Bear in a Prius

Just when we see the season winding down a touch in September, of course, we have to have a young bear come to Northwind Lodge in search of food.   Momma bear kicked him to the curb as he was the size of a large dog with a big head.  It was time for him to leave.  He was cute,  but unfortunately not very afraid of people.

While the bear haranguing the Cabin #2 garbage can,   I attacked him with a rock to try to get him to associate people with a painful experience.  The rock missed it's mark.  He  ran around the corner and almost instantly came back.  I zinged some more rocks but he's still not going too far from me. He slowly sauntered off into the brush.  So, we picked up all the garbage and got it out of there.  Later that day, he came back and rolled around a few empty garbage cans and then destroyed a few choke cherry trees scattered about the yard.  Bears do like their choke cherries.

A yoga-teacher friend of my wife Annette was staying with us in the TreeTopHaus  at the lodge for a few days.  Elayna is from Toronto and a very pleasant, empathic woman.  She’s  who you want around if you get a boo-boo or if you need a hand with something -  a kind and very helpful woman. 

I stepped out of Red Rock Wilderness Store here at the lodge, for some reason and looked towards the resort.  Some of our lodge guests were walking away towards the resort.  It was a couple with a two little kids who had just come in for something in the store.  Coming towards me but about 100 yards out yet, was Elayna.  I marveled at Elayna as she stopped to chat with the young family.  I couldn’t hear her, but she warmly shook hands with the parents, laughed, chatted, and bent down to shake hands with both of the little kids and then proceeded to hug them both.   It was something to see.  I was bit envious because I just don’t have “warm & cuddly” in me but I was happy to know someone who did.  Elayna is a natural.

She calmly waved goodbye to the family and then began an exponentially-faster walk towards me with a look of deep concern on her face.  It was like she just witnessed a murder  and the murderer saw her face.  It was utter trepidation and almost panic!  I was confused.

When she got closer, she quietly and urgently said, “There’s a bear!”

I asked where and she said, “There’s a bear in a car and he’s eating all of their food!!!!!!!”

“What!???” I said.  I just got done watching Elayna doing a casual, calm introduction of herself to a young family of Northwind Lodge guests.  She just got through hugging somebody’s children as if they were her very own.  “What the hell is she talking about!”, I was now wondering.

“You gotta go, Joe!  There’s a bear in a car!”  she breathed desperately to me noticing that I was getting mixed signals to say the least.  The "bear" part was not jiving with the rest of what I just witnessed.

OH!  Now it registered with me!  There's a bear causing problems with a car!   She told me the general direction and I took off like a bat out of hell down the road towards Cabin #6.  

That bear had come back to the resort again.   Elayna was coming across the footbridge that crosses Jasper Creek and walking up the path when she noted that a wild bear jumped into the back seat of a Toyota Prius which had its doors left open.   In the car, he was proceeding to have a field day with bags of candy and possibly Timmy the Hermit Crab.  (Somebody brought along a pet.)  Mind you, this is not something that one sees in downtown Toronto very often, so Elayna was a little rattled.  The bear even opened Timmy's little hermit crab box but hadn't made it to sample the fresh seafood - yet.  This was an observation that Elayna reported quietly with great excitement in her whisper that there was a bear in somebody's car eating their food!!!!!!  Sure enough when I arrived, there he was in the backseat rootin' around in the assorted colorful junk owned by two little girls.  Candy wrappers and a potato chip bag were strewn about outside the car.  It was a veritable cornucopia of fun – for little girls and obviously, bears.  They must think along the same lines.

From the back of the car parked by Cabin 6 (with two doors and the rear hatch open), I yelled in a gruff voice, "HEY!".    The bear looked at me through the open rear hatch door, paused and then turned  to escape by  bashing his thick bear skull on the un-opened driver-side backseat door to get out.  He was a bear, so no, he couldn’t just take the easy, big open door in front of him and leave.  He was going to go out Rambo-style and take the glass of the closed door with him.  For fear of him running around the car in tight circles and shredding everything in sight with his claws , I stepped back and peeked around the corner of a storage shed while I kept quiet to watch and wait if the dummy would come out sensibly.  Then, while under no threat of attack, he quickly went out the way he came in - through the open door.   I chased after him, hot on his heels screaming and yelling awful things.  Bears have to learn that humans are frightful creatures.  This bear was a slow learner.  I think his mom held him back a grade.

He ran down past Cabin 3, took a right turn, and headed down the trail towards the beach and right into Eli Preble who was staying with his dad in Cabin #3.  He surprised the heck out of Eli, who stepped off the path to the side and the bear shot past him.  So now, Eli was rattled as well.  Then, he noiselessly disappeared into the brush as only bears can do.  They just slip away.  But for the candy wrappers and the whites of Eli's eyes, you'd never even know he was there.
 

Maybe this bear only has a penchant for hybrids.  Early the next morning the lady in Cabin #6 who owned the Prius heard a noise by the car and looked out.  There on the roof of her car was that same bear walking around, trying to figure out how to open up the large battery-powered tin can with the food in it.  Then, while she watched, he slid down the windshield like a kid on a slide in the park and proceeded to grab a windshield wiper and yank on it like it was the lever that opened the safe.  At this point, she finally decided that it was less cute that the bear was destroying her car, so she opened the cabin door, took a step out on the deck and yelled at the bear.  The bear slid off the car and high-tailed it out of there. 

Dang bear scratched and dented her car because they don’t build ‘em like they used to, apparently.   She thought it was neat and a souvenir of their stay at Northwind Lodge in Ely, Minnesota. 

