Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

Whiteface Lake, May 11, 2013

I told you I’d tell you a story about fishing in a snow squall. Well, here it is.

For 46 years, the Mungers, the Scotts, and the Nelsons have assembled at the Scott family cabin off Cabin Circle on the shores of Whiteface Lake, a Minnesota Power reservoir lake located between Duluth and the Mesabi Iron Range. The tradition began with six families: the Scotts, the Mungers, the Lundeens, the Listons, the Nelsons, and the Tessiers. Over time, and due to the aging of the six patriarchs of the event, only the Mungers, Scotts, and the Nelsons have continued the tradition. This year, the sole founder of this tradition was my dad, Harry, who, at 86 years old, was intent upon continuing his streak of having missed very few Openers at the Scotts. The other five dads are all gone, having battled old age and a variety of maladies until they could fight no more. But Harry is still with us, ready, willing and able to barbeque chicken Friday night. His buddies, Bob Scott, Leonard “Red” Lundeen, Jim Liston, Ed “Bun” Nelson, and Larry “Lunga” Tessier have all passed on to that great fishing hole in the sky. But they were with us in the stories, both real and imagined, about past Openers. And this year, a fourth generation became part of our ritual: Johnny Scott (named for his grandpa John, Bob and Pat Scott’s eldest son) ventured into the world of cussing, cheap beer, saunas, card games, and yelling at the Twins on the television for the first time. And young Johnny, being that he is, after all, a Scott, fit right in.

Ice covered Whiteface, May 11, 2013

Now, I’ll be honest. I wasn’t looking forward to John Scott’s annual telephone call. I knew, because my sons Matt and Chris had bumped into John and Joe Scott (John’s son and Johnny’s dad) a few months back, that the invitation to the Opener, despite the loss of most of our mentors, was still “on”. And, in the ordinary course, since I am fan of tradition and personal history, I love keeping memories alive. But this year, I was swamped. I was teaching two night classes at UWS, trying to be a dad to Jack (my fifteen year old still at home), do my job for the folks of Minnesota as a district court judge, and every once in awhile, behave like the husband my wife wants me to be. Despite all the great times we’ve had over decades spent at the Scott place, I was just not in an “Opener” state-of-mind as the second weekend in May approached. Adding to my funk was the weather: It was May and it was still snowing, lakes of NE Minnesota were still ice covered, and the Minno-ette, our local convenience store and bait shop, had declared a “shiner” emergency: The very minnows we’d need for a successful Opener were nowhere to be found. We’d be reduced to fishing with chubs, crappie minnows, or worse, dew worms. Taking it all into account, I was leery of John’s call. I needn’t have worried: John never did call me. His youngest brother, Patrick, known affectionately to all as “Poncho” did.

Joe Scott, Chris Munger, Marc Mullen: Portaging, Poncho-style

“Mark,” Poncho said when he called,”we’re on. You need to call John and tell him how many Mungers are coming up for The Opener.”

By this point, the Monday before Opener, I’d done my homework. I’d chatted with a janitor at the courthouse who has a cabin on Whiteface. My worst fears were confirmed. Even if we could pull it all together: the food, the minnows, the boats, the logistics, Whiteface was iced over and there was no way, with dismal cold and continued snow in the forecast, the lake would be boatable by the weekend.

“How are we going to fish?”

“I’ve got a plan.”

“What’s your plan, Poncho?”

“I’ll tell you when you get to the lake. Call John.”

Truth be told, my concerns were more selfish, more about having to scramble to get my boat and motor ready (when Poncho called, it was still buried in a fold of crusted snow) than about whether we’d catch fish. I mean, in all the years we’ve plied the waters of the Whiteface, there have been only a handful of years where we collectively caught walleye in sufficient numbers to deem the weekend a fishing success. But as you can tell from this essay, fishing has little to do with our annual gathering. The Opener is about friendship, family, and memories. Whether we catch walleyes has very little to do with our motivation to gather at the Scott place. But in all our years of attempting to behave like fishermen, we’d never encountered, to my recollection, an ice covered lake on The Opener. I was interested to hear Poncho’s plan but, before I could press him, he was off the line and I was calling John.

From the photo above, you can see what Poncho’s plan was. Actually, to be fair, the plan was a joint effort between Poncho and his older brother, Tim. Tim is about to retire as the Activities Director of Hibbing High School after a long career of teaching and coaching so I’m guessing he has plenty of time, now that he’s contemplating his golden years, to figure out puzzles: Like how do you fish on a lake covered with ice?

