Bear 1, Campers 0 ~ May 25, 1995

 David Heiller

Jim and I were paddling across the east end of Vera Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area last Friday when Jim let out a holler. “There’s a bear in our camp!”

We were about a quarter mile away. You don’t realize how slowly a canoe travels until you paddle toward a campsite that contains your food pack and a bear in the same tree.

We bore down on the camp. “Paddle Dave, paddle!” Jim said. I wasn’t exactly dozing in the sun. We started yelling. The bear must have heard us. It dropped out of the tree and scampered happily into the woods.

We had hung the food pack in a tree, like we always do on our annual trip into lake country. We knew a bear would come calling. The day before, it had left teeth marks on a few dry food items by our fire grate. Things in plastic bottles that we don’t usually hang, like rice and salt.

It struck pay dirt on that first visit too: we had accidentally left out a quart of Heiller’s Pure Maple Syrup. It bit through bag and bottle and licked it up. That made us as mad as it made the bear happy.

Then Jim and I had to watch from the water while the bear hung like a double-jointed gymnast and picked out other goodies, such as the blueberry pancake mix and Cindy’s chocolate chip bars.

It gets worse.

Early Saturday morning the bear returned. We heard a crashing noise by the lake. Jim crawled out of his bag and shined his flashlight on a very big black bear on the ground below the food pack. It raced away, but not before taking a jar of Tang and a bag of apples and the last of the bread.

That was enough for us. He was eating us out of tent and campsite. We figured if we stayed any longer, he’d take over the cooking duties for Dave, and Dave is pretty touchy when anyone growls about his cooking.

So on Saturday we headed for new territory. Before we left, Dave scratched on a rock: Beware bear. I hope that bear can’t read.

Blame it on the new guy

It’s all Steve’s fault.

Steve took the place of Paul, who had traveled with Jim and Dave and me for eight straight years up north. We hadn’t even seen a bear in those eight years.

Then along comes Steve, who had dreamed about a bear just a week before the trip. And a bear comes and takes all our food? Pretty suspicious.

In fact, it might have even been Steve up in that tree. It’s been a while since he’s had a shave and a haircut.

Steve, Jim, Dave, and David: different crew,
slightly; different shenanigans, slightly.

Steve isn’t much of a fisherman. He caught a lot of things, but none of them were fish. Mostly he caught trees and rocks and logs and a lot of good natured ribbing, most of which he gave himself.

Sometimes when Steve got a snag, Jim would coach him off it. Jim missed his calling as a sports announcer. We didn’t catch many fish, so Jim had to practice on snags. “Come back the other way with the line, Steve,” he would say, while Steve’s rod bent against a 10 pound rock bass. “Keep it tight. Now jiggle your rod tip. Now pull from the other side.”

Steve attracted gnats. They may have thought he was a bear. Every evening, he would sit by the fire and a cloud of bugs would settle on him like a hair dryer. Steve would put on his sunglasses to protect his eyes, which worked great for the gnats but didn’t help him see his way around too well by the light of the campfire.

When it rained, Steve donned his new rain suit. The coat fit fine, but the pants were an extra large, something which Steve is not. So the crotch of the rain pants came to his knees, and the hem came out somewhere near the lake. He looked like a little kid in big, rubber-coated pajamas. We all laughed about this too, including Steve.

A lot of laughter and exploring

Laughter is a main ingredient of a good canoe trip. There’s plenty of serious conversation, and times when we don’t talk at all, like on a lake at night when the loons are calling back and forth.

A new canoe partner for David.

But everybody gets teased. We laughed at Dave’s voice, how it rumbles like a distant thunderstorm across the lake. Dave reminded me several times about the day I jumped into the water after a fishing rod that a fish had pulled in.

We recalled Paul trying to keep warm on our first trip, soaked and bedraggled to the bone while he insisted everything was just peachy. And Jim stripping off his clothes and washing up in the lake, then giving us the play by play of what it was like.

And Steve’s rainsuit.

Another part of a good canoe trip is exploring new country. We did that when we canoed down Knife Lake one clear, calm morning. The water was a beautiful emerald green. You could see down 10 feet. We sat in the sun and Dave cut thick slabs of meat and cheese for sandwiches. We climbed Thunderhead Point and could see for miles and miles.

We visited Isle of Pines, where Dorothy Molter lived for 60 years. We found a pile of her old bottle caps. I felt the spirit of the Root Beer Lady in the wind through the huge pine trees and her little lilac bushes.

We didn’t catch fish that day, but Dave put it best when he said it was a perfect day to not catch fish. It was a perfect trip too.

Except for the bear.

On the moonlit waters of Lake Insula ~ May 26, 1988

David Heiller

The moon slid above the western horizon about a third of the way into the sky before Paul spotted it through the pine trees. He and we three other men turned from our seats around the campfire to peer at it, yellow and soft in the spring haze. It didn’t throw much light as it approached its first quarter stage last Friday, May 20.

