William Hartwell first saw the lake in September 1917. He had just returned from France, carrying more weariness than wounds. Chicago's catering business had thrived in his absence, but the city felt different now - smaller, more constraining. He needed a refuge with some distance.
He came north with three business partners. They took the train to Duluth, then another train west through cutover land to Remer. The stumps stood in rows between the tracks. Some still smoked from fires that burned underground in the root systems.
From Remer they hired a guide named Gustafson with a Model T truck modified for rough country. Chains on the rear wheels, boards bolted to the running boards for traction in mud. They drove south on logging roads cut through jack pine and spruce. The roads were two ruts with grass growing between them. Where streams crossed, corduroy bridges of logs laid side by side rattled under the truck's weight.
The country was low and rolling. Stands of birch grew where fires had cleared the pine. The birch leaves were turning yellow, trembling in the light wind. Between the trees, bracken fern covered the ground in brown masses. They passed beaver ponds where dead trees stood silver in the water. Hawks sat on the snags and watched the truck pass.
They fished three lakes the first day. The water was dark with tannin from the bogs. Pike hit their spoons near weed beds with satisfying violence. The men kept enough for supper and released the rest. They made camp on a hill where the wind kept mosquitoes down. Gustafson cooked the pike over a fire of dead pine. The fish was good with salt and the bread they had brought from town.
They came to the lake at midday. Gustafson stopped where the road ended at an old logging landing. Logs had been piled here once, dragged across the ice in winter. Now young aspens grew in the disturbed soil, their leaves catching light like coins. Beyond the aspens, the lake stretched north and south—a corridor of water between dark walls of forest.
The water was astonishingly clear. They could see bottom at twenty feet—sand and scattered boulders in patterns like a map of the earth below. No weeds except sparse patches near shore. The lake ran maybe four miles long, a little more than half a mile across at the widest point. The far shore showed as a dark line of trees unbroken by any clearing or structure. No smoke rose from hidden chimneys. No boats marked the surface.
They unloaded the canoes and paddled north along the eastern shore. The shoreline varied dramatically. Steep granite ledges dropped straight into deep water, the rock faces stained with minerals in patterns of rust and gray. White pines grew to the water's edge, their roots gripping cracks in the stone like desperate fingers. Between the ledges, small bays held beaches of coarse sand, amber-colored from iron in the soil. The sand was warm underfoot where the sun reached it, cool in the shadows of overhanging trees.