Tim Scott, May 11, 2013

Saturday morning. The Opener. That’s Tim, in the photo below, standing on an island, trying to stay warm as it snows. Four of us: Marc Mullen, Tim, Pete Nelson, and I were dropped off on the island. We had two boats in play: John’s 14′ Lund with a 9hp outboard was under Poncho’s dubious command (many stories, not enough space) and TJ Nelson’s big old tub with a 15hp Merc were in service. Problem was, TJ put the motor on his boat, loaded the gas can, but forgot the gas line. So there we were, a crew of a dozen or so, with one operating motor, two boats, and eight life jackets. Poncho’s plan had to be modified. He towed TJ’s inoperable boat to the island before heading up river, to the rapids, our ultimate fishing destination, to drop off three other fishermen. Big white flakes fell around us as Marc, Tim, Pete, and I clambered out of TJ’s boat and tossed chubs to invisible walleyes. Poncho motored away, with the understanding he’d head back to the landing to pick up my son Chris and, eventually when TJ got back from his adventure, haul TJ’s boat back to pick up TJ and the gas line. There were no guarantees TJ’s motor would work. But it was the best we could do. Complicated? You bet. And all that energy was being put into a very dubious proposition: That we’d actually catch fish on The Opener.

Joe and Johnny Scott and the big one.

But guess what? We did catch fish. Nice fish. With Poncho and Marc anchored in the middle of the river in John’s Lund and the rest of us fishing from shore (except Dad who decided the weather sucked and stayed back to watch golf on TV), we caught and landed well over twenty of the nicest walleyes I’ve ever seen come out of the tannin stained waters of the Whiteface. For a while, I was personally stymied. I couldn’t feel the meager bites of the black backed fish nibbling at the minnows on the bare hook I’d tossed out into the river’s swirling current. But then Chris rigged me up with a slip bobber and my luck changed for the better.

Chris and a nice Whiteface walleye

For the rest of the day, I was part of the party. And for the first time, I caught nice fish on The Opener. Included in that experience was one beauty, the likes of which I’d never seen landed by anyone in our crew over four decades of disappointment.

Mark’s big fish

Unlike some of the bigger walleyes I’ve caught in the past, this fish fought like a frenzied pike. When Chris finally dipped the net under it, we were all amazed: None of us knew that such fish existed in the Whiteface. John Scott took a quick measurement of my fish and then, with as much gentleness as I could muster, I stroked water over the walleye’s gills until it revived and vanished into the depths.

Chris Munger and the crew: Lunch time on the river

Loading the boats

Cleaning the fish

 

 

 

As we drank cold beer and ate bacon wrapped steaks on Saturday night (John, our quartermaster, outdid himself this year!), my fish continued to grow in size. I guessed the walleye I released was 24″, a nice five-six pound male. John insisted it was a 28″ legacy. It’s the first time I’ve ever had someone else embellish my fish story for me! But regardless of the fish’s actual dimensions, I can tell you this: as I fought the walleye, feeling its steady tug, bringing it up with each turn of the reel from the rocky bottom of the river, all my dread, all my angst about not being able to get my boat ready, about feeling rushed into The Opener evaporated. Catching that fish was indeed the therapy, the healing my soul sorely needed.

Sunday morning. The great debate raged. Should we go back to the river, which, given logistics, would be an hour and half excursion before we were able to fish, what with the need to ferry an additional three people (my sons Matt and Jack arrived Saturday in time for steaks and were anxious to catch fish and Dad, after hearing our tall tales, was motivated to rig up his 9′ Sage and have a go at it). In the end, we returned to the river only to find another boat sitting in the pool where we’d been catching fish. Understand: There’s no right of ownership to a good fishing spot. It’s first come, first serve. We were late and we paid the price. In the end, Poncho landed a red horse sucker and one walleye, the only fish we caught on Sunday. But I learned, once again, that the Opener is much more than catching fish. All you have to do is take one look at my 86 year old dad, sitting in his lawn chair, waiting for the tug at the end of his fly rod and know that, whatever the weather, come hell or high water (or, as happened this year, ice and snow) so long as the Scotts ask, I’ll be at Whiteface for The Opener.

