Opening Day in the Boundary Waters ~ May 28, 1987

David Heiller

I did something strange on Opening Day of the 1987 fishing season this year. I went fishing.

Fishing used to be a big deal to me, as a kid. I knew every sunfish hole in a seven mile radius of Browns­ville. The town sits on the Mississippi River, and every kid knows those same sunfish holes.

But there was no Opening Day for sunfish. You catch them all year. And I never seemed to make that leap from panfish to walleyes, like most young Minnesota men do as a rite of passage in their teens or early twenties.

So when a friend asked me if I wanted to go fishing on Opening Day for a long weekend, I didn’t really think about the fishing. My first question was “Where?”

And I knew the answer too, because my friend is cut from the same cloth.

“The BWCA,” he answered.

“Sure, count me in,” I told him, without even checking with my wife.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The BWCA. Canoeing, portages, water, white pines, granite. Primeval wilderness, untouched by man. Loons, moose, wolves, and yes, walleyes, too.

Confession time: I am 33 years old, and I had never been camping in the BWCA. There are reportedly only 56 other Minnesotans like me still alive. Well, 55 now.

We left Dave’s house, three of us, and picked up the fourth man in Moose Lake at about 3:30 a.m. Friday morning. We each had about four hours of sleep under our belts, but still three of us sat awake and watched the night pass by the van’s headlights. The fourth man, Paul, has made some 30 trips into the BWCA. He slept on a sleeping bag in the back.

The coveted paddles.
 David did get his own Misukanis paddle.

We put our two canoes in at the end of Fernberg Road east of Ely at about 8 a.m., and paddled most of the day. I took the stern, with Paul working the front. Our canoe looked like a pinball as I tried to keep us straight. Dave and Jim in the other canoe gained on us. Both had custom-made canoe paddles from Vince Misukanis of Moose Lake. One was even autographed. Paul and I agreed that they had an unfair advantage with those Cadillac paddles, but watching Dave keeling in the stern of his Grumman, back erect and shoulders driving the paddle, I knew better and hoped I could do that someday.

We made some 15 miles to Lake Insula by late afternoon, until caught by a thunderstorm. Paul, who was now in the stern and keeping us straight, broached the decision to camp. “If lightning hits them,” he said, nodding to Jim and Dave up ahead, “it will shoot across the water and get us too.”

Paul and Dave on the rocks of the BWCAW.

We pulled in at the next campsite, and set up our tents in the rain.

The next four day taught me a lot about the Boundary Waters. We sat on the boulders in front of our tents Friday night and watched satellites whirl overhead. It was o only clear night of the trip. We cooked pancakes for breakfast every morning, except the last. We ate 10 pounds of turkey-pork loaf. We canoed in the rain, we ate in the rain, we went to the bathroom in the rain, we even lit a fire in the rain, because we figured by Sunday, after 24 hours of solid rain, the fire ban that had been imposed must have lifted.

Jim took a first crack at the fire on Sunday morning. Paul and I lay in our tent, listening to him cracking twigs and striking matches. At one point, we imagined the sound of crackling flames, and the smell of smoke. Then Jim muttered something I can’t repeat here, and climbed back into his tent.

Paul had to show his 30 trips of experience, so he crawled into the wet morning, and 20 minutes later, announced in a loud voice. “The water’s boiling for coffee.” In less than five minutes we were all dressed and crouched in front of a leaping fire, drying out our clothes and warming our spirits.

We caught fish too, plenty of walleyes in the one-pound range, and a couple northerns that went four pounds. My fishing highlight came as I returned from a walk around the point where we had camped. As I walked into camp Dave remarked, “Boy the fishin sure hasn’t been much.” At that very instant, Jim’s pole started jerking toward the lake. I ran forward, and five minutes later, had landed a seven-pound northern. That’s not much by many standards, but except for a 10-pound carp from my beloved Mississippi in 1968, it was the biggest fish of my life.

The gang.

We started home on Monday, and by late that afternoon, were passing through familiar territory for Paul. He must have camped on every spot on Lake Four, as he pointed out fishing holes and good memories. He gestured toward a jack pine that grew on a tiny slab of rock at the edge of Lake Four. The tree grew at a 45-degree angle, a crazy tree growing on a crazy spot.

