No Escape

Tyler Ellwood is a sales executive for WorldCom. He works at the company’s Golden Valley offices. A few weeks ago, he was ready to go on a fishing trip to the Boundary Waters with his father and a couple friends. As they drove up to Ely in a white minivan, he frequently checked his voice mail messages. “A big truck just pulled up in front of headquarters,” he said. “It’s full of empty boxes.” The company had just announced its intention to layoff 17,000 employees. Since he is in sales, he felt confident that his position would be spared. But he was prepared for the worst.

In any case, Ellwood wouldn’t know whether he had a job until he returned from the Boundary Waters. He was concerned—but not so concerned that he couldn’t tolerate the spotty cell-phone coverage he was getting as they made their way through Cloquet. He said his goodbyes to his wife and his 1-year-old daughter, looking forward to four days in the wilderness. “I’m going to turn off now, Sweetie, and save my battery,” he said.

When they got to Lake One at the end of Highway 169 (“If you go the wrong way, the other end is in Texas,” said the outfitter dryly), Ellwood was disheartened by the flies. As it turned out, it was a terrible year for tent caterpillars—also known as army worms—and, ecosystems being what they are, that meant it was a terrible year for “friendly flies,” big black insects that don’t bite. But they swarm all exposed flesh.

The lakes out of Ely were doing a brisk business in humans too. Ellwood spent most of the first two days looking for campsites that weren’t already occupied, and it became clear that most parties were settled in for indefinite stays. His group grew disgusted with the situation, and they were forced to camp illegally on an island with no latrine or fire grate. Although Ellwood caught a nice Northern the first morning, he released it. It was the only fish he caught that might have made a meal. And there was no relief from the flies.

One might have escaped them in a good tent. Ellwood brought along a nifty one-man tent with good walls and reliable netting. “Nothing personal,” he told his dad, who’d brought a two-man tent. “This is new and I haven’t slept in it yet.” But the unusual heat, reaching high into the 90s, made it unbearable to be inside a tent of any size. Soon it became clear that the campers’ only real option was to jump in the lake, and spend most of the day floating in their life preservers where the heat and the flies were kept at bay. “This kinda sucks,” said Ellwood. Out of the water, it was unpleasant. Even so, no one was eager to throw in the towel and cut the trip short. Aside from the ready availability of cold beer and cheeseburgers, the prospect of going back to civilization still didn’t seem very appetizing.