Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller The porch at Bob Eikum’s house in Moose Lake always seemed special to me. It had no lights, no heater, no glass to cover the screens and keep the cold out. Bob and his wife, Boots, had planned it that way. The better to view Mother Nature, to let her come into your life. Bob Eikum, Mother Nature and David's friend. Mother Nature came into that porch a lot, sometimes with a house full of people at an Eikum potluck, sometimes alone. Even at the end, cold and raw in September, she came to settle on Bob as he sat in a wheelchair one last time, soaking it up on his porch. Nature was Bob Eikum’s life, from the time he grew up in Mankato, while he studied forestry at the University of Minnesota, when he worked as a forester in Alabama and Florida and Tennessee, as a Boy Scout leader, every job he worked, he worked with nature. When he retired and moved to Moose Lake with Boots in 1978, he worked with nature as a photographer and as what he called an enviro...