Plymouth Christian Youth Center, Minneapolis, MN

Paddling a canoe – like the voyageurs used – to Fishhook Island at the start of their BWCA adventure were Nick Krier, Plymouth Christian Youth Center staffer, on the left; and from back to front: canoe guide Matti Erpestad; students Arthur Bunich and Joe Baker, and retired Lutheran minister Paul Monson. Krier has been taking youth canoeing in the BWCA for 17 years.

A trail to one's soul

WILDERNESS CANOE BASE, SEAGULL LAKE , MINN. -- In the midst of the pristine silence, spruce and pine of the wilderness, on the edge of Seagull Lake , two teenage boys stuck their toes in the water, laughing, jostling, pushing. "You first!"No, you first!"Wow, it's cold!"

In late August, Joseph Baker, 18, and Arthur Bunich, 17, were heading out on an adventure to test their skills, their stamina, their ability to work together, and to touch their very souls.

The Rev. Ham Muus helped start these outings in the mid-1950s. “It moves them into an environment where they really look at themselves,” he said at his home in Grand Marais, Minn. “ Most of these kids don’t know a canoe paddle from a tree trunk. But they learn, quickly. They learn how to start a fire with wet wood, how to share provisions and a myriad of practical experiences.” (Photographs by Joey McLeister/Star Tribune/Minneapolis-St.Paul 2005)

These inner-city youths, along with Yer Moua, 21, were taking part in a three-day canoe trip sponsored by a north Minneapolis alternative youth program, started 50 years ago by a group of Lutheran pastors. The pastors believed that if young people on society's margins could get out into God's open wilderness and dig deep into their hearts and souls, they could find success and maybe stay on good paths to a productive future.

"Oh, man, this isn't natural," Baker kept saying over and over. "It's not natural to sleep on the ground. I ain't eating no bugs. I've got to kiss my girl when I get home."

Kaitlin Boyce, 22, a recent St. Olaf College graduate and the tour guide, smiled. "We'll show you which ants to eat. Some are quite sweet!"

By now, Moua was in the water. And the boys, not to be outdone by a woman who probably weighs half of what they do, waded out.

The sun was down. It was getting cool. But they were game. They had to swim and tread water until Boyce was satisfied they could do it, then they swamped a canoe and got it back to shore.

Baker and Bunich are seniors at the alternative school, one of the programs of the Plymouth Christian Youth Center (PCYC) in Minneapolis . Moua graduated this past spring.

They were invited on the canoe trip by Nick Krier , who works at PCYC and is a graduate of the PCYC high school. Krier, 48, first went to the canoe base as a student in 1974, and began leading groups in 1990. He grew up in north Minneapolis , and, by his own admission, lead a rough life as a kid, doing just about every drug there was, except heroin.

He knows where these kids are coming from and believes the experience of pushing oneself to the brink in the wilderness creates spiritual and mental growth that will benefit them in the long run.

His first trip was "life-changing," he said. "There were eight in our group, and we've known each other forever. It's the knowing that you can do something; it's not just a fantasy. It helped keep me in the right direction."

To the three, he often said, "The more experiences I can expose you to, the more choices you'll have later in life to make the right decisions."

Wilderness Canoe Base is almost at the end of the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota . It's on the northern half of Fishhook Island (the southern half of the island is in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness) and Dominion Island , with an access area called the Cove. The islands are two of 250 islands in Seagull Lake . They are connected by a suspension footbridge. Virtually all of the cabins and outhouses, docks, the chapel, pathways and the bridge were built by volunteers, many from Lutheran congregations statewide.

Many of the cabins were sold to the camp when the government created the Boundary Waters wilderness area and owners had to leave their lands. The camp moved them painstakingly to the islands, usually in the winter when they could drive on the ice.

Many stories abound about the efforts. Once, a truck carrying logs from one log cabin fell through the ice, and the workers retrieved not only the broken rear truck axle, but all the logs, only to have the entire cabin burn while it was being reconstructed.

