It begins with that delicious moment when you push off from your starting point in a loaded canoe. Behind you lies the gravel public landing, the parked cars, the roads funneling from civilization. Before you the spires of dark spruce and pine perforate the horizon. Beneath you lay a lake's dark waters, inviting adventure, a path to the unknown.

Long ago, my wife, Mary Jo, and I took a 30-day canoe trip. We tore a month from the calendar, stuffed it into our Duluth packs, and set out to immerse ourselves in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and adjacent Quetico Provincial Park. Two million acres of North America's finest flatwater canoeing lay before us — a maze of pristine lakes and streams connected by the portage footpaths first traveled by the Ojibwe and hearty voyageurs. The wilderness of Minnesota and Ontario, with its tall pines, granite shores, laughing loons, and howling wolves, would be ours for the price of a little sweat.

Though we were not rookies to wilderness canoeing, neither of us had ventured out for so long a trip. We were apprehensive when we thought ahead to the day that there would be only two of us together in remote country, or when we imagined an accident and how we might respond with only each other for assistance. As the gear mounted in piles in our front room, so did concerns about how we would ever carry such a mountain of food and equipment.

But through these uneasy moments flickered a gleam of excitement. We knew that at least for one month out of our lives we would live by nature's rules.

Our worries eased almost as soon as the trip began. True, there was no one to hold our hand — and we found we liked it that way. As we labored over portages and paddled our heavily laden canoe, our confidence grew. As lake gave way to lake, as rivers were run, even after we "misplaced" ourselves for the better part of a day, we thought not of what could go wrong, but of how well we had handled each task or minor crisis.

And then one day, as we eased from the mouth of a narrow creek into the surf of a broad and windswept lake, we hesitated. Looming ahead of us, masked as wind and waves, lay a challenge and a choice. Bobbing in the waves we studied our options, knowing that the challenge presented us — and the change of plans it might entail — would change our trip. What we did not know is that it would also alter our understanding of adventure.

Last light fades

So we abandoned the route we had planned and chose the long way, which would force us to paddle through an even more remote chain of lakes that paralleled our planned course. We had studied our maps for months before departing, confident in our choice of routes. Detouring meant dashing the plan. It meant accepting whatever lay ahead.

We entered into the waves, our apprehension sharpened with a sense of adventure. Quartering downwind around points, running with the black waves across open reaches, we felt the heaving power of the lake. An hour passed, then two, and still we were afloat, grinning as we sped along, conscious that a missed stroke could end in tragedy but intoxicated with excitement.

A few things happened that day that, afterward, made us thankful for what had seemed like a cruel wind. We found that although we were at times tense in the big waves, we enjoyed testing our skills. As our red canoe surfed down the hissing swells, the wind blew us beyond any point of return. The total abandonment to the elements was invigorating. We gave ourselves to the wind.

When later we finally shot behind the lee of a small island, we turned the canoe into the"V" of calm water. A fine, broad shelf of granite sloped up to a tiny, but perfect, campsite. Dragging ourselves and our gear up the slope, we sat unmoving for what seemed like an hour on a breezy perch of rocks above the waves, too exhausted from adventure and effort to eat or make camp.

Finally, under a steeply slanting sun, we regained our strength and began to notice just how lovely was the place that fate had chosen. Persistent jack pines had forced toeholds in the otherwise intractable granite, and they prospered above the bald knob like some unkempt Japanese garden. Luxurious beds of caribou moss rolled soft and silver-green along shaded ridges. In the calm of the island's tiny crescent-shape bay, a wild pageant of water lilies grew, white tiaras presented on green platters. The lowering yellow sun finally flirted from beneath the hem of the dark clouds, warming us and the island, releasing from the pines and spruce their heady perfume. Whitecapped waves glistened. The distant east shore became bathed in butterscotch light. In those moments our fortunes seemed immense. And all of it was an accident.

True, we had taken some calculated risks. The most prudent plan would have been to stop at that river mouth and wait until the wind died. But hours of daylight had remained, and the campsite prospects were slim. We believed we could handle the seas, though we knew, too, that they were beyond anything we had attempted before. Though we were, and still are, cautious in our wilderness travels, that day we made a good and fortunate choice.

Adventure requires some level of abandonment; it occurs only when we physically or mentally stretch ourselves. Testing ourselves, we discovered excitement that no ride at a theme park could rival. We achieved that excitement under our own effort; we were not merely along for the ride.

This is perhaps the defining essence of a trip to the wilderness; the defining essence of the Boundary Waters or Quetico. A vacation by car or plane may be fun, but few things can rival the sense of adventure that is purchased with the currency of effort. In the canoe country that coin is sweat, patience, and energy.

Each time we go farther than we imagined, each time we are calmer under pressure than we thought possible, each time we carry a heavy load over stony portages, we buy a little more adventure. That effort takes us deeper into the wilderness, and deeper into ourselves.

Conservationist Sigurd Olson wrote about the "shakedown." To those in the north, the shakedown is that magical moment in a wilderness trip when all becomes harmonic between the voyager, equipment, and nature. For those who go to the woods frequently, shakedown is a brief and early affair. Those who are new to the wild may find it only after days, or not at all, depending on their frame of mind. When it does come, the ills of the world outside cease to exist.

Sky and wind and water are the topics of the day. Struggle ends, peace begins, and the traveler's mind and spirit are open to the adventure that lies all around. Discovering a lady slipper in its brief bloom is adventure. Gaping in delight as a loon submarines through clear water beneath your canoe is adventure. Tasting the joy of accomplishing a difficult task is adventure. None can be ordered up, booked in advance, or purchased with cash. These are the joys of wilderness travel for those who are open.

Adventure begins where control ends.