Daughter and dad, 20 and 62, go on a BWCA canoe trip

I’m just 20 and my dad is 62. We argue about a lot— my mom says we’re too much alike.

I took up running, cross country skiing, and track long before I found out that those were the sports my dad, Randy LaTourelle, played in high school.

He graduated from Ely Memorial High School and I hope to move to the town someday.

He listens to classic rock on the radio and I listen to it on Spotify. I’m not a mirror of my dad, but more the reflection you see when looking into a lake: it’s interrupted by ripples but undeniable all the same.

During the summer of 2025, I spent three weeks up in Ely for my job - a business trip of sorts. My second week, I learned that I not only had Juneteenth off, but also that Friday.

On that Tuesday, I called my friend who was working in Duluth for the summer and we hastily planned a trip to the BWCA. We would launch Wednesday night after work and return early on Friday morning. I applied for a permit to Farm Lake and called to rent a canoe through Spirit of the Wilderness, just down the road (as everything is in Ely) from where I was staying. As a college student, I ordered the cheapest canoe a heavy aluminum - and paid the $50 deposit.

In the morning, my friend texted saying that work had been a lot recently and she didn’t have the energy for a BWCA trip. It was understandable to someone who knew that for as soul-rejuvenation as a break in the wilderness can be, it is also physically draining. I texted her back that it was okay despite being out $90. And then I called my dad.

“Dad, I have the opportunity of a lifetime for you,” I said, after he answered on the fourth ring at six in the morning.

“I’m sleeping,” he answered.

I pushed on with my proposal. “Don’t say ‘no’ right away,” I said preemptively out of habit. “My friend canceled but I already have the permit and the canoe. Please come with me to the Boundary Waters. I’ll take care of everything.”

“I’ll check my calendar and think about it. Love you.” He hung up and presumably went back to sleep. When he asked me later, I told him that before I called I placed the odds of him agreeing at 30 percent (he scoffed that it was even that high). But after his initial answer, my odds went up to 70 - it wasn’t a flat out ‘no’ like I had expected.

My dad is my hero. Despite our arguing over current events or what to do for Mother’s Day or whether the windows should be up or down in the car, he is always there for me.

After putting in a half day at work, my dad drove the five grueling hours from our house in the cities to Ely. There were no permits for Farm Lake the following day, so we packed immediately and headed for the launch at 8 p.m. on Wednesday. The winds had picked up since 7 p.m. and it drizzled our entire drive to the access point.

But after putting my car in park and carefully lifting the canoe from the top of my car to the edge of the water, the sky cleared. Perched at the end of the dock, my dad and I looked out at a brilliantly vibrant rainbow stretching across the lake. I giggled with anticipation and hugged him. “This is going to be wonderful.”

We finally launched by 8:30 a.m. Already confused by the paper map, I pulled out my phone and we followed the shoreline to South Farm Lake. With little trouble after that and just a 30 minute paddle, we found the first campsite for the night. There was a lot of damp fallen wood and a rose bush in the middle of the camp.

“Now that we’re out here, I’m going to be honest,” I told my dad as we unloaded our pack from the canoe. The plan had been that my dad would sleep in my good hammock and I would stack below him in my thrifted hammock. “I’m cowboy camping.”

As my dad was unfamiliar with the term, I explained, “I’m sleeping on the ground. I realized I didn’t have my extra hammock straps and at any rate, the hammock I was planning on sleeping in is more of a sunny-Sunday afternoon type.”

Among other things, my dad is fiercely protective. I knew that he would worry about his daughter sleeping on the ground. But I assured him I would be alright. As a seasoned and pro hammock- camper, I had slept in worse conditions.

I set up the hammock and the rain fly for my dad and then awkwardly strapped our 10x12 foot tarp between two trees, cutting lengths of my 100 foot nylon cord at random. My dad worked on a fire but most of the fallen wood was too wet from the rain and it fizzled out quickly.

As I went to set up my sleeping bag amongst our gear and pack, I screamed. “Dad!” Rushing over, I fervently pointed at our pack. Now, dear reader, this is the point where I defend myself. I am an undergraduate Environmental studies, biology, and religion triple major; I have gone on countless camping trips; I do quite a bit of field work for my job; I own pet Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches; and above all, I believe all creatures are God’s creatures. But just then I had seen the biggest spider of my life and was about to have to snuggle up next to it for the night. My hero, my father, squished it between a leaf for me and I prayed for his little spider soul.

I awoke at 3 a.m. and then again at 5 a.m. in the morning to a loud thrum. I cautiously stretched my head from under the tarp to look towards the sky for signs of a helicopter, but no. Both times I attributed the sound to my dad’s snoring.

At 5:30 a.m., I slipped out of my hammock, not daring to peek inside to see what I had been sleeping with all night. After a recent camping trip in the fall and a comment our leader had made, my life changed forever. Instead of carefully rolling up my sleeping bag, making sure to press the air out, I did what the Lord intended: I grabbed fistfulls of the fabric and haphazardly prodded and stuffed the thing into my stuff sack. Beautiful.