Harry the fisherman

John Scott, Marc Mullen, and Poncho

Peace.

Mark

May 5, 2013

That’s me on the first day of Spring, 2013. The big smile was because after six months of winter, the snow had finally decided to recede and the sun had finally decided to shine.

Now we Minnesotans are a hearty lot. Mostly, I think, due to an infusion of Finnish sisu, Norwegian heltemot, and Swedish fasthet from the Scandinavians who collected here two or three generations ago. Not without coincidence, each of those ethnic groups also came from places of gray, cold, perpetual gloom, and frozen water. So they were right at home here, in northeastern Minnesota. But I digress. As I said, we are, even those of us from Slovenian, German, English, Irish, French, Dutch, Scotch, and Welsh ancestry, a non-complaining bunch. But this winter, I think, tested most Minnesotans beyond their native fortitude. Cabin fever? Ha! I don’t know about you, but I came down with a full blown, seasonal affective disorder-based depression.

Rene’, Chris, and Matt Munger 05/04/2013

Griggs Field at Malosky Stadium 5/4/2013

How bad did did it get? Well, Jack, my youngest boy had his first outdoor soccer matches of the season on May 4th, the day before the above picture was snapped. Check out the two pictures from those games. Yes, that’s Griggs Field and Malosky Stadium at UMD. Looks like perfect weather for international football, right? Lord. Think of the poor young boys and girls sliding around in little shorts on snow-covered, still-frozen artificial turf a full month after the official onset of Spring. What gives? Is this a sign, a symptom of global warming? I have no idea. But I do know this: the past winter was a rare bird, harkening back to the days of my youth. True, the big snows I remember filling the streets of Duluth, blanketing Park Point, and clogging downtown with drifts the size of elephants usually came earlier in the season. One memorable March storm hit when I was a student at UMD. My buddy Larry was stuck at his parents’ house in West Duluth and I was stuck with Mom and Dad in Piedmont Heights. Borrowing some of that sisu from my pals Tynjala, Rikala, Sikio, and Peltoma, I bundled up, pulled on my downhill ski boots, threw my Rossignols over my shoulder, and trudged through thigh deep snow to the top of Piedmont Avenue. Cars were buried to their windshields. The neighborhood was as still as a tomb. I stepped into my bindings, slid the straps of my ski poles over my wrists, and proceeded to ski down 24th Avenue West to Grand, doing graceful turns around stalled Fords and Chevys until I hit the flats. Fueled only with the promise of beer, I slid one ski ahead of the other all the way out to 47th Avenue West and spent the next two days in Larry’s basement, drinking Buckhorn and listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

But an entire season of snow in the month of April? Unheard of, even for those of us who have lived all of our lives in this neck of the woods. Fortitude can only last so long, my friends. And with the advent of the snow that fell on May 4th, I was pretty much at the end of my endurance for wintery things. I’d sunk to the lowest of the lows, the bluest of the blues on the heels of the wet flakes that disrupted the Gitchi Gammi Soccer Jamboree. And then, redemption. The sun came out, the snow began to melt, and with the snap of God’s finger, spring arrived.

The last of it.

The photo above does indeed show the last trace of snow along the southern treeline bordering our pasture in Fredenberg Township. The last vestige of the storms that kept me from work, bogged our plow guy down in our driveway, and broke the back of my father’s wooden deck at the old family homestead in Piedmont is now but a hint of April’s plot line. It’s time for the Spring rains to fully and finally scour away recently unveiled dog crap, green things up, and make us forget the April of the forever snows.

Peace.

Mark

PS Stayed tuned for the next blog when I take you fishing in a blizzard!

Sunset on the Cloquet River, May 5, 2013.

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

The Red Mug

Wednesday evening. I’m teaching Paralegalism and Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Superior later tonight. I could drive home after my “real” work day is over at the courthouse. But it’s a half-hour jaunt each way. And then there’s the fuel factor. I also teach Environmental Law at the college on Tuesday nights, so if I want to set a good example for my students, the less wasteful driving I do, the less gasoline my blue Pacifica consumes, the better.

Besides, writers are all about ritual, right? I mean, you’ve read my essays describing  my 5:00am obsession. About how I get up every morning, put on the coffee, fire up the iMac, and try to spin yarns. Oh. Don’t forget rubbing the belly of the little synthetic jade Buddha my sister bought me for good luck before beginning to tap away at my keyboard. There’s nothing that says an old writer can’t adopt a new ritual, which is why Wednesday evenings between 5:00pm and 6:30pm, you’ll now find me slurping soup and drinking hot chocolate at the Red Mug Coffee House in Superior.