“Let’s go out on the lake.” I threw out the suggestion to my three companions, much like we threw out bait from the big rocks in front of our campsite on Lake Insula in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, hoping for a fish but not worrying about it.

“I remember once when we canoed in with a full moon,” Paul Dwyer said. The Duluth man was a veteran of this neck of the North Country.

“You couldn’t portage though?” I asked.

Paul answered with a healthy expletive, one not too strong for the campfire, but a little heavy for a weekly newspaper. “It was beautiful. Everything looked like a negative image of a picture.”

“So who wants to go out?” I repeated.

“Yeah, I’ve been out in a full moon like that,” Dave Landwehr answered, crouching over the cast iron grill that had “U.S. Forest Service” molded on top. “It’s nice.”

The Sturgeon Lake man’s voice said it was nice indeed, but it added a tone that said a soft seat on a boat cushion by a fire was nicer still.

Jim in the BWCAW

“C’mon Jim, whatdaya say?” I said, turning to Jim Ryczek for my last hope.

The Wisconsin man looked at the fire. “I don’t know,” he hesitated.

“Go,” Paul and Dave said almost simultaneously.

“I guess that's not such a bad idea,” Jim agreed.

We walked past our two tents, down to the bank to Dave’s 15-foot Grumman. We grabbed our Misukanis canoe paddles. I crawled in first, walking easily down the middle while Jim steadied the bow. It was easy keeping balance with none of our 100 pounds of gear on board.

Jim put one foot in the boat and pushed off with the other, leaving the shore without much notice. In that instance, we were in another world, a world of dark water and shadows and pale stars and that yellow, banana-shaped moon. For the past two days we had seen blue skies and bluer water. We had seen an eagle nesting atop a white pine. We had startled two moose, a cow and a spike bull, off an island hide-away, and paddled respectfully after them as they stretched and swam across a channel to disappear into the brush. We had seen mergansers mating, and 10-pound northerns flopping on the end of our stringers.

But the moon seemed to pull us to the dark water, and quickly showed us another side of the Boundary Waters.

We paddled west at first, seeking as much faint light as we could. We circled around a small bay, off the main western body of Insula. A thick shadow lay at the edge of the water, where the jack pines met their reflection.

“Get a little closer to shore,” Jim said, pointing his paddle to the northern shore. Butterflies rose in my stomach as we steered toward the trees, looming ever larger until they seemed to grab at the moon with their tips and smother what little light we had.

“I can see,” Jim said. “We’re fine.” Did he sense my butterflies, or maybe have a few of his own.

The whole crew.

We paddled along the edge of the bank, perhaps 10 yards off, maybe 10 inches. The darkness was too thick for me. But we could hear the shore, hear the closeness of the paddles as they dug into water, and the water as it split the front of the canoe and dribbled off with a metallic sound.

We cleared the bay and paddled across lake toward two islands north of the campsite. We could see the campfire’s red glow now, and see the two men lying on their pads alongside it. The water split up ahead, and we caught a blur out of the corner of our eyes. Then came a heavy ker-PLUSH, as the fish returned to the dark water from a high jump. The sound was repeated to our right. Some powerful northerns were showing off for us, and as their bellies hit the water with that heavy ker-PLUSH, I could imagine they were even bigger than the 10-pounders that Jim had pulled in three hours earlier a short distance away.

We continued on, around another island, losing sight of our campfire. But the moon stayed with us, following us south as we talked softly and paddled on. We came into view of the campsite again. Is there anything so reassuring on a dark, silent lake? We put our paddles down and floated. A slight breeze, barely noticeable, pushed us south, rocking the canoe slightly.

Then a loon called from the southern part of Insula, perhaps half a mile or more away. The cry was two syllables, the second longer than the first. The sound carried across the lake and bounced off the shore and back at us softly, so that the echo was repeating even as the first call hung in the loon’s throat.

Another loon to the north answered with a higher-pitched series of cries, like a gull, only deeper and richer. The sounds layered the lake, with the echoes adding to the spell. Their calls are hard to describe. Maybe they have to be heard on such a night to understand why the loon is the unquestioned master and symbol of the Boundary Waters.

The moon had climbed higher, now nearly overhead. Jim and I both sat up in the canoe at the same time, and headed back to the glow of the campfire. We had been guests of the moon and the water, the loons and fish. And we felt very lucky indeed because we knew we had been given something more precious than a fortune, an experience and memory to take back with us as we left the moonlight and the Boundary Waters.

It’s a memory we look forward to reliving, and exploring in a new light, again.

Memories, unlike fish, don’t get away ~ May 23, 1991

David Heiller

Jim’s voice carried over the tiny lake with the hushed urgency that only Jim could give it while watching a fellow fisherman fighting a lunker.