Errr….OK, then!  Chalk one up for entertainment at Northwind Lodge!

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Cutting Trees with Bob

One day, my father-in-law Bob Sommer called me up and asked if I could assist him in cutting down a few nasty poplar trees next to his house.   Bob was a tough-as-nails, rugged individualist who liked to tackle jobs and succeed.  Sometimes they would be messy,  bumpy, and a little scary, but they were always functional in the end.

 In northern Minnesota, poplar trees are sneaky.  They are all over the resort and constantly sneak up on us between the resort cabins and along power lines.   They start out small and everybody forgets about them.  Then three days after your house is built, they get to be 16 to 20 inches in diameter,  About two thirds of the way up, they rot out when nobody is looking.  A big wind comes by and downward plummets the leaf-laden top to destroy anything and everything  below.  If the top doesn’t snap the bottom does so and a 60 to 70 foot behemoth lands on your house.   They grow like Minnesota bamboo and I never felt bad about cutting one done.  You can always count on twenty new ones taking  its place.

Bob said that to expedite the operation for his tree, he would have everything ready and he needed me mainly  to run the hand winch.  Of course, I said “Sure!” and made plans for tomorrow at 1 PM. 

I drove over to the Moose Lake road and Bob had the trappings of the adventure all in place.  Bob had a thick yellow rope way up on the tree about 20 feet.  It was securely tied and running through a massive hand winch secured to a solid tree about 60 feet away.  He had his screen-faced helmet with earmuffs on, his usual worn pig-hide gloves on with the little red bead and his brown leather belt with big buckle.  Also, as part of his usual get up was his .44 magnum, stainless steel Smith & Wesson revolver in its black nylon holster, stuck to his belt.  With red Jonsered chainsaw  smokin’ hot in hand, he was ready to go.

I know the chainsaw was smokin’ hot because Bob had a unique style for warming it up.  Every modern chainsaw comes with a chainbreak which serves both as a knuckle guard and a device that instantaneously stops the chain in the event that the saw jumps upwards when improperly touching a log with it while it is spinning.   Stopping the blade suddenly lets the operator only cut off his ear a little as opposed to sawing it off entirely.  The only time the break is locked is when there is a reaction from an emergency like a kick-back.  Otherwise there is no other reason to lock the blade.   Well, Bob found a reason.

A few years prior to this event,  Bob and I were talking chainsaws and he was having trouble with his.  He blew the head on it once, and it kept getting dull.  It got really hot, etc.  I suggested we start it up and see what it sounds like.  We’ve owned Jonsereds for over  20 years at that time and they were pretty reliable saws.   I couldn’t figure out what could be the problem with Bob’s saw.   I would find out shortly. 

Bob cranked up his saw.  It began to idle and sounded fine.  I was just about to shrug and say, “Sounds OK…” , when Bob suddenly tripped the chain break safety with his knuckles, and put a death grip on the throttle. 

The little engine roared  powerfully and the chain didn’t turn!   After a two "shock" second delay on my part,  I yelled,  “Bob!  Bob! Stop!  Whaddya doin”?!!!!!”, over the roar of that little motor and the blue smoke caused by burning metal.  The clutch must have turned cherry red under the side plate.   He let go of the throttle and looked at me in wonderment, and asked, “What?   I’m warming it up.  That’s what that chainbreak is for.”

“That just for emergencies”, I explained.  “You don’t use that to warm up the motor!”

He said, “No.  I do this all the time.  Warms the motor right up.” 

I politely gave up while feeling sorry for that saw.  So, today, when Bob is ready to go, I’m pretty certain that his saw is truly warmed up.

To me, everything looked pretty good to go on this tree job.  It was the usual “hairy” operation where if anything  goes wrong, we are going to wreck one of two buildings .  But the rope was stout and he had it tightened up.   I gave a test crank on the winch and it looked properly operational. 

The plan was that Bob was going to notch it towards me and I was going to tension it up with the winch which would put a lean on the tree right at me.  Then Bob would make a light back cut and I would continue to apply pressure to slowly begin the lean in the right direction.  Once it begins the fall, I step to the left and get out of the way.   Simple plan.  I’ve done this a zillion times with my dad and brother at the resort,  so nothing new was happening on my end.  We get in position with me on the winch, Bob at the base of the tree.

Bob cranks up his Jonsered and  begins sawing.  He saws and saws and saw.   I’m getting a little nervous  because at that moment, I was wondering if he’s cut down many trees of this size and it really sounded like his chain was really dull.   The other problem is that I can’t see him at all.   It’s a bright sunny day but Bob is 60 feet away in northeastern Minnesota in July. That means he’s shrouded by light and dark greens of thick, gnarly hazelnut leaves.  He’s somewhere in there but I can only see the cloud of blue smoke rising both from a combination of overly rich gas and probably a badly slipping clutch on the saw.

He goes to idle and yells for me to crank.  So I begin.

“Chi-kik, chi-kuk, chi-kik, chi-kuk, chi-kik, chi-kuk” went the winch and the rope got tighter.  Bob yelled to keep going, and the rope got tighter still.  Then, he yelled to stop and the saw fired up again.  Saw, saw, saw,  stop.  “Go ahead and give ‘er  some more!” he yelled. 

So, I lean on the winch and that sucker is getting really tight.  I was thinking that as some point I would be able to play DaVinci’s “Joyful” as the pitch of that now thinning yellow rope began to climb with the extreme tension.    I’m starting to get a little worried about this because that tree should be trying to crush me like a bug at this point.   But, it’s not.