“That tree has been there as long as I can remember,” Paul said. “See, it points the way to Lake Four.”

Sure enough, coming from Lake Three, the tree was a perfect landmark of the right direction.

“And you know, some day some fool is going to cut that tree down,” he said.

“No, that’s nuts, no one would do that,” I said. “Why would they?”

“Because it’s unique, it’s special, and people like to destroy special things,” he answered.

We pulled into a campsite, and I started to see what Paul was talking about. The site was littered with plastic pop bottles, empty cans, and broken glass. We moved on to the next campsite. I was shocked to see more of the same. It seemed the closer we got to civilization, the more we saw the litter of our fellow campers. At the second site, someone had even sawed off a foot-long section of root from a towering white pine, apparently for fire wood. I thought of Paul’s dire prediction and saw a glint of truth.

The Boundary Waters left me with many other impressions. There’s something special about the camaraderie of camping with three other men. There’s something special about missing your wife and children. There’s even something special about Opening Day, although that was just a pretense. And there’s something special about the Boundary Waters, despite the garbage and destruction we saw the last day, something special that everyone who spends time there is sure to take back with them to the everyday world of work and family. It’s something I look forward to again someday.

The age old struggle with snakes & ticks ~ May 30, 1991

David Heiller 

WARNING: This column contains frank subject matter that may turn the stomach of the squeamish. In other words, if you don’t like reading about blood-sucking insects, don’t read this column!

Snakes and ticks have entered our heart and home the past few weeks; bring controversy and ancient philosophical questions.

Garter snake

We have an over-abundance of garter snakes on our property. At least I think so. Whenever I go to the garden shed, I see one, or sometimes more. As we took a sauna on Monday evening, one even crawled up through the floor by the door. I thought about catching it, but decided the spectacle would be too much for the family. (I can see the headlines: “Naked man killed by Finnish garter snake in sauna” or “Naked man wearing Finnish garter killed by snake in sauna.”)

Last summer during some house remodeling, one even came into the kitchen. I didn’t panic too much, because my grandma Heiller used to tell about a nest of rattlesnakes they had living in their basement that would visit their warm kitchen on some mornings. At least garter snakes aren’t poisonous.

Still, I’ve taken to catching every snake I see, putting them in a box, and transferring them to a lonely stretch of highway between our house and Sturgeon Lake.

This has created some domestic disagreement. Cindy likes to point out that snakes are great rodent and insect hunters. I know that. That’s fine. But I’ll still take a few extra mice and June bugs in exchange for fewer garter snakes.

Creepy, crawly, dead:
It all was part of reality for country kids.

Noah, Mollie, and their friend, Chris, turned into snake hunters on Saturday too, with my blessing and coaching. The first snake was hiding under an old piece of carpeting. I caught it by stepping lightly on it, then picked it up gingerly behind the head. I showed them how to hold it so that it couldn’t reach around and nip me. I assured them that it wasn’t poisonous, and that a bite wouldn’t even draw blood, or at least not much. Still, my heart was beating faster than my calm words showed as the snake twisted around my arm. I put it in an empty garbage can.

The kids seemed bolder than me. They soon had another 15-incher, which went into the can along with grass, sticks, bracket fungi, some lilacs, and a dish of water. They showed the two snakes to me. “That one’s Scaley,” Chris said. “This one is George.” George had a little scar by his tail, Noah explained. It might have been one that got away from me last year by doing the old “Twist-Your-Tail-Off-When-Grabbed By-A-Schmuck-Head” maneuver.

They ended up catching only one more snake, a baby about six inches long, but they had so much fun that they passed up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoons. Chris wanted to take Scaley home, which was fine with me, but not so fine with his mom and dad.

Snakes and ticks go together. They both like the long grass by the garden shed. Chris, who lives on Sturgeon Lake, hadn’t seen so many woodticks in his entire life. There were dozens of them crawling over the carpet which hid the snakes. And there were dozens of them on the kids, on legs, arms, butts, necks: One had even holed up in Chris’ belly-button, which he discovered at the lunch table, along with a dozen or so others. The kids gave them to me to smash with my fork. When we took a break for a root beer float at 3 p.m., a dozen more came off.

