WannaskaWriter

    After reading Chairman Joe’s Wannaskan Almanac blog post of  Friday, December 13, 2019 about Robinson Crusoe, I remembered a Des Moines Register & Tribune newspaper article of my grandmother, Anna Louise Barnhart, and one of her younger brothers, Edward Barnhart, when they were reunited in Des Moines, IA, after forty-one years apart.       “You’re somebody I used to know,” she had said. “But I can’t recall your name.”       The stranger laughed long and loud. “I’m your brother, Ed,” he said. “Yes, a person does change a lot in forty-one years,” agreed Mrs. Reynolds, of 819 E. Twenty-second Street, and Edward Barnhart of Brooklyn, NY, who saw each other for the first time in that many years.       The reunion ended a search that led Barnhart, his wife and son, from their home in New York to Iowa where they did not even know what town his sister lived.       Starting at ...

A Memory of My Friend and Cousin Bert Palm  The afternoon sky of December 7, 2015, seemed dramatic, as against a wonderfully blue sky, the clouds varied in shape and opacity over black farm fields south of Roseau, that were totally devoid of snow. There was a light southerly wind. It had been a nice day for Bert Palm’s funeral.   We buried him in the Palmville Township Cemetery, next to his wife, Nora (Dahl) who died suddenly at their home in Roseau last year on October 15. Bert died in his sleep, on December 2nd, this year, one day after what would have been their 65th wedding anniversary. I have an image of Nora, in Texas somewhere, dressed in a sombrero and serape astride a magnificent longhorn steer, with Bert standing aside.  They were visiting their eldest daughter Diane Anderson, and her husband Harlan, of Wannaska, who were wintering there. Bert and Nora were great sports. They did so much together. Graveside, Gail wept as she and I embraced.  ...

   This last Tuesday, October 1st, in Reed River, Sven saw Mac Furlong hurrying down Main Street on his way to sign up for the Big Buck Contest at Normies On Main . Mac was wearing his Reed River Bank clothes so Sven didn’t recognize him right off, Mac walking so serious like, but Sven ought to have known that about this time of year all the local deer hunters are getting real anxious. Beginning soon after the Roseau County Fair in July, hunter types begin walking about the outdoors sports departments in their local hardware stores and sporting goods shops salivating over the latest hunting gear, wearing at least one parcel of florescent orange on their person as if to let the ordinary public know that, they, in fact, are real hunters of a serious nature, although temperatures are yet in the eighties. “See here, my florescent orange insulated cap with earflaps?” “Lo and behold, my florescent-orange camo jacket with elbow padding and several important pockets?” “Check o...

     Standing by an open fire, its smoke swayed by a cooling breeze, I look at the tall hybrid poplar trees along the farm lane. Across the Mikinaak Creek basin, the Red Wing blackbirds twitter from its partial cover of cattail reeds. A far distant jet rumbles by unseen, overhead. Leaves rustle noisily in the oaks behind me.; evening songs of robins, the crackling of the fire; the fragrance of burning wood, its embers glowing gy gusts of wind. Perhaps the coals will last until morning and we can drink our coffee here beside a renewed campfire.      I wonder of our impact here for there is no grand mansion nor log house of character, no machine sheds, no legions of steel grain bins nor acres of concrete padding, underground aeration pipes, no overhead wires or moats around fuel tanks stands against possible fuel spills, no oil-packed driveways, nor depths of seasonal implements hidden by over-grown forests of sweet clover and Canadian thistle, bu...

An unexpected rainstorm after tepid temperatures and windless conditions. Radar indicated the the system to go north of us, but we are in its southern reaches, thunder a way off heralded its approach. The sky began filling with dark clouds; temperatures dropping slightly providing a welcome coolness on the skin. Treetops fluttered. I carried in our plastic picnic table, partially folding it to fit off the aisle in our little porch. Grandson wanted to wait out the rain on his bicycle but as it began to fall more rapidly, Grandma told him to come indoors and bring the bike with him, and so the rain fell straight down, harder, hard enough to fill the gutter over the door and cascade out its open end and plunge splattering into the grass below, its cadence wavering as the rain slowed, then fell hard again. Mists arose in the corral. The drips spattered from the roof edge one by one. The leaves hissed. Cars out on the county road could be heard faraway as the storm quietly moved eastward .....

 I haven't taken many walks on the land this year, although my wife would argue with that statement. It probably seems to her that I'm forever leaving for a walk, going west across the corral, heading out across the tree rows out there, putting up with pesky flies and mosquitoes, doing who knows what.  If I walk out with my camera and a beer in my pocket, then it's just one of these sentimental strolls through the places I've put so much of my energies into over the past 48-some years. Sometimes, I just stand in one spot for several minutes, listening to the sounds around me, just looking at the landscape, the clouds and their play above the contours of the varying heights of trees, or how stages of light affect the scene.  Tree rows in July are still distinct although grown up in grass. I will mow the rows out in late August or  September according to my CRP requirements. I might pull weeds from around a struggling small tree, pull spring debris away so...