Back on the throttle of the saw, Bob goes.  Three more seconds and the saw shuts off and the cussing begins.  From deep inside the hazelnut brush, I hear a blurry of cuss words in combinations new even to me.   From the new, rising verbal cloud of blue smoke, I figured Bob cut himself somehow. 

So, not wanting to leave my critically important post as I have control of that tree, I yell to him and ask what happened. 

He replied with tones of anger and humiliation, “It looks like I cut the  #$@%^$*&#!  wrong tree.”

“Come again?”  I didn’t fully grasp what he said.  “What!!!!????”

“I cut the tree right next to the one with the rope on it.  We got a problem!”

Oh, boy, did we ever have a problem.    For the last 10 minutes, I’ve been trying to bring down a 70 foot poplar just with the winch and a plastic rope.  The second  70 foot tree that needed to drop with a secure line on it, now has a notch aiming at me and a back cut which has pinched the saw blade as it began its death lean right at Bob’s house.  The only thing keeping it from completing its fall is Bob’s chainsaw bar, stuck in the cut.  With no directional notch and the tree leaning on the back cut, it can go anywhere in about a 120 degree radius.  If the wind picks up, utter pandemonium with destruction would most likely ensue.  Not only that, we now have a Bob-induced “widow-maker” on our hands and the clock is ticking.

Now, the two of us rapidly start to “tiptoe” quickly around a tree that could fall any number of ways all by itself.   It was like a focused Chinese fire drill.  First, we have to loosen the winch which just got done playing  “Tree Concerto for Piccolo in G#”.   Then, I grabbed the ladder and climbed the tree that was supposed to come down and undo the high-tension  power-knot, with one arm around the tree.  Drop the rope,  get down the ladder and ever-so-gently  stand  it on the new, “tree-of-death”  which was literally standing  by a thread and a chainsaw bar.   I  shimmy up to tie a new knot  but not quite as high.   Back down the ladder I tiptoed and removed it while Bob was on the winch.  Several  fast  chi-kik, chi-kuk’s  and  down came the tree crashing with the winch doing the work.  It was exactly how Plan A was "supposed" to go.

“Well…..er…THAT was exciting!  Ha, Ha!” he said with the chuckle he would employ when things that went awry,  then went OK.   I wiped the July sweat off of my forehead.   Holy crap.  We took down two more trees.  But each time I asked  him to verify the tree by looking up before he cuts the notch.   “If you don’t see the rope, please don’t cut it!”

With all trees on the ground, all buildings still standing, I said “bye” to Bob and went home for that day.

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Basswood Basecamp and GQ Magazine

Way back yonder, when I was a lot younger, I used to do a lot of guiding.  I guided many different people on day fishing trips and did some overnight base camping on Basswood and other lakes as well.  Base camping with people who really know nothing is a heckuva lot of work.  It’s like complete canoe trip outfitting but where the guide has to do all the thinking, planning, packing and go with the party to guide them for fishing.  At camp, the guide also cooks all the meals, washes dishes, cleans fish, and baby sits people who don’t know quite how to act in the woods.  When one is a younger guide, any client can go.  With aging, a guide applies more restrictions to the clientele who might like to hire him or her.  Suffice it to say, early exposures to overnight guiding lead me to become really picky in  later years as to whom I would have to keep from drowning out in the woods.

One trip on Basswood was a particularly interesting event.  It was four guys and me.  I sent my brother up to set up camp in advance and told him no matter where he set up, “do not set up on the old Mapleleaf Lodge site on the west point just north of Wind Bay.”  I should have told Bernie to “just set up on the Mapleleaf site” and lived with it.  

That particular site has a nice beach area in a little Gilligan’s Island type of sheltered lagoon minus all the bamboo and the Skipper and Maryann.  I thought Maryann was the best looking of the two good looking women stuck on that madcap island.   It has flagstone rock steps from the old resort that was forced out in 1964 for the BWCA law and 99% of all the canoe paddlers have no clue as to why those neatly arranged rocks are there.  They all believe that the US Forest Service was feeling particularly artistic one day and sent up crew to beautify this spot. There used to be a privately owned and operated resort there in the “wilderness” along with 16 other businesses on Basswood.

It is a beautiful campsite of course and very sheltered from wind.  And, the mosquitoes REALLY like it A LOT.  I found that out by having shore lunches there while on day-guiding trips.  Using the biffy on this spot is a whole, new adventure.  So, thanks; younger brother!  He said there was nothing else open which was probably true as far more people used to actually visit the BWCA back in the late 80’s than they do today despite whatever the US Forest Serrvice says is the case with BWCA permit use is today.

So, I get my party to Moose Lake after picking them up the day before at the Ely airport.  They arrived to Ely in a King Air and had a pilot and a stewardess on that plane.  The leader of the group was named Jerry.  He owned a car part production company in Wisconsin.   He made all the medallions and related parts that you stuck on cars like the medallion on the grill of a Cadillac or a Kia today.  He owned the King Air which is a pretty big turbo prop plane.  One other guy named Bob was according to Jerry,  “ born with a silver spoon in his mouth and the spoon just kept getting bigger”.  Not really sure what the meant until Jerry said that Bob’s family shipped 25 boxcars of hops per day, 365 days per year to Budweiser in Missouri or wherever they are.  Apparently, that’s a lot of hops.  I was wondering how much beer people drink?  Then there were the two other guys, Sam and Dave, both of them members of the “leveraged-buyout- elite” that was going on during those times.  

