Quarries and caves made the day ~ April 28, 2004

David Heiller

It’s funny how something can sneak up on you and bring a smile.

Cindy and I found that on Sunday afternoon, when we took a walk to the quarry by Reno.

The view of the quarry from the top of Hillside Road

We parked our car in the little lot on Hillside Drive, walked up the broad trail, then turned right and marched up the old road to the quar­ry.

It’s a marvelous spot. The limestone stands sheer and beautiful, 100 feet high, and still looks amazingly fresh. You almost expect to hear a dump truck come rumbling up for a load. Of course, that won’t happen; there are a lot of trees growing in the quarry pit now, big birches that tell you it’s been three or four decades since this quarry was active.

And that’s probably good, because another blast or two of dynamite might send the entire bluff onto Highway 26 and into the river. It’s really just a sliver of rock by nature’s standards.

It’s a spiritual spot. A couple of young people have died tragically in recent years, and their friends have gone to the quarry and spelled out their names – Josh and Mark – while someone braver than I stood at the top of the quarry and took their picture. I can see why they would do that there.

We walked around the south side of the quar­ry, and up a trail to a little goat prairie. It’s so steep that I got dizzy looking at the river and had to sit down. What a view! We could see both spillways on the dike that leads to Genoa. And what a pretty sight that city is.

The wind carved a current in the river that paralleled the land all the way to Wisconsin. Or was it the wind? Maybe it was a line of river current, a ghost of the old days before the Army Corp of Engineers dammed up the river in the 1930s.

We walked to the edge of the quarry, about two thirds of the way up, and thought about climbing the narrow ledge to its peak. But not for long. It’s not a climb you want to make if there is a shadow of doubt.

David and I hiked throughout our marriage.
There is nothing that a hike doesn't
 help put into perspective.

We climbed up the other side of the quarry as far as we dared also. It’s even more dangerous, with a crumbling ledge about two feet wide, fol­lowed by a clump of boulders eight feet high that stops most people. I remember climbing over that spot with a friend when I was in col­lege. Was I braver then, or just dumber? Yes to both.

We left the quarry and headed north to Fairy Rock. I wanted to check out the old cave.

I found the path and scrambled down. Someone had tied a rope to a tree to help in the final six-foot drop. I still came close to falling. Our two dogs couldn’t make it, and Cindy thought better of it too. So it was just me and the cave.

It hasn’t changed much since the last time I visited it, but I still marvel at it. The ceiling is about 12 feet high at the highest spot, and it’s about 25 feet long. The limestone inside peels off easily when you scrape it. The colors are rich browns, all shades, and some red thrown in here and there. There’s plenty of light from the two big openings, but it’s still always evening inside the cave. Another spiritual spot.

I always wonder who has lived in this cave over the eons — I mean before Tim Serres. And all the people who have visited it. I remember seeing my dad’s initials in it when I was a kid — at least I think I remember it.

I checked out the names that are carved in it now. Most looked new. “Carolyn + John.” “Brad ‘99” Then I stood on a ledge, and looked up and to my right, and there it was, a big fat “D.H.” And that brought the smile. I don’t remember — wait, it’s coming back a little. Didn’t I stand on that ledge, right there, and carve that? Yes, Jeff Mitchell was with, and Billy Burfield. We rode our bikes down, and after that we went to the Root Beer Stand and bought a root beer for a nickel from Rita Grams.

OK, maybe that all didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter.

I left the cave and looked up. An eagle soared past, heading south, then another, then another.

I scrambled back to the top, where Cindy and the dogs waited patiently. We headed back home, both smiling on a fine April evening made even finer by the Reno Quarry and good old Fairy Rock.

The quiet house returns ~ April 25, 1991

David Heiller

The house is quiet tonight, for the first time in three weeks. Twenty-three days, to be exact. That’s because Tyson and Brooks are gone. Their parents retrieved them this afternoon, af­ter a long vacation.

Brooks, Queen Ida, Noah and Tyson.

We’d been talking about today for a week or so, about when Mom and Dad would come. Mostly I did the talking, out of some sense of duty that the boys should be missing their parents more.

