The adventure, ardor, and abuse of skating ~ January 5, 1989

David Heiller

Andy Rote was having the hardest time at the skating rink in Askov last Friday. He would skate about two feet before his own two feet would fly into the air, and he would land on his keester, as Ronald Reagan would call it.

But Andy, like most seven-year-olds, didn’t seem to mind the falls. For one thing, he had six layers of clothes on. His mother, Anne, who grinned from the sidelines, had made sure of that. He didn’t mind that his 10-year-old sister, Elaine didn’t fall down once, or that Tara Loew, at age 14, looked like another Katarina Witt as she circled the rink.

Andy just kept getting up, and falling down, and getting up again.

Noah and Joe skating,
Kevin is doing his very best with Mollie.

There’s something about skating that brings back memories for a lot of us. Watching Andy skate last Friday, and skating with my family on Saturday and Sunday, brought back some flashes. Someone always received a new pair of skates for Christmas in my family of eight brothers and sisters when I was a boy. The skates smelled of new leather, and the proud owner would try them on in the living room, wobbling from rug to rug while Mom reminded us not to walk on the linoleum.

"Keep pushing me, Kevin, this is FUN!"

Then down to the harbor we’d go, new skates or old. I’ll never forget the shock one winter on the first day of ice skating. I unlaced my skates from the previous year, and tried pulling them on, but they wouldn’t fit. I took off the extra pair of socks. Still not close. I cried and went home, and Mom explained that my feet had grown so much that the skates were too small. She dug into the basement stairway, grabbed another pair from a nail for me. There were always half a dozen extra pairs of skates hanging from nails in the stairway, one of the many advantages of a large family. These were about three sizes too big. We stuffed tissue paper into the toe, and they fit fine. I was back on the harbor in an hour.

There was adventure on the ice. Skating on the river, you had to watch your feet pretty close. My brother, Danny, hit a hole one night and bounced off the ace with a hard crack. He came up holding a mouth full of blood and a big piece of front tooth.

Another time, I was skating on the river bottoms, lost in thought with a full head of steam. I glanced down at my feet, and instantly felt a knot in my gut. Black water was rushing silently below ice that was maybe one inch thick. I made a quick but gentle turn. Any sudden movement would have cracked that egg shell ice. I made it back to safe ground, but not before I saw myself plunging into that fast current with a heavy pair of skates to pull me down. Very scary.

And romance. I’d like to tell about the times I stood around a bonfire on the ice, holding hand with a dark-eyed beauty, but it wouldn’t be true. (I never write anything that isn’t true in this column.) I did have a say in the romance of others, though. I remember once when Norman Cram and Joan Goetzinger were courting. Norman was about 16, and thought a lot of Joan, and even more of himself, because he wore figure skates, and not hockey skates, a suspicious choice in the eyes of a 10-year-old kid. There was a song out at the time titled “Norman.” It had a sugary chorus that went, “Norman, woo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo, Norman, woo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-oοo-ooo-ooo, Norman, Norman my love.” When I saw Norman Cram holding hands with Joan Goetzinger at the skating rink one night, the temptation was too great. I waited until he had started walking up the wooden steps from the harbor with his skates on. ‘Norman, woo-oοo-ooo-ooo- ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo,” I started singing in as sweet and as loud a voice as possible. Norman let go of Joan’s hand and came after me on the fly, thumping down the steps and flying headfirst when his figure skates hit the ice. But I had learned to skate pretty well by that time, and Norman never did catch me.

Now I skate around man-made rinks. There’s romance when I hold the hands of a dark-eyed beauty (actually, they’re blue). There’s adventure when I pull Noah and Mollie on the plastic sled so fast that the front end comes off the ice and they are suspended in air like a ride at the county fair. Ι fall down too, landing on elbows that don’t give like they used to. Then I lie on the ice and laugh at myself. Funny, every year our dedicated firemen flood the rinks around here, they make the ice a little harder.

