Ice Shanty Village 2026

The official name is “Art Shanty Projects” but I prefer to call it the “Ice Shanty Village.” It’s been a yearly gathering since 2004, though the location has changed a few times: Medicine Lake, then White Bear Lake, and now Lake Harriet. I’m wondering if it might even have been held in Stillwater at some time in the distant past. A few years ago, when the weather wasn’t cooperating, they set up the shanties on land.   

Wherever it pops up, the village consists of whimsical and sometimes elaborate structures—ice houses, basically—that have been created to advance a civic value, a scientific concept, or a mode of personal expression, and spread out across the ice with no apparent order or logic. Some function as performance venues. One shanty invariably serves as a Digger store, offering second-hand hats, scarfs, sweaters, and gloves to anyone who’s ventured out on the lake without the proper wraps.

Though the themes of specific shanties are often serious, the entire operation is conceived in the childlike spirit of “let’s build a fort.” Bike races are held from time to time—they provide the bikes--and there’s a kite day, too. In previous years we’ve come upon aerobic exercise classes, lip-synching contests, flamenco mini-juergas, and scenes from La Boheme. Years later, I’m still ruing the day we arrived too late to see a performance of “Waiting for Godot” on skates.

It was cold yesterday—we’d decided not to go—but patches of blue were appearing in the sky here and there, and next week is forecast to be colder. We were reading in front of the fire when it suddenly seemed like the perfect time to take a break before the afternoon got too dark.

“Let’s drive down the parkway to the ice shanties,” I said. “Maybe we’ll snag a good parking lot near shore. And if we don’t, we can just call it an afternoon drive and come home.”

By the time we got to Lake Harriet the clouds had returned, but we got lucky with the parking. (In previous years we’ve chosen to park in the neighborhood nearby, usually too far away.) And it wasn’t really that cold. The bad news was that the ice on the lake had only a thin veneer of loose snow on top, and it was slippery. But there were plenty of people wandering around, reading the signs, entering the shanties to warm up, or chatting with the creators about their shacks.

The shanties drawing the largest crowds seemed to be highly interactive. One was a witch’s candy house, inside of which they were concocting some sort of potion. Outside, a second group had formed to recite a curse together—perhaps to rid the city of demonic ICE agents. (Good idea!)

A few shanties away, a three-piece rock band was pounding away aimlessly on some bass guitars, as if they were just learning how to play. But perhaps they were just expressing their frustration that their shanty was located in the far corner of the village, a little off the beaten path.

Inside the Yellow Submarine shanty, you could get a look at images taken at the bottom of Lake Harriet through fake portholes. Not far away, a large group of heavily clothed visitors was square-dancing to a three-piece string band enclosed in a plastic bubble.

promenade left with your left hand ...

The caller was standing on a small stage outside with a mic. “Second-hand left, dosey-doe, and round the corner.” She was good.

A biologist was giving a lecture in the beaver dam house, constructed mostly of thin reed window-blinds. it was too crowded to enter, but we spent some time admiring the colorful papier-mache fish dangling from strings outside, designed to evoke the beaver’s largely underwater habitat.

One shanty focused on the notion of inescapable trade-offs. In order to feed the fire, you had to pull a slab of firewood off the wall outside, thus increasing the draft inside. Another option would be to spend some time outside in the cold, sawing new planks for the walls … or the fire.   

Near the entrance to the village, we passed a booth consisting of a large array of small chalkboards, upon which passers-by had taken the time to complete somewhat personal statements. Most of the statements were phrased as double-negatives, and I had a hard time determining precisely what was being said. For example: “I don’t try to not need ….” One of the answers was “drugs.” A second, scrawled on the same slate, was “financial planning.” Another statement began: “I know I want to not try ….” One of the answers was “gourmet mac and cheese.” A second was “insomnia.”

From first to last, it was a cheery and heartening scene. And the fun continues next weekend. Details here.

 

A Few Days on the Coast

After the extended Christmas hubbub, full of early darkness and general good cheer, Hilary and I almost invariably head for the fresh air, stunning beauty, silence, and solitude of the coast—the north coast, that is. Lake Superior.