I told them my “Mommy-Daddy Tomorrow” story. http://davidheiller.blogspot.com/2011/04/mommy-daddy-tomorrow-february-3-1983.html That’s what this one kid at Camp Courage (back in 1972 would say, countless times every day, “Mommy-Daddy tomorrow?” He really missed his parents, but he drove us counselors nuts, for 10 days straight. We couldn’t wait for the day when he would say “Mommy- Daddy tomorrow?” and we could shout, “Yes, Jimmy, Mommy-Daddy are coming tomorrow!” When that morning finally arrived, we crowded around his bed. But Jimmy spoke up first in a deadpan voice, “Mommy-Daddy TODAY?”

Noah and Brooks

Brooks, age six, laughed at my story. He caught the irony, but he never said those words. He and Ty missed Barb and Steve, to be sure. But kids being kids, they put it in perspective, somewhere behind playing baseball, climbing rocks, eating cookies, falling in creeks, making snowmen, eating cookies, wallowing in frost-boils, reading books, eating cookies, taking baths, watching cartoons, eating cookies, play­ing with Legos, putting jigsaw puzzles together, and eating cookies.
Cindy made 450 cookies during the past 22 days, we figure. And they are all gone now, along with Ty and Brooks.

Story time: Malika, Noah, Brooks and Tyson.

IT’S FUNNY HOW your relationship with kids can change when they are “yours” tem­porarily. If you have them for a day or two, you treat them like glass. You don’t small-talk with them the same, you don’t hug them the same, you don’t give them a tongue-lashing when they fail to pick up the baseball bats. You don’t hold their hands on the way to work, you don’t send them to their room as punishment, you don’t gaze at them after they fall asleep. At least I don’t.

Tyson and some
Mama level grooming.

But that all changes after about three days. They reach out to hold your hand. They cry when they are sent to their room. They volunteer to sing grace at the supper table. They take their dishes to the sink without being as­ked. They crawl onto your lap as you make a fire in the morning. They crawl into your heart too.

They trust you to fish them out of the river when they fall in, or scoot behind them up a steep slab of rock at Jay Cooke State Park. They accidently call you “Dad” once in a while.

They reward you by saying things out of the blue like, “David, I like staying with you.” Tyson said that in the car one afternoon. Is there any finer praise?

You feel proud too at things like getting four kids, ages four to seven, bathed, hair-washed, brushed, and jammied like clockwork on a Saturday night. Four kids are a lot of work!

But somewhere along the line something clicks in you and you can tolerate the extra 10 decibels of noise. You can step between two yell­ing kids and cross-examine them and figure out who did what, and hand over the toy to the right person, and send the right person to his room for time-out.

You can tolerate, even laugh at, the endless arguments: who is the sickest, who has the most juice, who gets to sit in the front seat, who gets to bat first, who can sleep with Noah, right down to the pros and cons of looking at girls’ underwear (Brooks is pro, Mollie is con).

But that’s all gone now. We’re back to two. The house is mighty quiet tonight. I can’t help feeling a little sad about that. But more than that, I feel very lucky for having those two extra kids for the past three weeks. Twenty-three days, to be exact.

Holy Moley, Mollie ~ April 20, 1989

 

David Heiller

My daughter, Malika, is good friends with Becky Lourey. There’s a 40 year gap in age between them, but they still have established a good friendship.

I like Becky for a lot of reasons that Mollie doesn’t understand. Her convictions, her caring, her enthusiasm, her family commitment, even her organizational skills. How can you not like someone who is so organized that she folds her family’s dirty laundry before washing it?

Mollie doesn’t understand those things, but she does understand a friendly face, moles and all.
Let me explain. It started at the Embassy Bar in Sturgeon Lake last fall. Becky

A mole-less Becky.

had a fundraiser there in preparation for her Minnesota House of Representative race with Doug Carlson. Becky, like a good politician, hugged Mollie, and talked to her. Mollie hugged back. She seemed to feel the energy, the glint in Becky’s eyes. Four-year-olds have a lot of energy, and glinty eyes too. Becky knows how to talk to kids, what with 11 kids of her own to practice on.

And Mollie liked Becky Lourey for another reason—her moles. Mollie touched the one on Becky’s forehead, and the one on her cheek. Becky let her too, and explained what moles are, if anyone really knows what moles are.