Thank goodness for kids like Andy Rote, who can fall down and pull themselves up again. They’ve got a lot to look forward to.

Snowshoes make winter easier to take ~ January 16, 1997

David Heiller

While filing out of church last Sunday, I ran into Bill Hall of Moose Lake.

Bill and his wife, Lou, used to own Moose Lake Florists. They sold it last year. They are retired. So I figured they must be going to head south soon.

I asked Bill about that as we slowly walked out of church. He answered that he hasn’t had enough of winter yet to head south.

Not enough winter? Some people would disagree.

I sensed that the notion of going south for the winter didn’t appeal to Bill. He explained it to me. There’s a reason people who live in the north live longer than people from the south, he said.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Going through four seasons is good for a person, he answered. There’s something about those extreme seasonal changes that is healthy.

That’s especially true if you are active, I said. If you snowshoe or ski or split wood in the winter, it should make you a healthier person.

My snowshoes, on Malika's feet.
~ Thanks to Malika for the photo.

We shook the pastor’s hand and went our separate ways. But Bill’s brief comment got me to thinking.

You can sit in your house and watch TV all winter, but you’re missing the point if you do that, if you don’t experience the change of seasons. If you don’t experience the season.

Oh-oh. I’m feeling preachy. I feel the Sermon of the Snowshoe comin’ on. Brothers and sisters! Listen and be saved from the dreary wintah! You don’t need a trailer park in Arizonah when you have a state park in Minnesotah!

“Yah sure,” you say. “Throw another log in the woodstove, Gladys, it’s chilly in this old farm house. And listen to what that crazy Heiller is writing about now. He LIKES winter.”

So call me crazy. Add my wife to the list too, and about 400,000 other people.

An Autumn view of our woods from across the field.

Snowshoes help. This is turning out to be the perfect winter for snowshoeing. Cindy and I have been doing a lot of it on our property this winter.

The snow is so deep that you need snowshoes to go anywhere besides the outhouse. And who wants to go there in the winter? I’m not that crazy.

We take a loppers and a folding camp saw with us and cut the branches and brush that try to tangle us up. Now we have all kinds of trails through the woods.

At first it was hard making the trails. Even with snowshoes, we’d sink in a foot. That’s tough walking. When you’re breaking trail, you have an extra five pounds on each foot.

But the wind has packed the snow down. Now it is much easier. And once the trails are made, you don’t sink at all. It’s like having little highways in the woods.

Even when it’s way below zero, snowshoeing has been fun. You just have to keep moving. And I always take a bottle of water with me. Α cold drink of water in the woods is really refreshing. It gives me a lift.

Snowshoes give me a fresh perspective on our woods. I can go places that are too wet and buggy the rest of the year. It’s interesting to look at the trees. I’ve seen them in the fall and spring but they look different now. A few are bent and broken. Most stand strong and silent. They all seem to take the worst Mother Nature can offer without a shrug. It’s their lot in life. They can’t head south. Maybe Bill Hall knows something that the trees know.

Cindy and I look at animal tracks. Some are easy to identify, like rabbits and squirrels and mice. But some are a mystery.

We went out on Sunday afternoon, January 6, after about 18 inches of new snow had fallen. We came upon fresh tracks, maybe two hours old, of a very big animal walking through our woods.

In some places, it walked through the deep snow. In other places, it took three-foot-long leaps. It veered off in one spot to sniff under some branches. Cindy and I both think it was a timber wolf. (There was no belly drag, despite of how deep the prints went.~chg) We saw two near our house about six years ago, so it’s not out of the question.

Those tracks have added to the wonder of our woods. I’d be honored to have a timber wolf as a neighbor, honored and a little nervous.

Winter has a lot of things like that to offer. Snowshoes make it easier for me to accept that offer, and even give a word of thanks.

The 13 steps of the 'Terrible Twos' ~ January 21, 1988

David Heiller

There are 13 steps to our upstairs. I actually counted them for the first time tonight, after six and a half years of living here.

