Trail Tales: Sacred Places & Pilgrimages

on hard to reach places and the importance of the journey

Manitou River Falls tumbles off cliffs directly into Lake Superior, framed by black rock, orange lichen, and a picturesque sea arch. It’s easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The catch?

Manitou River Falls can only be reached by water. It’s a six mile paddle, one way, from the nearest access point. The land along the way is either cliffs or private; you need to be able to paddle 12 miles on Lake Superior without stopping.

I learned about the existence of this remote North Shore waterfall four years ago when I first started sea kayaking. Another guide told me about it— “it’s beautiful, one of the best paddles out there. But it’s hard to pull off. Gotta get up there, for one, then gotta have good weather, and a group that can paddle for 12 miles on Lake Superior with no place to land. It’s not something you could just decide to do. Took me two years of planning to pull off one little day trip.”

It took me four years to pull off.

(That’s a little dramatic.)

From the time of inception of the idea, the I want to paddle there, it took me four years of sea kayaking, growing into my own community of paddling friends, and moving to the North Shore to reach that place. And when we finally did this summer, in practice it was just “oh hey, wanna give that a shot today?”

For the version of me that exists today, a paddling guide living on the shore, it just took actually doing it and good weather. From inception of the idea to reaching the place it took much, much longer and a lot of work.

[I want to hyper emphasize that the falls themselves are on private land, so you cannot walk to them; viewing from the water is the only option.]

But Manitou River Falls is a place where the sound of water echoes, greens are surreally bright, no trace of another humans, a land before time, a bald eagle eyeing you from the cliff, a sacred place, the river’s ode to the Lake.

I’m a big advocate for the idea that the outdoors belong to everyone; for this reason I never go out of my way to withhold locations like this.

The fact holds that some places are just hard to get to. They aren’t a casual tourism trip; they’re a pilgrimage. They’re that bug you get in the back of your mind when you first hear rumors about a place, and then you plan and plan, you buy maps, you maybe spend years learning an entire skill to have access to this cathedral.

It’s not that people should be denied access to places like these, but rather that there is inherent value in a journey marked by a series of tests, your own natural Odyssey. There is value in places that are still markedly wild because of the obstacles that stand in the way, and there is value in reaching those places and interacting respectfully.

The entire reason I decided to learn to sea kayak was because I wanted access to these places— I, a senior in college unhappy with the way my life seemed to be headed, wanted a little more agency, and I read about the Inside Passage, about the Apostle Islands and Isle Royale, about a woman who circumnavigated Lake Superior alone in a kayak and I wanted a little slice of that wild for me.

(I may have gotten a little carried away, and now I can’t give it up.)

But this feeling? Paddling 12 miles to reach the base of a waterfall? There’s nothing like it.

The Cliffs of Isle Royale

Manitou River Falls isn’t the only place like this I’ve been around Lake Superior, one of those places that is inherently hard to reach.

Isle Royale National Park has that same draw; you have to plan it, you have to be able to pull it off. For me, reaching Isle Royale and being on the island was a 12 day late season expedition that ended in me hypothermic, rattled, but ultimately okay.

By nature, Isle Royale is 18 miles from mainland and accessible only by sea or air. It’s remote, and for that reason more wild than most places.

I definitely want to take a second to recognize that Isle Royale especially, but all of these places and outdoors sports are inaccessible to people who are unable to plan in advance due employment/financial concerns, family concerns, or simply being made to feel unwelcome in the outdoors. I am not at all saying that sort of inaccessibility is good. I believe everyone should have equal opportunity to try and reach these places. This is why I chose to share locations and often trail guides; it used to be that special outdoor spaces were only shared by word of mouth, the result of which is excluding minority groups from these places.

I am, however, saying there is something incredibly special about places you need to pour yourself into to reach, though I recognize that not everyone has the privilege to do that pouring. In a lot of cases, the way to level that playing field is to make the places more accessible.

In other cases, perhaps for example the case of Manitou River Falls, or the impenetrable 16 mile stretch of cliffs on Isle Royale’s North Shore that probably sees less than 20 paddlers a year, or parts of the Border Route Trail, or the even the sea caves on Devil’s Island, the risks and challenges associated with the journey itself are part of the beauty, and a natural deterrent to most people.

The Apostle Islands

The Apostle Islands themselves are probably a strange and perfect case study in the sacred space wilderness/tourism dynamic; I can’t tell you how strange it feels to have paddled to Devil’s Island, several days out in the wilderness, and then watch the tour boat full of people just out for the next few hours pass, a surreal meeting of worlds.

It’s not a good or bad thing, just a strange one.

A sea cave on Sand Island Island this past June.

The Mainland Sea Caves have long moved out of the realm of wilderness and now are often treated like a theme park, but they still have that sharp edge and danger of a wilderness setting; this summer the Park Service had to rescue multiple groups from the mainland sea caves area, including a rather harrowing guided tour that managed to find themselves at the caves in 6 ft rebound in late August (I don’t at all want to fuel existing rumors about what happened there, and I’ve heard very positive things about the decisions of the guides on that trip).

The Border Route Trail

While places like the Apostles or Isle Royale are often limited both by difficulty of access and financial investment in a guide/sea kayaking gear (otherwise ability to commit to being a paddling dirtbag/guide), hiking trails don’t have those same limitations.

The Border Route Trail runs about 65 miles through the BWCA and is riddled with stunning views like the one above. While to backpack the entire trail you likely need overnight gear and experience, to get to Rose Lake Cliffs overlook (above), you really just need a full day, a map and compass, and a lot of determination.

It’s still a hard hike. It’ll take you from dawn to dusk to do it in a day. There’s a pretty decent chance that more than half the people who attempt this trail will get a few miles in and turn around. It’s one of the hardest trails I’ve ever hiked and had I not been with two other very determined people, I would have turned around.

The reward for your work though is this place, this cliff with the Border Lakes winding and twisting below you for miles, and a deep sense of accomplishment for reaching this difficult place, for climbing over gnarled roots to get there. And isn’t that, the challenge, the ugly journey, just as beautiful as the destination itself?

Incredible Places

I believe there is value in wild places, the ones that are hard to reach and challenge you. The sacred wild, the humans that journey to reach these places, the journey itself; all of this is my favorite thing to photograph.

The sacred wild is our natural habitat; it’s on these journeys that I, and probably you too, are happiest and feel the most whole.

I think my sort of “goal” in all this, my photography and writing, is to inspire people to get outside. But I also think it’s deeper than that.

I want to remind you that these magical places are real life too. They can be your life. I want to inspire you to get outside sure, but more than that I want to inspire you to take a journey.

Pick a scared wild place— head to Alaska, to the Aleutian Islands, the wild rivers of Canada, to Lake Superior, to the mountains or the sea or the forest, head out early in the snow for sunrise, or late in the night to stargaze— and have that journey.

You deserve a little slice of the world, and a perfect moment just for you.