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.