Minnesota weather—June frost and relative humility ~ June 5, 1986

David Heiller

Minnesotans are a humble folk. We aren’t known for our decisiveness, our positive thinking. Ask someone how they’re doing, and they’ll likely reply, “Not too bad,” or “I can’t complain,” “Pretty good, I guess.”

Even my three-year-old son realizes his humble fate. He thinks we live in Maybe-Soda, and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis. It’s a state-wide shyness flowing from Lake Wobegon to Lake City, from Worthington to Warroad. Steve Cannon of WCCO is perhaps the only person in the state with relative humility, and that’s just during the weather report.

 Noah thinks we live in Maybe-Soda,
 and Grandma Olson lives in Maybe-Applis.

I had some personal insight into al this on Sunday. Last week’s weather had broken all kinds of records. Duluth had 86 degrees on May 28, International Falls: 91. We were somewhere in between. The warm weather held through Friday, as we got our garden ready for spring planting. I even took a day off for the ritual. Cindy, my wife, drove with confidence to a greenhouse and bought 24 tomato sets, 12 peppers, and some odds and ends for the weekend planting.

The last of the garden beds were finished by Sunday. Cindy and Noah went to church in the morning, while Malika and I stayed home and fertilized the soil with bone meal and blood meal. Sunday afternoon, under 60 degree, partly cloudy skies, we planted tomatoes and peppers and flowers and Brussels sprouts. The clouds broke, sunlight blessed our hard work, and a lady on the radio said temperatures would be in the 70s on Monday.

After the kids were tucked away Sunday evening, I returned to the garden. Two robins chirped to each other in the spruce trees. A pair of goldfinches sat atop the end spruce, the bright gold male a step higher on the branches than his mate. Two cedar waxwings perched quietly in the dead branches of the elm tree next to the house. The wrens nesting in their home on the clothes line pole stayed inside, the mother warming her tiny eggs.

God was in his heaven, all was right with the world. It was enough to make a Minnesotan downright confident and happy, even a newspaper editor. I brought a paper bag full of old newspapers to the tomato beds, and started to spread them next to the plants. The first batch held shoppers. I placed them with a vengeance on the ground, thinking they would finally be put to a good use. Then I opened up a Pine County Courier, and laid Richard Coffey next to a plant. I felt like reading his column first, but knew he would understand, and his wife Jeanne would be proud to have him play such an active role in weed control.

But I soon ran out of other newspapers and even the Omni-present shopper. I went to the garage for a bag of Askov Americans. I had been saving them to submit to the National Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest, which is why they were still in the garage. Relative humility.

I spread them around the tomatoes. Joel Mortensen crowded one plant. “That one will have a strong taste,” I thought. One of my outhouse columns nestled another. Good fertilizer there.

Soon the tomatoes were nicely mulched. I sprinkled hay on all the crooked headlines and blurred photos, and walked into the house feeling very content. Humble, as only a person who can put a year’s worth of work on his tomatoes feels, but content.

The story should end there, but remember, folks, this is Minnesota. Our one-year-old daughter woke up with a cry at 1 a.m. She may have sensed the danger and warned us. As I stumbled in parent stupor for baby aspirin, I glanced at the outdoor thermometer. Suddenly the stupor disappeared. Thirty-five degrees and falling.

I hurried outside, grabbed the flashlight from the car. I carried sheets from the garage, plastic, blankets, anything I could find, and spread it all over the tomatoes and peppers. I knew I couldn’t sleep till they were all covered.

Cindy called me at work Monday morning. I knew before she said a word the bad news, like a phone call in the middle of the night when a relative is sick.

“The tomatoes, David, all but three have died.”

“Which three didn’t?” I asked. I hope they had been mulched with the American.

“The first three,” she answered.

I started to swear on the phone, then stopped. My Minnesota Confidence had glowed for a day. What the heck. It’s not so bad. We’ll buy more tomatoes. I can’t complain.

