Grand Marais was a welcome sight that Friday night in early August after some six hours of driving and listening to Tracker’s endless feature-function-benefit diatribe. “Listen,” I said. “How about we just check into the motel, you buy me dinner and a few drinks and I’ll share my years of belly boating experience with you. In fact, I’ll throw in a few fly fishing tips too.” 

It worked every time.

The plan went smoothly as we tipped Old Ezra until the wee hours. “Let’s get to bed and start early for Cogitation Pond. If you drive, I’ll navigate and we should arrive about 9 AM,” I said.  It’s important to note here that map reading sounds easy and may even appear elementary to the novice, but the skill required to doze for a few hours then awake with the keen sense of location is a practiced art.

For example, once Tracker John and I had the occasion to drive from Minneapolis to Duluth to attend a weekend boat show. Had I not awoke after a three-hour meditation, Tracker would have had no idea we were just outside of Fargo. At first, Tracker began to claim we had wasted time going the wrong way and that if I had been awake and reading the map and such hogwash, we would have been to Duluth already.  Once I explained that this circuitous route allowed us the chance to stop at a few local landmarks like Ellen’s Tap and House of Electrolysis, and that this could actually be considered a shortcut to Duluth in some sense, Tracker became appreciative of my map reading and he seemed eager to pay for the extra tank of gas required for such a high level of fun and excitement.

“Listen,” I said. “Cogitation Pond will be a lot easier to fish this time with our belly boats.”

“Yup, that sure was a long portage last year with the canoe,” Tracker chimed. 

Mentioning to Tracker that if we should be attacked by the bear that hangs around the boat landing this trip, he won’t need to run that quarter-mile holding the canoe over his head and I won’t be forced to run ahead of him clutching our fish. Tracker was excited!

Cogitation Pond is loaded with trout: rainbows and squaretails. It’s the kind of place I can take Tracker and be assured both of us will catch trout. The only snag with Cogitation is that it’s overpopulated with bear and moose – a kind of magnet for ill-behaved wildlife. But I explained in advance to Tracker that this was only a mild inconvenience and that if he took the precaution of bathing beforehand, we wouldn’t be as likely to run into the problems we experienced last year.

I should explain here that Tracker’s composure is not what it once was when it comes to coping with big game. I guess the whole problem started in Boy Scouts while camping at the Wilderness Site. (That’s what they called the remote campsite set aside for the scouts who could not pony-up the five dollars required to secure a site closer to things like safe drinking water. It meant that you didn’t get fed, slept in bear infested woods and swam for your merit badge in water occasioned by icebergs and leeches). We long-since reconciled our differences about the bear looking for the Kit-Kat bars I stashed in Tracker’s sleeping bag. I simply explained it was an act of Christian Giving on my part and that it was out of a life-saving necessity to beat the bear over the head with a club as it mauled Tracker’s body. That a few strikes went astray was unavoidable and should be expected given the circumstances.

Setting camp deep inside Cogitation Swamp was fairly uneventful. After demonstrating to Tracker how easily my belly boat inflated using my portable electric air compressor, Tracker proceeded to inflate his tube with Bob’s high-tech manual bicycle pump. It gave me ample time to further instruct Tracker in the Art of Belly Boating while I enjoyed several cold ones.

The anticipation left Tracker nearly speechless as we approached Cogitation Pond via our lucky shortcut through the swamp. Carefully checking our backside for the boat-launch bear, we reached Cogitation as expected. I expertly launched my craft and paddled to deeper water as I watched Tracker assemble his gear. It was a painfully slow process to observe and not unlike his tee-off routine made famous at the Boggy Swamp Golf and Sailing Club.

During Tracker’s first wet-run, it became apparent that he was approaching the weight capacity of his craft. “Are you sure water is supposed to dribble over the top of my waders when I paddle?”, Tracker asked.

“It’s important that you try to remain upright in your tube at all times. Most boats take on some water. Perhaps you should have purchased the bilge pump accessory from Bob,” I explained.  Tracker agreed.

