When Wynn Bruce was a boy, his father, Douglas, took him canoeing in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, their paddles plunging into a cool lake as they glided toward a campsite in Superior National Forest. After landing and portaging their boat over miles of rocky and remote land, they set up their tent and built a campfire beneath the pines. “That was a special moment,” says Douglas, now 78. The memory of Bruce’s face illuminated in the dark remains among the first images that come to mind when Douglas thinks about his son.
Bruce spent much of his childhood in nature, hiking the boreal forests of the Minnesota Northwoods in the summer, dog-sledding and skiing with family in the winter. “That’s kind of the background, the stage upon which he grew up,” says his father, who explains that Bruce continued to find safe harbor in the outdoors for the rest of his life.
