9/16/09 – From Suckatash, Ryan Suffern’s blog (used with permission):

This shot of Sawbill Lake is particularly special for me. While it’s probably been over a decade since I took the pic, I’ll never forget that morning – getting up at the crack of dawn and going out in a canoe with my little sister, Whitney. The lake was eerily fogged in that morning, and the water was so still, you could have easily imagined walking across it. And besides the sound of our paddles in the calm water, there was hardly a sound to be heard. It was such a beautiful moment reserved only for those willing to get up so early, and oh, what I wouldn’t give to be back there in that canoe right now.
It was up in the Boundary Waters that I think I first got the bug for taking pictures. Year after year and summer after summer, I would return with my family to these cherished lakes, and over time, I found myself trying to take better and better photos of the beauty to be found up there. And while I was crazy for catching fish (and we certainly did a lot of fishing), I also noticed that I was becoming just as interested in “catching” a good pic to bring back home. So in no small part, I know I owe this place for having been the catalyst for my first creative love.
The above photograph also means a lot to me because it was one of my first images that I ever had blown up and framed, which I gave to my Grandma & Grandpa Kielhorn. I cannot think of Sawbill and of the many, many trips I’ve taken there without thinking about my grandparents, and specifically my grandpa. Always in pursuit of finding the fish at just the right time of day, he would so often wake me up in my tent from a deep-summer-vacation-sleep, and the two of us would go out and see if they were biting. Some of my fondest memories of my grandpa are those early morning fishing trips – just the two of us out on Sawbill and not a soul in sight.
In the past couple of years, unfortunately, both grandparents have passed away. I guess that’s just life, or as Kurt Vonnegut might say, “So it goes.” I miss them both terribly, but it at least makes me happy to know that for the last several years of both of their lives, this photo was proudly on display in their bedroom. That everyday, my grandpa would wake up and that this would be the first image to meet his day. That maybe this photo might just make him think of those early morning fishing trips, and perhaps even put a smile on his face. – Ryan Suffern