The reason I counted them is that I just walked down them for the fifth time in the last hour. I’ve been trying to match wits with a two-year-old girl.

“Not another column about that kid of yours?” you moan. Yes, one more. But it’s not really about Malika. It’s about universal, ever changing growth and development, the human psychological phenomenon of putting a two-year-old to bed.

Sleeping beauties, but not that night, I guess.

I had put the kids to bed about 7:30 this Monday evening. They lay with me in Noah’s bed for a minute, then I separated them into their own rooms. There’s no door between their rooms, so I put a gate in place. It’s a gate that is made to keep toddlers out of rooms they shouldn’t be in.

The design is perfect except for the barbed wire they forgot to string across the top. Toddlers look upon such gates the way mountain climbers look at the north face of the Eiger. The way Dutch Jones looks at a bear. The way Marvin Johnson looks at a post office.

I trudged down those 13 steps, after leaving the lights on in both kids’ rooms. They had their books, and I thought maybe Malika would read herself to sleep. Soon the floor was creaking above me. Malika was in our bedroom, in our bed. I walked upstairs and put her back in her bed, with a warning that the light would go out if she got out of her bed again.

Things seemed to be fine for a minute, so I went outside to bring in a load of firewood. As I dumped the wood in the box, I could sense another person downstairs. I peeked into the living room. Malika stood behind the rocking chair, looking at me.

“I had to get my kiki,” she explained, showing me her blanket.

I herded her toward the stairs.

Sleep reading.

“I have to go poop, Dad” she said as we passed the bathroom.

“You just went poop,” I said. That was true enough, just a half hour earlier.

“I have to go poop, Dad,” she insisted.

“All right,^” I said. ^“But hurry up.” I was angry by now. My right ear ached from an infection. I still had my hat and gloves on from the wood hauling, and here I was standing in the bathroom with a two-year-old who claimed to have to empty her bowels for the second time in 30 minutes.

“Dog-gone it, Malika,” I started, as she stared at me from her perch. ^“Now hurry up. First you have to go potty, then you have to go again, and now you just sit there. I have a sore ear, and I^’ve got work to do tonight, and I’m angry with you, so go potty.”

“What, Dad?” she asked.

My speech has been wasted. I was glad there was no adult in the house to hear it.

“I said go potty,” I repeated.

^“Pee or poop, Dad?” she asked.

“I don’t care, you’re the one that has to go, not me,” I yelled.

Malika climbed off the potty, with nothing to show for her effort except an irate father.

Ms. Malika, full of the dickens.
Light of her daddy's eyes.

I left her upstairs, where she navigated her Matterhorn gate two times into Noah’s room. Noah hid under the covers. Even he had had enough. Finally I gave her a swat on the butt, turned off the lights, and headed down the 13 steps.

Malika started crying. ^“Lay with me owie minute,” she said between sobs. “Lay with me owie minute.”

“All right, I^’ll lay with you one minute.” I walked back upstairs. Malika hugged her blanket, and hugged me, as I lay down and ran my fingers through her hair. It was 8:30 now. She had finally run out of steam, and I took my last trip down the 13 steps for the night.

I remember when Noah was Mollie’s age, how he wouldn’t listen or behave. Nearly every parent can recount their Waterloos of the Terrible Twos. But Noah changed, in spite of all our attempts at early bedtime and his multiple trips to the potty. He just plain changed, through no effort on our part or his. Now, at age four and a half, for the most part he listens and understands and behaves.

Sometimes, when young parents belly-ache about things their kids do, older people get a wistful look in their eyes. “They’ll be grown up before you know it,” they say. I think I know how they feel. Being a parent is an on-going experience, just like growing up. Once a kid is grown, they’re grown. Having kids is hard work, but it’s a heck of a lot of fun too. Which is why I write columns like this.

Malika will change too. Once she leaves these Terrible Twos, she’ll leave them for good, since we won’t be having any more children. They’ll even be gone from this column, faithful readers.

