A perfect little adventure ~ January 18, 2006

David Heiller

Α couple images will stay with me for a while from last Saturday. The first clicked at about 4:30 p.m. We were walking across Duane’s field, the five of us, when the sun dropped below its skirt of clouds. The soft light of late afternoon instantly spread a golden glow on everything, the grass, the plowed field, the faces of the four people walking over them. It didn’t hurt that those humans were walking with a purpose. There was a glint of adventure in their eyes.

Alex and Laura, Malika and David, and I hiked cross-country to Freeburg to hear Bob and Gail perform at Little Miami.
It was a fine little adventure.

It wasn’t a huge adventure, mind you. We were hiking from our house to Freeburg, a whopping four miles at best. Little Miami awaited us there, good food, good music, perhaps a cheering crowd. Well, two out of three at least. But it put a spring in our step.

The sun left us about the time we hit the state land and its plantations of pine trees. We pawed through them and descended through the woods above Elsheimer Valley. I don’t know if that’s its official name, but every adventure needs an Elsheimer Valley or two. The walk through those woods was darn near magnificent, in the subtle ways that our woods have around here. I half expected to be going through logging slash. Sometimes it seems like you can’t step on state land without running into the after effects of logging. Not that I have anything against that. But it’s still hard to beat a mature hardwood forest and its big oak trees.

Outcroppings of limestone rocks dotted our trip down the big hill. We bounced from one to another, probing with a stick here, testing a boulder there. Rattlesnake country, I thought more than once.

Then it was the floor of the valley, big open spaces, leaves flattened by snow but the snow now gone. Perfect hiking.

Not for everyone though. Malika, my daughter, started complaining about blisters on her heels. “Do you have two pairs of socks on?” I asked. That’s always been my remedy for blisters, something I learned when I was about her age. She answered in the negative, and not to worry either, Dad.

We followed a dry creek bed south to the end of the woods, then through a prickly border of wild plums to farm fields. I had received permission to cross the property, which made our climb over the fences just fine. It’s not a good feeling to climb over a fence without permission. I peeled two oranges. We drank water. Time to celebrate.

We came to Elsheimer’s Road and walked along it. It was good that we hit the road when we did, because the sun had set and it was getting hard to see. A couple dogs barked as we approached the farm of Mark and Pat Lange. One came up to the road and gave us a friendly greeting.

Malika’s blisters were getting worse. We stopped by an overturned boat and sat down. I took off one of my pairs of socks and gave them to her. “It’s kind of late now, isn’t it?” she asked.

“It’s never too late,” I insisted. “They could get a lot worse” She didn’t seem entirely convinced of that, probably because I wasn’t either. But she put them on.

We crossed the bridge over Crooked Creek and found the snowmobile trail. Its sign was barely visible in the gloaming. Still we left the road and went west on the beaten-down path, although it hasn’t received much of a beating this wimpy winter.

Then the other image of the night popped out. “Here comes the moon;” Alex said. He always notices little things like bald eagles and full moons. Sure enough, it rose right above a rounded bluff, like a Roman candle in slow motion. We stopped for a few minutes. “You can see it move,” Alex added. Right again. It was a reassuring sight, and a beautiful one.

We kept walking, and the trail kept getting brighter. Soon we could see our shadows. A full moon in January is no small thing.

That lasted for about 10 minutes, then the clouds smothered the moon. The darkness slowed us a bit. We weren’t quite sure where the trail was, or where Freeburg was, or the Bruening homes that marked our way. A little worry crept over us, just enough for an adventure of this magnitude. But it didn’t matter, and we all knew it. We just had to keep walking and we’d find our way. It’s hard to get lost in the Crooked Creek Valley. You go one way, you come to the river. You go the other, you come to Freeburg.

We finally climbed over one last fence and at 6:10 p.m. we stood on County Road 249. “How much further is it?” Cindy asked. She was worried about her daughter and not herself.

“About a mile,” I replied. That last mile went quickly, and 20 minutes later, we came over the rise to the friendly lights of Little Miami.

The others went into the restaurant first, while I changed shoes at the car that we had left there earlier. Then I walked into the bar with a feeling unlike any I’ve had there before. I was cold and tired, yet proud in a small way of what we had just done. It made the food and fellowship and music seem even better than normal. A good little adventure will do that.

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.

It was a classic smear job all the way ~ December 12, 1985

David Heiller

There comes a time in every child’s life when they cease being babies, and become something more. It is a metamorphosis from a helpless bundle of pink skin into a human being.

Mothers may not know what I mean, because they spend more time with their babies, and probably never think of them as helpless bundles of pink skin. But to dads, who roll around on the floor with them perhaps for only a few minutes a day, the metamorphosis hits all of a sudden, and sometimes it hits hard.

Malika with her bearded and bespectacled daddy. She's thinking about, the last time she got hold of that beard, or the next time she scores his glasses. 

