Better listen when the river calls ~ April 29, 1999

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 place to enjoy it than in a canoe on a river.

The river was alive with life, even though the trees were bare and the ground drab with last year’s grass. Every bend sent ducks scurrying off. I wanted to shout, “Don’t go, we won’t hurt you,” but it wouldn’t have accomplished anything except to convince Dave that I was crazy.

We saw several deer. There are deer everywhere, and the river was no exception. I marveled at one that bounded along the shoreline, hurtling windfalls with grace and ease.

A bald eagle calmly watched us approach. No doubt he saw us long before we saw him, even though his big white head was hard to miss. We stopped paddling and drifted until he flew down the river. He waited for us two more times over the next hour, each time letting us get a little closer. It’s so good to see eagles. Thirty years ago they were a rare sight, thanks to DDT. Not anymore.

Trees hung over the river at places. Clumps of weeds hung on the branches that were about two feet above the water. That was the high water mark for 1999. The river at that level would have been even more fun to travel. We were a couple of weeks too late. I’m not complaining. Anyone who would complain about a day like this would have to be a cynical person indeed.

We went through several sets of rapids. The water was warming up for its roller coaster ride through Banning State Park. I would not care to tackle them there. But here they tilted and whirled us along at just the right pace.

At one sharp curve a tree had tipped over and stuck out across part of the river. I recognized that darn tree, and I made sure I turned sharply to avoid it. I didn’t quite do that in 1991, with my wife and two kids aboard, and the current swept us into the tree and flipped us over so fast we barely knew what happened. We lost a radio and a shoe, and I lost a lot of credibility. No one got hurt. My pride was bruised a bit, though.

I thought about watching the ice go out on the river two springs ago. It had backed up for at the bridge on 46, and we were lucky enough to see it let go one evening. I’ve never seen such an awesome display of power as that river of ice as it moved down stream, breaking off trees, scouring the banks.

We passed by two campgrounds, which I believe are maintained by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. They looked inviting. I’ve never camped at them. Usually it is so buggy. But there were no bugs on Saturday.

When our canoes were side by side, Dave and I would talk a bit about little things in our lives. Nothing of major importance. We didn’t about Kosovo, even though our country is waist deep in that muddy river and the water is rising.

We didn’t talk about the school shooting in Littleton, Colorado, even though it cast a haze over my thoughts that even a gorgeous day on the river couldn’t completely clear.     

Those sobering subjects wouldn’t fit the mood of a canoe trip, even a short jaunt like this.

The trip ended after only about an hour and a half. We pulled up at the bridge on County Road 52, and put the canoes in Dave’s van, then headed back to my truck. It was too short. But we each had chores to do at home.

As we drove back, I noticed that at practically every house, there were people outside. Raking, playing, carrying fishing poles. It was not right to be inside. I was glad Dave and I had answered the call of the river.

Tree houses are for everyone ~ April 28, 1994

by David Heiller

Tree house. Those two words can fill a kid with bliss and a dad with fond memories. My son and I built a tree house on Saturday and Sunday. We chose the box elder by the outhouse. It is easy to climb, and has four trunks that come out of the ground like giant weeds.

First we rounded up scraps of lumber. Rule number one about tree houses is that you can’t buy materials. You have to scrounge them.

The inspiration for 
Noah's tree house dreams

We nailed three two-inch boards to the tree for the floor support, eight feet off the ground. I showed Noah how to use a square for cutting straight ends. I showed him how to read a level for a level floor. I was glad to show him this. No one ever showed me when I was his age.

Then we nailed the floor boards onto them. We had to notch some of the boards so that three of the tree trunks could come through. The end result was a platform that seemed part of the tree, like it belonged there.

While we worked, I told Noah about the tree houses we had when I was young. They weren’t really houses, rather just a couple of boards nailed onto two branches.

They were in the elm tree beside our house. One was about eight feet off the ground. That’s the one I liked. The other was level with the bedroom window on third floor of our house. That’s the one my brother liked. He would climb up there, and then grab a branch overhead and swing out over the ground, then dare me to do it. I think I did once, and that was enough.