Then those 13 steps won’t mean as much as they did tonight.

I can’t wait.

He didn’t save living for another day ~ Marlana Benzie-Lourey ~ January 25, 2007

Editor's note: This is by our dear friend, Marlana. She and her husband, Tony bought the Askov American from us in 2003. She wrote this for the readers of the Askov American, after David's death.

David Heiller lived life like he played cards. He never held back and never had a card up his sleeve. What you saw was what you got. Dave started with his highest trump and played the high cards out as if there might not be another chance to play them. Straight-forward. Without reservation.

Jumping to Daddy, and other games.

“What are you waiting for, Mar? Why’d you hang on to that joker?” he’d ask me in disbelief as each card dropped. “You’re gonna miss your chance if you play like that.”

Tony and Marlana, 2003.

That’s how he lived his life. He didn’t save his living for another day. If something was worth doing, he’d do it. His family, writing, music, photography, camping, fishing, friends. He made sure he fit it all in. Neatly. With planning and purpose.

Dave’s last email to me was the morning be died. He was wondering if Tony and I were going to make it to Minneapolis to meet him and Cindy for dinner after a day at the state newspaper convention. He’d first contacted me several weeks ago about setting a date, always the one to make the plans, set aside the time for friends. “Or else we’ll never do it,” he’d often say, pulling out his calendar to schedule the next card night or book club.

We never got to have that dinner.

I’d told him the day before that I had so many new questions saved up for him. He’d been in my shoes as publisher of the Askov American nearly two decades longer than I had. He understood my dilemmas, worries, and frustrations. I didn’t have to explain much whenever we talked about life at the paper, which was often. “I know, Mar,” he’d say, with that gentle sigh and nod of his heed, always reassuring me that I should follow my instincts. It’ll work out, he’d tell me. Don’t worry. You’re doing just fine.

Ι didn’t get to ask those questions.

David, Queen Ida, and MacKenzie

If you ever had a conversation with Dave, on any subject, it would keep brewing in his news reporter’s mind long after he left you. Following a visit to an Indian restaurant, we’d receive a newspaper clipping on palak paneer. Mention that you like bluegrass and a tape would show up in the mail. Stuart wants to learn mandolin? Here’s a video. The kids are fascinated by wildlife? Check out this delicate mouse skeleton, presented in a tiny gift box that traveled hundreds of miles, just for them.

He never forgot. He rarely put off for another day. He did so many of the things we all want to do. He wrote songs, gardened, kept bees, put up maple syrup. Just a few weeks ago, I spotted the maple syrup pan he gave me too many years ago.

We’d been touring his summer gardens when he asked me to come over to the shed.

David pouring sap for 
maple syrup making.

“Mar, you said a while ago you want to learn how to put up maple syrup,” he said pointing to a wide metal pan. “I got a new pan. You can have this one, but only if you’re really going to use it. I’d hate to give it away and find out you never used it,”

When I saw that pan, just weeks before he died, Ι shook my head. There it was, leaning against my barn wall, begging for α spring fire. “Oh, I’ll use it!” I’d promised him.

But the years passed quickly, each fleeting spring answered with a “next year,” “someday.”

Dave was a serious newspaper man, of a style and caliber that one doesn’t often see these days. On α Tuesday afternoon, the office was often hushed, with Dave typing furiously away at his keyboard, setting in print the story of a neighbor—a seamstress, a logger, a firefighter, or α teacher. He gave voice to their quiet stories and told them proudly, preserving the memory and the moment in the pages of the Askov American. His work earned him dozens of awards and built the American’s reputation throughout the region. Dave believed completely in community journalism and the importance of the weekly newspaper. And, while I’m sure he kept a running fist of stories he’d like to do, I’d guess his list was relatively short, because he rarely put his work off for another day. If the story ought to be told, he’d tell it.

I didn’t get to have that last dinner and conversation with Dave.

