Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller I saw a cousin this summer that I hadn’t seen in many years. She is a couple years younger than me, yet she is already retired after a successful career in the military. Early Autumn 2004 at the Spillway on the Mississippi,  in Houston County, Minnesota To top this off, she lives in Hawaii. We got to talking about the weather there. No bugs, lots of sunshine, temperatures almost always in the 70s and 80s. Paradise, in other words. I told her that I could never live in Hawaii. Claire and me in Wright County  in the fall of 2002.  I like the oak leaf ears . She looked a bit surprised at that. I explained that I enjoy the changing of the seasons too much, and what it brings out in me. That’s a hard thing to describe on a muggy summer night when Hawaii did seem like paradise. I don’t think Barb understood. In fact, it’s hard to describe any time. It’s more something you feel, and it ’ s happening right now. Chances are you know what I’m ...

David Heiller Our 10-year-old daughter informed us at supper last week that she wanted to quit piano lessons. She is too busy, she told us. Piano days are done. She has homework every night. She has joined fifth grade choir at Willow River, and is going to start taking clarinet lessons for the school band. Then there’s Girl Scouts every other Monday, and piano lessons every Thursday after school. And I know parents whose children are even busier, for example, who play hockey. If you look up the word “busy” in a dictionary, it will say: “See hockey parent.” I get confused just listening to their schedules. It doesn’t get any easier as the children get older, from what I’ve seen. There are sports, and pep band, and marching band, and National Honor Society and annual staff, and maybe a part-time job at the Dairy Queen. Malika doing some wonderful "nothing" We said no to Mollie’s request. We think piano lessons are important. But I couldn’t stop myself...

David Heiller Our book club read Canoeing with the Cree , by Eric Sevareid, for our September discussion. But instead of meeting at someone’s house in the evening, like we usually do, we held this book club on the Kettle River. This is what bookclub usually looked like. This was at our house. We canoed from County Road 52 to Rutledge, about an eight mile stretch, on September 6. There were eight canoes and 18 people. Usu­ally we have about 10 people at book club, but a fun outing on a gorgeous day attracted extra spouses and kids. Cindy and I canoed the first half with a 16-year-old boy, Matt, in the middle. We hit a lot of shallow spots. The Kettle River is low, because of the dry summer. We had to get out of the ca­noe to pull it over rocks and sand many, many times. At some places trees lay over the river. Sometimes we were able to float underneath them. One tree was about three feet above the river. Cindy bent low enough to slip under it. But I’m a lot bi...

David Heiller Monday night, Sept. 3, 9:15. Mollie can’t sleep. She creaks down the steps for about the fourth time tonight. That’s not unusual. She’s a great staller. She crawls onto my lap at the kitchen table, and I hug her like a warm blanket. No yelling tonight. It’s a special night for us all. “I still can’t sleep,” she says. “Are you thinking about school? ” She nods, then raises her hand. “You have to raise your hand in school,” she says. “But not at nap time. You can’t raise your hand at nap time.” Noah has been teaching her the kindergarten ropes. Up a tree, where Noah and Malika liked to be. “I’m sad because I want to graduate,” she con­tinues, her eyes focused on a batch of fresh peanut butter cookies behind me. “You can’t graduate until the end of the year,” I say. “First you have to go to school and learn a lot of things and be a good girl.” She nods duti­fully, still eyeing the cookies. She’s not worried about school at all, I suddenly realize. She’s ...

David Heiller We’ve had a lot of wet weather lately, which has me worried about our Firewood Supply. Firewood Supply is capitalized because it is a serious subject when you heat with wood. Most people have their Firewood Supply under control at this point in the year. In fact the true old timer is working on his Firewood Supply for next year, or even 1997, right about now. Maybe someday I’ll be at that point. But things always seem to get in the way, like football games and gardening and an emergency or two. "Argg"! So I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll get a cold snap and the rain will cease and the ground will harden and everything will work out fine, like it always does. In preparation for those perfect conditions, I spent part of Saturday and Sunday in the woods wearing knee-high rubber boots, cutting and splitting several cords of basswood, maple, and red oak. Two companions helped the time go faster. On Saturday I worked with the company of our Austra...

David Heiller It’s interesting what a change in perspective can do to something as simple as fog. The view from our home in southeastern Minnesota. Under that cloud is the Mississippi River.  On the horizon is Wisconsin. When I was a kid growing up in Brownsville, fog would roll in almost every morning at this time of year. I never gave it much thought. It meant Dale Besse would drive the school bus a little more slowly up the mile grade. When I went to Fruit Acres to pick apples, the drive would take a little longer, until the old 1964 Chevy broke through the clouds above La Crescent. Then I would see the river bathed in clouds and I would pull off at the scenic overlook, and something would tug inside of me. Beauty like that is a gift, and I have carried that vision in the back of my mind for decades since. Now the vision is here to stay, and it hasn’t lost its luster. It snuck up on me a couple weeks ago, at our ridge overlooking Heiller Valley. (Hey, it u...

David Heiller Summer came to an end on Monday of this week, Labor Day. It was the last day that the kids didn’t have school. Time with good friends.  It doesn't take a lot of  planning in the summer. Things change in a hurry when school starts. It’s a time of “no mores.” No more sleeping in for the kids until seven, not when the school bus arrives at 7:15. Suddenly we have to get up at 6 a.m. No more working on the computer when I wake up, or weeding the garden for half an hour before breakfast, or sitting down with a good book and a big cup of tea while the rest of the house is asleep. No more sleeping in the tent or the trailer for the kids. No more 10 o’clock bedtimes. No more inviting friends over for a day or night. No more cold cereal. When school is in session, I make hot cereal every morning except Wednesday. It’s my job, and I can do it in my sleep, which is good because I’m usually asleep when I make it. Tuesday’s oatmeal passed the taste tes...

David Heiller There’s nothing quite as exciting as the first day of school what with butterflies, teddy bears, turtles, and all. First day of first and second grade.  Almost bravado. First those butterflies, the kind that you feel in your mid-section when you do something new, something a little scary and a little exciting too. They swarmed inside of us two years ago, on Noah’s first day in kindergarten, and again last year when he started going full-time and Malika hit kindergarten. Now this year it’s Mollie’s turn for first grade, and we are again nervous. Every year it’s a milestone, carried by a flock of butterflies. We parents feel the butterflies as we answer the questions of our young. “Did you ever think you would learn to write cursive, Dad?” Noah asked on Sunday night. That’s a weighty question for a second grader. “No, I never thought I would,” I answered, quite honestly. “I remember thinking it was another language, that it wasn’t even English.” Suddenl...

David Heiller We weren’t the only ones with an idea for a Saturday evening walk on the spillway. There were the fishermen who met us on the way to their cars. Three different groups, and they all had a contented look that said the fishing was good. The first guy said the bass were biting. Another man gave me a rundown on a big carp — it must have been 10 pounds, he said with a laugh. The third guy mumbled that he caught a few, which translates in fishing language to fantastic fishing, although I’ve yet to hear the latter statement, ever. Bob and Gail with me and two of the dogs on a fall spillway walk.  The river is a good place to go and reconnect yourself. Then there was that family fishing by the spillway, the kids all lined up oldest to youngest, and the little guy’s pole bending with a bluegill. That was almost too pretty for words. A father and son pedaled past us on their way to the unspoiled waters of the second spillway. You could almost feel their ener...