One bridge over the River Kwai has been of concern to us for more than 60 years. It was a Japanese- and British-made bridge on the Thai-Burmese frontier that spanned a river valley of very old topography and very young strata – that is, the remnants of things gone and the accumulation of things new – over a river that... READ MORE >
With Hans Solo captaining and Chewbacca as co-pilot, the Millennium Falcon famously made the Kessel Run in less than 13 parsecs. In his young adulthood Han convinced Chewie to make it 12 parsecs (“Ya round down!” he said). By his middle age it had become “under 12 parsecs.” Either way, the hyperdrive was working that day. In the Fall in... READ MORE >
During the weeks and days of my grandmother’s dying and death she was moved from her apartment in Stillwater, Minnesota, to the hospital in St. Paul and back to a care center in Stillwater, which is on the great St. Croix River. I do not know whether she was happy or not. The maternal side of my family gathered together.... READ MORE >
The most consequential canoe trip we took to the Boundary Waters had nothing to do with me. It was my father and myself and my brother as usual, and nowadays we had two canoes. But this time my brother, who was 14 or so, wanted to go off on his own. I was 17 or so and – to my... READ MORE >
In Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, we ate ‘com,’ which is rice. There were different varieties to be bought at the wet markets, maybe ‘com huong,’ meaning in my translation ‘perfumed rice’ as in the Perfume River (‘Song Huong’) that moved through the ancient capital of Hue, or ‘com Thai,’ which is obviously Thai rice. Sometimes if we had the... READ MORE >
“Horses for courses” is an old phrase used for the phenomena of certain racehorses to perform better under particular racetrack conditions. Some ran better in the slop, a “mudder” we called them, running muscular in the rain or just after the rain in a deep, wet course. Some ran like rolling thunder and crackling lighting on dry, hard dirt. Others... READ MORE >
Summertime is bass time. The largemouth (black) and smallmouth bass (bronzeback). I’m tying bass poppers again. I noticed in June that I didn’t have any good bass poppers. And I didn’t have any of my own. I tied some a couple years ago, but they didn’t sell. And I didn’t keep any for myself. I went back to the fly... READ MORE >
Scouting in the woods is old woodscraft. It is not as necessary with the publication in the 1960s of the USGS surveys providing topography, lake depths, waterways and some vegetation cover (open versus canopied). With satellite imagery now, one can discern the hazelnut brakes – a mass of light green – and mature hardwoods and conifer copses, and the shadows... READ MORE >
You’ll come to trust the veracity of my columns more when I admit in this one that it was twenty years since I had caught a walleye in open water until just twenty hours ago. No outdoors columnist or Minnesotan or fisherman worth his or her salt would admit to such a thing. Twenty years ago I had a studio... READ MORE >
I chew on ideas, like a dog worrying over the leg bone of a roadkill deer. I like coming across things to think about. Often in books I find ideas that resonate with me, or that I disagree with. Then I sit with, or more commonly, walk with or fish or hunt with these ideas, and think. Sometimes I work... READ MORE >
