Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller The cabin looked great as we moved our load of supplies in for a week’s vacation on Trout Lake two weeks ago. Carpeting on the living room floor and in the bedrooms. A clean bathroom, nice shower, no slime on the floor. Two beds and a crib in the kids’ room, and a big bed in our room. Cindy unpacked the food, putting enough for an army encampment into the refrigerator and cupboards. I tucked the clothes into the dressers, enough duds for an army encampment too, except for mine. I brought only three shirts, two pairs of shorts, and some socks. If I had packed the food, we would have had bread and water for a week. That’s why Cindy had let me pack only for myself. The two kids took off running the minute they hit the cabin floor. There were no bookcases to dodge, no mountains of toys or televisions or stereos. Just pure floor space, a small gym to them for running and falling. Noah and Malika ready for canoing Everything looked perfect. I breathed a sig...

David Heiller One of the sounds of spring that has been absent so far this year is the hooting of owls. They usually make quite a racket in our woods in March and April. I like the wild sound of owls. I like seeing them too. It’s a lucky day when you see one gliding silently through the woods like a cargo plane. Or when you come upon one sitting in a tree. But this year the woods have been quiet. I’ve only heard a few hoots. Ron Goetzinger, who works for the DNR in Moose Lake, explained why. “It’s been a pretty tough winter for owls,” Ron told me on April 15. “Normally they feed on mice and stuff like that under the snow, and the snow is so deep that they never could get down in there to get their feed so they just starved to death.” The lack of food has made them bolder too. We had a barred owl at our bird feeder two weeks ago. It must have been looking for an easy meal of red squirrel or sparrow. The dogs chased it away, but not before it flew up into a maple tree next...

David Heiller News reports I would like to see... HINCKLEY (AP) — An unknown number of masked robbers broke into the personal belongings of two families at a campground east of Hinckley last week. The unidentified assailants damaged property at St. Croix State Park, made personal threats, and carted off a quantity of food on Wednesday, June 13, before the campers could stop them. Joey and Nora Shields and Noah  and  Malika  Heiller:  before the invasion. The campers then withstood several more attacks by the group during a long and sleepless night. No one was hurt, although two seven-year-old boys were visibly shaken when they had to abandon their pup tent to sleep with one set of parents. Camper Cindy Heiller also had one attacker come at her for a short distance after she attempted to chase it away in the late afternoon. The incident came after the Shields and Heiller families returned from a bicycle trip in the park. While the ...

  David Heiller Jim and I were paddling across the east end of Vera Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area last Friday when Jim let out a holler. “There’s a bear in our camp!” We were about a quarter mile away. You don’t realize how slowly a canoe travels until you paddle toward a campsite that contains your food pack and a bear in the same tree. We bore down on the camp. “Paddle Dave, paddle!” Jim said. I wasn’t exactly dozing in the sun. We started yelling. The bear must have heard us. It dropped out of the tree and scampered happily into the woods. We had hung the food pack in a tree, like we always do on our annual trip into lake country. We knew a bear would come calling. The day before, it had left teeth marks on a few dry food items by our fire grate. Things in plastic bottles that we don’t usually hang, like rice and salt. It struck pay dirt on that first visit too: we had accidentally left out a quart of Heiller’s Pure Maple Syrup. It bit through bag and bott...

David Heiller When I pulled into Dave’s yard at 3 a.m Wednesday morning, after a sleepless night of newspaper layout and school board meetings, I expected to see a light in the kitchen, and smell coffee on the stove. After all, this was the start of our annual canoe trip. But the house was dark, Dave and Jim still sleeping. I gave a holler. For a moment I thought I was a day early. But then someone groaned awake, and the wheels of our tradition started rolling again. For the third straight year, the Gang of Four was headed for the Kawishiwi River in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. We picked up Paul north of Cloquet, I think. It might have been north of the Arctic Circle. I hadn’t slept a wink the night before. The newspaper had been put to bed, but not me. The next thing I knew we were at a breakfast table in Ely. Then out to the end of Fernberg Road, and into Lake One for our trip up the Kawishiwi to Lake Insula, 12 miles and six portages to the northeast. We’ve gone thi...

David Heiller   A mother bear lay at the base of a big red pine tree in St. Croix State Park last Sunday afternoon. In the top of the tree sat three cubs. They were draped over the branches like little rugs on a clothesline, swaying in a summer breeze. My daughter and I stopped our bicycles for a look. A hiker had told us about them. “I’m going to go look at them,” Malika said. My heart was beating fast, but I didn’t say no. I figured she was bluffing. “Don’t get too close,” I said. Malika got off her bike, and walked five steps into the grass. The bear was about 10 yards away. I was just ready to tell her to stop, when she stopped. Something told her that she was close enough. I was glad of that. The mother bear flicked her ears at us. Her eyes opened and closed. Flies buzzed around her head. She seemed to be trying to take a nap. Maybe that’s why she had shooed her kids upstairs. Time to watch a soap opera. As The Bicycle Wheel Turns. We stood the...

David Heiller The deer steeped into our headlights just as we reached the top of the hill west of Sturgeon Lake. We were heading home from the Moose Lake/Willow River football game Friday night, at about 11 p.m. “Deer!” Cindy shouted, the way a soldier might shout “Grenade!” in a World War Two movie. I slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. We hit the deer dead on. It flipped over the bumper and crashed into the windshield. Both air bags popped open. We skidded to a stop. Everyone was OK, except the deer. We sat in a daze from the crash and the air bags and the awful feeling of hitting a living creature. My mind shifted quickly to wondering how much this was going to cost. Then we staggered out of the car, coughing from the strong fumes that had emerged with the air bags. Joe Gibson pulled up behind us in his truck. “Seems like every time I see you, you’ve hit a deer,” he said, trying to inject a bit of humor into the situation. It wasn’t funny, but I cou...

David Heiller  WARNING: This column contains frank subject matter that may turn the stomach of the squeamish. In other words, if you don’t like reading about blood-sucking insects, don’t read this column! Snakes and ticks have entered our heart and home the past few weeks; bring controversy and ancient philosophical questions. Garter snake We have an over-abundance of garter snakes on our property. At least I think so. Whenever I go to the garden shed, I see one, or sometimes more. As we took a sauna on Monday evening, one even crawled up through the floor by the door. I thought about catching it, but decided the spectacle would be too much for the family. (I can see the headlines: “Naked man killed by Finnish garter snake in sauna” or “Naked man wearing Finnish garter killed by snake in sauna.”) Last summer during some house remodeling, one even came into the kitchen. I didn’t panic too much, because my grandma Heiller used to tell about a nest of rattlesnakes th...