fire and heated water for tea.

Then Stu baited two tip-ups with ciscos and trudged through the deep snow to one hole, then another. The lake was about 65 feet deep where we fished, and we lowered the baits about 40 feet down.

Unpacking a frying pan and a bottle of cooking oil, we laid out a fillet knife, hoping for a trout lunch.

The wind wasn't strong and what wind there was we could shelter ourselves from using the shoreline.

We drank the tea and watched the tip-ups. If a trout hit one of the baits, a flag would release from the tip-up. Trout can peel off a lot of line in a hurry. If we saw a flag we wanted to reach the tip-up as quickly as possible to set the hook.

For a long while, we had no bites.

We broke open a package of cheese and sausage, which had frozen rigid, like peanut brittle. We chewed it as if in slow motion.

Everything was still and beautiful. White and green and blue. We had seen wolf tracks and a lone set of moose tracks. But now in all directions nothing moved.

The sky was cloudless, shorn even of contrails.

"I came up here by myself yesterday to see if we could even make it," Stu said. "I ran up, rested the dogs and turned around. The snow and slush have kept people out of here."

We talked, drank tea and heated a pot of soup. In time, a flag jumped from one tip-up and Stu slogged quickly through the snow, diving for the line to set the hook.

"It's peeling off like crazy!" he yelled.

But he couldn't stop the line before it unwound completely and snapped. Or broke at the knot. This was heavy, braided line, and we had no fish for lunch.

Throughout the afternoon we tended the crackling fire and walked from hole to hole, opening them only to watch them refreeze, and opening them again.

We caught no fish.

As we broke camp and repacked the sleds, the dogs rose nervously. Soon they howled madly, wanting to run.

Shadows threw themselves fingerlike across Knife Lake as the vast frozen north tilted toward a long winter's night.

We pulled our sled anchors.

Seventeen. That's how many miles the dogs had to run

Soon we heard only the hushed whoosh of sled rails skimming atop snow.

For more information, contact White Wolf Dog Trips at whitewolfdogtrips.com.

Dennis Anderson • danderson@startribune.com