Housewarming

Sometimes research is its own reward. One example was Mike's encounter with Cook County resident Erik Simula, who owns some wooded acres up the Arrowhead Trail from Hovland. Erik runs his dog team at Bearskin Lodge on the Gunflint Trail through the winter, and demonstrates birch bark canoe construction at Grand Portage National Monument in the summer. While he has a spot cleared and logs peeled for his log cabin, he currently lives in the building that he currently uses as both sauna and dwelling.

Erik recently departed on a monumental journey: he shoved off from Grand Portage on Earth Day on a circumnavigation of Minnesota's Arrowhead Region in a birch bark canoe. His route includes Lake Superior's North Shore, the St. Louis River, Savannah Portage, upstream the Mississippi, down the Big Fork to the Rainy, and back east along the Border Route to the final big carry around the Pigeon River rapids to complete a thousand-mile paddle (that's a nine-mile hump for a finale). His dog Kitigan, along for the journey, will not be shouldering the canoe. Erik's authenticity and enthusiasm are compelling, and we trust he is grinning his way past the cliffs at Palisade Head and somehow preparing his legs for the first big portage around the steep rapids at Jay Cooke State Park near his hometown of Duluth. Good luck, voyageur!