“It’s a big sucker,” he said. “Work him in easy.”

I had heard that voice a year before, when an eight-pound lake trout graced the net which Jim held. Now it was Dave’s turn, with Jim again at the net.

David and Paul entering the BWCAW bleacher.

Dave’s gold and orange spoon clung to the mouth of a beauty, all right. Even from our canoe bleacher seats 40 yards away, we could see Dave’s arm muscles strain, could hear Jim’s urging.

Dave brought him in once, but this northern wouldn’t hear of that, and peeled out another 20 yards of line. Dave worked him next to the canoe again, and Jim brought the net around the head, and halfway up the belly.

That’s when the fish had had enough. It flicked the spoon into the net, plunged back-ward into the air, then hit the water and in an instant, was gone.

We were all a bit shocked, I think, and for a split second there was silence on the lake. It had happened so quickly. Then Jim let some carefully chosen words fly, unrepeatable here, and aimed at himself. Good fishermen are their own worst critics.

It’s funny, but losing a northern like that has its place on any camping trip. It’s almost as good as catching one. Dave could marvel at its girth, at how it had attacked his spoon the second it hit the water, at how its teeth had chipped some of the orange paint away, at how it wouldn’t fit into the dog-gone net. He could even give it a weight: 12 pounds.

So much more than fishing.

Dave wasn’t angry. Our main goal in this five-day trip into canoe country has never been catching 12-pound northerns or eight-pound lake trout. Then you might feel frustrated and swear bitterly and remember angrily those near misses. You see guys like that, guys who pack in two pails of minnows and a seine and a live-box the size of a trunk, who fish morning, noon, and night. That’s fine I guess, but I think they are missing something.

Like our trip up into that chain of tiny lakes, just north of Insula, where Dave’s 12-pounder still resides. We carried, pushed and pulled our two canoes over logs and rocks from lake to lake, until we could go no further. Then we hiked on without the canoes. In thick brush next to the stream, we found morel mushrooms covering the ground, and picked till two hats were full.

We came to another lake, and wondered when anyone had last sat in the sun with their shoes off at its bank, eating gorp, or sprang on the muskeg, or saw that blue racer snake through the grass, or watched an osprey swing downstream, like we did.

We pulled in two smaller northerns from Dave’s Bay, then headed back. The sinking sun turned the lake golden. It caught two hooded mergansers as they watched us sweep around a corner; then they skipped into flight across our bow, churning the water, etching their maroon-and-white beauty into our minds.

Dave L, the camp cook, always kept the gang satisfied.

Back at the camp, Dave whipped up a pot of wild rice, and Jim sautéed the morels, and Paul took out his fillet knife, and I caught another two-pounder, and we ate the freshest fish supper ever, with trimmings no restaurant could match, no where, no how.

We recounted Dave’s fish fight a few more times over the campfire. The moon hung like a thumbnail in the west, flanked by Jupiter and Mars. The lake was quiet. No campfires, no man-made noise. We were full, content, and we carried another slice of memories to go with so many others, five years’ worth. Memories like a big piece of pie, the kind that melts in your mouth and makes you want one more hunk, one more crack at that 12-pound northern, one more bushwhack, one more loon call hanging over the dark water, one more plate of food as wild as this beautiful wilderness that keeps calling us back.

Yes, fish get away sometimes, but memories don’t. We’re lucky for that.

The one that got away on Walter Lake ~ May 22, 1997

David Heiller

Paul, Dave, Jim and I had a chilly five days in the Boundary Waters last week. It froze most of the nights, and snowed most of the days.

But we didn’t mind, because the fish were biting.

Jim caught the first one a few hours after we set up camp on the Walter Lake. It was a 27-inch lake trout. We figured its weight, using a DNR formula, at 13 pounds.

Jim and a northern in the snow.

Later that afternoon, Paul landed a 42-inch northern. It weighed 21 pounds. The next day it was Jim with a 39-inch northern and Paul with a 38-inch one, 17 and 16 pounds respectively. Then Dave pulled in a 30-inch, eight pound northern.

It’s funny how a person can put up with crummy weather when he is catching fish like that.

Well, technically, I didn’t catch a fish like that. I caught a few smaller ones that fit nicely into the frying pan. It’s all luck anyway, right?

The fish I’ll remember most is the one that got away.

It took my cisco and bobber and ran with incredible power toward the shore of the bay where we were camped. Then it veered left, toward the center of the bay.

It stopped for a few seconds to swallow the cisco. Then it started swimming again. That’s when I set the hook. Wow. It was the biggest fish I ever felt. It was almost scary, thinking what was at the end of my line.

I started reeling in. The fish and my line went back toward shore. Then it stopped. I couldn’t budge the fish.