You couldn’t beat elm trees for climbing and making tree houses. That tree is gone now, thanks to Dutch elm disease.

Kids and trees go together.
Malika and Noah in our maple tree.

Saturday night, Noah showed me some tree house drawings from a Calvin and Hobbes book. That’s how he wanted his to look. So the next day we made walls like Calvin’s. He tied a rope above the walls so he could climb in just like Calvin does. Noah didn’t want a door in his tree house. I’m glad he didn’t. That’s getting too fancy for my tree house tastes.

My daughter, Malika, objected to this. She couldn’t get in using the rope. I think that was Noah’s idea all along. But Cindy and I made him put a, ladder up for her.

He has to share his house, and not only with his sister. When we were done, Cindy announced that she couldn’t wait to use the house. It will be a great place to read, she said, and she was serious.

Noah felt proud of his house when it was done. He sat up there after supper. He felt eight feet tall, in more ways than one. It was a beautiful spring evening, with frogs peeping and tree swallows making nests. And only 29 more days of school left! he said.

Life couldn’t be any better.

I looked at the house with pride too. It was no great feat of carpentry, but Noah couldn’t have made it without me, and I wouldn’t have made it without him. That made me feel good.

Maybe I’ll do some reading up there too.

Put the memories where they belong ~ April 20, 2000

David Heiller

Every once in a while the bitter memories return.

David was pretty good at keeping things in perspective.
 Of course, we all get hurt, by people whose 
aim is to hurt us, whether we are 12 or 50.

When I was going into eighth grade, I decided to leave my elementary school a year early, and go the high school 12 miles away. I did this because I wanted to play sports. Most of my classmates were staying at the old school for their final year. They thought I was a snob and a deserter, and they let me know it. “Νο one likes you anyway, Heiller. Everybody’s glad you’re going,” one kid said. Boy, did that hurt. The memory is so vivid that I can still remember where I was standing when he said it. Just a couple of cruel sentences, but they have stuck with me for 30 years.

Then there was the time at the playground, when I wanted to join in a game with some kids who were sort of my friends. I didn’t feel like I could just join in, so I asked if I could join them. Big mistake. “God, Dave’s got to beg to play with us,” one of the girls chided. She laughed at me, made me feel like an outsider, a loser. She had bully power and she wielded it in merciless kid fashion.

I don’t think I’m alone with experiences like that. And I wasn’t always on the receiving end. I inflicted a few wounds on others.

The only thing more painful than some of those old childhood memories is seeing them repeated on my own kids.

I wish I had some magic words when that happens. I try to say the right thing. You’re a good kid. Be yourself. Do the best you can. We love you. I might tell of an experience of my own that was like theirs.

But I know that the hurt feelings ultimately have to be processed internally. You look at the words that are said, see how many grains of truth they contain, and try to understand why they were spoken and the person who said them.

Figuring out who you are is tough when you are age 14 or 16. It’s sometimes still a challenge at age 46.

But it can be done. I want to tell my kids that, by example if not words.

“Life won’t get much tougher for you than it is right now. Hang in there. The bitter memories won’t go away. But they’ll be put in the closet, right where they belong.”

Old Man River has his way ~ April 26, 2001

David Heiller

Cindy and I stood on the observation platform of Lock and Dam Number 10 last Wednesday, April 18.

Locks and dams on the upper Mississippi.

The Mississippi River was high. It was almost flowing over the top of the lock. A lock is like a long cement chute with a gate on either end. The locks are used to move boats past the dams. In normal weather they tower over the boats, except for towboats. But the river had swallowed up the locks.

We talked about the houses we had just seen upstream in Guttenburg, Iowa. Dozens of them were flooded. The road ran between them had been replaced by the main channel of the river. It was a strange sight.

I struck up a conversation with another guy on the platform. “Did you see those houses under water up there?” I asked.