Silver Spoon Bob was wearing a brown, 10 gallon, corduroy cowboy hat, cowboy boots and a suede leather sport coat.  That is how he dressed for a Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness camping trip.  Sam had not one, but two portable alarms, plus a battery operated shaver, and various other gadgets.  I suggested that one alarm probably wasn’t even needed, but I could tell that he was so wound up coming from the world where everything in business was sliced, diced and sold quickly, that he needed two clocks and a shaver - on a BWCA trip.  The other two guys had their gear fresh from Eddy Bauer and were stuffing packsacks with it.  Silver Spoon Bob  had a little bag of stuff and I gave him a smaller pack.  He was curiously devoid of luggage or gear.   All the while, they are asking a few questions about fishing mainly and showing me high quality $200 rods and $200 reels bought just for this trip.  

The next morning, my mom served breakfast and we take off fully loaded, tow boat with canoes on the racks and what felt like 800 packsacks of crap and gear on the floor of the boat. It's a three night trip - how much stuff does one need?

Silver Spoon Bob is a likeable guy and a goofball, and completely clueless.  He gets in the boat, wearing his cowboy boots and hat, and suede leather jacket.  He zipped up his assigned, red life jacket securely over the top of that sport coat.   He did have blue jeans on because he figured it was a casual event….at the Moose Lake landing…in a boat....heading up to Prairie Portage….then to Basswood….YEP….casual.

We crossed Prairie with the trucks and the excitement began to set in with the four men in my boat.  Silver Spoon Bob is looking a little confused, but he’s game for anything.  Everybody else has a bit of a chuckle going on among  themselves.   I’m not sure what the group dynamic was at the time, but I was driving the boat.  We had to get to camp.

So, up along the Canadian border we went.   Nothing but vast open water ahead, distant shorelines and islands, rocks, and sticks.  Not a structure in sight and very few people on the water.   We finally get to the campsite.  The Maple Leaf base camp.

I beach the tow boat and everybody piles off the front end like a military assault of Navy Seals.  OK, an unloading clown car, would fit them better.  The base camp which consisted of two cabin tents 10 x 14 cabins tents, my own smaller tent and cots, a cooler, and assorted camping gear paraphernalia.  A tarp was up.  It was an instant, just-add-water, camp.

Silver Spoon Bob’s mouth was agape.  He begins to laugh, “Ha!  That’s really FUNNY!  OK!  Joke’s over.  Ya got me!  Where are we REALLY staying!”  I did not know what to say and began to mumble/sputter about this being home for the next three nights.

That’s when Jerry laughed and told Bob that I was speaking the truth.  This is where we are going to live for the next four days.

Bob said to Jerry, “ I thought you said we were going to be staying in a Holiday Inn and do some golf and go fishing!  Where the hell are we?”

I was thinking, “Oh, crap…”  As Bob wandered around looking into the tents, Jerry quietly told me that had Silver Spoon Bob been told about anything less than a water-access-only Holiday Inn with golf nearby uniquely sitting 100 yards from  the Canadian border, he would never have come along.  “Aww - great plan.” I thought to myself.

Well, Jerry smoothed it over with Bob by digging in his pack.  I was wondering why we had so many packs.  He pulled out several different bottles of booze all in different plastic bottles. It was a lot of booze and after a drink, shooting some bull, all four had a good laugh and the adventure resumed. Silver Spoon Bob was on board. I think he might have brought along only one pair of underwear. He wore his sport coat every day.

We caught some fish, I made dinner –surf and turf- fresh steaks, fish, hashbrowns and beans, everybody was happy despite the 250 bazillion mosquitoes who called the Maple Leaf campsite “home”.

The next day, I was up and at ‘em early as I’m usually wound like a spring with trips like these and I made breakfast. I made coffee on the wood fire along with  eggs, bacon, & toast.  I poured the coffee as these cranked (except Silver Spoon Bob) businessmen needed their coffee.  Then, stupidly, I mentioned that "I’m not much of a coffee drinker myself" when Sam said sardonically, “I know…” and flipped the contents of his cup into the woods. Apparently it was weak.  OK, so I’m not a barista - sue me.

The day brings more fishing, some portaging into smaller lakes around the edges of Basswood, and back to camp for dinner. As I’m filleting fish, a somewhat intoxicated Jerry comes to me at the beach and decides that he wants to take a canoe out of our perfectly calm lagoon and  go fishing by himself.  I tried to diplomatically dissuade him of the whole idea, because a northwest wind had picked up and was now ripping out on the open water.  This was his chance to shine.  Sam and Dave attempted a more-controlled distraction by suggesting sitting around the fire, but apparently, some people become very stubborn when they are drunk.

So, not liking this plan at all, I reluctantly give Jerry a three-minute paddling tutorial in handling a tandem canoe from a solo position and find a rock to weight down the new front of the canoe.  In soloing a tandem canoe you paddle Grummans by sitting in the front seat, facing backwards. You still need a bit of counter weight up front and a rock would do it.  Jerry loaded up his VERY expensive rods and did not want to put on his life jacket.  It was  the second week in June and the water is still pretty cold.  I tried to get him to wear the life jacket, but he assured me he could do it without wearing the PFD.  To appease me, he agreed to put one in the canoe with him.  That is like putting a seat belt on after a car crash, but this was a guy not used to taking orders.  At that time, a boat cushion was all that was required and Jerry was sitting on one to allow him to comfortably solo paddle that canoe.

