Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

High Falls, Baptism River, Tettegouche State Park

Day two. I wake after a hard sleep on a soft pad. I tug on my shorts, throw a shirt over my bare torso, clamp my Australian bush hat over my wild hair, pull hiking boots over bare feet, and stumble from the tent. After making the short trip to the Tettegouche Campground latrine, I fill pots with cold water and boil the water for coffee and oatmeal. My son hasn’t stirred despite all the noise I’m making.

Around the campground, other folks: couples and families, are stirring. Some are leaving their tents to take a morning shower. Others are revving up their $200,000 RVs for departure. But, despite all the humanity about the place, Tettegouche still holds plenty of appeal for someone like me, someone who enjoys the more primitive, the less refined. I clamber up a steep rock wall looming above our camp, a mug of freshly brewed instant coffee in hand, and sit on billion year old basalt looking out over the big lake, the Wisconsin shoreline a serpent to the east. There are no clouds in the sky and it promises to be a tough day to catch walleye on Tom Lake, our destination. Jack finally emerges from his sleeping bag (an unattractive butterfly if the bag is his cocoon): His hair is standing on end; his face is mushed from sleep; and his breath smells like roadkill. But, a cup of coffee, some hot oatmeal, a breakfast bar, a mug of Tang, and an apple later, followed by a trip to the shower ( and the application of a toothbrush) and my son is looking fine. After doing dishes, I too take my turn under the hot water of the camp shower. As I scrub away the dirt of our first day on the North Shore, I think back to how the state parks in Minnesota got hot water for their showers. Seems that the conservative members of the Minnesota House Natural Resources Committee chaired by my uncle Willard didn’t believe that campers needed such an extravagance. But Willard, like a good novelist, decided to show, rather than tell: He dragged a contingent of naysayers with him to the nearest park, spent the night in tents, and then, when the very tired and very hungry legislators were confronted by ice cold showers, he had his votes. (True story and you’ll find more like it in Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story. You can order a copy from the dashboard above. The book has been discounted to $15.00, $10.00 off the cover price!)

Once again, we’re early for check-in when we arrive at Judge Magney State Park north of Grand Marais.

“Hey,” I say to Jack.

“Ya.”

“Isn’t it a coincidence that a judge is staying at a park named for a judge.”

“Whatever.”

Apparently the irony isn’t as impactful as I thought.

Judge Magney State Park, a former WPA “Hobo Camp” from the 1930s, is smaller than Tettegouche but every bit as nice. We set up our tent, unroll our sleeping pads and bags, and head out to fish.

Tom Lake is windy. Jack isn’t happy when we unload the Grumman square stern, fire up the 2-horse Honda four-stroke, and begin crashing through waves.

“Let’s go back,” he whines.

“You’re kidding, right? It was an hour drive to get here.”

“I’m not fishing. Let’s go back.”

After raising three older boys, I know not to engage. I keep trolling, my nightcrawler and spinner deep in the cold waters of the lake. We work the shoreline. I catch two walleye the size of the chubs Jack caught on the trout stream. It’s too sunny for the fish to really be interested. After lunch in the boat and a couple more hours of trolling and drifting, we head back to the landing.

“That was a waste,” I complain as we hoist the canoe back on the luggage racks of the Pacifica.

“It’s a nice lake,” Jack says reflectively. “I’d fish it again on a cloudy day.”

Kid’s smarter than I am.

Devil’s Kettle, Brule River, Judge Magney State Park

Back at Judge Magney, Jack convinces me we need to hike the Superior Hiking Trail and find a place to fish the Brule River. We hike for an hour and find our spot. As night settles over us, we work a deep pool beneath a small waterfall and finally, after two days of no trout, Jack lands a couple of nice ten inch rainbows standing in the thick mist coming off cascading water. He also manages to hook and land a large mouth bass, which, given that we’re fishing a North Shore trout stream, is completely unexpected. As I study the fish, trying to figure out why it is where it is, Jack becomes excited.

“You’ve got a fish on,” he says, noticing my rod dancing under my arm.

I release the bass and turn my attention to my fly rod. The tip of the rod is indeed twitching. I set the hook and know immediately that this is not a ten inch brook trout.

“Holy crap,” I say as the rod bends in half.

