A little peace and quiet ~ July 24, 1997

David Heiller

That’s what we experienced last week. Peace and quiet. Our two kids were gone.

Mollie went to camp, and Noah went to visit a friend. So from Tuesday to Friday,

Malika was at camp.

we didn’t have the kids at home.

This has happened a few times in the last 14 years, but usually not for more than a day at a time. A four day stretch was a lot different. It took us back to the good old days, and maybe to some new days ahead.

When we came home from work on Tuesday, we could lie on the bed and read. We didn’t have to start making supper right away.

The house was quiet. The kids weren’t there to tell us about the blow-by-blow of their day, what Noah said to Mollie, what Mollie did back to Noah.

The house was clean, just like we left it in the morning. We could actually see our dining room table. It wasn’t piled with a basket of laundry and a couple books and a wrinkled newspaper.

The floor didn’t need sweeping, the living room didn’t need to be picked up. We didn’t have to ask Noah to put his shoes away, or Mollie to take her dirty clothes to the laundry room.

There were no basketball games to play, no softballs to toss, no chores to supervise. No arguing!

Hey, Dad, play some basketball with me?

No Sepultura. No Hanson. Those are music groups, in case you don’t have teenagers. They’re not my favorites, to put it politely. But my kids don’t like my music either.

On Wednesday we left work early and went to Duluth. We took our bikes along, and rode through the ritzy areas looking at mansions. We found a book store in someone’s house and browsed through used books. That was fun. One form of heaven for me would be a good used book store, and all the time in the world to spend there.

We ate supper at Taste of Saigon, bought candy at Hephzibah’s, and walked the board walk to the rose garden. Not once did we think about calling home to check on the kids.

A date is always nice!

We came home to a dark and quiet house. We were childless again.

We did think about the kids, Cindy more than me. We wondered especially about Mollie, how she was doing at camp. She never wrote, so we took that as a good sign, that she was having too much fun, or that she was too exhausted. Or both.

We enjoyed our time alone. It was a break. We were able to get a lot done. Not just work, but “quality time,” to use a phrase from the nineties.

Spouses need that, so they can become a couple again.

During their absence, I wondered what our life would be like without children. I kind of liked all that peace and quiet! A sense of freedom returned, that old feeling that I could go anywhere and do anything.

“Simplify, simplify,” Henry David Thoreau’s famous words, came to mind. The details of our life had simplified greatly without the kids: The big picture details that are a constant presence in the back of my mind, like how we’ll save enough money to send the kids to college. And the mundane ones, like how we’re going to get the kids to and from swimming lessons.

All together again!

Then it all changed, when a car door opened on Friday night and I heard Noah’s voice call out, “Hi Dad.” It was like a bolt traveled through the air between us, connecting us, triggered by his voice, by those two words, and I forgot about my new-found freedom.

On Saturday it happened again, when Mollie called me at work and asked if she could have Sarah spend the night. She was home, safe and sound! Wow, it was good to hear her voice.

It was good to give them hugs. It was good to have them back.

On the one hand, it would be nice not to have the worry and complications that our children bring. I’m envious of childless couples for that reason.

But on the other hand, I wouldn’t trade them for all the gold in Birch Creek township.

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.

A day to remember ~ May 29, 1986

David Heiller

Graves stretch up the hillside at the Catholic Cemetery in Cork Hollow. The cemetery, with its manicured lawn, is ringed by hardwood trees and cornfields. The dead are Irish here—Graff, Colleran, Sweeney, Corchoran, Quillen. They named this valley after their Irish county of Cork, left behind a hundred years and more ago.

The boy's grandfather.

Around the cemetery, near certain gravestones, small flags flutter in the breeze. American flags mark the veterans, some who died in combat, some of old age. Blue and gold flags mark the ladies from the auxiliary, who served the same cause at home, in a much different way. They sold food at Friday night bingo, or sent care packages to Vietnam. Some raised babies alone while they worked and waited for husbands and brothers, or fathers and sons, to come home.

Cars drove into the cemetery on this hazy spring morning. Men got out, opened their trunks to unfurl flags and take out rifles. They were dressed in khaki, remnants of World War II and Korea. A few of the men wore J. C. Penney. Forty years can cause you to outgrow World War II uniforms.

The women stayed behind the men, dressed in white blouses and blue slacks, not uniforms really but the closest thing to it. They wore VFW pins on their shirts.

The men lined up behind their flag bearers and their commander. The 20-odd spectators stepped to one side. The commander barked his orders. “Attention!” Backs straightened. Stomachs flattened as much as possible, which in some cases wasn’t much. Rifles bounced around from one arm to the other, coming to rest on the right shoulder, as the men came to attention.

“Forward, hunh!” The men moved ahead, left foot first. “Left, left, left-right-left,” the commander said. A few of the men were out of step as they turned to the left and circled to a flag-marked grave. “Company, halt.”

The father, once very young.

Four men with rifles stepped up to the grave, a Vietnam veteran killed in November, 1969. None of these veterans had served in Vietnam. They were remembering the dead from the war many people have tried to forget.

