WannaskaWriter

      Mikinaak Creek    For over 20 years I worked an evening shift, typically 3 pm-11 pm, in a local 'toy factory. During all this time, I missed the hours of sundown when the countryside of northwestern Minnesota quieted down and the through-traffic ceased; the ravens gave their last 'croak,' and with their noisy cousins, the crows, would fly off to bed, leaving the Mikinaak Creek basin to the owls, deer, and other animals that preferred night to day.     So it is, this evening, March 18th, 2022 as the sun slowly descends toward the horizon, I stand outdoors along the creek and listen to the hoo-hoots of owls and the quieter 'uh-uh' response they make, somewhere back in the spruce and popple woods. I think fondly of my late Uncle Martin Davidson and what he would say of this scene he helped provide me since 1971, when he was 71, my age now. I think he would be pleased at the growth of the 1500 white spruce seedlings he watched my friend Jeff Barker and I take acro

True Stories of Our Daughter's Childhood 1990-1993   " We didn’t make her fearful, we made her brave."            Turning in at Bemis Hill, in Roseau County, Minnesota, I snapped a few images of the nicely maintained CCC-era log cabin and its immediate sledding hill, but I didn’t stay long. Leaving, I turned west on the road I came in on, then a half mile or so, took the Bemis Hill Forest Road north, along the bottom of the Hill, to get onto smoother county roads again, when my daughter called from Ankeny, Iowa, several hundreds of miles away.     Even in this day of global communication at our fingertips, it’s strange thing to me, to be in the middle of nowhere, figuratively speaking, leaning against a car along a remote northwest Minnesota forest road with a legendary sledding hill behind me and a forest that stretches for miles all around me, making me its possible total human population for five square miles, conservatively speaking, the thought of which is

    “Did You Do Something You Regret?”    I texted my friend Joe to see if he was up for a late morning ‘Bott’l Run’ to Thief River Falls to recycle glass bottles, etc, per an urgent request by my wife who claims I become ‘obtuse’ when confined at home for too long, and this was definitely one of those days.      Joe’s bread-making schedule was agreeable, so he readily accepted my invitation, and within an hour we were flying down Roseau County Road 8 toward Strathcona and Beito Blvd., off Marshall County 48 east of Middle River; the windows down, the wind in our hair.     Joe was his amiable self. He was well prepared for a late winter cross-country roadtrip, having sprung all his clocks forward an hour, hours before I called. He had put on his tattered felt cap with its earflaps tied in front, his old ratty down vest, and varnish-stained chore coat; minus proper winter boots he admitted, far away from home. He made visible note of his low-sided waterproof footwear he ha