Brian's song

One of our favorite things to do together since early in our marriage was to go camping in the Boundary Waters.  I remember the first time I went, I had never been camping before and was not so sure how this was going to work out since there were no bathrooms!  We went with Brian's mom, and two friends of ours from Palmer.  Our friends could not take a whole week off, and since I was so uncertain how I would like camping I had made plans to leave with them.  What a mistake that was!  It was an incredible trip and breathtakingly beautiful.  I cried when I had to leave, Brian was staying longer with his mom.  From that summer on, a trip to the Boundary Waters was a yearly thing, well, at least until we started having babies!

One year we went with our friends Jen and Paul, and that was an amazing trip.  Brian and I were running late (which was nothing new) and we drove all night to get to Ely.  After a false start (we got all the way to our entry point and realized that our friends didn't have their life jackets!) we got on the water.  We were canoeing deep into the Boundary Waters on this trip, almost to Canada, so we had picked a half way point to stop and camp for the night.  We were on a HUGE lake and it was windy, so by the time we got to our first stopping point we were exhausted.  We set up camp and ate, then laid down for naps.  While we slept a moose walked up to our tent, I remember the ground shaking and it huffing, talk about incredible!  The next day we packed up and canoed to our final destination.

I can not express how beautiful the Boundary Waters are, how peaceful. 

That trip is full of memories, and was always one of our favorites.  Paul caught a turtle on his fishing pole, and Jen and I laughed as we watched it pull Brian and Paul around.  At one point it finally surfaced, did you know turtles can gasp for air?  One day it rained and we were forced to spend the day under our tarp...with two former camp councilors! They had game after game to play...Grandma likes coffee, but she doesn't like tea!  Haha!  We took a day trip, canoed into Canada and went to two different waterfalls, Rebecca Falls and Curtain Falls.  On our way back Brian told me to stick close to him on the portage.  When we reached the end, I asked him what that was for, and he said "Didn't you see those bear prints in the dirt?  They weren't there when we went through the first time!"  Always my protector.  Jen and Paul left a couple of days before we did and the two of us enjoyed the quiet of just us






 Having 4 kids within 5 years put a damper on that kind of trip.  I am so thankful though that we were able to do a few trips with them to the Boundary Waters.







The first was just an overnight in 2007.  We were staying at a cabin outside of Ely with Brian's family and we took the kids to a lake that we had been to once before.  We both wished we had at least planned on staying two nights, but we weren't sure how the kids would do, they did great! 

In 2009 we went for a week. 

We were across from an island that was filled with wild blueberries, so we swam over and picked a bunch.  The next morning I made blueberry pancakes.  I didn't have a spatula, so Brian whittled one for me, it is still in our camping utensil box......

The third trip we took in 2010 and went on with Brian's mom. 

We never imagined that it would be our last.

Brian's mom has a friend who is a songwriter as well as a lover of the Boundary Waters.  He wrote this song for Brian:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXBEtRBByvg&feature=related

The first time I heard it was the day Brian died.  I laid my head on his arm and cried, knowing we would never again take our kids to the Boundary Waters together.  It is a beautiful song and has such meaning for Brian's life.  I am not sure how, and I'm not sure when, but at one point I will make it back to the Boundary Waters with our kids.  It is what Brian would want......