This post, part of a larger thread titled “Medical Professionals of Reddit, what’s the most f***** up thing you’ve seen?”, is most definitely a hit.

“I am twenty-four years old. I saw the first death of my career in 2008. Since then, I have seen hundreds more. Many people commenting on my posts have said things about how terrible people are. These stories are going to shake many people’s faith in humanity.

However, all of these stories have only reinforced my belief that life is beautiful. Humanity is fallen and lost, but life is beautiful.”

Part of me hopes the story isn’t real. Part of me is also glad there’s a place where people can unload the tremendous emotional baggage they carry.

Some Minnesota love on Reddit:

I was 13 or so and helping my godparents with a show in an Ely B&B. My parents were cooking, my godparents were serving/hosting, and I was just in the back, doing dishes. This was a while back, so Charlie Parr and Dave Simonett were just playing to a small crowd, maybe 40 people or so. I spent the night in the kitchen so I didn’t see either of them play.

Then, at about 11pm, after the show was over and everybody had left, my godfather came in and handed me a plate of Tiramisu and asked me to come out to the dining room.

7 chairs were pulled up in a circle, and we all sat down with our desserts. My dad and Dave began a discussion of Lucinda William’s “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”, and then Charlie pulls out guitars for each of them and they play the whole album, from start to finish, all from memory.

Since then, I’ve dreamed of being able to have that experience again–listening to wonderful musicians improvise and laugh with loon calls and wildlife echoing across the lake outside.

The photo above is from one of the first Trampled by Turtles shows I saw — early 2007 at First Avenue I think. They’re doing pretty well for themselves these days, but stories like the one above make me smile and thankful for being a Minnesotan.

Here’s his final sign-off from Midday. Humble to the end.

Eastman Kodak Co. (EK), the photography pioneer that introduced the Brownie Camera more than a century ago, filed for bankruptcy after consumers embraced digital cameras, a technology Kodak invented and failed to commercialize.

…

“They were a company stuck in time,” said Robert Burley, an associate professor at Toronto’s Ryerson University who has photographed shuttered Kodak facilities in the U.S., Canada and France since 2005. “Their history was so important to them, this rich century-old history when they made a lot of amazing things and a lot of money along the way. Now their history has become a liability.”

This, one of my favorite commercials (I do wish it didn’t have the Forrest Gump-esque music), suggests the company was trying to capitalize on that history in the digital world.

Pity they couldn’t.

It’s the basement of the very cool Fargo-Moorhead Community Bike Workshop. More photos of that on my Flickr page.

Also: Say, Can You Make Phone Calls on That Camera?

We’ve done some interesting online coverage of it at MPR, but this is my favorite. I’ve asked people to send me their old photos from the burn area and then put them in a slideshow and plot them on this map:

View Pagami Creek fire in a larger map

It’s a little labor-intensive, but well worth the effort.

The USFS has really taken it hard from residents and some politicians over this fire; it started about a month ago and smoldered for about 2.5 weeks before it got out of hand. Fire is a natural part of a forest’s life, that much is clear. But I think Bryan Hansel really hits it on the head with this post:

In the Boundary Waters, we face several factors that must be juggled differently than they are in other Wilderness Areas:

• It’s the most used Wilderness Area in the nation because of the scenic beauty. Campsites and the relatively untouched beauty of the area draw people from around the world. Over a quarter of a million people visit the wilderness each year.
• It provides significant income to the surrounding communities, such as Grand Marais and Ely.
• Fire keeps the forest healthy and creates habitat for creatures that are currently struggling due to climate change. We need fire.
  Big fires can ruin (1) and (2).

He concludes:

So what to do? My gut tells me that the Forest Service should put out natural fires, especially when fire conditions are high, and then later carry out prescribed burns when the conditions are right. They should use a controlled method that would mimic the natural progression of smaller fires while protecting the shoreline, portages, trails and campsites.

