Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
OCTOBER 15 2020 – A few days ago I wrote about the art of the stencil. Yesterday, I moved on to the science of the stencil; that is, I took paint to stencil and boards on which I’d intended to make two dozen trail and landmark signs for my tree garden. The “art” part was …
OCTOBER 11, 2020 – For some weeks I’ve been planning signage for my tree garden—trail signs and markers designating regions where I’ve planted white pine seedlings. The project is a wonderful diversion from the discouraging plight of our country. The signage has multiple facets: size, design, colors, materials, and most important, names and directional arrows. …
OCTOBER 7, 2020 – Last Sunday I explored the land beyond my “tree garden” up at the lake. I was charting a route from the ravine I call Djurgården—“the deer garden,” in Swedish—up a steep, wooded slope to a glade of oaks and beyond that, a trail I call “Nor – Way”—a play on words …
OCTOBER 4, 2020 – Yesterday I spent all day in my “tree garden” in the back woods of our family’s lakeside retreat in northwestern Wisconsin. With the advance of fall, countless pine seedlings are now visible across the acreage that was logged several years ago. For months I’ve been trimming brush and poplar shoots around …
SEPTEMBER 20, 2020 – Recently, a good friend of mine, whose sails had been below my horizons for all too long, emailed me an essay by E. B. White: The Sea and the Wind that Blows. White is the writer’s writer (Sea—I mean see—The Elements of Style). I didn’t know that the Man of Style …
SEPTEMBER 19, 2020 – Even though I got lost in the woods yesterday, the main point of this post is not about that—since I’m no longer lost—in the woods, anyway. Nor is this about anything broad- or big-minded; just something . . . down to earth. Know, however, that being lost in the great outdoors …
SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 – If you spend enough time “in nature,” you make realistic judgments. Sure, nature is grand and beautiful. But it’s also cruel, unforgiving, even obnoxious. Over the summer I’ve devoted many hours to trimming around each of my 300 planted seedlings and at least that number of volunteers over roughly 15 acres …
SEPTEMBER 7, 2020 – The time of Covid has brought some silver linings. One is more old-fashioned, unstructured play by kids in the neighborhood. Instead of being carted off to dance class, soccer practice, and Taekwondo, kids are playing hopscotch on the sidewalks and riding their bikes up and down the street. Their shouts and …
SEPTEMBER 6, 2020 – At Björnholm, Dad was always engaged in a project relating to the operation, maintenance, or improvement of the cabin. Mother saw it as “work”—the burden of owning property, but she was wrong. For Dad, whose day job back in the cities involved wearing a suit and managing an array of people …
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020 – We create much wind with our words, and far from curtailing the gush of hot air, face masks are cranking up the volume and velocity of our windstorms. But up here at the Red Cabin, it’s the old-fashioned wind that’s prevailed of late. The other night the south wind blew so …
SEPTEMBER 2, 2020 – Amidst the pandemic I’ve moved the world headquarters of my law office to the Red Cabin. My wife joins me now and again until boredom and her online book business lead back to “the cities.” Although I’m plenty sociable, I’ve also always enjoyed solitude, especially when surrounded by “nature.” “Nature” is …
AUGUST 31, 2020 – As I prepared to return to the Red Cabin Saturday, my wife instructed me to get in touch with John, our reclusive next-door neighbor up here for 30 years. The top end of our drive cuts across his land, and he’d once said that with his “dirt toys,” he could regrade …
AUGUST 22, 2020 – Yesterday afternoon while deep in my “tree garden,” I heard the rumble of distant thunder. When I emerged for a look at the end of our dock, an enormous thunderhead was closing in. I felt like a sailor in one-person dinghy in line with the prow of an aircraft carrier steaming …
AUGUST 14, 2020 – In these fraught times, I find peace in things that will survive our troubles. Things like . . . trees, for example. Here at the Red Cabin, we’re surrounded by thousands of trees, but I’m determined to add thousands more pine—the species that dominated the landscape here for centuries before “progress” …
AUGUST 11, 2020 – If you’ve had elevated eye pressure or family history of glaucoma, perhaps you’ve experienced a periodic “visual field test.” It’s conducted by a machine consisting of a white, two-foot high, vertical half-dome (which I call, “Yosemite”) equipped with a chinrest on the open side, allowing you to stare motionless at the …
JULY 30, 2020 – Two years ago on a flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to LaGuardia, I sat next to a guy from the extreme northwest corner of Minnesota. In the course of trip, I learned that he loved to hunt, hated wolves, loved dogs, hated the city, loved the country. The recent death of his …
JULY 29, 2020 – He died long before our time, but my sisters and I knew very well, people who knew him very well. He was “George B. Holman,” our maternal great-grandfather. His entrepreneurial sweat and equity were in Rutherford, New Jersey, but his rest and recreation were in Lyme, Connecticut. Among his hobbies: gardening …
July 13, 2020 – The other night I stepped out onto our dock to behold the heavens. I do so often and each time become ever more awestruck. High-powered binoculars multiply the starry display into mind-blowing proportions. I think about ordinary physics—time, light, distance; about astrophysics—the make-up of those burning lights. I think about how …
JULY 12, 2020 – When I was little, Dad bought a cheap chunk of farmland north of town and planted 10,000 pine seedlings. Later he bought a larger, cheaper piece of prairie in a neighboring county and planted 20,000 more. His idea was to raise Christmas trees to supplement his income as Clerk of Court …
JULY 10, 2020 – Yesterday, my wife hung a hummingbird feeder on each side of the porch of the Red Cabin. From nowhere appeared a flock of ruby-throated hummingbirds. Actually, the term is a “charm”—according to Decoda, Canadian-based organization promoting literacy (isn’t the internet a wonderful thing?). As I write, four members of a charm …
JULY 9, 2020 – Yesterday evening we sat out on the dock watching some amazing birdlife. The two herons that hang out on the shore several hundred feet in one direction flew back and forth. On one of these trips a heron communicated with a couple of mallards swimming past the end of the dock. …
JULY 6, 2020 – I’m not a “math and science” guy, though in school I did just fine. It’s just that I didn’t advance very far. I was too busy being a “words” guy. Still am. No apologies. And my disclaimer regarding math and science doesn’t disqualify me from deploying words about a scientific concern. …
JULY 5, 2020 – When your dwelling loses power, you’re reminded of the basics of modernity: running water, storing perishable foods, and most important of all—phone chargers. After a lazy, tropical day at the Red Cabin, my wife and I were about to sit down for our Fourth of July “barbeque” supper. Preparations had involved …
JULY 2, 2020 – (Cont.) They pulled up their canoe onto the small landing of the little island and unloaded their gear. While the kids pitched skippers across the smooth waters around the island, Grandpa and Uncle Sugar pulled the big umbrella tent out of its oilskin bag. They soon discovered, however, that the island …
JULY 1, 2020 – Many hardy, nature-loving Minnesotans make annual pilgrimages to the million-acre BWCA (“Boundary Waters Canoe Area”) along the Canadian border. I’m not among them—the pilgrims, that is. Instead, we make regular pilgrimages to our family’s lacustrian Shangri-La in northwestern Wisconsin, south of Lake Superior and well south of the BWCA. Before my …