Home Cooking in Bayfield

Undaunted by the mercury, which stood at 12 below zero, we set off Friday morning for a weekend of Nordic skiing in Bayfield, Wisconsin.

There are countless ways to get there from Minneapolis—for a start, you can turn east from the freeway at Forest Lake, Highway 70, Hinkley, Askov, or Duluth. We hit the secondary roads at Hinkley, which sent us past St. Croix State Park and the HomeStyle Café in Danbury, Wisconsin. We didn’t stop: I think I might still be digesting the chicken-fried steak I enjoyed there in September. But it’s an unusual place, the owner cooks all the food himself, with the help of a woman from Montana.

(Native American, or Greek American?) who also waits the tables. Portions are on the gargantuan side.

We continued east to Minong before turning north toward Superior. Our immediate destination was the After Hours ski trails just west of the town of Brule.

We’d never been there before. Some parts of the gently rolling landscape have the feel of a tree farm, with vast acreage given to aspen, followed abruptly by seeming endless acres of tightly spaced, middle-aged white pine. But the plantings look like a forest all the same, rather than a regimented crop, and the sections of the trail that follow the heights above the Brule River are especially nice. We saw no one on the trail—the temperature had arrived at zero—and there were no critters in sight, either, though I at one point I spotted the tracks of a long-tailed weasel. Our two hours in the woods were given added dimension by the fact that more than a century ago, Hilary’s great-grandfather spent a winter logging in the woods near here before continuing west to Crookston.

We arrived in Bayfield at dusk and checked in at the Sea Gull Bay Motel, where you can rent an entire three-bedroom house for $70 a night. We took a sauna, whipped up some spaghetti, opened a bottle of fairly decent Cote du Rhone, played three games of scrabble and called it a night.

The next morning before dawn we watched through the living room window as some distant figures set up ice houses on Chequamegon Bay a quarter-mile out from shore. I made a few calls and discovered that the ice road over to Madeleine Island wasn’t open yet, and that you can’t get to the sea caves on the north side of the peninsula either. We drove downtown to the ferry dock, where a windsled operates a regular schedule of deliveries to the island. The sled was no where to be seen, but pine trees had been set out on the ice to mark the road, and while we were looking out on the vast sheet of ice stretching out toward Basswood and Madeleine islands, a couple of snowmobiles emerged from the white horizon and eventually passed us on their way to the snow-covered beach.

Our next stop was Bodin’s fresh fish market, a few blocks away on the south side of town. Evidently they’re still fishing with nets under the ice.

“We had some great herring fishing in October,” the man in the back room told us. “We brought in 250,000 pounds in two weeks. We had six semis backed up to the dock, one after another. And one rabbi, who stood at the back of each truck blessing the fish as it was loaded.”

“They must be taking it to the gefelte fish factory in Iowa,” I mused.

“Yup, they were going to Iowa.”

We bought a fillet of lake trout and another of whitefish, though it hadn’t been a part of our menu. Having done so, we then headed back downtown for some fish batter, parsley, butter, and a lemon. The Fryin’ Magic seasoned coating mix (made by Little Crow Foods of Warsaw, Indiana) was on sale.

An cheerful Indian woman was working the cash register. A young man from the Red Cliff tribal police was just in front of us in line. Another Ojibwe man was just leaving with a bag of plastic flowers (of all things). Before stepping outside he said, “See you at Kino,” and the woman replied in a musical voice, as if in agreement, “I'll be in the back row.” Then a woman buying a few things at the other register said, “See you at church.” It wasn’t clear to me to whom that remark was addressed, but no one responded.

A half-hour later we were setting out on the Jerry Jay Jolly Pike Creek Ski trails up in the hills west of town. No one in the parking lot. We were overtaken a quarter-mile in by a beautiful white husky wearing a day-glow orange cape, followed a few minute later by his owner. “I should have him on a leash, I know,” the man said, “But if I did, I’d probably strangle him or run him over on this hill we’re coming to. It’s not for the faint of heart.”

The hill in question was, indeed, one of those winding chutes down through the woods that have been removed from most well-designed trial systems. The kind that drop away out of sight in front of you while making a corner at the same time. The kind that you arrive at the bottom of with relief, not exhilaration. Hilary went first. When I spotted her tiny red figure a few minutes later amid the trees in the valley below, I started my own hair-raising descent.

Regaining my bearings at last, I found myself on the bank of Pike Creek, surrounded on all sides by snow-covered pines rising up the steep walls of the valley. The creek was flowing dark through the bed of snow-covered rocks. It was an enchanting stretch—winter at its best.

We spent the afternoon reading and snoozing, with the snow growing thicker and the distant outline of Madeleine Island eventually disappearing from view. The fishermen had disassembled their huts—they were gone. We drove down to the landing just to get out into the day one more time before darkness fell and were lucky enough to arrive a few minutes before the windsled was due on a return trip from the island. People were backing their cars out onto the ice, their trunks loaded with groceries. A man in a Green Bay Packers hat was standing on shore with what looked like three pizza delivery bags.

“So you live on the island?” I asked him.

“I’m fourth generation on the island,” he replied. “My cousin drives the windsled. Where are you from?”

“We’re from Minneapolis. Just up for some cross-country skiing.”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of snow for that. Trouble is, the snow screws up the ice on the lake. Insulates it. It started out real good but now it’s gone funny.”

We talked about the upcoming game between the Packers and Bears for a minute or two before the headlights on the windsled appeared through the wall of snow in the distance.

It’s quite a machine—orange, ensconced in canvas, riding on five huge runners, driven by wind generated by two enormous propellers at the back. It’s not likely to get stuck in slush, because it doesn’t require traction, and it won’t fall through the ice entirely, because the thing floats!

Meanwhile, I saw a man pass in a snowmobile on his way to the island clutching two plastic IGA grocery bags. (Honey, could you make a run to town to get some coffee?) And two people drove in from somewhere out on the ice on an ATV, caked in snow.

I spoke to them a few minutes later, as they were scraping ice off the underside of their vehicle. It looked to be a father-daughter team. They were from Ashland, and they’d been ice-fishing all day out near Basswood Island. Didn’t catch a thing. Other fishermen nearby had brought in thirty whitefish and gave them five or six. I told the man we’d bought some fresh trout at Bodin’s that we were going to fry up for supper.

“Fish soup. That’s really good. Or bake them. Just put some olive oil and lemon, maybe some onions…”

“In tin foil,” his daughter added an important detail, looking up from the underside of the machine.

“But frying’s good, too,” he said at last, tactfully. "We like fried fish, too."