Fishing with a master, Bob Dutcher ~ October 15, 1998

David Heiller

Bob Dutcher sat in his boat. I couldn’t see him. It was still dark, although the stars were starting to disappear.

“Hi, Bob,” I called out. I knew he was there, because his truck was sitting by the road, and he said he’d be there at 6 a.m., and Bob isn’t late, at least when it comes to fishing.

“Hi, Dave,” Bob’s voice answered.

I felt my way down the bank, to where I could make out the boat and Dutcher, and crawled in.

“Isn’t this a little early to be fishing?” I asked as Bob rowed us onto Mud Lake. It was 6 a.m.

Bob assured me that it was NOT too early to go fishing. It’s never too early for Bob Dutcher, Askov, Minnesota, to start fishing. Why, bass bite all night. So do walleyes. And you never know when you’ll catch a northern. They are early risers, like Bob.

We each put a frog on a hook and started casting toward the lily pads off to our left. Bob worked the oars expertly, keeping us just the right distance from the weeds.

Day broke fast and clear. It was a gorgeous morning. I had asked Bob to take me bass fishing. He likes to use frogs, and I have an unlimited supply of frogs at the pond at our house. So I brought the frogs and he brought the rest, including the expertise.

That became obvious very quickly. “There’s one,” he said, letting his line stop for a few seconds. I couldn’t see any difference in his line. He set the hook. The line strained. A good fighter, but not good enough. Bob reeled in steadily, brought the fish to the side of the boat, and lifted it out. It was a nice bass. About a pound and a half, he guessed. He weighed it on his electronic scale. One pound, nine ounces.

Bob put the fish back into the water and let it slip away. He’s strictly catch-and-release when it comes to bass.

Bob caught another bass, almost identical to the first. Then another. Then a two-and-a-half pounder.

I was fishing just like him, or so it seemed. But I wasn’t feeling the fish like he did. I felt a few bites, but when I set the hook, the fish wouldn’t stay on.

One time I thought I felt a fish gnawing my frog, so I set the hook hard—like Bob does—and the frog came shooting out of the water right at us. Luckily it missed us. I don’t know who was more startled, the frog or Bob.

He chuckled. “You’ve got to make sure the fish is on before you set the hook,” he said. Oh. Right. Good point.

Bob said he hoped I wasn’t jinxed, like George Frederiksen of Askov. Bob said George has notoriously bad luck, at least when it comes to fishing.

“Come on, Dave, catch one,” Bob said more than once as the morning unfolded. I knew how he felt. I always like my guests to catch fish and have fun.

But it didn’t bother me too much, not catching fish. I was having too much fun watching Bob fish. He seemed to do everything right.

I especially liked the way he released the fish. Try letting a 3-1/2 pound bass go some time. Bob caught one that size. It was a beauty. We admired it for a few seconds, Then Bob put it in the water. It didn’t respond, so Bob put it on a stringer.

After about five minutes, the fish started thrashing, so Bob took it off the stringer and let it swim away. Not everyone—including me—could have done that. My pride and appetite get, in the way.

Listening to Bob talk about fishing was fun too. He told me about some of his favorite lakes how he fishes them, what baits he uses. I felt like putting down my fishing pole and picking up a notebook. A lot of fishermen won’t share that information. But Bob isn’t like that. He likes to see people have fun. That’s why he wanted me to catch a fish.

David didn't get skunked this time! 
He didn't catch-and-release, either!

We talked about other things too, like our families, our interests. Good old small talk, the kind that fishing is famous for.

We watched many flocks of Canada geese fly over us. A blue heron took off from a bay. A beaver swam from shore. The sun shined through a clean sky. Wow, what a beautiful September morning. There was no better place to be than on that lake.

We finished fishing at about 10:30 a.m. We shook hands and Bob said once again that he wished I had caught one. I said it didn’t matter, and I meant it. The worst day of fishing is still better than the best day at the office.

I went back to Mud Lake the next week with my sister-in-law. This time she got skunked. I wish she would have caught one!

I caught a 3-1/4 pound bass. I called Bob that night to tell him. I didn’t want him to think I was totally jinxed.

I could tell he had been sleeping when I called. He had that groggy voice. But that didn’t bother me. After all, he had gotten me out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to go fishing. The least I could do return was wake him up at 9:30 p.m.

But Dutcher didn’t complain. I knew he wouldn’t. He was glad to hear I had finally caught a fish. He’s a fisherman, after all.

This transformation is anything but holy ~ October 16, 1986

by David Heiller

The Transformation began about two months ago. This Transformation has a capital T, but it is anything but holy. Diabolical might be a better description.

