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Dear friends, I hope you’ve had a wonderful 2018. We’ve had much to be thankful for this year: no cavities, no car troubles, no overdraft notices. Plus we only had five trick-or-treaters on Halloween, so we still have plenty of goodies left for Christmas.
Not really.
It’s been a year of milestones for me. For one thing, my husband and I celebrated our 30th anniversary in October. I’m not sure what he would say the secret to our long marriage is, but one of my tricks is hiding the newspaper when I write about him in a column.
We celebrated the big event with an Alaskan cruise. We had a glorious time and I hope we don’t have to be married for another 30 years before we get to go on another vacation like that one. I will say, a cruise ship is more luxury than we’re used to. It’s a rare thing for me to eat in a place where you have to “dress for dinner,” though I do always have something on.

Grandma Novak and baby Dewey (Charlie)

Every deer season we hear Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Our old FM radio played it on Saturday, a reminder of the sinking of the ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.
We didn’t have a sinking feeling when my relative Greg and I hit the gravel road on the way to the shack Friday morning. Seeing a doe and a fawn run off into the woods could be a good sign. Or the only sign.
Greg had traveled 1,700 miles from San Diego for his first deer hunting experience at age 31. He was eager to get in the woods when we got to the shack.
But first we had to unload the truck, carrying in groceries, water and guns, followed by driving the wheeler off the trailer.
With a fire started in the wood stove, I outfitted the California boy with some wool pants and a nice blaze orange jacket I picked up from Tom Today.

Two deer have been harvested at Camp Cholesterol, both out of the same stand.
Our deer slayer from last year, Megan, returned to take a basket rack eight on the second day of the season. She had been waging war with a squirrel who kept trying to join her in the stand.
Luckily the battle was at a lull when the buck walked in behind her. With no snow on the ground we had to do some searching.
If you’ve been in that situation, doubt can creep in really fast. Did I hit it? Which way did it go? Could I have missed? This is the time where prayer returns to the deer stand.
When I spotted the deer lying near the edge of a swamp, I called for Megan. I think she ran through the woods.
“I was praying up in the stand,” she said with an excited look on her face.
“You’re prayers have been answered,” I responded.

Armistice Day is commemorated every year on 11 November to mark the armistice signed between the Allies of World War I and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front of World War I, which took effect in 1918 at eleven o’clock in the morning—the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day.”
The U.S. holiday was renamed Veterans Day in 1954. As a Federal holiday, it will be observed this year on Monday instead.
At the outset of World War I, Harry S. Truman served in the U.S. Army as an artillery battery commander in France. He served later as President.
Starting in May, 1917 when the U.S. entered the war, over 4.7 million men and women served in the regular U.S. forces, national guard units, and draft units with about 2.8 million serving overseas. There were 53,402 killed in action, 63,114 deaths from disease and other causes, and about 205,000 wounded, according to sources.

One of my clearest and most consistent memories of Grandpa Kuehl would be him coming home from work. In from the cold, pulling heavy boots off, gloves and coat hung to dry near the stove in the porch, thermos and lunch pail on the steps.
Up to the kitchen to take his place at the head of the dining room table. Gram would feed him and then off to his chair in the living room to read the Duluth paper, or if it was Saturday, the Ely Echo. Larry King blaring on the TV…
Grandpa was a picture of a hard worker. He didn’t know how to not work! As a kid, driving out to see him at his latest logging site was a frequent outing. I’d bet there are photos of each of the grandkids climbing a woodpile Grandpa had cut … maybe even a few of the Great Grandkids too!

On the weekends I make up an imaginary set of “to do” lists for the days. Sometimes I write it all down, but sometimes it is short enough that I think I can handle it without a paper reminder.
And so it was last Saturday. A friend was coming over for lunch, so I planned my morning: Start the laundry, stop at the office for the mail, stop to see my friend Betty, pick up a couple things at the grocery store, buy some wine, set the table, straighten up the cascade of newspapers in the living room and get the cooking started.
My garage is also my laundry room, so I dressed, grabbed the laundry basket - briefly self-checking that I had emptied all the Kleenex out of the pockets of the grey jacket to be washed. Yes, I remembered doing that...
Got the machine load started after again questioning why the elderly aren’t considered when opening a child-proof soap container that requires the strength of a teenager or more.

When I first heard about Hetty Green I thought she was a myth. Years went by before her name came up again which intrigued me enough to do some research.
Her family members were Quakers. Her real name was Henrietta Howland Robinson. In 1867 at the age of 33 she married Edward Henry Green and went by the name of Hetty Green. She made her husband renounce all rights to her money before the wedding.
She was born In New Medford, Massachusetts on November 21, 1834. By the time she was fifteen she knew more about finance then many professional brokers. She became the first woman to make a fortune on Wall Street. She managed her own funds and invested in stocks, bonds, railroads, mines and real estate. She owned dozens of buildings in New York, Chicago, St Louis and Boston.

Open a sandwich bag in the woods and you’re bound to have company. We had two Canadian jays join us in second.
My buddy Jim Ronn named them Larry and Bob and they were more than happy to share our sandwiches.
Jim’s daughter Kaitlyn had joined us for a day of working on deer stands and wanted to see if the jays would pick a piece of bread out of her hand.
She put a cloth glove on to be assured we met all safety standards and plopped down on a log.
Larry and Bob decided this was better than hunting for the pieces of bread we had been throwing in their direction.
Kaitlyn held out her hand and in came the camp robbers. I’ve heard them called gray jays, Canada jays and whiskey jack but camp robber seems to be the most appropriate.
The first jay stopped just short of Kaitlyn’s hand and checked out the situation, hopping ever closer. Kaitlyn held her ground and looked out of the corner of her eye.

Time in the woods during the fall is food for the soul. No matter if you’re swinging a brush saw in the rain or righting a deer stand that tumbled in a summer windstorm.
Having a day off to sight in rifles turned into a change of plans with rain again falling in the Ely area.
Deciding not to give in, I fired up the brush saw to re-open some of our trails by the shack. Since I didn’t have Megan’s golden retrievers Millie and Maverick with me, this seemed like a good plan. At least there would be no three-legged dogs when I was done.
The tag elders grow like weeds and in my mind that’s what they are. You cut them and they grow back. Rinse and repeat.
By the time I had run through two tanks of gas, hit 15 rocks and was soaked to the bone, it was time to call it a day. But it was a day away from work, spent out in the woods.
On Saturday I headed to my buddy Rob Wilmunen’s shack to help him return an elevated stand to its original location.