Over the rainbow

"Where troubles melt like lemon drops."
- E.Y. Harburg

One week from today, we will be set free.

We’ll escape this Kansas heat … this bone-dry, 106-degree weather that sucks moisture like a desert, that forces us into our homes as surely as Colorado fires push owners out of theirs.

“The past three-month stretch is the driest April-June here since 1911,” reported our newspaper, dryly.

Even the dogs stay inside for the cool, though they sometimes burn with cabin fever.

But in seven days we’ll depart from Kansas City's airport, its tarmac baking, shimmering, and land in the refreshing, cool dampness of the Northwest.

The contrast will be bliss. 

Even more so given what’s ahead.  For we travel, at last, to celebrate the wedding.

For us parents, it started with The Call, when this dad misbehaved as Eric phoned to seek our permission.  It continued with wondrous visits to Bellingham … sure, to do wedding planning, but also to embrace the richness of tall trees, deep-green trails and blue seas.

And that’s the incredible thing about the wedding that Meghan and Eric have planned.  While we’ll celebrate the unification of these two, we’ll also celebrate the natural world that has so captured their hearts and imaginations.

These two geologists want it that way.  They’ve studied what lies beneath and what towers above in this Oz called Washington.  They know its secret places, its beautiful spaces.  And they want to share.

And so their 16-page wedding invitation – a green-clad book illustrated by Meghan – included hiking tips for out-of-towners.  The wedding itself will occur partway up Mount Baker, in a hidden clearing guarded by goliath trees and thick ferns. The reception fare will sample the bounty of Washington’s fields, seas and vineyards.

All things considered, the bill for this bliss is coming in at less than I expected. The credit goes to Meghan and Eric. But that’s such a crass thought right now that I’m ashamed I brought it up.  I have but one daughter.  You work and save for this day because … well, you just do. 

To paraphrase Tina Turner:  What’s love got to do with it? 

Everything.

Meghan is back in Bellingham now.  She escaped the hot grip of Houston, Texas, where she’d been working as an intern. It didn’t take the pair long to reconnect with the land.  They and friends ventured off on a four-day hike along the peninsula beach southwest of Bellingham. 

It was a successful trip full of sea breezes, encounters with starfish and, of course, rocks upon rocks to analyze.  Their souls are restored.  Meghan reports today that it’s cool and misty in Bellingham; my phone concurs: “61 degrees, fog.”

Meanwhile, we suffer the heat in silence.  Sure, we and the dogs venture out for brief visits with our outdoors.  But we tumble back in when the panting gets too heavy, the slobber too thick.

During the night, though … well, that’s different.  Because then I can dream of the deep  forests to come.  I can taste the cool, damp air. 

And, in the distance, I can hear the soft exchange of two companions confirming a love as big as their beloved Mount Baker.

“I do.” 

Played out

Maybe it was a dream.  Maybe not.  Working in the garden in the hot sun can do strange things.

So I was pulling weeds in the raised beds and I heard a muffled “Dang!” It came from below ground, under my feet.

“Dang!” it said again.

“Who’s that?” I asked, looking down.

“Dig!” came the answer. “Dig!”

“Huh? Dig?!”

“Dang it, get them hoofs off my back and dig me up!”

I grabbed the nearby shovel and sunk it about a foot deep.  Up came a leathery mess about the size of a baseball, caked in dirt.

“You can talk?” I asked.

“Hell yes, I can talk.  Now shut your big bazzo and wash me off.”

I ran for the hose, rinsed the mud ball off … and realized I was talking to a piece of rawhide.  

“Weird,” I thought. “Shouldn’t be happening, but let’s go with this.”

Like a congested goose, it let out a wet honk and blew a dirt wad about 6 feet.  I ducked.

“Crapohhhla, that’s better!”

Then, voice like gravel, it talked on ….

“Much obliged … though dang, boy, you were right atop my back.”  

“Sorry,” I said.  “Didn’t know.”

“Yep, I’m sorry, too. Been sorry ever since I got here. I’m played out … have had enough.  Been chewed on, stretched a damn dozen different ways, buried, unburied, buried again, left to rot, left to burn in the sun like jerky.  Just not right.  Not right at all.”

“Well, that’s what dogs do,” I said.

“Dogs … is that what they are?  Been wonderin’.  I can’t see for blazes what with the dirt and the slobber and all. If they’re dogs, they’re bad medicine.  They got me all catawampus.  Don’t know if I’m comin’ or goin’.”

“Yeah, well, dogs will do that,” I said.  “I feel the same way sometimes.  We’ve got three of them here now, you know.”

