Author: Sue Ahrendt

Last week before he headed out into the BWCAW, Jerry Vandiver gave a concert here at Tuscarora. Maybe you haven’t heard of Jerry? Neither had I. I just knew he was a friend of Old Scout…and I figured he was a friendly bunkhouse guest with a guitar, and isn’t that nice that he’s going to play for us and for the guests and the staff? There are so many things to attend to—that I didn’t really pay attention until I went in to hear him sing.

Wow! He was fabulous! Very entertaining, talented, engaging. Great songs–I even recognized some of them—it was just a fun evening. Jerry’s songs have been recorded by the Oak Ridge Boys ,Tim McGraw, Lonestar……. he was a great musician, a like-able guy, and I feel like we have a new friend. Yesterday some of our guests came out of the woods and said “some guy from Nashville portaged our canoe—he said to say ‘hello.”

If you’re in Grand Marais on Saturday Evening (Aug 21) at 7pm at the Art Colony, I highly recommend Jerry’s concert. He’s fabulous.

My plan was to introduce our summer staff early in the summer. Wouldn’t that have been smart? Now, zip………..it’s the middle of August, and they’re starting to leave. It’s really hard to see them go. And instead of introducing them to you, I find myself wanting to list the reasons that they are wonderful. You would be grateful too—if you could see the things that I see—when they don’t think that I’m looking. The quiet little touches are what get me. The way the anchor ropes are coiled, or the sheets are folded, the way they save a plate of food when Andy’s working late, or invite Daniel to go on a fishing trip. These are just the kind of people who are great examples, in their character and uniqueness, to help usher our children into adulthood

Kate went to Italy early this month. We miss her attention to details…she is aware whether she’s organizing the store,or passing the cream cheese before I can even ask. Kate always has a plan in place–and next, I believe she’ll be planning sustainable cities.

Weren’t we lucky that Jen came back this year? Sadly, one poor deer wasn’t so fortunate. Jen is the queen of blueberry picking, and she was especially adept during a little power-line crises in May when she helped moved all of the cars (stick shifts included) to safer ground. I sure do like her attitude.

I’ve worked all year to get Paul to say you guys instead of y’all. I like to think he’s half Louisianan, half Minnesotan—but….I think he doesn’t realize that yet. It’s OK, because I’m persistent. White t-shirt, quick dry pants, and coffee. These were the elements of Paul’s Tuscarora uniform.

Whew! Maggie Mae definitely gets it all done. And she is also a Gunflint Trail people magnet, sometimes we even sell extra glow-in-the-dark Nalgenes, just on the chance that Maggie will be the one selling. Which can be good for sales when you think about it.

Cassandra Garbarino, potter, coffee shop manager, Tuscarora crew cook extraordinaire, and overall part of our family, with wise, young adult insight into emerging teenagers. She’s been here 6 years, that’s half of Daniel’s age. We don’t actually need a nanny position anymore, but we’ll always need Cass.

Zach….Z….Daniel summed him up—“I really like Zach, he’s so……………….himself…., and completely cool with that”. Zach is staying into the fall this year. He’s skilled at steadily scrubbing while pointing out the quirky humorous details of situations.

Mike made a yurt this year. It’s swanky! I like to think of it as Mikes Mancave. Someday he may even sell Tombstone Pizza’s from it. He’s as resourceful as Sam Gribley. Mike has been a summer resident of the Gunflint Trail for many years—, this year we’re lucky to have him here.

Lindsay can cook. She is the master of gourmet camping food, which is why she’s been the master food-packer for 3 years now. She actually has a BWCA reputation—li’l cow-doc. She packs everything with such care, she has even called on her day off because she woke up in the night worried about somebody’s filet knife. For the crew she grills pizza dough, and makes jam. She’s really something

Kelley’s roller-derby nickname is –Poison Berry Pie, and you can believe it because she makes really good pies, and I think she is TOUGH in that sport. Around here she’s a quiet presence, working in the background gently checking on me, happy to drive the kids to town, cook, whatever we need. Kelley’s dad worked for Tuscarora 30 some years ago, so we new she’d be a good one–and we were right!

Dave reads the big huge non-fiction books. Honestly, it’s very impressive. He’s a cheerful and conscientious worker, who notices the little stuff, and then takes care of it. Did I mention that he’s always pretty cheerful about all that? Always.

Abbie just got here about an hour ago, so I have no photo yet. However, she has exactly her mother’s voice. Although she came here to pitch in for the fall season and hang with her good friend Zach, it’s just a coincidence that her mother was the presiding minister and our wedding. I think that’s a good omen, don’t you?

They come, they share their entire lives with us for awhile. They’re over-qualified, smart, generous, and they work really hard –they are Tuscarora. We love them for all that.

Andy found a rock. 4 years ago. He and Daniel thought it might be an arrowhead or a spear, but it seemed big for that. They were imagining some big archaeological find I’m sorry to say that I was skeptical and made fun of it……because it was not so sharp, not such a good specimen of an arrowhead.

