Day 3 | Voyageurs National Park

We started our morning back on the water with Captain Kevin and Ranger Mark, headed toward one of the most wonderfully unusual places in Voyageurs National Park—Ellsworth Rock Gardens. Of course, getting somewhere in Voyageurs is half the adventure, and on our way we stopped to watch bald eagles and eaglets. Eagles are truly part of the Voyageurs landscape. The park's tall shoreline pines, huge lakes, and abundant fish create wonderful bald eagle habitat, and seeing them from the water never gets old. There is something pretty incredible about shutting off the boat, looking toward the treetops, and realizing that we are visitors in their home.

Then we arrived at Ellsworth Rock Gardens, and what a story this place holds. Beginning in the 1940s, Jack Ellsworth took a rocky outcrop along Lake Kabetogama and began creating. Over roughly twenty years, he built more than 60 terraced flower beds, planted thousands and thousands of flowers, and created more than 200 rock sculptures. He wasn't a famous artist arriving with a grand plan. He was a carpenter from Chicago who looked at this rugged piece of northern Minnesota and saw possibilities. Rock by rock, flower by flower, hour after hour, he transformed it into what became known as the “Showplace of Lake Kabetogama.” Walking through it today with Ranger Mark, I kept thinking about what happens when imagination, persistence, engineering, art, and nature all meet in the same place. That sounds an awful lot like STEAM to me.

Back at camp, we had lunch and then welcomed Chanda from Voyageurs Conservancy, who shared another very special part of this place with us. Chanda is Ojibwe, and she spent time sharing her culture with our campers while teaching us how to make daisy-chain bracelets. As our hands stayed busy, we listened. We learned. We asked questions. She also shared about the work she does with the Conservancy and the role she plays in caring for and connecting people to this incredible place. These are the moments I love—the ones when learning isn't something being delivered to us. It happens through conversation, stories, relationships, and sitting together around a table making something with our hands.

And then came one of those glorious Voyageurs afternoons when everyone could simply be where their feet were. Fishing—and actually catching! Canoeing. Hammocking. Swimming. Laughing. Sitting beside the water. Nobody needed to rush anywhere. For a few hours, this beautiful place was simply ours to experience.

After dinner, our classroom changed one more time. We watched our National Parks Adventure film together and then met up with the one and only Dark Sky Lord, Jesse Gates. Jesse helped us look UP and think about Voyageurs in an entirely different way. The darkness here isn't empty. It is full of wonder. Stars, planets, stories, science, questions—and that feeling of realizing just how enormous our universe really is. Protecting dark skies means protecting something that humans have looked toward in wonder for thousands of years.

Today we learned from an artist who left his imagination on the rocks, from eagles raising their young along these waterways, from an Ojibwe educator sharing culture and connection, from the lakes that gave us a place to play, and from a sky that reminded us how very small we are.

Rock gardens. Eagles. Culture. Fishing. Canoes. Hammocks. Swimming. Stars.

Day 3, you were pretty spectacular.