Who Will Carry the Fire ? (eBook)

More Reflections from a North Woods Lake

Darrell J. Pedersen (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
240 Seiten
Riverplace Press (Verlag)
979-8-9891917-9-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Starting on a 1950s North Woods Lake, Darrell Pedersen weaves everyday life stories, laughter, challenge, tears, to invite us to reflect upon all the people who loved, worked, and sacrificed to enable the quality of life we know. Then he challenges that together we can leave the world a better place than we found it.

Darrell J. Pedersen is the author of two books, Campfire in the Basement: Reflections from a North Woods Lake (Winner of the Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards 2024 Best Memoir) and Who Will Carry the Fire? More Reflections from a North Woods Lake. Pedersen grew up on a remote North Woods lake, in the 1950-60s, and is guided by his deep love for critters, creation, people, and life. He hopes his ability to tell stories, love deeply, and laugh at himself will encourage others to do the same. He resides in Northern Minnesota with his wife, Jennifer. They have three grown, married children and thoroughly enjoy being grandma and grandpa to Anders and Bjorn.

Textauszug

A HOPEFUL CAMPFIRE BURNS

Slipping my choppers off, the bitter cold of that Northern Minnesota January night immediately nipped at my fingers. I could almost feel the icicles forming at the tips. Soon enough, they would start to grow numb, without feeling, like in Jack London’s story, “To Build a Fire.” The character in London’s story didn’t pay enough attention to his need to build a fire to stave off the cold, and he ended up dead. I know I must move quickly. Nineteen years growing up in these north woods had taught me it doesn’t take long to freeze exposed appendages. My leather choppers, lined with Auntie Dorothy’s home-knitted wool mittens, could keep my hands warm, maybe even down to forty degrees below zero. No mittens, however, in below freezing temperatures, meant danger and speedy consequences. Sometimes you just really need a fire.

Back at my parents’ tiny, log home, a thermometer hung on the wall outside the kitchen window. The mercury had all day long been dropping well below freezing and was continuing to fall. That house where I grew up, on the shore of Eier Lake, was warm, heated by our big wood-burning furnace. But now, I was outside that shelter, across the lake, and a couple of miles further out in the woods—state land, no roads, a foot of snow covering the ground. I very much needed to start a campfire if I wanted to warm my fingers and to have warm food to stoke up the fire that burned in my belly. Or the fire of romance in my heart. I needed that fire.

Huddled there beside me sat the recently graduated Duluth Central hockey cheerleader that I hoped to marry, Jennifer McCorison. She had no idea about that. Yet. I had dragged her out into the woods that night. No, she came of her own free will, on snowshoes. This was supposed to be a date. My idea. How is this all going to work out? Need that fire.

Bare hands now, I dug deeply into my coat pocket to pluck out the precious book of matches that rested there. Squatting beside my hoped-for campfire, I shuddered as a shot of cold air slipped under my coat and raced up my back. Hurrying too much now, I let the matches fall from my fingers and into the snow that covered the ground at my feet. That’s what happened in Jack London’s story too, only the guy’s fingers were already so frozen he couldn’t get them to grasp the matches. Dead. There in the darkness, fumbling, fingers already stinging from the cold, I scrambled to retrieve them.

1970-71 Duluth Central Trojans Hockey Cheerleader Jennifer McCorison

The night was clear and still. The stars watched from above, and the moonlight sparkled across the snow as I dug for and found the matches. Offering up a silent prayer, I opened the book, grasped, and tore loose a match, then dragged it along the striking edge of the holder. Once, twice— on the third try, the match sparked, ignited, and a tiny flame appeared.

Carefully moving my hand, I held the lighted match to where it began to lick at a piece of dead birch bark. The bark rested beneath a tepee-shaped pile of dry twigs that I had assembled while my hands were still protected in those leather mittens. The kindling caught, and my fire began driving back the darkness. I added dry spruce and balsam boughs, then larger dead wood, harvested from nearby windfalls. Snapping and crackling, the blaze shot out little balls of sputtering light that launched skyward and disappeared into the night.

I had built my fire at the edge of a ridge overlooking a large, open, muskeg swamp. Scraggly tamaracks jutted up here and there across its untracked expanse. Reflections of this very welcome fire danced across the surrounding trees and snow. I love the woods and swamps. I love campfires.

This was not the first campfire I had started. On Christmas Day when I was eight, surrounded by many cousins, I had lit a campfire in the basement of my parents’ home. Though that campfire started well, it did not end well. The house was saved, but my pride and my hide took a licking. Worst Christmas Day ever for me. My cousins came to know me as a “Little Dickens.” Now, eleven years later, this outdoor campfire would be better. This, for me, was a hopeful campfire. Better thought out. With a positive purpose.