With a sickening feeling, I realized the fish was snagged on something. Paul came over with a canoe. I hopped in the front, and we paddled to the spot. He saw a flash of the fish amidst the branches of a dead tree under the water. The fish had taken a side trip through the snag when it ran with my minnow, and was now wrapped around a branch.

I gave one more tug, the line broke, and the big fish was gone.

How big was it? A 25-pounder, at least.

I moped about the lost fish a time or two. Dave tried to console me. “It’s just a fish. It’s just life,” he said in the canoe later that day. I knew he was right. But I couldn’t help feeling sad. I couldn’t help wondering how big that fish was. Thirty pounds, easy.

I lamented the loss the next night around the campfire. Dave said, “Well, at least you can beat it in cribbage.” We all laughed, and that was the last I mentioned it. No use crying over lost lunkers.

FISHING WAS only part of our trip’s highlights. We saw a cow moose and her calf one morning. The calf was sucking milk, while the mother eyed us warily from behind white cedar branches.

Seeing a mamma and baby moose in the wild is worth at least one big fish. It’s always amazing how big they are. The cow was six feet high at her hips.

ONE afternoon two forest service employees came across the lake and checked our latrine to see if a new one would have to be dug. They were clearing portages, using axes and saws.

We were glad they followed us in. It made the trip out much easier. On the trip in, we had to climb over several trees that had blown over the portages. That’s not easy to do with a pack and canoe on your shoulders.

The rangers were both young women, fresh out of Northland College. We told them about some of our past 11 trips together. They listened politely. That impressed me. It’s nice when people know how to listen. We felt like old-timers compared to them. But they looked very competent, and no doubt they were.

“They pay you to do this job?” Jim asked them. That summed up our feelings as they paddled off to the next campsite.

ANOTHER memory: We were crossing the first portage on our way to Walter Lake. Paul was walking ahead of me. He was carrying two packs, one in front and one in back; three paddles, two life jackets, and a minnow bucket. We pride ourselves on making portages in one trip, and Paul wasn’t going to break that tradition.

Paul is not a small man. He says he weighs 300 pounds. As my daughter would say, “Yeah right, Dad.”

Paul, on an easier portage,
during a different year's trip.

We came to a spot on the portage where water from snow melt was rushing across. A half-rotten log lay on one side of the trail. Paul didn’t want to get his feet wet, so he tried walking across the log. The log cracked and sagged. Paul jolted from one side and the other, like a cement truck on a high wire. He couldn’t see his feet because of the pack in front.

We stood and watched and tried very, very hard not to laugh, the way you do when you see someone slip on a patch of ice.

As usual, Paul made it across. He always does. He is surprisingly nimble for a mountain. A few well chosen words always seem to help him. He provided a humorous moment for the rest of us insensitive louts.

The four of us plan on returning to our fishing hot spot again next year. I want to take another stab at that 35-pounder that I lost.

By the way, Walter Lake isn’t the real name of the lake. If I mentioned the real name, I might not live long enough to return there with my three fine friends.

There’s more than fish to a fishing trip ~ May 21, 1992

David Heiller

We might even catch some fish. Last week’s column ended on that spurt of optimism, and it came true, except for Dave.

Dave Landwehr waiting for a lunker...
or a snag.

There comes a time every year, when we go canoeing up north, that Dave does his “Pretend I’ve Got A Lunker” trick. That’s when his lure gets snagged on a stick or rock, and instead of carefully working it off, he strains and jerks and bends the tip of his rod like he’s Babe Winkleman bringing in an eight pound lake trout.

That’s what he was doing on Saturday afternoon, when Paul and I paddled up. There he sat, making faces, groaning against the rod, snagged solid. It was kind of funny. We smiled like you smile at an old story that you’ve heard a few times.

Then suddenly Dave crashed back into his seat, and held up his rod and started swearing. The top section had broken clean in two. Now THAT was funny. We smiled, we laughed, we roared. It was an Oscar-winning performance, unfortunately better than even Dave had expected.

I figure that Dave tempted the fates one too many times, like the boy that cried fish. He never did catch one. But at least he can brag about the one that got away: it was so big that it broke his rod.

The rest of us did catch some fish, nothing to brag about, but enough for supper every night except the first night, when Dave made spaghetti with ground venison sauce which was so good we forgot about fish anyway.

The other three nights we sat around the camp fire full of boiled lake trout, wild rice, noodles, and potatoes. That’s a fine way to end a day in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

You can’t ask for any more than that, but you get it anyway. You always catch more than fish in the Boundary Waters.

Like when Dave and Paul saw a ruffed grouse drumming as they took trips to the biffy one morning. Or an otter in Cherokee Creek on Sunday, coming out. Or naps, sweet, long naps in the sun, no phones ringing, no power saws buzzing, not even any mosquitoes buzzing.

