Woods & Water by Dick Herfindahl

 

On the first three days of this week I was able to get away and spend a part of three days at the cabin. It rained a little on Monday, but Tuesday was beautiful with a high of 70 and a sun that hung around for the whole day. I always enjoy any time I can spend at our cabin even when there are unforeseen things that pop up and need to be dealt with.

This trip was no exception to my skeptical thoughts of first visits of the season. When I turned into the driveway and saw that no trees were down I was pretty happy because I believe it was the first time in three years that it was downed-tree free. All things being equal, I discovered the wood stove had some rust and corrosion on it so I took a peek inside and discovered that it was full of water. After baling the water out, which amounted to almost 3/4  of a 2-gallon bucket full, I then took the firebrick out and laid them out in the sun to dry. After they had dried, I placed them back in the stove after I had cleaned the stove out as best I could. After talking to my son Brian, I started a fire in the stove. It took awhile, but eventually I had a nice blazing fire going.

I then called the person who had fixed a similar problem for me a few years ago. His name is Matt, and he came out and put the chimney back in place as the snow buildup had slid down our steep roof and knocked it loose. He will be coming back to do some more work on it to prevent it from happening again. It is nice to know someone like Matt who is dependable and does this kind of work.

There are only four of us cabin owners on the lake and Matt does work for the owner of the first cabin. He said he had a picture to show me. After searching on his phone he found a picture of the guy on the end, who I have never met, holding a huge bass, probably 5-6 lbs. easy. Matt said it is hard to believe that a fish that size came out of this little lake, which has had a history of freezing out in the past. I told him to keep it under his hat, but he said it won’t matter because we have no access on the lake. He also said that he will be bringing his kid back to fish from my neighbor’s shore. He said that they love to fish but never keep any.

After talking to Matt, the image of that huge bass was forever implanted in my mind. So after completing everything on my list of things I needed to do before I left for home in the morning, I rigged up a couple of fishing poles. I rigged two because fishing from shore in front of our place is not “snag free” I did have one nice bite before I lost my first lure. I then grabbed the second pole and began to cast once again, but soon got another snag so I decided that enough was enough. I had gotten it out of my system, at least temporarily.

On Wednesday, it had started raining sometime after midnight so I got everything ready for my trip home and after making sure all was good I locked up the cabin and was on my way home. I had decided to take a route home that takes me down Highway 6 through Outing because I have an old service buddy who lives there. I figured that with the rain he wouldn’t be working because he works for a lawn service.

I didn’t call my friend, whose name is Mike, until I got to the convenience store in Outing. He invited me to his place, which was only a couple of miles east of Outing. It was good to see him and we caught up on family and then he broke out a few picture albums. What a great time we had seeing pictures of old friends and talking about what-ifs, which are things that could have gone a different direction. We were part of an Amphibious Construction Battalion stationed in Japan. Mike decided to take a transfer to a ship so he could go home for 30 days and shortly after he left we were deployed to Vietnam. The what-if came in when he said if he had stayed, he would probably have been with us because he was on our tug at the time. Funny how things play out sometimes in the game of life.

After spending a couple of hours reminiscing, I had to head home but not before making plans to get together with another of our Navy friends.

Mike lives in Outing and had owned a resort for many years before a guy made him a great offer and he sold it and built a sports bar. He eventually sold that and built a little place to live just outside of Outing. The funny thing is that although he says he would never want to live anywhere else he is not a hunter or a fisherman; just a lover of the north, it’s people and the way of life, and that is part of what makes the north country what it is.

Please remember to keep our troops in your thoughts and prayers. We must never forget those who are still putting themselves in harm’s way so that we can enjoy all of the wonderful freedoms that we have today.