Pelican Lake
Traffic on I-35 was heavy for miles, trucks towing jet-skis, campers hauling canoes, bumpers belted with lawn chairs and coolers, kayaks and bikes, outdoor enthusiasts racing north for the holiday, thinning just past a junction called Can of Worms connecting I-35 to US-53. Finally a stretch of cruise control for my legs, a fresh posture for my back. I’d upgraded from a Kia Soul or similar, at the time thinking I’d save a dime, cop a new identity — hip old dude. The upgrade, your uncle’s Camry, was still in budget, leg room, low profile, and comfier, if still false, identity — hip replacement dude. But I was glad for it. I’d already stopped twice to tend my body: lunch in Duluth, and two hours before that, Starbucks near the Minneapolis airport where I bought a coffee and croissant microwaved without my consent by a young Nordic blonde which was fine, I guess, because I would’ve said yes anyway. I placed my chocolate croissant on the car roof to ooze in its wrapper before stripping bare-chested in the parking lot. The morning sun warmed my skin. I was feeling California. I buttoned up quickly and stuffed my undershirt in the console where I forgot it the next six days. Heavy on camera equipment, light on clothing, the tee I could’ve used. Where I was staying, there would be no towels. No door locks, either. And a breach or two, depending on how you count.
Cruising north of Duluth, I opened the window to cooler air and unwound in a wilderness corridor, the highway straight, purposed like an Ojibwa arrow rushing through second-growth pine, birch, and aspen. From lofty rolling crests, the canopy sprawled like a rumpled carpet. Deep blue lakes dotted the vernal like gems. Crows and hawks soared. I turned up the music.
I was full-throat into a halting, heartfelt singalong with the Replacements’ raspy Paul Westerburg
Look me in the eye, then tell me, that I’m satisfied. Are you satis-fied?
when the music dimmed, an incoming call from Virginia — a town of population 8400, where I knew not a soul. I declined the call. A minute later, dim again. I declined again, feeling just the tiniest bit dissatisfied.
A reviewer on the band’s Wikipedia page wrote of the Replacements’ lead singer-songwriter, “Westerburg has the ability to make you feel you’re right there in the car with him, drinking from the same bottle.”
***
If the past year of my life were a rock-n-roll tour, this trip would be the finale, the sold-out show recorded for posterity, replete with t-shirts and matching stage banner, a backdrop image of the tour mascot — a fierce, guitar-strapped bear, arm raised in rock-n-roll salute under the title — Paws for Sobriety, The Reclamation Tour.
I was ten months into a renewed dedication to clean living. I’d been partnering with the body temperance the last ten years, stepping lightly, a decade-long, loosely held embrace, one foot in, one toe out. Left to my own devices, I would mis-step after a sober stretch of, say, three, five, eight months. Name your span. I was consistently inconsistent. I’d like to claim a longer string — one year of pearled lucidity — but I wouldn’t know. I never counted. In my mind, I didn’t need to. Not that guy. Sobriety counters were awkward, imposing their values, yanking your strand to make their weepy amends. If I wanted your amends, I’d break dance them out of you. Keep your struggles to yourself, and I’ll keep mine, buried alive and kicking, pounding and screaming at the sarcophagus lid, thank you. And goodnight.
***
I was singing into my water bottle, an hour south of my destination, Orr, population 211, when the volume dimmed a third time. I thumbed a button on the steering wheel, and through the car speakers, a faint Hello? Hello? I recognized the voice, John, the owner of Grey Wolf Lodge on Pelican Lake. He could hear me, I could barely hear him.
We’d talked before, five months earlier, February, to rebook my initial reservation. The lakeside cabin I’d reserved through hotels.com for three nights, July 2nd – 5th, was not available, double-booked, a mixup left unexplained. Back then John had asked, “Would you be willing to stay in another cabin?” He had worked in education before stepping to the dark side — administration — a school principal. Now he owned a lodge. “Ever stayed at Pelican Lake before?” I would be in town for a photography workshop at the wildlife sanctuary ten miles away, my first time in Minnesota. My only alternative, one that didn’t add significant time to my sanctuary commute, was a landlocked motel in Orr, next to the dual gas station-grocer in the shadow of a lone traffic light. After accepting the replacement cabin, I checked the lodge map — my cabin was located away from the secluded shoreline, adjacent to a walking path that led from lodge to community fire-pit, on full display for any guest wanting to play a round or two of three-hole putt-putt golf.
