Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

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...