“Yeah, we live in one of them,” he answered. He and his family had one of the few houses that wasn’t yet flooded on the island. He had come to town in a boat, going very slowly and carefully. You would not want a floating tree to catch you in that water. I thought it was kind of funny that after he came to town, he went to the dam to look at the river. Didn’t he see enough of it from his kitchen window? But the river in flood holds that kind of fascination for some people. I include myself in that category, although I like to think that I would not live on a low-lying island along the Mississippi.

The man’s wife said it was the third time since 1993 that their neighborhood had been flooded. The only other time before that was in 1965. That tells me that we must be doing something to help Old Man River with his spring tantrums.

Look at Brownsville, my wife, Cindy, said. In 1965, the water came up and over the banks of the river. It spread over many acres of bottoms and beach, all the way to the railroad tracks. They called it a 100-year-flood. Yeah, right.

But now there is a housing development at that spot, as well as huge sand dunes left by water Army Corps of Engineers dredging. The water can’t rest in Brownsville anymore, so it hustles downstream and finds another spot to flood, like Guttenburg.

I don’t have much sympathy for people that build in flood-prone areas. But then again, they aren’t looking for sympathy. The people that live there take floods in stride.

With David.

Cindy and I spent four days last week along the Mississippi. It was a vacation for us, although it sure wasn’t for the people who live there. We didn’t time the trip to coincide with the second worst flood ever. That was a grim and awesome bonus. The grim part was obvious. The fascination came with the magnitude of the flood.

On Friday evening my mom and I walked down to the first spillway of the Reno Bottoms, seven miles south of Brownsville. Normally there is no water over the spillway. It runs through a big culvert. But we watched as four feet of water rushed over it. One spot where many people fish was eight feet under.

“Think of the treasures that will wash up back there,” I told Mom. I could see the tip of a canoe protruding from a tangle of water and wood. Suffice it to say that Mom did not share my enthusiasm.

I told her I would be back in a couple weeks to find that canoe, and maybe some more goodies. It will take more than a couple weeks for the river to return to normal, she replied. She’s probably right. Then we can wait for the next 100-year flood, which will probably happen sooner than that.

A bright spring day gone dark ~ April 14, 1988

David Heiller

The scene didn’t make sense, last Friday morning in Willow River.

The air had that early April feeling to it, nippy and fresh and crystal clear. The sun had a brighter touch too, as it warmed the frost off the brown lawns, and warmed the robins that jumped from tree to tree above the grass, already hoping for earthworms.

But smoke curled above the houses in Willow River, clouding this bright spring morning and all the hope that it should have brought along. The smoke oozed from the rafters and walls and basement of a frame home, once white, now blackened and broken.

A dozen or so firemen from Willow River and Sturgeon Lake stood outside the shell of a house. They stood in pockets, here and there. They stood alongside the hole in the ground where a backhoe pawed through blackened debris. Their faces were gray with soot and smoke, their eyes hung with a sleepless night. And they seemed to stoop, in a barely perceptible way that is brought on by more than fatigue.

No one said much. Their work was done, work that had started with a fire call at 1:30 in the morning, eight hours earlier. They had arrived at a fire that made the sky glow orange, and after five hours, they had extinguished the fire inside. They had done their job.

But their shoulders sagged, and they said little.

Outside the burned home, a snowmobile sat with melted frame and windshield, some 30 feet from the home. There was a tricycle in the yard a bit further back, and behind the child’s toy, a child who had lived in the house until the fire, Mike Olesen. They had found Mike at 8:20.

Pine County Sheriff John Kozisek and his deputies stood in the basement of the home, digging through the black rubble. They raked and shoveled, stepping back every few minutes as the backhoe took another bite. Like the firemen who watched from above, they said little as they worked. Their faces had that same blank look.

People started arriving to look in on the scene. A little boy rode back and forth on his bicycle. Children came, looking on as they held the hands of mothers and dads. They saw the tricycle and the white bag and the firemen and the backhoe and the sheriff digging relentlessly in the basement.