Now John was contacting me, an hour before my arrival, to say my cabin with the putt-putt view was double-booked. “Something happened when you cancelled your reservation,” John said. “Don’t worry. I’ve got three options.”
***
Not that I’d seen it coming, but there were hints. Pelican Lake’s website could’ve used updating. Messages filtered through the hotels.com platform were odd. After an email confirmation in February, John messaged — Still coming? — once and again a month later, as if my intentions unreliable. I forwarded flight plans. I gave my credit card number over the phone, but was never charged. I had chalked it up to mom-and-pop lodges in northern Minnesota, old school reservation systems. Now I was suspecting for holidays, or whenever, he deliberately overbooked, bumping shorter stays, prioritizing weeklong renters. I still preferred to believe his reservation system buggy, or his lodge struggling financially, a cash cow. All along, I’d had my reservations.
Then again, maybe John was right to be skeptical. As the trip neared, I had bouts with imposter syndrome: Is this trip really happening? What was I thinking? Do I have the skills? Experience? The tripod? The workshop encouraged all skill levels. Know the exposure triad — aperture, shutter speed, ISO — bring a manual. I made purchases: a 300mm-700mm telephoto lens, a remote control shutter release, backup battery and memory card. With each new purchase, more doubts: How does vibration reduction work? This new lens is heavy. I should have practiced more.
I practiced outdoor in morning light on my sleepy, disinterested dog.
My goal for the workshop was one frame-worthy photograph. My trip extended beyond the workshop three more days. I had other goals, or hopes, really: to smell a bear, hear a loon, see the northern lights. My sister’s husband, a developer who’d stood face-to-face with a bear in the woodsy area he would develop for residential, where he’d live and raise his family, said, “Wet dog, I imagine. You taking a gun?”
I laughed.
He said, “No, I’m serious.”
At a graduation party in June for my niece in a pool clubhouse with only one table, that for the catered spread, I told another brother-in-law about wanting to smell a bear. His mother, visiting from rural eastern PA, sitting in our circle, leaned over and grabbed my arm, nearly spilling the plate of barbecue in her lap, the one in mine too, said, “Vinegar, I’m told. No, trust me. You find yourself deep in the woods, you catch a whiff of tossed summer salad? Run like hell.”
***
“Option one,” John’s voice rose, clear now that I’d found the volume on my phone, “I’ve got an island cabin I think you’ll like. Option two, my personal RV on the grounds. Three, the North Country Inn downtown, I know the owner, she’s confirmed a room.”
Late afternoon, I followed the wood-painted signs down a gravel road pulling my four-door sedan into a grassy parking area, one last spot between a tractor and an unhitched flatbed trailer. The white lodge with black shutters looked like a well-kept family home, pieces of folk art scattered across an expansive lawn: a rusted antique wheelbarrow of flowers, a colorful metal rooster. John wore a trucker hat and khaki’s, sturdy chin, like an off-season Jim Harbaugh. He was directing a crew of three, thick-neck types in denim and tan work boots. I walked toward them, soft hands in my Kuhl pockets, when from nowhere a galloping German shepherd emerged on a beeline for me.
Shepherds are gorgeous, dignified dogs, the two-tone, black and tan coat, beseeching chocolate eyes. As the shepherd’s shoulders churned the thirty yards of lush lawn, I remembered the breed most likely to bite, not the pit bull, and had time to consider how my blood might look sprayed across the green grass. The dog clearly had a mission, seemed to be asking something of me, something of which I should already know, a bit of arcane knowledge, rules, found in, say, a manual titled, When German Shepherds Attack: Rule number one, drop to your knees, head bowed, and offer a forearm for the shepherd to lock its jaw, preferably the weak arm, the one not used for fine motor skills such as toasting a flute or rotating a focus ring. I considered scaling the tractor. It felt like I was trapped in a tragic Robert Frost poem. I would be maimed before I could fulfill my life’s mission.
