Canadian smoke, rumors of unusually pesky bugs, and a lack of serious planning had kept us out of the north woods all summer, but we finally managed to organize a four-day arc through that beloved region. On the advice of Google maps, which warned us of traffic delays on 169 near Elk River, we headed out of town on Central Avenue, which soon becomes Highway 65. The estimated time difference was only one minute, however, so it's fair to say we took that route because we rarely leave town that way and it sounded like a refreshing alternative, the numerous stoplights between Minneapolis and Cambridge notwithstanding.
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| The bustling main street of Mora |
Our first recreational stop was an hour north of town in the quasi-Swedish town of Mora, famous to outsiders mostly for its annual cross-country ski vasaloppet. The petite woman behind the counter at the bakery complimented us on our his-and-hers outfits—blue shirts, tan shorts, entirely coincidental. I was a little surprised she didn't offer to take our picture.
"I noticed some rosemaling on the clock on the boulevard down the street," I said. "Mora must have a Scandinavian heritage."
"Oh, yes. Our sister city is Mora, Sweden, and we do four student transfers—er, what do you call them?"
"Exchanges?"
"Yes. That's it. Four exchanges every year."
I asked her what the town was known for, beyond the famous ski race, and she told us about the Thursday night music shows at the municipal bandstand, every week a new theme—"old rock," polka, country.
"How old is "old rock"? I said.
"Eighties? Nineties?"
"That's not old," I said.
"I know, " she said. "But polka night is coming up. I do the polka with my daughters, and my husband occasionally shuffles around a bit, too. It's a lot of fun." She seemed excited.
We ate our pastries—a little doughy, now that you ask—along with a Styrofoam cup of coffee freshened with milk from the cooler, while sitting in the car in the parking lot of the public library, which looks out across Mora Lake. And as we munched we watched a couple of kids—a boy and a girl—shooting baskets in the distance. I was always hoping that a shot would go in; a few of them did.
Our final stop was the thrift store nearby where Hilary bought a pristine spring-form pan for a dollar. We were getting to know the town.
Forty-five minutes later we pulled into the Rice Lake National Wildlife Refuge south of McGregor. Such places have their own mysterious beauty, though anyone who visits looking for slam-bang scenery or Disney-esque wildlife activity is bound to be disappointed. In fact, I have never been quite sure why such places exist. Are they being managed for the duck hunters? Or simply to maintain the health of vast tracts of land most of which are too wet to sustain any kind of agriculture or recreation? I once talked with a man who had been hired to trap out as many coyotes as he could from a wildlife refuge closer to the cities. "It's being managed for the 'flowers and butterflies' crowd," he said derisively.
While we were looking at a nature display the ranger came out from the shadows of the office in the back, dressed in khaki from head to foot. He seemed a little forlorn. I asked him if there had been any interesting sightings lately. Maybe a LeConte's sparrow?
He thought for a moment and then said, "Well, someone saw a bittern crossing the highway up near McGregor the other day."
"I haven't seen a bittern in ten years," I said.
Perhaps encouraged by this remark, he dug his phone out of his pocket, fumbled with it for several minutes, and then showed me a photo he'd taken of a ruffed grouse crossing the road. Meanwhile, we discussed various encounters we'd had with grouse that had refused to respond sensibly to vehicles approaching at high speed.
Although we'd agreed before we arrived we didn't have time to take the ten-mile driving tour, of course we did take it, and during the circuit two grouse crossed the road, and two lovely sandhill cranes also appeared out of the underbrush and strolled along ahead of us, virtually hand in hand. An elegant raven swooped by at one point, and as we paused at one bridge and got out of the car, eager to spot an elusive bittern in the reeds, we heard two kingfishers rattling away as they sped along the shore. A family of loons was drifting out on Mandy Lake.
Hilary had read in the brochure that there were Indian mounds on the ridge just south of the lake dating back 1,300 years, but we didn't seek them out. They would have been hard to find, and it isn't hard to imagine what they look like.
The highlight of our visit to Grand Rapids was a chat with the cheery and articulate young woman tending the Pasties Plus shop on Main Street. She'd just returned from a "bucket-list" five-day tour of Florida with a friend.
I asked her if she was from Grand Rapids. "No. My grandparents have a farm outside of Northome," she said. "I grew up there. It's a century farm." And she explained a few of the technicalities involved in qualifying for that noble designation, which I didn't quite grasp. "My grandparents moved down to Blackduck years ago. Dad still farms it."
"Livestock?" I took a wild guess, in light of the typical landscape thereabouts.
"Ya. They did dairy, but it was hard making a living. Now they raise Angus beef. And my dad spends the mornings logging." She told us a little about two-man and four-man crews, and how they strip the branches off the trees by chaining them to the skidder and dragging them between two sturdy uncut trees nearby. (That seemed a bit archaic to me. But what do I know? I just now looked it up, and an average used skidder from John Deere might cost $200,000.)
We bought a couple of pasties, the ones with rutabagas. "They're a little more flavorful, or something," she said with a smile and a shrug.
As we were leaving I said, "We'll think of you as we pass Northome." Nor was this an idle remark. When driving around in the boondocks past small farms and scrubby fields carved out of the pine woods, I often wonder who lives way out there.
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Scenic State Park lies an hour north of Grand Rapids along Highway 38, which bisects the Suomi Hills as it winds its way past a succession of small and sometimes undeveloped kettle lakes. You're more likely to pass a logging truck than a Winnebego, perhaps, and there's a modest lumber mill in Big Fork, not far from the theater, the art center, and the historic wannigon, but Scenic State Park itself remains quiet and pristine. Loons call, owls hoot. We could hear the vigorous trill of a pine warbler in the white pines behind our tent.
We were surprised not long after we arrived by the appearance of two rodents darting here and there across our campsite, probably hoping for a hand-out. It looked like a gray squirrel at first glance. But the tail was skimpier, the ears smaller, no white on the belly, and a richer blend of browns and grays in the fur. We determined later that they might have been Richardson's ground squirrels, commonly known as prairie gophers. If so, then to judge from the maps, they were a hundred miles east of their normal range.
The next morning the rain came. Lucky for us, our campsite was adjacent to the picnic grounds, and we brewed our morning coffee within the comfortable confines of a majestic log structure built by the CCC in 1933.
From the park our itinerary took us west across some countryside that would be considered nondescript to those who aren't attuned to the subtle beauty of alder-willow bogs and hardscrabble farms chiseled acre by acre out of the underbrush. I'm referring to the county roads 14 and 29 between Bigfork and Blackduck.
The residue of the morning rains added a sparkle to the vegetation. We spotted a few pelicans as we passed Dora Lake. But we were distressed to see that Q-Anon film Sound of Freedom was playing at the theater in Blackduck. Highway 71 took us to the north end of Lake Bemidji, where we hiked out along the bog walk at the state park past a rich variety of low-growing plants--
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