Archives
“This frontier was unique. It had a divergent ethnic composition, long severe winters, a short growing season, and massive muskeg swamps and bog which made travel difficult, leading to intensive isolation. Settlers in Koochiching Country endured suffering that made pioneering on the barren high plains seem like child’s play by comparison. Realizing that this would be some of the last of the free land, the pioneers had hopes that were probably greater… Read More
My ethnicity and ancestry have been declared in previous posts; the Norwegian and Swedish essays constituting a sort of prelude to the time when my grandparents show up on the scene. Now I’ll step into the decades of my life from the 1900s to the 2020s that include me, a family member, and/or my home base of Koochiching County, Minnesota. Decades, the blog series, is intended to cover the years from 1900… Read More
Remember, labels and photos get separated when posts are transferred to a computerized blog book. Just enjoy, family members, who are the only people seeing these books…match as best you can! Posted December 26, 2023: My first home. Before the log and plaster addition, before fruit trees and spruce trees and willow trees grew into place. Before gardens. Then it lived as a home for a very long time. But eventually after… Read More
Remember , earlier in this ‘year of ageing dangerously,’ I outlined a series of ‘mostly’ small journeys, each with its own peculiar personal meaning. Well, Trip #2 is about to commence. While the first of this 2019 travel series was the California Black Mountain birthday climb fueled by a promise of borscht and cucumber vodka at the end, this trip is all about Home/Real Home/Me and the Real Home. The old nourish-the-inner-child… Read More
Ah yes, time for another round of sentimental musings about my old home. And many photos. For this round of visits, instead of waxing lyrical over mom’s apple pies and the cries of loons on the lakeshore, and rehashing which of my introverted traits can be attributed to north woods isolation, I’ll talk about our land. My grandfather, Torgus Neset, purchased 160 acres of timber, swamp and small meadows sometime between 1910… Read More