I was attempting to put a 10-foot piece of roll roofing onto the garden shed, in a pretty stiff breeze. With my carpentry and coordination, that is a two person job. There were two, of us, but one was my daughter, Malika. Being only 14 months old, she didn’t count.

Not much scared Malika.

I rode that roll roofing like a magic carpet a top the garden shed, trying to keep an eye on Mollie, who was playing on the swing-set. As I put one nail in place, the wind lifted the other end out of place. I turned around to nail it straight, glancing toward the swing-set for the kid. She was gone. That didn’t worry me, since the only real danger at our house is the county road at the end of the driveway, and I had a clear view of that. So I concentrated on the rolling roof.

As I nailed it into place, I glanced at the ladder onto the eight-foot-high roof. A movement caught my eye. Malika’s head rose above the edge of the roof, smiling like some proud sun. Then she froze. She was at the top rung, unable to advance. She looked down, then back at me with the dumb realization that she was stuck.

I had the same dumb look in my eyes. I couldn’t get down the ladder—only room for one there. I couldn’t lift her up—too steep. I leaped off the roof into tall grass, then came up behind Malika. She was now crying quite freely. The sun had changed to showers in a hurry. I lifted her off the ladder, and we both breathed a big sigh.

That was the Transformation, the start of it. I returned to the roof, and she followed me back up the ladder. We repeated the process, her beaming smile, then sudden fear, my leap to the ground and rescue. This happened three times before I conceded defeat and let the roof keep leaking.

When my wife came home, I told her light-heartedly what that darn Malika had done.

“You were doing what?” she asked. “She did what? You let her climb what? What if she had fallen? Is your roof that important?”

These were all questions I had been avoiding.

“But Mollie wouldn’t stay off the ladder,” I protested. “She’s got a mind of her own now, I tell you. She just kept coming up that ladder. I couldn’t stop her.”

The best way to deal with Malika was some kind of containment plan. A kid-pack worked great!

“Hmmmm,” Cindy said, unpersuaded.

Cindy is still unpersuaded about the ladder incident, but Mollie took the adventure as her cue to enter the real world of childhood independence. All moms and dads who have trod this rugged stretch of parenthood know of which I speak. It’s that time when letters to relatives stop describing the kid innocuously: “And little Joey is such a good baby, always smiling, real easy, not a trouble-maker.”

The letters change to something like this: “Little Joey is sure a little bug. He is always on the go, and likes to keep us hopping.”

If you read between the lines, they are actually saying, “The little so-and-so is a one-baby SWAT team. He makes Rambo look like Liberace. He’s destroying the house and us with it.”

At least that is the way it is at our house, during this Transformation. You do not turn your back on Malika. She has mastered the ascent of every piece of furniture under five feet. That ladder was small potatoes. She stands on the window sill, she sits on the kitchen range. She climbs the stool next to the counter and climbs up to reach the good cupboards. Not the unlocked ones at floor level with boring Tupperware, but the good ones, with the china we never use: She uses it. The kitchen table is her own personal turf, and she spends as much time as possible there. We have to spread all the furniture into the middle of the rooms, so that she can only get stranded. Soon she will learn to leap from one to the other.

Malika love. Everyone needs hugs.

Climbing isn’t the end. She pours milk out of pitchers, onto the table and floor. She pulls pitchers of juice off the counter, down her shirt. Any spare items that fall on the floors, she claims until they tire her, then she throws them into the wood box.

Maybe it is coming to a head though. On Saturday, she stayed in the house with Cindy while I performed the great American autumn ritual of putting on storm windows, I figured if Mollie were outside, she would be at the top, of the 20-foot ladder. I figured if she stayed in the house, we’d all be safe.

I figured wrong.When I’d finished the ladder work, I grabbed the piece of glass for the combination picture window in our living room, and went to put it in. I set it down in the living room, against the stereo, while I took the screen out. As I walked into the kitchen with it, a tremendous crash sounded behind me. Cindy and I jumped and ran into the living room. Mollie stood in the middle of about 200 splinters of glass. She had knocked the window over onto her rocking chair. She wasn’t cut, luckily. She just stood there, looking at us calmly. She didn’t start to cry till we very gently picked her up and deposited her safely in the kitchen. Or as safely as any room can be with her in it.

As I headed to work Monday morning, Mollie followed this fine feat by pulling the lamp off the table, again in the living room, breaking the bulb into another 200 pieces of glass. Cindy and I just looked at each other. I guess we are used to this Transformation. But we can’t wait till the next stage. It’s got to be better than this one.

