Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller It really feels like December. Certain months have certain feelings. When sap starts running, it feels like March. When frogs start peeping, it feels like April. When leaves start falling, it feels like September. But December is different. It’s in the light mostly. Maybe there’s a scientific explanation for whe re the sun is in the sky, and how it re fl ects off fresh snow. I don’t want to know about that. It might spoil the feeling of December, the way learning how to pilot a steam boat spoiled the Mississippi River for Mark Twain. I felt December for the first time last Saturday, Novem be r 24. It came a week early for me, but Mother Nature doesn’t go by our calendar. Quite the contrary. I was lying in bed at about 7:30, and I looked out the window, and there it was, that light of Decem be r. Α couple inches of fresh snow had fallen, and the sun was just coming up, and the bedroom was filled with December. It was like God hadn’t just brought a new da...

David Heiller The woodstove is finally earning its keep at our house, and so are Noah and I. On Sunday, we stacked about four cords of wood. I did most of the work, but Noah kept a steady pace too for four hours. We stacked wood and listened to the Vikings beat Chicago 41-13, and even took a hot chocolate-peanut butter cookie break. Is there a better way to spend a sunny November afternoon? Afterward, Noah had to take off his shirt and make me feel his arm muscles. Yup, I said, they feel a little harder, and they did. The wood stove was, for much of the year,  central to our house and family. (Why  don't I have  any photos of it?)  Anyway, this  is more  or less how we  heated our home for many, many years. (I must confess that he was also motivated by the dollar I promised if he helped stack the whole pile, and he got his buck.) We’ve had fires in our Fisher wood stove since September, mostly burning up old elm that feels and heats l...

David Heiller The mark of a good deer hunter isn’t always in his or her marksmanship. The Bruce and Sandy Lourey family of Moose Lake proved that on November 7. Bruce Lourey, 53, was hunting that Sunday morning on land that his brother, Dal, owns west of Kerrick. Bruce saw a buck early on that opening morning. He shot at it three times while it was running. After the third shot, the deer flopped out flat, like it was dead. Bruce was confident that he had killed it. He still had a shot left, but he thought he should reload before he walked over to it. “By the time I got two or three more bullets in there, I hadn’t even gotten them in the gun yet, he jumped up and took off running,” Bruce recalled on November 15. Bruce watched where it went into the woods and started trailing it. “I kept thinking, he’s only going to go a hundred yards. He kept going and going and going.” Bruce looked for the deer for about three hours. Two times he crossed the Willow River, wading...

David Heiller Our favorite photo of Grandma  Heiller.  Thank you Jeanne Roster! THINK OF Α SONG FOR this season, an old favorite, not something that you   might hear on a popular radio station. It’s too early for Christmas carols, and there’s no national holiday to sing about. But there is one song that fits Thanksgiving time, and it’s been on my mind this Sunday, November 20, 1983. “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go. The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow. Over   the river and through the woods, oh how the wind doth blow. It bites the nose and chills the toes, as over the ground we go.” I’m thinking of that song today because I’m thinking of my grandmother, Edna Heiller. She shared many Thanksgivings with her eight children, with her 29 grandchildren, and even these last few years with her 17 great grandchildren.   Sometimes she would be the hostess, and we’d all con...

David Heiller Editor's note: This was originally published in Backpacker Magazine, and later included in a book called "The Whole Hiker's Handbook." The cruelty is beyond comprehension. 10,485-foot Tuolumne Peak. “The most crucial 150 feet of my life,” I thought as I stood shivering in the snow. For the past six hours of that fateful November 10, 1973 day, I had waded through drifts up steep switchbacks below the peak. Now, standing on a small bare patch of soil protected by a dozen large pines, I scanned the outline of the snow-choked trail as it rose steeply over a crest. Beyond the crest was Yosemite Valley, 20  downhill  miles to the south. For seven days I had back-packed over mountainous trails, many like this one, always managing to stay one step ahead of the deep snow. But now? This was the most crucial distance. The final 50 yards. The chilling wind, my snow-soaked clothes and numbed hands were forgotten. With all my remaining strength,...

David Heiller The phone rang at 4:45 a.m. I picked it up and answered before I was really awake. If I had been awake, I would have known to be prepared. But I wasn’t prepared for the news. No one ever is. My grandma, my mom, my great-grandma and me. All my sleepiness disappeared in an instant as Cindy’s voice washed over me. Her mother had died. She was gone, David, gone.   I held her in my arms and she died. We talked for a short time. I can’t remember what we said. We didn’t need to say much. We just needed to be connected, even if it was through a telephone wire. Her brother was there. The minister was coming. They had to tell Nancy, Cindy’s sister. I told Cindy how sorry I was. That didn’t seem like the right thing to say. It didn’t seem like enough. After I hung up the phone, I lay in the dark for a few minutes. I didn’t want to move. I knew if I moved the calm would break and the storm would hit. And it did when I sat up and the minutes passed and the r...