We were making our last portage on a recent canoe trip when we saw a procession of folks coming toward us. The party was coming from a parking lot near our take-out. We were headed out of the woods after several days on the trail.
They were noticeably clean _ a couple of adults and a file of well-organized teens. The kids appeared to be of young high school age. Duluth's Clint Moen, a member of our group, liked seeing young people on the trail.
"It always makes me happy when I see people taking kids into the woods," said Moen, 70.
The kids couldn't help noticing the two 6-pound lake trout that two others in our party were hauling out to take home. They had caught the fish about an hour before.
"They said, 'Wow, those are big!' " Moen said.
He began talking to the leaders of the group, two schoolteachers from somewhere in Wisconsin.
"They had taken it upon themselves to try to get kids into the outdoors," Moen said.
Moen took it from there.
"Do you have a map?" he asked the men. "I'll mark your map, and you'll catch fish. The trout are down 30 to 50 feet."
The men produced their map. Moen marked the location of a couple of pines on one shore and another landmark on a different shore. He made an "X" on the map at the intersection of these landmarks. He handed the map to the men.
"This is where to fish," Moen said, jabbing at the "X."
They appeared a bit incredulous _ an angler giving away a productive lake trout hole in the wilderness. Moen wasn't finished. He went to his pack and extracted his fishing tackle. He pulled two of his best spoons from the pack and gave them to the men.
"Here you go," he said. "Try these."
Then he dropped in a funky-looking pink contraption made of plastic and metal _ the Pink Lady. A Pink Lady is a device you tie to your fishing line to take it down 40 or 50 feet to where the lake trout live. Behind it, you tie on a leader and a spoon.
Moen showed the men how to rig it. Following his example, I tossed in one of my Pink Ladies and a couple more spoons.
Moen's behavior in this instance was not unusual for him.
"I can't tell you how many Pink Ladies I've given away," he said.
It's likely, in such encounters on the trail, that you'll never again see the folks you've befriended. But Moen was eager to hear how the group did, so he gave them his phone number. Several days later, one of the teachers called him.
"They just had a wonderful time," Moen said. "They caught lots of fish. They shared the Pink Ladies so everyone had a chance."
One of the lake trout was 31 inches long, he said.
It's impossible to know how their experience might have changed any of those students. Would they become lifelong anglers? Would they want to return to the wilderness? Would they pursue other outdoors interests?
We'll never know.
But it sure changed one day in the wilderness for those kids, opening their eyes to what was swimming beneath their canoes.