Out he went into the bay.  Of course, he couldn’t just stay in the bay, he had to head out into the fray to prove his manhood or something.  Dave said to me that “it must be hard to fillet fish and keep an eye on the  guy alone in the canoe”.  I didn’t say much but, I looked up a lot.  Sam was very worried and called to Jerry to NOT go into the windy part.  Of course, macho Jerry, owner of the King Air complete with full-time pilot on staff, waved off the sounds of trepidation resonating from shore.  Then, he proceeded to get himself into a pickle.

Ignorantly charging straight out into the ripping cross wind, resulted in turning his canoe so he was heading southeast, right towards the mouth of Wind Bay.  He paddled hard trying to turn the bow back to shore.  That rocked the canoe violently but the wind held the canoe like a weather vane with the lighter front end of the canoe not budging from the path the wind had chosen for it.  Jerry was no longer the master of his domain. As he saw himself heading apparently (in his mind) to a sudden death, he did the whole, inexperienced, canoe-paddler thing that people do when they panic in canoes.  He should have just traveled with the wind until he saw a calmer opening.  It’s not like I wouldn’t  come and get him, but he’s no different than the 90% who paddle the BWCA.  He had to turn the canoe NOW!   He began to rapidly paddle backwards and when he couldn’t beat the wind, he reached back far with his paddle for a long, strong, pulling stoke and then  he rolled it over in the blink of an eye.

His three buddies on shore groaned a loud, collective “Oh, my God!” and hightailed it over by me who was filleting fish at water’s edge right next to the towboat.  Jerry was floating while holding onto the swamped, upside-down canoe and he was trying to put on the life jacket that I insisted he take with him.  On the shore, all three guys grabbed the bow of the tow boat and picked it up and began pushing with all their might trying to make it float.  Only one problem with their good intentions:  The towboat was tied to a skinny cedar tree on shore.  They stretched that rope SO tight that if somebody strummed it, the pitch would have shattered a mirror.  The boat wasn’t budging and they weren't listening to me saying “Wait, wait, the rope!” because “fight or flight” was in full force and they were going to put up heckuva fight for their pickled, floating, maybe sinking,  buddy.

I had no choice. There was too much pressure on the rope and untying was not an option so, with my razor sharp Normark Presentation Fillet knife, I sliced my tow boat’s rope from behind the panicked horsepower of the three men.  All three fell forward like a Three Stooges episode and landed face-first in the water with a beaver-tail’s splash and a big, collective “Oooofff!”.  I dropped my knife and skipped over the bodies on the ground before me and into the boat. I zipped to the back and dropped the brand new 25 HP Johnson into the water, cranked it up on the first pull, shifted into reverse and ground up my BRAND NEW propeller on a rock below trying to save a wealthy drunk’s butt!  My inner-Incredible-Hulk wanted to come out swinging.  Those props cost $85 back then!   I didn’t dwell on it because in cold water, Jerry could seriously end up in deep trouble fast.  I spun the boat around and headed out into the wind.  Alongside of the swamped canoe now, I pulled the suddenly-more-sober Jerry over the side as he thanked me profusely for being so “unbelievably quick”.  He also complained he lost about $800 worth of rods in that flip.  I thought, “You dumbass! - I lost a prop!” but I smiled and said “Oh, sorry to hear that…”

Back at shore, the three wet-from-the waist-up guys thanked me for getting Jerry and keeping a cool head when they all panicked.  Sam told me privately that this was good thing because Jerry will be much more “ruley” for the rest of the trip and might listen when the guide says “no”..

The rest of the trip went off without any more hitches, and I would guess that they all had fun.  But then I went on to witness the next spectacle that businessmen apparently become quite jaded in doing on the last day.

My brother Bernie arrived to take down the camp with 16 foot Lund and different 25 HP - and two chicks.   Of course, Bernie has to arrive with two chicks (so professional) he picked up at Prairie Portage on his way to me, but that’s a different, sub-story.  It really  ticked me off at the time.  I mean, who picks up chicks in the middle of the woods?  What are the odds of that happening?  Apparently, the odds are quite good.  Nonetheless, it looked really goofy and one girl annoyed the crap out of me, but I digress.

Anyway, my clients  boarded the Lund and off we blasted. The wind was still screaming and the lake was pretty rough but aside from that it was a spectacularly deep blue with both sky and water showing off for us the extra silvery whitecaps.  One would think that a day and journey such as this would elicit stares and observations and feeling of bummed-out-ness or having to leave.  Nope.  They all nonchalantly whipped out their magazines.  Business Week, National Review, GQ, et cetera and folded them in half to make for easy reading in the upright position.    

As we were leaving God’s country, the waves  pummeled us with slow-down-the-boat-and-watch-so-they-don’t-come-over-the-back-whitecaps on Basswood. My guys  looked like we were on a commuter flight to Chicago, Illinois.   It was surreal.  As their upright bodies swayed and rocked with the pounding the bow was taking, every now and then, one of them would look up briefly at Canada just over the border and then re-bury his nose into that paragraph on that page. For a minute there, I was waiting for the stewardess to show up with that narrow beverage cart.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.  We’re experiencing a bit of turbulence and we expect it to be over just around the corner past Green Island and at the top of Inlet Bay.  Please remain seated and buckled in until the seatbelt light turns off.  Thank you for base camping with Northwind Lodge Canoe Trip Outfitting.

I was definitely happy to get home.

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Wood Lake Boats - getting ready for open water

It’s the beginning of April 2014 and Northwind Lodge cabins and boats are covered in a deep blanket of snow.  It’s a beautiful day outside and the migratory birds who normally make their way up to the north woods from wherever they spent the winter, are filling the trees and cheeping and pecking;  then moving away to greener pastures in this sea of white. 