Bundled up, with only my eyes visible, I now sat on a fallen log beside the fire, soaking up its warmth, the beauty of the night, and the beauty of my campfire guest. Reflections of the campfire danced across her as well.

The young woman by my side was more bundled up than me. She had her own store-bought snowmobile suit. I did not. Scarf wrapped around her neck and face, tassel cap covering her hair, and hood tightly secured—there she was. I could only see, there in the firelight, her beautiful green eyes, but I had already seen the deep and rich beauty that lived within her. Jennifer McCorison was only the fifth girl I had ever even taken out on a date. She was the first one who really seemed to care about me, to have an interest in my well-being, my hopes, and dreams. Though I had little clue about love or relationships, she seemed like she might somehow belong in my future story.

So then, how did all this campfire business come to be? Who in their right mind would ever take a date snowshoeing out into the woods and swamps of Northern Minnesota on such a cold night? I did. Maybe that’s why my entire dating calendar could be written down on the flap of the little book of matches that, tonight, rested in my pocket. Jennifer did. She agreed to come along. So far, my plan was working. Well, I didn’t really have a plan, but I was hopeful.

How could sitting beside a cold winter night campfire, deep in the North Woods of Minnesota, far from any road—temperature rapidly dropping far below freezing—be hopeful? Hopeful for what? Survival? The night was growing colder with each passing hour. No, I was not thinking survival. I was thinking future. I was thinking about how to live in the best way as I traveled life’s journey. So, on a freezing winter night, there I sat, trying to win the heart of a young woman who might walk with me into that future. Maybe even walk with me into the woods.

The previous fall, I had brought Jennifer home to see our beloved Eier Lake. My parents raised their three children in a place thirty-five miles northwest of Duluth, where our only neighbors were the critters who lived in the lake and surrounding woods. That October night, Jennifer and I had sat for a long while, legs dangling over the end of our little dock. It was a warm, still night, mosquitoes all gone for the season. Sun setting over our shoulders, the sky was blue. The lake was blue. Resting between the two was the shoreline where the birch and poplar trees literally glowed with the vibrant yellow coloration of their leaves. The maples added in blazing reds and oranges. All this color was framed by the evergreen Norway pines, white pines, and balsam trees. The entire scene was mirrored on the perfectly still waters between us and the trees. Breathtaking beauty that I had delighted in every fall for all my days, yet that night, I mainly focused on Jennifer. It seemed to me that she had a heart for being out in the boondocks, and for being with me.

* * * *

We had met at Camp Vermilion, near Cook, Minnesota. Another wilderness place. We came to a multi-church youth retreat as nineteen-year-old chaperones for our respective church groups. Jennifer was accompanied by her church’s adult youth worker. My best friend, Neil Fredrickson, also nineteen, and I were the adults with our group of teens. Did anyone think through the idea of two nineteen-year-olds being chaperones? After supper the first night, I raised my hand to volunteer for dish duty. So did Jennifer. We cleaned up together. When we were done, I built up my courage enough to ask if she’d like to go for a walk. Anticipating the upcoming worship service, we ended up entering the rustic chapel. It had rained earlier in the day. I sat in a puddle of water on the bench. Jennifer thought I was being a gentleman and was impressed. I simply was completely focused on her and had not seen the water. The next day, courage again surfacing, I asked her to join me for a canoe ride. Lots of time for this external processor to talk, and to do some listening. Stories to tell and to listen to. I got the impression she thought I was not too bad, which would be high praise in the mind of this shy Minnesota Scandinavian.

A dish pan. A wet chapel bench. A canoe seat. The end of a dock. A few more dates. On one of those dates, Jennifer told me she loved me. “Love” was a word I had never heard come out of the mouths of my parents, or anyone else, during my growing up years. Did she love me enough to marry me? My older siblings, Rod and Judi, had both gotten married. I thought it could be time to push my luck and try the same. Could this wonderful young lady somehow be interested in becoming a lasting part of my life and the things that I loved?

Summer is one thing, but how might Jennifer feel about my beloved woods in the winter? Her family had a new Ski-Doo snowmobile and used it a lot. Plus, she was a hockey cheerleader. Those were good signs. My father refused to buy a snowmobile, “too expensive of a toy.” No snowmobile for us. So, how would this young woman do at hiking a couple of miles out into the woods, starting a campfire, roasting hotdogs, and then hiking back—all at 10 degrees and with plenty of snow on the ground? This would certainly not be as easy and comfortable as supper at our usual eat-out destination, the new McDonald’s up on the hill along Central Entrance in Duluth.

Hopeful...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 8.4.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-13: 979-8-9891917-9-6 / 9798989191796