The fish dives and I give it line. After a few minutes of playing the fish,  I work the it away from the rocks and ease it onto the shelf Jack is standing on.

“It’s a big bass,” my son says as the fish flops by his feet.

“No, it’s a brookie,” I correct my son. “And a damn nice one at that. Biggest one I’ve ever caught.”

Indeed. The trout is a beautiful 21″ coaster, likely a female getting ready for the fall spawning run. It is not a fish I want to keep.

“That is a big fish,” Jack says reverently.

“A legendary fish,” I reply as I pick it up. “Grab the camera.”

I try and hold the trout after releasing the hook from its hard palate but I cannot control the undulating mass of muscle and the brookie crashes to the rocky ground.

“Shit. I don’t want to hurt it. I want to put it back.”

I retrieve the fish. Jack aims the camera. The fish twists again and falls to the rocks.

“Shit. I do not want this fish to die.”

Eventually, after the photo is taken and after trying to revive the brookie in fast moving water, I give up: The fish is too far gone to release. I am not happy about keeping the fish and, had we been better prepared, I would have had a net handy. But it was a spur of the moment decision to follow Jack’s lead and fish the river. I lament the trout’s death but do not lament the excitement.

Thursday. We pack up camp and drive up the shoulders of the rolling Sawtooth’s into the interior of Cook County. Trout Lake is placid. There is no one else out fishing the tiny lake on this gorgeous Minnesota morning. We troll spinners and spoons and nightcrawlers in harnesses for brookies, lake trout, and rainbows. I have one strike. Other folks finally unload canoes and fish but all of us share the same bad luck. I have one strike but can’t hook the fish. And then, the blackflies, the curse of the Northland, find us. For the last hour of our time on the lake, as beautiful a little spot of sliver I’ve ever been on, the flies attack our bare ankles and shoulders mercilessly. No amount of DEET can dissuade the little buggers from landing and biting. We concede defeat and make for the landing.

On the way back down the hill towards the lake, we stop and spend the last couple hours of our trip on a tiny brook fishing for speckled trout. Intermittent clouds provide cover and we pull a few small brookies out of the unnamed stream. Jack finally has success and lands a half-dozen trout but keeps none. I keep one nice eight incher to go along with the big brookie from the Brule, which, when I gutted it, I discovered was a big male.

Still didn’t want to keep it. But at least it wasn’t  a female full of eggs.

I bust out of the bush a good half-hour before Jack does. I sit atop a big steel culvert disecting the gravel road and eat lunch as I watch the creek course towards Lake Superior. No black flies or mosquitoes bother me and the warm sun feels good on my stubbly face. I pull out my tattered copy of Wisconsin and Minnesota Trout Streams by Humphrey and Shogren and read up on all the rivers, streams, and creeks waiting for an old man and his son to visit.

Peace.

Mark

Vacation. That word conjures up a lot of images for folks. Thrilling descents on roller coasters, cotton candy, and shaking hands with Micky Mouse. Luxurious cruise ships docked in distant, exotic ports. Fine wine, elegant dinners for two, gawking at Picasso paintings, and falling in love with the Manhattan skyline. The list of choices for Americans away from work is endless. In my fifty-six years of life (nearly thirty-four working full-time) I’ve enjoyed my share of memorable respites from the daily grind. This week, I spent three days of a week off from work on Minnesota’s North Shore (that’s on Lake Superior for you non-Minnesotans) with my youngest son, Jack. He’s thirteen: the perfect age to learn how to fish the craggy, rocky streams of NE Minnesota for the wild and beautiful fish that is my favorite: Salvelinus fontinalis; the eastern brook trout (actually members of the char family and not true trout). So, with about a week of foresight, I planned a trip to my favorite stream on the Shore along with some side visits to small lakes tucked in the wilderness above the Sawtooth Mountains.