I don’t know why Mollie liked the moles so much, but I have a hunch that they were special because they were something she didn’t have, and therefore something she wanted.

Mollie didn’t forget Becky after that. Often when we would drive past the Embassy Bar, she would say, “There’s Becky’s house!”

But Becky showed up at a party three weeks ago with no moles in sight. Mollie took notice, and took offense. Becky explained that the mole on her forehead had swelled up, and started to hurt. Her doctor advised taking it out, along with the one on her cheek and several others farther south. Mollie didn’t buy that. Becky finally took her aside and asked that she be forgiven for taking off the moles. Mollie agreed. Becky asked, “Do you still love me?” and Mollie said yes. She has a kind heart for a four-year-old.

But the next day I wasn’t so sure. As we drove past the Embassy Bar and Mollie made her remark about Becky’s home, I asked her if she’d had a nice visit with Becky.

“She took my moles off, too,” Mollie claimed. “Hurts my cheeks and I got blood.”

“I don’t see blood,” I said.

^“No, yesterday I went to the doctor,” she insisted. “One day the doctor took off my moles and then threw them in the garbage. I didn’t like them take off.”

“Do you still like Becky?” I asked.

Mollie nodded. “But if she takes any moles off, I won’t like her anymore,” she said.

That answered my question, sort of, and I have since dropped the subject. No point in making a mountain out of a mole hill. But I hope Mollie can overcome her prejudice of the mole-free Becky Lourey. They’ve got too much in common, too much of a budding friendship. Then maybe Mollie can even run for political office, and be an Outstanding Minnesota Woman too.

~drh

The next week we received a hand written note complete with a drawing for Malika. It completes this tale. Becky has had many more losses that are too difficult to bear, as have we. Malika and Becky remained close over the years, Malika considering Becky her mentor. Here is the note from Becky to little Mollie:

~Dear Mollie~

I hear that you miss my moles. I do too! One day last week, I held a little child and when he, reached his hand out toward my face, I thought he was going to touch my mole, and then I remembered that it was not there_. My face is not as much fun for children as it used to be

This picture is supposed to be me and I Put the moles on with a sticky paper so you can take them off and put -them on until you are really ready for them to be gone. (Here is where Becky added a lovely self portrait)

I thought that I would tell you a sad story that explains why I feel okay about losing my moles. There, are some things we might not want to lose, but we can stand to lose them. And then there are some things that when we lose them, we miss all of our lives. It is important to remember the difference, so that we can get over losing the things we like but don’t really need.

Once we had a little son who died because his heart wasn’t made right and so it couldn’t work right. Forever and forever I will miss him. And so I know that the moles aren’t as important, and I can let them go.

I bet you can think of things that you would never ever want to lose, and,then think of things that you could get along without if you lost them.

I can stand to lose my moles, but I sure couldn’t, stand to lose your friendship, Mollie.

love, BECKY

Thoughts on a weekend alone ~ April 21, 1994

David Heiller

So how was your weekend alone? my brother-in-law asked on Sunday. You could almost hear his eyebrows going up and down like Groucho Marx at the other end of the phone line.

“It was fine.” I answered.

“Just fine?” he asked with surprise. He has two kids of his own. If he ever shipped them both off for a weekend, you can darn well bet he’d do better than fine.

So I’ll explain the fine weekend without rais­ing too many eyebrows.

We had dinner at the best restaurant in Duluth, Taste of Saigon. We bought candy at a candy store, and went to a movie, The Paper. It was the late show, but there were no kids at home so we didn’t worry about that. It was a carefree night with Cindy.

But it was strange going home to an empty house, not having to bring the babysitter home. The next morning, it was strange not hearing Noah’s radio. He usually forgets to turn it off at night. And no cartoons on Saturday morning—very strange.

I’d like to say we forgot about the kids, but that would be forgetting about your hands or your legs. You don’t think about them much, but if they are not there, you notice it.

I spent Saturday and Sunday at work doing photos and ads for “A Day In The Life Of Nor­thern Pine County,” a special section in this week’s paper. Cindy called on Saturday morning and asked what my plans were for that evening. I suggested we transplant tomato seedlings. “Well, I guess that would be all right,” she said. But her voice said, Gee, how romantic.