The sun rose higher in the sky. Sweat broke out on the faces of the firemen in their heavy coats. Sheriff Kozisek unzipped his coveralls, took off his shirt and threw it into the patrol car, then zipped the coveralls back up and returned to the basement.

Television crews arrived from Duluth, cameramen dressed in blue jeans and news reporters in three piece suits and $200 dresses.

At 10 o’clock, the sheriff found the body of the family dog. A half hour later they found Michael’s mother, Debra Olesen.

They dug and sifted on. Kozisek wouldn’t stop. He had to find little Douglas Olesen. Cars drove by, people looked on. Some gawked as curious bystanders, some stared in disbelief. Others cried, shoulders shaking.

By afternoon, the sun had turned the crisp April morning into a stale afternoon. Smoke still curled from the top of the house, on the north side which was still standing. Kozisek and his crew finally quit at four o’clock. The firemen returned to the station. People sat on porches next door to the burned house. Others stood on the sidewalk across the street. Cars still drove by slowly. The little boy who had been riding his bike in the morning rode by once more, as if patrolling the street. Flames broke out in the top of the house again, in defiance to the firemen and the sheriff. Two men from the fire hall came down and hosed the flames out.

Back at the fire hall, most of the firefighters stood by their lockers, or sat in the lounge. They should have gone home to bed, but they couldn’t. They talked about the heat of the fire, and the layout of the house, and how it might have started and spread. They talked about Kozisek. They talked about Debra and Michael and Douglas. “They probably didn’t know what hit them,” someone said. “Once that smoke gets you, one or two breaths and that’s it.”

The sun set on Willow River. The firemen went home to their wives and children. Sheriff Kozisek went home to get a good night’s rest. He would be digging again in the morning looking for Doug. The little boy on the bike went home, the gawkers and friends and family and neighbors and reporters went home.

And alone, in the dark, they cried.

Remembering a few good teachers ~ April 13, 1989

David Heiller

What makes a good teacher? I found myself asking that question this week, for a couple reasons.

One reason was Rocky Kroon’s letter to the editor, which appears on this page. Rocky doesn’t write letters to the editor every week, or every year. His words are sincere, as he tells about one good teacher, good in the classroom and in the community. Please read it.

The other reason started with an incident last week at Askov Deep Rock. A group of people were standing at the counter, passing time. George Frederiksen told Pat Mee some fire department news.

“You’d better write it down and put it in your pocket,” I joked to Pat. Pat is the kind of guy who has a pocketful of notes to help him remember. His coverall pockets sometimes bulge like a file cabinet, filled with his notes.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Pat said, as he took his pen and wrote his reminder on the back of his hand.

The school and school-yard in Brownsville 
where Mrs. Sauer taught young 
Mr. Heiller the do's and the don't-s.

“Don’t write on your hands,” I said.

“Why not?” Pat asked, looking a little surprised.

I couldn’t answer for a second. Then I remembered Mrs. Sauer. “Because you’re not supposed to. People’s hands aren’t for writing.”

I felt a little embarrassed, telling a man like Pat Mee not to write on his hands. But Mrs. Sauer’s words just came out on their own.

“I had this seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Sauer,” I explained to Pat and George and Maureen Seibert. “She taught us never to write on our hands.” I can still remember her scolding Lynn Rohrer, an eighth grader, for writing on her hands. ‘Your body is a temple. Don’t abuse it,’ Mrs. Sauer had said, or something like that. ‘You weren’t born with ink on your skin, or holding a ball point pen.’

“And she taught us that whenever a woman drops something, a man should always pick it up for her,” I went on, not caring if Pat or George or Maureen really wanted me to. “She used to stand at the front of the class and drop her pen, and all the boys would dive for it to give it to her.”

Maureen looked at me. “She really made an impression on you, didn’t she?” Maureen asked.

