Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller Several years ago I heard a strange thing while on a canoe trip. Three buddies and I were camped on an island on Lake Insula in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It was mid-May, a beautiful, cool evening, with a full moon on its way. Loons were calling around the lake. That’s a pretty hard sound to beat, especially in a remote spot like we were on. Malika's loon and baby. Then I heard a loon in front of our campsite calling like I have never heard before or since. The loon had a hoarse voice. It tried and tried to make its majestic presence known. Maybe it was a call marking its territory or a call for a mate. I’m not sure. Loons have several very fascinating calls. But that loon couldn’t do it. Its call came out thin and raspy. You could tell it was straining with all it had, but it ended up sounding weak and weary. The oddest part was that the other loons seemed to rise up and call even louder. I know it was my human imagination, but the...

David Heiller It’s interesting what a change in perspective can do to something as simple as fog. The view from our home in southeastern Minnesota. Under that cloud is the Mississippi River.  On the horizon is Wisconsin. When I was a kid growing up in Brownsville, fog would roll in almost every morning at this time of year. I never gave it much thought. It meant Dale Besse would drive the school bus a little more slowly up the mile grade. When I went to Fruit Acres to pick apples, the drive would take a little longer, until the old 1964 Chevy broke through the clouds above La Crescent. Then I would see the river bathed in clouds and I would pull off at the scenic overlook, and something would tug inside of me. Beauty like that is a gift, and I have carried that vision in the back of my mind for decades since. Now the vision is here to stay, and it hasn’t lost its luster. It snuck up on me a couple weeks ago, at our ridge overlooking Heiller Valley. (Hey, it u...

David Heiller Mike was working on his 1970 Polaris snowmobile when we drove up Saturday morning. He was using a hair dryer to thaw the frozen fuel pumps. Our 11-year-old son looked at it in disbelief. He’d never seen anything so old and beat up. Mike didn’t see it that way. “It’s the best one I’ve owned,” Mike claimed. He bought it five years ago for $50, and it runs if you take a hair dryer to the fuel pump every winter. Mike and Donna at our house, petting MacKenzie. Mike and Donna live seven miles southwest of Willow River. Donna had told us we could cut a Christmas tree on her land. She was working Saturday, so Mike led us out to the woods. Actually, their two big Labradors did the leading. We found a beautiful tree right away, a nine-foot white spruce. It wasn’t perfect, but it was close. Towards the top it tapered in a bit, then spread out again, like a crown on the three Wise men. It was too nice a morning to just cut the tree  ...

David Heiller Steve Serres reminded me of the beauty of mushroom hunting last Saturday. Morel mushrooms. (not my photo) He came up that afternoon to walk the woods with me in search of morel mushrooms. I thought it would make a good newspaper fea­ture, but I had my other hat on too, the one that says, “This will be fun.” And it was, in some unexpected ways. We started by heading across the field toward a dead tree. Dead trees are one sign of morel country, particularly dead elm trees. But they are no guarantee, as Steve pointed out in a stream of morels lore that seemed endless. Many is the time he has come upon a dead elm, bark hanging like a shawl on an old woman — a honey hole for morels — and not a one can be found. That’s probably part of the beauty of the hunt for Steve, as it is for all sportsmen: you just never know what you’ll find. And sure enough, the first two perfect spots didn’t have didley. At the third tree, Steve stopped and pointed his stick at a ...