The Trail
I’ve only had the one day this winter. What with shoulder surgery keeping me off my skis until just before President’s Day and the winter rains that fell in January, I didn’t get out on our family trail until we came back from Montana. By then it was March. March, mind you, when I finally put on my cross country boots, waxed up my skis, and headed out the door. I could tell from the energy of our three dogs: Daisy, a stocky black lab/sled dog mix rescued by our eldest son Matt from a group home; Kramer, a chocolate lab of thin withers and bad hips, rescued by our third son, Chris from certain euthanasia at a vet’s office in River Falls; and Jimi, my wife’s obnoxiously colored and tempered dachshund; that the four of us were overdue for a ski. It was sunny spring day a few weeks back when we set out on a quick hour jaunt on the trails that loop through our 135 acres of God’s country, Daisy in the lead, Jimi here and there and everywhere in search of rabbits, and Kramer content to saunter behind me over fresh snow.
That’s Kramer, looking into the lens of my iPhone. You can tell from the narrowness of his hind end that he’s got some issues in the joint department. He’s also pretty shy, except when our pair of resident brush wolves deign to confront him out in the open country surrounding our house. Then Kramer is all bark and growl and bluster. Like I said, he never breaks trail, he always follows behind me when I ski. I don’t mind. At least he doesn’t walk on my skis like Copper, our long departed yellow Labrador, used to. I’d be skiing along just fine and wham, I’d stop dead in my tracks because an eighty pound juvenile delinquent retriever thought it was smart to step on the backs of my skis. Maybe Copper was the smart one, eh? After all, standing on my skis kept him out of the deep stuff…
The day of our first (and so far, only) ski of the winter, my dogs and I pushed off from the garage, coasted down the snowy driveway, clambered over the snowbank created by our plow guy Barney (every Minnesotan needs a Barney to plow their road), and began to find a pace, a rhythm in the quiet woods. The first trail we took brought us through some nice Norways onto an old pasture that was once owned by Minnesota Power. Our former neighbor, Dave Holte, used to hay the field way back when we first moved out to Fredenberg and it was MP property. Then Rene’ and I bought the old pasture and stopped haying it. During a downpour in July of 1999, while our new house was in the process of being built, I wandered out from the apartment we were renting in Hermantown to plant sixty white pine seedlings in the old field. The trees, handed out at the funeral of my uncle, legendary Minnesota State Representative Willard Munger, are now taller than my head, having survived a decade of attempts by deer to grind the seedlings to nubs. As I skied across the snowy field, I marveled that one day, when I am gone, when my sons are old, the trees I planted in my uncle’s memory will be dropping cones of their own, reforesting the land in pine. There are a few 100-year-old whites on the property, survivors of the 1918 fire, along with clusters of Norways of equal age. But much of the land I skied through with the dogs is second growth timber: mature aspen, birch, and maple. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good birch or maple. Aspen? Not so much. But what I wouldn’t give to be able to turn back the calendar and witness this land before the white man tore it apart, when woodland caribou, cougar, black bear, wolves, and moose ruled the forests and marshes, and white tailed deer stayed south of Hinckley.
Jimi let out his bunny yelp. A snowshoe hare, all white fuzz and coated in white snow from hiding, bolted across the trail. Daisy, always interested in tearing into a rabbit, followed the dachshund into alder. The dogs emerged empty mouthed from the thicket.
I poled hard, and regained my pace. Three to four inches of fresh, untracked snow dusted the trail. I was lucky to be the first to ski our trails. Normally, our neighbors, the Kaas’s, beat me to the punch. Jim is retired and Barb works odd nursing shifts so they’re usually the first ones into the woods after a snowstorm. But there’s a positive to the Kaas’s energy: with Jim’s chain saw, 4-wheeler, and snowmobile, he keeps the trails free of deadfall for all of us to use, so I don’t complain when they track the trails ahead of me.
The Trail and the Cloquet River
Daisy and Jimi were out ahead of me as I broke from the maple studded floodplain onto the banks of the Cloquet River. I scanned the dark water for our resident flock of Goldeneyes, ducks that fly in from Manitoba every November and stay through early April. There were no ducks to be seen. Just a big ol’ goofy black dog and her partner in rabbit mayhem standing on the trail, waiting for an old man. I pushed harder, trying to work up a sweat. The dogs turned and trotted ahead. Kramer looked interested in joining the other dogs but stayed behind me, acting as the rearguard as our little contingent meandered towards the house. I avoided the easy route, the old logging road that deadends at a couple of little used cabins on the river. I skied a spur I cut years ago, when I was younger, my back was stronger, and my chain saw was sharper. The dogs and I passed through a cathedral of new white pines, all taller than the ones I’d planted in the field, all natural offspring of the ten or so big whites that still stand above the land. I stopped to give thanks to the oldest and biggest of the trees and I noted that it seemed to be shedding branches at an alarming rate. It would be a shame to lose such a giant, such a link to the old days of lumbering and robber barons. But if it dies, I’ll have someone come out, take it down, and saw it up into white pine boards. There’s a house of lumber tied up in that old tree, lumber that will simply turn to dust if I don’t take advantage of the tree’s grace in dieing on my land. Plus taking the tree will open up more space for little whites to sprout, open up the canopy for light and rain to nurture the fallen emperor’s children. Some might argue against cutting down the magnificent old tree even if it dies. They would assert that the dead tree could be a platform for an eagle’s nest, a haven for squirrels, a legacy to time. They might be right. But they don’t own the land: I do. I’ll decide what happens to the tree if and when it’s time comes.
The dogs skittled ahead, sniffing home. I increased my stride, trying to keep up. Kramer loped behind, wheezing and coughing as if he was about to croak. But we made it back, my three dogs and I, from our first, and perhaps, only ski of the year. The shoulder held up fine. The legs didn’t seem any worse for the time off. And my heart, which pounded in my chest as we climbed the hill to the house, seemed perfectly content.
Home, looking east.
Peace.
Mark
