Rain didn't dampen sisters' adventure in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

Finally, I snipped the line in shame.

My sister and I, 10 years past our camping prime, had managed to paddle 30 miles through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in two days, survive seven thunderstorms on the water and in the brush, and keep ourselves mostly warm, mostly fed and occasionally dry.

But after snagging a tree, rocks and repeatedly flubbing my cast, failure came at the final task: reeling one in.

In some of the most bountiful waters in the nation, my pole reaped no fish.

I sighed and trudged out of the chilly water and up the mossy bank to where my sister was tending a fickle fire.

"I hope you feel like potatoes," I said.

We were only about 5 miles of water from completing the ambitious route we had mapped out the previous week, when we officially locked ourselves into our weekend adventure.

Don't get me wrong, we aren't nature novices — growing up in North Carolina's Piedmont region, Val and I practically came of age in canoes and tents. Our parents toted us first around the state, and later, the country, in our beige Aerostar minivan, stopping and pitching camp as we pleased.

But this venture seemed high-reaching, even for us. Most of the off-road camping we'd done had been a quick walk or paddle away from a vehicle and cellphone reception, and with other people. And despite our background, neither of us had really ever fished.

What if one of us broke a limb? What if a bear snatched our food? What if, in the maze of lakes and islands, we got horribly lost?

"I've never gone on a trip like this without really planning it or knowing where I'm actually going, lol," my sister texted to me before arriving in Minneapolis from North Carolina.

Neither had I, but eight days later, we drove to Ely's edge at Falls Lake. There, we lifted our canoe into the lake, put our packs, in waterproof bags, into the boat and set off. A sparkling breadth of clear water beneath a sapphire sky stretched ahead; the Falls Lake boat dock growing ever smaller behind.

"Those bushes are loaded," she said, nodding at the woods behind our tent.

For the moment, we had won. The cooked rice and mushrooms in our cups was burnt at the bottom, but tasted like gourmet risotto. The red wine in our mugs, from the boxed wine bladder we'd brought in Val's pack, went down like rare champagne. We'd set up camp, filled our water purifier and managed to start a fire with a mass of damp wood. Now, spread out on the rock overhang, our clothes were drying beneath a hazy sky pierced by precious, waning rays of sunlight. The lake stretched out before us, a tired version of its former self.

The clean, slicing silence seemed palpable on the heels of a day that was anything but.

Ten hours earlier, around 8 a.m., we had set out, crisply packed on a crisp, breezy day.

Within an hour, that picturesque beginning evaporated. That was when the thunderstorms began, a daylong wave of them rolling through like breakers charging to the shore.

"That doesn't look so good," a fellow camper said as he walked to his site. We agreed, and unpacked the cheap ponchos and the last-minute tarp we'd bought at our outfitter's suggestion and tipped the boat on its side. We threw the tarp over our shoulders and packs and tucked it underneath our feet and let the storm rage. When the thick drops grew quieter against the green plastic pressed on our faces, we got out, repacked and continued, but soon another storm was threatening. We powered through several of them in the next five hours, letting our limbs and clothes saturate as we bounced over whitecaps and squinted ahead to try to make the dripping watercolor scene match our map coordinates.

When the lightning got too close, too real, we pulled into the brush of an island, yanking our bags into the dense forest and crawling over saplings and rocks and between branches to perform the tarp routine again, this time in a much sloppier, more hectic manner.

Finally, around 5 p.m., with the sky darkening and our nerves testing once again, we were paddling near a man and three young boys in a pair of canoes when a rock-carved campsite appeared around a bend. It looked like nirvana to two tired paddlers unsure of where the next opportunity would be. No doubt, we thought, the family just ahead had the same mindset.

But lightning cracked hard a short range away. We paddled in place — as did the family near us — monitoring the sky, calculating the risk of starting across the great bay and getting caught in the worst of the storm's wrath. Then the sky opened and rain dropped in sheets; the family ahead of us abruptly turned back.

"Let's take advantage of their hesitance!" Val yelled above the wind. I nodded, steering from the back, and cut the nose of the boat into the open lake.

"This," my sister said, "is one of the best days of my life."

Val frowned at the map, looked at the horizon and then back down. "I can't figure out why there isn't a campsite here," she chirped from the front of our canoe. "I don't think we're where we think we are."

It was nearing 5 p.m., and we were racing the sun to find a place to sleep. We were also lost. After two days in the wilderness, the islands and shorelines had started to look the same. We knew we were on our way back to Ely, we just didn't know where, exactly.

The day had begun in Basswood Lake, where we had camped the previous night. The storms had prevented us from reaching our deepest point — Basswood Lake Falls on the Canadian border — on the first day, but we paddled up in the still of the morning instead, when the sun was bright and the lake calm, yielding to our paddles as they sliced through the surface. We had found the falls by ear, cautiously creeping around the wide bay as the torrent grew louder. From the shore, the fanned rock shelves looked like giant fingers depositing water from a grand faucet into a deep basin below.

The path through the woods was thin and rife with mosquitoes. We hiked for a while parallel to the river, but couldn't find the Indian pictographs promised in the research we'd done. So we returned to our first camp, downed a couple of peanut butter sandwiches with fresh blueberries, packed up again and then headed back south toward Ely with the goal of advancing as far as possible to make for a light final day.

Finally, we gave in, choosing a shady campsite because of the time, not the circumstances, and hoping the map would look clearer the next day. We started with the night's chores, collecting water from the lake, pitching our tent and laying out our bags, setting up the "bear bag" to hoist in a tree after our meal was finished, and setting out the soap and wash basin for our dishes. The wood everywhere was waterlogged, and it took us four tries to get a fire going, but when we did, my sister tended it as I set out to try to fish for the first time on our chaotic excursion. Stringing my lure and tying it secure, I brought the rod to my shoulder and flung the tip away from the shore. Kerplunk. It lingered just past my feet. I reeled in and tried again. This time, my line was taut, but only because the hook was snagged on a rock. I gave an hour's worth of effort before I conceded to an all-carb dinner. Val pulled the steaming tin foil lumps off the coals, shook salt and a little oil over the potatoes, and we headed for the bank at the edge of our camp.

Tomorrow, we would find our way on the map and point the canoe toward Ely. We would muscle through two more portages that claimed the last of our energy. Finally, we would pull ashore, successfully completing our ambitious adventure.

But for the moment, we paused and ate. Behind us, the fire crackled. A soft wind rustled the needles in the pines above. Below, the lake gurgled against our canoe and the rocks that cradled it. The sun set deep and orange beyond our camp, behind the ridge of evergreens and the sparkling breadth of clear water.

We sighed and sat, quiet, and the world around us, finally, did too.

Amelia Rayno • 612-673-4115