It’s long since become a tradition.

We try to mix things up a bit from year to year, of course. Theme and variations. But the drive up is often punctuated by a visit to the Sax-Zim Bog. The following days are likely to include a few cross-country skiing excursions, pasties and fresh fish on the menu—not on the same night!—with herring, Jarlsberg cheese, Aunt Nellie’s red cabbage, and Ingebretsen’s liver pâté prominently featured on the lunch-time smorgasbord. Gooseberry Falls State Park. Two Harbors, and Shovel Point are all near at hand.

Our cabin is right on the shore, a half mile from Highway 61. It has a gas fireplace which generates a lot of heat and is easy to flip on. We’re always eager to relish the call of the coyotes (or wolves) and the startling brilliance of the night sky—especially the Quadrantid Meteor Shower on January 3.

And then there are the books.

What was that remark by Kierkegaard? “The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.”

Operating on that principal, as usual, I limited myself to eight or nine books. That might seem like a lot, but you never know what mood you’re going to be in. Among my choices were a small early paperback of Milosz’s selected poems, a book about the Old Testament called People of the Book by A. N. Wilson, and a wide-ranging collection of essays about literature and art by Clive James called As of This Writing. Add to that a slim hardcover by a once-famous Columbia University prof, Sterling Lamprecht, called Freedom and Nature, an obscure (but handsome) paperback by Neal Atcherson called The Black Sea, and a fat hardcover collection of nature writings by Barry Lopez with a cool blue cover called Horizon. I was set. And if none of these books struck my fancy, too bad for me. I’ll have no choice but to read at least one of them, anyway. (Though in a pinch, the discard shop at the Two Harbors library is usually full of pleasant surprises!)  

But as we walked into the Wilbert Café in Cotton my mind was engaged in deeper issues: the burger or the pasty or the BLT? It’s a small but spacious room with pale green walls; several groups of people (with binoculars) are usually sitting in the booths along the window that looks out across the snow-packed parking lot and the four-lanes of highway 53, an expanse that’s uniformly flat and dreary. But the talk is lively. And during our recent visit Sparky Stennsaw, one of the moving forces behind the bog, happened to be eating there. As he was leaving, I heard him say to the group in the next booth, “Head for Two Harbors and on up the shore to Grand Marais. Look for that mountain bluebird. Look out beyond the harbor for long-tailed ducks.”

A man sitting alone a few tables to my right tried to catch my eye once or twice. I learned why a few minutes later, when he engaged another customer in conversation, telling the man about the ten acres he was developing near Cherry, and the two cabins he already had for rent. He gave the man a card.

Our own sightings in the bog were modest: a Canada jay near the visitors’ center, a boreal chickadee in the midst of a flock of black-capped chickadees at the Admiralty Road feeders, and a flock of pine grosbeaks at a platform feeder on Auggie’s Bogwalk  No hawks. No owls. Not even a siskin.

The bog had gotten a bit of snow, and the black spruce forest was stunning with the late afternoon sun coming in low and bright through the frigid air.

Rather than head back to Duluth and up the shore, we decided to cut cross-country through a chunk of the north woods we didn’t know well. I had never been to Forbes before. A few years ago we skied some sketchy trails near Brimson, a town better known for the New Years Eve bashes at Hugo’s, the local bar, which seems to be almost the only building in town. 

But the setting sun was behind us and the sky to the east was tending toward peach near the horizon. It had a scintillating dreamy quality that reminded me of childhood summers in Oklahoma. Quite a contrast to the street-light glare of the strip malls and body shops of the highway into Duluth.

It was still light when we arrived at the resort in Castle Danger. We drove to our cabin (#8) to find that it was already occupied! Hmm. I’d printed out the reservation. There was no mistaking the number. We stopped in at the office. “No, you’re in #11,” Jamie said, looking slightly confused. “The key’s on the kitchen counter.” End of problem.

There followed three or four days of reading, hiking, skiing, cooking, and staring out the window. Bright moon through the clouds, but very few stars. A few passing ore boats.

