Attribution: Ville Kurki, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis frequently compare notes about various outdoor adventures in their earlier lives, with Phyllis citing her hiking in all the national parks and camping on Isle Royal, and the keeper telling Canada fish stories and remembering nighttime wading in wild northern rivers. The keeper ends up wishing he had been with Phyllis before he got too creaky to chop campfire wood.
Early in his “outdooring,” the keeper’s dear mother arranged for him to get a personally autographed copy of Sigurd Olson’s “Runes of The North”, Olson then being the god of northern wilderness writing. The autograph read “For William Stokes whose life is dedicated to gathering runes, Sincerely, Sigurd Olson, 9/16/63.”
The keeper recently used that old book for his go-to-sleep reading and ended up vicariously enjoying a traditional Finnish sauna with Sigurd and his son at their wilderness cabin, complete with hot rocks, cold water, willow switches and dives into the frigid lake.
The keeper once briefly met Sigurd, but of course nothing like a Finnish sauna was involved—until the other night when the keeper asked Phyllis if she had ever been in an authentic sauna and she said she had, and so there went that—the keeper only reads about it, Phyllis does the real thing, and there is small comfort in knowing that at least it was not with Sigurd.
It is a high memory bar the keeper and Phyllis live with but the keeper plans to keep jumping for it.
Photo by Bill Stokes