To be honest, I hadn’t been a frequent visitor to the Mug until recently. My coffee house of choice is located on my side of St. Louis Bay. I’ve been a loyal patron of the Amazing Grace Bakery in Canal Park ever since I first heard folk great Lucy Kaplansky sing there over twenty years ago. Along the way, I became casual friends with the owner, Chip,and a host of the characters that frequent the funky little Greenwich Village-inspired venue. Sadly, Chip’s gone, a victim of the Big “C”. But the place he founded and nurtured still serves great soup and sandwiches alongside some of the finest live music in the Twin Ports.

But back to Wednesday evenings at the Red Mug.

Deciding where to park my keester and write between jobs on Wednesday evenings wasn’t all that difficult. I mean, it’s Superior, right? That is to say, the choices for a clean, quiet, humble, and quaint place to write are pretty limited in a town better known for its cheap ass tap beer than its literature. But I’d been in the Mug a couple of times, so I knew the layout. It’s also right on the way to the campus from the courthouse, making it the perfect location for an OCD afflicted author who craves consistency and order. About a month ago, I started hauling my new Mac Air along with my books, notes, and supplies for my class to my day job every Wednesday. Before class, I find an empty table at the Mug, fire up my notebook, and order dinner. The soup’s very good. The Paninis are filling. And the Mug’s hot chocolate, after too many cups of coffee to start my 5:00am writing obsession, seems a calming elixir.

Inside the Mug

This is only the third or fourth week I’ve been hiding out at the Superior coffee house, which means I haven’t made any new friends or got to know the staff. But that will come. Superior, despite its lack of big hills and scenery, is a friendly place, filled with hard working, gregarious folks. Over time, I’m sure I’ll feel as comfortable at the Mug, tapping away at my prose, as say, William Kent Krueger is at the St. Croix Broiler. I don’t know if Minnesota’s mystery icon still hovers around that venerable St. Paul eatery. But that was once his haunt, the place where he sat for hours, spinning tall tales into his word processor, sipping hot coffee, and trying to remain nondescript. I, of course, don’t have similar worries here at the Mug. No one in the coffee house knows who the hell I am.

The Work Goes On

After three solid years to researching, writing, editing, feedback, and more editing, my novel-in-progress about the Finns and Estonians during World War II, Sukulaiset: The Kindred, is nearly finished. Oh, there will be a final edit sometime later this summer when I send the manuscript to Scribendi, the Internet editing service I’ve used for my last five books, receive the comments and changes suggested by Scribendi’s editor back in the form of Track Changes to my Word document, and make adjustments as need be. But if I’ve done my homework and put together a story that flows, the final edit’s not an arduous task. It’s all of the sweat, blood, tears, frustrations, and swearing that come before the final edit that causes a writer’s gray hair. Or, at my age, more gray hair.

I used to worry about which version of a manuscript floating around on my computer was the most current. Then there was the disaster of waking up and discovering that my Windows computer had experienced a hard drive crash. That’s serious business, as I learned working on Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story when a year of work vanished in the ether. I know, I know, I should have been backing up my work on an external hard drive or on the Internet. Or both.  Attempts to recover that year of work were unsuccessful but I learned a valuable lesson. I bought an external drive and also began saving my work on the Cloud. Redundancy is apparently a good thing when it comes to data. My eldest son Matt then cured all my ills by a) convincing me to switch to a Mac, a machine much less prone to disintegration; and b)Using Dropbox to secure my work on the Web.

The hour runs late. I save the changes to my manuscript not only on the flash drive of my Air, but also on Dropbox. At home, when I’m using my iMac, security is even more rigid. My documents are saved to the hard drive, to an external hard drive, to Dropbox, and also Carbonite. OCD folks learn lessons well. I shuttle my dirty bowl, plate, and cup to the bin, pack up my computer, and wander outside on this beautiful spring evening, ready to talk to kids about ethics, my manuscript secure in numerous disclosed locations and ready for a final edit. And then? Stay tuned…

Leaving the Mug

You’ll find information about the Red Mug at:

http://redmugcoffee.com/

Peace.