I won’t bore you with all the notes I took during our afternoon reading sessions, but one remark by Lamprecht is truly golden: “Despite the admirable character of the kindly Kant himself, the Kantian influence, in practice, has been as deleterious as in theory it has been incoherent.”

Bravo!

A second trenchant observation won’t hurt. “Nature is a lush welter of teleological profusion. Man faces the moral task of organizing as best he can what nature offers with total disregard of centrality.”

And while we're at it, how about this one? “Scorn of matter is a mark of arrogance of spirit. People of healthy spirituality never lose capacity for enjoyment of material goods.”  

We enjoyed our frozen walleye “from Canada,” breaded, fried, then baked, while listening to some poundy, youthful piano sonatas by Beethoven, then watched the gentle waves outside the window reflect a shimmering moon. 

It was a supermoon, in fact, and it also happened to be at perihelion. The last time than happened, in 1912, the extra gravitational pull set one or two icebergs loose, and the Titanic sank!

 

Homage to Mercury

There’s moisture in the air again. I'm sure you've noticed. It's raining. It’s still dark at 6:45, but on a clear day, Jupiter is bright and high in the western sky, and the sun is brilliant on the ungainly heaps of snow. On a clear day, it also streams in above the piano on a lower plane than at any other time of the year, shoots across the room, and comes to rest on the light switch in the hall. 

Mercury is the god of quick changes, I think. They say you can see it just before sunrise in the southeast these days. I haven't made the effort, but I can see its influence everywhere.

It all began with a dreadful cold snap. During that bitter spell, we sat in the den by the warmth of the Jøtul stove, though we might just as well have been up on the North Shore. As usual in such situations, I had a stack of books by my side on the couch, including Petrarch’s Bucolicum Carmen, a biography of Erik Satie, a slim book about aesthetics by Bence Nanay (part of Oxford’s Very Short Introduction series), and a collection of essays by John MacQuarrie called Studies in Christian Existentialism.

Also near at hand was my journal, into which I occasionally jotted a few notes. For example:

“Nanay rejects both beauty and pleasure as foundations or standards for aesthetic judgment. In fact, he rejects judgment itself, preferring the term “analysis.” He quotes Susan Sontag, who characterizes aesthetic experiences as ‘detached, restful, contemplative, emotionally free, beyond indignation or approval.’ Evidently Sontag didn’t go to the movies much.”

The weather turned that night, and the next morning we went on a spectacular ski, following Tornado Alley south in bright sun through the woods, under Highway 55, across Bassett Creek, and around a loop through the white pines just north of Glenwood Avenue. We've walked these grounds many times, but had never skied them before. The freshness in the air was genuinely intoxicating. 

In order to make the most of it, I shoveled two feet of snow off the deck and oiled the track on the garage door, which was squeaking something terrible. (Alas! It still is.) Then I split a few pieces of the firewood stacked in the garage  into narrow strips for kindling, which will come in handy sooner or later. It won’t stay this warm for long.

The next morning the air was just the same, but the snow had crystalized during the thaw, and we left the skis at home during our morning ramble down alongside the creek.

Last night the rain arrived, slightly weird, but still atmospheric. 

This morning I was cleaning up some emails from Earth/Sky News and was cheered to learn that the universe, like me, is slowing down. The theory had been that it was not only expanding, but accelerating. New research offers a more reasonable view. In findings published November 6 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a team of astronomers argued that “the universe is in a phase of decelerated expansion.” 

Here's the gist: Early arguments for accelerated expansion were based on measurements of distance to faraway galaxies using Type 1a supernovas. These supernovas were regarded as the universe’s “standard candles,” but new research suggests that their brightness is related not only to distance, but also to the age of the stars that created them. Once you factor that information in, the data suggests that the universe expands and contracts like an accordion, rather than expanding and thinning out with relentless and ever-increasing speed.

I like that idea, and Empedocles would have liked it, too, I think.  

