Listening to Winter’s last call ~ March 15, 1990

David Heiller

Winter waited for us at Grand Portage last weekend, like a patient mother calling her kids to supper.

We could hear the calling, all right, a gang of two families, five kids, four adults, nine friends mostly, except for some titanic clashes of young wills. All headed 200 miles north as Old Lady Winter called to us across the melting snow.

Dave Landwehr, Noah Landwehr, Kyle Landwehr, Matt Landwehr, and David
 throwing snowballs into Canada.

SHE CALLED SATURDAY morning. Was it a coincidence that I stepped out of the hotel room the same time as our friends’ son, Noah?

“I’m going for a hike,” I said to him.

“Can I come?” Noah asked. He knew he could. Adults don’t invite themselves along when someone is headed for a dawn hike. They wait politely, sometimes too politely. Not 11-year-old boys, which is fine with me.

So off we went, along a trail from the lodge. The snow was hard packed from skiers. It was easy going, like walking on hard foam. “Look, a jackrabbit,” Noah pointed ahead. I could see only snow—Where? There. Where? THERE!—until the rabbit moved its head. Then suddenly the black eyes jumped out, the ears, the huge back feet, as it nibbled some willow buds. Talk about protective coloration.

“Snowshoe hare,” I corrected. We moved toward it down the path. It hopped away, in no great hurry.

Noah left the path to see where it had been eating. The snow sucked his leg up past the knee. Of course he was wearing tennis shoes. He climbed back onto the trail and brushed the snow from his socks.

Dave L, Sue and Kyle on the fire tower.

As we walked on, Noah’s sharp eyes picked out more snowshoe hares, six, eight, 12. We saw their tracks, back feet five inches long, toes spread out to keep on top of the crust. And tracks from a large canine. We called it a wolf. And scat with fur in it, next to an empty 12-gauge shotgun cartridge.

There are many mysteries to solve on a walk like this, and much to talk about too. Favorite books. Kid sisters who are learning to talk. Things you don’t usually hear from an 11-year­old because they don’t discuss these things with people from the Land of Bland (adults) except on frosty morning hikes.

WINTER CALLED AGAIN on the ski trail, this time to Mollie, Matt, and me. As the Gang of Nine started skiing, we three fell into the natural pecking order quickly. Last place. That didn’t bother us. Mollie sat in her sled, attached to my waist by a rope. Matt kept pace at our side. He wore my Indiana Jones hat over his eyes.

We went at our own pace on the Sugar Bush trail. I marveled at the endless hills of sugar maple, some so old that their bark had cracked like the hide of a crocodile. And huge birch, with limbs like oak. All etched into the crystal white snow as only March mornings can do.

The kids took a closer look. Matt spotted a bracket fungus with a small branch growing straight through the middle. You’ve read about a tornado blowing a piece of straw through a telephone pole? I can understand that. But how did that branch grow right through the middle of a bracket fungus? Neither Matt nor Mollie not I could figure it out.

Malika and Mama on the fire tower.

We saw other wonders of a young world, too. A pine squirrel sat on a limb, scolding us between bites of a seed sandwich. A boulder with a tree growing out its side, then up—a giraffe, no, a brontosaurus.

The greatest wonder came when Mollie fell out of the sled as it fish-tailed down a hill. Mollie started crying. She hadn’t had much luck skiing, and now she couldn’t even stay on the sled. So Matt asked if he could help pull her.

That’s a wonder because eight-year-old boys aren’t known for compassion toward four-year-old girls. Especially when they fall in the snow and come up like Jaws III.

Mollie was so shocked with Matt’s chivalry that she said yes. So Matt gave Mollie one of his ski poles, grabbed hold of the rope, and “helped” me pull her the last mile. Our slow-going got a little slower. I would glance back and see Matt coasting along. I felt like an Evinrude at the St. Paul Aquatennial.

“You’re doing great, Matt,” I said. He smiled proudly.

THERE WERE LOTS OF OTHER calls from winter, too. Like on our way back from the old border crossing of the Pigeon River, as Cindy, Kyle and I sang songs in the car. You don’t sing songs with 12-year-olds except when winter calls.

A visit to a sacred site: The Witch Tree.

· Or seeing the Witching Tree, its lone root tapped into a crack οf granite, “The Spirit of the Little Cedar,” our Indian guide, Melvin, called it, a tree but much more than that, a shrine that native Americans have visited for 450 years, offering it tokens like tobacco in exchange for safe journeys.

· Or when Dave and I hiked up to the High Falls, watching the water roar under its sheer shield of ice, all the while marveling, arguing, agreeing, disagreeing. Talking.

Dave & Sue Landwehr, and 
me in an impromptu lunch.

· Or as Cindy and I walked through the night, kerosene lanterns pointing the way under a moon so bright we could have read as we walked, though we were in no mood to read.

· Or as Sue reached out and gave me a spur-of-the-moment hug as we stood in the parking lot.

In countless other ways, winter called, until at noon on Sunday, she started to rain. Real rain. Spring rain. You could almost see the snow pack sigh and say goodbye, which is what our two families did.

Then like the Witching Tree, Winter gave us safe voyage home. For all of that, we give thanks.