By Dick Herfindahl, Woods & Water

With the governor&8217;s opener fast approaching I decided to head north a few days early to check out the cabin. I had mentioned in an earlier column that there is always a chance of having a new challenge waiting when making that first trip of the year. This time was no exception.

I left town early Wednesday morning and when I arrived I found a fallen birch tree across the easement drive and a little further on lay a small pine that had just fallen. The birch was easy to remove because when they fall they are usually dead trees that have rotted away. The pine was still green but small enough that I decided to drive over it and come back in a bit with the chain saw. As I approached the cabin there was a very large pine that had fallen across the front of the camper and gouged a hole in the front.

We don&8217;t use the camper for much of anything except storage and maybe a little cooking because the stove and oven still work quite well. After driving around the tree and unloading the truck I decided it was time to fire up the chainsaw and begin doing some tree removal. My son Brian had sent the saw along and said &8220;I&8217;ll fill it with gas and oil and that should be plenty for anything you will need to cut&8221;. Those were his exact words as he dropped it off at my house and headed home.

Now I&8216;m not a real lumberjack nor do I claim to be an experienced logger but I do think that a saw should run for more than the two minutes I got to use it. After sawing for a minute it turned into a routine of pulling and starting and quitting, pulling and starting and quitting and finally just not starting at all. At this point a light bulb came on and I thought I&8217;d better check the gas tank. I have come to the conclusion that either that saw burns one heck of a lot of our high priced gas or someone didn&8217;t fill the tank.

Not to worry, I had a couple of sharp axes and a large pruning saw. After going through two axe handles and a lot of sweat I had the tree cut up into moveable portions and dragged out of the way. I then proceeded to head down the driveway to cut up the smaller pine with a saw and a wounded axe.

Just across the easement drive we have a few acres of woods and some of that is pretty low. With the late spring and plenty of rain it was like a swamp you&8217;d see in one of our southern states. It was beautiful and there were wood ducks everywhere.

The next morning I went for a walk and as I approached the edge of our swamp I saw something that I&8217;ve never seen before, two giant woodpeckers. I mean they were huge and I almost doubted what I&8217;d seen until I talked to my brother-in-law Lynn. He said that he&8217;d seen one in the woods while hunting over by Frost a few years ago. He said they were called Pileated woodpeckers and were pretty rare for that area. Not that he&8217;d ever try to trick me, but I thought I&8217;d better look on the Web before putting anything in print. Sure enough I found a picture and that was exactly what I saw. It also said that the Pileated woodpecker is about 15 inches in length and is one of the largest woodpeckers found in North America. It has a black body, a red crest, white stripes on its neck and black and white stripes on its face. It has yellow bristly feathers over its nostrils that keep out wood chips. It has a long, sticky tongue; a long, sharp pointed bill and yellow eyes. Males and females are similar, but males have a red forehead, and females have a gray to yellowish brown forehead.

I couldn&8217;t believe how pretty they were or how lucky I was to have seen them. Nature sure has a way of serving up a few pleasant surprises for us.

As I headed back north again after the fishing opener it was sunny and clear and the snow that had fallen overnight still rested atop the brown grasses on the east side of the highway. When I passed by Roosevelt Lake I thought of an old friend that had once owned a resort near there. I decided to stop in the town of Outing and see if he was in the book. After asking the lady in the convenience store for a phone book she asked who I was looking for and I told her Mike Baier. She said she knew him and told me where to find him. It was good to see an old friend, we were in the service together, in fact, I was the best man in his first wedding and he was a groomsman in mine.

After talking with Mike for a few minutes he said he had to get back to work and after getting directions he said he&8217;d drive up to the cabin in the morning.

Mike showed up and helped me drag my small fishing boat up the hill. It was not a very nice day with rain and wind and the feeling of snow in the air. We spent most of the day inside the cabin throwing logs in the wood stove, reminiscing

and catching up on what had been happening in our lives.

As we sat at the table we watched a red squirrel eating the seeds that the birds had spilled from the feeder. As we talked a large hawk flew by the front of the cabin and landed in a broken birch tree nearby. We decided that the hawk was shopping for his dinner (the squirrel). For a good five minutes the hawk sat in the tree without moving and the squirrel sat motionless under the small branches of a fallen birch tree. Neither of them so much as twitched waiting for the other to make a move, it was a show that only nature could put on.

Finally the hawk grew impatient and flew off and in an instant the squirrel was off; I assume heading to wherever he considered home sweet home.

After that Mike said &8220;I wondered why you bought land way up here but now I know, there&8217;s not too many places that you can go and see things like that right outside your window; you really are on the edge of the wilderness&8221;.

Although the fishing opener was fun, it couldn&8217;t compare to seeing an old friend and sharing a little bit of what I call &8220;up north&8221;.

Until next time, take a little time to enjoy the outdoors -&8212; good luck and good &8220;fishin&8217;.&8221;

Remember to keep showing your support for the troops that are serving our country today.