A beautiful morning

Or on the granite slab in front of our campsite before sunrise on Friday morning, reading Sigurd Olson and listening to the birds of the north, their songs fresh and new and wild like the lakes and islands of the boundary waters.

The lake was dark and silent, save for a rim of rose at the shoreline. The island 200 yards out front emerged from the gloom, the pine tree branches a lacey black. A loon called and another, far down the lake, answered hoarsely.

The clear sky changed as morning mists rolled in. The air became clammy and thick. The sun inched above the distant shoreline, then glowed like a spotlight above the trees, and the fog melted and crept away. That was my cue to make a fire for coffee. What a way to start a morning.

Old-timers scoff at such romantic descriptions. They remind me that this country was logged at the turn of the century. It wasn’t so pretty then. They mention the mercury in the lake trout, the USDA caution to eat no more than one fish a month. The water isn’t so pure after all. They shake their heads at how much poorer the fishing is now than it used to be in the good old days. “Before schmucks like you discovered it,” they almost say.

Let them say it. There’s enough room for everybody, as long as we treat the land and water with the respect it has coming.

A Gift in the Moonlight

Jim and I paddled into the moonlight on Friday night. First we hugged the shoreline. Patches of moss glowed eerily in the darkness. Tree roots loomed like misshapen monsters.

Jim and David on a daytime paddle.

We moved into the middle of the lake, and the moon instantly cleared the tree line and shone clear and bright. It brightened our spirits too, made us grin and talk. Talk can’t describe how bright and pretty a full moon on a quiet lake can be.

We paddled around a dark island, then came out to a shimmering path of moonlight that lead like a yellow brick road back to camp. Two loons swam through it, silhouetted for an instant against a glittering ribbon of yellow wonder. It was a vision worth a thousand words, a gift no money could buy. Even old-timers would have enjoyed it.

We followed the moon down a narrow channel, toward our camp. A beaver splashed on our left. The voices of Dave and Paul guided us home, their campfire an orange dot on the dark shore. What a beautiful, age-old sight.

Welcome home

I could go on and on, but anyone who has been to the Boundary Waters can rekindle their own memories. In fact, I feel a little foolish for this sixth annual gushing about our trip.

But one more gush: When we got to Dave’s on Sunday evening, his son Matt stood waiting by the mailbox. As we approached, he stuck his hand out like he was hitch-hiking. His eyes gleamed above a grin a mile wide. It was a look saved for only Dad, gone five whole days, from a 10-year-old boy. It’s not a look you see every day, and not a look you easily forget. A look of pure love and affection. If it’s aimed at you, you’re the luckiest person in the world. I know I am.

That’s another thing you get from a trip up north, maybe the best thing of all. It’s enough to make you forget about whether or not you catch a fish, or even break your rod.

Two tales of life and death ~ May 10, 2001

by David Heiller

The call of the bittern almost shook the windows in the house last Friday morning. I stepped onto the deck and looked toward the pond. I couldn’t see anything, so I went back inside and grabbed the binoculars.

When the call came again, I was able to zero in on a bird standing on the south side of the pond. He blended in perfectly with the dried grass all around him, two feet tall and very stout.

American bittern.

I’m saying it was a “he” because I think he was calling for a mate. It was one of the most fascinating things I’ve ever seen. The call started in his midsection, as if he was gasping for air. Then he puffed out his feathers and stretched out his neck like he was about to throw up. His chest bulged up like a hot air balloon. Then out came this big, wet, hollow call. Glug-Ga-GLUG, Glug-Ga-GLUG, Glug-Ga-GLUG, Glug-Ga-GLUG. It sounded like Paul Bunyan using a plunger in an echo chamber. The nickname of the bird, “slough pumper,” comes from that unique sound.

The funniest part was that after every call, the bird would look up and slowly rotate his head across the sky like a radar. He must have thought his call was so powerful that a lady slough pumper would come flying right to him.

·        *   *   *   *   *

On Saturday morning, our dog, MacKenzie, started digging frantically underneath the out-house. Cindy and I were working in the garden. We didn’t pay much attention to her until we caught the smell of a skunk and realized what she was after. MacKenzie quickly slunk away. The memory of past skunks must be engraved in her mind.

There are several animals I cannot tolerate near our home and the skunk is at the top of the list. I went in the house and got my son, Noah, who is a sharp-shooter. He loaded up the .22 rifle and came out with me. First I pulled the back of the outhouse and peered underneath. No skunk. Then I opened the door and peered into the two holes. If you have never peered into an. outhouse hole with the thought that a skunk might be looking back at you, then you are lucky. No skunk.

Then I sprayed water underneath it and in the holes. No skunk.

“I’m going to tip it over,” I told Noah. “Get ready to shoot.”

The outhouse is old, and was threatening to tip over on its own, so it didn’t take much of a push to do the job. Out came the skunk! It had been hiding under the floor, in a nice little nest of dried grass. It crawled out looking rather confused, and sat inside the building.