I let my dad sleep and in the meantime attempted to make a fire with the evenmore- damp wood. Using what must have been seven fire starters, I was only barely successful at boiling water for breakfast. Suddenly, I heard the loud echo-y thrum again. Glancing quickly over my shoulder, there hovering above the pink rose bush, was a ruby throated hummingbird. It didn’t immediately flit away, but instead stared at me for a moment. It was wondrous that something so small could emit such a loud noise.

At seven, my dad woke up and I handed up a mug of apple cinnamon oatmeal and we shared a backcountry mocha (instant coffee mixed with hot chocolate powder). We broke camp and half an hour later, we were putting paddle to water once again.

We made camp at the second site on the Kawishiwi River. It’s a big space filled with looming, thin trunked pines. We tied our tarp and my rain fly together in a jumbled mess of cord and sticks used as stakes in the ground. I told my dad that the pretentious camping fans would be clutching their pearls at the sight of our messy sort-of-slip knots but true wilderness people would nod approvingly. At the end of the day, it’s about what will keep you dry, not perfection.

After both of us took a cozy nap in the heat of the day, we set out on an excursion up the river. We led our fishing line through the water, hoping to snag one of the fish that had been jumping, making its presence known in the most taunting manner, below our campsite.

Despite our lack of success, we still had a good time, talking about anything and everything for a long while. Eventually, we looped back around an island and filled our water bottles and put tablets in to purify them. My dad, in the bow, filled our $10 thrifted pot from the Piragis outlet store.

By the time we got back to camp, both of us were getting hungry. We started piecing together our fire. Compared to the previous campsite, this one had less wood, but what it did have was drier than before.

“You’re hangry,” I said to my dad as we were still waiting for the water to boil for our Knorr pasta. I forced him to make a PB and J while we waited. Our pasta ended up extremely soupy. We snacked on Astronaut ice cream sandwiches for dessert that my mom had packed for us. Later, we made gooey s’mores.

We laid down under our palace-like set up at nearly 8 p.m. It was still light out and two loons were calling to each other. I was in awe, just as I had been with the hummingbird: how such a small animal could make that large of an impact on its environment.

A storm had been forecasted on the radar all day, but its timing kept switching. Eventually it arrived long after I had already fallen asleep, at 9 p.m. and continued

on until 11 p.m.

In the morning when I woke up again at 5:30 a.m., my poor Dad was already out of the hammock, having not slept a wink. He was ready, as so many are on the last day of any trip, to head home—and so was I. We packed quickly, checked our area, and pushed off into the water.

“I had a great time with you, Gracie,” my dad said to me. We paddled through the channel - towering rock faces dotted with pines paved the way. I looked down at the lily pads, blanketing the surface of the water as we passed, noticing a different species of insect on each one.

Just before the buoys that mark the edge of the wilderness, my dad asked to stop paddling.

“Let me take a moment. This may be my last time in the Boundary Waters.”

Over the years, back before I was born, my dad had taken countless trips to the wilderness. He went with two different groups of guys. I had listened to all of his stories growing up, especially the one in which my dad and his friend’s canoe got separated from their group in 80 mile an hour winds. While they had to shiver, hungry through the night, they could see their buddies across the way with a warm, roaring fire and all the food in their packs. I had always hoped that one day, my dad and I would go together.

I asked my dad if he remembered the last time he was in the Boundary Waters and he said he didn’t.

“I never thought I’d be back, so thank you,” he said to me.

I just turned 20 years old. I’ve had many adventures in the past two decades of my life: peaking mountains, canoeing in Georgia swamps, and swimming and skiing everywhere I can. But I have a whole lifetime of them ahead of me.

My college friends and I started an annual trip to Ely in January two years ago, hiking, skiing, and snowshoeing, but we’ve really just only begun. I have decades more to pack Duluth packs, buy groceries at Zup’s, strap on canoes, and enter the most beautiful place I’ve ever laid eyes on. God willing, I will get to experience the majesty and awe-inspiring nature of clear lakes, dense forests, bears, and loons, and wolves, and dark skies for a long time.

Most of us may never know when we will say goodbye to our favorite place for the last time, which may be a blessing. How do you say goodbye to a place where waters run deep and wide with the memories?

As we sat in that canoe, I could see past my muddled reflection in the water, to a world of sorrow and joy and every emotion between and beyond that people had left there. They say to “leave no trace” but how could we not when we go and the land and water and sky knows how to unravel the knot in our chest? Every person to touch these waters has dumped their soul from the canoe and the waters carry it on, reclaiming the happiness and burying the grief. How do you begin to say goodbye to a place like that?

You don’t. I get to be the best and worst parts of my father. Even if he never dips a toe back into the waters of Wilderness, the ripples his paddle made are still cascading outwards through me. I hold his stories in my heart and lay them down on the lily pads.

Dad, if you’re reading this, this trip meant everything to me. You’re my hero forever and always and I love you so much. Like the hummingbirds and the loons, you’re a small creature in the vastness of the wilderness and beyond, but have and continue to make a big noise in this world we call home.