“Yeah, she really did,” I answered. Funny, I hadn’t thought of Mrs. Sauer in years, but just like that, on a Tuesday morning some 22 years and 250 miles later, I remembered her. Good teachers will do that, the kind Rocky Kroon writes about.

I could write a book about Mrs. Sauer. She was about 50 then, and had grown-up daughters. We used to joke that one was named Dinah. We wanted to ask what it was like to have a “Dinah Sauer” for a daughter, but we never dared. Mrs. Sauer had sharp features, a hawk-like nose, reddish hair, piercing eyes. She moved quickly, and with complete confidence.

She thought quickly too, and wouldn’t hesitate to tell you things like: ‘Don’t write on your hands.’ And we listened.

One of David's
Brownsville school photos.

Mrs. Sauer would read books to us, a chapter a day from one of her favorites, like Little House on the Prairie. She made us read too, and everybody read, everybody checked out books from the library. Mrs. Sauer inspired us, and I can’t think of one student who didn’t respect her and obey her. She was that once-in-a-lifetime teacher.

But not all of Mrs. Sauer’s lessons came in the classroom. I remember one spring day that school year. The seventh and eighth grade classes had walked to Germania Hall to rehearse the graduation ceremony. On the way back, Mrs. Sauer pulled up beside me. She asked me what I wanted to do with my life.

“I want to be a truck driver,” I answered quickly.

She put her hand on my shoulder. “You’re not meant to be a truck driver, David,” she said. “You’re going to go to college. You’ve got some special gifts, and you should use them.”

It was a clear day, and life was still fresh for a 13-year-old boy in rural Minnesota. That’s what she said. At least I think it is. It’s what I remember anyway, and that’s what good teachers are all about.’

Even if I sometimes wish I were a truck driver.

You find many treasures in the spring ~ April 24, 1997

David Heiller

Spring has a way of uncovering lost treasures although sometimes you have to help her. Take my folding saw, for instance. Cindy bought it for me last Christmas. I had wanted one for a long time. I could use it to prune trees and to cut firewood on camping trips. A folding saw would be real handy, I figured.

I talked about the need for a folding saw for a couple years. Cindy finally got tired of that, so she bought me one. It was my favorite gift.

One of the functions of a spouse is to buy things like folding saws. That should be a marriage vow.

PASTOR: Do you promise to love, honor, and buy handy things for your husband?

BRIDE: I do!

I started using the folding saw right away, to cut branches and small trees on our snowshoe trails in the woods. It worked great. The teeth were razor sharp.

But it was a bit awkward to carry. I tried putting it in my pocket, but it was too big for that, so I put it in my fanny pack.

Then one day in the woods, in the middle of February, the saw fell out of my fanny pack. I looked and looked for it. I knew the general vicinity where it fell. But when you drop something in three feet of snow, it’s hard to find, and I couldn’t.

Losing that saw was hard. I had to tell Cindy that her great gift was gone. She was sad, not so much about the loss of the saw, but because she would have to put up with another two years of me saying, “Gee, I wish I wouldn’t have lost that saw. I really liked it. I could have used it for a lot of things. Sure could use a new one.”

Last week I took a walk in the woods to find the saw. The snow was pretty much gone. What a treat to be walking on bare ground again.

I walked over the trail once, and didn’t find it, so I doubled back, and then the saw just jumped out at me, plain as day, on the matted leaves of the forest floor.

Those first spring days outside,
you just never can tell what will turn up.

Wow, that’s a nice feeling. The prodigal saw had returned. The handle was weathered, and the blade had rust spots. But those were surface blemishes. That saw was as good as new.

When I got home, I casually mentioned to Cindy, “Oh by the way, I found my saw in the woods.” She could see through that smoke screen of nonchalance. She was happy for me, and for herself.

Another minor miracle occurred on Saturday. Cindy had lost a weeding tool last year. It was her favorite tool. I gave it to her, by the way. I took the same marriage vow she did, although; I don’t always live up to it.

She didn’t know what happened to it. That’s often the way people lose things. You set something down, you get distracted and walk away, you forget about it for a while, and then when you go to use it again, you wonder where the heck that darn tool is.