In the past, I’ve taken my older sons brook trout fishing. The streams I fish are not gushing, rushing, torrents of water like you envision after watching movies about trout fishing, like “A River Runs Through it”. Generally, what we’re working, when we trout fish the North Shore, are tiny little rivulets and brooks with the occasional modest stream thrown in for good measure. And, while I recognize that purists will balk at what I am about to say (think of the drunk movie star in “A River Runs Through It”), though I’ve tried my hand at fly fishing and I understand its poetry, I am, through and through, a worm man. That’s right: I fish for these beautiful bursts of color and energy with sinker, hook, and dew worm. I know, I know. It’s not as lyrical. It’s not what Ike Walton would do. Too bad. I only get out once a summer to pursue the brookies. I want to ensure at least a few fish, my favorite eating fish, for the frying pan. Worms ensure dinner. It’s that simple. It’s something Ernest Hemingway knew and applied when he fished for trout in the streams of his beloved Michigan.

Tuesday morning. We are up at the crack of dawn and, after a brief stop at the Two Harbors McDonald’s for breakfast on the fly, we’re back on the road. The old Pacifica handles the eighteen-foot Grumman square stern on the roof racks without a hitch. The cargo space of the van is loaded with a two-horse Honda four-stroke, gas, camping equipment, fishing equipment, food, and other supplies. Jack sits in the passenger seat and eats his McGriddle as I munch on an egg McMuffin. When we arrive at Tettegouche State Park just outside of Silver Bay, I’m apprehensive: We’re way too early for the 4:00pm check-in.

Now, you’d think a guy who wrote the book on the formation of Tettegouche State Park (see Mr. Environment: The Willard Munger Story) would have used and appreciated Minnesota’s 76 state parks (nearly one for every county in the state!) before he turned fifty-six years old. Not so. This is my first overnight stay in a Minnesota state park so I’m a bit apprehensive that my online reservation was messed up. Nope. Turns out making a reservation over the Internet worked out fine and dandy. And, because the folks ahead of us have already vacated the spot, we’re allowed to set up early. After a flurry of activity, we get back in the Pacifica and hit the road in search of trout.

When we arrive at the water’s edge, the day is too nice to be a good trout fishing day but we’ve come too far not to fish. We split up: Jack heading downstream and I upstream, our rods and a stockpile of worms, hooks, and sinkers in hand.

“Fish the edges of the fast water, at the ends of little rapids. The fish will be hiding there with the sun up like it is,” I say.

“OK, Dad.”

It’s high noon and there are no clouds in the sky. I dip my hand in rushing water: It’s cold, no more than 65 degrees, perfect for brook trout. But the sun being so high will be a problem. Still, a bad day on the river is better than any day in the office.

The river we’re on (really a stream but bearing the regal title of “river”) has the worst rocks for walking I’ve ever encountered. I stumble and bumble my way upstream, tossing my hook and worm from my fly rod into any water that looks trouty. I have one good strike but, given it’s been three years since I fished brookies, my reactions are slow and I miss the fish. I look back down river and see Jack has already tangled his line in a tree. I don’t offer any suggestions: At thirteen, he’s a veteran fisherman. I know he’ll figure it out.

The day progresses. I get lost in the rhythm of tossing worms under rocks, cut banks, downed trees, cedar boughs, and the like. It takes awhile but I finally find fish. Lots of fish. Nice ones too. The largest I take are twelve inches or so. I catch a couple of that size, big fish for this little water. The feel of a brookie on the hook hasn’t changed despite the distance of time: When I feel the line tighten and the slack start running against the current, I know what to do. I set the hook and the fight is on. The little char fight like the dickens and dance across the silver water into my hand. I lose a few. Catch a few dozen. I lose track of time but, in a moment of parental concern, realize that the predicted storm is at hand: Thunder is rumbling in the distance and a gray blanket is seeping into the valley. I begin my walk back downstream, the fish pouch of my fly vest full of fat, shimmering trout. Enough for dinner tonight and tomorrow night. Not paying attention and in a rush to make it back to the car, I stumble and fall a half-dozen times.

“Should have brought a walking stick,” I mutter as I examine my ring finger above my wedding band which now is twisted in a direction I’ve never seen it before.

I land on my rump, my knees, my shins. I’m wearing tennis shoes and bluejeans: I learned long ago that waders are an inconvenience in these streams: They are hot and ungainly and totally unnecessary for the waters we’re working.

“How did you do?” Jack asks when we meet up where I’d left him.

“Lots of fish,” I reply.

“Where were you, Dad? I started up the river to find you but gave up. You must have been a mile upstream.”

“I was.”

Jack is as wet and dirty as a thirteen-year-old can be.

