Snowshoe Blog

Roger Miller's King of the Road played on the tape deck. My sister, Meghann, was asleep in the passenger seat. We were shooting across Montana, heading for Oregon and the left-coast. It was August 2000. I was just 19; Meghann was 22 and she had recently finished her undergraduate degree. She wanted to take a trip before starting graduate school in the fall. The trip was one of a few I took as a teenager, and it cemented my love of road trips.

We seem to have arrived in Boone, NC, with all pieces intact. No photos, yet, but, with hope...soon. A recap of the trip here: we left Proctor, MN, on Friday, after work. We arrived at MJ's sister's in River Falls, WI. The next day, we called it quits for the driving in Lafayette, IN. We did the swanky thing of staying in Walmart #1543's parking lot along with a few eighteen wheelers; lot lizards were of no bother to us. The next morning, we headed out - south bound and loaded down - as my cousin would say.

It has been a hectic month; and an event crazier week. On the 27th of July, the area was hit with heavy rain. As the evening rolled in, I was cooking dinner (sweet potatoes with quinoa and various vegetables; I have embraced being a mostly-vegetarian). Melissa was standing in the back entryway with the door open; she was watching the heavy rain come down in sheets. The back sidewalk was submerged as the water rolled down from the driveway. I continued to cut and clean vegetables. At about 5:30 PM, something hit the window above the sink; then again, and again - then a lot all at once. It was hail. Melissa watched the yard become littered with nickel-sized hail balls (15 millimetres for you metric people). Lightning flashed and without delay a tremendous crack of thunder sounded. Melissa shut the door. The storm was directly over our little town. Without warning, the wind picked up. The hail slammed against the house; more thunder and lightning.

Ryan, my cousin, would not stop. "Look, a bear! Over there, deer!" Michael Bolton's "How Can We Be Lovers" played on the tape deck. My sister, Meghann, and our cousin, Michael, talked about whatever it was middle-schoolers talked about; Meg made a quick departure from the topic at hand to call Ryan a liar. My mother and her sister, Jane, were in the front; Jane was driving. My cousin, Jonathan, and I watched a VHS of "The Gospel Bill Show". Ryan continued to announce all the amazing northern Minnesota creatures he was certainly seeing in the thick woods.

A week-and-a-half-ago - a bit later than normal in the evening - and the treatment for Lyme disease was underway (it is now pointing toward something else - lupus or rheumatoid arthritis - both, of which, at the age of 30, I should not have) and the not-sleeping-well and the upset-stomach were on full assault modes. An email came in from a friend; it was a forwarding from a post to the UMD Farmers' Market mailing list. Someone had a friend with a tree full of honey bees. They wanted the bees gone.

For a while, I have been tacitly involved with a loose group of people who are strong supporters of urban farming. So, strong and so passionate about it, they campaigned for and successfully changed a city ordinance allowing for the keeping of chickens within the city limits of Duluth. My involvement revolved around being technical support for their website, duluthcitychickens.org.

After checking the hives on June 6, 2010, it was determined, with much regret, that the Minnesota Hygienic Italian queen...must die. The warrant was signed when I located a supplier of new MHI queens, placed my order, and 5 days later, a small, buzzing package was in the mailbox. The queen arrived last Thursday, and we got home from St. Paul far too late (bad weather postponed our departure from 5:00 PM until 9:00 PM) for me to depose the monarch; it would wait until the next day.

We headed to the lake today; took some photos when I was not fishing.