Mark

The Blue Pacifica

Saturday. 6:15am. I’m on the road again in my blue Pacifica, the newly paved asphalt and concrete of I-35 rumbling beneath the floor (my apologies to Steve Goodman). The title of this piece was stolen from friend, musician, and memoirist, Paul Metsa. I’m not off to much of a start here in terms of originality; I’ve ripped off Goodman’s lyrics and Metsa’s book title and we’re not even through the intro! Oh well. That’s what we writers do; we collect ideas and scenes and characters and themes that other folks aren’t using and we adapt them to our own warped little view of reality. Anyway, as I’ve recently written, I’m all but done for awhile with the writer/author/lecturer circuit. Except…

When you make a commitment to do a thing, well, you’re not much of a man or a woman if you bow out and leave someone hanging. I’d agreed to be on a panel of authors at the Bloomington Theater and Arts Center at the 10th Annual Writers Festival and Book Fair. So far as I know, there are only two of these writerly events left in Minnesota: The Bloomington Writers Festival and Book Fair, the one I’m headed to, and the Twin Cities Book Festival in October sponsored by Rain Taxi Magazine. There have been others I’ve participated in over the years: the Deep River Writers Festival in Mankato and the Great Northern Festival of Words in Duluth. But these other events no longer exist, having followed many local festivals and art fairs into retirement on the heels of a damaged economy and diminished volunteerism. I’ve attended most, if not all, of the festivals hosted by the lovely Bloomington Theater and Arts Center and, in return for a table to sell books and the proverbial free lunch, I’d agreed to join three other authors and moderator/publisher Tom Keyes to discuss the topic of “Pathways to Getting Your Book Published”. I’d made the promise before I decided to pull back from marketing. Hence, the early Saturday morning drive down I-35.

Location. Location. Location. Last year, my table was at the intersection of two hallways packed with authors and books: A great spot in terms of traffic flow and visibility. This year, I’m at the far end of a secondary hallway: a dead end. It’s sort of like being the last bar in a dark and dreary alley. By the time the drunks realize there’s one more tavern to visit, they’ve blown their wad. Oh well. I’m getting the space and lunch just for talking, right? Who can complain? I set up my table, which, given that I am down to stock of only two of my books, Laman’s River, my latest novel, and Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story, a brick thick biography of my dead legislator uncle that I have cartons of stacked in my basement back home, takes very little time. In short order, I’m open for business and I settle in to read. It’s a bit after 9:15 and the doors have been opened to let folks in to hear the keynote address at 9:30.

The Festival

Folks wander in and begin browsing tables stacked with self-published and subsidy published books. Each passing customer is a potential reader, a future fan for the hundreds of amateur authors like me sitting patiently behind their rented tables ready to discuss their work. I’ve never sold many books at this particular event but I’ve always made a new friend or two. Because I’m at the tail end of the hallway, the crowd thins by the time it reaches my table. But that’s OK. It gives me time to dig into Shelter, a nifty little memoir by Minnesota author (and friend) Sarah Stonich. I just started the book and already, I’m hooked. It’s a tough balancing act, reading someone else’s prose while trying to sell your own, but it’s a trapeze wire I’m well adept at walking, having sat in hundreds of events like this in hundreds of locations over the decade I’ve been a published author. Over time, I’ve acquired a second sense, an innate ability, to discern, from body language alone, when a person stopped in front of my books is actually interested or simply curious. The simply curious I leave be. I keep reading. For the actually interested, I lift my head, place the book I’m into on the blue cloth covering my table, and engage. Sometimes this connection with a potential customer results in a sale. More often than not, it doesn’t. But the conversation is always cordial, sometimes illuminating. And it comes with the territory.

A 10:40, I wander down to the Bloomington City Council Chambers where our panel will be presenting and meet Tom Keyes, the panel’s moderator. Tom and I are joined by authors June Anderson, Dave Fingerman, and Steve Filippini. After receiving preliminary instructions, the four author/panelists head back to our tables with the promise that we’ll all be on time for the 11:00 start of the panel. Despite the notion that most novelists are irresponsible drunken louts, we’re all in our places and behind our microphones when the cable access guy starts the video rolling and the panel discussion begins. As with most of these sorts of events, the hour flies past. Unlike some of my more recent blogs about my publishing efforts, which have tended to the dark and depressing, I try to remain upbeat, to give hope to the aspiring authors in the seats across the room. After all, who am I to step on someone’s dream, right? Besides, sitting in those chairs filled with college kids, retired grandfathers and grandmothers, and all sorts of folks in between, there may just be the next Sarah Stonich: a first-time novelist who lands a deal with a national publisher. One never knows. And so, I display a sunny optimism about the world of self-publishing in hopes of keeping the authorial aspirations of the audience alive. The panel ends with a few questions from the audience and we’re released by Tom to engage in personal commerce.

