Memories from my June 2026 Boundary Waters Canoe Trip
For two years, we've supported a Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness adventure with The Venture Out Project. The organization provides outdoor adventures and skill-building opportunities to people who identify as LGBTQIA+.
This year, they partnered with Wilderness Inquiry to create a canoe camping trip for first-time participants. Read more about their experiences and reflections. Learn more about our Wilderness Equity Initiative Program.
Part Two (Missed Part One? Read it here)
Embark
Our first morning of paddling into the official entrance of the Boundary Waters was bliss. The sun was warm, the wind gentle, and I felt the ancient muscle memory of guiding a canoe return in a rush. It feels powerful, sliding through mile after mile of water - the movement becoming meditative. And where better to meditate than amidst this vast expanse of wilderness…with nothing to see but an endless horizon of trees and the curve of water around each land mass. From the distant shoreline of Canada, to an island so small only a single sapling reached out of the waves.
The first cards I drew at our initial campsite were both pentacles, and thinking of this suit out here in the wilderness feels so different. There is an effortless distinction between the pop-culture association with money — and the truer, deeper meaning of the pentacles: that of the element Earth. When my wallet and my phone are miles and miles away, physical resourcing takes on a whole new meaning.
While acknowledging that financial resources made this trip possible, out here, that same money is rendered meaningless. Our resources are the land itself and the paper maps we use to navigate. The water that buoys our bodies and boats.
The management of supplies and prediction of weather. We adjust as the Earth edicts, not as we exert our will. How far we have societally strayed - from cash as a simple stand-in for the trade and barter system. Now, we have taken too much. From our planet and from each other. So much that the small handfuls of resources I have to return to the collective feel obsolete. But open hands still reduce harm.
Map Dots
I am so small.
The map we use to plan routes
and navigate
looks vast
Lakes large and miniscule
Fading into one another
Islands dotting the blue like freckles
Inches melt into miles before me.
But I saw the full Boundary Waters map
on the breakfast room wall
We had to lean closer
Squint
to even find the waterways we’d be traversing
Only a small corner -
But it’s the richest bite of the world I’ve ever tasted.
I am so small
and as we all do -
I turn map dots into moments
that grow beyond their borders.
Free
This trip felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but it has quickly turned into something I hope is anything but. I’m gaining so many new skills, learning every day what I never knew I was capable of. I want to keep going, assembling everything I’ll need for more off-grid adventures. I want to never be far from this intimacy with nature that I’ve never before felt so deeply. And what is any love without a continual desire for new depths? I will keep learning, growing my ability to navigate these waters - and I will never stop prioritizing my communion with all the places that make me feel fully alive.
Alive and free — to fully be myself. And I don’t just mean a trip like this, where I can be in community with other queer folks. I mean there is a Pride flag erected in the center of our campsite — and this place — this quiet, serene paradise does not discriminate. I need not justify my gender to the pines. There is not a single wave that has questioned my love for a woman. All that background noise vanished the moment our canoes slipped into this holy water. Maybe this place, with these people, is a home like no other. And as we love nature, it loves us back without reservation. What a gift.
Nightfall
A clear sky one night guided our attention to the wide expanse of wilderness above. As the evening darkened, constellations emerged. We followed them up the hill to the giant lookout rock behind our camp. Lying on our backs, we took in the vast array of stars, laid out like a dome — a real-life planetarium.
Vega.
North Star.
Big Dipper.
Scorpio.
Jupiter, the brightest pinprick of them all.
We had a communal existential crisis, and spotted satellites in their orbit.
Some bits of light turned into shooting stars, flaring brightly before fading away entirely. The very stardust in our bones; but perhaps we too are allowed a flare of glory before dissipating into the ether.
I could have stayed out there all night, watching stars shift, watching the moon rise. Waiting for the sun.
Denouement
Our last night brought us to the long-awaited palisade overlook. Both the steep hike to the top and the incredible view upon reaching it took my breath away. The islands and water were the same as those we’d paddled through for days now — but the new perspective provided a new sense of awe. Seeing the currents curve around coastlines, as the setting sun shifted the horizon’s hue. We talked, then poetry recitation replaced conversation.
Eyes watered, and I suddenly felt every emotion of the past week rising to the surface, channeled through my body in chills. The mist in my eyes condensed and fell. I cried because this world is so beautiful and humans are so awful — and so beautiful too.
We were meant to live like this, so fully, but the time slips away. And how do we continue fighting for what’s right, if we don’t remain filled to the brim with the glory of the world we’re preserving? As the wind dried my face, we climbed back down to the canoes, ready to settle in for one last night together.