Meditation on Peaks

I suppose those maps you see in the newspapers and online showing areas of “peak leaf color” serve a purpose. But anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors is likely to notice that the show begins in early September and goes on for several months. By early November the basswood tree in our front yard is bare while the silver maple out back is still green, though it’s looking a little pale. The branches of the sugar maple nearby spread their brilliant—I would almost say buttery—yellow leaves above the garden. Meanwhile, the Norway maple that I can see from where I sit here at the computer is kaput.

The concept of “peak” color begins to sound misleading and even misguided.

I’ve raked the front yard three or four times by now. It’s an excuse to get out into the cool and marvelous afternoons, and say hi to a few passing dogwalkers perhaps. Besides, our weekly yard waste pickups run 'til Thanksgiving. That bin can’t handle everything, but it helps.

I am amused repeatedly by the fact that if I rake half of the yard one day, the next day the leaves will once again be distributed evenly over the entire expanse. How can that be? As I rake, I ponder whether the effort of raking lightly three or four times is equivalent to the effort that would be required to rake the entire yard only once after all the trees are bare. I’m not terribly interested in the answer to this question, however. The best time to rake is when you feel like raking.

I have also been in the habit of grinding up the leaves with a lawn mower. They say it’s good for the grass.

* * *

Whatever else it may be, autumn is peak walking season. Fresh cool air, low sun, few birds. And yes, the color. Grabbing the fading light while we can, then home to a fire in the fireplace, perhaps. It’s the same cozy, and perhaps slightly melancholy, feeling, year after year.

The biologist Rene Dubos explains:

On the one hand, the external manifestations of human existence change continuously and at an increasing rate under the influence of social and technological innovations. On the other hand, man’s anatomical structures, physiological pro­cesses, and psychological urges remain in phase with the cosmic conditions that prevailed when Homo sapiens acquired his biological identity.

Though we may live in cities, in other words, we re­spond to changes in our environment the same way the Neanderthals did. Nor, in Dubos’s view, are our seasonal moods driven entirely by changes in light.

The behavioral patterns associated with the sea­sons cannot entirely be accounted for by changes in temperature or in the luminosity of sky. They have their seat in the genetic constitution and originate from a time in the evolutionary past when man lived in such direct contact with na­ture that he could survive only if his bodily functions and his mental responses were pre­cisely geared to the sea­sonal rhythms of nature and the availability of re­sources.

I don’t see how genetics can entirely account for the immediate emotional impact of mer­curial fluctuations in air pressure, cloud cover, tem­perature, or light, however. When I step out onto the deck on a cool autumn morning, sights, sounds, and smells that weren’t there even a few days ago incite me to rhapsodize. Low light, frost on the deck, dew in the long pale grass, and the chrysanthemums, which the Chinese associate with the beauty and melancholy of the season:

           I remember, when I was young,

How easily my mood changed from sad to gay.

If I saw wine, no matter the season,

Before I drank it, my heart was already glad.

               But now that age comes,

A moment of joy is harder and harder to get.

And always I fear that when I am quite old

The strongest liquor will leave me comfortless.

Therefore I ask you, late chrysanthemum-flower,

At this sad season why do you bloom alone?

Though well I know that it was not for my sake,

Taught by you, for a while I will open my face.

                               —Po Chü-i, (812)

The penultimate line of this little gem, in which the poet acknowledges the radical separation between his fate and the ebb and flow of his circumstances, seals its modest beauty.

      

Halcyon Fall Days

It’s become a struggle, almost, trying to make the most of the seemingly endless string of beautiful fall days we’ve been having. There have been excursions to the Landscape Arboretum, the river banks of downtown St. Paul and Mounds Park, Bud’s Landing at Spring Lake Regional Park, and even an overnight down in Forestville. The coup de grâce was a leisurely three-day trip under clear blue skies up to Itasca State Park.

We were in no great hurry to arrive at the park, and took a few secondary roads east of Rice to visit the Crane Meadows Wildlife Refuge. We spent a half-hour strolling along the Platte River through an oak savannah and were rewarded with a sighting of a bittern in the reeds on the opposite bank. They’re not exactly rare, but bitterns are hard to spot; I hadn’t seen one in five years. I also caught sight of a small bird moving through the underbrush and managed to get a good look with my binoculars. “I think that’s a Harris sparrow!” I all but exclaimed.

