Stuck in a pipe on our way to Mountain Lake.

The mine looms above the trees like a post-apocalyptic horror, its mirror image fills the tranquil surface of a lake connected to Kosh by a wetland and a small narrow channel. And a culvert. The area is a study in contradictions. Mountain Lake is pristine, yet there’s a mine along its shore. It is full of very big bass and muskie. The water is clear, you can see fifteen feet down to every rock ledge and deep weed bed. It has no cottages on its shore because it’s in a game preserve, but the moonscape superstructure at its far end defiles the serene waters. It’s strange to see deer picking about the low marsh with struts and gantries rising behind them. This industrial presence doesn’t stop us from fishing there, because the muskies of Mountain Lake are huge and they see very few fishermen. You don’t even see the mine until you get to the far end of the lake. At this end the shore is lined with the white skeletons of long dead pines tumbled among the rocks and there’s no sign of human intervention. As we motor along, a cliff rises thirty feet above with rocky tumbles at its base. We usually troll with large minnows along this edge. It’s hard to get in to Mountain Lake. There’s a railroad to get over or under. Getting under means slipping your boat through a seventy five-foot culvert, a galvanized, ribbed pipe that’s starting to sag in its middle. Usually, on opening day of muskie season there is a beaver dam at the far end. And the culvert is full of spider webs. That’s probably why people wait for Murray and me to go in first. Each year we’d slip Murray’s little tin boat through the culvert barely skinning the insides until we got to the beaver dam. Have you ever dismantled a beaver dam? Beavers are clever builders and their creations don’t come easily apart. Sticks and twigs and impossibly big logs are woven, literally, into a tight fabric. But it can be done if you have the will to do it. Standing in thigh deep water at sunrise on a chilly June morning was never my idea of fun, but there’s those muskies… Our reward is an expanse of wetland surrounded by untouched trees. Marsh birds sing and deer creep carefully among the rocks on shore. We weave our way between the stumps and underwater rocks without hitting the prop. After several years of this we know the way. The second beaver dam is at the narrow point where once a road must have come through and the old bridge supports remain, though there’s no sign of a road now. This dam is smaller and we usually just drag the boat over it, and once past, we’re in. Once again we will be first into Mountain Lake. It’s a tradition. The last time we went into Mountain Lake we didn’t pull apart anything. The culvert had finally sagged to where a boat could no longer get through in the center, and we had to haul our gear over the railroad bed, meaning scramble over ten feet of loose rock ballast with an outboard motor on your shoulder, if you weren’t carrying the gas tank. Earlier, a young friend had dragged a boat over that we could use. We learned about the culvert the hard way of course. A couple of years back we started through as usual, me lying in the bow and Murray ducking low over the little outboard. Halfway through we came to a scraping halt. The center of the culvert had sagged to where the waterline forced the boat into a space slightly less wider than the boat. We were jammed, without enough room to raise our heads much less get out of the boat, and the stern was stuck like a ratchet in the ribs of the culvert. Moments like these freeze time. There’s Murray considering the back end of the boat, hopelessly stuck. There’s me, studying the boat sides where they jammed tight against the culvert; each of us thinking hard. “This is not our coffin, Murray, people know we were coming here and sooner or later we’ll be found”. He agreed; we considered how long we might be in there before we were missed. Hours? Meanwhile, "...since we can’t be any more stuck than we are right now, we may as well try to force our way through", which we did. Pushing against the ribbed sides with our feet we forced our way forward, one rib at a time. Push. Clank. Push again; clank. The culvert ribs were like a ratchet to the stern. The back of the boat caught on each passing rib as we pushed through, and finally we were stuck again. “Okay, now let’s both of us push up on the roof of this pipe with our feet, maybe we can get the boat a little lower in the water”. On our backs pushing hard with our legs it worked just well enough to scrape through the tight spot. Soon the boat floated again. When we got to the beaver dam we tore into it from inside the culvert with a fury. Soon enough, water was flowing out through the big pipe that had nearly been our home for several hours. And so, onward to Mountain Lake, we’ll see about getting back later. First, we must fish.