August 28, 2023

Waiting for the Blue Moon

The Minnesota writer and long time Ely resident, Sigurd Olson, wrote in his book The Singing Wilderness that loons sing madly all night during the full moon. We arrived here on the full moon of August 1st. I was’t accustomed to hearing the loon’s plaintive longing, a fragile yearning as clear as a bell. But there it was all night. The last day of August arriving on Wednesday, again is a full moon, hence it’s a blue moon waiting for the loon celebrants.

This is our loon flute. Terry made me play it horizontally instead of vertically because he thought it looked suggestive.

The weekend was filled with fun adventures in Grand Rapids. After the half marathon, of which I’m still suffering from, we ducked into a brewery because the music was wafting our way. It was the famous Steve’s Over-Populated One-Man Band. Smashing fun!

You know you’re in Minnesota where you can still enjoy an accordion.

When we drove by Remer MN, my brother reminded me that one Christmas break we farm-sat. I was 5 or 6 years old, little and skinny, and I had an accordion. It had been sent home with me to practice. The only lesson taught to me was to pull the accordion out. I didn’t know it was supposed to go in so I severely sprained my arms. I had to quit. I think this was after I told my mom I would practice and not give up. Gee, I would have been a totally different person if I had two lessons.

I know I should be talking about the building of our cabin. We were very anxious to get home and stake out our house. Everyone who’d been here had said that we have a large building site. We felt the same. But staking it out showed us the truth. IT’S TOO SMALL. So we printed out our plans and worked on modifying them. We decided to extend our site. It’s hard because we’re in the Canadian Shield on the Laurentian Divide. And you know what that means.

Plan II is to get our guy and one of his friends to take out more trees and rocks and flatten a bigger area. This can’t progress too much because I’m training for the Ely Marathon. And it takes a ton of time. Also we’re going to the BWCA September 5th to the 14th. And my son Andy, Reyla and friends and Brenda and Greg are coming.