A Whistling Bird in the northwoods

It’s not been the best of times.

A hurricane slams into Louisiana making a total mess of New Orleans before it plows its way all across the country, finally dumping enough rain on New York and New Jersey to flood the subways, turn streets into rivers and drown more than 50 people trapped in their cars and in their homes.

At the same time, through the heroic efforts of the stubborn and the stupid, COVID was back on the rampage, filling hospital beds and sending coffin sales a-booming as the unvaccinated half of the country found itself right back where it was a year ago.

On top of all that, Smokey the Bear was about ready to turn in his shovel and throw in the towel as mega-fires and relentless drought crisped and burned millions upon millions of acres, clouding the air with smoke across half the continent.

All we needed was a plague of locusts for the Red Sea to part…

It was time to get away from it all.

So I did what any good Minnesotan will do when the day-to-day becomes a bit much; I headed Up Nort for a little pine tree therapy. Nothing like a good dose of lake water and the sound of apolitical loons to mend body, mind, and soul.

And, y’know, I think it sorta worked.

I spent a few days poking around the iron range … peering into really, really big holes in the ground and finding out about the life and times of the folks who dug ‘em. It seemed like an appropriate way to spend the Labor Day holiday.

I tell ya, looking at the world from the perspective of guys who headed out to work when it was 30 below, going to jobs were they faced the daily risk of being blown up by a dynamite blast, buried in a rockslide, or squashed by a runaway mine care puts contemporary complaints of feelings hurt by insensitive office politics into a different light entirely. And thinking about how much wood a guy would have to chop to keep frostbite at bay through a northwoods winter, or how to deal with clouds of summertime skeeters in a pre-Off! era gives a guy a fresh appreciation for central heat and window screens.

Sure enough, life’s not perfect, but it’s a darn sight better than it could be … and has been.

Looking around, there were other things to brighten my overall outlook at least a bit.

Standing on the shore of an icy clear lake, rimmed by pine, birch and aspen it was hard to imagine that from 1916 to 1963 it had been the site of the St. James open pit mine – no longer an ugly industrial gash on a pristine landscape, but a public recreation area and source of drinking water for the adjacent town of Aurora. It’s a cycle being repeated across the iron range -- as if Minnesota didn’t have enough lakes to start with.

There were more little surprises. Round a bend in the road and there in a forest clearing an acre of solar panels gleams in the sunlight. Look up, and a line of windmills march above a forested ridgeline. And pull into a public parking lot in a town of fewer than 2,000 people and there are charging stations ready to top off the next electric Chevy, Nissan or Tesla to roll through town.

Somewhat to my surprise, but definite delight, the green revolution appears to be a grassroots kind of thing … a development climate change skeptics might find to be as unlikely as a Jamaican restaurant setting up shop amidst the pines and mines.

They really need to stop by the Whistling Bird in Gilbert … I recommend a Red Stripe to wash down the jerked pork.