During our “You’re amazing, I hope you like me too” phase we hiked up to Old Baldy, a knob of granite above Burntside Lake’s North Arm. I was a new staff member at YMCA Camp du Nord; Mike Manlove was the year-round caretaker, From the ridge above the camp, glimpses of the lake glinted through breaks in the trees.  Mike helped me identify pine species by silhouette. Just when I thought he might kiss me, he said, “Let’s play hide and seek!” We were a mature twenty-four and twenty-seven.

I laughed. “Um, OK. You hide first.”

“Count to fifty.”

“Fifty! Don’t go far. I’ll get lost trying to find you.”

“Count to fifty.”

I counted quickly. “Here I come, ready or not!” I turned around. Mike was just behind me, lying in a little needle-strewn clearing with his eyes shut. “I found you.”

“No, you didn’t. I’m invisible.”

His joke was doubly funny because Mike was not an invisible kind of guy. Only five feet ten inches tall, most people thought of him as much larger because of his powerful build. His laugh was unfettered and loud. The stories he told made other people laugh with him.  His love was solid as the ledge rock we were sitting on. We were married that October, in a snowstorm.

I miss him most when I’m in the woods. Pausing on skis to absorb the silence in a stand of pines, I remember working on the North Arm Trails as Camp du Nord winter staff. After a big snowfall, we dropped lunch, a thermos, and tools into a Duluth pack and strapped on snowshoes. Mike, heavier and stronger, led the way while I stamped along behind firming up a base. Often, we saw moose tracks. Once we watched a moose trot across the trail. Our favorite lunch stops were a fallen tree alongside a chattering stream or a tumble of boulders on the shore of a newly frozen pond. We widened our trail on the way down. The next day we skied on yesterday’s track, carrying snowshoes so that we could set base on a farther reach of trail. Mike, always the wrestler, sometimes grabbed me up, threatening to dump me into the snow. I watched for moments when he was bent over, tightening a binding or pulling nippers out of the pack, to try to shove him over. We talked about mundane things. Should we haul this long, stout stick out for knocking over what Mike called poop castles forming in the outhouses? We planned water hauling and other logistics for du Nord guests. Arguments broke out at times. Two strong-willed people doing cold, arduous work isn’t a fairy tale after all. But we laughed more than we fought.

We talked seriously too. I’d learned how to snowshoe in Mr. Anderson’s Earth Science class in Cloquet Middle School. My mind expanded like ice in a bucket when he taught us about the interconnectedness of soil, plants, animals and the weather on snowshoe field trips. A heavy snowfall meant better warmth and cover for grouse, not just the hassle of shoveling the driveway. Mr. Anderson taught us about the Greenhouse Effect (now called Climate Change). Scientists were trying to raise the alarm already in the early 1970’s. Mike’s dad was a YMCA and Lutheran Church Camp Director whose second Bible was A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. Mike and his brother, Steve, helped their dad with erosion control projects on an overgrazed ranch in the Black Hills. Together we were concerned about the consequences of our actions on the future of the woods around us and on the planet.

At du Nord, we lived in Belfry, a one-room cabin with no running water.  Once a group of guests (as I remember, they included a judge, a U of M professor, and a 3M executive) lobbied for flush toilets to be installed in the winter cabins. One complained that the outhouse for their cabin stunk. Mike laughed. “That outhouse didn’t stink until you guys got here.” The cabin was used mostly on weekends. Frozen poop doesn’t stink--much.

In 1984, we built a home of logs cut from a stand near Soudan. We watched Len Bielawski, our log builder, hug each tree, looking up the bole to determine how straight it was. Building with local materials and labor was important to us. We burned wood as our main heat source and used off-peak electric heaters as back up. We didn’t install running water until our second child was born. In these ways our carbon footprint may have been smaller than the average American, but it wasn’t unusual in Ely. We contributed plenty to the current climate crisis in other ways. Driving nine miles to work, sometimes in separate cars, and delaying installment of more efficient windows and doors are just a few examples. I continue to drive too much, leave lights on, and stay silent about climate change.

Local consequences of global warming are no more invisible than Mike was in our game of hide and seek. Arctic sea-ice melting means that our air conditioning system is faltering. The biggest change in the Ely area is in nighttime winter temperatures. Already we’ve lost an average of a week of ice cover on lakes in the fall and one and a half days in the spring. On a year when ice doesn’t leave until fishing opener or, like this past November, sets up extra early, we can’t see the problem, but the long-term data is there. The Minnesota DNR website contains good information on climate change concerns for Minnesota including amazing temperature and precipitation data.