Spring is in the air, somewhere.  South of here, some 265 miles is the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Pictures of that region show that the snow has all but left and the mushy beginning of spring has actually set in for real.  Those of us in the north know every year that life here is not the same as it is down “by the Equator” in southern Minnesota.   Despite the never ending brilliance of sun, snow and long days, some of us inhabitants of  Minnesota’s north woods are envious.  The month of April is a historically snow/rainy/freezing month with low temps in the morning producing solid snow and ice on the lakes that seems reluctant to leave forever.  This season appears to be no different than last season which had the winter that wouldn’t leave.  Last year spring struggled hard to cling to it’s time slot but was squeezed out by endless winter.  Spring was forced reside in June and the first week of July in 2013. 

The long winters here at Northwind Lodge are nothing unusual.  Growing up as a child here,  working on the resort and getting ready for the fishing opener meant coming every weekend and weekdays after school outside at Northwind Lodge once the snow and freezing finally subsided.  Can’t do anything when it is still freezing and paint won’t dry.  Once winter finally gave up the ghost, there was endless raking, fluffing up flat dirt and grass from the 6 months of snow.  And as always we were trying to find a nice day to paint.

 At a Ma & Pa resort like ours, there was, and still remains, endless square feet of flat and bumpy surfaces to paint.  I remember as a very young child crossing the Wood Lake portage each year to maintain the steel boats we had way at the end of that portage. They were heavy, old and always needed maintenance.  So, every spring, my brother and I would follow our mom and dad down that portage on a nice Saturday or Sunday. 

The trail was always winter-just-left muddy and we wore rubber boots.  My feet would sometimes get cold in those uninsulated boots despite wearing the knitted wool socks that my mom made for us kids.   We all carried our own appropriately-sized packsacks with various tools for the day divided up among us.  They included a hammer, egg-beater-style hand drill ( there was no such thing as lithium batteries/cordless drills back then) drill bits, assorted nuts and bolts, a wrench, a couple wire brushes, sandpaper, rags, a gallon of  red paint, paint thinner, brushes, screwdrivers, lunch, toilet paper, cans of pop,  the keys to the locks for the boats, and an axe or two. 

The woods on the Wood Lake portage always smelled like fresh earth. The air was usually crisp, the sun out but the shadows cold and the new ground was breathing.  With the snow mostly gone and no leaves on anything, you could see far into the woods.  Everything looks roomier in the spring and the brush has a real camouflage coloration to it.  If you stopped walking, but for the footsteps of the rest of the group, you can hear your heart beats.  Every now and then, a raven would fly over "gee-gunk'ing" to check on us while we walked perhaps hoping that one of us would kick the bucket for an easy meal.   Nothing comes easy for ravens.  There was always a sense of calm as we walked with little noise. Having come from a long line of hunters, trappers and outlaws, we were taught by our dad to never leave tracks.  So the walking on the portage meant stepping on solid terrain like the points of rocks and avoiding the mud.  Being little kids with packsacks on and ill-fitting hand-me-down boots, that kind of focus and commitment only lasts so long.   We may have left a few extra tracks behind us.

Once we completed the final rugged decent of the Wood Lake Portage to our boats at the water’s edge, we could survey the damage.  There was always damage.  Not so much to the boats but the crude docks with metal rings we had in place to lock up the boats.  The fluctuating water levels and wicked ice would always rip something apart.  So, we’d struggle to get those heavy boats to the black, muddy, rocky shore and begin wire brushing the rust while Dad wrestling with beating the dock back into place. 

Layers of peeling paint, rust and dust lead to a shiny new coat of red Rustoleum paint from the Ace Hardware in Ely.  Us two kids would sand , brush, and wipe dust and our mom would cover the tracks with her paint brush.  When it finally was time for lunch, we kids were relieved.  Some years, our dad would build a fire and we’d roast hotdogs over it for a busman’s picnic. Other years it was fire and a sandwich.  On one trip that I could not attend because I was in Kindergarten, my younger brother Bernie was so tired, he fell asleep in the bow of a boat after being a trooper scraping rust for as long as a little kid can last out in fresh air doing the work of adults. 

Once the Wood Lake boats were repaired and painted inside and out, they ‘d be flipped upside down and allowed to dry before another trip down the portage had my dad putting them on the water for the upcoming season.  It was just one of the regimens we would follow every year until I was 18 and we finally got aluminium boats that required no maintenance.  It was a blessing to have the amenities of modernity bestowed upon us, but also kind of sad, in retrospect.   We no longer had that ritual to follow and squeeze in between the weather and time.  But needless to say, we had a Ma & Pa resort with many other projects to fill the void.   With a bunch of cabins and a water system that needed to be fired back up after the ice decided it doesn't really like plumbing in spots, there was a never-ending stream of things to do.

Growing up at a resort in northern Minnesota is something that perhaps should be afforded every kid.  It's hard to disagree with spending time in the woods and using tools, isn't it?

Little Dog's Gotta Run

Delilah is a zippy little dog with a snowball obsession.  You can throw snow until your hands fall off.  That dog doesn't wear out.  

I actually filmed this in HD super slo-mo on a JVC Adixxion II  video action camera.  The speed was by accident.  In editing, I  sped it up 4 times to get it to normal speed.

visitnorthwind.com

Who Built This?