She had other plans. She made shrimp and pasta and parsnips fried in butter. I opened a bottle of champagne. We lit a candle. After din­ner we turned on the TV and watched Nancy Griffith sing. That’s something we wouldn’t normally do on a Saturday night. Not with dirty dishes still on the table.

It was much better than transplanting tomatoes.

We had a glimpse of life without children last weekend. It brought a strange mixture of freedom, loneliness, and worry. They’ve been, gone before, but never at the same time, never for three days. I wondered how they were doing if they were behaving, being polite, doing things we tried to teach them.

I wondered how they were going to turn out when they grew up and left home. I wondered if they would come home and visit. I wondered if they would be good children.

That made me think about what kind of son I was.

When they came home Sunday night, I spent time in each of their rooms. I didn’t have much to say. I just wanted to be near them, to watch them, to hear them tell of their weekends.

Sometimes you can see time slipping away, and you want to stop the clock. That’s how I felt. Both our kids are good kids. They are at a good age. We have a happy life, a happy home. It’s spring. Baseball has started. Soon the garden will be planted.

No, we had a fine weekend without the kids. It made me think about what a fine life Cindy and I have with them too.

Life is short and sweet ~ May 2, 1996

David Heiller

Cindy and I went to the woods on Sunday evening, April 28, with the intention of pulling our 53 maple taps. I carried a hammer along for the purpose.

We figured this late in the season, the buds must be full of sap. When that happens, the sap turns a tannish color and becomes “bud sap.” That means it’s time to pull the taps, because bud sap is bitter and makes poor syrup.

But when we got to the woods, the buckets were full of clear sap, and instead pulling 53 taps, we gathered about 53 gallons of sap.

Those cold nights we had last week, the ones that everyone was complaining about, kept the maples pumping sap. Every cloud has a silver lining.

David understood the sweetness of life.

Part of my territory in the sugar bush is located near a spring, and that spring was full of frogs on Sunday night. Peepers, and they were living up to their name. They were so loud it almost hurt my ears. But it was a glorious sound to hear, especially when I thought of that same ground just a month ago, when we tapped the trees, covered with two feet of snow

It made me think of how fast spring comes along, and how fast things change. It seemed like almost overnight the snow in the woods was gone and the garden was bare and the parsnips were frying in the skillet.

Parsnips are one of my favorite vegetables. You plant them in the spring, then weed them and thin them, and then you forget about them. Some people dig them up in the fall, but Alvin Jensen told me to leave them all winter, and they taste even better in the spring, and he’s right.

Hedda cooked spring parsnips
 for Red, making life sweet.

They seem sweeter in the spring. Maybe the cold weather does that. There’s probably a scientific reason, just like there is a scientific explanation for being able to take 35 gallons of sap from a tree and boil it down into a gallon of something that is too good for words to describe.

They both border on miraculous to me. How could those parsnips stay fresh in the ground during the coldest winter on record? How did they handle that February 3 day when neighbor John Filtz had minus 56 on his thermometer?

Then again maybe we are so anxious to taste something fresh from the garden that we just think the parsnips are sweeter.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s fun to eat them, and fun to give them away. Red Hansen came in for some. He likes to have Hertha boil them, then fry them in butter and put brown sugar on them. Red is on a low-fat, low-sugar diet, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying his parsnips.

David and Noah after breakfast.

Leona Schultz came in for her bag full too. She doesn’t bother boiling them. She just cuts the up the long way and fries them. She used to boil them first, but she saw all that good sweet juice laying in the bottom of the pot and thought it was too precious to waste, so she just fries them straight.

We were sitting at coffee break on Monday afternoon, and Cindy Jensen was talking about the upcoming graduation of her daughter Katie. Hazel Serritslev couldn’t believe Katie was graduating already. Neither could Lynn’s Storrar. Neither could Cindy Jensen!

They all knew in their minds that Katie was graduating. But all of a sudden it didn’t see possible. All of a sudden it had come so fast, too fast.

Malika and Mackenzie with David,
enjoying some sweetness.

I think about that when I look at our two kids Noah and Malika. They are growing out of shoes and clothes almost every other month. They are like the tomato plants in our living room, that seem to grow an inch a day.

