Rick's Bench

Rick owns forty acres of wilderness located about fifty miles north of nowhere.  Rick's wife is my wife's best friend, and we were invited to spend a few days with them in the home they rented for their summer vacation on the shore of Lake Superior.

The girls went off to art galleries and such one morning, and Rick took me to his land.  I hadn't been there before.  He bought his forty from the elderly grandson of an original settler some 25 years ago. It's hunting land.  There isn't a cabin or electricity, or even a driveway.  He just drives up a neighbor's drive, then onto his land as far as he can go until the land becomes swampy.

Then it's a long hike through thickets, poplar stands, oak and maple, and huge conifers.  If you don't know the land, you'd be lost in one turn.  Rick has been hunting and fishing here as long as he has owned the land.  He knows it very well.  I just followed him, and we both stopped every few minutes to pick the ticks off of our clothes and bodies.

Years ago Rick dragged some slab lumber, nails, a hammer and a saw to a high point on the land and built a bench.  It rests in a small clearing above the Iron River

I sat on the bench for an hour while Rick walked the stream, casting for trout.  Silence.  The only sounds were the sound of the river cascading over small rocks, and a few birds.  Silence, blessed silence.

I sat for an hour, clearing mind and heart.  I can't describe what happened in that hour because I'm not sure I understand it, but I know this: I was a different person at the end of the hour than I was at the start.  And the change is still with me.

More beneath the fold.

We hiked back to the truck, then drove on gravel roads.  This is a harsh area.  There is no business, no industry, very little agriculture because the growing season is too short.  The landowners are mostly the descendants of people who worked in the logging industry a century ago.  Some have lived here their entire lives, driving fifty miles one way to work in the small city each day, then home at night.   And the work is usually driving truck, or working in a factory.  Others are people raised here who moved away, then returned at retirement to live on the family land.

We stopped whenever Rick saw someone in their yard.  It's the way things are done here.  Always watch out for neighbors, stay in touch.  If you hear someone is putting on a new roof, you show up with your hammer and knee pads.  If you learn someone has lost a husband or a wife, you stop in for a cup of coffee and shot of whiskey, listening to some gent or lady sobbing his or her heart out about he loss of the one true love of their life. You stop and help the neighbor with the bad hip stack firewood for the coming winter.  You stop and make agreements for who can hunt deer on your land (answer: everybody).  You do this because there isn't much here other than the people whose names you know.

And because everyone relies on everyone else.   Their happiness and goodness simply oozes out of them at the mere sight of a friend (and stranger) coming up the drive.   The nearest small city is an hour away in good weather.  The nearest hospital is double that.  There are no cell phones, the land lines are provided by a local co-op, and can't provide internet bandwidth.

No one wants to leave, except the young ones who go away for work, but then come back.  People stay in their homes until they die, or until they can no longer live alone.  There is a stoic connection to the land, and to the cycle of life and death.  The retires small-town journalist said it best when we stopped to see him:  "My heart is shot, I'm on a tight deadline, and they aren't going to stop the presses for me!"

I have traveled a little in my life and have seen some remarkably beautiful places.  None are better than that place fifty miles from nowhere where people gladly open their hearts and homes to others.