The many questions I had for him bounce around in my head, unanswered, unsettled, seeking a smooth place to land. So many questions. And, while Ι might not get the answers Ι was seeking that night, I know the question Dave will ask me as I put off plans to see a friend, write a story, tap a maple tree.

“What are you waiting for?”

a photo album dedicated to David

Alone at the cabin ~ January 21, 1993

David Heiller

The cabin sat on top of a high hill overlooking Moose Lake. Below you could see two islands, pine covered and rocky. They looked like ships in a smooth white ocean.

We had to ski there first. I insisted, with a hunger that I couldn’t explain. Moose Lake, not the one in Carlton County but the one northeast of Ely, is a jumping-off spot into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. I had seen it from the front of a canoe three springs ago, had followed it through Newfound and Ensign and Missionary Lakes and beyond to an eight pound lake trout, the nicest fish I ever caught. And with the nicest friends too.

So last Friday afternoon, Cindy and I strapped on our skis and headed up Moose Lake with a wind at our back and the sun setting low in the southwest sky. We broke our own trail for about half a mile, until I hit slush and my skis turned into two-by-fours of ice and snow.

Stopping for a sunset.

We headed for shore, and picked up a dogsled trail. It was slick. The slushy spots had frozen over. We flew along for three miles to the end of Moose Lake, to where it joined Newfound Lake.

There wasn’t much to see with just your eyes. The lake twisted around a bend and disappeared amidst the jack-pine. But it was the promise of adventure, both past and present, that I was seeing. From the Root Beer Lady and Sigurd Olson on down to Dave Chasson and his ALC students, all wanting to follow the water, to see what lies around the next bend.

WE HEADED BACK TO THE CABIN, the wind in our face forcing tears, and I felt better for peering into the north country. I had it out of my system, which is maybe why I started this column with it. But that wasn’t the main reason for this trip, and it isn’t the main reason for this column.

Cindy and I were the main reason.

For the first time in more than five years, we were alone for a weekend. No kids, no family, no friends, no newspaper convention. Just us and a cabin.

Mike Vosburgh, the owner of the cabin, showed us the woodstove and how to use it. He told us about the sauna, and how to use it. Cindy and I smiled and listened politely. This was just like home, we thought.

But it wasn’t just like home. It was a cabin in the woods, and we were alone, and there’s no better feeling when you throw those two ingredients into a pot and simmer slowly for two days.

We skied for hours on end, exploring a trail that Mike told us about, then finding another one on our own. We followed the fresh tracks of a moose, saw its calling cards. I wanted to pick one up for Noah, but something stopped me. Maybe a bit too much of the civilization that we had left behind.

“Maybe you should take one for Noah,” Cindy said, reading my thoughts, and we both laughed.

I drank quarts of water, like I always do on Boundary Water trips. It tastes better there, colder, fresher. I like to think that it purifies me, but Cindy just thinks it makes me stop frequently, like the moose.

Après-ski cooking at the cabin

We took a walk under a night sky full of constellations. We found Orion and the big dipper and the North Star, just like we see them at home, only here it was at the cabin and we were together and it was better somehow.

We talked, in the car, in the cabin, on the ski trails. We talked about the kids and our families and friends and books and other things both mighty and mundane. Talk came easy.

And we ate. Cindy had packed enough food for a troop of Boy Scouts, and we ate most of it. She bought T-bone steaks for the first time in 12½ years of marriage. She stirred up tomatoes and green peppers and deer steak and made fajitas, which I could barely pronounce but could barely stop eating.

We sat in front of the woodstove and watched tornadoes of flames behind the glass doors.

We hugged and kissed. We drank champagne and fell in love again.

Cabins and skiing and weekends alone are good for that.

When we got back home, we picked up our kids. We were so happy to see them, and they us. Weekends away are good for that too.

Together time.

When we told Noah about the moose trail, he said we should have brought some moose droppings home for him. He wanted to bring them to school.

We told some friends, a couple, about our weekend. “You guys, you guy-as!” the woman kept repeating stretching the words out with a voice full of happiness and envy.

