Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller We might even catch some fish. Last week’s column ended on that spurt of optimism, and it came true, except for Dave. Dave Landwehr waiting for a lunker... or a snag. There comes a time every year, when we go canoeing up north, that Dave does his “Pretend I’ve Got A Lunker” trick. That’s when his lure gets snagged on a stick or rock, and instead of carefully working it off, he strains and jerks and bends the tip of his rod like he’s Babe Winkleman bringing in an eight pound lake trout. That’s what he was doing on Saturday afternoon, when Paul and I paddled up. There he sat, making faces, groaning against the rod, snagged solid. It was kind of funny. We smiled like you smile at an old story that you’ve heard a few times. Then suddenly Dave crashed back into his seat, and held up his rod and started swearing. The top section had broken clean in two. Now THAT was funny. We smiled, we laughed, we roared. It was an Oscar-winning performance, unfortunately b...

David Heiller The best part of the trip came at the end, when “Dave” and I paddled down the Kettle River last Saturday morning. (In case you don’t read Dear Abby, when a name is in quotations, it’s not their real name, although I’ve often wondered if people don’t put the person’s real name in the quotes, just to be funny.) “Dave” took care of the logistics, as usual. “We’ll put the two canoes in your truck, and then drive my van to the bridge at 46,” he told me when I pulled into his driveway at 9:30. The idea was to then drive my truck to a spot up-stream, park the truck, paddle downstream about eight miles to County Road 46, then get in his van with his canoe and go back for the truck. I would pick up my canoe on the way home. And that’s what happened, mostly. The Kettle River had never looked finer to me than that morning. Cold, deep, and in a hurry. A river in flood is like a magnet to me. We slipped the canoes over huge slabs of shore ice and into the water. It q...

David Heiller Winter waited for us at Grand Portage last weekend, like a patient mother calling her kids to supper. We could hear the calling, all right, a gang of two families, five kids, four adults, nine friends mostly, except for some titanic clashes of young wills. All headed 200 miles north as Old Lady Winter called to us across the melting snow. Dave Landwehr, Noah Landwehr, Kyle Landwehr, Matt  Landwehr,  and David  throwing snowballs into Canada. SHE CALLED SATURDAY morning. Was it a coincidence that I stepped out of the hotel room the same time as our friends’ son, Noah? “I’m going for a hike,” I said to him. “Can I come?” Noah asked. He knew he could. Adults don’t invite themselves along when someone is headed for a dawn hike. They wait politely, sometimes too politely. Not 11-year-old boys, which is fine with me. So off we went, along a trail from the lodge. The snow was hard packed from skiers. It was easy going, like walking on har...

David Heiller The blackflies swarmed over us when we stopped for lunch at the portage going into Ima Lake. They were bad on the paths before that, but at Ima they hit like a blizzard of giant gnats. They were so thick we could barely breathe. We choked down bologna and cheese sandwiches—seasoned with blackflies—and quickly pushed off toward to Thomas Lake. We had been traveling for five hours, and had four more to go. Dave paddled alone in his 17—foot Grumman, using a double-bladed paddle that he bought for the occasion. Jim and I had Jim’s Old Town Penobscot. Dave solo, and in the rain. Dave had quickly figured out the nuances of paddling solo. He looked like he was doing a martial arts exercise with the paddle, moving it fluidly back and forth, back and forth, wax on, wax off, into the water. He skimmed across the water faster than Jim and I could paddle, although Jim and I weren’t paddling very hard, except when we were trying to evade blackflies. The only drawback f...

David Heiller We had paddled safely down the Little Indian Sioux River a couple miles before Paul broke the news to me. “I’ve got a new air mattress this year.” We were heading into the Boundary Waters for our annual canoe trip. “Oh yeah?” I tried to answer calmly. “Great.” That was about the extent of our brilliant conversation. But I sensed that a red flag had been hoisted. I don’t have a big tent. Tents are like packages of food. If the macaroni and cheese is supposed to serve four people, two people will probably eat it and still be a little hungry. My tent is called a four man tent, but it can sleep two people OK, provided that one of the people doesn’t have a queen-sized air mattress. That’s what Paul had brought, which we discovered three miles later when we found a campsite on Upper Pawness Lake. He even had a battery-powered pump to fill it. Scoping out the possibilities. Paul’s Air Mattress (it has to be capitalized) left about six inches of space on...

David Heiller The Kettle River water flowed along like a big muscle of water last Saturday morning, April 24, and it seemed to welcome our canoes almost as much as we welcomed it. My friend, Dave, noticed it first. “This doesn’t look like the Kettle River,” he said after we set our canoes down below the bridge on County Road 46. The current was strong, the water deep. Usually I don’t get on the river until later in the year, when the water is low and the rocks are high. David and Dave in a quiet canoe, during a different paddle. Not Saturday. The power of the current sent us downstream in a hurry. Dave and I each had our own canoe, which was a new twist, and a good one, because even in high water, the Kettle River will shave aluminum off a heavily loaded canoe, and any canoe with me in it is heavy enough. Saturday was a great day to be alive. Clear sky, temperatures in the sixties. No mosquitoes! The first really nice day of spring. And there couldn’t be a better plac...

David Heiller Jim’s voice carried over the tiny lake with the hushed urgency that only Jim could give it while watching a fellow fisherman fighting a lunker. “It’s a big sucker,” he said. “Work him in easy.” I had heard that voice a year before, when an eight-pound lake trout graced the net which Jim held. Now it was Dave’s turn, with Jim again at the net. David and Paul entering the BWCAW bleacher . Dave’s gold and orange spoon clung to the mouth of a beauty, all right. Even from our canoe bleacher seats 40 yards away, we could see Dave’s arm muscles strain, could hear Jim’s urging. Dave brought him in once, but this northern wouldn’t hear of that, and peeled out another 20 yards of line. Dave worked him next to the canoe again, and Jim brought the net around the head, and halfway up the belly. That’s when the fish had had enough. It flicked the spoon into the net, plunged back-ward into the air, then hit the water and in an instant, was gone. We were all a bit s...

David Heiller There are a lot of good reasons for four grown men to take a canoe trip. David, Paul, Dave, and Jim heading to the BWCAW For Dave, it might be to leave his woodshop and clear his lungs of sawdust and take out his ear plugs. The air is pretty clean and quiet where we are headed. For Paul, it might be to leave the metropolis of Duluth and the pressures of working with low-income people who rely on him for so much to go canoeing with three other low-income types who also rely on him, and he them. For Jim it might be to leave the mental mazes of social work. Or could it be he simply comes to his senses and leaves Wisconsin for Minnesota? I can’t speak for them, but I have to admit it’s nice to leave some baggage behind and head out for a four-day trip into canoe country. Two years ago, on the eve of our trip, a guy called me at home, slurring his speech and cussing me out for making a mistake in an ad. It wasn’t a big mistake. Not worth getting drunk and s...