Warmer winter temperatures have drastically increased mortality of tamarack from the Eastern larch beetle. Swaths of these gold-lace-in-the-fall, lowland trees are succumbing across Minnesota. The emerald ash borer, which can survive winter temperatures to xx below zero, moves ever closer, threatening black ash, also a wetland tree. Our dramatic polar vortex last winter may have helped slow the beetle populations into the Ely area, but the trend of warming winter nights will continue. Moose, bat, and bee populations are struggling while Ely sees an increase in raccoons and skunks. Moose numbers have dropped so sharply that the DNR has suspended moose hunting indefinitely. First Nation people with hunting rights have also limited the number of moose to be taken.  Populations of evening grosbeaks and other boreal birds have dropped dramatically. The causes are multi-faceted AND climate change amplifies other deleterious factors.

 When Mike died, I learned how to adapt, how to mourn the loss of a loved one. He’s been gone twelve years now, but he still isn’t invisible. Consequences of his life continues to ripple out through our two children, the trails he laid out and maintained, and the stories people tell about him. I’m not sure how to adapt to and mourn the loss of the boreal forest. My granddaughter may tell her children about tamaracks turning gold in the fall, adventures on frozen lakes, bats swooping over the lakeshore at dusk and reducing the mosquito population, and moose munching aquatic plants. But these iconic northern occurrences may be invisible to future generations of Elyites.

I have hope. People in the Ely area are already doing many things to shrink their carbon footprint. A partial list includes: shopping locally; re-purposing items through Ely Swap and Sell  and Ely Drop and Shop; re-placing leaky windows and doors; shopping the Farmers Market; turning down thermostats (one stalwart local keeps her thermostat at 48 degrees at night and 55 during the day); heating with wood, riding bikes; buying energy efficient cars, furnaces, water heaters, and lights; eating less meat; refurbishing existing homes rather than building new ones; installing solar panels; supporting political candidates addressing climate change; electing to pay extra on power bills to support renewable sources of energy. Although national and international policies are important, our actions as individuals and communities can make a big difference, too.

In the next twelve years, we have an opportunity to drastically cut carbon emissions and so reduce the speed of climate change. The global temperature has risen one degree Celsius (C) and will continue to rise to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels because we’ve literally been stamping on the gas pedal and only just begun to apply the brakes on this fossil fuels hotrod. But if we can cut emissions enough to hold the rise to 1.5C (2.7F) rather than going to 2C (3.6F) or worse, we may hope that remnants of the boreal forest may linger on north facing slopes and in deep valleys around northeastern Minnesota. I struggle to grasp what sounds like a tiny difference. One detail that helped me was that it’s the difference between the Arctic, our air conditioner, being ice-free once every 100 years (1.5C) or once every 10 years (2C). per the World Resource Institute (wri.org)

Trails and buildings constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) of the 1930’s can still be found in the Ely area. The CCC camps were a government response to a human-caused change—the devastating dust storms, as well as the stock market crash. People were starving. Americans rose to the challenge then. We can do this now. I don’t want the boreal forest Mike loved to become invisible here. I want my granddaughter to snowshoe with her children and grandchildren, telling them, “I didn’t ever get to meet my Grandpa Mike, but he loved it out here. He’s glad you like being here, too.” 

For the table on the difference between 1.5 and 2.0:

https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/10/half-degree-and-world-apart-difference-climate-impacts-between-15-c-and-2-c-warming

DNR Climate Change Information:

https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/climate_change_info/index.html

Essay samples:

My essays, some short fiction, and a few poems are published in the Ely Summer/Winter Times, a full color magazine published by Raven Words Press. https://www.ravenwordspress.com/ely-times/

One October morning, my grief split open like a snake shedding skin grown too small. My soul expanded with the knowing, “I am okay alone.” More than okay—happy, buoyant, strong.

Then an old joke popped into my head: a man pleads with God day and night, “Please, God, let me win the lottery!” Finally, an exasperated God shouts, “So buy a lottery ticket already!” A reminder for me, sometimes growth requires risk.

Later that day, when the tall, handsome man leaned an elbow on the counter, I was happy in my supple new skin—alone and glad for it. The man looked fierce. He wore a black watch cap which emphasized his expressive eyebrows and intense look. A gray, three-day beard added to his macho image. He needed to talk to one of my co-workers so I took his name and phone number to arrange a meeting.

But David Conard was in no hurry to leave. We talked for a while and found we had a mutual friend. I assumed she was his girlfriend. His slow smile softened his image. He laughed at himself, said he was so happy he felt like a fool. He’d just spent time with a Sikorsky helicopter and the pilot—David told me he had flown Sikorskies for the Army.  The other pilot invited him aboard his ship where they spent an hour discussing details and swapping stories.

His laugh was deep and infectious. I let my guard down. Our conversation wandered. I said something about my husband. David said, “You’re not married anymore?”

