Monday, March 26, 2012

BRANDY IN THE BLACKJACK

A few guys and I escaped for a long weekend up north. Had quite a time.
Saturday morning we helped Glenn squeeze his big brown couch out of his cabin. We got an okay from a fellow in town to leave the couch on the sidewalk in front of the junk store downtown in Phelps. Pictured on the couch on the sidewalk are Gary Greene, Glenn Hojem, and Mark Hanson.



From there, Gary, Hanson and I took a hike in the Blackjack Springs Wilderness. We hiked in to Whispering Lake and took the trail to the right up to the high point overlooking the lake. While up there we noticed a wooden box affixed to a tree down closer to the lake. You can see this box in the picture of the lake. It’s in the lower left part of the image. We thought at first the box might be a wood duck house or something like that. Gary ventured down first to take a look and discovered it was something totally unexpected.



On the hinged door were written the initials “DRS” and a date when the person was born, and another date when they died last fall, in their mid 80s. In the box were a hand-rolled cigar, a shotgun shell, a small spiral notebook with pen, and a half-pint of blackberry brandy. A message was written on the inside door of the box. It read, “Dad loved spending time in these woods. Have a drink to celebrate all the good times we had. He worked hard to protect the Blackjack for future generations.” We made entries in the little notebook and sniffed the brandy. Well, it smelled good; how do you suppose it might taste? Gary and I each poured some brandy into the bottle cap and enjoyed a tribute to this fellow. From reading other entries in the notebook, I was able to determine that the Dad mentioned was Dan Satran, a noted newspaper publisher, editor and writer in Eagle River for many decades.




Later, in the early afternoon we headed to Land O’ Lakes for a bike ride on the trail system out to the Forest Lake Country Store and back. It was a 10.23-mile round trip, and as you can see in the photo of our bikes with a snow pile, it was an unusual mix of seasons during an unusual spring.