“Felix, no!” John called, and like that, the dog whirled, vanishing with the thick necks.
“Eric? The bear guy yah? Get your camera. We’ll go see the island.”
John slid into a golf cart parked next to the tractor, “We’ll pass two bald eagle nests on the way.” I knew from kayaking a reservoir near my in-laws house in north Georgia that eagles nest way up there. Bobbing on water a challenge. Not wanting to appear amateurish, I did as I was told, but left the long lens in the car. From where I stood, I could see the putt-putt course, its green turf torn, curled, and spotted with black mold, and right there next to it, the cabin I thought I’d booked. I longed to check-in. John drove us to the boat dock.
Unwinding a thick rope, John said, “Hop in. Sit on the side.” Less unstable than I expected, the fishing boat might sit a family of six. John stood, left hand on the wheel, right on throttle, and looked over his shoulder, a whiff of diesel as we eased back, “You can drive a boat right?”
***
Pelican Lake is a fisher’s paradise appealing to families. I left my boating and fishing licenses back with my tackle box in another life. My dad had once told me every father should fish with his son at least once, and I’m fairly certain we did, once. If it was more, I will never know, my dad died a little too soon, twenty-nine years ago, of cancer at 58, the age I am now.
Jim Sollisch, a Clevelander, wrote about living beyond his father’s age in an essay titled, My Father’s Child is Turning 65, published in the WSJ. He wrote,
And now I realize how young my father was when he died. That he craved all the joys and temptations he always had. That his insecurities hadn’t expired because he reached a certain birthday. Now I know that the voice inside his head was still youthful and rebellious, that time in all its trickery lets old people walk around forever young inside, their core selves immune from life’s chronology even as their bodies bend and twist and their hands spot with age. Now I know that we are all children still, dressed in our costumes of age, time’s makeup perfectly applied.
My dad retired from the post office at 56. Less than two years later, he retired from the temporal world. He had wanted a fishing boat, but ran out of time.
***
“It’s been awhile,” I said, inhaling vapors, uneasy with the lie, the engine revving, the boat’s motion suspended, fighting to change direction. Another man, a true outdoorsman, might’ve answered No, but how hard can it be?
Planning my trip, I pictured myself drawing a paddle across a small, tree-rimmed lake, so small as to require the gentlest maneuvers, keeping still water between me and dads and children anchored, bobbing in boats over their favored fishing holes during my break — three hours mid-day, lackluster light — scheduled into the three-day, dawn-to-dusk photography workshop. I pictured bombardier pelicans, herons posed with their reflections, water dribbling off my paddle, a chickadee alighting on my shoulder.
The lake was huge, small islands of trees, the opposite shore visible but indistinct. Paddling across might take hours. Not a single boat out there. “The lake is 12000 acres, 53 small islands, most privately owned,” John said. The moving air felt good. Pelicans perched on white rocks in the distance. John cut the motor.
“Pelicans visit this lake exclusively, see there, those big white rocks?” “Guano,” I said. I took a few pictures of the pelicans of Pelican Lake, too far to be good pictures, just memories, and we motored on. John asked, “Is that an eagle up there?” The eagle lifted from its nest as my camera thumped my chest. We passed the second nest and John was steering us into the island dock.
“Got to be careful, coming in from this direction,” he said, raising the motor to avoid hidden rocks. The island was a rough circle, about two acres, a small, two-room cabin tucked in the shade of pines, nicely appointed, small lamps, odorless, dim. John pointed out the clean seams, “What you get when a machinist saws logs.” The outhouse was a marvel as well, adjoined by a nifty shower-sauna combination. From a chair out front, surrounded by water and sky, it reminded me of The Little Prince, the book by Antoine de Saint Exupery, where the Prince sits on his tiny, one-person planet, how he could watch 44 sunsets in a single night by scooting his chair back just a little, dropping the sun below the planet’s horizon, again and again and again.
