Getting to know the woods ~ December 17, 2003

David Heiller

The two dogs and I headed into the woods on Sunday afternoon. It was something I had wanted to do for several weeks, but work had kept it on the back burner.

There’s something very inviting about woods this time of year. The ground is hard, so there’s no mud. There’s a little snow for contrast, but not too much to make walking difficult, and you can see everything.

The view from our deck as well as all of the east facing windows. The river is down there, but also our woods,

and what we refer to as Heiller Valley.

It is now owned by the State of Minnesota.

Our woods are even more of a magnet to me because I really don’t know them yet. I’ve walked over the hills a time or two, but it takes a while to get to know a piece of land, years really.

I scurried down the hill, eased over a barbed wire fence, and entered the woodlot. My new Allis Chalmers WD tractor was in the back of my mind. “Could it handle this trail without tipping,” I asked myself as I walked along.

“Νο, not here,” I said with a grimace at a few steep spots.

“Here it will be fine,” I said at an equal number of places. Cindy calls my tractor a widow maker. I hope she’s wrong—and so does she!

I skirted three hills, sizing up the trees that were standing, and looking at the debris from the logging that had taken place a few years earlier. We have hundreds of cords of oak and hickory firewood ready to be sawed up and hauled to the house. Making firewood is never an easy job, and this project will be even harder because of the steep terrain where much of it lies. That’s why I was visualizing the tractor in the woods.

It was a sober walk in some ways, seeing all the tree tops lying on the ground. I kept wishing I had seen these woods before the chainsaws came. I noticed a new gully that had opened up in the midst of the logging, with fresh brown dirt ready to be washed into the valley with the spring run-off. Would the trees have held that in check?

But I’ve seen enough woods to know that they recover in time. The trees still standing will far outlast me. That’s the big picture. The ones that got cut will go to good homes, like the one we are building.

I reached the edge of our 20 acres of woods, and crossed onto some land owned by Duane Thomford. He has a cabin overlooking the broad Heiller Valley. That’s what I call it, because it’s where my grandparents and then their son Donny lived and farmed for about 40 years. It’s state land now.

Duane had told me to take a walk out there, that it was a good view. I realized on Sunday that Duane is a master of understatement. The sight from that cabin was as close to an Ansel Adams view as I’ve seen in Minnesota. The huge valley is flanked by hill after hill, then it opens up like a huge smile to the Mississippi River.

I peered down into the bottom of the valley and saw the familiar fields where Donny had planted corn and alfalfa. I traced the route that he would go, first on the north side of the ravine, then down into the gulch and up to the south side , then a bit west, and then up the steep hill to his field on the ridge.

Talk about tipping tractors—Dοnny would make that run up the ridge with a hayrack behind!

I’ll always remember a joke he pulled on me on that trail. Before he would descend with a full load of hay bales, he would take iron wedges and put them in front of the wagon wheels. Only then would he slowly creep down. The wedges kept the wheels locked in place. His helpers, like me, sat on top of the hay bales, oblivious to any danger.

One time after a swaying descent, when we got to the flat land in the valley, Dοnny backed off the wedges and called me over. “Feel how smooth that is,” he said, running his hand over the shiny wedge.

I ran my fingers over it and yelped. That metal was hot enough to fry a grilled cheese sandwich. Donny was always a famous trickster, and he had fooled me again. I had to laugh in spite of the pain. And the burns healed just fine after a couple years.

Just kidding Donny.

The Heiller Valley beckoned to me again on Sunday, just like it did those 40 years ago. But the light was fading, so I turned around and went home through the top of the woods and I found what I was looking for.

No, not the spring that Duane said is on the property. He’ll have to show me that himself, unless he’s pulling an Uncle Donny.

The spot I found was a big tree that had not met the loggers standards for cord wood, for some blessed reason. It was standing on a ledge with smooth ground all around, and a four-foot high crop of limestone at its edge.

Oh boy, I could see myself with a book or a banjo at that spot, leaning against the tree on a fine spring day.

Yes, I’ll get to know our property better. I can’t wait for the next 30 years to transpire.