A writer (and farmer) needs a break now and then. Every summer mine is to drive nearly seven hours north until the road runs into the waters of Rainy Lake (or crosses the bridge into Canada.) I stay with nine other writers on a small private island once owned by Ernest Oberholtzer, the man responsible for preserving broad swatches of nature in northern MN and Canada. In the 1930s (?) he stood up against the proposed hydroelectric projects that would have destroyed the wilderness.
The buildings on Ober's Island have been preserved. His belongings, down to his piano music, have been kept in the cabins. All who use the island are respectful of its past, and its future. Oh, and there are spirits still living in the Main House...but that's another story.
So here's my 'cabin' this year, a lovely building called Front House, because it's at the front of the island.
Here's the view forty feet from Front House.
The kitchen is an old river boat, now surrounded by a deck.
You step inside, and go down stairs. This would be the part that was in the water when it was a boat:
The island does not have running water, so if you want to get clean, your only choice is to jump in the lake. During heat waves, it's lovely. On a normal summer day, however...holy frijoles, it's cold. Here's the swimming beach:
I feel so lucky to be part of a group that has been able to visit this island, off and on, for nearly fifteen years. It's been the place where I recover, think about my life, and get excited about writing all over again.
So, new novel, and possibly a new nonfiction as well (acck-not sure), here I come....
Every good story needs a beginning, middle, and end.
Here's the story of two bottle lambs that live on pasture with their moms, but get a bottle from me twice a day. (I tried embedding the videos in the blog post, but blogger went bonkers, so the best I can do is provide the links. Gaack.)
Beginning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_sahDOpJDE
Middle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEDugl3VaQs
End:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am9fv0-7Kf4
This weekend I leave for my annual writing retreat with 9 other writers on a tiny island in Rainy Lake, between MN and Canada. I say 'annual,' but I missed last year, and the year before, so I'm really ready to 'retreat' this year. I wish a week of calm reflection for all of you as July races by.
Melissa will be in charge of the farm.
Hope she can handle it. :-)
Sunday Melissa hooked up a hose to the barn hydrant so we could have access to water outside the barn. When she returned an hour later, the entire barn floor had flooded, covered in two inches of water. What?
She dug and shoveled until the water drained out, but then we had to figure out what was going on. She turned on the hydrant again, and about 30 seconds later, water came bubbling up through the dirt floor. We quickly shut it off again.
Water coming up through the floor isn't good. And it literally bubbled.
Monday morning Melissa goes off to work. Dealing with these sorts of problems is now my job as Head Farmer, but I must confess that because Melissa has taken care of this stuff for years, I might have become...well...somewhat of a spoiled princess...
So first the princess calls the wrong plumber, the guy who does the inside stuff. "Nope, you want Mark for that."
So then she calls Mark. He says he'll send someone out. The guy comes a few hours later and is very nice. The princess shows him where the water comes up. He shakes his head. "Mark thought the hydrant might need a new float, but it's clearly leaking from the pipe itself." [She thinks the word he used was 'float,' but princesses don't like to bother with technical details.]
The guy and the princess look at each other. They both know the pipe, which runs from the well to this hydrant, is six feet below ground. There is no room for a back hoe to come into the little barn and dig. "Someone's going to have to dig with a shovel," moans the princess. The hole must be six feet deep and four feet across so the guy can get down there and work.
The look on his face? It ain't gonna be me.
The look on the princess's face? It ain't gonna be me. (She only uses ain't when she really, really means it.)
The guy fiddles with the hydrant. "Let's check the float first.Could you shut off the power to the well?"
The princess asks him how to do this, then runs to the house, fights her way through the laundry room to the breaker box, and shuts off the breaker to the well. She runs back to the barn.
The guy shows her something. "Look, this hydrant is really loose." He turns the thing at least three times until it's tight again.
"How could that be the source of the leak?" the princess asks.
"If the pipe was loose, the water could have leaked out the threads. Let's turn the well back on and try it."
The princess skips off to the laundry room again, this time confident she knows what to do, then returns to the barn. The guy lifts the hydrant handle and they both stare at the ground, watching for water.
Nothing! 'That's amazing," the guy says. "We fixed it. How did this hydrant get so loose?"
"Perhaps partying racoons, or evil ducks, or barn ghosts," says the princess. Really, she has no idea, but she cleverly disguises this with her reply.
Then it hits them both. "No one has to dig," they say in unison, heaving a mutual sigh of relief.
The princess feels so proud that she's resolved the problem (with a little help from the well guy), that she returns to the house and replaces the broken toilet seat in the master bath.
Princess power!
Some of you may remember that in late May, a visiting (and unleashed) neighbor dog startled our duck, Mr. Bodgepie, into the air. Instead of circling around the house as he usually does, then landing, Bodgepie was so upset that he just kept flying. He flew south, and we found out a few days later, from a neighbor, that he'd taken up residence on the Zumbro River, maybe 3/4 of a mile to the south.
Several captures were attempted, but failed. We resigned ourselves to the idea that he was down there to stay, since he'd have to do some major flying to get up out of the river bed and over the trees, high enough to see our house and barn.
Late last week, 39 days after Mr. Bodgepie's flight, Melissa looked out the front door and shrieked, "He's back!" Somehow the boy managed to get his heavy carcass up into the air high enough, and far enough north, that he recognized home.
That's the good news. The bad news is that his wife Helen was a little miffed that he'd left. She had to raise their three ducklings herself. (Actually, she does this anyway---the males don't really participate---but this is my blog post, so I'm going to imagine she's feeling a bit huffy about this.)
As we watched Bodgpie pie waddle toward the barn, I said, "If he turns left toward the food, he's hungry. If he turns right into the barn (where Helen was), he wants sex."
Not surprisingly, he turned right. Both Bodgepie and Helen wagged their tails, so this was good. But then Helen decided to punish him for abandoning them. No nookie for Bodgepie.
Here are Helen and her 'babies':
Mr. Bodgepie was frustrated, to say the least. (I should note here that our rooster died last fall, so our hens have been celibate, not by choice. Whenever I come up behind one of them, she assumes the position, hoping I can help. Ah...no.) Sunday morning I witnessed a most disturbing sight: Bodgepie trying to mount one of the hens. I broke it up before he damaged the hen, but I suspect she might have been inviting some action.
Bodgepie has always been polite---he spent months wooing Helen before she would trust him. Turns out this time he wasn't willing to wait months. Yesterday, in a flurry of wings and huffing, he chased her out of the barn and, well, nailed her. Apparently this is how it's done down on the river.
For his sake, I hope he remembers that this isn't how it's done on this farm. We'll cut the boy some slack, given his traumatic nearly 40 days and 40 nights on the river, so hopefully he'll remember how to be a gentle duck again.
Another neighbor came to visit last night, with her dog unleashed, so we had to tell her the whole story. It's great that neighbors visit, but we may need to post a signed: If your dog scares our duck back into the air, you'll have to go get him and bring him back. Thanks.