It is hard to imagine what kind of distraction
could cause a person to leave a tool behind...

“It’ll show up some day,” I told her. They always do. And sure enough, last Saturday Cindy was cleaning out a flower bed, and she saw a stick buried in the dirt, and pulled it up, and it was the handle of her prodigal weeder.

It made her day, and mine too, because now I don’t have to listen to her talk about that great weeder she had, the one that was just perfect, and did such a good job, and wouldn’t it be nice to get another one like it.

Other treasures are turning up these days. Some aren’t so pleasant, like dead squirrels and the calling cards of our two dogs. Three wagon loads of organic debris were taken to our woods on Saturday.

But under it were irises and anemones, hollyhocks and delphiniums, tulips and poppies, and many other flowers that are nameless and beautiful.

They are all green and growing. Is there a prettier sight than seeing a mass of green shoots coming from a flower bed?

Spring has many treasures that once were lost but now are found again.

A tough winter for owls and dogs ~ April 18, 1996

David Heiller

One of the sounds of spring that has been absent so far this year is the hooting of owls.

They usually make quite a racket in our woods in March and April. I like the wild sound of owls. I like seeing them too. It’s a lucky day when you see one gliding silently through the woods like a cargo plane. Or when you come upon one sitting in a tree.

But this year the woods have been quiet. I’ve only heard a few hoots. Ron Goetzinger, who works for the DNR in Moose Lake, explained why.

“It’s been a pretty tough winter for owls,” Ron told me on April 15. “Normally they feed on mice and stuff like that under the snow, and the snow is so deep that they never could get down in there to get their feed so they just starved to death.”

The lack of food has made them bolder too. We had a barred owl at our bird feeder two weeks ago. It must have been looking for an easy meal of red squirrel or sparrow. The dogs chased it away, but not before it flew up into a maple tree next to the house to catch its breath. My son and I got a good look at it, and it was a fine sight indeed.

Larry Dagel, who lives east of Sturgeon Lake on County Road 161, had a closer encounter with a great horned owl this winter that wasn’t such a fine sight.

Here’s how Larry, who owns and operates Sturgeon Lake Feed Mill, told the story on April 15:

“I turned the dog out at 5:30 in the morning to go to the can. It was dark then. In front of the house I’ve got a sidewalk. It’s half the length of the house, 20 feet.

“Before the dog even got to the end of the sidewalk, the owl had it. It just put the grip right across the shoulder blades, shoulder and stomach, and it punched eight or 10 holes in the dog. Blood was running out to beat heck.

“The dog started squealing, and I came out the door and the owl just looked at me. And I grabbed him around the back on both wings and I rung his neck. He wouldn’t let go of the dog.

“The next day I chucked it in my woodstove. I guess a guy ain’t supposed to have them around, so I just got rid of it. Eliminate the problem.

“I’ve never seen one that close to the house. He had to be right in a tree by the house because the dog had only been out less than 10 seconds and the owl grabbed it. It was like he was wait­ing there for him.”

It’s been a tough winter for owls in more ways than one.

But things will get better. Spring is just around the corner, and when it hits, it will hit hard and fast and green, and we’ll all be happy.

The maple trees know that. Our 55 taps produced 30 gallons of sap on April 13, 56 gallons on April 14, and 66 gallons on April 15. That’s by far the most we’ve ever gathered in one day.

I think they are like the rest of us, pouring out their frustration over an endless winter, anxious and excited for warm weather to stay so they can get on with life and growth.

This winter has been like a bad dream that you know you are having but you can’t quite wake up from. When we awake, we will all breathe a big sigh of relief.

Especially Larry Dagel’s dog, which by the way, did manage to survive the winter of 1996.

Spring—when the snow melts and the frost boils ~ April 3, 1986

By David Heiller

An Easter miracle occurred last weekend.