I trade a comp ticket for a free box lunch-a turkey wrap, assorted condiments, and a bottle of water-and return to my chair behind my table at the end of the line. I sell a few books. I chat with Randy and Kath McCarty, two friends from Grand Rapids who are insanely supportive of my writing, and then, when the traffic begins to dwindle with the shifting afternoon sun, I climb back into Stonich’s story, lost in her description of single motherhood, building a wilderness cabin, and trying to find a place in the world. Before too long, it’s 3:30 and time to pack up and wheel my boxes of words and thoughts out to the blue Pacifica for the ride home.

Shelter by Sarah Stonich

You can find Sarah’s work at: http://sarahstonich.com/home.html. You can track Paul’s comings and goings and buy a copy of his memoir, Blue Guitar Highway, at:

http://www.blueguitarhighway.com/.

Buy a book and help a Minnesota author out!

And for those of you who don’t know who Steve Goodman is, shame on you! (Check out: http://www.stevegoodman.net/)

Peace.

Mark

Snow shoveling brought me to my senses. That’s as plain as I can state my circumstances as I sit in front of my iMac, typing away, velvet ebony surrounding the windows of my studio, a Norwester’ whipping snow into unseen dervishes across our invisible hayfield.

For twenty-three years, I’ve been pursuing my muse. It started with spinal fusion surgery in September of 1990. My wife, a fine artist in her own right, urged me to use my recovery time after my week-long hospital stay, to cobble together the novel I’d always dreamed of writing. And so, I did. That book, The Legacy, took ten years to find a publisher and was born into the world in October of 2000. Since that fateful exercise, I’ve gone on to write nine books in all, some I’m proud of beyond measure, some I’d rather not claim. But not a one of those efforts had the support of an agent or a mainstream publisher. They have all been self-published. And therein lies the reason I find myself awake at four in the morning.

It’s not like I haven’t tried. Early on, I queried literary agents and publishers across the United States and Canada hoping and praying that one of my projects would spark an interest in the cultural doorkeepers that control the printing presses. Didn’t happen. I came close with The Legacy. Closer yet with Pigs. But my best work, the work I am most proud of, never generated any enthusiasm from the powers that be. Undaunted, fueled by ego or hubris, and propelled into my writing studio each morning by a rare combination of ambition and OCD, I typed away, spinning my yarns across the decades. To facilitate my tall tales being read, I founded a small press of my own and began to release books to bookstores and over the Internet. Folks seemed to like my work. I thought that, with vocal appreciation from fans and a little luck, my stories would spark interest in the larger world and my writing would find a home with a “real” publisher. Didn’t happen.

Debts mounted. A paltry attempt at financial rescue through Kickstarter was a bust. I managed to scrape together enough money to try one last time. Laman’s River came out a year ago. My most “commercial” effort and the slimmest of my novels never moved the needle on the success dial. Yet, I kept at it. Words poured out of my brain, through my fingers, and propelled the keyboard. Sukulaiset, my biggest challenge as a writer, emerged from piles and piles of research. I was on a mission with this book, a mission to craft a stunning and evocative story of love, loss, and the Holocaust that would solidify my reputation as a thoughtful and intelligent writer. But that didn’t happen. Some who pre-read the book, like my friends Randy in Grand Rapids and Alexis here in Duluth, had high praise for the effort. My wife thinks Sukulaiset is the best writing I’ve ever done. Others expressed less enthusiasm for the book’s plot and characters. The feedback I received was a mixed bag but the overall impact was devastating. It caused me to seriously doubt the path I’d stubbornly chosen.