“Oh hell, yeah I know. I'm no slowpoke. You know the sayin’ … you won’t catch this weasel asleep.   No, I could tell there were three by their tooth sizes. And they all smell different.  Not pleasant.  Not pleasant at all. 

Linus

“And they, well, they just act different. Now, the little, scrappy one … well, I tolerate him pretty good because he grabs me, plops me to the floor and pretty much leaves me to sit there.  Doesn't chew on me. Now, that one will like to growl and snap if either of the other ones comes ‘round.  Helps me out!  So of the three, that’s the best.

“Then there’s that mid-sized black and brown one.  Now, that one’ll grab and chew pretty hard, but that one’s a mite chickabiddy … dashing one way, then the other, and damn fast to boot!  But blackie gets distracted easy. You know, if a bird flies by or somethin’. Then it drops me like I was dead meat.”

“You are dead meat,” I said. “But never mind that.  What about the third one?”

Koa

“Yeah, well that one’s the worst.  A big, white, hairy thing.  Got the biggest head I’ve ever seen … seems bigger than the West Kansas steer that I came from.

“That one is the slowest-movin’ ride I’ve ever been on … grabs me in that soggy mouth and just walks and walks, from one corner of the yard to another, stoppin’ along the way to smell flowers, sticks, tall grass, a bug here or there.  Stops now and then with me sitting between tongue and teeth, that tongue just hanging out, flappin’ and drippin’ in the wind.  Disgustin’.

Nellie

“Never seen a bit of flusteration with that one, though.  That little scrappy one, it’s growlin’ and snappin’ all the time.  That mid-sized one, jumpy as a jack rabbit, always got a wiggle on.  But that big white one.  Why, I’d swear it was a sleepy cow chewin’ cud if it wasn’t so darn harry.”

“But you complained the white one was the worst,” I said. “All things considered, that’s pretty easy-going with her. A gentle ride.  A bit wet at times, maybe.  But all in all, not too bad.”

“Ah, helll-ohhh-no!  That white one, well that’s the digger!”

“Oh … yeah,” I acknowledged. “She does like to dig.”

“Damn straight she does.  After we go for these lazy-day walks, she moseys over to some loose patch of dirt.  But she’s got to sniff some more first. Damn persnickety, that one. If she don’t like it, she meanders over to another, then another.

“Finally, she finds one that satisfies. Then she starts diggin’ like a bear in an ant hill … those big white paws scoopin’ buckets.  When she’s deep enough she drops me in like I was a dead skunk.  Uses that big nose to push that dirt over me ….

“Seen it happen many a time, seen that big, black nose push ‘til I could see no more.”

The rawhide now got wistful, the voice distant.

“And then she comes back and digs me up, and we do it all over again. The walks, the sniffin’, the damn la-di-da nonchalance, the diggin’, the droppin’, the coverin’.   We do it all again … and again … and again ....” 

The old rawhide stopped ... abruptly looked at me.

“Makes me crazier than a coon in heat.”

“Well, you know the alternative isn’t pretty,” I said.  “You are dead meat, literally and figuratively. Your days are numbered no matter what. At least you get some postponement a foot down … able to see another day.  It’s not like that for the others.  Sometimes they go pretty quick.”

“Yep, I know that.  Believe me … I’ve got a lot of time to think when I'm down there.  Now, I don’t get myself into no sonofabitch stew … you know, stewin’ about my fate.  I know the cattle trail I’m on.  It ain’t pretty.

“But I just wish she’d forget where she put me just one time!  Just one sweet, merciful  time.  That white one has a memory like those elephants.”

“Well,” I said.  “That’s not going to happen.  She’s not going to forget. At least I don’t think so.”

“How’s this,” I added.  “How about I dig you a new hole that she doesn’t know about and drop you in there.  Then we’ll see if she finds you.  She might not.  It’d take a mighty nose to figure that one out.”

“Worth a try,” it said.  “Appreciate it … really do.  And I’m a mite hopeful, but ….”

“But?”  I asked.

“But I’ve seen the power of that nose, seen it suck in so much air you couldn’t find enough for yerself. 

“She’ll find me.  Always does.”  

I dug the hole, dropped it in, covered it tight. 

I haven’t gone back to look yet.  I’m not even sure the hole is there.  You know … a dream?

I do know I now watch Nellie as she moseys from one side of the yard to another, a new-turned-old rawhide clinched, her tongue out.

And I think … not of Nellie, but the rawhide.

“Poor boy,” I tell myself.  “Done played out.” 