“No, I’m a widow.” I expected him to say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’

He said, “Do you date?”

The God I believe in has a serious sense of humor. She invented LOL. But I wasn’t sure I wanted a ticket for this lottery. ‘OK Alone’ felt so wonderful.

We agreed to dinner at 7 p.m. on a Sunday night in a local restaurant--public place, my own car, early-exit excuse because the next morning was a work day. When he walked in, I almost didn’t recognize him. He was clean-shaven with no cap covering his wavy gray hair. Three hours, many stories, and a lot of laughter later, I agreed to a second date--a ride on Burntside Lake on his pontoon boat. We would launch from the cabin and boat slip he was renting.

My twenty-three-year-old daughter insisted I take pictures of him and his license plate. She called soon after I arrived and asked to speak to him. A southern gentleman but long past the days of convincing fathers he was trustworthy (he was 62), David answered her ‘who-are-you’ questions with merry eyes. Then she asked, “What are your intentions toward my mother?” He laughed out loud. So did she.   

I prefer to paddle—being closer to the water, getting wherever slowly, under my own power, but David gave an interesting tour of the west end of Burntside. I didn’t know that end of the lake very well. It is beautiful—full of islands. And in early November, wearing many layers including big mittens, I didn’t mind the motor pushing us around while I huddled on the padded bench under a blanket.

The season for boat rides quickly iced over. But I found the captain of the ship to be a big-hearted, deep thinker who celebrated the joys in life, calling them Preferred Parking. We laughed a lot—at each other’s stories, at the antics of our dogs, at the comedy of two mature people trying to fit two full lives together like a complicated puzzle.

By the time the next pontoon boat season rolled around we were a couple. He offered me the helm, patiently taught me to trim the motor, steer the craft, watch the depth monitor among the reefs and islands of Burntside. Most of the time, though, he drove.

A year after we met, David bought a cabin on Burntside—a charming little cabin with an outhouse. A nearby stream fed fresh soil to cattails and water lilies beside his dock. As the lake level fell steadily through the summer, the water beside his dock grew more and more shallow. A boat with a deeper draft would have bottomed out in the muck but the craft road lightly on its pontoons.  

The larger deck gave us a lot more negotiating space than a canoe. A good thing, since life aboard the pontoon was not always idyllic. David, a Warrant Officer raised by an Army Colonel was used to commanding his craft whether it was in the air, on the road, or on the water. Sometimes he ordered me, a fierce and stubborn feminist, as if I was a member of his crew. That did not ever go well. He was a foot taller, the owner of the boat, and much more experienced with all things mechanical. But he loved me beyond all reason. Wisely, he waited to tease me about my foot stamping until we were back on firm ground and the storm was over.

Sometimes we argued because I wanted to paddle rather than motor. David suffered arthritis from exposure to agent orange when he was in Vietnam. But he was proud and wouldn’t admit that his hands ached too much to grip the paddle until all other excuses were torpedoed by me. Over and over, I saw only the strong, active man and forgot the pain he suffered.  I yearn for the chance to do some moments over again—the chance to make kinder, more loving choices.

We settled into the habit of grabbing picnic supplies and spending the evening adrift near someplace beautiful, of which there is no shortage on Burntside. We tied back the front gate so our dogs could lie in the opening, their noses raised to the streaming air. Together we celebrated sunsets, tiny sand beaches, the wonder of water so clear we could read the scratches of glaciers on bedrock far below the surface. David had led a deep life, full of adventure and unorthodox choices. His stories were often about people he’d known who amazed and delighted him. We drifted, gently rocking on the water, talking.  Slowly I learned. Pontoon boats aren’t about speed. They gave David with arthritis, our parents unstable with age, and people laden with island supplies, access and joy.

Many times, we didn’t even start the engine but used the moored craft as an open-air living room. We listened to chirring red wing blackbirds and murmurs of the stream. Watched for muskrat and beaver and great blue herons. Envied our dogs for all the colors they read in the scents lifting from lily pads or riding the breezes off the lake. Life with David was rich with serendipity. He noticed the good in life. Sometimes he startled me by yelling, ‘Beautiful!’ when he was looking at driftwood, a sunset, a seagull soaring.

We lost David to a heart attack just after Christmas 2015. He was 67. His favorite book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach, gave me solace—imagining him soaring into a new dimension.

My circle of people to love has expanded exponentially. His mother, sisters, brother, sons and their families have adopted me. David stories come with me now when I’m hiking, paddling or piloting my own car. I hear him yell, ‘Beautiful!’ when looking at constellations or meeting interesting people. He called any winged beings--birds, bats, dragonflies, even house flies—fellow aviators. Watching them fly makes me smile. Okay and not alone, I won a lottery.