The Rev. Ham Muus, 76, was one of the pastors who started PCYC in the mid-1950s and decided that a northern wilderness experience would help inner-city youths. "It moves them into an environment where they really look at themselves," he said at his home in Grand Marais, Minn. "Most of these kids don't know a canoe paddle from a tree trunk. But they learn, quickly. They learn how to start a fire with wet wood, how to share provisions and a myriad of practical experiences."

As the group paddled to Fishhook Island to start their adventure, Boyce sat in front and said it's important to make a break with the world the kids have just left at the parking lot. "It creates a quiet," she said, that will last in one's soul.

At dinner, Matti Erpestad, 22, a recent graduate of Macalester College and a tour guide, read portions of Sigurd Olson's writings, the nationally known ecologist and northern Minnesota writer. "These writings speak to the timelessness of the wilderness," Erpestad said. "This is what we'll experience on the canoe trip."

But Bunich wanted to know "how can you tell time without a watch?" Erpestad said confidently: "We'll teach you how to tell time from the sun."

Although Krier says that they don't "push" the kids to go to morning devotions in the chapel, all three got there in time and listened to the reading from Isaiah about the crowd of witnesses. After silent mediation, as they looked out over the perfect calm and quiet of the rising sun and setting moon on Seagull Lake , they walked back to the main house for breakfast.

Baker's father is in prison in California , and he doesn't hear from him. His father did write twice to his younger sister. With quiet resoluteness, Baker says, "As long as I keep my mind straight, I'm OK. My mom is my mom and dad. If she were gone, I'd be real sad. Then I'd have to take care of my brothers and sisters."

Moua's former husband has remarried and doesn't come to see their daughter, who lives with Moua and her mother. She's unsure what she wants to do in life yet and is taking some time from studying to raise her 3-year-old.

Bunich just got back from a summer visiting friends and doesn't know what he wants to do after he graduates. Despite having a bad smoker's cough, he smokes. In fact, before they head out for their trip, all three have a last smoke around the campfire on the beach, after they have loaded the canoes.

Krier loves to introduce young people to the wilderness experience, but he's also tough. If they don't follow the rules -- including no cell phones, no drugs, no taking big risks -- the trips are canceled. He had a group at Wilderness Base in May and took them home after 12 hours when he found them breaking rules.

Still, he insists, these are good kids. "They're out of their element, so they tend to listen. By the time they come back, they'll be working as a team and they'll be following the rules."

When he got back to the Twin Cities, Baker announced proudly that he had carried the canoe on three portages, over rocks and through the bush to the next lake. "We went to Canada , and we saw a waterfall! Me and Art went swimming the last day. It was really cool. Yes, I succeeded at it. I'm going back in December."

Well, OK, both Nick and Art snored in the small tent, so that wasn't so cool, he laughed. Did the experience ever feel natural? "Sure, the last day, when I knew I was coming home," he joked.

Krier said he thinks it's harder to persuade urban kids to go on such an adventure than it used to be. He grew up in a family that camped and did things out of doors, but he thinks that today's young people don't have that background.

Muus agreed. Just as the inner city can be frightening for someone from the country, so can the wilderness frighten someone from the inner city, he said.

However, he thinks that new models of involvement in the camp will come from local Lutheran parishes. "My sense is that in the next 50 years we'll see more integration of parishes in this camp in a mission sense" as more congregations incorporate new ethnic communities statewide.

He reminds people that Wilderness Canoe Base is rooted "in the Lutheran church. It's a Christian camp, and we talk about things of the spirit. There's an intimacy on the trail in the small groups that often leads back to the spirit. I think that's what's stirred."

In the morning, the group practiced lifting canoes for portage, and how to work a paddle. They packed their canoes.

Then, in the still, crystalline morning sunshine they headed out into the wilderness, into an adventure of a lifetime -- into a journey of the soul.

Martha Sawyer Allen lives in Minneapolis and is a retired religion writer for the Star Tribune.

Republished with permission of Martha Sawyer Allen and the Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St. Paul on September 10, 2005 .