Living the Dream

My dream home is a place on the highway between Thunder Bay and the US border-crossing at Grand Portage, Minnesota. It is a moderate looking house with a detached garage, but its surroundings are spectacular. It's a house on a hill surrounded by a sparsely brushed meadow with a creek that circles the place like a moat. There is a bridge over the creek part way up the long winding driveway. The backdrop for the home is a rugged cliff on the Norwester mountains.

I think about that place every time I drive by and envy the lucky stiff who bought it. I imagine myself living there - or somewhere like it - sipping on hot black coffee before a day of hunting or dipping a line in the small creek. I don't know if there are trout in that creek but for the sake of my imagination there are. Not enormous trout, but small, chunky, feisty brookies that eagerly take a well-placed fly. One that doesn't hang-up in the trees, that is.

I would convert the garage into a carpentry shop (if it isn't already) and spend some of my time building cabinets and such.

Yesterday when I drove by there I imagined all these things; and had to correct my steering to prevent my pickup from veering into the ditch.

And then it dawned on me...

I have a house with a detached garage converted into a carpentry shop. No I can't shoot deer off my deck, but I can go deer hunting whenever I want. (Actually I could as there are deer tracks in the lane every morning; but I'd end up in jail and loose all my rifles for a lifetime!)

Come to think of it, shooting a deer off your deck doesn't make for a great story.  I have a friend who did just that and bagged a record whitetail 100 yards from his back door while it chomped on some corn at the feeder. I'm not suggesting I wouldn't have done the same thing. A big buck with a trophy rack isn't easy to come by regardless of the circumstances. But even when my friend tells his story it sounds rather apologetic.

But I digress. I live in an urban neigbourhood in Thunder Bay. It is a fair size city of 110-thousand or so. For Northern Ontario that's a metropolis. Realistically, it's an "island in a stream" - as Uncle Ernie (Hemingway) might say. Drive a half-hour in any direction and you are in God's country. There, in the woods, bears outnumber people - and know it (obnoxious bastards).

I shot my first moose 50 kilometers from where I now live. It had a 53-inch rack. I've driven an hour or so on a paved highway and caught brook trout the size of a snowmobile boot. That's right, a brook trout that would feed a family of eight, and eat a foot-long sub sandwich.

When I'm not hunting or fishing I work in my carpentry shop and get all covered in sawdust. It makes me feel good about myself - that I actually work for a living - and connects me with my roots of swinging a hammer with caloused hands. "Men from Earth" was the name of an album put out by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils back in the day when I drove nails for a living. The cover of the album is an old photo of men, mules and dirt. I like that image.

Every now and then I have to write something that pays money so I can continue doing what I love. Sometimes I write reviews on outdoor goodies like guns and such. I have a habit of beating myself up a bit for writing about such shallow, material things. But then I catch myself and realize that everyone has to pay the bills somehow.

At present I have a cup of jet-black-rocket-fuel in my coffee cup. It's starting to taste a little bitter, which means I've had enough and it's time to head into the shop and make some sawdust.

Or shall I go snowshoeing? Or wolf hunting?

Hmmm. I'm living the dream after all.