John and I took to our new surroundings like bears to wild honey. We woke each morning to the calling of birds; the most raucous of these were crows from their morning meeting place high in the grove, and blue jays, lower and closer to the house. Through our open windows also came the chatter of red squirrels. They scampered about high in the tree canopy, tails twitching, as they scolded indignantly from the lofty boughs of their busy neighborhood.
I loved staring at the rough pine ceiling boards over my bed. I could find shapes in the knots and waves of the wood grain, like a find-the-hidden-objects game, and I enjoyed studying them while lying there. Clearest of all was a wood nymph figure — her light colored featureless face in three-quarter view, was framed with dark flowing hair, which, along with the lower part of her body, faded into the background pattern. Other forms were not so stable. Depending on my focal point, a curving line could be the raised arm of a person, the wing of a bird, or the torso of an animal. Some smaller knots were eyes looking down. The possibilities were endless, but Mother usually broke my sunrise reverie. Then I would slide out of the warm covers, pull on my clothes and, drawn by the lure of pine scented morning air (and nature calling), I headed outside and down the path toward the little-house.
Cold dew from the plants chilled my bare feet as I padded along, occasionally meeting The Mother Cat walking back to the cabin after a nocturnal hunt — a freshly caught breakfast mouse dangling from her mouth. A pampered, civilized creature her entire life, lapping milk from a saucer and eating daintily from a ceramic dish, she had transformed before our eyes into this self-sufficient predator. In response to some primordial instinct, she displayed her new-found hunting prowess by laying her prey at our feet before eating it.
We hardly noticed the twigs, pine needles, and larger grains of sand our dewy feet picked up on the soft ground along the path, but they pressed sharply into our skin whenever we stepped inside. As they dried, they dropped off onto the wood floor and linoleum, which Mother swept after each meal.
We had no icebox, so milk soured quickly during the hot weather. If we wanted fresh milk for breakfast every day, our only option was the one-mile round trip to Jensens. Sometimes all three of us would go, but most often it was just John and me. At first we took quart sized mason jars, but soon switched to five pound honey pails, because they were lighter and unbreakable. Made of shiny thin metal, they measured around five inches across, and held about a half gallon each. With a metal cover like a paint can, and a wire handle, they were much easier to carry. This last quality was especially important when, just before reaching Jensons, we raced down Wild Horse Hill — our name for the modest grade where horses in the pasture sometimes trotted along the fence as we went by.
Killdeers called out their name as they skimmed over the pasture. Meadowlarks and blackbirds, perched in full view on fence posts, sang out, while warblers trilled unseen from clumps of bush across the road. By the time we got back home, a ribbon of smoke from the stovepipe told us Mother had breakfast ready for us.
The same fire that cooked breakfast, heated a teakettle of water for washing dishes, which we did following each meal. After the beds had a chance to air out, Mother made them and tidied up the house. Every day, John and I brought in wood for the stove — one load in the wagon for ordinary days, two for washdays. But remembering daddy’s advice, we tried to keep the wood box filled, so there would always be a dry supply in case it rained.
Daddy had made all of the bartering arrangements with our neighbors. Jensens had agreed to provide us with firewood as well as milk, in lieu of paying rent, for using some of our farmland. When our wood supply ran low before they delivered, we were forced to cut our own.
Taking advantage of the cool morning air, the three of us headed to the grove with our buck saw. We soon located several small dead trees. Cautioning John and me to stand back, Mother wielded the heavy axe on her first target. Scandinavian heritage aside, at a delicate 5’2″ and 100 pounds, she hardly fit the image of a lumberjack. She not only lacked daddy’s skill and strength, but her housedress restricted her swing. As usual though, she made up for all deficiencies with stubborn persistence, and the tree finally succumbed, falling with a thud on the forest floor. We all helped drag it over to the sawbuck daddy made, and hoisted it up on the notches, ready for cutting into stove lengths. Without fully considering the outcome, Mother stationed one of us sitting on each end of the log to force open the cut, and to keep her blade from binding while she sawed. As the blade made its last stroke and the log parted, John and I both fell off, landing on the ground — as though our teeter-totter had suddenly split in the middle. More startled than hurt, we applied our newfound wisdom to the remaining operation — cutting down more trees, sawing, splitting, and piling the wood.