Noah had a perfect shot. He plugged it three times, and it was dead, but not before it gave one last hallelujah of a spray. The stench sent Cindy gagging into the house. She stayed out of the garden for the rest of the day. I carried the skunk into the woods with a shovel.

Spring is always an adventure in the country, with good endings and bad. Mankind plays God in between. I hope the slough pumper finds a mate, and I’m glad the skunk did not.

                                             *                            *                            *

This note arrived at the newspaper the next week:

If I were you I wouldn’t be bragging how you had a poor little skunk killed. You should be ashamed of yourself. There are many ways to get rid of skunks without killing them. Shame on you.

And she signed her name.

A good trip, including that dam portage ~ May 23, 1996

David Heiller

Our canoe trip got underway with a thud last week. The goal was to get from Snowbank Lake to Ima Lake, which is only six miles. But one thing stood in our way from Snowbank to Parent Lake: ice.

The ice was an issue.

It was pack ice, rubbery sheets of it. Some the size of a table, some the size of a football field. Some thick and white, some black and broken, all sloshing together like ice in a glass.

We launched our canoes amidst it, and travelled a total of about 15 feet. We thought we could slip through the ice, but the leads closed up. We tried to blast through the rotten stuff like an Alumacraft icebreaker, but it was too thick for that. A whack with the paddle wouldn’t break it either.

The last thing we wanted was to get wedged in an ice jam. So we had to turn around, take out our packs, and carry the canoes 50 yards through the woods to open water.

As we approached the portage to Parent Lake, we saw that it was surrounded by half a mile more of the same jig-sawed ice. There was no way to get through it.

Oh, beaver dams, only bigger...

Dave, our unofficial leader, had an idea, like he always does. He spied a small creek from Parent to Snowbank on his map. We paddled to it. It was a creek all right, but we weren’t the first to find it. That honor would go to the beavers. They had made dams all along its half mile length.

These were not your Pine County beaver dams. These dams would have made voyageurs drool. Three and four feet tall, curving grace-fully from shore to shore, made of logs and sticks and mud and rocks. They were like Hoover Dams for beaver.

They were really pretty, except that they were in our way.

But Dave being Dave, talked Jim into it. That didn’t take much talking. Jim is always eager for adventures like this. It gives him something to talk about in case he can’t talk about all the fish he caught.

So they dragged their Old Town canoe over the bottom dam, then paddled as far as they could, then dragged it over another dam and paddled again, and dropped it over another dam, and so on, slogging through muck and scraping through trees and puzzling over which channel of water to follow to the next dam.

Paul and I dutifully followed, hoping with each step and each dam that we would not come to a dead end and have to go back the way we came. We didn’t know what was ahead. That’s what makes an adventure like this fun. But you hate to turn back.

Portaging Paul.

To say that Paul was not as enthusiastic as Jim would be an understatement of some magnitude. He fought off brush like it was his personal enemy. One branch swept his glasses off and into the bottom of the canoe. I always gain a new respect for the fine art of cursing when canoeing with Paul.

After about 90 minutes, just as Paul was taking his vocabulary to new heights, we saw the beautiful sight of Parent Lake, and the stream widened, and the beaver dams were behind us. What a great feeling of freedom! We had seen new country. We outsmarted the ice.

The ice didn’t seem so bad once it wasn’t hindering us. We canoed alongside it for the rest of the day. It made a light, tinkling sound as it moved, like a thousand tiny birds all singing at the same time.

This was a new experience for us, watching the ice go out. We were literally the first ones into this part of canoe country in the spring of 1996. We were a few strokes ahead of the open water and a few hours ahead the many other paddlers who would follow, looking for whatever they might find.

What we found was some beautiful new country. Like Ashub Lake. It’s just a little dot on the map, but one of the most beautiful lakes you could imagine. It is a designated trout lake. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has stocked it with brook trout. We didn’t catch any, but we sure caught the charm of the lake. With Disappointment Mountain in the background, the lake made you feel like you were in Glacier National Park, the water was that cold and pure.

We found a tremendous thunder and lightning storm on Friday night, May 17. Actually, it found us… maybe you too. But there’s something about a thunderstorm when you are camping that gives you new respect for Mother Nature.

It hit in the middle of the night. What a wonder to watch from a sleeping bag. Even through the top of the tent it hurt our eyes. It stayed over us like a bowl, roaring and pouring and making us think of our tiny, vulnerable lives.

Except for Paul. He slept through it. He was about as vulnerable as a grizzly bear in hibernation, and sounded like one too with his snoring. He was still trying to recover from the portage up the beaver dams, which he would make reference to every so often, when the right mood hit him.

Curses, foiled again... checking out that reel.

