The Light At Middle Ground

The Light At Middle Ground

Fall is fading fast. Naked branches click like dry bones in the wind, and the choppy, pewter-toned lake mirrors an apocalyptic sky. Winter’s wrath brooks no quarter when the wicked weather turns minutes into hours, and few know its fury better than the late-season...

Nate Smith’s Dairy Farm

Nate Smith’s Dairy Farm

The right or wrong of hunting has nagged at me from the beginning, and after a decade of hunting I finally set out to think it through.  I agree with the sentiment of writer Edward Abbey: “Hunting is one of the hardest things even to think about.” As is my way, I...

Wilcox Pass

Wilcox Pass

Paynesville, Minnesota, 1875 It was cold. A damp kind of cold that reached into the bones and could scarcely be shaken away.  The lateness of autumn had arrived and soon winter would descend on Minnesota’s once rugged back country.  Before long, tens of thousands of...

A Red Oak Thanksgiving

A Red Oak Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving 1964, one I’ll never forget. I was 14 years old.  Mother was decidedly against it. “They’re different, Lane, not like us,” she said. “I don’t mean that they’re bad. They aren’t... just different. They’ll have family and friends down from Jackson and...