Emil:
"It'd been five years since Lena passed away when I made up my mind to move on. Six years is plenty of time to think things over, the past and the future. And get used to the idea I'd always miss her no matter where I lived. Years ago I used to think I was unique, a one of a kind. Came to learn there's some truth in that but not a lot. Mostly, we're the same. Why not? Take your pick, Creation or Evolution, either way we crawled up from the same ooze and'll turn back into that ooze when we've burned our candle. Between, we all pretty much react the same way to what life throws at us."
"What I'm gettin' to is the Fourth of July in '64. I'd pulled to the side of the gravel alongside eighty acres of corn to see if it was knee high. You live in Minnesota, that's what you do. Kind of an idiot thing if you ask me. But sometimes doin' the idiot thing clears the air so you can see the truth. The field belonged to the Wieners, old friends from church. George had been farming since the days when the wheels on his family's tractor were made of steel. And he was a stickler for detail. Figured a real farmer could plow furrows clear 'round the planet and end up in the exact same place as he'd started without as much as a single waver."
"Maybe it wasn't the height of his corn but his die straight rows that got me to stop. Looked like an army marching off to battle. For all practical purposes, all of those stalks were the same. Then I got to thinking of me and my life and where the two of us were heading. Ten, fifteen years from now I could see me as one of the town geezers. Meet the boys for coffee at the diner in the morning, putz around the property doing all those things that may or may not need doing, build birdhouses and whittle pornography from wood scraps I had lying around the garage. Did I really want that? Maybe it was time to change course before it was too late? But where to go?"
"It was the Grumman canoe stored on sawhorses alongside the garage that gave me the answer. Loved the northland and figured it just might be the thing. Canada? No. The Arrowhead? Way up in the Arrowhead was as good as the Canadian backwoods. Same rocks, trees, lakes, rivers, bugs and quiet. I'd spent enough of my days in those woods to have a fair idea of where I'd like to move. Maybe build? Why not? I wasn't as yet too old but my time to hammer out the physical labor necessary was growing shorter by the day. Two weeks later found me in the Nomad heading up the shore of Lake Superior on my way to Grand Marais. Had me an appointment to see a man who had the lowdown on just what I wanted."
"Didn't take me but one look and a little thought to make an offer. Mike from the realty office had spent the morning showing me four pieces of land, even though there was only one I was truly interested in. No problem, the man was only doing his job. Might have just had time on his hands and wanted out of the office. Who knows, I might have changed my mind. The first parcel we walked was eighty acres of woods mid-way up the McFarland Road. Lotta land and land is a temptation for any man. The pines were fair sized but few were mature. The whole area had been logged off fifty years earlier and the lumber shipped south. The few reds and whites that'd been left as seed trees were of size. Close to thirty inches on the stump. But there wasn't an acre or running foot of fish holding water. We moved on."
"The next two were lakefront. Smaller lots of twenty and forty acres each. Had I wanted lakefront either would have been fine, though forty acres spoke louder than twenty. A man wants to be able to take a leak in his yard without offending anyone."
"Both had stands of pine, birch, spruce and popple, some cedar down on the water. Smelled good, looked good and had fish at my doorstep. But by now I was itching to see what I'd come for. Could be the young man was just whetting my appetite, setting me up. If he was, he was wasting his time. I had a fair idea of what I wanted and the land would welcome me when we met."
"The fourth was the winner. I'd seen the spot a few years back and liked it right off the bat. Less than a dozen miles inland from the big lake and off the McFarland Road. The rangers at the Gunflint Station said there were trout in this little river up near the border. Told me to pull over on the shoulder once I passed a river at the bottom of a hill after a turnout with a view of the valley. Woulda been nice had there also been a red barn as a landmark. The stream, Aspen Brook, ran through the valley winding its way to the Pigeon River. The trout I found weren't big but they were the prettiest brookies I'd ever seen. The stream wasn't wide but looked like it'd hold through the whole year. Riffles, rapids, little waterfalls galore and some slow moving meadow over its dozen or more miles. The trees were a mix of hardwood and pine, the land rocky with a car-sized boulders scattered about. She looked near perfect. Wild as all get-out. And, almost forgot, it was a hellacious slog through thicket and forest to get to the stream. Once there, the challenge was finding a spot to cast that didn't scream of falling in the torrent."
