News From Down the Lane

I took a walk down the lane this morning, all the way to the county road and back.  It snowed overnight, like it does most nights in winter.  We'll get more snow this afternoon, and more still overnight.  My plan to leave for home tomorrow afternoon is growing less certain.

It's quiet.  Most of the noisy birds have left for winter, and the ones that remain are busily going about their work without talking.  The family of eagles that was nesting atop a red pine near the edge of our property has left, probably headed west to the Mississippi River where the water stays open most of the winter making fishing easier.  Squirrels are still digging up pine cones and nuts and scurrying away with them.  Deer tracks, coyote tracks and rabbit tracks are all along the edge of the road and leading into the woods.

Walking down the lane is the way we get neighborhood news.  Anyone who is walking or driving stops for a chat. News is exchanged, jokes are told.

Chet plows my driveway.  He's done so every year for the last 20 years.  He seems to be AWOL today so I knocked on his door.  His wife doesn't know where he has gone, and they don't have cell phones.  "Tell him I've got the twenty I owe him" I say.  I don't owe him any money, but the promise of $20 will bring him around.

Ray stopped his truck and rolled down the window.  Deer season wasn't very good this year.  The wolves have thinned the deer herd.  The wolf pack that lives a half-mile north of here seems to have moved on, maybe because they need an area with more deer.  The ice isn't thick enough to go ice fishing, but when it's thicker the perch fishing should be pretty decent, at least that's what the DNR says.  The DNR doesn't know anything, though.  They should all be fired.  There's a mountain lion in the area, a couple of guys saw it and called the DNR.  The Ranger saw the foot prints, but said they aren't enough proof because somebody could have made them.  Well, I gotta go, wife's making soup for lunch.

Bob was walking his little dog.  "A bichon", he said telling me that he got it from a dog rescue organization.  "Not a good hunting dog, Bob" I offered with a smile.  "No, ha.  I'm done deer hunting now, mostly I fish.  Don't have to climb a tree and wait for the fish to walk past.  Plus, some days I just anchor the boat out in the lake, turn on the baseball game and nap."  Bob's wife died five years ago and his daughter moved to the Twin Cities.  Daughter wants him to move there so he can be closer to her and her husband.  "I'm not moving, I told her.  It's still close enough to drive over for a visit.  Besides, I've lived in my home for 30 years, since I got out of the Air Force, and I don't want to move."  His new wood pellet furnace works great.  Two pallets of pellets were just delivered for this winter.  Glad the power company is coming through next year to bury all the lines.  Our electricity goes out every time it storms or snows.

Further on, Walter and Cheryl stopped their car for a few minutes.  "The Klisseg's 18 year old boy died.  Blasto.  He caught it in the woods logging with his father. By the time it was diagnosed, he was near death."  Nice family, they supply my firewood.  They lost an older son in a car accident a few years ago.  I can't imaging what they are going through.  Mr. Klisseg has a college education but wanted to work in the woods.  He's a logger, as was his father, and as are his brothers, uncles, cousins and one sister.  He knows more about the Civil War than anyone I've met.  Cheryl reminded me that everyone in Washington is an idiot who should be fired, at the very least.  "None of those people who make the laws ever set foot up here.  They have no idea what their damn laws do to us."

George was at the mailboxes.  Said that he had had been taking his transit and surveyor's rod up and down the lane last summer and made some drawings for how it should be sloped, filled and re-graded this coming summer.  Thinks it'll cost about $500 for each property.  Did I want to go in?  Sure, thanks for doing this.  The lane took quite a beating last year and it needs work.  Asked me to "pray for Ted and Sarah; they've been having trouble in their marriage.  And pray for Mrs. Johnson, too."  That's north woods gossip.  Elsewhere it would have been "Didja hear that Sarah caught Ted with Mrs. Johnson?  Looks like they're getting divorced."   It's bad to gossip, but never bad to ask for prayers for someone.

Chet pulled up as I made it home.  "I hear you've got that twenty for me" he says.  "Sure do, Chet.  And can you push the snow out of the drive on your way out?"   "Will do, Mike" he says.

That's the news from down the lane.