“You’re right,” Hilary replied. She’d pulled out her phone and identified the short, wheezy call on her Merlin app.

Our next stop, a half-hour up the highway, was Morey’s Fish House in Motley. We’re fond of their herring in horseradish sauce, and also picked up two nice walleye fillets for dinner, along with a pint of seaweed salad. “We eat quite a bit of that in California,” I told the woman behind the counter, by way of idle conversation.

“Do you harvest it yourself?” she replied, with a straight face.

That night we cooked up a fish dinner at our cabin rental, and later took a walk in the dark down to the Douglas Lodge parking lot in hopes of seeing a few shooting stars. Zilch. The Draconid meteor shower is almost invariably disappointing, and this year was no exception.

The next morning we hiked an unnamed two-rut road just west of the north entrance in cool fresh air and glancing sunlight, flushing a grouse and a pileated woodpecker, and noting the many young pines that had been capped with slips of white paper to protect them from browsing deer. 

On the Bohall Trail, where many of the pines are more than 200 years, the seedlings and saplings had also been capped. 

The dogwood shrubs had lost most of their leaves and the trails we took seemed pleasantly open. We came upon bittersweet, highbush cranberries, and even some grapes. In the six miles we walked we met up with only a single group of hikers.

Late in the afternoon, a sheet of gray clouds arrived, and we decided to take a short trip up to LaSalle Recreation Area, a few miles north of the park. We took the trail from the picnic area down through the woods to the dock and looked out on the deepest lake in Minnesota--225 feet, so they say. We circled down a few gravel roads on the return trip, passing prosperous cattle ranches and hardscrabble homesteads that looked like something out of a Knut Hamsun novel, startling a few magpies in the process. No corn in sight. Hurray!

I had brought up a fine selection of reading materials: Death by Black Hole (Neil deGrasse Tyson); The Works and Days (Hesiod); The Limits of the Known (David Roberts); Silk Dragon II (Chinese poems translated by Arthur Sze); and Last Night’s Fun (Ciaran Carson). A book for every mood.

Did I do any reading? Nothing to speak of.

We left the next morning, but not before hiking the Roberts Trail, where the air was crisp and the ground moss was frosty. Or simply dead. Not a loon in sight on the lake.

   

Ratatouille in Half an Hour

 

Yes, it’s in the oven, and I’ve got a strict deadline.

Why ratatouille? Because we were walking the aisles at Trader Joe’s this morning, gathering ingredients for our upcoming pesto-making day, and I spotted some bulbous purple eggplants sitting in a bushel-basket alongside a produce gondola otherwise cluttered with onions and potatoes.

“We’ve got to make ratatouille at least once this summer,” I said.

“I’m not that keen on it… but why not?” Hilary said graciously.

So after she left for her knitting group, I got to work.

I made an error immediately, choosing a Brazilian album to listen to as I minced the garlic. That wasn’t right. I switched to a CD of music for wind instruments by Darius Milhaud.

This might seem an even more inappropriate choice. Milhaud’s music tends to be buoyant, open, casual, and spring-like, and these selections are no exception. The frequent harmonic clashes are meant to be rambunctious and exuberant rather than distressing in the serial Germanic style. If memory serves, Milhaud even did the soundtrack for Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), one of Jean Renoir’s more frothy and frivolous films.  

Yet we’re just now entering into that luscious season of late summer, when the air gets cooler, darkness comes earlier, there’s often dew on the ground in the morning, and a touch of welcome melancholy begins to seep into our thoughts.

On the other hand, Milhaud hailed from Aix en Provence. We went to a wonderful concert at the Milhaud Institute there in 1989. Didn’t understand a word anyone said—many of the songs were performed in Russian, in fact—but the vibe was more than friendly. Ah, those were the days.

And ratatouille is a Provençal dish, after all, and eggplant is just now coming into season. The first piece on the CD is “La Cheminée du Roi René.” The "chimney" of Good King René of Provence, that is. For whatever reason, the pairing was perfect.