Taming and improving the grounds around the house was an ongoing chore. Mother pulled up weeds in the front yard and cleared a patch for another garden space on the side, but it was grueling work, “hard on the hands” and she asked Daddy to send up her old gloves. But she was pleased with the results, “the front yard begins to look quite nice.” She continued to make creative use of materials on hand to spruce up the inside of the house. “I have curtains at all of the windows except the one by the stove, and a curtain over the bookcase, and blue curtains over the cupboard — and it really looks cozy …. I like it more here every day.”
But my father was gone less than a week when we discovered another of the house’s defects. The deteriorated state of our cabin should have been a clue, but nature has a pragmatic way of highlighting flaws. The long spell of fair weather ended on Saturday afternoon with a heavy rain. As Mother described it in her letter, “We almost drowned in the house. We have pans sitting all over.” Deploying them became part of our routine over the next several days, as one rain followed another. A new roof — an unexpected expense — quickly became the top priority for my father’s next visit.
Mother had decided that even though we had no means of attending church, we would still keep the Sabbath by abstaining from regular work. After breakfast, our first Sunday, she proposed exploring the un-cleared section of the farm that John and I had named “The Big Woods.” We eagerly agreed — pleased that being religious clearly had tangible benefits. We started down the road through the grove to the cornfield. Past the vegetable garden (we now had a holiday from weeding), we walked along the edge of the woods looking for a suitable place to enter. Several narrow paths for small animals led into the dense underbrush.
Finally we came to an old logging road — more like two ruts made by wagon wheels — heading into the trees. We followed it into the forest, this shaded, quiet wonderland. Before that time, my only conception of woods was drawn from fairy tales like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood. Their illustrations always showed neatly groomed wide paths bordered with flowers. But this was a wild place, similar to those we later read about in books by Ernest Thompson Seton — a sixty acre obstacle course.
We were confined to the road. The forest floor was a jackstraw tangle of fallen logs, decayed to a rich rust color in places, covered by medallions of silver-gray lichens, pincushions of moss, and sprays of fern. Ecru bracket fungi and mushrooms flourished in the moist places. Pine needles, pines cones, and fallen poplar leaves filled the spaces between rotting logs. Drawing on her University Botany, Mother pointed out and named many of the plants we saw, including partridgeberry, bunchberry, wintergreen, trillium, and Solomon’s seal.
Going in deeper, Mother looked for more mature trees — white and Norway pine, large enough to be used for lumber — slightly tainting her Sabbath observance with business. Looking upward at the trees, we almost missed our most spectacular find — four radiant yellow moccasin flowers hanging down from slender stems, curving against shiny wide leaves. I had never seen anything like them. To me, they looked as improbable as any creature whose foot might have fit them. I had very much wanted to believe in fairies, and seeing these wonders, after finding a fairy-circle of mushrooms in our own front yard, made it easy to think that Little People really lived in the forest.
Mother told us how rare these flowers were as we carefully examined them without touching. They were so extraordinary I knew I would come back to visit them often — but we could never locate them again. And I have never seen another one since. My one and only encounter with moccasin flowers was that day in The Big Woods on Sunday afternoon, June 26th, 1932.
We saw many more little animal trails, but did not meet any of the porcupines, woodchucks, or cottontails who made them. At one point, we were suddenly startled speechless by the loud thrashing of giant wings and a great squawk, as a large bird dove straight toward us, and then retreated, just as quickly to a tall pine some distance away. We were too astonished to do anything but cover our heads for the moment. Once our adrenaline level subsided somewhat and our breath returned, we concluded it must have been a brown owl, who was as shocked by our presence as we were by his.