Her husband started fidgeting and I realized we were walking on eggshells with all this talk of a wonderful weekend alone. How many times have I fidgeted like that?

It’s like the weather: everybody talks about it, but nobody can do anything about it.

I DON’T WANT TO BE SO PREACHY as to suggest you can do something about it, you guys. In fact, I feel a bit sappy writing about it. After all, this IS a family newspaper.

So just quit squirming and go find your own cabin.

Skiing beats cartoons any day ~ January 16, 1992

David Heiller

“Come on, kids, we’re going skiing.”

I made that statement on Saturday morning, and it didn’t sit well with Noah, Malika, and Jake. They had watched three hours of cartoons. Their eyes were glazed over. They were hypnotized by laugh tracks and sound effects and chocolate covered cereal commercials that are SO nutritious. Hey, that’s what the announcer said.

Their grumbling didn’t last long. Off went Bugs Bunny. Out went the kids. On went the skis. And along came the old man with a collie and two oranges and a bottle of apple juice.

Take it from the old man: what a day for skiing it was! Temperature in the twenties. Sun shining. Three inches of new snow over an old ski trail. You folks who have gone south for the winter don’t know what you are missing. You kids who are still watching cartoons don’t either.

Skiing, and turning around, and talking lead to this.
She doesn't seem too mind much though, does she?

Jake and Noah led the way. They quickly disappeared. That’s not hard with Mollie and me in the rear. Six-year-old girls like to talk while they ski. They talk about friends and school and Barbies and grandmas. They turn around when they talk. They fall when they turn around. You end up travelling about one-quarter mile an hour.

That’s all right though. Getting out is what’s important. That’s what I keep telling myself when I want to zoom past her and the boys in those long, easy strides of the good old days.

We finally caught Noah and Jake at the deer stand. We ate the two oranges. There’s nothing sweeter than an orange on a ski trip. We drank apple juice. Mollie wanted to drink the orange juice in the plastic milk bottle in the deer stand. It was frozen. I explained that it wasn’t juice at all, that when deer hunters have to go potty, they don’t like to leave the stand and, well, you know.

The kids understood all right. In fact, it started quite a lively conversation, which I will NOT repeat. Such things sure fascinate eight-year-old boys.

Let's go!

Jake and I skied on. He moved along steadily. I kept up with him, but barely. It won’t be long until he is faster than me. I’d never admit that to him, or to Noah, who claims every so often that he will someday run faster than me.

“You’ll never be faster than me,” I say as if there is no room for argument. One of these days he and his friend Jake will prove me wrong. Even Malika will quit her chattering, face forward, and glide away from me.

I won’t mind a bit if we are skiing on a day like that one last Saturday morning.

I’ll even put up with the arguing that came when Malika kicked snow down on Noah from the deer stand. I’ll contend with helping a six-year-old girl go the bathroom on a ski trail wearing a snowsuit. (I’m glad I’m a boy for that reason alone.)

Days like last Saturday make me thankful for snow and skis and kids and good health. It makes me thankful for people like Sam Cook, who wrote a column filled with insight in the Duluth New-Tribune on January 10.

Sam’s thoughts and experiences often hit home with me, and that one was no exception. He wrote:

It is possible to buy your child Nintendo games and still take him or her fishing. It’s possible to plop your kids in front of a rented video for a couple hours and still go hunting on the weekend.

But my guess is the more we expose our kids to Nintendos and movies and malls, the less likely it is they’re going to climb up on our laps and ask us if they can come with us fishing on the weekend.

Or skiing. Forgive me for preaching, but Sam Cook is right. It’s sometimes much easier to leave the cartoons on. I’m sometimes guilty of that. But then we miss ski trips and oranges and juice bottles and all those other things that make life fun for children and us parents.

Some cold weather thoughts ~ January 20, 1993

David Heiller 

Cold is relative. It always takes a cold snap to remind me of that. In December of 1977, we had a stretch of very cold weather, 20 and 30 below for a week or so. I remember standing outside and playing my banjo when the temperature rose to zero.