Gichigami’s gift

LUTSEN, Minn. – It’s dusk.  And for one used to sunsets, it’s odd being on a western shore facing east as the sun sinks behind you.

Sure, there are, stretched above Lake Superior, reds and pinks in the sky.  But they are muted, soft … a distant reflection of the celestial blaze that must be playing out behind my back.

Pine Knot

Surely that’s been the experience of the long-time owners of Pine Knot, a 92-year-old cabin just south of Lutsen. Unlike me, they have always looked east for the calm and beauty provided by a lake. Not west.

Perhaps they’ve not missed the sunsets. Perhaps they’ve compensated by rousing early to catch the sun’s rise. If so, hats off.  That takes a better man than me.

I’ve finished my main writing task today – the first draft of the ceremony for Meghan and Eric’s wedding.  I’ve sent it off for inspection; I’ll hear the reviews soon.

So now I have a chance to write about Pine Knot, the cabin where I’m staying.  There’s so much to say.

Let’s begin with the cabin itself.  It was born in the 1920s and has been owned by the Barton family most years since.  The Bartons apparently hail now from many parts, but there’s some concentration of family still in California.  My payment for this rental was sent to Los Angeles, for example.  And a more contemporary cabin was built next door for the California-based matriarch of the family, though apparently she’s not visited for a while. The grass is high, the flowers untended.

Other members of the family seem to return in August, according to a friendly note to visitors.

It’s this cabin’s structure, though, that’s the story.  It’s truly an American cabin, with Lincolnesque logs inside and out.  The floor shows its age, slanting at various angles at scattered spots.  You’re never quite sure it’s the floor at fault or an inner ear disorder.

Much living's been done here.

Yet it is solid as a rock, clean, warm and inviting.  Its doors are thick, heavy, with black-iron handles and latches that often need two hands to open. At its center is a large living room with an imposing stone fireplace that’s 10-foot wide and at least 15 feet tall. Large-pane windows look out upon the lake. 

The décor likely has not changed much in many decades.  A good thing.  It features solid oak chairs, wicker furniture built for comfort, massive tables and large Native American rugs.  The lamps arrived when electricity did.

On the walls: old maps of the Great Lakes, pen-and-ink drawings of the deep birch-filled woods, an old fishing net, and books … many books.  One caught my eye – a young readers’ piece named “A Bear Called Trouble.”  The title seems both obvious and redundant.

As for literature, there’s also a fascinating, framed piece of artwork that summarizes Indian legends and other stories of the region, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famed “The Song of Hiawatha.”

“By the shores of Gitche Gumee,

“By the shining Big-Sea Water …”

Wadsworth was referencing Lake Superior.  He snatched that from the Ojibwe, who called the lake “Gichigami,” meaning “big water.”  It is. Of the Great Lakes, the biggest.

This is a hunter’s cabin, too, although I suspect that time is past.  Two deer head are mounted high, one over the living room’s south door, the other above the north. On one end table sits a framed photo of John W. Barton, circa 1930s, with gun and a dispatched geese in hand.

And hanging very high above the two large windows is a massive moose head.  Sadly, I hadn’t noticed it until tonight after I had darkened most of the lights.  Only then did one of the remaining lamps cast it in deep shadow.

Lincoln logs!

Sad because it was “hidden,” I think, by the small, satellite-powered flat-screen TV positioned directly but some distance below it – the cabin’s only concession to today’s technology.  We all know that our eyes these days are trained to turn to a screen like moths to light.

Ever been to a sports bar?

And yes, I’ve had the obnoxious thing off and on … to catch up on the hardly-new “news.”

But I didn’t realize the slight until now.  The moose, with its muscular antlers, must have been a Barton prize in some year … a regal beast, perhaps from the surrounding woods.  In any other era he would have dominated this room. That he was made smaller by a noisy, irritating flat-screen a twentieth his size troubles me.

There’s much more to share about this cabin … the kitchen with its large windows that catch the northerly breezes, the two hospitable bedrooms, the porch with its east door that welcomes the sound of waves up the hill and inside.

And yes, the waves … this part of Lake Superior is so unlike what we’ve known of Lake Michigan.  The cabin is perched on a 40-foot bluff above a rocky shore that evokes Maine or even Ireland. This seems almost mountain country.  Streams tumble from the westward hills, spilling into the lake below. One tumbler immediately south of the cabin makes its own kind of music, heard from the porch.

Stairs follow the stream down.

