When I think about the most cherished memories of my life, I
can say that it was the adventures I had with my Dad roaming the countryside of
the Copper Country. There wasn’t a plan
or a map of the travels we took; it was simply a decision to jump into the car
and follow whatever road caught our fancy. Many times, it was a tour of the
spots that made the Copper Country special: the old mining structures, the
remains of Electric Park, the abandoned street car stations. Other times, we
drove past the former homes of relatives, the house where my mother grew up,
the empty church where my father served as an altar boy, the rental houses that
we lived in when my family returned to the Copper Country in the mid-sixties.
Always included in these trips were stops to pick wild berries and fruits. We
tromped through thick grass, over the outcroppings of glacial rock in search of
the elusive thimbleberry, sugar plums and wild apples. As we filled our
buckets, Dad would tell me stories of his youth.
Years earlier, Dad had decided to purchase acreage in the
township where he grew up. The property, that we called The 39, had a range of vegetation from open fields to thick woods
of hardwoods and pines. Except for the family dog that was buried on the
property, the land remained unimproved and wild. In the late 1990’s, Dad announced that he
intended to sell The 39. He gave my
sisters and me the opportunity to purchase it before he put it on the market.
As my sisters had no interest in the property, I agree to buy it from him and I
became a land owner.
I returned to the Copper Country yesterday to visit with
my parents for one evening and to spend a long weekend at Lightfoot Bay watching
eagles and relaxing. We helped my parents move furniture on Wednesday night,
freeing Bob and I to wander the back roads the next morning. We decided to
return to The 39 to see if there were
any thimbleberries left on the bushes. For those of you who are not familiar
with the thimbleberry, these tart thimble-shaped wild berries make the best
jam. During my earlier visit, I had picked the berries every day and collected
enough to make jam to last until next berry season. Today, we found enough
thimbleberries to make another small batch of jam. Success!!
As Bob continued to pick thimbleberries, I hiked through
the overgrowth of trees and waist high bushes into the open field in the center
of the property. I had two objectives in mind as I walked through the deer
trails: to find summer apples to make applesauce and to locate the white pines
that my father, my sisters and I had planted 30 plus years ago.
Hiking into the open field, I found the white pines that
had survived and now were 20-40 feet tall. I recalled with clarity the weekend
that we had planted those trees. It seemed like it took an eternity to plant
the 100 10-inch seedlings in the rocky ridge overlooking the field. The
seedlings were left to their own devices to survive and those that did were
tall and sturdy. I don’t get sentimental over objects anymore, but the sight of
those trees did pull at my emotions.
This was the first time I had looked for the trees
without my father. Up to this year, he had always joined me as we traipsed up
and down the property, inspecting the changes that had occurred, reminiscing
about the day we planted the trees and Peepers, the dog that was buried here. A
week before my visit, Dad gone out to pick thimbleberries on the property and
had difficulties walking through the dense and muddy woods. He had decided that
it had become too much for him to walk through the woods now and would leave
those adventures to me.
That was the melancholy that came over me as I stood in
the field, admiring the trees. As much as I loved to see how much those young
seedlings had grown it was also a reminder about how both my Dad and I have
also grown older. On most days, I don’t notice that I have aged; then suddenly,
the reality that years have passed and that I and all my relatives and friends
are no longer the kids we once were. It’s not that I would want eternal youth. Having
lived through those years as a young person I have no desire to relive them.
But I am not ready to settle down and retire; I have a many good years left in
me. The blue mood soon passed and I looked around the field, glistening from
the bright sun that shined overhead. This day was too beautiful to dwell on
such melancholy. I picked up my daypack filled with apples and headed back to
the car.
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