Leaving the island, John pointed out the blind he’d installed. I imagined crouching with my telephoto atop the tripod. A voice in my head: what an adventure, what a wonderful opportunity, just do it, say yes, how hard can it be, forward and reverse, if worse comes to worse, forget the boat, paddle the span every morning, evening, before and after the workshop, like a real outdoorsman who fishes and hunts. I imagined how loud a gunshot from the blind might sound.
***
I keep my dad’s gun in a small drawer in my den. It looks like the six-shooters those dusty cowboys twirl, thumbs cocking the hammer. The butt is pearl, the barrel thin, lightly oiled, and long after, the metal clings to your fingers.
Every time I see it, it makes me think of a Robert Downey interview where he described the grip his demons have, acknowledging his self-destructive ways, he says something to the effect, My addiction is like a loaded gun and I can’t help but close my mouth around the barrel to savor the taste of cold steel.
My dad taught me to oil my baseball glove, replace torn radiator hoses, change oil filters, inspect distributor caps, but he never taught me to shoot. He kept a bow and quiver of arrows in the garage that I remember shooting into a big cardboard box in the backyard. My mom gave me his gun after he went to his grave a little too soon. I knew him to use the gun once. A mother skunk had nested in the hedges that limbed our house. He liked to watch finches and chickadees peck seeds from the tube feeder he hung on a slim iron post stuck in the hedge outside our picture window. Once the birds neglected the feeder, Dad stalked the skunk at dusk.
***
A second voice in my head: You’re no sea-faring adventurer, the island too far. Seven minutes motoring, calm lake, pure glass, sure, fine, if the weather holds, find the right cove, not this cove, stop to shoot pelicans, get confused, turned, lose your bearings. Submerged under your facade lurk dangerous thoughts, a tumbling, roiling core of ironweed, deeper still, basaltic mind-bending boulders, crumple zone. A milquetoast who needs angels to structure his day, you know enough about watercraft to threaten every aquatic tourist, you’ll forego motoring for slow riveted aluminum, sure, add thirty minutes, how early you will have to rise, no time for coffee, no sunrise, just heavy lenses lugged in the dark, drop your tripod, splash, dank air, black water, snakes, are there snakes, what if it rains, a capsize, serious coin sunk to the benthic of Pelican Lake.
As John cut the motor gliding into the dock, a coil of green sprang like a serpent from the water behind us. “What was that?” John asked, answering himself, “A northern pike, I think.” Startled out of water, I’d nearly caught my first fish.
And we’re back in the golf cart to John’s RV.
***
The appeal of fishing, mostly sitting, staring at water, a meditation, I suppose. Understanding hunting is my challenge. I connect on a trophy level, my framed photo the hunter’s mount or tanned hide. Maybe something in early childhood, a father-son ritual. My dad did not hunt; therefore, I do not hunt. He kept three fishing poles in the garage, a canoe, two tackle boxes. I think he would’ve liked it if I’d taken an interest in angling, but he never pushed me into anything. I played Little League baseball and he coached my younger brother. Other dads optimized their lineups for victory. My dad was Buttermaker. He drove eight hours, with his buddies at the gas station where he worked part-time, to a remote lake north of Toronto for a number of summers to fish and booze. He told me once, around the time he and my mom were divorcing, “I only have one vice.”
We canoed together, that was our ritual.
Jim Harrison, a writer and avid outdoorsman, describes it this way in his essay, A Sporting Life,
In spring and summer the boys in town carry either baseball mitts or fish poles on their bicycles. Two different types are being formed and though they might merge and vary at times, most often they have set themselves up for life. During the endless five months of winter one boy will spend his evenings poring over the fishing-tackle sections of the Sears Roebuck catalog while the other boy will be looking at the mitts, bats, and balls. One tinkers with a reel while the other sits in a chair plopping a baseball over and over into his glove just recently oiled with neat’s-foot. One reads about the Detroit Tigers while the other reads Outdoor Life and fantasizes about the time when he will be allowed his first shotgun.