“My safety strap seems to have malfunctioned,” Tracker exclaimed. “…yes, indeed, it appears to have ripped in half – some sort of structural deficiency I suspect.”

“Luckily for you, I have a spare strap which should work. I’ll be glad to loan it to you in exchange for one of those Diving Green Caddis. In a #16 please,” I added.

“Oops! How unfortunate! How deep do you think it is right here?” Tracker asked.

“Why?”

“I believe my right swim fin has detached itself and has sunk to the bottom.”

“Oh, it’s probably no more than 30 or 40 feet deep”, I added.  “By the way, Tracker, weren’t you the one who got that diving merit badge in Scout Camp?”

Now, I would never begrudge a friend in need, but with only one swim fin Tracker was out of luck. He could only paddle his belly boat in circles. I contemplated the hopelessness of the situation and quickly realized that I could only be of assistance to Tracker by providing some entertainment – the entertainment one receives while watching another man fish. “Well, no sense in wasting all this daylight. I’ll just check out the Monster Hole and maybe your fin will resurface …you know, like drowning victims do a day or two afterwards,” I reasoned to Tracker.

The plan had all the probability of working when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on the shoreline. As my good eye focused, I realized I was spotting a large cow moose feeding. “Hey, Tracker, look at the moose!”  

In retrospect, I should have been more coy in announcing our company to Tracker having forgotten about his composure problem. “Perhaps, we should paddle to shore,” chirped Tracker as he watched the moose enter the water and swim directly toward us.

Not wanting to upset Tracker anymore than possible, I agreed with his recommendation. We paddled and reached the safety of shore as the moose drew to within 20 yards. “Of course moose have poor eyesight, and with your arms flailing miserably in the air like that, it probably thinks you are a bull moose. By the way, what’s that smell?”  I asked.

“Bob told me to use this new bear repellant. It’s called Bears-Get-Off and it supposed to work by simulating the odor of a bull moose in rut. Bob said it’s common knowledge that bear are afraid of moose,” Tracker explained. Note to self: I need to have a little talk with Bob.

“Look, it’s leaving,” squealed Tracker as the cow vectored and swam away from us.

“Tracker, maybe you’d like to sit down? You know, just until you get some of your color back,” I offered.

A sharp eye or even two can keep a seasoned outdoorsman out of trouble I always say. But the real art of avoiding trouble is in delivering the proper caution when one’s good eye detects trouble. “Bull moose dead-ahead! Easy now Tracker. Just because that bull has a rack that makes a beaver dam look like a pile of match sticks, and is swimming directly towards us, doesn’t necessarily mean it intends to kill.”

It only took a couple of minutes to revive Tracker after the original fainting spell, but by then the bull made our shoreline just 20 yards away. I believed it to be only coincidence that it charged, snapping small pine trees like twigs. But concerned for Tracker’s mental health, I felt we should err on the side of safety. “Perhaps we should deploy the boats and swim out of here,” I delivered in a calming fashion. (Tracker later claimed I said something about “everyman for himself”. But I have since reconciled that misinterpretation to Tracker’s fragile mental state at the time.)

I complemented Tracker on his ability to dive into the water without the boat and yet manage to fly back out of the water and into the boat in one fluid motion. The moose followed into the Pond.

As we paddled for our lives, Tracker began an elaborate series of wild wolf calls. (I really wasn’t sure what kind of sound they were at the time,  but later Tracker told me that they were wolf calls; reasoning of course, moose are afraid of wolves and that I shouldn’t confuse the sounds he made with anything like pathetic human shrieks.)

“Here’s a plan,” I injected, as the bull gained on us and I overtook Tracker. “Why don’t you let the moose have its way with you while I paddle out of here and get help?” Having keenly reasoned we were witnessing bull moose rutting behavior, this seemed quite logical to me. 

