It’s hard to envision the desiccated lands and towns or imagine the impact on the Ojibwe who lived there—losing their livelihoods, their woodland existence, their hunting and ricing grounds, and their fishing waters, powerless while watching their environment ravaged for profit and slowly raked away and into the white men’s coffers.
Precious minerals had already been explored by prospectors all over northern St. Louis County. The original gold diggers came and found jack and left. Some, considered fools, stayed on, and being patient and looking stupid paid off for them in 1893 when gold was finally discovered on Rainy Lake and the Little American Mine was established. Meanwhile other mineral hunters who’d failed to find precious metals did discover something else: a tsunami of ore deposits drifting just under the three iron ranges. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
Another wave of big men barreled in to start up the mines, managerial types with lackeys trailing behind at a safe distance, gingerly lugging a lot of dynamite. They landgrabbed the most viable mining land plus anything else they could get their hands on—swamp, bog, lake, you name it. From afar, the bosses sat counting the seconds on their gold pocket watches between explosions. Since the land had been conveniently scalped by logging and fires, mining exploration went off with few hitches and to great success. Our own land is an example, pitted with blasted test sites, dozens of depressions the size of barnyard troughs or larger.
An immigrant’s first view upon arriving, depending on the season, would have been either of stumps and mud, stumps and dust, stumps and frozen mud, or stumps and snow. These newcomers wore yet another set of hats, the shabby haberdashery of the working class: Welsh tweed caps and battered Italian fedoras and whatever mad headgear the Finns and Bohunks had donned when embarking from the old country. Most came to escape the oppression and poverty back home, where there were ugly wars and plenty of tyranny. Finland, as it was ruled by the Swedes, was no picnic, particularly for laborers or free thinkers, which included a good portion of the population. Here in the land of free speech, they could air their communist leanings and get all atheist without being too offensive or getting murdered for it. Hope for a better life drove them here to about the only other place in the world just as cold as Finland but with arguably better jobs. These immigrants, along with legions from other small European countries like Montenegro, formed labor forces that would not labor for too many years in bad conditions before realizing there was oppression here, too, in the great nation of America. Some began revolting, forming unions, rabble-rousing, and making general nuisances of themselves to the guys in the fanciest hats, the investors and industrialists. From a distance, it’s easy to see why communism looked so good to so many at that time. In theory it still does, especially while watching Reds on a digital flat screen costing well over the annual income of an early miner.
The past on the Iron Range is harsh and full of villains and heroes, good guys and bad, but mostly just a lot of plain folks looking to get by. If you were a Native during the heaviest of the mass immigration between the 1870s and 1920s, life was not good. Several unfair treaties were signed in exchange that the Ojibwe might retain their least-valuable lands, and the rest was purloined. Government schools were hastily built with the overall goal to culturally reeducate, their credo being, and this actually written down, “Kill the Indian, Save the Man!” Knock some white into them was the idea. The schools were notorious for abuse and wretched conditions, though the Indian school near Tower, built for the Nett Lake and Bois Forte bands on the eastern shore of Lake Vermilion, was allegedly somewhat less awful if only because the Vermilion school was staffed by Native teachers who allowed children to speak their native language in the dormitories and who tended not to punish them when they slipped in the classroom. They also had access to the Ojibwe grapevine that connected teachers to the children’s parents and relatives, meaning most kids were not completely cut off from news of home and thus were a little less isolated and many of the students and teachers were even related. In 1910, the year my father was born, the population of the school peaked at over a hundred students.
Julia visited the school a few times to show the Native domestics teacher how to operate a sewing machine. I tried getting her to describe the place once, but she claimed she didn’t remember much, just that it was like any run-down school, though the name of a particular girl had stuck with her always: Louisa Blue Sky.
Though my grandmother lived to ninety-nine and was a fixture in my life until I was nearly thirty, I knew little about her family history, only that her parents were caterers and that she was born in Mottling, Austria, and immigrated as a toddler to America with her father, Franc Tancig; mother, Marija Mak; and several siblings. Julia learned English at school and spoke Slovene and German at home, often translating for her mother and older siblings.
At home, I stuck close to the one air conditioner in my back-bedroom office. After ten hours in front of a computer each day, ennui began seeping in. I found myself listlessly surfing the ‘Net. I should have been content, but I’d run out of pathetic Internet dating stories to entertain married friends with and make them feel grateful for not being me, so I tentatively prepared for another round of online dating, though this time would be different. My bar was raised. I changed my profile to reflect what I felt I deserved, not what I’d settle for. If a date was awful, I would walk—no excuses, no Minnesota nice.
