Wid Ricing and Fire

 The sign explaining the basics about wild rice at the put-in on Cramer Lake.

It's Sunday morning, September 11, 2011. A look of peace on the lake.  You can just barely see the wild rice in the distance. It's a beautiful, very warm, sunny day with a slight breeze out of the west-northwest.

 Just getting started and the rice seems thin.  We keep paddling seeking a better, thicker stand and even think about heading to another lake but we really don't want to spend any more of the day driving around as we are already an hours' drive from home.

We found it!  With the knockers I pull the the rice stems over the canoe and brush or tap off the ripe rice into the canoe. There are stems empty of rice and rice left on stems even after tapping.  Ideally you tap or brush just enough for the ripe grains to fall.

While I'm knocking in rice Dave is standing behind me pushing us along.  It's quite the workout for your abdominal and back muscles but Dave loves it :)

 Swans!  It's as close as they wanted us.

 We stopped for lunch and I couldn't resist, is it a porcupine?

After landing the canoe we carried our lunch up past this fire ring to find a shady spot.  On one trip back to the water Dave stepped next to the ring and was surprised to have the ground give way as the organic material outside the ring was cooking.  The ashes looked completely cool but it was hot to the touch!

We found that the fire had traveled toward the forest at least 4 feet.  After digging down into the hot, smoking ground we hauled water with our cooler to drench the smoldering ground.

 I was shocked at how many trips to the lake it took to finally cool it off.  I kept digging while Dave hauled up the water.  If you pour it on without digging it just runs off and doesn't cool down the hot ground beneath..

As we headed back to the rice stand after lunch we noticed the Pagami Creek fire blow up.  The fire located over near Ely went from 3,000  to 10,000 acres that day.  As of today, September 14 it's grown to 100,000 acres and with the strong winds this morning it will keep growing.

We need a break!

Yes we are still resting but do you see the smoke moving in from the northwest?

The sky east of the fire blow up is really getting smoky and gray. The furthest forest ridglines have disappeared in the smoke. We odor of smoke is getting stronger, "Gee, I think we have enough rice, don't you think Dave?"

The paddle back.  What a beautiful day on the water.

It doesn't really look like that much rice, I hope it's enough.  We're hoping to have enough for the family, that's all.  How many pounds, any guesses?

I was very surprised at how much we got! 
Notice the smoke filled sky!

At home we weighed it and the correct answer is: 22 pounds!

Can you tell I was taken with the site of smoke filling the sky?

The evening sunset at home shows the smoke filled sky and smoky clouds moving in from the west as Grand Marais is East of the fire.  The smell of smoke is everywhere.  The Pagami Creek Fire was started by lightening.  I'm glad we found and put out the potential fire starter at the lunch site, which wasn't started by lightening.