Malika asked me on Sunday to jump on the trampoline with her. I was busy, but I did. Later Noah asked to play a little football with me. I stopped my gardening and did that too.

There was a time in my life when I might have said no. But those times are becoming less frequent. I can see them growing up too fast. Like the parsnips and maple syrup that remind me that life is short and sweet.

The river showed us wonder and power ~ April 10, 1997

David Heiller

Ice piled up against the Kettle River Bridge on County Road 46 a week ago, and when it let go, it was a sight to behold.

A crowd of people gathered for the event on Thursday evening, April 3. My wife, Cindy, and son, Noah, and I were lucky to be among them.

Ice is fascinating.

I had seen the people on my way home from work at 5:30. They were standing on the bridge, pointing at the river, which I thought was pretty unusual. Being a reporter, I wanted to stop and see what was going on. But I didn’t. None of my business, I thought.

Then at supper, Noah told me that the river was filled with ice, and it was really something. He had seen it from his school bus window. He’s always noticing things from the bus, like dead animals and lost lumber. Things he knows I’d like to investigate.

“That’s what the people were looking at,” I said. So we cleaned off the table and went back to the bridge and joined them.

About a dozen people were there. The bridge pilings had stopped some big sheets of ice, and all the ice up river, as far as you could see to the north, had backed up against it. You could have walked across the river on the ice, if you felt suicidal. On the south side of the bridge the water was clear and flowing.

We talked with some of the folks there, all the while watching the ice, looking for movement.

Then it happened. A bit of ice broke free on the west side. A tree started swaying 100 yards away, as ice jostled by. Then Frank Larson put down his binoculars and pointed upstream.

Janie Johnson took this picture of the Kettle River
breaking up on February 23, 2017.
I am so appreciative of her sharing it with me!

A river of ice was moving downstream like a huge snake, alive and unstoppable. “She’s going now, several people said at the same time.

Ice battled ice, grinding and crushing at a hundred different places, pushed on by the swift current of the river. The big sheets of ice at the bridge lost their grip and broke and slid through the pilings, and the river of ice was on the move.

For the next 20 minutes, ice floated under the river. No, float isn’t the right word. Float is too gentle. That ice was about as gentle as a bull. A jillion pieces, some huge, some tiny, bank to bank, all charged downstream.

The motionless ice field that looked so benign a few minutes ago was now a tremendous and deadly force. It was like a giant lava flow of ice, carrying trees and branches and rocks.

It clobbered the bridge with heavy thuds. The bridge shook. One woman bolted toward the end of the bridge, thinking the bridge wasn’t safe.

We stood there gasping with stupid grins on our faces. A car drove by and someone tried to wave it down to stop and look at the river. The two ladies in the car looked at us like we were crazy and drove on. They don’t know what they missed.

Looking at the ice moving underneath me, I felt for all the world like the river was motionless and the bridge and I were moving upstream. You couldn’t help but feel dizzy and a little seasick.

Norman Larson said he had seen an ice dam break like this a couple times before, and Frank Larson had seen it once. They’ve lived near the river their entire lives. It was a rare natural phenomenon to witness.

I felt lucky to see that ice dam go out last week. It’s something I’ll never forget. I’ll never look at ice on the Kettle River the same way. It reminded me of the wonder and raw power of Mother Nature.

People in western Minnesota have seen that power all too closely in recent days. Whole towns have had to be evacuated due to flooding. A blizzard, record floods, and record cold all hit at the same time last weekend, and this after α winter of record snow. We have nothing to complain about here.

The blessed end of the syrup season ~ April 15, 1993

David Heiller

People in our neck of the woods woke up Easter morning to about five inches of wet snow. It clung to pine tree branches like plaster, and coated the grassy church parking lot like lard.

Folks who normally have to be pushed into going to church had to be pushed away from church, wheels a-spinning. Folks like us.

Malika and Mama hauling the sap, bucket at a time.

The snow came at a lucky time for our family. We had just finished boiling our last gallon of maple syrup on Saturday. That was about the time the tractor quit working too. I had hauled in the last 40 gallons of sap on Friday evening, and it quit Saturday morning, right in the mid­dle of an idle. I guess it wasn’t an idle threat.

