Sweat on the Water

Reflections from 22 days in the wilderness of Lake Superior and northern Minnesota

Who am I? Why am I here, on a rocky beach under the shimmering stars, listening to the waves lap onto shore? Who are these people surrounding me, right and left? Are their lives just as intricately woven as mine? What invisible hand gathered us to this remote place, to this exact point in time? Will I be who I was?

As another dusk fell over the expanse of Superior, I found my mind racing through the vast improbabilities that brought me here. Every minute, every second of my 18 years of life on Earth had led down an invisible path of decisions that culminated in this point. Observing the neat row of kayaks and the gentle burble of the cooking pot, I let my brain wander some more…

A few weeks ago, I returned from one of the most challenging physical and mental experiences of my life. Nine friends and I embarked on an outdoor leadership course, which would take us kayaking across the vast expanse of Lake Superior, rock climbing hundreds of feet above the waves, and backpacking through the hills and bogs of the Superior Hiking Trail. With no contact with the outside world, we carried all of our food, tarps and personal gear in our kayaks or on our backs, braving the rainstorms, an assortment of ailments, and perhaps most menacing of all, the bugs.

The most vivid portrait I have of that time is that of the beach against the trees against the sky — the dark pebbles anchoring the pines as they reached for the infinite blue of the heavens above. There were many times that I wasn’t fully cognizant of the world around me, and all that remained at the end of the day was the memory of this tricolor blur for miles on end.

Being so far removed from the routines of daily life and the constant connection, and distraction, of the world gave me a lot of time to think. Nine hours of physical exertion on the lake or trail forces the mind into reflection, mostly as a mechanism of making the time more bearable, but I enjoyed the space to reflect just the same. Out there, there are some ground truths that the mind whittles its way down to, and I hope to share some of those learnings here.

On Challenging Oneself

Other than the pillow fortresses I’d made on my living room floor as a kid, this trip was my first real adventure in the wild. Although I came into the experience feeling rather excited, I couldn’t help but notice an undercurrent of anxiety coursing through me. I’d always wanted to prove to myself that I was physically and mentally capable of taking care of myself in the wilderness, but now that it was actually happening, I started second-guessing my abilities. I’d done competitive sports all of my life and consistently worked on mindset, but this was a challenge that was markedly different than anything I’d ever faced before. What if I couldn’t do it?

On the six hour drive north from basecamp to our starting point in northern Ontario, I began to understand that this was it — there was no backing out now. As we began unloading our kayaks from the trailer under the pelting rain , I found a strength that I never fully understood existed. At first, it was my brain tricking me into thinking that the situation wasn’t so bad, then, my consciousness realizing that it really wasn’t. Perhaps the fittingness of the situation appealed to me, but I began to sing at the top of my lungs as I stripped down out of my soaking wet ‘dry’ clothes, swarmed by bugs, freezing cold. This was a new beginning.

The daily routine was testing at every step. Waking up at five in the morning, preparing breakfast, taking down all of our worldly belongings and packing them into the kayaks, putting on the cold, putrid-smelling wetsuits, paddling for nine hours, finally finding a campsite, cooking dinner, setting all of our equipment back up again, and, if we were lucky, going to sleep at 11, all to do it over again the next day. Putting this in writing, it sounds quite miserable, and at plenty of points throughout the trip, it really was. We often questioned: ‘Why do this?’

The first answer, to me, is proving to myself that I was capable. As the first few days came and went, as we paddled further into Superior’s waters, the less I felt the anxiety that nagged at me early on. That feeling of being unsure was soothed by action, by doing everything I needed to do, day-in and day-out, in the most efficient way I could. More than anything, I think that all I really wanted was competency — the ability to tie knots, to set up a tarp or to get out of my kayak if I flipped over. Moreover, I felt even more confident in myself when I had the ability to help others. Feynman explained that the true mark of mastery is to explain a concept in the simplest terms possible, and to see another person catch on to something immediately is truly a gratifying feeling. The more I practiced these skills, the more comfortable I became, which in turn reinforced the belief that I could become self-sufficient.

The second point is evident in my last sentence — I became more comfortable with challenge. With the pace of innovation in the modern world, anyone looking to succeed will have to adapt to entirely new paradigms of thinking and technology, which means constantly learning new things, which means more challenge than the world even 20 years ago. The day-to-day employment of humanity has slowly transitioned from the physical tiredness of handiwork and manual labor to the more mentally challenging fields of knowledge work. As we move further beyond into meta-level creative employment, the challenge of being original in a technology-dominated world will only increase in difficulty, and the more we’re comfortable with that challenge us, the more prepared we’ll be for what the future brings.