Centennial Trail creator Tom Kaffine was visiting a few times this spring. Because he was adding some trail markers and a spiffy Centennial Trail historical guide. It is a very cool place.
Tom doesn’t exactly visit. He zips in and talks fast, and then he’s gone. Sometimes he chats with Andy a little longer, but then he paces. As he was pacing he noticed the rock on the top of the map case…and it caught his interest. Tom spends his winters in the USFS archaeology office in Duluth.

He’s sort of enthusiastic about that, so he snapped some photos, took a bearing on that particular spot (called the Denali site, according to Tom) before he rushed off smiling. It turns out that Andy found a a trihedral adz, tentatively dated somewhere between 5000-8000 years old.

The kids and I were chatting about that. How many years does 8000 feel like? Time and magnitude are sort of hard mathematical concepts when you get right down to it. We used to read a childrens’ book “How Much Is A Million?”. Do you realize it takes at least 23 days to count to a million? Most of the time, I’m too tired to think about that.

Shelby and Daniel were attempting to wrap our heads around that to conceptualize the peoples living here 5000-10,000 years ago, who must have been chiseling the adz. Or scooping out boats. Or just dropping a tool. Well, let’s see. The United States is almost 240 years old…..and Jesus was born a little over 2000 years ago. That’s really as far back we could sort of personalize. But we were giving it a good shot.

This is what these guys do. Tom and his archaeologist guru colleague Lee Johnson came and did a mini-treasure hunt–a test dig in the area around Andy’s first find….which may be an ancient tool making site? Who knows. At any rate, I had no idea I’d be so interested, but it is really fun to hear these guys’ enthusiasm about it, that I start going with them 8000 year ago– to people on a river bank maybe? With stone from Knife Lake…

By Sue Ahrendt

The Mohan Family took advantage of our Boundary Waters Family package—and they sure spiced up last week here at Tuscarora. On Tuesday, Maggie took them paddling, Jen took them blueberry picking, Cass took them to Chik Wauk, Lindsay taught them campfire building and cuisine over lunch at Blankenberg beach, , Kelley took them hiking on the Centennial Trail where they stumbled upon a moose—or actually she nearly stumbled over them.

On Wednesday Daniel and I paddled out with them for their first night in the woods. It was great fun. We started out in a downpour, buckets of rain— yet they were very good sports about it. We had a tarp, we hunkered under at the end of the portage with some jerky, some fruit snacks, some good conversation. It’s such a conquering feeling to navigate such rain. I was hiking back for another load thinking—I LOVE this. I love it here. You can see that Matt never lost his smile.

Daniel shared some fishing tips, and I had a chance to share some of the finer points of wilderness snacking with TJ and Malachy. They were so game for anything. Funny boys, reminded me of Bob Snodgrass who introduced me to formic acid (in ants) 25 years ago. Do they use formic acid in lime sweet tarts? I don’t really know, but they taste surprisingly similar. If you can’t see this video full screen—you might miss TJ’s hands describing the taste explosion (and he is right on!) —or karate-kid-Malachy, who couldn’t seem to hold back his shimmies.

The next morning after breakfast, with memories of a good evening of hide-and-go-seek sardines, swimming, fishing, s’mores,,, Daniel and I reluctantly headed back to Tuscarora and left the Mohans to find their own ants to eat. On the trail, they crossed paths with another Boundary Waters Family-sponsored group. On these work trips, family teams take the opportunity to join some US Forest Service Rangers to camp and volunteer with work projects. The outfitters on the Gunflint Trail partner with the US Forest Service and we’re really excited about all of the things happening in the program this summer. And upon return, that group had a weekend full of stories to tell.

The big idea, the cool truth is—time in the woods strengthens families. And we’re lucky we get to facilitate some of that. We get to meet some great people that way too. And the kids are like the formic acid in the ants—they always surprise us with the taste explosions. Oh Yeah!

Tuscarora guests–the Mickelsons visited a local road this morning–and they were greeted by an entire wolf pack. They watched—then came back to get their kids, and drove back to observe the puppy antics some more.

If we can figure out how to hook up the video camera to my computer, I can later include a video of the puppies learning to howl. It gives me goose bumps every time!

Thanks to Greg Mickelson for sharing these great photos with us.

They wondered about so many pups—seeming like two different litters (4 littler guys, 3 bigger ones—???) Obviously together…but my understanding is that the pack allows only one female to mate with the Alpha male–and they all take care of the pups.

This group was a little different. Perhaps they came from a polygamous belief system? Or maybe–some just grew faster than others.

Could she be the only mother?

This smaller male was a baby-sitter of sorts.

They didn’t get the photo of the large beautiful male they were guessing was the alpha–but apparently he was bi–ig.

I just read about the pups–and Greg said that they were beginning to pounce on little critters and hunt a little—

Maybe they were somewhere between 6-10 weeks old? You can bet I’ll be on the lookout for this big family!