The one thing we didn’t find was fish. Maybe we were too early, or too unlucky. More likely, we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. We tried everything, every day. All our minnows and worms. All our lures. Even my Slug-Go. Nothing. Dave lost a big one when he couldn’t get his drag to work and it pulled his 10 pound test line tight and snapped it. That was as close as we would come to fish for supper.

But you can’t define a canoe trip entirely by the fishing. Jim did find other things to talk about. Like that dam portage.

And it was sure nice to return home. I’m always so happy to see my wife and kids. They seem equally happy. The canoe trip makes me appreciate them as much as the great outdoors. Even more.

Following the beat of the Twins ~ May 4, 1989

by David Heiller

When I was a high school student, my dream was to be a beat writer covering the Minnesota Twins. I covered high school sports in Caledonia to prove that I could be another Dave Mona or Sid Hartman, two of my heroes.

One time when I wrote a baseball column for the “Smoke Signal”, a grocer in town came up to me and shook my hand. “It’s just like something Don Riley from the St. Paul paper would write,” he said with a laugh. Don Riley became my new hero. I’ve never forgotten that compliment.

But after writing sports at the University of Minnesota, I ran into one too many muscle-bound egos, and gave up my dream of beat writer for the Minnesota Twins. I ended up as beat writer for the Askov American.

But last Friday night, the old dream came back for a couple hours when the Twins gave me a press pass to cover the Minnesota-Cleveland game. I usually do this once a year, and come up with a column on how not to interview people like Kent Hrbek or Frank Viola (the ego-factor again).

So this time I wanted to do a story on what it was like to be a beat writer covering the Minnesota Twins. I tried to arrange an interview with Mark Vancil, who covers the team for the Star Tribune, newspaper of the Twin Cities. I left two messages with Mr. Vancil, saying I was a reporter for the Askov American, newspaper of Nor­thern Pine County. He didn’t return either call.

When my brother Glenn (my photographer) and I checked into the press box, I greeted Charlie Crepeau, an old fellow who used to live in Finlayson some 50 years ago. I did a column on Charlie a couple years ago, after Kent Hrbek had snubbed me. Charlie told me that he had cut the column out and put it on his refrigerator. That’s another compliment I’ve never forgotten. To be pinned by a magnet next to first-grade art work is a writer’s greatest honor.

Charlie’s co-worker in the press box, Hardy Smith, looked me over as I picked up the stat sheets for reporters. One of the sheets was a seating chart for the press box. “I don’t think you’ll need that one,” Mr. Smith said. I braced myself, because this is usually the time I get booted out of the press box. (The press passes of Askov American beat reporters usually entitle you to sit in a vacant seat of the stadium, but not the press box.)

“Why don’t you grab a seat over there?” Mr. Smith said, pointing to some empty seats. At first I thought he was pointing outside the press box.

“You mean, over there?” I asked, pointing 20 yards away. No, over there, those empty seats,” he said, pointing to_. some seats in the press box. Then he added with a smile: “Next to Sid Hartman.”

Wow. We had just been invited to sit in the press box, and next to my old hero to boot.

We took our seats, then glanced around, trying not to gawk at the 20 other reporters. Behind us to the left were celebrities like Mark Rosen from WCCO TV, next to Tom Bernard, a commentator from KQRS-FM radio. Right behind us sat a row of veterans, guys in their sixties and seventies who looked like they stepped out of a ^“Shoe” comic strip. On our left was an empty chair with the name ^“Sid Hartman” bolted onto the table. In front, the first row, sat the beat reporters: Tom Powers, Mike Nadel, Steve Aschburner, and many more familiar names to newspaper readers. Right smack ahead of us was Mark Vancil from the Star-Tribune.

I didn’t introduce myself.

We learned a few things about press box etiquette during the game. In the first inning, for example, when Gary Gaetti hit a three-run homer, my brother and I both leaped out of our

chairs and started cheering. We quickly noticed that no one in the press box had risen from their chairs,or was even cheering. A few glanced our way, rolled their eyes. Most just sat there and typed into their lap-top computers. “Gary Gaetti hit a three-run homer in the first inning for a lead,” Mark Vancil wrote.

“I think we’d better be a little more neutral here,” I whispered to Glenn. He checked himself, which wasn’t hard the way the Twins were playing. When Kirby Puckett hit one out in the third, Glenn only half-rose from his seat, and raised his arms up to his ears, shouting a subdued, “Yay!” The rest of the stadium rose to their feet, but the press box gang sat like so many Buddahs. “Those fans really like Kirby Puckett,” Glenn apologized, and for a second I could see that he wanted to be out there with the other 37,600 fans, screaming and clapping.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much more to cheer about. Gary Gaetti made two errors in one inning, and Mark Vancil changed his sentence to read: “Gary Gaetti hit a three-run homer in the first inning for a lead, then committed two errors in the third to lose it.”