This past Sunday morning was like that. I shoveled snow in my bathrobe and slippers, after the temperature shot up to 17 below zero. That was the warmest it had been for a day and a half.

On Saturday afternoon, the thermometer rose to 21 below.

Cold~cold~cold

That was the high for the day. The night before we had minus 33.

Steve Popowitz went outside Saturday morning. He thought some people were chopping down trees in his woods. Then he realized that the trees were popping from the cold. Pop. Crack. Pop. Crack. It sounded just like someone chopping trees with an axe. It was louder and faster than he’d ever heard.

He had 35 below. He was trying not to boast when he said it. But it feels good anytime you can beat a friend in the How-Cold-Was-It contest.

There’s always someone who had it colder too. “Ed Pepin had 38 below, so we had at least 40,” Pat Helfman told me on Sunday. She’s telling the truth, as any fifth grade student can tell you.

Sure as shooting, someone is reading this column right now and saying, “Well I had it colder than that. Forty below? That’s nothing. Hey Lena, listen to what this idiot Heiller wrote this week.”

People love cold weather. It makes us feel like we’ve earned the right to be called Minnesotans.

Cold~cold days are good puzzle days...

We don’t brag about it, but it feels good to casually mention it. It’s the same feeling a fisherman gets when he’s carrying an eight pound lake trout, and he meets another fisherman. “Catch anything,” the one will ask. “Nothing much,” the other says, holding up his fish and trying not to smile.

Some people really earn their cold weather wings. I saw Pat Mee filling up Jean Lunde’s fuel oil tank on Friday afternoon. He was standing with his back to a vicious north wind. The wind chill was 50-below, which he acknowledged by turning up the collar on his coveralls. You know it’s cold when Pat turns up his collar.

Somehow, seeing Pat there gave me a secure feeling. He has an important job to do, and he does it, and you know he will do it. When was the last time you heard of someone running out of fuel because a Pat Mee or a Don Petersen couldn’t stand the cold? I can’t recall one.

...and a good time for a game of Monopoly with a friend.

School bus drivers earn it too. We trust them with our kids in the dark, frozen mornings, and they never let us down.

In fact, once people get accustomed to cold weather, life goes on almost as usual. Maybe they play a few more games of cribbage or Yahtzee. But people are still out snowmobiling and ice fishing. Kids still go sliding and skating.

I took an hour’s hike through the woods on snowshoes on Saturday afternoon. It was 21 below, but the sun was shining and there was no wind, and it was lovely. The woods were beautiful, pure and pristine. The snow was soft and powdery. Hardly any tracks on it.

I heard a chickadee call its spring song too. Phee-bee. Phee-bee. They must know something that we don’t.

Or else they are eternal optimists, like Steve Popowitz. He was going to split wood on Saturday afternoon. He had some big, tough hunks. They would split easier in the cold weather, he said.

Steve was verifying that old saying, that wood heats you six times: when you cut it, haul it, split it, stack it, carry it in, and burn it.

“Anything colder than 20 below feels the same anyway,” Steve said. Cold weather brings out the philosopher in Steve. (So do a lot of other subjects.)

I thought about that statement later, when I came in from the woods. My beard was white with ice. My toes were numb. As I warmed up I got a headache like you get when you eat an ice cream cone too fast. I don’t think I could have hiked like that at 30 below or 40 below.

It’s something to think about anyway. Cold weather is good for that.

So long, Miss Emma ~ January, 1999

David Heiller

Miss Emma seemed to go downhill right before our eyes. For all of her 16 years, she had been a big, healthy cat.

Even in her old age, she was robust. Her stomach fur dragged on the floor. I used to joke that we dusted our furniture by spraying End Dust on her stomach and chasing her around the house.

Miss Emma, doing the cat-gig.

She looked like a healthy old grandma, the kind that wears an apron and makes cookies and reads books to kids sitting on her lap. Emma had a big lap.

