I can’t remember having a winter quite as mild as this. That statement alone may be the one that brings on a March blizzard. The old saying: in like a lamb, out like a lion or vice versa, may hold true in this case. I have been around long enough to know that, as a true Minnesotan, I am always waiting for the proverbial “other shoe to drop.”
In past years I have headed to the cabin in early to mid-April, going to bed and waking up to eight inches of newly fallen snow. This tends to leave me with trust issues when it comes to spring. One year I awoke not only to snow, but to fallen trees and mayhem. The trusty old wood stove is our only source of heat and sometimes it is a little hard to get going because the wood can be damp. Birch bark is like kerosene, and the best fire starter that you can have. We have six acres of mostly birch and pine with a few maples thrown in for balance. With that being said, we never run out of firewood or fire starter, for that matter.
Having no running water or electricity that cannot support any kind of electric heater still makes going to the cabin a rustic adventure. Drilling a well and having an electrician running power to the cabin would be costly. All-in-all, I kind of like it that way. A little hardship makes me feel closer to the days when our ancestors had to cope with things. Our electricity runs off a 100 ft. drop cord which gives us the electricity that we need. Once we got access to electricity, we then had lights, radio and TV, which in all reality, made things pretty comfortable. Up until about ten years ago, we had propane lanterns and oil lamps to light up the cabin. TV ran off of a car battery until they took the access to free TV away.
I purchased an HDTV antenna, which I put on the roof. This now gets more stations than the three we once did. When I am at the cabin, I usually don’t watch much TV. I have the radio on and for entertainment, I watch the wildlife. You never know when, on any given day, you will spot wildlife right out in front of the cabin. My wife has a knack for spotting different critters. One day while standing at the sink, she asked what kind of animal was staring at her from a tree outside the window. I looked out to see a martin staring back at me. Another time while she was sitting on the deck, she called me to come out and tell her what kind of critter had come out from under the cabin and was walking down the trail into the woods. It was a badger; I knew that there was a den in the area, but I had never seen it before. One thing about badgers, they are not afraid to be seen by humans.
For years, we had the camper near the cabin. We still used it from time to time. My wife, Jean, would make breakfast in the camper and bring it to the cabin if there were a number of us. If my son Brad and his son Dylan were there, Dylan loved eating in the camper. I’d guess that he felt comfortable there, mainly because he had spent time with us at the camper when we had it at Tetonka Lake near Waterville.
When Dylan was younger, he would always bring up things from the past. He remembered things that I can’t believe he recalled. In that respect, he is a lot like his grandpa. It is good to remember the things that made you happy as a youth and I did what I could to make outdoors memories for my sons and grandsons. My granddaughters both enjoy fishing, but not to the extent of their brother and cousins do.
Emma really likes to go fishing, and Ava will fish, but loses interest pretty quickly, making her a typical kid. This isn’t anything new; all youth are not interested in the same things.
Until next time: With the nice weather that we are now experiencing, getting outdoors has been a lot easier to do. If the weather holds, I plan on heading up north earlier than I have since we bought our little piece of heaven “up north.”
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