Chris did not ask to take home any woodticks, but I have a hunch he took some home anyway. Moms and Dads are powerless in such decisions.

Noah has taken a higher road to the tick invasion. He posed a serious

The dreaded woodtick.

philosophical question the other morning: “Which do you like better, woodticks or mosquitoes?”

The question stunned me for a minute. Then I had to confess my answer: mosquitoes. I never thought I’d defend mosquitoes. But at least you can see and hear them fairly easily, at least there is a repellant for them. Woodticks are just plain gross, ugly, and useless. No theologian has yet explained the reason God made woodticks, as far as I know. (Cindy believes that they are meant for chickens to eat, because Cindy wants chickens, but that’s another matter all together.) They sneak up on you, and you often don’t feel them until they are crawling up your thigh as you sit at a school board meeting. And then there are the ones on the dogs that get as big as your thumbnail, that fall off and you don’t discover until you step on them.

This column is deteriorating faster than a garter snake in the grass, or a woodtick in a belly-button, so I’ll end while I’m ahead. Remember, I warned you.

Sunday Night Supper ~ May 24, 2006

David Heiller

Our daughter, Malika, had a friend, Emily, over on Sunday. They made an interesting hot dish for supper. They put chips in a cake pan, sprinkled salsa and cheese and Cindy’s bean burrito filling on it, then baked it until it was a melted mass of something.

Seeing this concoction prompted me to ask Emily if she had a special Sunday Night Supper.

Malika's friends Emily and Kris with Malika.
(Kris didn't have Sunday Night Supper 
with us, but the three just go together. 
Like chips and cheese and Sunday Night Supper)

Yes, she replied, they fended for themselves, cleaned out the refrigerator, and her mom made a couple big bowls of popcorn as a side dish.

“We always had chips and cheese;” Malika replied. That’s true, we pretty much did. Chips with melted cheese, pop it in the microwave for a minute, then eat with a mix of salsa and sour cream. Simple and good.

Last Sunday’s meal must have been a combination of that tradition: Malika’s chips and cheese, Emily adding a touch of her own with beans and salsa, then actually baking it in a real live oven.

We sat at the table and ate it too, with our fingers. It was, like I said, interesting. Different. You’re from Minnesota, you know what I mean.

It occurred to me later that this was not a meal we would have made, much less eaten, on any other night of the week. Those nights are reserved for real hot dish, the kind with hamburger in it. Or a chicken breast, or pork chops, or fish, plus vegetables and maybe a salad. In other words, real food. Something from the freezer that we either grew, caught, or shot.

Sunday nights are different.

When I was growing up, we had tomato soup every Sunday night. Watch Lassie on TV and eat tomato soup. We didn’t have it any other night of the week. That was our Sunday Night Supper. It has to be capitalized.

It was a break from the rest of the week with its formal meals every night at 5:30 sharp, revolutionary almost.

Cindy had a Sunday Night Supper that was firmly linked to Bonanza. Watch Bonanza on TV, raid the refrigerator, eat supper.

My bet that most people reading this have their own Sunday Night Supper and its accompanying routine.

There’s nothing profound about all this. It’s kind of dumb to even write about. But I think there’s something to be said for traditions like that. Granted, I don’t stop and ponder the beauty of eating tomato soup with Sharon, Glenn, Kathy, Mary, Jeanne, Danny, and Lynette, and getting to do so while sitting in the living room watching Timmy and his dog.

But there was more to it than that. There was the cooking, and the smell, and the running in and out of the kitchen, and the words from Mom, and the familiar creak of the stairs and a visit from Grandma. All those little things that are woven as tightly as a rug from Selma Vοight. They add up to not so little things when it comes to a family.

Our kids have both moved away now. But I’m thinking those simple meals of good old chips and cheese maybe weren’t so simple after all. We were talking, laughing, bouncing off whatever the day brought, connecting for the upcoming week. We were together, and that’s what really counted.

It was good to be reminded of that again at Sunday Night Supper.

Moose, blackflies, and some technical fishing ~ May 27, 1993

David Heiller

You could call this year’s fishing trip the Year of the Moose, or the Year of the Blackfly. Or the year we caught all those fish. Technically.

