August, Cool and Beautiful

The weather gods have been too kind to us. Following a warm winter, who would have suspected we'd get a cool and beautiful summer? The ample rain has brought new life to our gardens, and even the lawn looks pretty good—at least the morning after I mow it.

The National Night Out in early August was a big hit once again on our block. It's the only time we actually converse with some of our neighbors, who are a diverse and generally cheerful bunch of mostly young and middle-aged couples. 

Hilary and I have somehow slipped into the category of old-timers; I don't know how that happened. But the eldest attendee, Elfrida, has lived on our block since 1962! I sampled  several strange, cheesy casseroles and enjoyed some piping-hot mini-wieners wrapped in bacon that were sitting at the bottom of a crock-pot.

Pleasant as it is here at home, Hilary and I have also been out and about to various state parks. On one excursion we brought our massive Grumman canoe along, elaborately strapped to the top of our tiny Carolla. After setting up camp at Savannah Portage SP we went for an evening paddle  at nearby Loon Lake, left the canoe by the landing, and returned early the next morning for another placid circuit. There was no one around. The lake was calm, and at one point  we had the pleasure of watching a family of loons drift by. You can watch them here: 

A few minutes later we came upon a pair of kingfishers who led us the rest of the way around the lake, keeping fifty yards ahead, swooping and diving from one branch to another, chattering away.  It's not the Boundary Waters, but it's a lot easier to get to.

After breaking camp we continued north, resisted the urge to revisit our beloved Meadowlands, but toured the Mesabi Range on Highway 169 from Hibbing to Tower and beyond. We ate lunch at the Sportsman's café in Hibbing, where our charming Jamaican waitress told us how she happened to settle down in northern Minnesota. We also spent some time cruising downtown Virginia, where my mom grew up.

The canoe once again proved to be useful at Vermilion State Park, where we'd rented an upscale camper cabin for the night. There isn't really much to do at that park. Trails are few, and it's impossible to see the lake unless you drive down to the landing or the smallish picnic area. But we enjoyed hanging out on the cabin deck, looking off into the trees. And once we hit the water we appreciated the park's lack of shore front development.

The camper cabins are fairly private, but the next morning we ran into our next-door neighbor, who was heading for the nearby parking lot. She and her husband had signed on to take the mail run around Lake Vermilion, by boat. (Something to consider for our next visit.)

The woman's name was Tamara Uselmann. She's a professor at North Dakota State, though the couple live in Pelican Rapids.

"You've heard of Pelican Rapids?" She seemed surprised.

"Sure. With a river flowing right through town and a nice coffee shop. It's right down the road from Maplewood State Park."

 She told us both her parents spoke Finnish at home. I told her a little about the nearby town of Embarrass, the Finnish "capital" of this part of the state. "And you probably know about New York Mills," I added.

"Yes, we know about New York Mills," she said. "We were raised there."

On our way out we stopped in at the Soudan Mine, which also serves as the park headquarters. I was hoping to get a refund for the firewood we hadn't used. While we were there, we got into conversation with one of the tour guides. He'd worked in the taconite mines for years, but had previously pursued a fairly successful career as an opera singer. Who would have guessed?

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A few days later we headed north again to catch the Perseid meteor shower at Crow Wing State Park, this time with bikes instead of the canoe. We left in mid-afternoon, and paid a visit to Crane Meadows NWR along the way.

It was a clear night. We set up our camp chairs out in the road at midnight and looked up through a break in the trees that—just our luck—exposed a sliver of sky between Cassiopeia and  Perseus. Hilary saw the best one, a fireball that lasted several seconds. I missed that one, but saw seven shooting stars in all, for the most part bright, but short. At one point I saw two almost simultaneously in the same place, which gave me he impression that the meteor had broken apart at that moment, far above the Earth.

While we sitting out in the dark, we heard a deep, loud groan coming from the distant woods. It was a sound I'd never heard before, like the mooing of a cow, but somehow entirely different. A moose? Hardly likely in that part of the state. A bear? They don't sound like that.

The next morning we set off early on what might be the most beautiful stretch of the Paul Bunyan Trail. It runs through the woods from the park north along the Mississippi to Baxter. It seems to be mostly downhill in both directions, and there are some wonderful stretches lined with blackberries along the way.

Back at the park, we broke camp, and on our way out we stopped in to pay for the firewood we'd burned. I asked the ranger about the mysterious sound we'd heard. He paused a moment for effect, and then said, "Bullfrog."

Before turning south, however, we drove the eight miles up to Brainerd. We wanted to see what kind of development had been taking shape at the mostly abandoned Great Northern Railyard. Turns out there's a beauty salon, a gift-shop, an event center, and a outdoor-grill franchise, among other things. What interested us was the restaurant with a shady patio called Notch 8 (a railroad term for "full speed ahead"), run by the former chef from nearby Prairie Bay. The lunch special was BLT, carrot-ginger soup, and spinach peach salad with a sophisticated vinaigrette.  I would go back. 

Such excursions are vastly enriching, but there also a lot to be said for staying home. On a given day I might sit on the deck for quite a while, taking note of the slightest changes in the vegetation or watching the young robins eat the white berries off the gray dogwood shrubs, one after another, thus exposing the clusters of beautiful pink stems.

Ah! The black-eyed-susans we planted in May are finally blooming—one little blossom in the midst of a sea of tired Siberian bugloss.