2014 Road Trip – Day Nine – Bemidji, MN To Iron River, MI

RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen.

Travelled three states today: MN, WI and MI. Trivia: Both WI and MI have an Iron Lake County and an Iron Lake Town in their Iron Lake County.

While fueling friend, a young mother fueling her friend eyed me photographing Lake Bemidji across US 2. When I noticed, I held up my camera, lens down, and said, “Tourist, on a road trip.” She asked, “Where are you from?” and when I said Washington State she screwed up her face and said caustically, “What are you doing HERE?” Her innuendo was directed at Bemidji, not at me. I said I was on my way to Maine and then visits father south. She asked where in WA I lived, I replied about 30 milies east of Seattle. She said, “O, Bellevue, Issaquah?” I smiled and said, “No, about 10 miles east of Issaquah up in a river valley.” “Oh, North Bend?” “You really do know the place, but no, the next town over, Snoqualmie.” “Well, we were just there this summer visiting family. We saw your falls [Snoqualmie Falls].” “Well, isn’t that a coincidence,” I said. “Yes, small world isn’t it.” “Indeed it is.” Whereupon we parted ways into the ethers — after she recommended a coffee shop on my way out of town.

It is generally my experience, that what other parts of the fruited plain call good coffee — even when labeled Starbucks, which this one was not — is not up to Seattle area standards. Still, nice of her to chat with me. And we all know how many Minnesotans there are in Seattle area!

The Fall Colors here are already spectacular, beyond my powers of description. Pictures I made intimate the grandeur. And the grass fields and lawns in WI are the deepest, brightest green I have have ever seen. They cannot all have been dowsed in food coloring. It may be the iron in the soil, which is rich red because, presumably, of that mineral. This is iron ore country, after all, Mesabi Range and all.

Duluth lies at the snout tip of Lake Superior. Lots of bridges, including newer ones. I saw one iron boat, definitely, as I have long heard, created for the lakes and its cargo. Old downtown is classic mid-western but with French underlay. These northeastern plains show strong French background.

Also the legendary Norwegian and Swedish backbround is readily apparent. And in one area of WI, also strongly Finnish. Bjorn popped out at me on an ATV from a side-business on a wooded 65 mph stretch of US 2, ripping full speed parallel to me but on the shoulder. Carrot hair and beard flying. Big, burly, not the sort of chap to criticize for his choice of occupation, ancestry, clothing or method of eating asparagus.

But the strongest impression of the day is the fall leaves blanketing the forest floor. One has seen this in post-cards and paintings, but until today not in person. It is breath-taking. Transfixing.

In the PNW we have forests, mostly evergreen, of trees with thick girths and so relatively wide distances between their trunks. Here, the trees, which include some evergreens with thin trunks, are mostly thin tall trees which lose their lower branches and have a foot or less between their trunks. Aloft they are covered in these leaves that turn yellow and gray and purple and …. And there is little shrub beneath them. So the forest floor is nearly bare. What shrubs there are are evergreen or scarlet at this time of year. Knocks one’s eyes out. Which means the fall-colored leaves descend from aloft and blank the forest floor, creating this delightful effect of thin, bare, close-set lower tree trunks above a monarch’s path.

In the PNW, deadfall obstructs passage through the forest, but here it is the closeness of the trunks. Indians I heard had paths through, similar to Appalachian Indians. They would have to have had. Human’s could not traverse that vertical sheaf of trunks, much less a horse, without known and maintained paths going to designated, known destinations. Hunters must love the aesthetics as much or more than killing.

Also, the boys up here like to display their art work. One sunk the head and foot risers of an old brass bed in his front yard and between them planted flowers: a Flower Bed. Another installed a 10 foot or so wooden rocking chair on a berm facing US 2 and next to it a 30+ foot wooden fishing poll with wooden hook and bait. Beautiful workmanship. One filled his yard with wood carvings, intricate, imaginative ones. Another made a menagerie of welded iron prehistoric animals. Elsewhere I have seen this once in a while, but here it appears to be a point of honor and far more imaginative than I have seen before. And the workmanship is uniformly superb!

WI appealed to me as an eminently sensible jurisdiction. No doubt cold winters, but they have their ways of living them, and they do not show the drug skin of the Minot-ese. Tough, but not deformed. Ashland and Iron River WI especially appealed to me. Ashland has a huge and hugely beautiful (exterior, I did not enter) RC Cathedral of Christ the King. Also a Greenbriar-type and era hotel on the water, now a Best Western but the original intent — monied summer retreat on the lake — is visible and maintained at least to some extent that I could see. Iron River, WI is just charming in many ways. Good people live there.

In one of the towns, I believe it was in MI, the VFW Hall was the size of a typical County Courthouse and the ambience of a typical RC Church. Never before seen anything like it for a VFW Hall.