Mouse season has begun ~ October 19, 2000

David Heiller

Mouse season started at our house on Sunday, October 15. Cindy had found some mouse pebbles in a drawer in the bathroom vanity the day before. Her make-up sponge had been gnawed on pretty well too. Must have been a female mouse.

“Time to set the mouse trap,” Cindy told me.

I found the trap under the bathroom sink, which is its permanent location. I smeared peanut butter on it, then re-set it. I knew the action would start soon, and I wasn’t disappointed.

“Mouse in the trap, “Cindy hollered matter-of-factly when she got up Sunday morning. She called it out like a ship’s bosun might call, “Officer on board.”

Some people panic a bit with a mouse in a trap, even if it is dead. Not Cindy, although her voice did have a tone that said, “Please don’t wait too long to get rid of it.”

I lifted out the dead mouse by the tail, carried it outside, and flung it toward the back of the outhouse, which by the end of this winter will look like Boot Hill.

“We should keep track of all the mice we catch,” I said. Cindy agreed that that was a grand idea, so she wrote “Mouse” on the calendar for October 15.

She wrote it again the next day too.

I might be able to get rid of the mouse entry-way into our house. They come in somewhere behind the vanity. But that would mean moving the vanity, which would mean taking out some screws and unhooking the water lines and drain pipe. But if I found the spot where they got in and plugged it, I have a hunch they would find a new way in.

And maybe I could plug that spot, and the next one, and maybe eventually we would have a mouse free house.

And what fun would that be?

Maybe it’s a hunter’s instinct, the same one that sends me and 100 million other Americans after deer and bear, squirrels and grouse, bass and walleyes.

Ronnie Roberts has his grizzly bears, I have my mice.

Perhaps after all those years living with mice in the 
house, we got to be a little bit lighter on our feet.

It’s something I inherited from my mother. (Blame your parents, I always say). We had mice poking around in our house when I was a kid, and Mom seemed to take it in stride with a heavy sigh like she did everything else.

I recall one time when I was in high school, playing Scrabble with her at the kitchen table. We heard some scurrying under the kitchen sink. (Yes, it was under the sink. Is there a pattern here?) Mom told me to set the trap, and I did, and she hadn’t so much as counted her word before we heard the trap snap and there was a shrew. It was about the size of a quarter. We both thought that was pretty neat.

I read in the paper last week that we are supposed to have a real winter this year, complete with snow and cold weather. The mice seem to know that too. They don’t need El Nino and La Nina to figure it out. They just head for the Heillers.

Well, mice, we are waiting. The traps are set, and we can’t wait to write your name on the calendar.

Illness brings both sorrow and hope ~ October 26, 1995

David Heiller

Grandma and Malika at the cabin. (1990)

Cindy’s mother, Lorely, was diagnosed with cancer on Saturday, October 15. Lorely spent ten rough days in the hospital, and will spend many more days at home, recovering and taking chemotherapy.

Cindy has been gone nearly all of the time since the cancer was discovered. I’m realizing in a hurry how hard it is to be a single parent.

Lorely’s illness is making me appreciate both Lorely and Cindy more than I ever have.

Many thoughts have crossed my mind about Lorely since the illness was discovered. She has so many good qualities, like her love for her family and her generosity. She had strength enough to raise three children as a single parent without child support payments or extra finan­cial help. I have great respect for that.

People usually don’t think about qualities like this in a parent until the parent is facing illness or death, which is a little late. Sometimes too late.

But that’s not clear in Lorely’s case. The can­cer is calling all the shots. It has its own time zone, and all we can do is go kicking and scratching along with it.

Grandma warming up her
 Noah at a chilly soccer game. (1990)

And say a prayer or two. I took the kids to church on Sunday. They didn’t want to go, as usual. But I said it would be a good time to say a prayer for Grandma, and they understood.

After the offering, I leaned over to each 
of them and reminded them about the Grandma prayer. Then we sang “Beautiful Savior,” and that made me think of Lorely. Tears welled up in my eyes. One dripped on the left lens of my glasses.

I didn’t wipe the tears away. I figured no one would see them. But a boy in the pew ahead of us did, and he gave me a curious look, like he was wondering what was wrong. Maybe he’s never seen a man cry before. That’s okay He’ll have plenty of time for that.

We sang the song with the gusto reserved for all good hymns. On the third verse, the organist quit playing, and we sang in unison, just the voices. It 
sounded strong and pure. I wanted to stop and listen, but I wanted to sing even more, so I did, and the strength of those voices gave me hope.

Immediately after our wedding.

Tears crop up at all hours these days. From Cindy in the wee hours of the 
morning, her body wracked with sorrow.