With no tractor, and with five inches of sloppy snow, I don’t know how we would have brought in the last batch of sap. We were lucky, or maybe more. Sometimes you wonder.

We ended up boiling down about 360 gallons of sap for our nine gallons of syrup. That’s just right for our family. But that’s a relative term.

For example, Joy Naylor, a waitress at Partridge Cafe, was telling me about their maple syrup operation southwest of Bruno. During the height of the run this year, around April 6, they had 1,600 gallons of sap WAITING to be boiled down, while they were cooking down 250 gal­lons. They couldn’t keep up, it was flowing so fast.

Joy processes eight gallons of syrup at a time. This is after a long day of waiting on schmucks like me. Don’t tell me people don’t work like they used to.

The Naylors had about 400 taps out, and en­ded up with about 45 gallons of syrup. I asked Joy what they did with it. They give a lot away, sell some, and use the rest up. “We have a big family,” she said with a laugh. So yes, that’s a relative term.

Noah and his buddy, Jake.
David always had chores for them 
to do, and they always found 
ways to have fun anyway.

Noah and his friend, Jake, helped me take out our 42 humble taps on Saturday, before the snow hit. They had a claw hammer and a knapsack and managed to pull out at least five taps. Their laughter and high, excited voices carried through the trees like a spring breeze, and that more than made up for any tap quotas that I had in mind for them.

Children work at their own pace in the spring. Their hearts are more into clubhouses and creeks. Noah stayed overnight at Matt’s house recently. When Matt’s dad went to wake them up for breakfast, he found an empty bed. They had gotten up at 6:00 on a Sunday morning to go outside and play in Matt’s fort.

Cindy wanted to take a sauna on Sunday night. I wasn’t going to join her, until I stoked up the fire and smelled spilled maple sap evaporating from the floor and benches. So we sat and sweated together, and breathed in that sweet smell one last time, and cooled off on the steps, arm-in-arm, overlooking the snowy yard and the sap stove and a tractor that won’t start. We felt lucky on this Easter Sunday, blessed with good fortune, a good family, good friends.

Blessed. Maybe the Virgin Mary had bad directions and visited our field in Birch Creek township instead of that one in Kettle River, where 3,500 people showed up on Sunday.

Gee, we could tap a lot of trees with 3,000 people helping. (I’m joking, I’m joking. 

School Forest burned, then saved best friend ~ April 16, 1987

David Heiller

When Tom Leustek heard the crackle over his fire pager that a fire was burning south of Willow River last Thursday, he felt a premonition of disaster.

“In my head, I heard, ‘This is it.’ I had pedaled my bicycle to school, and I pedaled against that wind, and I knew it was tinder dry. I work in the woods,” Leustek said.

Tom Leustek had built his house in the center of a dense pine forest in Willow River in 1980. He loves trees. “I built there one reason—for the timber,” he explained. “A fool can see how pretty it is.”

Tom Leustek, holding a poster that
 commemorates May as Arbor Month, 
a time to plant trees.

So when Tom heard the fire call, and felt the south wind, and, saw the dense smoke, he knew.

When Tom got to the fire hall, he jumped into a fire truck with Bill Kenyon and Bruce Bohaty. They raced south to the Eva Marcus farm, but the fire was past it already, and into the pine forest, heading north, straight toward Leustek’s home.

They turned around and drove down the Old Sawmill Road, past Tom’s house, as far as the power line. They met a wall of fire, flames jumping from tree top to tree top, pushed on by that terrible wind.

“It was obvious we were going to do nothing,” Tom says. “Bill Kenyon said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here,’ and that’s what we did.”

They turned around, and drove back through fire, back to Tom’s house. They pulled up by Tom’s garage, to make a last stand.

A stone’s throw to the west of Tom’s garage lay the School Forest, 40 acres of jack pines that were planted 25 years ago. Tom knew those jack pines as well as anybody, probably better. He and his environmental studies class at Willow River High School had spent the past winter thinning the School Forest, taking out 23 rows of trees, a quarter mile to each row.

“In my yard and in that School Forest I’ve got a lot of labor of love,” Tom said.

