By Adam Kaplan
It goes without saying that 2020 has been an unusual year for all of us. For me personally, it has been an enormously challenging one for sure. The loss of camp this summer was absolutely devastating for me on so many levels. I was denied the chance to do my favorite thing in the world…CAMP!
The pandemic also meant that my off-season life has been incredibly different as well. Normally, I log weeks and weeks and thousands and thousands of miles driving and jetting about the country. While I have enjoyed my time at home for sure, those that know me well know that I have a bit of wanderlust. I especially like travelling during this time of the year, but I was denied that opportunity (save for an AMAZING solo RV trip this fall – check out the highlights here!).
But…these are the cards we have been dealt…and I have just been so impressed with how so many people have been able to deal with it.
But, 2020 is coming to an end and it is time to look back at it, take stock of it, and look forward to the future. This is an annual tradition for many of us. I have always loved newsstands this time of year. In general, I am not much of a magazine reader, but I have to admit that all changes at the end of each year. So many magazines come out with their “year in review” issues and I love these issues. Whether it be Sports Illustrated’s Best Moments in Sports, or Time’s Person of the Year, or Life’s Year in Review, or Camping Magazine’s 10 Hunkiest Camp Directors of the Intermountain West, I enjoy sitting down and thinking about the year past, and remembering what has taken place over the course of the last twelve months around the world.
In addition to having the chance to reflect about the year just passed, this time of year also beckons for us to think ahead to what will be in the coming year, and what things we would like to do differently. This is such a common practice that we give these forward looking promises a name. They are called our New Year’s Resolutions. (Admittedly, it would be tough to come up with more of a cliché article for the Arrowhead than a New Year’s Resolution article! And, while it is certainly a bit cliché to discuss the whole New Year’s Resolution thing, I actually believe that it is a very healthy thing…and since I get to choose the Arrowhead topics…you are just going to have to deal with it!)
In my opinion, the New Year’s Resolution gets a bad rap. The entire concept of the New Year’s Resolution is the butt of jokes, and more so, simply something that people say they don’t have the time, energy, or desire to deal with. This leads us to develop and ignore bad habits. The group put-down of the New Year’s Resolution concept gives us all an excuse to avoid the introspecting needed to uncover what we need to do better. I think this is a mistake. Virtually any successful person will tell you that one of the keys to their success was to be able to evaluate themselves and identify areas which needed improvement. Here are some examples. When Michael Jordan came into the NBA he had a decent outside jump shot, but it was certainly unremarkable. After he identified this as an area in which he could improve, he worked hard at it and eventually turned himself into an excellent outside shooter, thus dramatically improving his game. Also, whether it be a restaurant, a hotel, or a pet sitter, almost every successful business uses tools such as customer surveys and internal evaluations to identify areas for improvement. Without this introspection, there would be very little growth. Take for example politicians…you see…nah…too easy…I’ll leave that one alone!
Certainly we all know that success, when it comes to our professional lives, is dependent upon us casting a critical eye on our operations and making the changes necessary to improve. So why is it then that we sometimes resist applying the same concepts of introspection and active change to our personal lives?
Much of the time we simply fall back on excuses. “I am too busy.” “I never follow through with my resolutions anyways, so why start?” “I am already stressed enough.” “I am who I am; there is no way I can change that.” “How could I ever hope to become chiseled enough to compete with that camp director I read about in Camping Magazine’s year-end edition?” Admittedly, I often adopt one of these lines and therefore successfully avoid having to take a hard look at myself. Not this year. This year I resolve to make some New Year’s Resolutions! Though I think it unlikely that the result of these changes will garner me my own line of tennis shoes, I am hoping that I will have the willpower and stick-to-itiveness to actually affect these changes and continue to grow.
All of us here at the Off-Season Camp Nebagamon Headquarters (ok…that means Steph and I in the basement of our house) wish you all a new year filled with happiness, exciting adventures, and successful introspection.
“Wild Ice” is the moment in time when the lakes freeze over smooth as glass and there is no snow, allowing you to freely ice skate into the Boundary Waters. I’ve backpacked in the BW, paddled the BW, skied in the BW and now I can say I have skated in the BW. I’m not talking about skating on a rink that someone shoveled off either, we had a huge part of the lake at our feet. All told we skated 22 miles that day on the most pristine, glassy ice I have ever seen. We skated along large rocky bluffs and over drop offs that played games with your eyes. We spied on insects and minnows swimming beneath us under the crystal clear two or three inches of ice. It was smooth, fast, and eerily enchanting.
It was a rather quick lunch as we came to skate, and skate we did. We racked up a bunch more miles, checked out another lake and skated well after the sun had set. It was a glorious day in the BWCA…one that will go down in history.
when our high only hit what is usually a normal low for that date! It was quite a shock; we went from an abnormally warm 37-degree high on the 23rd to a 7-degree high on the 24th, which is the average low for that date. Thankfully, temperatures have been pretty much staying close to average since then, with highs in the mid 20’s and lows in the single digits. Things really started to look up on the snow front as well that same week. You may recall that we had a lot of snow in October, about 20 inches in total, that came and went by mid-November. We had some snow in November that also stayed on the ground a short time as the temps in that month also stayed above normal. Well for the first three weeks of December when we were expecting the start of our snow season, we got nothing! But at long last in the last week and a half the snow fell and by the end of the month we were only one inch off of the average snow fall for December (15 inches). That’s right: we had more snow in October, about 20 inches, than an average December, and yet we started the month of December with basically no snow on the ground!
Nebagamon. I’m not an ice skater but Caretaker Andy, his wife Amy, and Adam Fornear all are and they were over the moon with giddiness with this year’s ice conditions. They were able to skate for miles on end out on the snow free surface of the lake. Amy and a friend even skated unimpeded all the way to the YMCA camp at the far end of the lake past the little light house, the same route paddled every year by Camp’s youngest campers for their first overnight camping trip. Andy was having so much fun out there skating every night after work that he went out and bought a new pair of skates! I was a very jealous skier sidelined with no snow on the lake or the ground but was happy to see them all enjoying themselves so much. Finally during the second week of the month, about a half of an inch of snow fell leaving just enough snow stuck to the ice that it was my turn to have some fun out there. The wind had blown the snow off of most the lake but I was left with a patch about a mile long and 100 yards wide and about ¾ of an inch deep. The snow was sticking to the ice just enough to give a good kick without slipping and I was able to ski laps from Lobber point in the west to the east about a quarter mile past the Dairy Queen. The tiny bit of snow wasn’t enough to ruin things for the skaters and was just enough to give me some skiing; we all were very happy “Campers”!!
6th – Ollie Tannahill