From Lorely’s other daughter, Nancy, at the breakfast table when she talked about a recent trip to Wisconsin with her mother.

From Lorely as she listened to our daughter sing her a song in the hospital. It’s a time for crying. There is plenty of sorrow in this world of ours.

But there is plenty of joy as well, and there is still time for that, time to appreciate your loved ones, to not take them for granted, to accept them for what they are.

Nothing beats a good walking stick ~ October 26, 2005

David Heiller

A couple weeks ago I asked Mom if she still had any red cedar for making a walking stick.

Mom of course knew exactly what I was talking about, even though the subject of walking sticks hadn’t arisen in the old homestead for about 10 years.

“Yes, in the far corner of the basement, by the furnace;” she said.

David with his walking stick and his
 sister Jeanne walking through 
the hills of Brownsville.

Sure enough, there they were, just as I had left them after a stick-gathering walk in the woods a long time ago. Maybe 20 years, not 10.

I hefted several of them, and found the right one. It’s going to be a Christmas gift for a certain someone. I’ll call him “Alex.” (I always like how the advice columnists put names in quotation marks to hide their identity.)

Alex is a lot like me, although without a 52-year-old girth. So I figure if I like the stick, he’ll like it.

I took it home and could hardly wait to peel off the cedar bark and trim the knots with a hatchet and knife. It soon had the sleek, strong look of a good walking stick. I worked on it for the next week, just a few minutes here and there. It’s fun to take your time with a project, let it speak to you a bit. For example, I toyed with the idea of carving or wood-burning Alex’s name in it. But after a few days. I thought no. Walking sticks can’t be too gaudy. Nothing against those ornate kind that people sell. They can be magnificent. But you want a walking stick that you aren’t afraid to lose. It is, after all, just a stick. Well, maybe not quite.

I lost a very nice stick back in about 1977. It had been a gift from a co-worker at Camp Courage, and it too was made of red cedar. He had coated it with linseed oil, and it was indestructible, like the staff of Moses. I had it for several years, and even took it on a backpacking trip in Glacier National Park. But that didn’t stop me from setting it down on a hike from Brownsville to the Heiller Valley and walking away. I never did find it. It’s probably still leaning against a tree above Shellhorn.

I finally sanded Alex’s stick, gave it a good soaking of linseed oil, and hung it in the barn, where it will patiently wait for a firm and loving hand.

Alex and Laura, Malika, David and I took a long
hike each wielding a David red cedar walking stick.

Then I returned to Mom’s basement and found a smaller stick for Alex’s girlfriend, “Laura.” I wasn’t quite as sure what she would like, because she and I are not alike, at least in the physical sense, and that’s a good thing. I found a skinny stick. It was crooked, but it had good balance. You could hold it a couple different ways and it felt just right. That’s another thing about a good walking stick. It doesn’t have to be this straight grained, perfect piece of wood. It can have a bend or a crook, but it has to have balance.

Working on a cedar walking stick in 1992 

It was exciting getting this stick in shape too. It emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon. Now it is awaiting some final touches, a little sanding, maybe some more peeling here and there, and good old linseed oil. Then it will hang next to Alex’s stick until I give it to them.

My own walking stick right now is special too. I found it at the home of a friend, Willie Boyer, in about 1982, shortly after he died. He was a hermit, and we didn’t hear of his death until a couple weeks later.

We drove the 40 miles to his house, and poked around. No one was there. He was a woodsman, and could make things like axe handles out of white oak. He was really good at it. He had some pieces of white oak standing in the corner of his outhouse, so I took a couple and made walking sticks from them. I am down to my last one now. It is a very plain stick, but as strong as anything you could find, and it carries a lot of good memories of my old friend. I hope I get to keep using it for many years. Because there’s nothing like a good walk, and nothing beats a good walking stick.

Take a walk in the woods—and soon! ~ October 4, 1990

David Heiller

If you’ve got a spare hour or a spare day, take a walk in the woods, and do it soon. Our family tramped around Banning State Park on Monday of this week. Cindy’s sister, Nancy, had been looking after Mollie, so she packed a lunch and we met at Banning for a picnic and hike.

We spread tuna fish on crackers and cut up a couple of homegrown tomatoes and had a meal that fit the day like a glove, pretty and simple and good for you.

Then we hiked, following the Kettle River south toward Sandstone. Other people had the same idea. Usually Banning is deserted during the week, but not last Monday. We saw a young man sleeping on a picnic table, using his knapsack as a pillow and using the sun as a blanket. We pulled over as another guy met us coming up a narrow, rocky trail. We saw several couples, young and old.

