Jim Landwehr - Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir

Table of Contents

DIRTY SHIRT

a boundary waters memoir

JIM LANDWEHR

eLectio Publishing

Little Elm, TX

Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir

By Jim Landwehr

Copyright 2014 by Jim Landwehr

Cover Design by eLectio Publishing, LLC

ISBN-13: 978-1-63213-029-7

Published by eLectio Publishing, LLC

Little Elm, Texas

http://www.eLectioPublishing.com

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Publishers Note

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

A portion of this book was previously published in the Winter Issue of Boundary Waters Journal magazine.

In memory of my brother Rob,

a vested partner in many of these adventures.

Acknowledgements

The genesis of this book was a writing workshop I took part in over nine years ago. What was intended to be nothing more than a ten-page theme has evolved over the past four years into this full-length memoir. I am forever indebted to the instructor of that workshop, Ms. Shannon Jackson Arnold. She was the one who first challenged me to take my writing seriously and sparked me into action.

If Shannon was the spark, I would have to credit Kathie Giorgio, director of AllWriters Workplace and Workshop, with being the fuel. She has been with me throughout the process, simultaneously being my biggest fan and biggest critic. She always encouraged me when I was down or not sure where I was going with the whole project. I cant mention her without mentioning her husband, Michael, who was there as well, relentless in correcting my sentence structure and punctuation. These two, along with many of the AllWriters students, have encouraged me to grow in the craft and legitimize my writing.

To my wife, Donna, I say thank you for your support and for giving up our Wednesday and Thursday nights together so I could go and be cerebral with my writing cronies. I love that our written words brought us together for this beautiful life we have created. My brothers Tom, Rob, and Paul and our various friends from trips past deserve mention for allowing me to write these personal memories we sharememories I deem too important to be lost when were all gone. I extend my thanks to them for their fact checking and words of encouragement.

Finally I want to thank the staff at eLectio Publishing for believing in me and giving me a chance. You have made a lifelong dream come true, and I thank you for that.

Prologue

Its 1976 and I am fifteen, sitting cross-legged in a vintage canvas tent from the 60s with Timmy, the son of Jack, the man my mother is dating. There is an orphan tent pole dangling from the center of the ceiling, victim of either its missing base or some inferior tent assembly; no one is quite sure which. The poles umbrella arms reach out and hold up the four tent corners, but something doesnt seem quite right. The supporting pole just hangs there in the middle of the tent looking like a Christo sculpture gone awry. The running joke around camp is about whether it really should be on the outside of the tent rather than the inside. Again, no one is quite sure.

Inside the spacious, damp tent, we are careful not to touch the sides, as we were told it causes the rain to penetrate the canvas at the touch point. The tent smells of basement and must, but it is a warm, dry refuge for us. Using a big flashlight as our source of light, Timmy is sitting across from me, teaching me how to play cribbage. The cards and game board, stuck with its scoring pegs, sit between us on the floor atop the unrolled sleeping bags. Timmy is an accomplished cardplayer for a seventeen-year-old and is patient with teaching the nuances of fifteen two, fifteen four. Santanas Evil Ways is playing on the black Sanyo cassette player on the tent floor. The player is the top-loading kind, meant more for taping an interview than listening to music. It certainly is not doing justice to the brilliance of Carlos Santanas guitar work as we sit here in the dark woods of northern Minnesota.

We need Mother Nature to change her evil ways, Timmy says, commenting about the incessant rainy and cloudy weather weve had since our arrival.

You got that right, I agree. The rain has ceased, at least for the moment, and my mother and Jack are outside around the pathetic, wet-wood smolder they call a campfire. Timmy and I, bored with trying to coax the smoking mass to life, have sought refuge in our tent and have left the fire to our respective parents. If the weather pattern continues as it has, its only a matter of time before the drops will begin to fall and drive our parents into the tent, as well. For now, theyre trying to make the best of the respite from the bad weather while enjoying a campers nightcap.

Ooooo, whats that thing? Timmy asks, pointing to a greyish worm-like thing on the floor of the tent, near one of the corners.

Yuck! I dont know; I think its a slug or something, I reply.

Whatever it is, its nasty. What if it crawls on us while were sleeping?

Thanks for bringing up that possibility! I say. Timmy flicks the slug back down into the hole in the corner of the tent from which it came.

Look, theres another one, Timmy says as he points to the wall of the tent, where one is hanging. Theyre everywhere, he exaggerates. I join him in his expressions of disgust at the slimy, albeit harmless, creatures that have taken up residence in our tent. Like us, they are probably just looking for someplace dry after the deluge of the previous day. While I am certain there has never been a case of death by slug, I am also sure, thanks to Timmy, that I will be sleeping lightly on this damp night.

We are at a small campground on Iron Lake, on the edge of, but not in, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northern Minnesota. I struggle with the dichotomy that we have come to this godforsaken place of our own accord and that, at the same time, there is something mystically attractive about it. I am here with my brother Tom, my mother, Jack, and Jacks two sons, Patrick and Timmy. Mom and Jack have been dating for seven years, so my five siblings and I have become friends with many of his eight kids. Tom, twenty-one, befriended Patrick, who is the same age. Timmy is two years older than me, but we attend the same high school and have become friends as well. This trip was suggested by Mom and Jack as an older boys trip up to the Gunflint Trail for what they referred to as some real camping. My older sisters, Pat and Jane, are back home taking care of my younger brothers, Rob and Paul.

Our campsite at the moment is clearly more remote and rugged than Ive ever seen. When they said we were going real camping, they were not kidding. The rutted gravel roads we took to get here, the thick tree canopy, and smelly pit toilets are all testament to that. Weve camped several times before in much less remote areas closer to our home in the Twin Cities. Those trips usually involved a mix of kids from both families, two monstrous tents, and a couple of large sedans with trunks and rooftops loaded with equipment.