BOUNDARY WATERS CANOE AREA WILDERNESS – Last month, a group of canoe campers who took hallucinogenic mushrooms requested emergency assistance after one member of their group started having “a bad trip.”

In the afternoon hours of June 21, a worried parent called law enforcement when two teenagers did not return from a day hike on time at Bridal Falls in the BWCA near the Border Route Trail. The “missing hikers” were an hour late from the time they were supposed to return to Loon Lake Lodge near the Gunflint Trail. Search and rescue crews were dispatched, as were aircraft, and the boys were located at the falls a few hours later. They were reported to be in “good condition.”

It was extremely windy across the Boundary Waters June 25. Steady winds of 40 mph were reported much of the day Tuesday. That afternoon, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office responded to three separate calls to the BWCA during a span of about five hours. Nobody was seriously injured and no one died in the incidents. The situations were reported on by media outlets across Minnesota.

These recent scenarios illustrate the reason search and rescue squads across the BWCA are pleading with the public to think carefully and with intention before calling for help. Search and rescue crews are not lifeguards at a municipal swimming pool. They are volunteers who are highly trained to help people in life-and-death situations. They should be called upon only in the most extreme cases. It is time for BWCA visitors to start taking this concept to heart. And it is time for the media to use these examples of search and rescue operations in the Boundary Waters as education tools, not simply as news items. And that message includes this publication, Paddle and Portage.