“Sure, leave your best friend to die alone,” objected Tracker. (What would happen, I thought, if by some remote chance, we should survive the attack? Tracker would tell everyone that I abandoned him. They may even believe him and no one would ever want to go fishing with me – a fate worse than death itself, I reasoned, and turned back.)

The moose was clearly alarmed by my brave and aggressive move to save Tracker. Within a few feet of us, the bull vectored and swam away. “Take hold of my rope,” I instructed. “By the way, a truly prepared belly boater always carries a spare rope. Nylon is the best type but you could use twine or something too. You’ve probably noticed that contrary to popular belief, no matter how much water gets into your waders you do NOT sink to the bottom.  A seasoned  belly boater knows this and does not panic. Perhaps you would like to call it a day?”

I towed Tracker back to the landing. He was very heavy once on land.  As he resumed respiratory and other bodily functions, out came the last words he spoke to me that day: “For sale – one belly boat”! 

Tracker can be quite a funny guy from time to time.

“We’re finished with the project and able to demonstrate quite clearly one of the most significant contributions to the Science of Fishing in the 20th century,” I answered, in a reassuring yet understated sort of way. 

Mr. O’Beeker spent most of his life on the Brooks Range in Alaska as a trapper and hunter. Marriage and a new teaching certificate forced him to move to Northern Wisconsin just two weeks before the start of our seventh grade science class. It took some time for him to become acclimated to his tame surroundings. His wife, we were told, exhibited great patience as he learned to eat and bathe indoors. Surprisingly, he adjusted rather rapidly to trapping the only game around his new home – muskrat.

As science teachers go, Mr. O’Beeker was one of the best. Tracker John and I typically received nearly passing grades and actually excelled in the Wildlife and Biology portion of his curriculum. In fact, he considered us his very best students. We achieved this ranking during one of the first classes as he demonstrated the proper techniques for skinning, stretching and curing a muskrat pelt. It was later determined that most of the random fainting and sickness experienced by the other students were largely due to their inexperience with such things and also having never smelled a bloated muskrat. O’Beeker was most grateful for our glowing testimonials during his indictment by the School Board.

“Looks pretty good boys, what’s it supposed to do again, I mean, incase anyone asks?” We couldn’t understand why O’Beeker was so painfully slow in grasping the obvious and imminent scientific contribution awaiting mankind. 

The theory was quite straightforward. Fish communicate with each other, often relaying messages to their brethren that fisherman were upon them and to avoid biting the hooks and such. All we needed was to record their fishy commands and break the fish language code. We hypothesized that this would be very useful in determining things like when and where to fish, if the fish were big, small, hungry, and such. Afterwards, we could sell our invention to a well known outfit like Zebco Corporation and make a great deal of money. We might even be able to skip the whole middle school thing.

The experiment was fairly simple and required mainly an aquarium with a trout, some wire, a microphone, an amplifier and an oscilloscope. We had nearly everything except the oscilloscope. Mr. O’Beeker was surprisingly eager to lend it to us from the school’s science locker. We were merely instructed to return it “in one piece”, noting he made no lofty demand for it to be returned in working condition.

“Okay Tracker, we are going to need plenty of power for the audio amplifier.” With a nod of self-assured affirmation from Tracker, we were “okay-to-go”.

“Tracker, you just hold the microphone in the water while I plug the amplifier cord into the electric socket. According to our theory, we should be able to see the sound waves on the oscilloscope”, I explained. “Miss Keaster, if you would be so kind as to adjust the amplifier knob? Ready? Here we go!”

Not even NASA got the first unmanned space flight off the ground on the first attempt. Setbacks should be anticipated in all great experiments. It was quite a surprise to learn that the microphone wasn’t waterproof. Equally unpredictable was the fact that it took the paramedics nearly fifteen minutes to arrive. If it hadn’t been for O’Beeker’s mouth-to-mouth training, Old Miss Keaster may have suffered even more brain stem damage than resulted from the initial electrocution. For reasons unknown, O’Beeker was quite upset.

Tracker still feels that with a few adjustments, more competent supervision and a little better insulation, the fish would have survived.