So we watched the Twins lose, and we watched the reporters in the press box too. Some of the reporters talked on the phones which were set on the tables in front of them. Mark Vancil once had two phones going at the same time, one on each ear, just like in the movies. All he needed was a checkered suit and a fedora with a press card sticking out. “You moron!” he shouted once, slamming the right phone down. Maybe he was trying to return my call.

In the seventh inning, Glenn nudged me and said, “Look who’s here.” I looked to my left. No mistaking, it was my old hero, Sid Hartman.

“Would you look at the nose on that guy?” Glenn said in some awe. It’s true, Sid has a nose like a large bird of prey. And he swooped slowly through the press box like an eagle too, smiling at some, sneering at others, and looking right through us.

It was a good night, even if the Twins lost. Sitting in the press box and watching the reporters was almost as fun as watching the game. Maybe that’s why I’m still a beat reporter for the Askov American.

A great day to climb the water tower ~ May 6, 1999

David Heiller

I knew that if I asked, the water tower crew would say yes, and that would mean I would actually have to follow through on my request and climb the darn thing.

It’s a love-hate relationship, me and heights. I’m not acrophobic, but I do get nervous when I’m high. (No wisecracks, please.)

At first I wanted to climb the old Askov tower, and get a shot of the guys working on the new tower. A bird’s eye view.

I asked the foreman, Jerry Burgess, what he thought.

He told me in a thick southern accent that he wouldn’t climb the old tower, no way. I thought he was joking, or testing me in some way. These guys aren’t acrophobic. But he was serious,

This picture of the Askov water tower
is courtesy of Keith J. Semmelink. 
Thank you, Mr. Semmelink!

It’s old, he explained. Some of the rungs on the ladder could be rusted. But I was welcome to climb the new tower, he said. He would even clip my camera bag on a rope and bring it up for me.

Great, I said. So on Wednesday morning, April 28, Jerry gave me a hard hat and took my camera, and I headed up the new tower. The ladder is inside a cage, so it would be hard for a person to fall and get hurt. You’d have to faint, or have a heart attack. But that was a possible scenario with me.

Two men were suspended about 50 feet off the ground in harnesses. They were welding the legs together. Welding is a key skill in the tower erection business. That and a southern accent. All the guys I talked to had drawls.

I stopped to watch them weld the legs of the tower. A man above would lower hand grinders and welding rods to them. I wished I hadn’t given up my camera.

Some big chunks of steel whistled past me from above. Two men were welding the inside of the tank. When they had a piece of scrap steel, they would drop it. I could see why a hard hat was a necessity.

I kept climbing, but I stopped every 10 seconds or so, partly to calm my nerves, but mostly to admire the view. It was fantastic.

When I reached the base of the tower, the two men were sitting on a scaffolding there. They had finished welding the inside, and were cleaning things up.

They didn’t have harnesses on. They said they were supposed to, but it made work awkward, so they didn’t always use them. One of the guys, John Stenger, said I was welcome to join them. I could swing out, reach over, and he’d give me a hand. I declined. Then he said he was only joking anyway. I should have called his bluff! Yeah, right.

I reached the cat walk. A sturdy railing surrounded it. I could relax there. The base was covered with ropes and hoses and tools. A guy named Don Burgess was straightening equipment; getting ready to leave. They were heading out that day to another job.

I asked Don if he liked his job. He said he did. He liked to weld, he said in his Indiana accent, which was a good southern one. He said he could weld as well with his left hand as he could with his right. Which is quite a gift, if you know anything about welding.

The other two men came up from their scaffolding to help Don with clean up. I asked Jo r, about his job. He had been doing it for about 30 years, and he looked to be my age, on the downhill side of 40. He did take about seven years off to be with his family in Poplar Bluff Missouri. The pay is good, he said, but it’s hard to be away from the wife and kids. Yes, he had a southern accent.

I asked the other guy what his name was. He would only say Greg. He had a warrant out for his arrest in Louisiana, because he hadn’t shown up for a divorce hearing with his ex-wife.

I asked Greg if he was ever got nervous being` up so high. “All the tahm,” he replied, and I could tell he was serious.

I asked if he had ever fallen. No, he said. But he had watched his dad fall 140 feet to his death several years ago. His dad had been climbing to the very top of the tower, on a ladder that didn’t have a cage around it, and a cyst on his pancreas had burst. It caused him to lose his grip and fall. The fall killed him, not the cyst; Greg said. It was a sobering story. Their company, Phoenix Manufacturing, had taken care of his mother all right, he said.

John asked me if I wanted to climb to the very top. The view was even better there. I said no. Greg’s story was fresh in my mind.

The view was superb from where I stood anyway. It was a gorgeous spring morning, the sunlight soft and warm, the air as fresh as flowers. It was a good day to work on a tower, or to. take pictures for a newspaper, even for a guy who is a little afraid of heights.