Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller   Tree swallows were weaving a net over us last Saturday morning. They seemed to perch on every Al Jensen bluebird house in sight. Bluebird Tree swallow I have nothing against tree swallows. They are confident and beautiful, and they eat a lot of mosquitoes. All great traits in a bird. But we needed a bluebird. They are on the top of my list in the bird world. They always remind me of my Grandma Schnick, for some reason, of the good old days. Their red breast and soft blue color almost take my breath away. I had staked a claim on the bench in the backyard, with muffins, coffee, and a banjo. Cindy joined me. That’s when we started looking for bluebirds. “We usually see them by your Mom,” I said. Lorely’s ashes are buried on a little knoll next to the pond. “And there it is,” Cindy said. I’m not making this up. The bluebird appeared as if on cue, on the bird house where we always see it. The little knoll by the pond, a favorite  bluebird nesting...

David Heiller Dear Grandma: Another year has gone by already. It seems like I just wrote to you, yet it was last Christmas. Is time flying because so much has changed? I know you are keeping an eye on us, but I still want to say a few things. In a way it doesn’t seem like Christmas. No trip to the woods to cut down the tree. Even the woods have changed. Our balsams and spruce from up north have been replaced by good old oak and hickory. Christmas cheer and Christmas hugs. No house, no halls that Cindy can deck with her Christmas flair and fervor. She made that old farm house sparkle. I agree with Ben Logan—Santa Claus is a woman, at least in our house. No Noah. He has to work. This will be our first Christmas without him. It’s hard on us, and probably on him, although he won’t admit that. I remember my first Christmas away from home, in Morocco in 1977, I walked down the road under a full moon in shorts and a T-shirt, surrounded by sand. In a way I felt closer to th...

David Heiller The two dogs and I headed into the woods on Sunday afternoon. It was something I had wanted to do for several weeks, but work had kept it on the back burner. There’s something very inviting about woods this time of year. The ground is hard, so there’s no mud. There’s a little snow for contrast, but not too much to make walking difficult, and you can see everything. The view from our deck as well as all of the east facing windows. The river is down there, but also  our woods,  and what we refer to as Heiller Valley. It is now owned by the State of Minnesota. Our woods are even more of a magnet to me because I really don’t know them yet. I’ve walked over the hills a time or two, but it takes a while to get to know a piece of land, years really. I scurried down the hill, eased over a barbed wire fence, and entered the woodlot. My new Allis Chalmers WD tractor was in the back of my mind. “Could it handle this trail without tipping,” I asked myself a...

David Heiller It happened so fast that I can’t say for sure how it occurred. Maddie had just pulled in a nice walleye, and she gave me the honor of taking it off her lure. She could have done it herself, but I had offered and she had accepted. I took out my trusty Leatherman, opened the pliers, and was pulling at the hook when the walleye gave a mighty shrug and the next thing I knew, a hook was seriously stuck in the little finger of my right hand. Grace and Maddie in the front of David's canoe The fish was still flopping on one end of the Zip lure, and Maddie was pulling the line tight enough to land a 20-pound northern — or in this case a 230-pound German — on the other. Those, two actions drove the hook in one side of my finger and out the other. I hollered something that can’t be repeated here, and the walleye flopped off and Maddie loosened her line, and I sat looking at a big problem. Everything had been perfect up to that point. We were on a seclu...

David Heiller It was getting dark the other night when I paused from some chores to look at the house. The lights were on in the kitchen and upstairs, and they peered at me like a friendly face, but a wistful one. I know it was my imagination, but the house seemed to wear a sad and crooked smile. I probably did too. “So long old friend,” I said to myself and the night and the old farm house. “You  were my dream.” Can it be 22 years ago that Cindy and I moved here? All our stuff fit in one 17-foot U-Haul truck. We had no kids, no jobs. But we had fallen in love with this house and its 35 acres of wild land in northern Pine County. So we left our teaching jobs and pulled up stakes and got a loan at 17-1/2 percent interest and bought it. I’m not sure why we liked the house so much. It had indoor running water (cold only), but that was about it. A basement with fieldstone walls and a dirt floor. Not even an indoor toilet. It was like walking into the 1930s. Somehow...