Back to the snow shoveling and my eureka! moment. March has brought a ton of snow to our neck of the woods. It won’t likely be a record snow year. Duluth averages, according to the Internet source I checked, about 86 inches of snow a year. Hardly competition for Houghton-Hancock, or Bridger Bowl, or Killington, Vermont. A recent article in the Duluth News Tribune placed our snowfall to date at 75 inches. Ahead of last year and many recent years but still below our annual average. But we have had, in the past three weeks, a late awakening of winter. New snow has been accumulating on the roof of my house along nooks and crannies where, if undisturbed, it will form ice. Which will in turn form ice dams. Which in turn, will cause the roof to leak. So yesterday, I crashed my Pacifica through accumulated drifts that had reclaimed our road and driveway, spun my tires, and made it home before dark intent on shoveling the roof. I bundled up in my insulated Carhartt bibs and coat, tugged on an old orange stocking hat and matching gloves, and trudged outside.

The view from the roof of our house was astounding. The yellow globe of the sun stood above the leafless aspen and maple forest defining the western edge of our pasture. Wisps of cloud danced to a fresh Manitoban wind across the blue vaulted sky. The snow I was set to move was a mixture of light fluff, hard corn, and solid ice. The ice proved impassable and the snow was thigh deep. I was soon sweating inside my bibs. At fifty-eight, I know the statistics. I stopped to catch my breath and let my pounding heart rest. The weight of the snow tested my left shoulder where Doc Klassen stitched me back together. The shoulder’s not perfect. But it works. It stood the test. And as I shoved shovel after shovel of snow over the frozen gutter and onto the ground, I came to a decision.

Take some time off. Give this self-publishing thing a rest.

I am quite certain that creative types share the same demons, the same fears. One of those fears is that, if we stop what we’re doing, whether it’s painting or sculpture or writing, we’re toast. The fickle muse that propels us will vanish like the last breath from a gasping trout in a creel. And we will never be able to start the engine of creativity again. But as I pushed snow over the edge of the roof into the thin, cold air of the Cloquet River Valley, I came to the conclusion that I must take that risk. For me. For my sanity. For my wife and the son who remains at home. The fear, that if I stop promoting and selling my work at festivals and events,  my name will be forgotten by those who’ve read and enjoyed my writing, is an irrational one. It is not founded on common sense or reality. That’s the clarity that came to me yesterday as I stood on the roof of my house watching the black water of the Cloquet push against the weight of a Canadian wind.

And so, I have cancelled all my appearances for the summer as well as the June release of Sukulaiset: The Kindred. My future as a teller of tall tales is, at this moment, uncertain. I do plan to re-format some of my older novels as eBooks over the upcoming year so that they’re available to folks who haven’t read them. Beyond that, I hope to find the time and the inclination to slip on my waders and wet a line in one of those little trout streams along the North Shore I used to write about. Maybe take a trip out west to visit my second son and his girlfriend at their new home, with a stop at Yellowstone and the Custer Battlefield as well. And maybe float in a canoe on the Cloquet in search of peace, contentment, and a walleye or two.

Stay tuned for the next chapter.

Peace.

Mark

Helsinki Station January 2006

Sex (got your attention, didn’t I?). A cold beer on a hot day. Seeing your children born. Merlot. Slow food. Friends. Family. Good health. Brisk winter air. Spring rain. Cool rivers on hot summer days. Flaming autumn leaves. Grandchildren. A job that you love. Faith. Bald eagles. Osprey. Wolves. Moose. White pines. Mountains. Lake Superior. Springsteen in concert. Discovering new music. Sibelius. History. Old buildings (like the one above). Traveling to new places. Reading. Writing. Finishing a manuscript. Helping. Being helped.

I haven’t been diligent about keeping up with this blog thing. I’ve been preoccupied. There’s work. There’s teaching. There’s fathering. There’s husbanding (OK, I’m pretty sure I just made that verb up). And yes, from time to time, even OCD crazed writers like me need sleep. And exercise (not enough, my tummy tells me!). So I apologize to you, loyal readers, for not putting out a bit more effort to keep you engaged. Anyway, I’m here now, typing away, trying to think of something profound to say about what’s been going on with Sukulaiset: The Kindred my latest fiction effort. A big project, no doubt. Three countries. Eight decades. Three wars. Hundreds of characters. And, at last count, 160,000 words. My words, all lined up in order, ready to meet the world. Or not. But a column about the book can wait. Something’s been rattling around in my brain that needs to be explored. Here goes.

