Back Straps Up North

 

Much of my wife and my "getaway" was for the daily retreat from cellphone bars and road rage as well as the fishing to be found in remote country.

The back straps on a five-pound walleye are two inches thick and maybe fourteen inches long. That’s a lot of fine eating for two people set up for seven days, alone, tucked away in a far, far wilderness cabin on a lake called “Slender”.

The back straps don’t call to attention the side meat, fine itself, which can be almost sixteen inches long, an inch thick, and, of course, there are two sides. We had all the fried-golden walleye fillets we could possibly eat in two meals, and it came from just one fish. Seven more days. Maybe heaven.

It was all Pam’s idea. I haven’t gotten over it yet. Fifty years, and she still amazes me. My end of it, she says I still make her laugh. I still like watching her move across a room.

We were to mark our fiftieth wedding anniversary; July 8th, I think. Yeah, I still can’t remember it every time. It could be the 9th. It’s because, I say, as is every girl’s wedding, it was all designed in her favor by a family that thought very highly of her; nothing for me in way of ceremony.

If you look at it from her father’s perspective, I was almost the villain. “A son is a son, until he takes a wife. A daughter is a daughter, for the rest of her life.” Kinda’ like that.

Anyway, to avoid all her fans in a big, blowout, family celebration, with Conrad, again, way over there against the wall, Pam said one day this past winter, ”I don’t want a big celebration.”

“No bling?”

“I want you to take me to Canada, just the two of us, where we can fish if we want to, or just sit around in a cabin and read, watching the waves roll by; listening to loons. Could you do that for me?”

Wow. Get out of my way. I knew just the place, one of several Mike and Renae Henry (Pipestone Fly-In Outposts, catchfish@pfo.net, 807-482-1143) operated a day-and-a-half drive from Sand Springs over into southern Ontario, Canada. Bring your own food. Do your own cooking. Nobody will bother you (for sure), just you, the bears, the wolves, and the fish. Take someone you like along to pass you the salt, pepper, and fillets.

Pam also specified, “No portages”. She had done her share of those, “back in the day”, on our adventures into the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness (many times), and up yonder on the Churchill River in northern Saskatchewan (many times). Those trips took young bodies to effect; we no longer have them. Just young hearts.

Mike knew just the place for our “celebration”. He had built, a number of years ago, a small cabin on a windswept point (ideal for keeping mosquitoes at bay) as a retirement getaway on Slender Lake with two rooms, a propane stove and refrigerator, and electric lights (for goodness sakes) powered by solar panels.

A flush toilet, and hot shower? Unbelievable.

Better than home? Yes. No TV covering detail by detail all the shootings, bombings, and political maneuvering. Best of all? No road rage; no “cell” bars. None. Get over it kids. Electronic detox.

Yes! Pam, put that damn cellphone down. Oh, it doesn’t work back in here, anyway? Too bad.

It was a half-hour boat ride from Mike’s headquarters to Slender Lake, the only portage, a fascinating, mechanical one requiring you not to even leave your boat. I could’ve gotten to the cabin easily with the map Renae handed me, but Mike led us in, and left us.

As he left, as soon as the sound of his departing motor and boat was swallowed up by genuine wilderness, I swear a loon yodeled up lake within a couple hundred yards of the cabin.

Perfect.

“You want to fish now, or later?” I asked.

“Let’s get the stuff inside the cabin and situated. And then, honestly, I don’t care if we fish or not. We’ve got seven days back in here.”

“Are you having fun, yet?”

“For fifty years.”

Sure: You want to know about the fishing. Hang on. Come back next week.

Copyright © 2013 Conrad M. Vollertsen