As I transition to university, I’ve been reflecting on what the point of a university is. Universities were created as institutions to bring together bright minds, to give them a place where they could work collaboratively to propel the progress of humanity forward. The search for progress necessitates challenge. Whether the rigor of coursework or the intellectual spars between peers and professors, a university is designed to be challenging — it’s meant to take the young and ambitious and turn them into the people they have the potential to be. In the modern setting, this takes extreme personal agency, but at its core, this is the prime period of life to overcome whatever is thrown at you.

Challenge reveals character. It’s difficult to describe post-mortem, but living in the moment, all of the little decisions made in the wilderness reflect the person you are back home. The reason I chose the word ‘reveal’ is that we all have layers to our characters, layers that aren’t revealed in the ‘regular’ decisions of our daily lives. Out there, it’s much easier to see when someone is struggling, but also to observe how they react, adapt, and overcome that struggle, each in their own way. The challenges are pressing and poignant, and they feel more immediate, but all of the experiences I’ve had on the beaches of remote islands and campsites in the bogs have revealed to me of how much more I’m capable of, and will motivate me in my day-to-day life. We all suffered in our own ways, but I am certain we’re better for it.

I’ve also come to realize that it is challenge that gives our lives meaning. Simply existing in a comfortable world becomes unfulfilling. The days go by, slowly drag on, and you’re left wondering what should come next. No matter what hardships we faced, we always had a goal for the day, a goal for the trip and the support of each other to achieve those goals. When those goals became unsustainable, we adapted, but we persisted all the same. Even our downtime was intentioned, spending time alone in nature, reflecting, journaling, and exploring the caverns of our minds. We always had something to live for, and that made the challenges more bearable, and at times, fun.

Just as in civilization, the woods teach you that your mindset towards life is everything. One phrase from Eckhart Tolle reverberated in my mind as I journeyed through the ‘suck’:

This too shall pass.

18 miles with a full kayak and breaking a trucking pole while climbing a mountain really sucked in the moment, but looking back at those experiences at the end of those days, they didn’t seem so bad. I’m not so sure why that is. Perhaps it’s the brain’s ability to adjust to hard things, or maybe flooding me with serotonin for finally laying down. Regardless, the ability to recognize the impermanence of negative experience made it enjoyable. As I write this, I look at the scars of bug bites on my hands. Their testament of achievement brings a smile to my face.

Another shift in perspective was using past hardship as evidence of the ability to overcome the present one. A friend of mine on the trip had summitted Kilimanjaro, and relative to that, I felt that what I was doing was nothing. Even through the storms, waves and wind of the first few days, the more hardship I experienced, the less I felt afraid of the next to come, even if it was greater than whatever I had done before. Trusting yourself and in your ability to figure things out is really a superpower, and if there’s anything this trip taught me, it’s that self-reliance combined with a strong community makes you unstoppable.

On Gratitude and Relationships

The wilderness teaches the modern person what their life might have looked like had they been born thousands of years ago, or into a less fortunate context today. I spent a lot of time over the trip thinking about that one little fact — that my life today is the product of thousands of years of human ingenuity, making my day-to-day routine a relative breeze, while millions of people around the world fight for the bare necessities of survival.

As anyone in our group would tell you, we spent hours on the water fantasizing over our favorite meals, what we ate at the airport before arriving and what we would eat once we got home. We promised that we would never take a good meal for granted again. And yet, as I sit here a few weeks removed from that journey, I find that I’m enjoying the taste of food less and less. The undeniable reality (that I’ve come to through the process of writing this) is that we get accustomed to what we have , and once that something is there most or all of the time, we become less aware of its existence and importance.

Having gone without the creature comforts showed me not only how much I had in my daily life to be grateful for, but also that I was more than capable of adapting. Interestingly, there was a very clear delineation between the things I could comfortably forego and the things I absolutely wanted to keep. In the latter category, I found that these were most often relationships, and more than anything, the relationship I have with my parents.

This experience was the longest time I’ve gone without any form of contact with them, and it really showed me just how much I’ve gotten used to their presence. Any time I need support, advice with a project, or just someone to have fun with, my parents have always been there. Being without them and anyone else from my outside life for three weeks gave me an insight into what it was like to live in a world before the hyperconnectedness of cellphones and the internet. I noticed just how deep my emotions became — I had never longed for someone or something like I had longed for a nice dinner with my mom or a game of beach volleyball with my dad.

Constant access makes us forget the value of time spent together. It’s only when you’re truly disconnected that you realize the importance of the relationships you have in your life, and I’ve found that the effort I put into organizing get-togethers and meetups with the important people in my life has increased significantly. Of course, you can always text or speak on the phone, but the way it feels to go to dinner with someone you respect and care for is miles ahead of any form of digital communication.

