Unplugged

In the past five years, I got divorced, got sober, got married again, became publisher of GCI and Lawn & Landscape, wrote a hundred columns, attended 30 or so conferences and trade shows, gave 75 speeches, sent 4,200 tweets, racked up 400,000 air miles, spent 250-plus nights on the road, covered a dozen major championships, turned 50, quit smoking, and even moved a couple of times.

My life has been roaring along like a runaway train...and I absolutely love it. But the one thing I hadn’t done in the past half-decade was to get away, and recharge my batteries. The opportunity just never presented itself.

Yes, I am aware that I have an amazing job that routinely sends me to beautiful, fascinating places for free and I’ve certainly had my share of long weekends, family outings and even an all-too-short honeymoon with the fabulous Mrs. Jones.

But, I never disconnected. My thoughts were never far from the next issue, budget, trip or the next damned 800 words I’d need to extract from my derrière to fill this space. And the loathsome but loved iPhone and iPad were never more than an arm’s length away. I was always plugged in.

That changed last month when I headed to the Canadian wild to reconnect with a group of turfheads who love fishing, adventure and unplugging from the world for a week.

The group has changed over the past 20 years, but guys, including Dave Heegard of LebanonTurf, Carlos Stimson of JDL, Fred Anderson of Reinders, Rich Mulder of OHP chemical, Dave Hofacre of Grass Master and Dr. Tom Fermanian formerly of University of Illinois, were along for this year’s trip.

The group changes but the destination always remains the same: North Caribou Camp on Cemetery Island, a tiny dot in the middle of the 80,000-square-acre North Caribou Lake. It is, quite simply, an unspoiled wilderness in the middle of nowhere in northern Ontario. It’s all tribal land owned by the First Nations (Cree) indigenous people. Only a hardy few of them actually venture to the lake from any of the handful of tiny villages and outposts within a hundred miles. There are no roads, no houses, no power lines, and effectively no way to get to North Caribou other than a small float plane.

That’s exactly how we arrived at the lake a few Saturdays ago. The tiny, ancient de Havilland Otter glided in for surprisingly smooth landing on the lake’s choppy surface and delivered us at the camp – basically a few simple log cabins and a cookhouse with a dock and six boats – along with 70 pounds per person of food, clothing and fishing equipment. Within an hour, we were geared up and blasting across the big lake in 16-foot Lund boats. We proceeded to fish about 12 hours a day for the next week. It was beyond awesome.

The lake is so isolated it is virtually pristine. It looks largely the same as it did when the glaciers withdrew and the waters filled it in after the last Ice Age. Other than the occasional jet contrail in the sky, no hint that the modern world exists. No trash, no noise and no sign of humans other than a few pictograms left 300 years ago by an artistic native.

It’s breathtaking...and it’s an adventure. It’s hard to get there and it’s kind of physically demanding stuff for us old farts. It beats the crap out of you. The mosquitoes and black flies were indescribably bad. The camp manager told us they were the worst he’d ever seen. It rained, the wind blew hard and we were in little boats on a large body of water with a zillion submerged rocks lurking inches under the water. If something bad happens, you are six hours from a real hospital.

But we didn’t give a tinker’s damn about that stuff.

I won’t bore you with fishing stories other than to say a respected Canadian outdoors writer we met in Thunder Bay told us it’s the best walleye and big pike fishery he’s ever seen. As Carlos Stimson says: “You don’t go to NCL to fish...you go there to catch.”

We each caught hundreds of healthy walleye and quite a few big pike. I was lucky enough to get a 40-inch northern into the boat with me and happily release him a minute later. Honestly, it didn’t matter how big or how many. It was just a joy to reel them in, give ‘em a kiss and send them back home. (Note: Just “air kiss” them. Do not actually kiss a northern pike. You will bleed.)

But, the amazing scenery and phenomenal fishing are just part of the story. The real joy of the trip is the sense of place and camaraderie. There is something spiritual about being completely isolated with old pals who share a love for this place. Heegard, my friend for a quarter century, summed it up: “Other people have no idea that a place like this could even exist...and here we are.”

But, the greatest thing was feeling the stress ooze out of my body one cast at a time. I unplugged and I am better for it. I urge you to find your North Caribou Lake and do the same.