Just one more go, then I’d unplug. I leisurely checked the site for a few weeks, but nobody piqued my interest, no one seemed compelling. Then, just as I was about to close up shop, a profile I hadn’t seen before popped up. This new guy looked fresh and seemed as genuine as one can in a few assigned paragraphs and answers to canned questions. He could construct a sentence and liked junk shopping. Of course, what he wasn’t was equally important: born-again, Republican, or short. He didn’t talk himself up much. In fact, his profile was completely devoid of that underlying “the wonder of me” tone that colors so many of them. Even his online moniker was modest: Bonhomie. There was the photo to consider; he definitely had a chin, and his eyes and mouth were set in roughly the right places. He had dimples! And if it turned out he had hair under that cap, all the better.
I’d learned not to bother with any pre-date e-mail chitchat wherein guys blather on with Googled quips, trying to brand themselves as Really Something before the date, as if not foreseeing that they would actually be expected to converse, or what they might consider improv. But the reality is there’s no way to glean character or any detail over the Internet unless the person is performing a striptease on Skype. The new rules included “no time wasted.” If he doesn’t have potential, get out fast, mercenary, efficient.
I examined the fresh guy’s profile one more time. In regard to the question of politics, he’d mused, “How do Carville and Matalin do it?” Ah, I thought. I’m not the only one puzzling. Under “What celebrity do you most resemble?” he responded, “I’m told I look like one of the guys in the Lipitor commercial. I hope I’m the one with low cholesterol.” I made the date.
Thirteen
Lipitor Guy showed up at the restaurant on time, getting points for that (what dating had come to) and extra points for being terribly handsome. And he had all his own hair, which was perfectly silvered at the temples, as if he might run for office after cocktails. He was wearing shoes, not trainers, and a dark gray uber-fabric T-shirt that clung over a good chest and a fit set of arms. We shook hands. Jon, Sarah.
“Huh.”
“Hmm.”
Ever wary on first dates, especially after previous calamities, I took a while to relax. He seemed ever-so-slightly wary himself and for some reason insisted on sitting to my right, which required some chair wrangling and disruption. Was he that fussy about where he sat? Did he have some obsessive-compulsive disorder that prevented him from sitting on anyone’s left, ever? Why did the good-looking ones always come with some glitch? He certainly smelled right enough, and I was soon leaning into his explanation of the musical
chairs. Simply, a tumor and the bones of his inner ear had been removed years before in a procedure he described briefly in nonmedical terms. He was able to make light of losing an eardrum, which must have been a heavy loss for a musician. While I was taking a good look at the dimples, he joked about his surgery so that, looking back much later, I would think, “He had me at melon baller.”
Being one drum short of a bongo set was nothing. From all indications, he lived up to his profile alias, Bonhomie—a good guy. I deemed him not to be dangerous and, after our drink, let him walk me home, where we sat on my front porch and discussed the etymology of a single word for a half hour, and when I had to break out the laptop to Wiki other esoteric things we were equally curious about, we knew there would be a second date.
Appropriately, our second date involved a game of Scrabble, this time on his front porch. We were a little too preoccupied to play very well. I let him win, and he let me kiss him. This one definitely had potential.
A casual third date was followed by a hiatus during which I was away on my long-anticipated yoga week at a retreat center on the California coast in Big Sur, the original seat of hippiedom and New Age plinkyness. While I was there, a volley of e-mails revealed Jon could write an entertaining paragraph and was a stickler for grammar, which only made my knees weaker.
As soon as my yoga mates shut their eyes during meditation session, I’d slip away, unable to concentrate, and compulsively check my e-mail, an activity definitely frowned upon by the docents. But what if Jon had left me a message during the Om chants or Pranayama breathing?
Whenever I heard the one man in class referred to as a “yogi,” I fought to keep a straight face, expecting Boo-Boo to come swinging through with his pic-a-nic basket as we down-dogged or balanced in tree pose. I could barely keep from falling out of headstand when we women were called “yoginis.”
Many guests were from big cities, and like me, they just needed a break and some quiet. Others were diehards, like the radical beyond-vegan parents in the line to get our dinner trays. They were consuming only raw fruits, vegetables, juices, and nuts during their stay at the center. Their two little boys, adorable but zipper-thin, made me want to slip them cheese dogs and Snickers.
Many guests kept to strict agendas that wrung every drop of spirituality out of each moment, intent on blissing out 24/7. The lawns were flocked with people doing tai chi, quietly chanting, fingering talismans, or just standing around on their heads. One day I was hula-hooping near the pool and reading a book when a woman wearing a wreath edged up to inquire, “What are you doing?”
“Hula-hooping,” I replied, “and reading a book?”
“Yes, but what are you doing?“
I thought of Jon with his deep admiration of facts. His e-mails were inquisitive and charming. His down-to-earth perspective made me think of lactose-tolerant midwesterners who ate deep-fried food on sticks.
Returning from my retreat, relaxed from all the yoga and limp from the mineral baths, I forgot to be guarded and skeptical and impulsively invited Jon up for the Labor Day weekend, when the cabin was slated to be finished. Lars had reported that the doors were hung, the windows were in, and finishing touches were being made.