For the first time, I also felt what it was like to make friends with others without any form of technology present. Jon Haidt talks a lot about childhood changing from a physical to a digital experience, and after eighth grade, most of my relationships have had a strong virtual component. Meeting nine other people, a few for the first time, and embarking on an adventure was certainly a venture into the unknown, but because of the way in which we formed our friendships, I can sense that we will be close for a long time to come.

A shared experience, especially one that is physically and mentally demanding, has a unique way of bonding a group of individuals into a cohesive unit. With no external distractions, all you have to pass the time are the group’s thoughts. Even when we didn’t know what to say, we found questions to ask: about childhood, about where we came from, what we wanted to do in life. The more we talked, the less aware we were of the pain we felt, and it seemed that the miles passed by much quicker.

We saw each other struggle, and we all grouped together to help one another. From flipping rudders to bandaging feet, you never felt that you were going through anything alone. We all faced the same challenges, from putting on the cold wetsuits in the morning to finding an adequate camping spot, and we would never ask anyone to do anything that we wouldn’t do ourselves. The level of trust you build in the wilderness allows everyone to be vulnerable, to share things that, in another setting, would be known only to their very closest friend. The experience of making friends on this trip was unlike any I’ve felt before, and whenever we’re together, we’ll always have a line to fall back on: ‘Hey, remember that time we were on Superior for 3 weeks?’

On the way home from the trip, I had an eight hour layover at the airport. It was truly a joyous occasion — having access to a variety of foods, entertainment, and an air-conditioned place to walk around brought a huge smile to my face. Even as my flight got delayed and delayed again, I found that I was more than happy to sit there and read my book, sipping on a nice iced coffee. Never in my life did I think I would be grateful for a nearly-cancelled flight, but there’s a first time for everything.

On Reality

Enigmatic, I know.

In the leadup to my departure, I expected to be ecstatic to have my phone back, to see what everyone had been up to, what had happened in the world. Handed my bag, I felt the phone in my hand — much larger than I had remembered it — and powered it on. A quick scroll later, I powered it off and headed to breakfast.

As we sat in the van, everyone was glued to their screens, myself included. Spain had won the Euro, Argentina the Copa, and a presidential assassination attempt had just occurred. Wait, what? It hit me — I could have been in the woods, a president could have died and I would just not have known. No matter how often we speculated on what was going on in the world, that was never on the cards. Looking back, I find the entire situation rather laughable. A group of kids who have grown up accustomed to instant access to information, now so occupied with their own success in the wild that everything external seemed to fade into the dark recesses of their minds.

After a check-in with my parents assuring them that I was alive and coordinating plans for my arrival (surely enough, Toronto got flooded as I was on my way home), I scrolled through my emails. Some logistical items, a bunch of old headlines that I wasn’t affected by, and a heartfelt message from my English teacher, congratulating me on graduating high school on the islands of Lake Superior.

Apart from hearing from the people I cared about, I realized just how much of my reality (or my perception?) of the world was shaped by some algorithm created in California, downloaded to my phone. Even when I’m conscious of not spending an abhorrent amount of time looking through X or Instagram, my view of everything going on around me was still influenced by these platforms. From the simple stuff like ‘What’s the best new restaurant in Toronto?’ to the more serious ‘What should we do about the Canadian housing crisis?’, the never-ending diet of information takes a serious toll on wellbeing, which I only really noticed once I became accustomed to using my phone again.

My point on ‘reality’ is this: to a large extent, the internet, social media, and the world that stretches out of the digital into the physical is smoke and mirrors. Not much of it, in the grand scheme of the progression of the world or an individual’s life, really matters. Despite this, it disproportionately influences what we think and our outlook on the world, especially in the younger generations. Adventuring taught me that to thrive in an new environment, the skill of understanding the person sitting across from me, regardless of their views and beliefs, is crucial to surviving as a human. As we grow more digitally connected through better phones and new apps, we lose touch with this essence of what it means to be human, instead letting ourselves fall into the idyllic worlds of influencers and chasing the reward of social status.

Reality is what we perceive around us. What we see, hear and feel each day. The cool lake breeze in your face, the gentle murmur of paddle strokes, the laughter emanating from under the tarps. That’s real. Discovering a new cancer treatment, building advanced prosthetics, writing a novel. That’s real. When we focus on the real in our lives, the noise quickly fades. And in that reality, there’s hope for the future.

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If you enjoyed reading this post and would like to hear more from me,

My name is Alexander Yevchenko. I’m 18 years old, and an incoming Morehead-Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. If you’d like to keep up with me, I’m most active on X, @ayevch. If you enjoyed this reflection or just want to send a message, send me an email: alexanderyevchenko@gmail.com.