“Get any fish?” I ask.

“Chubs. Hundreds of chubs.”

I smile as we walk up the hill towards the waiting Pacifica. The sky rumbles with renewed insistence.

“I’d better clean the fish. You pack the stuff away. It’s gonna pour.”

I hand Jack my rod and my fishing vest, dig into the tackle box, and remove a fillet knife.

“Chubs, eh? You were in slow water. You need to find the fast stuff on hot days like today.”

Jack doesn’t seem the least bit disappointed.

“One of them was this long,” he says, making a gap between his hands that’s at least a foot across.

“Too bad we can’t eat chubs,” I quip.

I squat near the stream and clean the fish. The yellow, blue, and red spots have faded as the life has left the brookies but they remain the most striking fish an angler can pursue in Minnesota. They are pallets of color and, on hook and line, the most robust of fighters for their size. By the time I’ve packed the gutted fish in a plastic bag and put them on ice in the cooler, the storm arrives and engulfs the Pacifica in a wall of cool rain as we drive back to Tettegouche.

We clean up a bit at the campground shower building before clambering into the tent. Rain continues to fall by the bucket. Our tent stays dry. I turn on our battery powered lantern intent upon reading while we wait for the rain to let up.

“How about a story?” I ask.

“Sure,” Jack says, his head resting on his pillow, his eyes shut.

I pull out Up North by Duluth outdoor writer, Sam Cook, and search for a fishing story. I hit gold.

“This one’s called, ‘The Trout Fisherman’.”

“Cool.”

At first it looked like a trail, not a worn path, but a meandering opening among the thimbleberries. The trail dissolved into forest, but that didn’t bother Enok Olson. Now he was coursing randomly through the aspen and large-leafed aster, stepping over deadfalls, and batting branches away from his face.

It didn’t seem that he was trying to find the stream so much as he was being drawn to it. Perhaps that’s the way it is when you’re almost 89, and brook trout streams have been drawing you to their banks for half a century…

“That was an awesome story,” Jack says as the storm lets up and we make ready to leave the tent and fry up the trout for dinner.

As I unzip the wet rain fly, I think about Enok Olson.

I hope that if I make it to 89 and I fall on my rump in a North Shore brook trout stream, I have the gumption to get back up.

Peace.

Mark

(Excerpt from Up North (c) Sam Cook, 1986)

Tattered Cover Bookstore Denver, Colorado

Every once and awhile, I run across commentary from someone who says something better than I could. As I’ve often revealed in my blogs, I relish my time spent reading Glimmer Train literary magazine. Though it’s unlikely my short fiction will ever be displayed inside that journal’s pages, I thoroughly enjoy the multifaceted writing that appears in GT. I also enjoy the interviews with writers in each issue. For the Spring 2011 edition, Andrew Scott sat down with writer Christopher Coake and discussed writing and marketing short fiction. This is what Coake had to say about the utility of independent bookstores in marketing midlist authors.

My second wife…works at Sundance Bookstore, which is our local independent, and which has been thriving in Reno for twenty years. They’re terrific…They will hand-sell a book they believe in and move many copies. For people like me, whose book will only ever sell in the low thousands, this sort of attention is vital. If six independent stores sell twenty copies of my book…that’s a measurable percentage of my sales.

The big chain stores generally won’t do this. There are exceptions. Let me be clear: I like all bookstores, even big chain ones…But you I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve stood in a Barnes and Noble and listened to a customer ask an employee where to find an author I know, only to hear the employee bumble around…

Borders and Barnes and Noble can’t help midlist authors, except here and there, almost by accident. Unless you’re the sort of author who gets a stack on the front table, you might as well be invisible…Our local Barnes and Noble has a pretty good fiction selection…but they still miss some…(I)f you care about literature, go to stores like Sundance, City Lights, Prairie Lights, the Tattered Cover, Square Books, Powell’s. These are the places that understand…Ask their advice, and read what they tell you to.