Moms, dads beware—the secret weapon is awake ~ June 6, 1985

David Heiller

I have a secret weapon that could probably be sold to the highest bidder and used in the torture chambers of totalitarian regimes throughout the world. This weapon doesn’t cost millions of dollars, wasn’t developed by the military, and isn’t even illegal. But under controlled situations it will force the stiffest of upper lips into jelly, and melt nerves of steel into lead.

I discovered the weapons Sunday morning, at 5 a.m. My wife and I had celebrated our fifth anniversary the previous night, with dinner and a Greg Brown concert in Duluth. We had finally got the babysitter home, and settled ourselves into bed by 2 a.m. That made the weapon even more potent three hours later.

Small cute boy?
Not really, more like a diabolical 
weapon on the morning here described.

Cindy heard it first, and deserves much of the blame. Thump. The sound of bare feet sliding out of bed in the next room. Pad-pad-pad-pad. Those tiny feet approaching with both stealth and firmness. The blankets tightening around two groggy adults, as two little fists grab, pull, and hoist 29 pounds of boy onto the bed. Up lift the blankets, in slides the weapon, warm, snuggling, smiling.

For perhaps a minute, all is well, the calm before the storm. While Mom and Dad pull the covers up to their chins and mumble something to each other, the secret agent’s eyes open. All semblance of fatigue is gone from those blue eyes. They are the eyes of a wide awake, two-year-old boy at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

This agent goes by the name of Noah. In your house, it may be Emily, or Mathew, or Joseph, or Amber. Names differ, but techniques are universal.

“Mo-mower grahch,” he starts, standing on the mattress looking out the window. “Mo-mower grahch. Mo-mower grahch.”

Yes, the lawn mower is in the garage,” I answer. My eyes are open slightly, staring at the ceiling and the towering boy.

“Why?”

I started to answer, then catch myself, and instead turn my back to him. He kneels by my head, grabs my beard, and pulls my face to his.

“Daddy.”

I don’t answer.

“Daddy.” Two quick kisses. Something is up. “Daddy. Dasses, OK?”

Now I am awake. Two kisses in his mind are worth my glasses, which rest on the night stand next to the bed.

“No, you can’t have my glasses,” I say while catching his arm as it passes over my head.

“Why?”

I don’t answer him. Instead I call out to Cindy. I want to make sure she is a part of this. “Why did you let him in bed?” I ask.

“I thought he’d fall right asleep,” she answers in an embarrassed voice. A two-year-old falling back to sleep on a Sunday morning once in bed with Mom and Dad? She seemed to realize now how foolish the notion sounded.

Dancing with Mama and her midsection.

But my diversion worked. Noah turned his attention to Momma He started grilling her with small talk. The birds are singing. April was here last night. She’s a nice babysitter. I would like a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast. The lawn mower is in the garage. Is Margot coming today? Binti is sleeping. Miss Emma is sleeping. Let’s go downstairs. I want juice.

Cindy rolled over onto her back. That seemed to be Noah’s intention. He eyed the 22 extra pounds of a soon-to-be brother or sister on Momma’s midsection. His eyes sparkled like a mountain climber gazing for the first time at the Matterhorn. Then he started climbing, draping the bulge like a barrel.

“Noah. Daddy, help!” Cindy groaned.

“You let him in bed,” I said, not moving.

“I know, I know,” she answered, holding back expletives with sheer Mother willpower.

By this time, we were both awake. The clock said 5:30. The Sunday sun was almost over the horizon. Birds were calling everywhere, catbirds, robins, mourning doves.

“What the heck, we might as well get up, huh?” I suggested.

Noah was already sliding off the bed, leading the way downstairs. The secret weapon had won.

Bear 1, Campers 0 ~ May 25, 1995

 David Heiller

Jim and I were paddling across the east end of Vera Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area last Friday when Jim let out a holler. “There’s a bear in our camp!”

We were about a quarter mile away. You don’t realize how slowly a canoe travels until you paddle toward a campsite that contains your food pack and a bear in the same tree.

We bore down on the camp. “Paddle Dave, paddle!” Jim said. I wasn’t exactly dozing in the sun. We started yelling. The bear must have heard us. It dropped out of the tree and scampered happily into the woods.