David Heiller Standing from left are Peggy Whitehead, ad sales; Diane Delzer, proofreader; Sara Poslusney, cute kid; Donna Cronin, ad sales; Lynn Storrar, typesetter and bookkeeping; Chris O’Brien, typesetter; Cindy Jensen, typesetter, circulation manager, and writer; Hazel Serritslev, typesetter, subscriptions, and writer; Kaarin Johnsen, typesetter, bookkeeper, and circulation; Darrell Johnsen, photographer; Ardis Jensen, ad sales, subscriptions, and typesetter; Coral Popowitz, ad sales; Tim Peebles, ad sales and delivery; Sandy Koecher, ad sales; Jay Poslusney, musician and father of cute kid; Carrie Merriman, proofreader and bookkeeper; and Dean Dronen, friendly neighbor, musician, son of Gerald and Gloria. Seated from left are Arla Budd, typesetter and bookkeeping; Cindy and me; and Red Hansen, the all time official Askov American mascot. Arla had the tone of an old school marm. “You can’t go to the meeting, David,” she said. You can’t miss the party!” She had be...

David Heiller Collin pondered the rock bass the way a bonsai artist ponders a pine tree. He looked at it this way and turned it that way in careful consideration of his next move. It might take minutes. It might take hours. Levi and Collin, fishing at the cabin “Just take the fish off!” his cousin, Levi, finally exclaimed. He was an expert at that of course, because he had taken a crappie off his fishing hook just the day before. It had taken him 20 minutes, and the fish looked like a used tube of toothpaste when he released it. But he had indeed removed the hook, and now that feat was serving him well. “I will!” Collin shot back. The two boys are like brothers, and that means the gloves come off every so often. “You’re two years older than me and I can do it,” Levi jabbed. “Not two years, only a year and a half,” Collin replied. “And you fish a lot more than me. You go 10 times a year, and I only go five.” “But you’re two years older than me.” “Nuh-uh.” “Uh-huh....

David Heiller The Sauna Equilibrium Ratio is high these days. It’s not a statistic that you hear from Collin Ventrella during the 10 o’clock news, but it’s a good barometer at our house. Here’s how it works: You take a sauna until you are too hot to stand it anymore. Then you go outside until you are too cold to stand it anymore. That is your Sauna Equilibrium Ratio. What was the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio  on this day? I still miss my sauna. For example, if you take a 45 minute sauna, then stand outside for five minutes, the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio is 45:5 (or 9:1). In mid-winter, with the temperature below zero and a west wind, the Sauna Equilibrium Ratio is 45:0. Some evenings, when the temperature is mild and the bugs have gone to bed, you can have an infinite Sauna Equilibrium Ratio. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures if you live in the country. I still vividly remember one evening earlier this year. I had just taken a sauna, and was lying on the picn...

David Heiller We were heading off the lake on Saturday afternoon, but Tom had one more stop to make. There was a spot of blood next to one of the holes in the ice. Tom scraped some clean snow over it with his boot and tamped it down. The blood was gone, and so was the evidence of the fish he had caught. This was vintage Tom Deering. The location of Osama Bin Laden is better known than Tom’s fishing holes. Never mind that we had hiked six miles over four lakes and four portages—unmarked ones at that—or that we were on a lake the size of Denmark. Better not leave any evidence next to a fishing hole. We had started for the lake early that morning, laden with packs and sleds and ice fishing gear, Tom, his friend Ken Hupila, Ken’s two dogs, and me. Tom and a couple of snakes. It felt so good, after this strange winter of no snow, to actually head into the wilderness. We made it to Tom’s Bay in two hours. Tom’s Bay is not its real name. I can’t say the real name with...

David Heiller I stopped the car at Heiller Valley on Sunday morning, stepped out, and entered the world of swans. Malika took these pictures on November 7, 2013. First the sound hit me. Α swan song. It’s hard to describe, but the first thing that comes to my mind is the scene from the Wizard of Oz when the flying monkeys come swooping  in for Dorothy and Toto. I would wager a fair sum that the sound track from that scene came from a bunch of swans. It sounds like a lot of people laughing and talking, but they aren’t quite human sounds. The sound carries a long way. I can hear it from our new home 1-1/2 miles to the west. I walked across Highway 26 and down the bank to the railroad tracks. The swans that were close to shore did not like that. I didn’t care.  I walked across Highway 26 and down the bank to the railroad tracks. The swans that were close to shore did not like that. I didn’t care. No one else was around, and I wanted a closer look. ...