We proceeded more cautiously after that, half expecting another assault. A little ahead of us in the middle of the trail, was a mound about three feet tall, perhaps a pile of sawdust left over from logging operations. John and I went closer to examine thinking it might be fun to climb on — but at its edge our feet broke through tunnels of what we discovered, too late, was an anthill….
Hundreds of its large red-brown inhabitants streamed out, covering our feet and ankles before we could retreat. In defense of their breached nest, the warriors continued biting away furiously on any patch of flesh they could reach. We dislodged a few by stamping our feet and brushed off others — but they were thrown to our hands and arms as we flailed. Eventually, we vanquished the hoards of voracious marauders, but it took us much longer to get rid of that crawling sensation on our skin. There were several more hills along the road that day, but we kept a respectful distance. Our woods may not have had a gruff papa bear or a wolf in grandmother’s clothing, but it certainly had its hazards.
The corn, buckwheat, and alfalfa crops Jenson’s grew on our land were coming along nicely, but Mother saw little benefit for us. “I wish this crop was ours and you had a tractor and a few cows and chickens and pigs. We could build another room like the lean-to in front and get along until we could build a new house.”
And there were other signs that she was becoming adjusted to the independence of country life, “I’d be glad to learn to milk a cow so as to have our own milk and butter. Then we’d want some hens and a little pig. We can easily take care of them.”
Daddy replied that he hoped “you like it up there for I think it will not be long until we will all be farmers.” But he had some ominous news. “The streetcar business is getting worse right along. I can only hold a run until July 16th, then it is the extra board again.” This was for men who did not have enough seniority to qualify for a regular schedule. They went to the station each day hoping to find work filling in for someone else, or manning an extra run added to the schedule.
His ten years of seniority put him on the fringe of regular employment. A few retirements or extra runs and he had an assured position, some cutbacks and he was out. In those days there were more cutbacks than additions, and schedules were changed several times a year, so getting a regular run meant he could only be sure of the work for a month or so.
We could hardly wait for his visit on the Fourth of July. Our letters pleaded for sparklers and firecrackers — or anything — even paper bags to pop, that would make noise. He wrote back that fireworks could not be sent through the mail, but we were not worried because we knew he could deliver them when he came. But he did not arrive on the third, and, after waiting all day on the Fourth for him to appear, we sadly give up hope. He explained in his next letter that he had gone to West Concord for the day to see his parents, the last time he would have a chance to see them for some time. He felt he should visit because neither of them was in good health, but he promised we would have our Fourth of July celebration later with new cap guns and holsters.
Mother was not pleased with his decision, “Believe me this is no bed of roses. I’ve spent most of the morning sawing and splitting wood…. It rained again yesterday. We’ve had pans sitting around on the floor every day for almost a week…. We waited for you all day Sunday and the morning of the Fourth and the children were very disappointed.” And a little later she was still complaining: “There are loads of raspberries but I have no jars for canning…. It seems a shame for all this fruit to go to waste when all it would cost is the sugar.”
Letters from John and I showed the naiveté and optimism of childhood. Mother shared some of the hardships but focused more on the cheerful aspects of our new life — the beautiful sunsets, the view of trees from our windows, the clear fresh country air, her vision of the future and a home we would all cherish.
Perhaps their original plan was to live at the farm during the summer, although they had never mentioned that our move was only temporary. However, Daddy did not give up our house in Minneapolis, and they may not have been sure themselves how it would all work out. But Mother’s decision to stay on the farm became their decision. It certainly met with our approval, as John wrote happily, “I feel like it was years since we left home.” Daddy told us about seeing his old horse, Tim, when he was in West Concord, and we thought about how nice it would be to have Tim up on our farm where we could ride him whenever we wanted — never considering the cost of feeding him….