Country Friday, January 17, 2020
cres A Focusing on Today’s Rural Environment
Volume 8, Edition 1
PHOTO BY SARAH COLBURN
Just inside the door to his winter tent, Mike Leedahl starts a fire in his lightweight titanium camp stove, with the smoke escaping through a chimney.
Alive
in the wilderness
Leedahl relishes winter camping, anything nature By SARAH COLBURN Staff Writer
AVON – Mike Leedahl dons his Mukluks and straps on his snowshoes to trek across the land, taking in the elements, from the animals and sunlight to the barren trees. He breathes it in, he lives it. He relishes in the black and white of the Minnesota winters, the starkness of brush against the fresh snow, the tracks that show life continues under the blanket that covers the Midwest. “I just never feel more alive than that,” Leedahl said. Nature calls this outdoor enthusiast year-round; from fishing, hunting and canoeing to outdoor winter camping and assisting with a dog-mushing team, he does it all. And, when it comes to winter camping, as in most things, Leedahl does it the traditional way. That means a cotton canvas white tent, titanium wood-burning stove, his food and clothing packed onto a toboggan that he pulls across the land in his snowshoes.
He becomes one with the woods and as civilization melts away his senses heighten and everything becomes more vivid. The land reveals itself. “Maybe it’s just a part of me, it’s who I am,” he said. Though Leedahl has spent a lifetime enjoying the outdoors, due to life’s many commitments he only returned to winter camping as a sport a year ago – prior to that it had been nearly a decade since he winter camped. For him the season provides a comfort and a seclusion like nothing else. The trails change, the landscape changes and there’s not another human soul for miles. “It’s really hard to explain; the best way to explain it is to take someone out and experience it,” he said. He recalls a trip to the Sawbill Trail north of Tofte on the North Shore and as he tells the story his eyes smile and his face lightens as he remembers the details. “We went six or seven miles in and took another road but it wasn’t plowed … we wanted to go where we grouse hunt in the fall so we took a 45-minute trip in, we snowshoed,” he said. “It was 9 o’clock
This month in the
COUNTRY
PHOTO SUBMITTED
Mike Leedahl and his colleague took their first traditional-style winter camping trip to the BWCA on Kawishiwi Lake.
at night and it was snowing and all the sounds were just absorbed by the snow and the headlamps would barely reach.” He and his brother and his colleague set up camp. That was 2009. In the last more than 30 years Leedahl has learned from some of the best winter adventurers in the world. A science teacher by trade, he’s read books, researched and studied. He’s also attend-
ed symposiums with speakers the likes of arctic explorers Will Steger, Paul Schurke Garrett and Alexandra Conover and Lonnie Dupre. He’s learned to always go into an adventure with a back-up plan though he admits, one time it failed. He and his brother
5
Floating Cows Diane Leukam Column
10 Bessie the Baker Atwater
13 Leaving the electronics at home Richmond
7
Match made in a barn Sauk Centre
12 Country Acres According To: 16 Country Cooking Larry and Beverly Sorenson
LEEDAHL continued on page 2
17 Four-legged family Holdingford