![]() Veritable iron men, the voyageurs often paddled up to 55 strokes a minute, dipping their paddles in unison as they sang about lost love, the weather, or animals. Avants (“front men”) stood in the bow navigating, while gouvernails (“rudders”) stood 30 feet back in the stern with paddles as long as six feet. Traveling in brigades of four to eight canoes, they pushed west in their quest for pelts. These hearty mountain men-famous for their wilderness chorales-paddled oversize birchbark canoes, trading and freighting furs from the far reaches of North America back to Montreal. The park is named for the French Canadian traders, called voyageurs, who traveled through the interconnected border lakes more than a century before the nation’s founding. The Ojibwe harvested rice around the Boundary Waters and trapped fur animals, trading their pelts to French Canadian explorers, who arrived in 1688, for ammunition, flintlock rifles, blankets, and axes. The Ojibwe (also known as Chippewa and Anishinaabe) have lived in the area since at least the 1600s, after migrating from the East Coast in search of food. Together, these protected acres of aqua-wilderness are known as “the Boundary Waters.” Voyageurs National Park flanks the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park, and other state and national forests. To this day, traditional folklore holds that Wataway are the spirits of ancestors dancing in the sky to celebrate life and remind onlookers below that we are all part of the celestial wonder of creation. The park is one of the many reasons that northern Minnesota is one of Nat Geo’s Best of the World destinations. At Voyageurs-designated an International Dark Sky Park in 2020-this spectacle happens as often as 200 nights a year. Sometimes, they morph into heavenly versions of a delicate cedar frond or stream water diverting off rocks. Shimmering green, pink, or blue, the ribbon- and curtain-shaped lights strobe into searchlight beams or flare up into what appears to be an interstellar explosion. Properly positioned in the darkest places below, Earthlings can bear witness to the bombardment called the northern lights, or aurora borealis. The Earth’s magnetic field deflects these detrimental rays and particles. Located above the ionosphere, as high as 400 miles above the Earth, the magnetosphere is being bombarded by debris and radiation streaming from the sun. The light displays can be seen when the sun produces the ideal radiation during clear nights from the higher latitudes of the planet, where the magnetosphere weakens. But travelers who venture to Minnesota’s only national park-one of the country’s least visited-are rewarded in the coldest months with some of the best northern lights viewing in the contiguous United States. It does not store any personal data.A wintertime trip to Voyageurs National Park is not for the faint-hearted. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. ![]() ![]() The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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