Naturalist and Guide Rich Pagen talks the Boundary Waters Wilderness and its Dark Sky Sanctuary

Can you share a short history of your experiences with the BWCA? 

My first trip to the Boundary Waters was the summer of 1991 (between my junior and senior years in college), when I was in the Twin Cities with a college roommate, pretty much going out to see live music every night.  One guy we met had made trips to the Boundary Waters.  I had no idea what it was. Anyway, up we went under his tutelage … And it stuck with me, the simplicity of it, the life routines literally becoming moving, shelter, eating, being present. 

When I graduated in May 1992 from the University of Notre Dame, I gathered a bunch of good friends and we all went up to the Boundary Waters after graduation. I learned on that trip about setting one’s tent up in a depression, and then the rain comes. After the trip, I stopped in Hudson, WI (all shaggy and unshowered) to interview at a nature center for my first post-college job. I think the fact I just came out of the Boundary Waters helped my cause.

At that job, teaching environmental studies classes to Twin Cities middle school kids, I found out about a winter camping week up in the Boundary Waters and took time off of work to do it. It was run by the American Lung Association, and I had to fundraise to be able to participate. So I did. It was February 1993, and up I went with my skis, and the dogsled carried all our stuff. It was a teacher’s trip, and we had a satellite phone to communicate weather data to classrooms in the Twin Cities.  

Since then, I moved away for many years and came back with my partner, Kristin, in 2003. One place I’d always remembered was YMCA Camp du Nord, up above Ely. Back in 1993, I had a school group in Hudson cancel on short notice; and the YMCA  Camp St. Croix management gave us a vehicle and said go up north.  We can’t pay you but take the car. We did. That was my first ice dip with the associated wood-burning sauna.  Kristin and I go back every year since we came to Minnesota in 2003.  We can ski into the wilderness directly from the door of the cabin.

Many times since then, I’ve done canoe trips in the Boundary Waters, including a 12-day solo cross-Boundary Waters trip, as a cancer fundraiser for my niece who was diagnosed with leukemia. Someone who heard I was doing it offered to come find my car and drive it to the other side so it’d be there when I got there. An outfitter gave me a canoe free of charge to use.  

Kristin and I have done many trips, including three during 2020. When Covid locked us down, we did 10 days in August, another 10 days in September, and another 10 days in October. A full month in the Boundary Waters as our answer to Covid isolation. I’ve also gone up a couple of times in winter, to the end of the Sawbill Trail, and done solo two-night winter camping trips with my skis, snowshoes, and the toboggan with waist strap I bought from some guy who manufactures such things in his basement. 

As a world traveler and educator, why is this region of particular significance to you? 

When people ask me my favorite place to travel to, I say the Boundary Waters. They are always expecting some more far-afield destination.  But this is honestly my answer. It has become sentimental for me. The quiet, the chance to bump into moose, wolves, pine martens. I love it. I think my answer to question 1 probably answers this one.  

But to add to it, I love the seasons, and how it’s seamless to become connected to the rhythms of the day, of the night, of the seasons, of the passing weather patterns. I’ve had CRAZY wildlife encounters, particularly when alone. And it’s the Boundary Waters where I discovered the wildlife-watching advice I’ve always found myself passing on to others: stop to take a leak, and just being still for 2-3 minutes is often enough for the animals around you to start getting back to their business.
 

Can you share about the brightness and fullness of the stars in the BW?  

When I was working at YMCA St. Croix (Hudson, WI), my first job out of college (as described above), a couple of friends and I took a backpacking trip up above Silver Bay on what is now the Superior Hiking Trail. We brought musical instruments up there in early October, and it was freezing. The northern lights were the best I’ve ever seen, yellows and magical. I recall on that trip, and those early trips with Kristin in winter up to go cross-country skiing, encountering the darkest skies I’ve ever encountered.  

So dark that the stars seem almost too bright for their own good. Constellations are difficult to make out, with all the light pollution from the surrounding stars, which are usually drowned out by city lights, and so go unnoticed. It’s interesting that our wilderness takes on different meanings: no motorized anything, a place where wildlife that needs lots of wild open undeveloped space can survive and thrive, and where it is silent and no light pollution. The latter is becoming more and more rare and is not always recognized as important as it is.

What do you feel, think, or experience when you look up at the night sky? 

I’ve never been one to focus on “Is there life out there where those stars are,” though it is an interesting question. For me, I just love how the night sky, whether there is a moon (so fewer visible stars) or not, adds to the feeling that is ‘the night’. The hooting of owls, the mournful cry of loons echoing across the water. 

I’m particularly drawn to windless-ness, when you can hear a stick crack in the woods from your cozy tent, wondering if it’s a moose moving as silently through the brush as an animal that large can. And to moonless-ness, when everything is at its darkest; and the nocturnal animals that are so adapted to the dark are thinking ‘this is what I’m made for’.  