That’s what happened at our house last weekend. Cindy had been telling me how our six-month-old daughter had been going through a growth spurt, guzzling more milk per hour than a young Holstein. Cindy had pointed out that Mollie was sitting up by herself now, and laughing at her big brother, and babbling in her crib when she woke up at 6:30 in the morning. She was even taking an interest in the mashed bananas that her mother pried down her throat.

I had noticed these changes. I had also seen how Mollie was very interested in my beard now, grabbing tiny fistfuls, doing chin-ups with my face. Noah had done the same thing two years earlier, so I should have been warned about the next step, the change that takes a baby out of the helpless stage and puts them on the same plane with an Amazonian warrior.

Never underestimate a budding grown-up,
even when they are six months old.

It started innocently enough. Mama was in town shopping. I was lying on the living room floor, with my head about a foot from Mollie. Noah sat nearby, playing with some cars, but watching us out of the corner of his eye. He must have sensed what was coming, just as his beard-pulling genes were passed on to Mollie. Mollie jerked her arms back as her eyes moved from a toy in her hand to me. Her gaze settled on my face, and her eyes focused on mine with the intensity of a fox. Her left arm shot out, with no baby jerking and twitching this time. It was an adult movement, a steady, resolute motion that held no hesitation and would not be stopped. Her fingers uncurled from their fist, and re-clenched around the left temple of my wire rimmed glasses. Vice-Grips could not have been tighter. Then with a quick backward pull, she flipped the glasses off my nose and ears, and held them high.

The inevitable followed, as I lay in shock. She took the left lens of the glasses and put it in her mouth, gumming and slobbering so that it would be smeared as only six-month-olds can gum and slobber and smear. Then, and only then, did she relax and smile and shake the glasses in wild glee.

I reached over and grabbed my wire-rimmed glasses. I had bought the frame in college 10 years ago, and I didn’t want to lose them now. Mollie let me have them. Her goal had been accomplished. Her first glasses execution had been a success. And Dad was on notice that his helpless bundle of pink skin was not helpless anymore.

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.

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.

Ice storm was a step back in time ~ January 5, 2005

David Heiller

When it comes to good timing, the ice storm had it down perfectly.

Still, it was a sobering couple of days this past Saturday and Sunday.

The ice started forming on Saturday morning, New Year’s Day. That’s what I mean about perfect timing. Whο goes anywhere on New Year’s Day?

At first it was snow, huge flakes. But that changed to freezing rain by noon. I called Cindy at work at about 3 p.m., and she was ready to head out the door, thanks to some thoughtful co-workers at Casual Corner in La Crosse. She got home by 4 p.m. after a very cautious drive.

Ice built up slowly the rest of the day from sporadic spurts of sleet. It hit harder at about 9:30 p.m. I started to say to Cindy, “This weather is really getting”—then boom, a crack of thunder sounded.

“What did you say?” Cindy shouted from upstairs.

“God just finished the sentence for me,” I replied. Thunder on New Year’s Day? Very strange.

By Sunday morning it was ugly. Half an inch of ice covered everything. Our dog Riley jumped off the porch and fell down.

My daughter Malίka and I took a walk down the road. She was anxious to return to college in St. Peter, Minnesota. But we realized that would not happen soon. Hillside Road was a river of ice, impossible to drive on. We could barely stand up on it. Malika fell down near the crest of the road and slid about 20 feet, the three dogs barking and sliding with her.

Mother nature painted some beautiful scenes
during an ice storm on January 1, 2005

It was pretty, as all ice storms are. Sights like the picture that accompanies this column were everywhere. Mother Nature was wearing her good jewelry.

No cars went by the house at all on Sunday. It was like we had stepped back in time about 70 years. I half-expected to see the Heiller family hike up from the valley.

In the early afternoon, I called Eldor Wunnecka to see if a sander was coming. The township truck had tipped over, he informed me. When a sanding truck tips over, you know it’s slippery.

Malika paced the floor as the day progressed. The timing of the storm wasn’t perfect for everyone. I would have felt the same way if it had hit a day later when we were putting the newspaper to bed.

But it could have been worse, Mom reminded me during a phone call that day. Power lines had weathered the ice. No one had lost electricity, not a lot of stuff had broken.

Mother Nature was toying with us, in a sense. Testing our patience. Reminding us what real power is.

And to put it in perspective, we need only look to the tragedy of the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26 to realize what a real force of nature looks like. We had better not complain too loudly about a little ice.

It gave us a chance to worry and wonder, to play music and listen to the Vikings, to work on a jigsaw puzzle and read a book. That’s not a bad consequence to anything.

At 6 p.m. the Brownsville Township sander roared by. I was standing alongside the road by then, because I had heard it coming. My grin must have blinded the driver. I was relieved! Gregory Guillien turned the truck around just south of our house, then pulled over to see who the idiot was by the side of that road.

It was a bad storm, Greg said, second worst he had ever seen. Taking four times the sand to make the roads safe, and the ice was going to be with us all winter. Snow falls on it; it’s going to be slippery. Drivers of sanding trucks know those kinds of things.

I gave him a heartfelt thank you. The road was open. We were back in touch with civilization. At least until next time, which can wait a year or two.

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.