Standing by his garage, with his white pines at his back, some of them 100 years old, and the school forest in front, Tom watched the fire bear down.

But suddenly, a miracle occurred, one of many miracles that for most people transformed last Thursday’s inferno from tragedy to relief. The fire veered to the west, skirting Leustek’s house, and two other houses. It swept past like a tornado, missing them.

“Apparently the school forest inferno was pulling so much oxygen from the east,” Tom tried to explain. “God’s wind just blew it away from our buildings.”

“That’s what it was, it was luck or divine intervention.”

The fire raged on, and the firemen chased it and fought it and finally beat it. The fire won the battle for Agnes Jaros’ trailer home, and Lyle Bakke’s basement home, and 302 acres of trees. The fire fighters won the war.

At first the victory seemed hollow to Tom. He lost his School Forest, and he is afraid for those white pines. They are very sensitive to heat, he said. “I don’t look for most of my white pines to survive.”

The day after the fire, Tom put a for sale sign up in front of his house.

“If I can sell, I will,” he said at first. “To me, I would have been better off if it (the house) went up.”

But after some thought, Tom’s feelings changed. “It’s obvious to me that the house didn’t burn because it was God’s will,” he said. “He wants me to stay in Willow River, and that’s what I intend to do.”

If you love trees like Tom Leustek does, you can understand his sorrow. He lost a part of his family, in a spiritual sense.

And consider this: With its wide rows so neatly trimmed by Tom and his students, the School Forest drew the flames away from Tom’s house, and from half a dozen others. If the fire hadn’t changed directions to the west, into the School Forest, at that time, it could easily have swung northeast. It might have jumped County Road 43 to the trees around the gas station and three 10,000 gallon fuel tanks. If those had blown up, the fire might not have been contained for miles.

So in our long list of thank yous to the people who helped halt disaster at the doorstep of the houses in Willow River, let’s add one for the Willow River School Forest. May your trees grow again.

Savoring the big melt ~ April 11, 2002

David Heiller

Sunday was one of those perfect days. Temperatures in the sixties. Bright sun. Melting snow.

After weeks of below normal, cloudy weather, it was the kind of day that would get you pulling a Roger Jensen and running from chore to chore.

Everyone you talked to, at church, at work, in the coffee shop, said the same thing. It’s time for spring. Enough of the bland weather. Bring on Rutabaga Falls. Bring on the big melt.

I walked out to the woods that afternoon to check on the sap buckets. Just the day before it had been a frozen landscape. Frozen snow. Frozen taps. Frozen ice in the buckets.

Our sap boiling set up.

But not Sunday. Sunday was so warm that I was working in a vest and T-shirt. I gathered 25 gallons of sap from the 50 taps in the few short hours that it ran. Combined with 20 gallons we had collected about a month ago, that was enough to start a boil.

I lit a fire in the barrel stove that has been converted to a sap boiler. The sap pan was filled with four inches of sap-ice. I told you it was cold. But a roaring fire took care of that in a hurry, and pretty soon one of the sweetest smell: of spring sifted into the yard. If you have smelled sap boiling, I need say no more. It’s a fragrance that Madison Avenue has yet to capture. It’s very subtle.

Like all good smells, it has pleasant associations. It carries with it the anticipation of hot corn bread covered with syrup, and tulips blooming, and frogs peeping. And tilling the garden, and lying in the hammock and listening to a Twins game. All this plus your favorite spring activity, isn’t far behind when that smell fills the air. Neither is the big melt.

The big melt has a charm that not everyone appreciates. If you live in the country, it means mud, serious mud. It sucked off one of my shoes on Sunday, causing me to do a one-legged triple-sow-chow-double-toe-loop. Luckily, no one saw me hopping around on one leg. I got my foot back into the waiting shoe without falling, and scored a respectable 5.7, except for the French judge who gave me a 5.3.

Canning the finished syrup.

The big melt brings frost boils, and water the basement, and hordes of ladybugs anxious leave our house. (The feeling is mutual.)

Plus, lakes form in places that don’t generally have lakes. Like in the garage. I half expect to see Bob Dutcher pull up with his fishing boat and start fishing in our yard. Knowing, Bob, he would catch something.