Years ago I made a “home cookbook” containing recipes we make often. I do a reprint maybe once a year, adding new things and sometimes taking things out that we no longer make. That ratatouille recipe has been hanging by a thread for a few years, but now I’m glad we kept it. The dish turned out well.

One bittersweet element signaling the approach of fall is the growing irascibility of our backyard hummingbirds. A female or a juvenile will arrive and alight on the feeder, only to be chased off immediately by a ruby-throated male, who doesn’t linger but disappears into the woods himself. What’s the point of that?

As we were out on the deck enjoying our dinner, I got up for a minute and stepped over to the edge to survey the back yard. Just then, a hummingbird flew right up to my face, hovering no more than a foot away. He moved to the left, then to the right, always facing me, as if he (or she) wanted to get a good look at this strange creature from every angle.

They say hummingbirds can be curious. I didn’t get a good look at it because I was reluctant to open my eyes fully so close to such a fast-moving and potentially aggressive creature, but I didn't flinch, either, and the sound of beating wings (fifty times per second) was loud.

As it flew off into the woods, I felt strangely blessed.

The Blaze of Summer

The key to enjoying the hot summer months is to get out early in the day. The bristling sunlight and the cool shadows make a delightful mix, summoning a spirit of exhilaration that seems almost heaven sent. We’ve had more than our share of rain this summer, but it’s been good for the plants, and there have been plenty of fresh, sparking days, too. Days of heart-rending beauty.

One morning Hilary and I drove south down West River Road with our bikes to Minnehaha Falls and took a trip up the creek to Lake Harriet. Bright, cool and spectacular. The trails were uncrowded, the gardens by the Longfellow House were stunning; and the pickleballers at Lake Nokomis—trim and athletic—were having a blast.

By the time we got back to the falls the Minnehaha Art Fair was in full swing. (Before setting out we’d seen the rows of square tents lined up under the trees like an Arabian bazaar, but had no idea what was going on.) The line at Sea Salt was already long, so we gave up on the dream of a calamari lunch and took the plunge down the first aisle.

It struck me almost immediately that the quality of the work was high, though many of the objects for sale inhabited that broad but vague realm between fine art and gift shop merchandise.

Halfway down the first row I was drawn to the linoleum block prints of Matt Otero.

Across the aisle, at a tent devoted exclusively to long, narrow bowls carved out of mid-sized pieces of birch with the bark left on, I was struck by the seeming incongruity of the sign: Erv Berglund – Fridley. Erv was standing right there, and he looked Scandinavian, as did the art, so I took a chance and said: “You look like someone who should live in Scandia or Lindstrom.”

Erv nodded and said, “I used to do some hunting out that way. I grew up in South Minneapolis. There was a Dane down the street, and another Swede on the next block.” My God. He had an accent!

We made our way down the aisles, past jewelers and silk-screeners, potters and weavers. I tried to convince one soap-maker to look into the possibility of linden soap. “Is that an essential oil?” she asked. How would I know? She looked it up in a book that was sitting on a table nearby. “Hmm. Yes, it is.”

During our stroll Hilary was on the lookout for the woman who made her purse. She loves that purse, but she needs a new one.

We have several friends who have made a good living selling things at events like these. But after two or three aisles everything starts to look slightly superfluous and vaguely meretricious. (I blame it on the heat.) Having failed to locate the food trucks (if there were any) we returned to our bikes and cycled the remaining quarter mile to our car, which was parked near the entrance to the lock and dam. A stunning morning, well spent.

A few days later we headed west early to the Landscape Arboretum and took a stroll around the grounds. The day lilies were singing, the herbs were fragrant, and the bedding plants were spectacular. Even the orangish shades were appealing in the long shadows of mid-morning. We cut behind the Snyder Building on our way back to the car and met up with a young man selling coffee on the terrace. Hilary commented on the book by the Buddhist monk Pema Chodron that was sitting on the counter of his cart. She’s a fan.

