patient fellow to allow a child into his tiny space, at least patient enough not to toss one over the side. I was obsessed by the tower and afraid of it—it swayed. Still, I desperately wanted to live in it. After it was decommissioned, we continued visiting as trespassers, warned by the ominous squeal of rusted bolts.
Forest rangers are rarely if ever set up in metal aeries these days; there are better methods of fire spotting, such as satellite-harvested digital imagery systems like MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, of course). DNR planes continue to run observation flights a few times a day when fire danger is high. The local fleet is a trio of vintage de Havilland Beavers built in the late 1950s, painted bobber red and white. When not airborne, they are kept perfectly maintained like thoroughbreds in watery corrals on Shagawa Lake, with new engines installed every so many thousands of flight hours. Occasionally one will skim overhead, making its giant-dragonfly hum, a wing dipped like a nod, reassuring us that even when we are not here, this place is being looked after.
Four
When bonding with a scrap of land, it helps to blaze paths, plant trees, and bury loved ones on it. When Bald Walter finally wore out, he was twenty-three, roughly one hundred and sixty in cat years. He’d just gone blind, and his kidneys were sputtering. On the kitchen scale, he weighed less than four pounds. It was time, and thankfully Sam was either at his dad’s or on some overnight. I took Walt to the vet, planning to say good-bye and get it over with in a painless narcotic nod-off to the finish. But the obtuse intern on call wanted to do some tests and keep Walter for observation, certain that with some invasive and expensive medical intervention, he might last another month or so. I blinked at the stupid man, wondering what it was he didn’t understand. Unfortunately, it was a Friday night, and our regular vet wouldn’t be back until Monday. I took Walt home and made a little nest for him on my bed, then ground up what I thought would be enough valium to kill a large dog and mixed it with cod liver oil and juice from a can of tuna. I fed this Kevorkian cocktail to Walter with a dropper through his chipped, tea-colored teeth while playing old Cat Stevens tunes. In his final hour, Walter’s breathing smoothed, and he looked so peaceful, I took one of the leftover valium myself and we both drifted off. In the morning, I drifted back, damp-mopped Walter’s little corpse, and fluffed him with the blow dryer, drying the wet spots I’d bawled onto his fur.
Sam and I laid Walt out in his picnic basket casket just like a real wake, and a few friends came by to pay respects, milling and toasting until they were, as the Irish say, quite full. I wanted to bury Walter on the land and honor his tenacity by planting a tree on top of him, but April in Minnesota is no time to plant anyone. This I’d learned from Dad’s sisters, the Aunts, after the last of their five brothers died, inconveniently, in the off-season. The Aunts arranged for Uncle Teddy to be kept in the mortuary cooler until July so that his burial could coincide with their annual vacation to Ely. Ted had not been quite right since coming home from Korea with a metal buckle holding his skull shut, and while he’d been a bit jittery, he was a nice enough fellow. If cold storage was good enough for Uncle Teddy, it was good enough for Walt. I wedged his basket-casket into the freezer under the Skinny Cows and waited for the north to thaw.
In the meantime, I shopped for a tree. What sort would best honor a steadfast, bantamweight runt? In all our years together, Walter never destroyed a piece of upholstery with his fishhook claws, didn’t hock up hairballs, and was an adroit bat catcher, saving me the trouble. Even toward the end, he’d made valiant stabs at reaching the litter box, which alone deserved some tribute. And he loved me, meaning he understood that only I could operate the can opener.
I searched local nurseries for a native tree that could tolerate thin, rocky soil and a tundra-like climate. Tamarack seemed most appropriate but was unavailable at Bachman’s, so I settled on the next most logical choice, an expensive but lush white pine.
After the thaw, I packed Walt into the car along with a spade, a gallon of water, and the tree, shivering on its side. I slid a cassette of Barber’s Agnus Dei in the stereo because Walter loved a good dirge, and we hit the road. Four hours later we bounced up the logging road, the front seat full of wet little balls of tissue, Walt still frozen stiff.
I’d chosen a building site in the high pines at the eastern edge of the land overlooking the little island. At that time, the meandering trail to it was nearly a thousand-foot trek, thick with eye-thwacking alder and difficult enough when empty-handed, but I was carrying a basket of cat, a jug, a spade, and the heavy tree. Barely into the brush, I stopped to rearrange, pulling the still-frozen curlicue of Walter from his basket and fitting him over my forearm like a fur bangle. A spade over one shoulder, a gallon of water in one hand, and the tree perched on my hip, thrashing like a toddler, I tromped over the trail. When I finally breached the clearing with my portable funeral, I shaded my eyes to scope out a decent burial spot. That’s when I noticed: if there was one small white pine gracing the vista, there were a hundred.
When “digging” here, one learns quickly not to jab a spade any old place, or the shock will travel arms to shoulders, rattling the skeleton like a cartoon x-ray. Here on the rocky, petered-out end of the Canadian Shield, there’s only the slightest lacing of soil, a mere hankie of dirt dropped by the glacier. Terry came over to help. He was on the patch again and tense. About twice a month, he would make the motions to quit smoking but never got farther than wearing the patch until he wanted a cigarette, when he simply tore it off. After much scraping and cursing, there was finally a hole just big enough for a stiff little cat and a few strands of white pine root.
I made a mental note to add “Please cremate” to my half-completed, unregistered will somewhere in the folder labeled DEAD.
Even with no portable funeral to carry, just getting to my site was a hump. Having chosen the most remote plateau at the far eastern edge of the property, I had effectively rendered myself end-of-the-road inaccessible. I’d have my privacy but I would need a long driveway, a real road. I invited three excavators out to bid.
After years of renovating houses and dealing daily with contractors, one learns what signs to watch for. The first guy showed up with manicured hands clean enough to excavate teeth with. His truck was waxed and undented, his feet shod in shoes, not boots. He obviously didn’t do any of the work himself and advertised his business as the only environment-friendly road builder in the area, yet when asked what that meant, he only mumbled. Perhaps assuming because I was female and therefore possibly gullible and maybe, hopefully gouge-able because of my 612 area code, he came in with a bid that was double the average.
The lowest bid was from a man who barely looked at the site as he walked along next to me, extolling the quality of his work with such a tone of desperation I wondered when he’d start tugging my sleeve. When he insisted he could start the next day, I figured there was some reason he was so wildly available and so cheap.
The middle bid came from a guy I’ll call Chim, who already had more work than he could handle and had only come out reluctantly. Breaking through brush alongside him, I was impressed by his grousing. He pointed out various obstacles, a particularly large tree, the difficulty, how he would have to approach this dip or that curve or move an immovable boulder. When we had walked the length, I asked if he wanted to measure the distance on the way back.
“Already have,” he replied. “Seven-hundred seventy-five feet, give or take a few.” The whole time we’d been talking and tromping, he’d been counting his steps in a measured stride. I already knew he was busy and didn’t need the work, and his truck was filthy, so I wanted him. My only advantage was that I was in no hurry. I asked if he might pencil me in as his very last job of the season. That way he’d have no next job making him rush through mine. My road wouldn’t be something he was squeezing in.
There are as many ways to build a road as there are roads. When milestone birthdays for me and my sister Mary rolled around, she treated me to a vacation in Peru, where we learned that real road construction is not for wimps. The Inca Trail system is the road to end all roads, the difficulty factor eclipsing anything the pantywaist Romans ever built. Most everyone has seen images of Machu Picchu or the walls of Cuzco or Ollantaytambo, just a few examples of stonework the Incas are famous for. To see them up close is something, but what you cannot see