Hugh Magill first learned about the Boundary Waters in the early 1970s through Sigurd Olson’s writings. My first BWCA canoe trip came in 1980, paddling the Granite River, Saganaga, and Seagull. My wife, Nancy, took her first trip out of Ely in the early 1970s.
Following our marriage in 1982, with very limited funds for travel, we could only afford to visit in-laws or come up to the BWCA, so we spent a lot of spare time up north, bringing young adult groups, volunteering at Wilderness Canoe Base and Adventurous Christians, deepening our passion for the BWCA with every trip.
We lived in Chicago for many years, building our vocations (Hugh as an attorney in the trust business and Nancy as a music educator and conductor), raising three children, and making annual trips to northern Minnesota. We began to search for a place to park our canoe around 2000, which led to the acquisition in 2006 of a quirky cabin on Clearwater Lake with views of the Palisades.
We’ve launched many canoe trips off our dock, lots with our large extended family, others with Boy Scouts I led as a Scoutmaster. We laid our old cabin to rest in 2018, rebuilding and moving in in 2020/21.
Our children, have all landed in Minnesota, as we did in 2020, and we now divide our time between Clearwater and Minneapolis. Nancy is fully retired, and I work with families and attorneys through my consulting company, Granite River Consulting. We also make music together as church musicians at Trinity Lutheran in Hovland and around a 1934 grand piano at Clearwater.
We are huge fans of Chik-Wauk and are so grateful to all who have labored to chronicle the marvelous history of this area we all love.
