Kent Nerburn

Alexandria, Minnesota 

 

Bookstores occupy a unique place in small communities. There is generally a fiercely visionary aspect to their presence and, usually, a fragility. After all, they are selling a product that is discretionary in areas of the country where folks generally don't have a lot of discretionary income. Hardware stores they need; bookstores, not so much.

 

Too often the economic realities of the town and the book business force these stores to descend into being shops of greeting cards and gift items, with the books becoming secondary. No praise, no blame. It's just the way it is.

 

But when a store survives with its vision intact and establishes itself as a community anchor, it shines in a very special fashion. Even people who never step inside its doors point to it with pride.

 

"See, we are more than Walmarts and Dollar Generals and barstools and denver omelettes. We are part of the larger world. We value ideas and adventures of the mind."

 

Cherry Street is one of those community anchors. Maybe I'm blinded by my history with this store: it, like Beagle and Wolf, was one of the stores that embraced me and promoted me early in my career. Kathleen Pohlig, the founder, made me feel like I was important, not just the next author up in a string of author appearances. A dinner out, good fellowship, and a warm welcome in the store. It made me feel like Sally Field in her famous exclamation: "You like me! You people really like me!" And the feeling was mutual.

 

This tour's night together at Cherry Street just cemented that love. All you folks out there in big city America, all you folks who think that rural America is just bullet-headed Trumpists, need to go to a reading at a store like Cherry Street. Smart people, engaged people, stronger in their belief in a worldly vision than many of their urban compatriots, because the reactionary forces with which they have to contend are ominpresent and immediate in their everyday lives.

 

A rainy night just enhanced the evening's intimacy. I left with a warm feeling in my heart, not just for Cherry Street, but for this whole nine day journey through the Minnesota north country that I love so much.

 

Now, it's a little R and R before going back on the road in the southern part of the state. Sadly, I have to say adieu to my blogging about the tour. Obligations are piling up and I can't keep pace with the demands. Every mother has at one time told her kids, "If you can't say something nice, say nothing at all." My personal variation on that admonition is, "If you can't do something right, don't do anything at all." I can't do the blogging right, so here comes my radio silence.

 

Keep reading, keep passing on the word about Lone Dog Road, and pet every dog you can.

Every author has one of those places where it all began.

What is now Beagle and Wolf books in Park Rapids, Minnesota, is that place for me.

 

Beagle and Wolf was originally two stores — Beagle Books in the small town of Park Rapids and Sister Wolf books in the even smaller town of Dorset, Minnesota. Both are destination spots in the resort area on the western edge of the lakes and pines country of northwest Minnesota.

 

Park Rapids is a sweet little lakes and woods town of 4000 that serves as an escape valve for North Dakotans who get tired of their parched reality and scoot over to Park Rapids to race around on jet skis and otherwise live the lake life that their home geography has denied them.

 

Dorset, population 22, pulled off the promotional gimmick of having a three-year-old mayor, who succeeded his six-year-old brother in the job, creating a political dynasty that for all I know continues to this day. That's a story unto itself, and worthy of the knowing, but now is not the time to tell it.

 

Lots of vacationers and cabin owners visit Dorset for an evening meal at one of the four restaurants that exist on its single main street and are its claim to fame as the self described "restaurant capital of Minnesota". Where the people come from who staff and operate these restaurants is anybody's guess — probably Park Rapids.

Bemidji, Minnesota

"My god!  You look just like someone I used to know, except a lot older."

"Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you!"

 

And so went the good-natured ribbing among those of us at the Lone Dog Road reading at Four Pines bookstore in my old home town of Bemidji.

What a warm evening! Dear old friends, folks I recognized but didn't know, folks I knew only slightly, but with whom I shared a common history on these too familiar streets.  This was not the Red Lake taproot.  This was the Bemidji intertwining of branches.

 

Four Pines bookstore felt courageous.  I know this town in the lakes and pines country 100 miles from the nearest freeway and 100 miles from the Canadian border.  I lived here for25 years.  I know how it has fought against meaningful social change and clung tightly to a culture of nostalgia. But things are changing. The young people are forcing it. They are saying, "We want more.  We want the bigger world."  And they are getting it.

 

Micro-breweries, Thai restaurants and ramen shops.  Home grown businesses started by young, courageous entrepreneurs who want to embrace change, not resist it.

