The Outdoor Office: Summer 2012

Over the summer, my morning commute to the office consisted of a quick paddle into the wilderness. Life jackets replaced seatbelts and wind conditions were more of a concern than traffic jams. Parallel parking a canoe along the lakeshore was a dream.

Ok, the term office is relative—in this case, the office is one million-plus acres of wilderness, known as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. There are more than 3,000 lakes in this area, which straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, and it’s just a hop-skip away from Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world. Needless to say, the landscape is enchantingly beautiful.

Not to mention that it is nearly impossible to travel without a canoe in the Boundary Waters—which is what makes this area so unique. And this summer, I called this place both my office and my home.

As a student worker for the U.S. Forest Service, the government agency that manages the Boundary Waters, I worked alongside Wilderness Rangers in the Superior National Forest. You could say I was a Wilderness Ranger-in-training, no big deal.

I learned about this opportunity through Dr. Bill Quinn, a biology professor who is a strong supporter of students who are interested in careers in natural resources. Dr. Quinn has helped several students obtain summer positions in the Superior National Forest over the past few years, and this summer, Biology majors Janaee Wallace and Claire Hemingway also worked there with me.

The Boundary Waters is a protected wilderness area that lies within the forest. Land that is designated wilderness under the Wilderness Act of 1964 is managed differently than other public lands, like National Parks. Motorized and mechanized equipment is prohibited, so that means no roads, no cars, bicycles, chain saws, etc. People can use the wilderness for recreation reasons, and they certainly do in the Boundary Waters since it’s also the most visited wilderness area in the country. That means there are over 200,000 visitors each year—most of them come in the summer, and nearly all of them paddle in via canoe to camp, fish and enjoy the mysterious allure of the Boundary Waters.

And that’s where we come in. Wilderness Rangers travel around in the Boundary Waters for 4-8 days at a time to maintain campsites, trails and speak with visitors. We camp out in the wilderness at night, and while it’s certainly not a vacation, it’s definitely an adventure. We paddle several miles a day—sometimes ten or more. We cut down trees, dig latrines, and move rocks around to prevent erosion in certain areas, among other projects. It’s hard work—you’re exerting yourself, it’s hot and you’re wearing long (forest green) pants and long sleeves, and it can be strenuous—I easily drank at least 16 cups of water a day when I was working. But it’s mostly fun, and I absolutely loved my job and the cause I was working for.

One of the most important parts of our jobs is educating visitors—we check permits and discuss Leave No Trace principles with people to ensure they are practicing proper wilderness ethic, like packing out all of their trash and leaving as little impact as possible. That’s not always the case though, and I’m pretty much a pro at picking little bits of aluminum foil out of the ashes in fire grates.

The wilderness way is entirely sustainable—you bring in all of your gear, from food to clothing to canoe—and you bring it all out. The trick is to leave the area as pristine as possible, as if you weren’t even there in the first place.

For example, trail maintenance sometimes involves cutting down trees that have fallen across the portages, or the trails on land between the lakes that people use to get from one lake to the next. Down trees can pose a safety hazard because people are often carrying a lot of gear, like a canoe, and a person’s line of vision is severely limited with a canoe over their head. We buck the tree into smaller pieces, and carry the logs into the woods. Then, we smear dirt over the freshly cut faces of the tree trunks that are near the trail. We call this naturalizing, and it’s all about blending our work in with the natural surroundings to make it less obvious that a tree was just cut down.

After a summer of paddling, digging latrines, and learning about land management in the wilderness in the best of ways—by actually doing it—I’ve come away with a solid foundation for a wilderness ethic that I know I’ll follow and build upon for the rest of my life. For me, this was the defining moment of my academic career thus far. As an Environmental Science and Policy major, I learn about sustainable lifestyles and limiting our impact on the environment through my academic studies. We discuss issues like land management and environmental policy in classes such as Environmental Politics and Policy, and this summer, I actually got to practice land management, speak with others about their impact on the environment, and see the effects of environmental policy firsthand.

Furthermore, limiting my personal impact on the environment is a big part of what I think about each day, and when I’m riding my bike to school up one of those infamous south Austin hills, I think about paddling to work in the Boundary Waters and remember that sometimes you have break a sweat to get what you want—and where you want to be.

Authored by Kristina Schenck ’13 , Environmental Science and Policy