I’d never spent the night at the cabin myself, not even camping, and now I was going with a relative stranger with whom I’d spent a total of twelve hours on four dates. What was I thinking? For one thing, I hadn’t seen him with his shirt off, and for another, The Lake was my place, my haven, my sanctuary, but beyond that, it had come to embody my independence after too many years of none. This Labor Day was meant to be my maiden voyage, a sort of christening: “I am mistress of all I survey,” ad nauseam.
Hadn’t I just given up on men? I hardly knew Jon; he wasn’t exactly an open book. He was taciturn, as Julia would describe anyone hesitant to reveal himself, a trait she admired. Jon didn’t hang out his prizes or try to impress, but then neither did he hang out his dirty laundry or flash any warnings. What had been revealed so far had been pleasant, but might pleasantness mask some major character flaw? As far as I knew, Bonhomie could have been a sociopath or NASCAR fan. My first visits to his house had left me vaguely uneasy until I pinpointed what was wrong—no books! When I finally asked, he explained they’d been in storage since he’d remodeled. Okay, so his books were only out of sight—but what books?
Soon enough I’d know plenty. I’d be alone in the woods with this guy for four days and four very dark nights. Recalling all the sage dating advice from relatives, I remembered “Get him good and drunk” and bought two bottles of wine and invited him over on a school night. For three hours, we yakked about anything and nothing and never opened the second bottle. I’d forgotten about the whole exercise until he left. He passed the getting drunk test with flying colors by not getting drunk.
Then there was: “Tackle a project together.” I already knew Jon was handy enough to wield a Sawzall and do minor plumbing but was prudent enough to hire someone else for floor refinishing (only a fool would tackle his own), but it was too soon to recruit him for any sort of domestic task, so I asked for help regarding a computer problem, of which I have legion. His points accrued when he didn’t lose patience with me like the IT guy or bump me aside like Sam (who, to be fair, has also been known to roll my office chair away gently, as if sending an elder out on an ice floe). Jon straightened out a few of my file gaffes, then offered to set me up on a better e-mail system, plugging me into the one he used, in the process becoming privy to my password, which I took to mean we were going steady.
We packed up the wagon, strapped a futon on top, and I drove north with crossed fingers. Halfway there, we passed a gleaming milk truck and were startled by its reflection of a giant balloon quivering atop the car. Wind had breached the plastic-zipper futon bag and filled it to bursting with air. For the remainder of the trip, we listened to the bag flutter and flap and tried not to think of its effect on the gas mileage, amusing ourselves by watching the expressions of other drivers puzzling over our odd topside spectacle.
From the main road, there are two approaches to the land, both unpaved and rugged. One is a trail once called the Tower-Ely Road, though it’s barely pickup passable and now (of course) called something else. Rusted bits of metal along the ditches could be vintage oil pans or mufflers sheared off by the hump with grass that camouflages jutting bits of stone. Our neighbor Mac had had two tires punctured during a single journey of just over a mile. The other route, longer but less harrowing, begins on a county road named for a respected local man who had tromped or canoed every township and section in the northern half of the county during the forties and fifties, a forest ranger, land broker, and sometimes amateur historian and ethnographer. His notations of various historic Native sites and points of interest are on many survey maps of the region. I was thrilled to discover that copies of the maps could be acquired through the Minnesota History Center library. His son Bill was the avuncular real estate broker who’d showed me so many places for sale and finally gave me the tip regarding our mine-owned parcels. That county road is a well-tended wide gravel ribbon that rises and falls from ridges of high pine down to the water level of roadside ponds. The turnoff to Lake Road is no wider than a driveway, down a sloping blind hill you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking. The maximum speed limit is twenty miles per hour; much faster will undo a front-end alignment. The mile-plus drive from the county road to our driveway can take fifteen minutes even if nothing has fallen across the road.
Jon was likely wondering just how far into the boonies I was dragging him, but eventually we turned at the dead pine and the wooden sign onto the cabin drive. We pulled up to the slight rise overlooking the piney plateau. We had arrived. From the car, the little clutch of buildings looked like a pioneer homestead, as if the historical society had been by and clicked their heels three times. It was finished! Phase one of my dream was complete, and completely charming. The cabin had doors and windows, the outhouse had a metal roof to match the cabi
n, and the ribs of the timber-frame shed stood like an ark-in-progress. Everything was swept and tidy, no sign of construction mess.
On the long drive up, I’d wondered if I hadn’t overhyped the place to Jon. For weeks I’d teased him with “The lichen is amazing,” or “Just wait till you see the crapper,” and a dozen other come-ons. Jon might have been expecting the moon. Looking around as if through his eyes—as if I’d just been dropped there not knowing what to expect—I saw then, and might even have said aloud, “It’s beautiful.”
It really was, and more than I’d hoped for.
Once we examined every corner, wall, and window, we christened the place with a beer, and I stopped jumping up and down long enough to commence playing Cabin! for real. We eased the futon from its giant deflated condom on top of the car, carried it flopping over our heads, and jammed it up into the loft. There was a bed—with a roof over it!
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