At the edge of Two Harbors, I turn left on Lake County 2. This is the back road to Ely, one of my favorite highways in the state. Most folks approach Ely by "the front door," shooting up U.S. 53, then cutting east on 169. That route makes sense; it's smooth and fast, with four wide lanes most of the way. But I've never cared much for common sense. I'll take Highway 2, with its dangerous ditches, lumps and bumps, and evergreens growing right up to the road.

On many maps this highway is only a thin gray line through the green of Superior National Forest. Sometimes it doesn't show up at all. Which makes it my kind of road. As the car climbs, I watch Lake Superior fall away in the rearview mirror and merge with the sky. It's warmer over the hill, so I snap the heater off and crack the window. The car fills with the perfume of the forest-herbal, fresh, and sweet.

PHOTO: Bob Firth

I first drove this road some thirty years ago, with a cousin who later worked as an ornithologist in Ecuador and Borneo. Northern Minnesota is exotic enough for me. Travel, they keep telling me, is broadening. But I don't want to be broad. I'm after depth. The brain insists on novelty, constant stimulation, but the soul desires the same old thing, renewed again and again. That's why I moved to Duluth ten years ago-to lose myself repeatedly in the woods and water of canoe country, to give myself some history here, to lay down layer upon layer of experience in the same old always different place.

Halfway up Highway 2, the second-growth forest is darkened by a stand of white pines. From a distance, they resemble towering candelabras. Nothing says "north" like a white pine. Once upon a time, two hundred years ago, just the other day, white pines covered this entire region. It's a thought I can hardly bear. Today, less than 2 percent of the original forest remains. Somehow the loggers of the last century missed this particular stand, and the Forest Service has protected these giants that grow right next to the road, tacking large reflectors to their trunks instead of sacrificing them for human safety and efficiency.

For the most part, Highway 2 runs true as a ruler, so I've been cheating the speed limit, racing down a long green hallway. But now the forest walls flash open on lakes and ponds and streams. There's Greenwood Lake, where I stopped with my dad a quarter century back. Sand River looks black this morning. And here's a glimpse of Wampus Lake, a blue snapshot, as perfect as a beer ad.

I'm told that people who like to read move more slowly down the page as they grow older. With a lifetime of experience behind them and hundreds of books in their heads, every passage reminds them of some incident out of their past, some other book they've read, and they wander off the page into alternate worlds of thought. That's how I feel about this wild highway. I'm reading the road like an old-timer, reminded of other days.

Here's the bend where, years ago, a friend and I helped a family put out a fire. And here's the bog where, just last week, my brother and I saw a big bull moose. Astonished, we stopped, amazed by his size and his calm demeanor as he stood there munching alder shoots. He was growing a new set of antlers, and his coat looked scruffy, as if he were made out of gunnysacks smeared with grease. But he was the rough, rude lord of these woods, and we were more excited than if we'd caught sight of the president.

Here's a back road off the back road-one of the best-and even as I flash past, speeding up the asphalt toward Ely, I'm driving down the gravel to my favorite lake in this area. I'd tell you its name, but the word is Ojibway, and I can't pronounce it properly. A rough translation, though, would be Big Secret. Last fall my wife and I took a break from fishing Big Secret and dragged our canoe up a granite slab. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, out of deep silence, came the howl of timber wolves: one voice at first-one long, lonely, wavering note-then several songs from other throats, twisting and twining around the first. This music was more unearthly than Gregorian chant. Those animal voices rose and fell, quavered, and drifted away like smoke. The silence was deeper after they stopped. I looked at my watch. I'd waited thirty years to hear timber wolves howl, and their song had lasted less than three minutes. I felt like a mystic who'd finally heard the voice of God.

This article appeared as "The Last Word" in the July 1997 issue of Minnesota Monthly. Copyright Minnesota Monthly.