Then just like that, about three weeks ago, she looked old and frail. Her bones stuck out. She wouldn’t move or even meow when we walked by her on the dining room floor. She liked to lie in a special spot about two feet from the wood stove.

It’s just old age, I told my wife, Cindy. After all, Emma was 16 years old. That^’s the equivalent of a 76-year-old woman.

Cindy didn’t agree. She felt that something was wrong with Emma, so she took her to our veterinarian, Daina Rosen, in Moose Lake.

Daina did some tests and found out that Emma had a bad heart. Daina couldn’t even count her pulse; her heart was racing so fast. Her kidneys were barely working either.

Miss Emma in the "missing-sock-basket".
She was named Miss Emma because she had Emma-rald eyes.

Daina didn’t say we should put Emma 'to sleep', but it became obvious to us after a few days that that was the best option. We didn’t want our cat to suffer, to not be able to use a cat box or walk around the house, and she was close to that point.

We didn’t want to intervene with intravenous feeding and lots of pills, just to buy her a few months of life. Those were options that Daina presented, in a neutral way. That didn’t make sense. She’s just a cat, one side of me said.

But, what a cat. She was so patient with the kids when they were young. She welcomed them both into our house. When they got too aggres­sive with her, she would give them a little scratch. Nothing serious. Just a warning, and one that they heeded. She was like a mother in that way, which might have been an instinct that she never got to display because she was spayed.

Miss Emma and Malika in the maple tree. 
They were pals like that.

She was a great mouser. One day I woke up to find three mice laid out in front of the wood-stove, like a hunter might display the squirrels he shot. That diminished in her later years. She went into hunting retirement. That didn’t bother us. She had earned it.

She hunted outside too, but we didn’t like that, because we feed birds and it didn’t seem fair to the birds that we were fattening them up for Miss Emma. So we started keeping her inside as she got older, or when a lot of birds were at the feeder.

Emma was very cautious. That’s probably why she lived so long. It would take her a long time to warm up to a new dog in the house. She liked Binti, a dog that we had for 12 years. They were good pals. We tried getting another cat a couple times and Emma refused to have anything to do with them. We finally gave up trying, and gave in to Emma’s desire to be the sole cat.

She liked people too, although she wouldn’t be called the friendliest cat that ever lived. She was too cautious and alert for that. But she would often lay on our bed with us at night, or curl up on our stomach if we were lucky enough to catch a nap. Then it was a real cat nap.

David and Noah and Miss Emma, hanging out.

There isn’t any simpler pleasure in life than having a cat purr next to you. Even though I had bad allergies from Emma, it was worth it to have her with us.

Cindy and I talked about what to do with Emma. We called Daina back and asked a few more questions and told her that we thought we should have her put to sleep. Daina thought that was a good idea. She hadn’t wanted to say that right away. She didn’t want to influence us. But she said there was a lot of wisdom in doing that.

Daina was so gentle. I didn’t realize that vet­erinarians had a bed side manner, but she did. She understood how hard this was. She ex­plained how she would put Emma to sleep by injecting an overdose of anesthesia into her heart using a hypodermic needle. It wouldn’t hurt much, she said. That made me feel good.

We took Emma to Daina’s office on January 14. Emma lay quietly on the table. No way would she have done that when she was healthy. It was like she was resolved to her fate.

Cindy and I knelt by her and petted her when Daina put the needle through her side. Emma didn’t flinch. Her eyes stayed open, but they slowly lost their focus. Then they closed slightly. Daina checked her heart a couple times with a stethoscope, and told us when it had stopped.

We petted Miss Emma for a few minutes. I’m not ashamed to say some tears were shed. It’s hard to lose a pet. I hope I never become too hard-hearted not to feel that. It’s an honor to be present when an old friend dies.

Daina gave us a hug. She said she would keep Emma until spring, when the weather is nice and we can bury her next to Binti, our old dog and her old friend.