***
“You won’t need a key,” John said, sliding the screen door and bending to collect what appeared to be four or five bean bags lined up across the threshold. The RV smelled of moth balls. I stood at the door as John walked to the bedroom past the shower and toilet. Only room for one. He picked up more bean bags at the foot of the bed and tossed the collection, near a dozen, over my feet outside on the wood stair. I went in, noting the bedroom the least claustrophobic room. There was a small window above the bed, a view of the lake through trees, a small rear door to the outside, where in the lower corner, a splay of duct tape. I turned to John and said, “I’ll take the RV.”
“Great,” he said, “you can park your car here, just keep from blocking the neighbors. I’ll introduce you.” In a lawn chair, a gray-haired woman with a lap of yarn clicked her crochet needles in front of a big shiny RV. “Eric will be staying for three nights. He’s here for the bears.” The woman looked at me through thick eyeglasses, like I’d just emerged dripping from the lake, a bipedal creature from the depths.
And that was that, the last I’d see or talk to John.
I plugged in my laptop, arranged clothes. A coffee pot, cheap white carafe. No filters, no grounds. A few condiments in the fridge, sweet pickles, a reused bottle of water. I flipped every switch, few worked. Water faucet, nothing. I went outside, found what seemed a main, and before stepping back in, I bent to the mound of bean bags on the stoop. On the tag: Mouse Repellent.
Inside, more moth balls, a hint of dead mouse, I tried the faucet. Still nothing. I was reluctant to try the toilet. Stubby toothbrushes near the sink, a tube of children’s toothpaste, purple, nearly empty. No towels. No bed sheets. I scoured the floor for droppings. The duct tape on the back door seemed sealed. A fan above the shower wouldn’t turn on, the screen cracked, caked with dead mayfly. A mirror above the sink, I saw a stooping bald man with bags under his eyes shake his head at me.
The couch was scratchy and held three-fourths of my reclined body so I left and sat on the pier. It was peaceful. The water undulated, mercurial. A family sat in a circle at a near cabin. I kept my back to them, trying not to feel the loner weirdo cross-legged, no fishing pole, just sitting, looking at the water. The pier swayed gently, water lapped at old wood, reeds and algae swirled, vegetative smells. A dog chased a toy off a distant pier, splashed, swam to shore, and a minute later another run, splashdown, swim. I sat until my breathing shifted, my chest let go and I returned to the RV. I had an hour before I was due at the Visitor Center for the workshop’s mandatory safety meeting.
I knew I had to call John about the water when a shadow crossed the screen door. I slid open the door and Felix came bounding in ahead of John’s wife cradling bed linens in her tan, trim arms like an offering. “Sorry,” she said, “John feeds him treats in here,” giving me a brief, sheepish look. Her look wasn’t regarding the dog. Felix sniffed the bedroom, convinced of no morsel, and trotted out.
I cranked the Meat Puppets album, Too High to Die, driving to the Visitor Center for the safety meeting. The last song, Lake of Fire:
Where do bad folks go when they die They don't go to heaven where the angels fly They go to the Lake of Fire and fry Don't see them again until the Fourth of July
I knew the Meat Puppets weren’t from the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but for the longest time I did, because of this song. They’re from the Land of the Sun, Arizona. I flirted with the song for months before the trip.
Now I know a lady who came from Duluth She got bit by a dog with a rabid tooth She went to her grave just a little too soon And flew away howling on a yellow moon
After the safety meeting, where I learned the proper way to retreat from a hungry bear — walk, slowly, backward, palms open — I showered under a vent screen, a square of rich blue sky filtered by dead mayfly. The temperature had dropped, all the windows open in the RV. No towel, patting myself with a poly-blend t-shirt, I convulsed, a severe, body-rocking shiver. A muscle cramped as I dropped to a narrow space for push-ups.
The sun was setting, perfect light for pictures, but I was spent. Not quite enough light to read by, I curled in a ball in bed. The sun kissed the water’s surface, casting a line through the window as the walls closed in and burned gold.
The last verse of Lake of Fire:
Now people howl and people moan And look for a dry place to call their home And try to find somewhere to rest their bones Before the angels and the devil fight to make 'em their own