I’ll take the moose first, and so will Paul. You’ve got to know Paul to understand why. He is a huge man, maybe 6-4, 280 pounds. Cross sumo wrestler with a grizzly bear and you’ll get an idea of what he looks like.

I’ve been canoeing with him for seven years now, and he’s as tough as a tree root. He’ll stand a freezing rain, wearing soggy tennis shoes and sweat pants with holes in them, and never complain. He’ll crawl into his old Boy Scout sleeping bag on the coldest nights and be snoring like a pipe organ before I’ve got my long johns on.

Paul and Dave

Nothing much bothers him in the woods, not even that 10-pound rock that I slipped into his pack three years ago. Not much except blackflies. Paul hates blackflies as much as they love him, and they do love him. Their mission in life is to seek him out and bleed him dry. If blackflies went to school, Paul’s picture would be on their textbook covers.

So that’s why you could call it the

Year of the Blackfly.

We were on a day trip to Ranger Lake on Saturday. It’s a little puddle just to the west of Cherokee Lake. No campsites, just an 80-rod portage (a quarter mile) and a nice place to eat a shore lunch.

Or so we thought. The portage should have warned us. Trees were laying across the trail very which way. We had to carry the canoes and packs over them, stepping carefully so as of to lose our balance.

The blackflies flew thicker with every step. Paul was carrying a pack and my fishing rod with a Red Eye fishing lure on the end. He was now swearing and waving his hands in front of his face.

The trail ended in a puddle of stagnant water. Beavers had dammed a creek, flooding the portage. We poled across it, but not before the thickest cloud of blackflies that I have ever seen found their old friend.

Paul’s hands flew wildly around his head, like he had a nervous disorder. He lit a cigarette and kept smoke billowing from the corner of his mouth, but those blackflies were chain smokers, and swarmed in for their own shore lunch of nicotine and blood.

My fishing line snagged in a tree as Paul crashed ahead, and the Red Eye lure went flying through the air. It landed on Paul’s back like a big bug.

Then we retreated. It’s the only portage in seven years that beat us, and it routed us good. I’ll never forget the sight of Paul up ahead, with that lure stuck to his back and about a million blackflies hovering around his smoking head. I didn’t laugh. Honest.

The year of the moose

We saw moose almost every day last week on our annual trip to lake country. On Wednesday, we saw a cow and her calf on an island on Cherokee Lake as we searched for a campsite. On Thursday, Dave and Jim watched a cow swim across their bow as they paddled up Gorden Lake.

David

On Friday, Dave spotted a cow on a breezy point on Town Lake. She stood still, like the bottom of an overturned tree. Was she waiting for us to see her? Maybe she wanted to show off her baby. It lay silently at her feet, watching us too. We drifted closer, until the mother gave a com­mand that we couldn’t hear. Then the youngster stood up on gangly legs, and they ambled off together.

But nothing will ever beat Sunday. We were heading home, and had stopped at an empty campsite on Sawbill Lake for one last lunch.

A noise came from the woods across a bay 100 yards away, a crashing, snorting noise, too loud for this quiet country. We could only sit and stare dumbly as a cow moose and her calf lurched from the thick underbrush into the water.

The cow snorted again, and looked into the woods, and right into the eyes of a timberwolf. It appeared without a sound, like magic, and stood gazing intently at the two animals, sizing them up.

The wolf turned its head to look at us for a few seconds too, although it seemed like time had stopped. It was sleek and gray, with the manicured face that you’ve seen in photographs, and a look of complete indifference in its eyes. Then it was gone.

We talked about it all at once, the four of us, but the words fell short somehow. It was one of those sights that we will cherish inside more than out, and be glad that we all saw it together.

The moose and calf stayed put. After all, Jim pointed out, she was sitting in her bedroom and her bathroom and her living room all at the same time. She didn’t have any appointments to keep, which was fine with us. What better way to enjoy lunch than to watch a couple moose?

The mother was bigger than a draft horse. Huge. How many times had she played cat and mouse with a wolf? It might be a different story in deep snow amidst a pack of wolves, but for now, no single wolf would get the best of her. You could see it in her homely face, in her rippling flanks and huge hooves.

Soon the calf was eating its shore lunch too, its head stuck up between its mother legs, suckling. The sight filled us better than any cheese and salami sandwich ever could.