We had hung the food pack in a tree, like we always do on our annual trip into lake country. We knew a bear would come calling. The day before, it had left teeth marks on a few dry food items by our fire grate. Things in plastic bottles that we don’t usually hang, like rice and salt.

It struck pay dirt on that first visit too: we had accidentally left out a quart of Heiller’s Pure Maple Syrup. It bit through bag and bottle and licked it up. That made us as mad as it made the bear happy.

Then Jim and I had to watch from the water while the bear hung like a double-jointed gymnast and picked out other goodies, such as the blueberry pancake mix and Cindy’s chocolate chip bars.

It gets worse.

Early Saturday morning the bear returned. We heard a crashing noise by the lake. Jim crawled out of his bag and shined his flashlight on a very big black bear on the ground below the food pack. It raced away, but not before taking a jar of Tang and a bag of apples and the last of the bread.

That was enough for us. He was eating us out of tent and campsite. We figured if we stayed any longer, he’d take over the cooking duties for Dave, and Dave is pretty touchy when anyone growls about his cooking.

So on Saturday we headed for new territory. Before we left, Dave scratched on a rock: Beware bear. I hope that bear can’t read.

Blame it on the new guy

It’s all Steve’s fault.

Steve took the place of Paul, who had traveled with Jim and Dave and me for eight straight years up north. We hadn’t even seen a bear in those eight years.

Then along comes Steve, who had dreamed about a bear just a week before the trip. And a bear comes and takes all our food? Pretty suspicious.

In fact, it might have even been Steve up in that tree. It’s been a while since he’s had a shave and a haircut.

Steve, Jim, Dave, and David: different crew,
slightly; different shenanigans, slightly.

Steve isn’t much of a fisherman. He caught a lot of things, but none of them were fish. Mostly he caught trees and rocks and logs and a lot of good natured ribbing, most of which he gave himself.

Sometimes when Steve got a snag, Jim would coach him off it. Jim missed his calling as a sports announcer. We didn’t catch many fish, so Jim had to practice on snags. “Come back the other way with the line, Steve,” he would say, while Steve’s rod bent against a 10 pound rock bass. “Keep it tight. Now jiggle your rod tip. Now pull from the other side.”

Steve attracted gnats. They may have thought he was a bear. Every evening, he would sit by the fire and a cloud of bugs would settle on him like a hair dryer. Steve would put on his sunglasses to protect his eyes, which worked great for the gnats but didn’t help him see his way around too well by the light of the campfire.

When it rained, Steve donned his new rain suit. The coat fit fine, but the pants were an extra large, something which Steve is not. So the crotch of the rain pants came to his knees, and the hem came out somewhere near the lake. He looked like a little kid in big, rubber-coated pajamas. We all laughed about this too, including Steve.

A lot of laughter and exploring

Laughter is a main ingredient of a good canoe trip. There’s plenty of serious conversation, and times when we don’t talk at all, like on a lake at night when the loons are calling back and forth.

A new canoe partner for David.

But everybody gets teased. We laughed at Dave’s voice, how it rumbles like a distant thunderstorm across the lake. Dave reminded me several times about the day I jumped into the water after a fishing rod that a fish had pulled in.

We recalled Paul trying to keep warm on our first trip, soaked and bedraggled to the bone while he insisted everything was just peachy. And Jim stripping off his clothes and washing up in the lake, then giving us the play by play of what it was like.

And Steve’s rainsuit.

Another part of a good canoe trip is exploring new country. We did that when we canoed down Knife Lake one clear, calm morning. The water was a beautiful emerald green. You could see down 10 feet. We sat in the sun and Dave cut thick slabs of meat and cheese for sandwiches. We climbed Thunderhead Point and could see for miles and miles.

We visited Isle of Pines, where Dorothy Molter lived for 60 years. We found a pile of her old bottle caps. I felt the spirit of the Root Beer Lady in the wind through the huge pine trees and her little lilac bushes.

We didn’t catch fish that day, but Dave put it best when he said it was a perfect day to not catch fish. It was a perfect trip too.

Except for the bear.