I often head to the water’s edge with my flashlight, and see what has come alive in that darkness. Leeches forage in the shallows, crayfish explore the gaps between the rocks, and wolf spiders wait patiently for a water strider that gets a little too close to the stick it is perched upon. One time while I was out wandering at night, I found a foraging flying squirrel under a rather bright moon. I sat and waited until it sprung into the air every now and again, from one tree to the next (one time I was in my tent, and the shadow of a flying squirrel flashed across the tent and then I heard the sound of it landing on a nearby tree trunk).  

Also at night, on an autumn trip, Kristin was tucked in the tent and I was out walking on a nearby portage. I could hear something approaching, rather silently; but it sounded big. There was a large rock outcropping next to the trail, so I climbed up on top of it and sat, waiting. It was a moonless night, so not easy to see what was walking up the trail 10 feet below me. I waited until what felt like the perfect time and turned on my flashlight. There was a female moose meandering up the trail, pausing every now and again for a bite.

This all brings me to how a night sky free of light pollution really does add to the feeling of remoteness, of wildness, a flashback to an earlier time when humans’ footprint on the earth was much smaller.

How do you experience a sense of well-being in a wild space vs. out of nature/city?  

I think we humans are very adaptable, maybe a little TOO adaptable. Whatever the world is that we are born into, that is the world that is normal to us. The idea of creeping baselines resonates here. Young people now are used to US National Parks as places where there are traffic jams in summer, and where visiting in the ‘off-season’ makes the most sense. Kristin’s parents still dream of, on a whim, heading out with their Scamp trailer; and winging it, finding campsites on the fly each night.  

Recent experience has shown them that the days of winging it are about gone. So how each of us finds well-being is very variable, depending on our personalities and who we are; AND depending on what the world was like when we were born into it, compared to how it is now. For me, even going for a walk in the Bird Park on Lake Harriet during fall migration (with hundreds of white-throated sparrows and yellow-rumped warblers flitting across the trail at any one time) reminds me that nature is so much bigger than us; and that even a huge human construction like a city is not outside of nature and its presence.  

I recall one time, in winter, skiing out to the middle of Lake Bde Maka Ska (which I do frequently); and thinking about how I was probably further from any other human, than anyone else in Minneapolis at that moment. So there are ways to have that nature connection, even in a city. With that said, not everyone seeks it out or finds it. I recall coming back from a summer in the Sierra Nevada in California, where I had been doing surveys for spotted owls for the US Forest Service in 1993.  

My friend Kevin and I had a chat about spotted owls and Kevin, so far removed from the natural world, said something like “Whether spotted owls exist or not doesn’t impact my life one bit”. It was an interesting realization. But for me, I am very aware of how different it feels to be out in an intact ecosystem, with all or most of its parts.  Compared to, for example, visiting New Zealand, where I can feel the loss of species and presence of invasive introduced ones, which have so devastated the ecosystems there….

When do you feel compelled to plan a trip to the BW?  

I feel compelled to plan a trip to the Boundary Waters every chance I get. For me, it’s mostly when I have time at home, as I’m away a lot. And I don’t always have full control over when that is. If I’m home Aug-Oct, or some portion of it, that is when I love the most to be up there.  Winter too of course, and I make a point of going up skiing every winter.  Of course, there are also times when heavy stuff has happened, and I know that getting away, especially alone, to a place like the Boundary Waters is probably what I need most.

Why is it important to protect spaces large enough to support a dark sky sanctuary? 

As mentioned above, wilderness has many facets to it. And some places are ‘wild’ in one of those ways, though lacking in others. Other places meet ALL the criteria. An intact fauna is a huge one to me and makes the experience so much richer knowing one COULD come across a wolf or a moose or a pine marten. It’s one of the things I love about being out west: mountain lions still roam and, though unlikely you would cross paths with one, they are out there and are seeing you.  

Certainly, a large area makes an intact fauna more likely. And it also contributes to the possibility of the sky not being too impacted by the lights of humans. Even when we go skiing north of Ely, if the sky is cloudy, we can see the reflection of the lights from Ely on the clouds.  Not my favorite thing to see, because it reminds you of what is outside of the situation you are currently in, which is what it is all about. I think when it’s possible to not hear traffic, to not see lights or buildings or towers from where you are, and to not have a cell signal; these things really enhance and enrich the experience of being in a wild place.  

So to answer the question, the larger the patch, the better. I remember learning in graduate school (in wildlife biology) that “one large” is always better than “several small” when it comes to planning nature reserves. Equally important is having an extensive multi-use buffer zone around it, because no creatures stay put in the reserve. They wander. One example of the “one large vs. several small” discussion, when I was in Missouri in grad school, was that the Ozarks (mostly forested) have a number of forest-breeding bird species. 

Many are parasitized by brown-headed cowbirds, which sneak in and lay their eggs in the unsuspecting host birds’ nests; the host birds unknowingly raise the cowbird chicks which outcompete the hosts’ chicks for food.  In many cases, this means complete nesting failure for the host species. The cowbirds live outside the forest, and the larger the patch of forest, the larger the core area where cowbirds don’t get to. However, in smaller forest patches, the cowbirds can utilize the host nests throughout the forest patch. So, the recommendation in this case is always that LARGER is BETTER.

(All photos by Rich Pagen)