(c) 2011 Glimmer Train

I agree. The local indies (and we’re down to one here in the Twin Ports now; we used to have three), are the places to find books that the big box retailers either have forgotten or never knew about. In my wanderings around the US and Canada selling my books, I’ve read and signed at over 100 Barnes and Noble, Borders, or Chapters stores. All of them are basically the same: Very nice folks who love books but who have a corporate bottom line and corporate philosophy to address. The little guys and gals, like my pal Sally at Fitger’s (or Anita at the now closed Northern Lights)? Sure, they need to make money: Otherwise the store will close like so many other indies have. But their personal touch, their concern for the little guy or gal who gets up at 5:00am (hey, sounds familiar) to churn out stories, well, that just can’t be translated into corporate America.

So if you value the marketplace of ideas, stop in at the Bookstore at Fitger’s when you’re in Duluth or, if you’re out and about on a vacation, pick up a good regional novel from an independent bookseller. Ask the clerk what he or she would recommend as a novel from the area that sets the mood and tone of the place and captures the essential character of its people. That’s what I do and I haven’t been disappointed yet.

Peace.

Mark

Saturday. The sky threatens to open up. Though there is a brief respite to the clouds, as I drive west on US Highway No.2 towards Tall Timber Days in Grand Rapids gray envelopes the landscape.

“Shit,” I mutter, sipping hot coffee as I listen to KAXE, a great independent radio station from ‘Rapids, “another rainy weekend in the E-Z Up.”

I know, I know. My son Matt, my webmaster, has implored me to be “positive” in my posts. I’m trying folks, I really am. But damn. Every time I drive off for another event, the sky seems to want to open up. Where’s the positive in that? Haven’t we had enough rain for the summer? I mean, aren’t these incessant storms causing flooding, destruction, and the loss of crops? No to mention crappy book sales for certain semi-famous regional authors?

OK. Here’s something positive. I am able to unload the Pacifica and the trailer I’m pulling and get the entire booth set up (including three of my wife’s concrete mosaic benches) without a drop of rain falling on my little head. There, that’s a positive thing, right? The author and his books not getting drenched. Very upbeat, I’d said.

The day is slow. The folks that mosey through the festival aren’t buying much. I do sell the biggest, heaviest, most ungainly of my wife’s concrete artwork to an elderly gentlemen as part of a memorial garden for his recently departed wife.

Very positive. Rene’ will be pleased about how the man chose to remember his beloved.

But the books? They aren’t exactly flying off the tables. And the weather? It drizzles for the better part of the day, making the concept of selling paper in the rain very dubious. Of course, the optimist in me (channeled there by my eldest son) is happy it didn’t pour.

When I get home, my wife’s entire family is at our house: Rene’ called them together for an impromptu picnic. Dog tired, I don’t say much to the in-laws as I wander up to the shower and rinse off the grime of the road. Later, after my belly is full and I’ve had a couple of cold ones, my mood lightens and I’m a happy guy. Leinenkuegels will do that for you.

Sunday. The sky is still gray.

What the hell good are those weather forecasters anyway?

Every television guy or gal spouting their knowledge of all things weathery said that it was going to clear up and be a sunny day. Wrong. Pewter clouds sit above the river and off to the west. I don’t leave the clouds behind as I drive towards the festival. But on a positive note, I’m listening to To Have and Have Not by Hemingway on the CD changer.

Hemingway’s the guy that showed me how to write, how to tell a story.

I’ve read just about everything Papa wrote down on paper and I still admire his unique, crisp style. A bit misogynistic but still, one of my favorites. The story makes me forget about the close sky and the likely slow sales I’ll encounter at Tall Timber Days.

The festival continues at the same snail-like pace. Some vendors literally pull up stakes: They take their tents down and leave early. But not me: I’m an optimist, always looking for a surge of customers at the end of an event to make my bottom line better. Never happens, of course. Sundays are always slower than Saturdays. Wait, that’s not true. Phelps Mill, out in Fergus Falls is an exception to that rule: Sundays at Phelps Mill are always better than Saturdays. Don’t know why. But they are. And guess what? That holds true at this year’s Tall Timber Days as well. The sales aren’t great but I do sell more on Sunday than Saturday. Maybe my positive vibe is showing. Or maybe it’s because it didn’t rain as much on the Sabbath. Or maybe it’s because local writer Tom Chapin (Poachers Caught) takes pity on my plight and starts hawking my books inside the E-Z Up with me. Whatever the reason, I drive home a bit happier. Not a lot happier: just some.

Peace.

