The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is a million acres of lakes, forest, and wetlands along the Minnesota-Canada border. No motors allowed. No roads. No cell towers. You paddle in, portage your gear between lakes, and camp on designated sites. It’s one of the most heavily protected wilderness areas in the country, and it’s been under constant threat from copper-nickel mining proposals for decades. The sulfide ore deposits sitting beneath the watershed would be worth billions, and every few years someone makes another run at extracting them. So far the wilderness has held. For now.
I go there when I need to unfuck my head. I also go for fun. The two coincide. Whatever.
No cell service. No notifications. No Slack. Just water, trees, and the sound of your paddle hitting the gunwale because you’re not paying attention.
The appeal is obvious: remove every external distraction and maybe—finally—you’ll be able to think clearly. The fantasy is that your scattered brain is a symptom of the modern world, and the cure is wilderness.
Here’s what I’ve learned: your brain doesn’t give a shit about your romantic notions of solitude.
The wrong lake
Day two. I’m confident. I’ve done this before—not this route, but plenty others. The rhythm is the same. I check the map at the portage, confirm my heading, and start paddling.
Forty-five minutes later I realize I’m on the wrong lake.
Not a different route to the same place. The wrong lake entirely. I had looked at the map. I had traced the route with my finger. I had nodded to myself like a person who understood what he was looking at. I talked to the bird that was chirping, and its family member. But somewhere between my eyes and my brain and the bird and my brain (my bird brain?), the signal got lost. I was thinking about whether I’d packed enough ramen. Or maybe about that weird interaction I had with a stranger three weeks ago. Or both. Probably both.
There’s no cell service out here. No GPS. No human to ask, and the species out here don’t speak a language I can understand. Just me, my paddle, and the dawning realization that even without a single screen or electronic pulse for miles, my ADHD is still very much a fucking thing.
I turned around. Added two hours to my day. Arrived at camp after dark.
The food bag
I walk to the bear hang. Unclip the rope. Lower the bag. Open it. Stare inside.
Why did I open this?
I close the bag. Hoist it back up. Clip the rope. Walk back to camp. Sit down.
Oh right. Oatmeal.
I walk back to the bear hang. Unclip the rope. Lower the bag. Open it. Grab the oatmeal. Close the bag. Hoist it back up. Clip the rope. Walk back to camp.
I forgot the spoon.
This happens more than I want to admit. The wilderness version of opening a file, forgetting why, closing it, and reopening it thirty seconds later.
The hyperfocus paddle
Sometimes this works the other way.
I was supposed to do a short crossing—maybe an hour—and then make camp early. Take it easy. Write a little. Be a person who relaxes.
Relaxation: a mere concept.
Four hours later I’m on the far side of this chain of lakes, dehydrated, starving, having blown past three perfectly good campsites because I was in a groove, and there was pretty view ahead of me. The paddle felt good. The rhythm was there. My brain had finally locked onto something and I wasn’t about to interrupt it.
The price was making camp in the dark, again, with shaky hands from low blood sugar and a headache from not drinking water. But for those four hours? Perfect focus. No scattered thoughts. Just motion.
That’s the trade. You can’t summon it. You can’t aim it. You just hope it shows up when you need it and doesn’t show up when you don’t.
I’ll remember this
There’s a campsite on a small lake—I won’t say which one, because that’s kissing and telling—that’s perfect. South-facing, and open east-to-west for pretty sunsets. Flat rock shelf for swimming. Protected from wind. Good tree spacing for the bear hang—bears eat beats, and they eat my meats. I found it by accident on a forum and I was going to accidentally stumble upon it here.
I didn’t mark it on the map because I’d remember.
I did not remember.
I’ve been looking for it ever since. Three trips. Haven’t found it. I can picture it perfectly. I just can’t locate it in physical space. Also, it was in an incognito window because there were pictures linked on the post which hit a Facebook page.
“Remember” is the most dangerous word in my vocabulary. It’s never true. I know it’s never true. I say it anyway.
The broken thesis
So here’s the thing: the outside doesn’t fix me. The absence of technology didn’t quiet my brain. I still forgot things. Still got distracted. Still made the same dumb mistakes I make when I’m surrounded by x.
The problem was never the notifications. The problem was never Slack. The problem is my brain, and my brain came with me. It’s always with me.
But there’s something clarifying about that. When you remove every excuse—no phone, no internet, no other people, no ambient noise of civilization—and you still can’t focus, you stop blaming the environment. You stop thinking you’d be fine if you could just get away from it all. You realize the work isn’t about changing your surroundings. It’s about learning to operate the hardware you were issued.
I still go to the Boundary Waters religiously. I still get lost (mostly fun), forget things, hyperfocus on the wrong stuff, and fail to mark campsites I swear I’ll remember.
But at least out there, when I screw up, the only person who knows is me and whatever fucking loon is judging me from fifty feet away.