It
had been a busy day.
There was the morning’s cabin closing, with plenty of opportunity to practice our signatures on the numerous purchase documents. There was the loading of the truck and utility trailer with all the items we wanted to take to the cabin. Then there was the unloading and carting in of those same items, as well as cleaning up after the previous owner. But evening came. A Scotch poured and a martini mixed, we moved to a window. Outside, an expanse of amber wild rice spread across the lake to the nearby islands, waving in the breeze. The lowering sun lit the white and Norway pines on the largest island, basting them with warmth, turning their cool green to olive, the needle strewn ground beneath a rustic red. And if that weren’t lovely enough, an azure sky and lake (where water could be seen through the rice) framed the scene. Mary Jo’s martini clinked my Scotch. “Here’s to the first night at our cabin,” she offered. “To our first night,” I responded.
The cabin provides plenty of opportunities to see wildlife. This marten is a regular visitor. 18
MARCH 2021
NORTHERN WILDS
And we grinned like Cheshire cats.
THE DREAM I know when it all began. It was 1986. Mary Jo and I were living in a two-room cabin in the Boundary Waters wilderness near Lower Basswood Falls. The cabin, built of logs by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, had served as a base for U.S. Forest Service crews ever since. A simple two room design, it consisted of a kitchen/dining area with a wood cookstove and table, and a larger bunk room with an old pot-bellied woodstove and a few rickety bunks. Primitive as it sounds, it was luxurious in comparison to tenting for the summer. For that’s how long we would be there: three months patrolling an area from Upper Basswood Falls to Curtain Falls as volunteer wilderness rangers. When, at last, we had to leave, we agreed that someday, if we were lucky, we’d have such a cabin of our own. Ah, but life gets busy. Years went by. Still, the dream lingered. A pile of boxes grew in the basement containing utensils, plates, blankets, towels and tools that were no longer needed or used at home, but would be “great for the cabin.” In the meantime, we paddled nearly every route in the Boundary Waters and Quetico. Fished Montana and Wyoming.