As the chaplain finished his words, a man in the crowd reached over to pick up his three-year-old son “There’s going to be a big noise now,” he whispered. The boy widened his eyes. His small hands cupped his ears. The father inched backward, as four rifles swung upward.

Boom! The guns flared with flame. An explosion echoed up the valley. The boy began to cry. The father moved farther away. Shell casings flew to the ground. Boom! The second report came. The boy cried louder. Heads turned their way. The soldiers kept their spread stance, as more casings clattered to the ground. Boom! The final report. Smoke drifted upward, met with silence, except for a child’s cry.

A bugle’s notes floated down from the hill, playing taps. The child quieted, tears on his cheeks. The father, holding his son, had tears in his eyes too. He remembered taps as a boy, after the explosions as gray haired men stood in khaki over the grave of his own father who had served in World War II and had died eight years later.

The boy around the time of his first 
Memorial Day Service. When he was 
older, he scrambled for the shells.

The bugle stopped. The men reassembled, and several boys crept up to the grave, seeking the brass shell casings ejected from the rifles. One boy was dressed in a Cub Scout uniform, wearing a camouflage hat of Vietnam style, with a gold medal on the front.

The men led the way to a woman’s grave. The prayers were repeated, without gunfire, by a lady in white blouse and blue slacks. Then all marched out through the gate, to the cars. The guns went back into the car trunks, flags were rolled up again. The little boy climbed into a car, next to his father.

A man came to the car window. He had long hair, thin on the top, and a headband. His clothing did not give away the fact that he had served in Vietnam. His son was the boy dressed in Cub Scout shirt and Vietnam hat, who had searched for shell casings. The man reached a hand through the window. His hand opened, showing a brass casing. “Here, this is for you,” he said with a smile.

The little boy’s eyes widened again. His small hand grabbed the shell and held tight. It was his first Memorial Day.

Full circle, for now ~ May 23, 2002

David Heiller

Noah’s car was in the shop for a repair so I drove him to school a couple weeks ago. We didn’t talk about much. Just small talk, about the Twins and the weather. There was plenty of silence too, the comfortable kind that fathers and sons have when they are getting along.

Noah's graduation, 2002 Full circle, for this chapter

I took a left off Highway 61 in Willow River down the familiar street, then left into the parking lot to the entrance of Willow River High School with barely a good bye.

A lot of kids were streaming in, running just ahead of the first bell like Noah, and he joined them.

As I watched him disappear, an emotion hit me that I wasn’t expecting. It’s hard to describe. I suddenly realized that a big end had come to one of Noah’s chapters, and to one of mine.

First day of school, 1989

It was sadness a little, although it’s hard to be sad when you son^’s whole adult life is still ahead of him and you. I thought, “The things that we did in that school as parents are about to end,” and that brought a crooked smile.

I can’t begin to recount the memories here, and I would be in big trouble if I tried, because Noah has declared war on newspaper columns that include him, and I respect that mostly.

But they ran the gamut from good to not so good... as you might expect if you recall your own school years. I know he learned a lot, because Cindy and I learned a lot, and not just from helping him with math and proof-reading his English reports.

Like my sister Mary Ellen told me when I went to college, “Don’t let school interfere with your education.” The lessons Noah learned will probably not be what the chief export of Egypt is.

And since we served as general consul to those lessons, Cindy and I learned too. Phil Minkkinen should hand out honorary law degrees to all the parents on Friday night that can be redeemed at health spas or taverns.

I feel happiness for Noah and his classmates. Finishing high school is a big deal, and he’s glad to be doing that, and excited about his next move. I can still taste the freedom I felt when high school ended for me. It was like a chain was lifted from my torso. Yet I was kind of sad to see it go. That freedom is something to savor, because it doesn’t last. Chains come back, and by our choosing. There are good chains.

The other thought that hit me at that moment two weeks ago was that I was getting old.

Where did the time go? Was it really 13 years ago that Noah was getting on Dave Nyrud’s bus for his first day in school? I can remember it like yesterday, remember that he was wearing shorts (against our advice) and carrying a red back pack with a dinosaur on it. I remember the pride and sadness at that moment too.

We’ve come full circle. Now a new one is about to start, and I’m excited for Noah and all his classmates. There will be more milestones in Noah’s life. I’m looking forward to them. But I’m going to enjoy this one on Friday night in the Tom Stine gymnasium.

Never look a gift tiller in the Tines ~ Spring 2000?

by David Heiller

The Hillbrand Boys came over last week with a tiller in the back of their truck.

I had been going to borrow Steve’s tiller, after I had first weeded the garden by hand. I like to weed first, then till. I use a Mantis mini-tiller, which is so light that it’s more like vacuuming the garden than tilling it.

I don’t like to till in weeds. I like clean dirt. I pull weeds out by the wheelbarrow-full almost every day at this time of year, then I till, and for at least a week, there isn’t a weed in sight.

But Steve said he needed the tiller and couldn’t let me borrow it, so it was now or never with the tiller. He was already unloading the tiller as he said this.