No, there are no long stretches of white sand here.  Only sharp outcroppings and sheer walls and, occasionally, the tiniest of islands just offshore that accommodate a small gaggle of geese but not much more.

Linus ashore.

And yet for those like myself who are sustained by the sound of waves, it’s a blessing.  For although the lake’s western edge doesn’t catch the prevailing winds, the breezes that do arrive slap the waters against those rocks like a metronome. 

Muted at times, yes.  Soft like the sunset.  But relative to this time and this place, extremely satisfying.

It’s no wonder the Bartons have held on to this gem, to re-live its history each August. 

It’s a gift born of Gichigami. 

I’m blessed to have been here.


For a photo tour of Pine Knot, click here.  

Up North ... again

ANKENY, IOWA – It’s Saturday night, and Linus and I just finished sharing some fried chicken.

Okay, the chicken is beside the point.  Though it was pretty good for Culver’s.

I know north!

The bigger point is that we’re heading north.  We drove about four hours on the highway late this afternoon; we’ll do about seven tomorrow.  Tonight we’re at a Comfort Inn, which is so pet-friendly that our hallway sounds like a kennel.

I know we’re heading north for two reasons:

First, I put on my “Up North” t-shirt today, so I’m reminded with each full-length mirror.

Second, the sun was flinging daggers through the driver’s side window almost the entire trip.  For my directionally challenged friends and family, that might not mean much.  But I know my compass points – I remain a mighty Boy Scout – so when the sun is to your left late on a Saturday afternoon, you absolutely are facing north.

The sun proved so obnoxious, in fact, that I pulled Linus’s white towel from under him and somehow bunched it in the window and draped it on my head and shoulder to block the rays.

Coolness prevailed, although drivers who passed must have wondered if my hair was in a bun and I’d just stepped from the shower.

“North” means so much to us Weavers.  I’ve written plenty about the family cottage that used to sit yards away from Glen Lake in Michigan … how it shaped all of us in fantastic ways.  It’s always been a magical place.  Eric proposed to daughter Meghan near there.

So it only seemed natural that when faced with two tasks – to write the ceremony for Meghan and Eric’s July wedding, and to finally finish a book about the cottage that I’ve been working on for two years – I had to head in Canada’s direction, not Mexico’s.  Meantime, the family appreciated that I needed some quiet time to get the job done.

And so awaiting me tomorrow is a small cabin in Lutsen, Minn., that overlooks Lake Superior.  Lutsen has a population of 180 and one gasoline station. Not surprisingly, the cabin is in the woods.  The owner warned me to watch out for wolves, and I intend to. 

But it also has a great view of the lake. Superior is the largest of the Great Lakes, so it’s the big, burly brother of Lady Michigan, which remains our favorite Great Lake.  It’ll be interesting to see Superior’s breadth.

By the way, I brought Linus, not big-dog Nellie, because I’m driving the VW Beetle.  Getting Nellie in a Beetle is like getting me into size 32 jeans … something is bound to pop.  Plus, the last time Nellie crossed the Minnesota border in a car – see this post – she manufactured 50 gallons of dog slobber.  I have a swimming pool at home.  I don’t need one on the road. 

Cindy noted that my two tasks at the cabin will be emotionally challenging for me. She knows me, of course, and she’s seen me wrestle with both.  Writing about the cottage always prompts a few tears.  Not sure why … although I’m not alone.  (Cindy sometimes reads back on what I’ve written and turns in to a faucet. A nice thing, really.) 

As for the upcoming wedding … heck, I could barely get through reading “The Night Before Christmas” to Meghan and Zach this last Christmas – something I’ve done since they were knee-high – because I knew Meg would soon be turning a new page in her life.

The good news is that I’ve accepted that I’m a wuss … which is quite liberating, actually. Sure, I can be the tough guy when the situation demands it.  But reaching in and plucking those heart strings – painfully sometimes – has shown me things about myself, my family and life that I’d never known otherwise. Writing tends to bring it out. 

It’ll be an interesting four days at this cabin.

Just south of Des Moines on I-35, I put on some folk tunes and found myself scripting in my head Meghan and Eric’s wedding ceremony.

A few tears started. 

“Good gawd!” I shouted to Linus in disgust. 

I could blame the music. It was the Wailin’ Jennys, after all, that achingly beautiful Canadian group.  Although that's not fair to them ... I really know it's me. 

Still, I’m a practical wuss. 

Because as the drops formed, that white towel bunched between window and head also proved mighty handy for making the tears disappear.

Sure, I might have my hair in a bun.

But damn if any truck driver is going to catch me blubbering on the road.