Mark

Dusk on the Cloquet River: All is well…

My son Matt (who is also my webmaster/tech guy) says I have been too much gloom and doom of late, that I need to be more upbeat. So, here it is, “Positive Monday”. I borrowed the title of this piece from “Garage Logic”, Joe Soucheray’s cranky, often edgy radio show out of the Twin Cities which has a distinctly anti-Liberal bent and which usually features Joe going off about something Nancy Pelosi or the President or some other Left leaning American has done. I am going to be positive today, even though this weekend was the worst Ely Blueberry Festival on record for Cloquet River Press. Really, I am. Here goes.

Well, I was able to stay for free up in Ely, on beautiful White Iron Lake, thanks to Dennis and Roxanne Korman who let me bed down in their place for two nights. Oh, and I got to drink beer and yell at the Twins (we were cheering only positively of course, even though the A’s were kicking the Twins’ collective asses) with Uncle Buck (Rod Skube) the caretaker of the place. Not having to pay big bucks for an overpriced hotel room or stay in a tent, and also watch the Twins on satellite is a positive, right?

And then there were the fabulous blueberry pancakes I ate both Saturday and Sunday morning in the pavilion in Whiteside Park where the festival was held. The Lions provided the all-you-can eat (another positive, right?) pancakes, two sausages, and juice, milk or coffee. The cakes were fresh and the crowd was lively, making me, even in the early morning hours after drinking beer with Uncle Buck the night before, feel distinctly alive.

And how about the fact that, even though it rained cats and dogs around noon on Saturday of the three day festival, the bad weather lingered for only an hour or two at most? It could have stormed all day (which has happened in past Blueberry Festivals) but it didn’t. Another very good thing, right?

Then there was spending two days in my little E-Z Up tent with the talented, wise, energetic, and gifted Sarah Stonich, a Minnesota author based in the Twin Cities with roots on the Vermilion Range. Sarah had never done a “tent show” before (may well not do another one after being confined in an E-Z UP with the likes of me for two days) but was a real trouper. She managed to sell some copies of her new memoir, Shelter and of her older books as well, and, during the many lulls between sales (not a negative as you will discern from the rest of this passage), we were able to talk about writing, publishing, and life. A very “thumbs up” attribute to the weekend, I must say.

The people who stopped by to tell me (and Sarah) how much they liked our writing? Well, of course, that’s what an author lives for. Critics have agendas. Newspapers and other media outlets may or may not discuss your books, depending upon available space and whichever corporate big-wigs are in control. But readers? Having them stop by and chat, even if they’re not in the market for another book, and gush over a story you put on paper is just about the most positive aspect to being a writer there is.

Oh, and then there’s festival food. Now naysayers might cringe at the fat content in the Chinese I ate for lunch both Saturday and Sunday or argue that the frozen custard I had for a treat after a hard day in the booth on Saturday (black raspberry despite the fact I was at the Blueberry Festival) are not very healthy options. Especially the deep fried egg roll. Too bad. It tasted so darn good and, well, since my time in Ely had to be a positive experience, I ate what made me feel, well, positive.

The swim I took Friday night after getting up at five, driving from Duluth to Ely, setting up my booth (including my wife’s ever-present and extraordinarily heavy concrete mosaic garden benches), and spending a long day trying to hawk words to strangers? Oh, sure, I was a bit disappointed that White Iron Lake was not what I expected. Instead of the nice sand and gravel bottom I’m used to when I swim in the Cloquet River by my house, I was greeted with a confusion of boulders the size of small hay bales strewn across the lake bottom. The jumbled mess made it impossible to swim: I kept hitting rocks with my feet and hands as I tried to move through the sweetly cool water. Oh, oh. Sounds negative. But it isn’t because once I let the lake win and I found a nice flat rock to settle on, sitting in waist deep water after a long, hard, hot day in a airless tent, well, the lake was heaven. See? I can turn something bad into something good, now can’t I? I’d say that’s the mark (no pun intended) of a gifted wordsmith.

Finally, there’s this: Even though I grouse and moan about the size and heft of my wife’s hobby, I came to Ely with four of her concrete benches and left with three. That’s right: I sold one, which lightened my load for the trip home. A very, very positive outcome, if I must say.

Peace.

Mark