"I’ve read all of her books,” he said. “They’re pretty similar. But she’s helped me through some tough times.” I asked him what he did when he wasn’t baking in the summer sun on the Arboretum terrace selling coffee. “I’m a yoga instructor at LifeTime Fitness,” he said.

I couldn’t quite picture it. “You mean, like poses and mediation and stuff?”

“I think you’ve got the general idea,” he said, smiling good-naturedly.

A woman was watering plants with a sprayer hose a few feet away. As we passed her she said hi, and I said, “If it gets too hot, you can just spray yourself.”

“I do. I do,” she said. “I just spray up into the air and down it comes.”

“Would you spray me?” I said.

“Really?”

“Sure.”

So she shot a shower up into the air in my direction. That was refreshing. Unfortunately, as she brought the nozzle of the hose back down she inadvertently “let me have it” with a direct hit to the chest.

“Oh, I sprayed you too much,” she said with a sheepish giggle. “Well, don’t worry. You’ll be dry in half an hour!”

Though the afternoons have been almost unbearably hot, we hosted my cousin Rich and his wife Sarah for lunch on the deck one day at noon. 

And a few days ago we met some friends for a late afternoon performance at the Theodore Wirth Trailhead given by the Mixed Precipitation Opera Company. They were doing Mozart’s Idomeneo, an early “opera seria” that’s sometimes referred to as his first masterpiece, though it’s seldom performed.

Mercifully, the troupe had decided to move the performance into the cool and capacious confines of the Trailhead building itself, rather than out on the grass behind the building. And the show was an utter blast.

The group takes its opera seriously, in so far as the voices are strong and the singing heart-felt. But they ham up the drama as if it were a SNL skit. The orchestra has been replaced by a cabaret quartet consisting of cello, violin, accordion, and guitar. And by editing out two thirds of the material and adding a few pop tunes and jivey dances here and there, they succeed in keeping the audience amused—even those who might not like opera much. We loved it.

You can hear a snatch of the music here:

 

Bear Head Lake State Park: Home on the Range

We took a few days off recently and headed north to Bear Head Lake State Park, which sits deep in the woods on a large peninsula extending south into the largely undeveloped lake. By “woods” I mean the North Woods—a mix of pine, spruce, aspen, and hardwoods, hazelnut and dogwood, ferns and sarsaparilla, that was logged more than a century ago and is now robust again. Many of the white pines in the park were too small to be harvested back in1910; they’re majestic now. 

The remains of some of the largest open-pit mines in the Western Hemisphere are located nearby, but you see them only occasionally along the highway, vast depressions in the earth, often surrounded by mountains of slag and clothed in a veneer of scrubby vegetation. What you see more often are the towns that once supported the mines—Gilbert, Eveleth, Tower, Virginia, Biwabik, Aurora; the ore was largely depleted decades ago, and now most of them are struggling.

At this point I might note that my mother grew up in Virginia, and we visited her folks from time to time. Though I didn’t play hockey, we watched the annual high school hockey tournament together year after year with great interest. I’d heard the names Mountain Iron, Roseau, Baudette, and International Falls many times before I had the slightest idea where they were. (Check out Jim Hoey’s fine book, Puck Heaven, for more details.)

My mom and her two older siblings on Lake Vermilion

Later, my parents bought a slice of land on a cove in Black Bay, at the west end of Lake Vermilion, and we built a boxy plywood cabin there, making sure not to disturb the towering red pines growing nearby. In time, by imperceptible and almost Proustian degrees, the natural mystique of the Iron Range sunk in, and it was compounded later by the summers I spent canoeing in the BWCA.   

A few years ago Bear Head S.P. was voted the best state park in America as part of a promotional campaign sponsored by Coca-Cola. I don’t know why. It doesn’t even rank among the ten most popular parks in Minnesota (which highlights a troubling aspect of the democratic process more generally: people who know absolutely nothing about the issues often do the most voting).

Yet Bear Head SP does have an attractive array of features. First and foremost, it’s a boater’s park. It’s on a large lake, but the shoreline along the campground area is riddled with inlets that would appeal to visitors interested in kayaking, canoeing, and—yes— paddleboarding. 