I would like to make one selfish request though, for those of you with better connection The Man Upstairs than me. Keep the nights chilly for a while. Below freezing, to be exact. Once the weather gets above freezing and stay there, the sap quits running, and the sweet smell disappears. Let’s savor the big melt for another week or three.

Murphy laid down the law with his kids ~ April 10, 1986

by David Heiller

Everybody knows Murphy’s Law, either directly or indirectly: If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.

Murphy's children were probably cute too,
it is how they survived.

Murphy was probably some hapless Irishman who wouldn’t know a four-leafed clover if he found one in his salad. But we can all share his motto. I could last week, when I transposed two paragraphs of an editorial piece by Steve Bonkoski. If you read the article, you caught it in this sentence: “I decided to continue the charade of the computer by telling them I had people are there in the world?” Murphy loved it, of course. Steve writes about one major article a year and I lay it out wrong.

My son, who is nearly three, loved it too. He thrives on illogical words and ideas.

Me: Noah, why did you just cut that cassette tape with the scissors?

One of Malika's expensive toys: the broom.

Noah: Because the snow is gone.

Me: Noah, why aren’t you sleeping?

Noah: Because I can’t sleep.

Me: Why can’t you sleep?

Noah: Because I’m awake.

Noah: I don’t have a beard.

Me: Why not?

Noah: Because I have a chin.

Noah: The snow is all melted.

Me: How come?

Noah: Because there is grass.

Such non sequiturs, to put it in his own words, I find “really dickiless.” [Noah’s favorite word at the time for ridiculous]

But back to Murphy. Not many people know this, but that luckless Irishman had a large family. He had 14 children, and he had 13 other Laws. (He coined his first and most famous one after his wife told him she was pregnant with kid number 14.)

I can verify the truth of his 13 laws, because I see them acted out daily by our two children. Here is a sampler.

Murphy’s Law Number 4: If a crawling baby comes across anything on the floor, she will eat it.

Our daughter Mollie has a taste for Meow Mix cat food, preferably soaked in the milk saucer. She makes our cat lean and nervous for her to outgrow this Law. In the sauna Sunday night, Mollie had a tub full of toys, but none of them looked as delicious as the bar of pink soap. She got her mouth washed out without even the fun of deserving it. She didn’t mind a bit either, even though her teeth marks are still in the soap. Maybe her taste buds have been calloused by so many offerings.

Murphy’s Law Number 7: If a baby has a choice between a store-bought toy and a make-shift one, she will choose the cheaper of the two.

There’s nothing like a box of Kleenex to keep a little one busy, pulling and ripping. Easter grass works almost as well. Bars of soap fit this Law too. Murphy gave up on giving toys to his kids after Number seven. Why bother with Fisher-Price when a pile of old newspapers works just as well, or a basket of just-folded clothes, or a book shelf lined with books?

They are playing with Daddy's banjo... yikes!

Murphy’s Law Number 9: If your kids are going to misbehave, they will do it in the company of others.

Just when you think the Terrible Twos are over, your daughter throws a tantrum down at the pizza place. Or your son starts talking about He-Man at the story hour in church. I remember once when I just had to play catch with the football in the house when a strange lady came to visit. I was about six. My pass to my brother went wild, knocking the glasses off the lady. I hid in the closet. Mom found me, no doubt while she was mumbling Law Number nine under her breath.

Murphy’s Law Number 6: Anything private becomes public.

This family newspaper prevents me from being too specific. To put it gently, Noah knows certain body parts and functions by their correct nomenclature. When conversation lags with neighbors and mothers-in-law, he inevitably turns the discussion that way.

Yup, good thing they are cute.

Murphy’s Law Number 12: Bad timing.

This one is related to Law 9, but includes countless variations. If you go out once a year and have a few too many beers, that will be the night your kids wake up and need to be rocked for three hours. If it is your turn to sleep in on Sunday morning, that will be the morning your kids sleep till 9. If you tell your best friend how well your daughter is doing with potty training, she will wet her pants in the next three minutes. If your son never takes a nap, he will fall asleep for two hours just as you are about to leave for a dentist appointment.

We’ve all got a little of Murphy in us. You probably know a few of his Laws too. And as long as we continue to have children, his Laws will live on.