A while back, not too many years ago, a young guy in his mid-thirties came into  the store here to find out about possibly buying a new Souris River Canoe.   Being that our store is out in the woods on a beautiful lake here called Jasper, that alone is one thing of fascination for many of our store customers.   Most people on a shopping adventure end up going to the populated area and concrete jungle of Ely to wander the stores in a more civilized environment.  Our store at Northwind Lodge is not only sizeable with a great selection of products, gear and fishing tackle, but it is located almost at the end of the road, at our resort called Northwind Lodge.  We are surrounded by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on three sides.  But for a few gift shops and maybe a pegboard wall with some tackle on it, other resorts around the state of Minnesota usually don’t have anything quite like this.  A beautiful resort with clean, housekeeping cabins on a small lake with few people AND a store.   As a result, Red Rock attracts people to Northwind Lodge not necessarily with the intention to stay here, but they are usually a bit surprised that the resort with housekeeping cabins is here on the Fernberg road.  We usually do a lot of explaining that Red Rock and the Northwind Lodge are under the same ownership but market them separately for the very reason that people are easily overwhelmed and confused with too many bits of information all tied up in one spot.

Well, anyway, this guy wanted to test paddle a Quetico 17 because he correctly heard that as far as general purpose, Boundary Waters canoes go, nothing beats a Souris River Quetico 17 for a whole host of reasons.   Based on my own in-depth knowledge of that canoe and  other brand Kevlar canoes, he would not even need to test paddle it. The canoe is unflappable for 99% of all general, recreation-use paddlers on the planet.   But, my being in a sales position always tests many peoples’ sense of skepticism before they buy something and he needed pudding with proof in it.  So, I flipped a 43 lb., Kevlar,  Souris River Quetico 17 up on my shoulders.  While ooo & aww’ing about me picking up the canoe, he grabs the paddles and PFD’s and to the lake we head from Red Rock which is on the outer edge of the resort and about 100 yards from Jasper Creek.  It's only a minute or two to the Northwind Lodge beach.

As we are walking along, he (and almost everybody else) asks from behind me if that noise ahead of us is a waterfall to which I say “yes”.   We make it to the trail from the road edge and to the first foot bridge that leads over the creek which is moving along nicely.  In the middle of the bridge he stops behind me to look over the 15 foot wide, gurgling swath of white noise as it sparkled furiously below in the leaf-filtered sun’s rays.   There is a look of marvel in his eyes as he yells to me, while I’m now across the bridge and turning the canoe to follow the trail to the lake amid the ash trees, “ Wow! Who did this?”

I said, “Excuse me?”  I expected that I knew where this big city kid was going with this, but I’d decided to play along.  The canoe on my shoulders was pretty lightweight so I had time to engage.

“Who did you hire to do this?  The layout and design?  It’s FABULOUS!!!” he  queried all excited about how beautiful Jasper Creek is.   I thought  “Wow!”  He actually thinks we hired an architectural firm named Hanson, Rogers and Flipperding to design Jasper Creek.  Then we hired a highly respected eco-excavation company (who burns love in their fuel tanks instead of diesel) to install it with tender care just like they do at Disneyland and the tourists are all dazzled by it.

To answer him I responded with a question, sort of, “Err, God?  Mother Nature?  Bhudda?  Pick whichever one serves your belief system.”

Photo courtesy of  Hanson, Rogers and Flipperding
(Landscape Architects Extraordinaire)

Then, a slightly sheepish look came across his face as he said “Ohhhh” as he realized that most of those rocks have laid there in that water for abouty 30,000 years or longer -  whenever the last glacier left us.

And, then we continued down to the lake and he noticed the resort cabins on the hillside overlooking the beach area.   He wanted know what this place was – with the beautiful creek and rental cabins nestled in the woods.  I explained that it is our resort, Northwind Lodge and as he took it all in at the beach, you could see the processing taking place.  Then he wondered how long I’ve had this place and I replied “for about 50 years – I grew up here, pretty much.”    He shook his head in amazement and declared “what a beautiful place to grow up” it was.  I agreed.

It was then that he remembered his original purpose, and we both sat down in that canoe and shoved off the shore to take that test paddle.   When we got back to shore after about 15 minutes, he said to me, “You already knew what I was going to find when I took this canoe on the water, didn’t you?.”   I just smiled.

He loaded up a new Souris River Quetico 17 on his car and off to the great blue yonder it went with him.  Before he left, he took a picture of the waterfall at Jasper Creek like so many people have done for my whole life here at Northwind Lodge, just outside of the BWCA, near Ely.

Jasper Creek Fall at Northwind Lodge

Northwind Lodge Website Here

Cabin #4 - From 1948 to present

Back in 1948, my Grandfather built the first half of Cabin 4.  It was a small cabin made from logs and shiplap pine lumber with parts of the inside, plastered by some guy he hired.   Like all of our other cabins, it had no indoor plumbing but for a sink drain.  For running water, you needed to run to the well by the lake with a bucket and hand pump your own.  For restroom needs, Cabin 4 shared the outhouse with Cabins 5, 2, and our house/Office on that side of the Jasper Creek.  One time, as modern things began to creep into life in the northwoods, resort guests began to request crazy stuff like indoor plumbing.  One guy, opened the door and asked my grandpa with a room full of lodge guests present, if our resort offered indoor plumbing. My grandpa, never one to mince words, yelled at the man that we are “civilized and not pigs –  We S**T outside!”  That guy didn’t stay.  After my dad built Cabin 7 when he was 17 and added a flush toilet and everybody wanted to rent it, Grandpa decided that indoor plumbing might not be so bad. 