Six fish, technically

And we caught some fish, although I’m not sure how many.

The confusion started on Friday. I was in the front of the canoe, and Dave was paddling in the back as usual. Dave has a work ethic the size of that last moose, with a bad back thrown in. When we fish, he sits in the back and paddles and thinks too much.

Paul and Jim

I had his rod up front, so naturally when that five-pound northern hit his spoon on Town Lake, I brought it in.

“Technically, that’s my fish;” Dave quickly pointed out. Never mind that he had caught a nice lake trout on MY rod on Thursday. That was his fish too, although technically it was mine. Then he caught one on his own rod, so that was his outright.

Then Jim caught a trout on my rod, so that was mine, technically, and Jim and Dave each caught one on their own rods, and I caught one on my rod.

We ended up catching six fish, I think, but technically I caught four, and Jim and Dave each caught three. Guys think—and argue—about these things after spending five days in the woods together.

One thing I do know: Paul didn’t catch any. Blackflies don’t count. Technically.

Some lessons from America’s pastime ~ April 11, 1991

David Heiller

Ghosts of baseball past and present are mingling like a couple of old timers at the ballpark these days.

For the present, baseball is haunting the four kids in our household, ages 4-7, my own two and the two we have temporarily adopted.

Two or three times a day they ask, “Can we play ball now?” And you can’t just answer “Sure,” not when you’re the only one that can throw the ball across the plate.

The American League has its designated hitter. The Birch Creek League has a designated pitcher: me. I’m also the entire infield, outfield, and umpire.

Actually, it’s pretty fun, if you don’t mind dodging a winter of dried dog droppings, retrieving balls from the sinkhole in the driveway, and most of all, being patient.

All the rules apply, except 
you can't strike out in family ball!

Patience, as with all kid activities, is the main requirement, mainly because you can’t strike out in our game, which is lucky for Tyson and Mollie. Ten or 12 swings before bat meets ball are not uncommon with them. When they are in a slump like that, any contact, fair, foul, or tick, is a hit.

When they get a hit, they all run the bases like mad, and often don’t stop even though I’m bearing down on them, ball in hand.

Slowly they are learning some; basic rules, like don’t run out of the base path, don’t pass another runner, don’t let a hit ball hit YOU, don’t run on a fly ball that might be caught.

They are learning, because when I tag them out, or force them out, or catch a pop fly, the kids are OUT. Sometimes they get angry, pout, even cry. But once they are called out, they stay called out.

That’s the way baseball is: The rules are sacred, and you don’t bend them even for a kid. Besides, the lure of the game, the laughter, the thrill of seeing a ball fly over the old man’s heat for a sure homer, is enough to keep kids from worrying about making an out or two.

You can learn a lot from baseball. (Here come: the ghost of baseball past.) I remember one time in a grade school game, my brother Danny was batting. He hit a ground ball to the left side, and raced to first so fast that his legs outran his body, and he went into first base like he was falling from a tree.

Concentration, as well as a sense of 
humor work well in baseball and life.

It seemed funny for a split second, until we realized that Pete Scanlon was playing first base. Even in eighth grade, Pete was about the size of a garbage truck. He caught the throw, like he always did, just as Danny smacked into him. Then he glanced casually over his left shoulder to see what kind of insect had bit him. It never dawned on him to get out of Danny’s way.

Danny lay crumpled on the ground in a cloud of dust at Pete’s feet. We all held our breath for a second, waiting to see whether he would come up swinging or crying or whether he would come up at all.

Danny instead rolled over onto his back, threw his arms out to the side and rolled his head back in a dying scene that would make John Wayne jealous.

We all laughed. Even Pete laughed, and no one had seen him laugh in three years. Then Danny got up, brushed himself off, and limped back to the bench.

It was a great lesson that Danny had learned on the spot and had taught us just as fast: A little humor goes a long way in a tense situation.

I usually grumble to myself when the kids ask me to play ball these days, because there’s always some work to be done or a book to be read or a nap to be taken. But it never fails that after a few pitches, I’m enjoying the game as much as them. It’s as good a family activity as you’ll find.

And like my brother Danny found out, it might teach you a lesson or two: Don’t take yourself too seriously, and watch how you run when Pete Scanlon is playing first base.