We’ll have to wait a few years I’m sure to find out what the Forest Service is going to change, if anything. But I can’t imagine the public being any happier with them next spring when it starts to get busy up there again.

One hundred-forty miles doesn’t sound like much — if you are in a car, I suppose.

But we were in canoes. Two old, heavy and dented aluminum canoes, that is. By the end of the first 160 rod portage from the parking lot to the Moose River, my friends were all ready letting me know what a pain in the neck — literally — they were. But I didn’t really notice. I’d been planning and looking forward to getting back up north for so long I practically ran down the trail.

And just like that, we were back. Within hours, we’d seen muskrats swimming up the river before us, heard the call of loons at dusk and felt that aching yet satisfying soreness that comes with thousands of paddle strokes and rods walked.

Annemarie and I had seen part of our route before in a previous trip; we’d taken the Moose River north to Lac La Croix and over to Curtain Falls. That was part of what turned out to be a leisurely trip. Not so this time around. We traveled from 12-15 miles on an average day, with our longest day ending at about 20 miles. (We were ready to call it quits after about 15 miles, but a bear camped out at our would-be site forced us to keep moving.)

The variety of country we saw through the whole trek (map) really was astounding:

Crazy cliffs:

Cliffs on the eastern Canadian shore of Lac La Croix.

Gorgeous sunsets:

The sun sets as we return from said cliffs.

Curtain Falls:

Curtain Falls, between Iron and Crooked lakes.

Towering pines:

Pine trees on a small Canadian island on the far west side of Lake Saganaga.

Burn areas:

Burned forest on Lake Saganaga.

More photos here.

After so many long days, I’m thinking next time will be a little more laid back. I loved seeing so much in one trip, but I would’ve liked more time to stop and smell the roses, as it were. Good thing I’ve got plenty of years (I hope) and plenty of lakes, rivers and trails left to explore.

After missing last year’s week-long BWCA canoe trip (I was graduating and starting a new job in Moorhead), I’m now just eight days away from putting in at the Moose River with a handful of friends. Here’s a map of our trip:

View BWCA 2011 in a larger map

A couple things are different this time around. First, we aren’t going in a circle. As you can see above, we’re starting west of Ely and ending midway down the Gunflint deep in the Arrowhead of the state. I’m excited for that, as we’ll be seeing a whole lot of country I haven’t been before. The route is a shortened version of a 3-week trek I had initially planned for this year, which was scrapped for practical reasons.

Second, we’ve been dehydrating our own food. That’s been an adventure in itself, let me tell you. Take a look:

My girlfriend and I have been planning this on and off for months now. I spent the cold, long winter in Fargo reading old Sigurd Olson books and Sam Cook columns. Take this line from Sam Cook, for example. It sends a chill down my spine.

After dinner each night, we stoked the fire and talked about camps we had made in Greenland and the Northwest Territories and Alaska. We talked about banner days involving brook trout and walleyes. We talked about big rapids and esker country and glaciers.

But we all knew we were just as happy under the stars on Knife Lake as we were in any of those far-flung places. We knew that all we needed was a packsack of food, a canopy of nylon over our heads, an ax and a saw, and we could live out here for a long, long time.

The stories and history from Canoe County certainly are impressive and I think I’ll appreciate this trip better for having read them.

But those aren’t our stories; I’ll tell you those in a few weeks.

Just after the fabulous Rock the Garden last Saturday night, I heard the news that Bruce Springsteen’s saxophonist extraordinaire Clarence Clemons had passed. Springsteen has said that when he was 15, the opening snare shot in Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone” was like somebody “had kicked open the door to your mind.” It took a few more years for me get into Dylan, but Springsteen’s 70′s albums — especially Born to Run — effectively kicked in a door or two when I was about that age.

Clemons’ sound was a big part of that. The explosive energy of his sax was the perfect compliment to Springsteen’s earnest lyrics. It’s in his solos in “Jungleland” and “Born to Run” when I can best remember my teenage years.

R.I.P., Big Man.