When we left for a family get-together in Minneapolis Saturday morning, a foot of snow covered the landscape at our home in Birch Creek Township. When we returned Monday afternoon, all the snow had melted. It was like seeing a nephew you hadn’t seen in years, and suddenly he is a foot taller, with a deeper voice and stubble on his face.

Malika and Miss Emma outside 
in the small window between
"The Snow is GONE! and the mud is here!"

But what a sight on Monday. The woodpile gaped like an open wound. I located the pile of slab-wood that didn’t get stacked before our Thanksgiving storm. The bent hood of an old Ford truck emerged, plus sheets of tin for a roofing project. And those rusty band saw blades from an old sawmill were curled where I left them. Waiting.

The garden sneered at us, cornstalks and Brussels sprouts leaning this way and that. Weren’t we supposed to clean that last fall, after harvest? The front lawn showed a long winter’s use by our dog, who must have thought it a perfect pet exercise area. Time to get the rake out.

But spring is here, though the countryside doesn’t proclaim it. A pair of robins flitted in mid-air under the apple tree Monday evening and they weren’t fighting. They will nest again in the white spruce. Green will push aside brown, frogs will break into song, and roads will boil.

A little leery of the Canada 
geese in the spring.

Roads boil? If you live in Pine County, you know what I mean. Frost that is down nearly to China works its way to the surface, and spits out into frost boils. I measured one two and a half feet deep several years ago just south of our house. I’m sure older folks can top that by a lot. They look like huge boils on the face of the road. New ones jiggle when stepped on like Jello. Old ones swallow children and foreign cars. The Guinness Book of World Records doesn’t list the world’s deepest frost boil, but I would put my money on northern Pine County.

People west of Sturgeon Lake will have a closer look at them this year, with the Kettle River Bridge still closed. The old bridge on County Road 46 was removed last summer, with a new one to rise in glory three months later. But bedrock, rain, or too many cups of coffee kept it from completion. The detour roads to Moose Lake, Sturgeon Lake, or Willow River, will show us some fine frost boils. Our cars will suffer. Mechanics and front-end specialists love detour roads the way dentists love Easter and Halloween.

But before we complain too much more, we should remember what those roads must have been like not too many years ago. If you are used to blacktop, our forefathers would have been pleased with a little gravel. Many of the roads where I live are “corduroy” roads, made to stand up to frost, water, and washouts, by laying logs in place and covering them with dirt. Sometimes you can still see these logs when a grader accidentally snags one out of the road after a rain, or in the spring.

The roads were often built by local people who wanted better roads. Many contributed days of their year to work on the roads in place of paying taxes.

Sometimes the work was simply donated. O. Bernard Johnson, who grew up in Birch Creek Township, wrote about such an effort in his very interesting book, The Homesteaders.

Postmaster Charles Olson, who worked in Sturgeon Lake from 1901 to 1913, wanted to establish a rural route east of town. The route qualified, with a minimum of 24 miles in length and 100 or more patrons. But a postal inspector found the roads deplorable, and turned in a negative report. It must have been frost boil season.

Writes O. Bernard Johnson:

The rejection was a disappointment to the settlers, but they were not discouraged. Mr. Olson informed them as to the reasons why the proposal was not approved and they went to work immediately, without pay, and improved the roads of the suggested route. When the Inspector returned in the fall of the year, he was so greatly impressed with the improvements, that he approved Route No. 1. Route No. 2, running east of the village was approved later.

Johnson also tells about the muddy roads:

There is an incident, related years ago, concerning a fishing trip made by Olaf Larson to Sturgeon Lake in a two wheel cart, which in this instance was the front part of the lumber wagon: He caught several wash tubs full of fish. On the way home, near the Ten Post, due to the heavy load and depth of the mud in the road, one of the wheels of the cart gave way and all the fish slid off the cart into the mud. No record is available as to how he managed to transport the fish the rest of the distance to his home. The story, however, is true.

If you are driving through that area eight miles west of Sturgeon Lake in the next month, keep an eye out for frost boils. You may even find a few of those fish still splashing around.