Later in life, Grandpa added on a small front porch on Cabin 4 but then passed away with the porch unfinished.   Upon his passing, my dad finished the small front porch when I was a little kid.  I remember his  exasperation with the odd-sized, unfinished little addition.  In trying to modernize by moving away from the outhouses and having plumbing with running water inside of pipes,  my dad sectioned up the little porch and stuffed a shower, a ¾ size lavatory and a regular toilet in a room that was a mere door’s thickness from the kitchen table.  Even as a kid I thought that being able to sit at the dining room table and open the bathroom door and then shake hands with the guy sitting on the porcelain throne was a bit awkward.   We rented Cabin 4 like that for many years and nobody seemed to mind.    Many of our customers would request that cabin for years to come. 

Back in 1998, I decided that the little dining room/bathroom was coming off.  With the help of my employee Curt, I tore that little wing off.  I’ll never forget a plaster wall that served as the base for  a small counter top and my trying to remove it.  It was plastered by a mad man that my grandpa hired.  A mad plasterer of sorts   One inch and thicker plaster covered a heavy mesh and logs.  It was  darn near impossible to smash out of there.  I wrecked a couple of sawzall blades when I finally brought in a 12 pound sledgehammer and began tenderizing it.  I took out that wall in crumbs and slivers.

I ended up adding my first ever, all-by-myself, addition to a cabin.   I made the room a lot bigger, added a bathroom that you could turn around in with much better lighting.  I used big windows in the living area.  I also added a sky-light to the roof for some natural light and then paneled the entire room in native knotty pine I bought from a John Latola on the Iron Range.   Outside, I built a wrap-around deck that would fit a picnic table.  Cabin #4, because of its size and layout is now our most rented cabin. 

The fun part for me in this cabin is the 50 year span.  Built in 1948 by my grandpa and then remodeled by me in 1998. I attempted to meld the 1948 portion to the new wing so there was a seamless transition of logs meeting stick construction and it seems to have worked. 

Best part is that it in 2014, it’s still standing and still level.  Numerous Northwind Lodge guests have stayed in this cabin and request it every year.

In remodeling the cabin, for lack of knowing what to do with it, I turned a bedroom window into a curio cabinet of sorts.   There was nothing in it but I figured people could use it for personal effects as there are never enough places to put stuff in small cabins in the woods.  This window shelf took on an interesting  twist as a lot of our guests began leaving notes and little ditties behind – mementos of remembrance for others to see.  Things they brought, bought, had, or wrote ended up behind the glass.  The oddest thing left in window-turned cabinet  was a couple of .357 caliber live rounds – hollow points, no less.  (I pulled those)  Meanwhile, the figurines change all by themselves as I believe they come and go from year to year.

Cabin 4 was remodeled to accommodate our winter cross country ski business back in the day when we cut, maintained and groomed about 15 mlies of ski trails.  I designed the wing to be able to accommodate a  wood stove as all our winter cabins needed the extra heat.  The first year with brand new carpeting, a guy and his wife stayed there for a weekend. On Sunday, after he checked out at 8 AM and went skiing on the trails for few more clicks before they left, he told me he cleaned out the wood stove.  Years of experience taught us to NEVER allow any guests to clean out a woodstove, ever so other than a poker, there were no shovels or fireplace tools available.  He casually said as a parting thought that he put all the ashes from the woodstove in a Zup's paper grocery bag and set it on the floor by the door before they went skiing.  His car didn't make it out of the yard before I made it to Cabin 4 on foot.  When I got there, I picked up the bag and the hot coals burned right through the paper and landed in a pile where the bottom of the bag was.  It only burned a 6" X 8" hole through the brand new carpeting into the subfloor.  Fortunately, the bag didn't flare up and light the wall on fire and if nothing else cause a bunch of smoke damage.  A lifetime of moments like these has developed my more cynical side about people, I must say. 

Cabin 4’s popularity with two double beds and one twin bed in two bedrooms,  makes it a little harder to reserve but if your schedule is flexible, there are plenty of openings in the early/later parts of summer.   June is a nice month for those seeking cooler temps, high water, and really blue skies.  The fishing’s pretty good then as well for primarily bigger largemouth and small mouth bass along with ferocious northern pike and the occasional walleye.  June is also a good month for spotting moose both on Jasper Lake and along the Fernberg road on your way out to Northwind Lodge.  We've had a cow and calf spotted on Jasper and down the road from us in Fall 2013.  There are not a lot of them, but they are here.   Mid-August and later see less people and very temperate days.  The fish will be biting then, too.  But you’ll see lots of sunnies and bass with more developed weed beds than in June.  

Late in the season in 2013, we added new mattresses to Cabin 4.  Nothing is more popular than sleeping  on a comfy bed next to Jasper Creek.   Cabins 2, 6, 4, 3, and 8 all hear Jasper Creek as it pours ts way through the resort property.  We are always amused buy our new lodge guests who over-sleep and wake up all confused.  Most think that it’s raining outside so they roll over and go back to sleep.  When they finally crawl out of bed and are greeted by sunshine and blue skies, it dawns on them that they were duped.  With the exception of one woman who asked my mom years ago if we could turn the water off at night (we really can’t), everyone seems to take the authentic white noise in stride.  It is one of the most beautiful sound barriers that exists and you can only find one at Northwind Lodge.  Our water fall is perhaps the most photographed set of falls in the region.  

Staying at Northwind Lodge is not just a place to sleep, it’s more of an experience that can’t be found on any electronic gadget.  To live next to the creek on Jasper Lake for a week is an experience that few have ever had.   It does not exist at any other resort in the Ely area.  Our lodge guests have loved, enjoyed and daydreamed alongside Jasper Creek forever. 

Northwind Lodge Website