Next to our garage, we have a ramshackle clematis. Hidden within the leaves and flowers is a sparrow nest with some just hatched babies. Meanwhile, a robin has gotten busy with a nest on top of the light fixture containing two bright blue eggs.
Last week, we managed to fit a glorious trip to Camp du Nord into our busy summer. This was our fifth visit to their summer program (see prior posts from 2023, 2021, 2019, and 2016), though we also stayed in a cabin there in January 2024.
We stayed in one of the original cabins, built in the 1930s, called Sans Souci. It was a tiny one-room cottage perched on some rocks on the shore of Burntside Lake. The cabin itself had a single full-size bed. Next to the cabin (but oddly out of frame in all of our photos) is a spacious platform tent with two twin beds.
How did a family of five manage this? Well, Griffin was only with us for the first night. On Monday we drove him and his gear over to Camp Widjiwagan, just a few miles east, where he’s embarking on a three week canoe trip into Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. We missed his lively presence for the rest of the week.
The week included a traditional “polar plunge” into the lake first thing in the morning with dozens of other families. (It’s something of a ritual to start the day… and quite refreshing, especially in the absence of showers. Note that despite the name, the water isn’t especially cold. We have all successfully survived real polar plunges into this same lake through holes in the ice in the winter.)
Maggie and Oliver joined their age groups for activities in the mornings. Sarah and I relaxed, read books, played cards, and walked in the beautiful northern woods. In the afternoons and evenings we went swimming, did art activities, enjoyed the beautiful wood-fired sauna, and played games. The week wrapped up with hilarious skits on the stage by the lakeshore.
On our final night, we experienced a phenomenal thunderstorm. There’s nothing quite like being in a tiny cabin on the short of a lake while mother nature howls in fury overhead. (Come to think of it, Griffin was probably in a pitched tent during the storm… I look forward to hearing his take!) We learned on Saturday that the storms were even worse west of us with tornadoes in North Dakota and 100+ mph wind gusts in Bemidji (about 100 miles from us).
In the pictures below, Maggie is usually wearing her purple hat.
Andrew awoke early on Wednesday morning and took this panoramic video from the rock below our cabin at 4:30 a.m. This was two days before the solstice. You can hear those “early birds” getting their day started.
Hear ye, hear ye! By order of the great State of Minnesota, Griffin is officially permitted to menace the roads without a parent.
After much diligent practice through the challenging winter and spring, Griffin passed his road test yesterday and has his preliminary driver’s license. The official card should arrive by September. Hardly an hour after getting his license, he drove himself to trombone lessons. It’s a new era.
Today was the last day with students at my middle school. Five teachers and spouses went out for an evening on the town, culminating in an outstanding Chinese feast at Shuang Cheng in NE Minneapolis (owned by the parent of a former student and serves the best Ma Pao Tofu I’ve had since leaving Oakland).
It was a bittersweet occasion because Shannon is retiring and Matt is taking a sabbatical next year. The middle school won’t be the same without them.
Oliver invented a new way to eat breakfast: Pancake Chess!
Sarah and I finished demolishing the aging and no-longer-safe second story deck behind the house today. We have plans to replace it with a larger, safer deck. This may take a while. But taking the old one down was an important first step.
Note that Sarah did the bulk of the work on this job (she’s the handy one around here), but I’m proud to say that I contributed more labor than usual. Prying the boards up was tough work. We could use a longer crowbar.
Note the closeup picture that shows how rotted the joists were. (The previous owners clearly added wood to try to shore things up.)
The Hands Off! demonstration in Saint Paul was very well attended. Despite the outrage at the Trump regime, the crowd was friendly and in good spirits, including many creative signs.
My favorite moment was on the sidelines when an impromptu band started playing to drown out a fanatic preacher with a bullhorn yelling about how we were all bound for hell. (I don’t even think you can see or hear the preacher in this video, but he’s off to the left under the scaffolding.)
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve chaperoned our annual seventh grade trip to Camp Widjiwagan in northern Minnesota. This year was special, however, because it was Maggie’s turn to join the adventure. She’s heard about the trip for years, so she was greatly looking forward to it.
Camp Widjiwagan is on the north shore of Burntside Lake in northern Minnesota. It’s about four and a half hours from the Twin Cities. This is far enough that it is noticeably colder and snowier than the central part of the state. We left early on Monday morning and returned on Friday afternoon, spending four nights in rustic cabins in the woods.
The only downside to the trip was that Maggie caught a stomach bug on her final day, keeping her up for much of the night. A thousand thanks to my colleagues, Cat and Mackenzie, who took good care of her in her cabin. They brought her over to the impromptu infirmary in one of the admin buildings where I was able to be with her for the rest of the night. By morning, she was over it, though I did sit with her on the bus home to try and reduce the spread of any germs to her friends. (The final pic in the gallery below is our selfie on the bus… we don’t look as sleep-deprived as we were.)
Most of the following pictures were taken by the ever-talented Bobak Razavi.
We all have a rare day off from school today due to extreme cold temperatures. The wind chill when I woke up this morning was -36°F.
Interestingly, that’s cold enough that normally pliable plastics become near solid. Practical example: Sarah pulled out our electric pump to put some air into a low tire on the car. The power cord was stiff and difficult to work with. When she plugged it in and turned on the compressor, sparks flew and the cable was severed in half! We think that the plastic effectively snapped in the cold, causing a short circuit.
This reminds me of an experience I had during my first year in Minnesota. I biked to school one morning when it was severely cold. (I rarely biked in the winter, but there was no snow or ice on the roads, so I chanced it.) My bike lock at the time was a heavy braided steel cable sheathed in clear plastic. I normally kept it coiled around my seat stem, uncoiling it to run through the wheels and rack. On this morning, however, I could not uncoil it, it was like a solid steel helix wrapped around the post. Putting all my strength into it, it finally gave a little and then shattered. I distinctly recall the sound of the plastic shards hitting the cement like tinkling glass. The steel cable itself was unscathed, but the plastic was unable to cope.
The cold does come with some bonuses besides getting a day off from school. Our sun porch, not as well insulated as the main house, forms spectacular window frost patterns.
Next week, Maggie and I are heading up north for a week at Camp Widjiwagan. This is the annual seventh grade retreat that I’ve chaperoned for many years. We’re both looking forward to it. Yesterday, however, I checked the weather report near the camp:
That’s seriously cold. Fortunately, the outlook for next week is balmier. With highs in the teens above zero, the kids will likely spend all their time rampaging through the wilderness while their long-suffering teachers tend to the fire in the cozy lodge.
As part of a school thing this week, I needed to find a baby pic of myself. I found the perfect one. Not sure when this was taken, but since David is in it, and he was born in February of 1973, it must be after that.
