Everyone is SO Nice Here (aka Did I Ever Tell You About That Time I Bought a Mattress in San Francisco?)

Saturday:

Ah, what a fun day I had! I awoke in Backus and had a lively show of many colorful bird species eating at the feeders in the yard at the Burns'. The weather was sunny and cheerful. My cousin Paul offered to take me up to see some cabins his friends have and to see my land. Because it was the weekend, I was unable to begin the process at the county building department so I had the whole day to just enjoy myself here before I really get to work.

We headed up toward Becida where my lot is and made our first stop at a log cabin Paul's friend and neighbor Sid is building (pictured above). Sid was absent, but I met Bo who was peeling logs for Sid's cabin. Bo is one person who lives next door to Paul in a community living situation. My cousin Joel built a cabin on Paul's land in Becida a few years back. Later, Paul sold a piece of land with the cabin Joel built on it to the Pemberton family who are Christian Missionaries with a mobile ministry (http://freedomseed.org/) who now call Becida their home base (as seen above). So the Pembertons moved in and started adding little cabins around the main cabin and have made a really nice place of it all. While I build, my cabin, I'll be staying at Paul and Melanie's place, so I'll be next door neighbors with the Pembertons and all the various people in their little community.

After we saw Sid's progress, we headed on over to Paul's place less than a mile down the road. Once we arrived there, my cousin Joel came by for a visit because he lives in a little house with his family in a building shared by Paul's DNA sequencing lab (http://www.nwdna.com/) that is on the same property as Paul's house. Joel has been running that business while Paul is running an assisted living facility with his family in Backus.

Then Paul and I walked over to see what was happening with the Pembertons and I got all inspired by the cabins they have over there. They had progressed a lot since I saw the place last year, so it was really exciting. My favorite part was seeing a spiral staircase they had in one of the cabins. I talked with Tony who is the father/grandpa in the Pemberton family and his wife Tracy showed me around. They were very welcoming and Tony told me to come by any time. Then I talked a while with another Paul who is married to one of the Pemberton daughters who I don't think I've met yet (or at least haven't hung out with). Their place is really beautifully landscaped using a lot of rocks they dug up right on the spot. They also have done a beautiful job of using local wood, logs, and branches in their cabins.

While at the Pembertons', I also met Randy who lives just down the driveway from Paul about a quarter mile or so. Randy has a tractor service, so he'll probably be the guy I hire to do the excavation at my property.

Once we'd had a nice visit, we headed to the lab and I got to meet Joel and his wife Dustin's newest family member, Piper. I had fun catching up with their family (3 kids now!) and we made tentative plans for dinner once I start staying up there. Outside the lab, there was a trailer camper occupied by my newest friend Curt who is retired spending his summer in Minnesota and his winter in Florida. Curt showed me a device he recently acquired which has a brass bird on a little hinged bar and it pecks at another bar which sets off a trigger to hammer on a blasting cap which then engages a wheel that spins around and has a dial on it. The distance the wheel spins around measures the strength of the blasting cap. It was all very bizarre and interesting!

I can't believe how many of my new neighbors I got to visit with all at once! It was really fun and I'm looking forward to living next to all of them in the coming months.

An aside: as I write this, I am enjoying Malanie and her daughters practicing singing harmonies somewhere far off in this giant house!

After we met all the neighbors, we pressed five miles north to my lot. I can't believe how much the vegetation has grown up in the year since I last saw it!!! What I had thought to be a field of brush turns out to be mostly young poplar trees! This is great news for me because it means I have very fast growing trees all over the place which I can choose to let become a mini-forest, or I can cut back for a cleared yard area. I saw many surprising things there including a delightful variety of wildflowers.

I saw two of my very favorites, wild iris and columbine (pictured), as well as wild roses, daisies, and Indian paintbrush. On top of all that, a few miles from my lot, we were treated to an apparently uncommon sighting of the Minnesota state flower, the showy lady's slipper, which is a really pretty wild orchid.

I finally made a decision as to where to locate my house on the lot, and thus where to locate the driveway. It was a tough decision, but it was time to act! I picked a nice spot far enough north of the grove of tall poplar trees to let in plenty of light from the south but near enough for a nice view. Poplar trees are locally known as "popple" trees, a correct alternate spelling/pronunciation for a plant completely unrelated to this toy I desperately wanted and received for Christmas from my dad when I was in third grade. Dreams do come true. The house site is set back from the highway a bit and screened in on that side by a row of conifer trees.

After visiting my lot, we took a short trip to Bemidji before heading to Lake Hattie for some sun-fishing. There we met back up with my newest friend and future neighbor, Curt. I got to fish with Curt in his boat along with my little cousins Rachel and Sarah while Paul took Hannah and her little brothers Malachi and Caleb. Curt was so nice to teach me about fish and fishing, and had the deftness of character to not make me feel like an idiot for asking questions as stupid as, "is this a left-handed fishing pole?" He just said in his mellow Wisconsin accent that reminds me very much of John Goodman's voice, "Ya just gotta turn it over." I learned the difference between a bluegill sunfish and a punkin' seed sunfish (pictured below), what a perch looks like, and how to grab that fish I can't remember the name of without getting stabbed by the barbs on its fins. I caught a bunch of fish; from a 2 inch perch (my biggest perch yet...) to a bluegill that was also too small to keep... Rachel was the champ in our boat landing several sunfish that were plenty big enough for Curt to take home to eat. Tired and happy, we headed back to Backus to recharge and find out what adventure Sunday might bring.

In case my day wasn't wonderful enough, I got to use Skype (free internet video phone) for the first time with Lynea in the evening. It was so sweet to see her face and hear her voice, all without even needing to get my neck all cramped up holding a phone!

Here Sarah is helping Malachi who "accidentally" got a bit wet in the lake....