If you take the path through the woods along the shore between campground loops you’ll pass a number of makeshift docks where overnight visitors have casually moored their vessels and hung their life vests out to dry, evidently on a first-come-first-serve basis. Across the inlet lies the boat landing, a five-minute drive down a gravel road through the woods.

The campsite we reserved, sight unseen, would not be considered glamorous by anyone. It’s exposed to overhead sun for most of the day. The afternoon shade arrives at around 4 p.m. when the sun drops below a few scraggly trees and shrubs.

But almost immediately upon our arrival we spotted a female redstart in the bushes ten feet away. Then the male. We set up our camp chairs and sat down in time to get a good look at a chestnut-sided warbler in the shrubs on the other side of the picnic table. A few minutes later a northern parula arrived, so close I could see the double break in its eye-ring.

“This is going to be great!” I said.

But it wasn’t great. A scrawny (but cute) chipping sparrow was a frequent visitor. Two flickers in the distance. A catbird sitting on a boulder on the far side of the campsite. Slim pickins.

What was great was the openness and privacy of the site. We enjoyed looking off at the distant trees, the blue sky, fireflies at night, a good view of the (hazy) midnight stars, and no other people in sight.

Nevertheless, we left camp the next morning after breakfast to hike the Norberg Trail, which starts near the landing, the beach, and the unusually sophisticated “visitors’ center,” which is modern, air-conditioned, and fitted out like a suburban showroom you’d see in Design Quarterly.

The trail is lovely, winding through mature forests with the bright blue lake often in sight through the trees. Norberg Lake itself is a peculiar sinkhole with mineral-rich, turquoise-blue water—some people might call in a kettle lake. The return route follows a different path, and it’s also fine. Three miles of beauty, solitude, sunshine, and semi-open woodland bliss.

From there we drove a half hour west to the Kawishiwi Falls Trailhead, a few miles east of Ely. The hike itself is short, easy, and popular. The view of the falls is impressive. At one point, while we were examining an unfamiliar wildflower, a not-so-elderly couple squeezed by us. A few steps later the man turned and said, “Gee, we finally passed someone.” He seemed pleased.

The day was heating up by the time we set off on the two-mile loop around Blackstone Lake, a few miles further east on Fernberg Road. The light was getting harsh and the vegetation was scrubbier. Serviceberries were in bloom here and there, and Hilary also succeeded in harvesting a few handfuls of early blueberries. A young couple was camping at the walk-in site. We could see their bright yellow tent and hear their cheery voices as they swam together across the lake. They were having fun.

Back at the car, we took a short drive down the road to Moose Lake, one of the most popular points of entry into the BWCA. In 1968, at the age of 16, I headed out from here with friends Carl and Dave for our first wilderness experience without adults. A year later, my dad, my brother, and I explored one of the most beautiful parts of Quetico Provincial Park: Agnes, Kawnipi, Cutty, Sark, Kahshahpiwi. I remember the names of the lakes, but I hardly remember the trip itself (though Agnes Falls is truly unforgettable.) In 1980 we took a trip with two other couples down Knife and Kekekabic and around through Insula to Snowbank, stopping for weak root beer one afternoon on Dorothy Molter’s island. And Hilary and I started a trip here at Moose maybe fifteen years ago, though the weather was so bad on the return trip that we paid one of the numerous water taxis that ply the lake to give us a ride the last few miles back to the landing.

Truth be told, the Gunflint Trail has always been our preferred avenue of approach to the BWCA. I remember all these Ely-based trips now, as I stop to think about it, but the Moose Lake landing holds little nostalgic appeal for me. On our recent visit, we didn’t even get out of the car.

Our plan was to stop at the Subway in Ely to buy some sandwiches for dinner, then return to Bear Head for a cheese-and-crackers lunch at the beach. 

Sitting at a table under the pines, we listened to the merriment at the beach a hundred yards away, watched a family of common mergansers swim back and forth a few feet from shore, and convinced ourselves that after seven miles of hiking, we weren’t really in the mood to take kayaks out into the increasingly choppy lake. Next time, for sure.