"This last parcel abutted the road and ran close to a half mile in. To that point we'd been under a high cloud cover. After we parked and commenced working our way up what'd once been some kind of access road, the sun broke though. Lit up the aspen and birch leaves like lights on a Christmas tree. Don't know if that was a sign from the heavens but it sure didn't hurt."
"Better than two thousand feet of stream marked the south property line. Uf dah! I could sure learn to live with a half mile of trout. Though the acres straddled the valley floor there was enough high ground to allow a choice of building sites. Once a ways in and down on the water we came on a slab outcrop of bedrock overlooking a bend in the brook. I could see me for years to come perched on that rock, sipping my morning coffee and communing with the feeding trout below. The sixty-two acres had stream on one side and National Forest in complete surround. Like being on an island. The more I saw, the more it appealed."
"Turned out there was a story behind this parcel. Of course that made it all the sweeter. Decades earlier when the Arrowhead was logged off, these acres were set aside by the Schroeder family, owners of the operation, with the idea of someday building a lodge along the brook. Turned out the trout stream wasn't the only attraction. What set this particular parcel apart was access to the ground water below, not a common thing in that rock strewn land. A civilized family needed a little spring water to mix with their scotch. Also needed a few majestic pines to contemplate, so the plot wasn't clear cut, just thinned. Well, the somedays built up, one generation turned into the next and finally the reason for holding the property was forgotten. This spring in a financial housecleaning, the land was put on the market. The asking price was a little high of fair but we reached an agreement. My luck I guess."
"Mike told me this stretch was so far from anywhere of consequence there'd be no electricity for a year or two and water would have to be hand pumped. Not a problem that I could see. People'd been living that way for thousands of years. Figured I could too. Winter would be a challenge. Snow neck deep and temperatures that'd freeze up a thermometer. Cold runs downhill and I'd be sittin' in a valley. Seeing as how I was still considering fishing the southland over the winter months, worrying about winter could wait."
"Oddly enough, what tied it all together was the lack of electricity. I'd have no washer or drier, no water heater, no tv or furnace. The way I saw it, there'd be no need for a basement and that'd make construction a lot easier. I'd dig holes 'til they hit bedrock or five feet whichever came first. Then mix rock, steel and concrete to form piers. That's when I recalled my nephew Archie's young back. Years earlier he'd offered to help me should I ever build in the boonies. He'd be eighteen next summer, an age that just begs to work like a man with a pick, shovel or post hole digger in hand."
"Long story short, I bought the land. Made an offer and agreed on the counter. Three weeks later the house in Parkers Prairie, topped with a fresh coat of paint inside and out, went on the market. Priced it right. By the end of the summer I was homeless and living in a tent. Gave me a sense of freedom no money could buy, though having more cash than I could spend didn't hurt."
"First order of business was a well. Like most small towns, Grand Marais has a hardware store and a lumber yard. Also a saw mill. Over the next year I came to know Agnar and Roy at the mill pretty well. Did a lot of business with both. In turn they put me onto help with men who had the savvy and tools I was lacking. It was Roy who set me up with the Andersens. Been drilling wells since the day after the war. Seemed I'd lucked out. The Arrowhead doesn't suck up a lot of water. Most of it falls as rain or snow and runs off the rock off as quick as it can. Should you build on a lake your water would come from the lake. For some reason, maybe 'cause my plot was in a valley, like I said earlier, there was ground water to be had."
"Once the Andersen's walked the land, there was nary a guess as to where to sink the pipe. Not sure how they knew but they did. 'Course they did walk around with a willow switch for a while. Could be it worked, could be it was purely for show. I figure they knew where they were gonna drill before leaving the shop. The spot marked, it was now up to me to clear an access. Took two weeks. She wasn't much but was enough to allow the truck entry. Then they started drilling. Ten, twelve feet of dirt, sand and lots of rubble 'til they hit bedrock, more than sixty feet of it to drill. Close to eighty feet down they hit sweet water. As luck would have it the water rose up the pipe to within eight feet of ground level. Close enough to draw with a pitcher pump. Yeah, when push came to shove, it was water told me where to build."
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