All creative types have doubts and demons. The trick for writers and artists and musicians is to try and keep the little specters that bedevil us on a short leash and not let them loose on the world. Sure, we need those demons close by, nipping at our heels, propelling us forward. But the consequences of releasing the clasp and letting our inner beasts roam at will, well, that can be catastrophic, sometimes deadly. Remembering the good stuff can help keep a tight leash on those nasty beings that bedevil creative types, can help defend against the ordinary self-doubting that is part and parcel of any creative process.

Here, in a bucolic small town alongside one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, two Minnesota writers chose to end their lives nearly a decade apart. Now, I won’t pretend to understand suicide. This isn’t an essay about loved ones’ recognizing the signs of depression and getting their family members, who just might be writers or artists, help. I’m an ordinary human being possessing ordinary thoughts and musings, trying to make sense of what happens around me. When I ran into a piece entitled “The Secret Lives of Stories” in the most recent issue of Poets & Writers  magazine (Jan/Feb 2013) it got me thinking. A dangerous thing, getting me thinking but something that happens from time to time.

Anyway, in the piece, contributing editor Frank Bures describes an encounter he had with beloved Minnesota essayist, Paul Gruchow (The Necessity of Empty Places) when Frank was a wide-eyed student in a creative writing class taught by Gruchow. Bures’s essay is part of an annual effort by Poets to instill a sense of joy and inspiration in would-be authors (like me) who buy the magazine. Hence, the title of the entire issue: Inspiration. Bures has written a solid, reflective piece about not only how generous and open Paul was with his time and his wisdom: He also laments, upon learning of Gruchow’s suicide years later, how unknowable and unpredictable human nature can be:

What I heard from Gruchow was this: Writing, creating, something so beautiful that it may outlast you is so important that you must be prepared to suffer for it, and then keep going on…That may also be why the news of Gruchow’s death, so many years after we met, filled me with a deep and unexpected sadness. It was sadness born of the realization that while I thought he and I had been reading from the same script, perhaps we weren’t…

Paul Gruchow (B-Montevideo, MN; D-Duluth, MN)

Powerful language, that. And it reminded me of a recent funeral I attended of another Minnesota writer, Duluth News Tribune and Minneapolis Star Tribune journalist Larry Oakes. Larry too, apparently, succumbed to his demons. Like Paul, Larry was in his fifties (Paul was 56, Larry was 52) when life, apparently, became too much. I never had the pleasure of meeting Paul Gruchow but as you can tell from this piece, I greatly admired his work. I did meet Larry Oakes a couple of times. Our most recent contact occurred when Larry and his wife Patty, a childhood friend from the neighborhood, were in front of me as parties in a court case. Beyond that, Patty introduced me to Larry at a public event or two and that was the extent of my connection to Larry Oakes. Except that I knew his writing. In fact, one of his articles about my uncle, Willard Munger, made it into Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story ( p. 515). Of the hundreds of articles and editorials written about my uncle over his 88 years of life, Larry’s piece stood out. His writing compelled me to include it in the last section of the book, “Afterword: Remembering Willard”, an elegy to one of Minnesota’s most ardent conservationists. Like I said, I didn’t know Larry personally. But from the anecdotes told by friends and family and co-workers at his memorial service, it seems abundantly fitting that a guy who loved to canoe and fish and camp had his writing included in a biography about “Mr. Environment.”

Larry Oakes (B-Mpls., MN; D-Duluth, MN)

Working on my novel-in-progress, Sukulaiset, I’ve followed my time-tested formula of spewing words on paper through my keyboard (hopefully in some sort of order that makes sense) and then imposing my half-cocked story upon friends and strangers. As I’ve written before, this book, this project, and all the feedback, both negative and positive, has prompted the kind of internal struggle…No, that’s not the right word. Journey. That’s it…the kind of internal journey that sorely tests a writer of sound mind. I can’t imagine the psychological torment a project like Sukulaiset would have on someone battling depression or other serious mental illness. All of us can recount the names of artists and writers and poets and musicians who have left this world by their own hand far too soon. And we can recount, from a distance, the diagnosis that each of those souls wore as a label. But we can’t really understand. We can never answer the question why. We can only remember. And appreciate the gifts they gave us, the good stuff they shared with us, during their short lives.

In honor of these two fine writers, I’d ask that you follow this link:

http://www.pw.org/content/ben_arthurs_bone_and_heart

Author and musician Ben Arthur has fashioned a beautiful tribute to Paul, Larry, and all the other writers who’ve passed on using Paul Gruchow’s own words.

Peace.

Mark