David tilling our new garden spot
 after we moved to the Denham area.

That put me in a dilemma. I wasn’t ready for the tiller, but how do you turn down a free till? Steve had tilling on his mind—I could see it in his eyes—so I said OK.

He backed the tiller out of a wooden box that his brother, Deane, had built on the back of his old Ford F-250. He eased it down two stout planks. It was like unloading a bull, and the tiller wasn’t a whole lot smaller than a bull.

We walked over the garden area that needed tilling. It was full of weeds—plantain, dandelions, thistles, and quack grass, to name a few. Steve suggested that we pull the quack grass, because that will spread when it is tilled up. We did our best, but pulling weeds isn’t easy when a tiller is pawing the ground nearby. Steve soon had the engine running, and pulling any more weeds at that point would have been dangerous to my banjo playing future.

“Are you sure it’s OK to till all this in?” I asked Deane. He has a degree in horticulture from the University of Minnesota.

“Should be fine,” he answered. That was what I needed to hear.

I turned to Steve for verification, but the gleam in his eye had turned into a wildfire, and I knew he would say anything just for the chance to till my garden.

And so the tilling commenced. Steve started out left, then went up the side. He turned to the right and gave it gas. He cut to the right, and swung the big beast around with the skill of a surgeon, He plowed down the middle, sinking up to his ankles in the black dirt. He whirled and twirled that tiller like a stout high school sweet-heart at the 1969 Paynseville prom.

“Got any more to till?” he asked when he had finished, and I could see I’d better find some more garden to till or there would be trouble.

So I pointed out another patch, and Steve tore through that patch with the same skill as an Indy 500 racer, chewing through sod and quack and a few small trees like a glacier in overdrive.

Oh, the joys of the harvest are more
 fun than making new beds. 
Noah and Cindy with broccoli joy.

Finally he was done, spent. He kneeled by the side of his tiller and tenderly cleaned the tines, getting ready for the next patch of ground that might be available for a free till.

Steve wrestled the tiller into its wooden cage and strapped it down securely. I thanked them, and I meant it. Then the Hillbrand Boys drove off into the sunset in search of fresh gardens.

Now the waiting has begun. I’m working in that Hillbrand soil, planting in it, scraping away the roots and leaves and seeds and stems and wondering if I will have the greatest garden in Birch Creek township, or the greatest patch of weeds.

Time will tell.

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.

Just a game of catch ~ May 17, 2001

by David Heiller

Noah came out of the house on Sunday evening carrying a baseball and two gloves, and I was reminded once again why spring is my favorite season.

David and the kids.

I got up from weeding the garden and walked over. He tossed me my glove. It was flat and soft and to my vivid imagination, almost eager for my touch. We walked to our favorite spot for playing catch, he at one end of the driveway and me at the other.

We tossed the ball back and forth. I said to keep it high so I could see it against the sky. My right eye is still healing from a cornea transplant, and I can’t see very well from it yet.

We talked about a lot of things, both trivial and profound. It’s funny how doing a familiar activity like playing catch can unplug the conversational sink. It isn’t always that easy getting a 17-year-old boy—or a 47-year-old man—to do that. But give a guy a ball and glove and he will sing like a canary.

She's just his daughter.

And on all kinds of subjects. Simple things like the Twins game. Or important stuff, like one of life’s struggles. They all seem to carry equal weight during a game of catch and they all somehow seem to be more manageable from the effort.

When Noah and I were done, Mollie met me by the deck with her glove. “My turn,” she said, and we had a repeat performance.

When the kids were smaller, we used to play catch before the bus would come. The house was hectic with getting up and dressed and eating breakfast, but there usually seemed to be about five minutes before the school bus would come in the morning, and we would get in a few throws.

Sometimes I wouldn’t get a taker when I asked for this game of catch. In fact, the kids would go through streaks where they seemed to take pleasure in saying no to my request, like I was an idiot for asking. They were too cool. But ask I did, every morning, and sooner or later, maybe just to shut me up, they would relent and grab their gloves.

That’s why seeing Noah walk out with the gloves on Sunday night felt so good. The tables had been turned. He was asking me to play catch, and I tried very hard not to run to him when I saw what he was holding. Be cool, Dad, it’s just a game of catch.

He's just his son.

Just a game of catch. In a sense, that’s right. It hardly warrants a column in the newspaper.

On the other hand, a game of catch is your childhood, your best friend, your brother. It’s your kids, your dad, your neighbors. It’s spring, a fresh breeze, new life. It’s the freedom of summer just around the corner. It’s blackbirds on the highline wires, and kids going to the beach, and baseball games that you wish would never end. It’s Mom and apple pie and the Fourth of July and the World Series.

It’s a part of us all. Strip away Einstein’s brilliant layers, and I bet you’ll find a game of catch.

That pretty girl over there is just your daughter, that handsome young man your son.

That book on the shelf is just the Bible. That woman with the golden smile is just your wife.

And it’s just a game of catch.