The sun moved in and out from its skirt of cotton clouds. When it shone, it warmed us like toast, and when it didn’t we walked a bit faster to keep the chill away. Mostly it shone, and soon Nancy and Mollie had handed their coats to Cindy to carry.

A different hike in Banning:
 Nancy watching Noah and Malika enjoy the park.

Underfoot, maple and poplar and birch leaves had created a bright walkway of yellow and red, some bright red like candy, others mottled with yellow, as if someone had poured on a bit of yellow paint before the red had dried.

Above, the leaves filtered the sun into a warm yellow glow. The air had that fall smell, dry and crackling, of leaves on the ground and vegetation that is turning in for the winter: A smell of squirrel hunting from my younger days.

We found a cluster of four pine cones on the ground from a Norway pine, with needles still attached. “Noah can bring it to show and tell,” I said, handing it to Cindy, the official carrier of things. He’s been bringing things like that for the past week to his first grade class.

Noah was in school while we walked, and I thought how much he would be enjoying this. Not that he doesn’t like school, but he’s chafing a bit from the daily schedule and he would take a hike in the park any day, as would most kids, and most teachers. Unfortunately, life isn’t that logical.

Mollie has a year of freedom left, every other day at least, and we all made the most of it on Monday. She led us on, wanting to take every spur she discovered to the edge of the river so she could toss in the “sparkly” rocks she’d found.

Mollie likes to edge close to any sheer drop-off that will scare us. She knows, like all five-year-olds, what makes Mom and Dad nervous. And how do you as a parent try to act nonchalant as your daughter stands on the lip of a rock that is 30 feet straight above one of the most dangerous rivers in Minnesota? Let’s just say that we held her hand a lot.

We saw a lot of beauty on the trip, us and the others who meandered along the Banning trails on a sunny October morning. The trip made our day. And later that night, as I drove home from a school board meeting, I found myself grinning again, feeling the sun, smelling the leaves.

That’s what parks and fall and families are all about.

A wood pile time bomb ~ October 8, 1992

David Heiller

The time bomb is set to explode at our house. It’s doesn’t look like a time bomb. It looks like a woodpile.

But because the woodpile will fall down, I think of it as a time bomb.

David and his maul: the never ending battle to keep the wood box full.

Hopefully no one will get hurt. My woodpile fell last spring while I was on a canoe trip. It covered three bicycles, a garden tractor, and a compost shredder. I had to buy a new front rim for Noah’s bike. But it didn’t crush my children or wife, thankfully.

It took a year for that woodpile to fall down. That was a long stretch. I remember once when my brother-in-law and I spent the day stacking wood. He had to go back to college that afternoon, so I drove him to Moose Lake to catch a bus. I drove home thinking how great it was to have a brother-in-law like Randy, what a great job we had done stacking wood together.

When I drove into the driveway, the woodpile looked like someone had shot a cannon through it. Half an hour, an unofficial Guiness World Record for a fallen woodpile.

Our woodpile never ever looked like this one!
 I wouldn't want to use it!

There’s nothing like the sight of a sprawling, fallen woodpile to deflate your spirit. You work so hard to get to that point. Risk life and limb cutting down the tree and cutting up the wood. Drive the tractor into the woods, load the wood into the trailer, drive the tractor home, unload it, split it, all the while listening to your lower back do the Rice Krispie Shuffle: snap, crackle and pop.

Stacking it is the final reward. You get to make it look so nice and neat. Maybe you even crisscross the ends so that it stands without any posts. That’s the sign of a good wood stacker.

I plod along slowly, pulling at the pile every few minutes, feeling it start to sway a little at the bottom, feeling it tilt even more as it gets higher.

I can tell a woodpile that will fall. The one I stacked today will fall real quick. If you push against it, it sways and creaks. Unless we get some cold weather real fast, I’ll have a bunch of birch logs to pick up soon.

Cindy came out while I was stacking it up. She gently reminded me to move her bicycle away from the 8-foot-high pile. She knows my wood-stacking skills are low.

Cindy on the other hand is a great wood stacker. When we used to stack wood together, she was always rearranging sticks here and there, tightening things up, and the pile would be as solid as a wall.

But she threw out her back two years ago. Now she won’t go near a woodpile. (Or else she hasn’t forgiven me for conking her on the jaw with a piece of popple. One bad throw.) But she still knows she has woodpile superiority. I think she gets a perverse pleasure seeing mine fall. She even calls her friends and tells them. Last spring, about a week after the canoe trip, a friend asked me with a smirk how my woodpile was doing.

“Geez, does the whole township know?” I asked. That reminded me that the only thing worse than a fallen woodpile is someone asking you about it.

Time bombs are like that.