Four Pines Bookstore is one of these.  It has a brightness, an earnestness, a hopefulness.  Other bookstores have come and gone in this town — a crazy, topsy turvy bookstore of used books on jumbled shelves in an old Victorian house, a weirdly insular tiny Christian bookstore, an off-brand chain whose heart never really seemed in the enterprise, and now, Four Pines.  It has the modern, welcoming openness that puts it right in the mainstream of colorful, brightly lit independent bookstores around the country.  You can feel it enhancing the texture and dimension of the community by its presence.

 

The reading went well.  I am figuring out how to present this sprawling, hard-to-categorize novel.  But, even more, there was discussion about the interwoven nature of the Native and non-Native communities here.  The pain, the rupture, the commonalities and differences, are all being brought out into the open.  I like to think that my work has played a part in this.  After all, here in this forgotten corner of northwest Minnesota is where my eyes were opened, where I first put pen to paper, and where the land grabbed me with a force that has never let go. And I have tried to give it voice through my work.

 

I'm fond of saying that we each have to live in a way that pays the rent for our time on earth.  Between the wonderful engagement in Red Lake and the warm evening in Bemidji, I get a good feeling that maybe my rent is partially paid.

 

My reward for these days was a touch with people who have touched my heart, the lapping of lake waters and the nighttime cry of the loons outside our window, and a pontoon ride along this northern most part of the Mississippi with my wife at my side and a dog on my lap.

 

If there was nothing more, I could die happy.

 

But I don't get to die, happily or otherwise.  Bemidji is in the rearview mirror and we're off to Park Rapids and Beagle and Wolf books, who have been among my strongest supporters for 35 years.

Another precious homecoming. I could get used to this.

 

 

 

You can't go home again? I don't want to hear it.

When I get to Red Lake, I'm home.

 

I can't explain it. Bemidji, the town where we spent 25 years, feels distant, even in its familiarity. But Red Lake, where I spent only three years, makes me feel like I never left. You can attribute it to the fact that not much changes on the reservation. You can say it has to do with the people. You can attribute it to any number of causes or circumstances, but I can't help but feel it has to do with the fact that I was allowed into the taproot experience of this vast piece of land, held in common by the Ojibwe, that has never been owned by the United States.

 

As I keep saying over and over about Indian experience in general as well as Red Lake in particular, what you see on the surface does not speak to the deep resonances of a place and people whose roots don't trail off into some other part of America or some European or African country.

 

These folks are of and from this land, and the land has an unassailable resonance not obscured by the crisscrossing of immigrant cultures and transient movements. I tend not to trust single words to describe things, but I can't do better than one of my favorite words to express the experience I am trying to describe: "quiddity". The people and land have a quiddity that is irreducible.

 

But enough of the Kentian ruminations. This homecoming was a true highlight of the tour. The college treated me in that way that the Native folks have always treated honored guests. A tour of the college given by the college president, platters of food for folks attending the talk, an image of me on a big screen that made me feel like the wizard of Oz. The key word is "respect". Native people understand respect, both given and received. It is one of the reasons why I love being around them. They hold people who show respect in higher regard than people who wield power. America in general doesn't get that, and we are reaping the results of that blindness in the grotesque misshapen reality of our contemporary politics.

 

But enough of that.

 

The highlight for me was five of my former students showing up. They had not all been together in 30 years, and seeing them opened floodgates of feelings and memories that defy description. Suddenly, the veil of years parted and it was just Nerburn with Keith and Karen and Donnie and Kevin and Missy. Like Karen said, it was as if we hadn't missed a beat.

 

Oh, those were the days. That was where my life turned and got set on the course that it has been on ever since.'

 

I hope all of you sometime have the experience of encountering the moments of greatest significance in your past and feeling the years melt away and long forgotten sensations rush in and overwhelm you with warmth. That's what Red Lake was for me.

 

I left that day with a song in my heart.

 

 

 

Red Lake

Here's all you need to know: a 30 mile drive back up to my old haunts and a radio interview with my one-time student, Gary Jourdain, known as The Rez Dog. Or for those of you who don't know him so well, "Mr. Dog."

 

Other than seeing the legendary Dog, the only event of significance was having to stop on the way up to let a bear cross the road, probably to do what bears do in the woods.

Here's the interview: enjoy or endure.
 
Watch Video

No bookstores or book signings today, just the 250 mile drive from the upper eastern corner of the state to the western edge of the forests where the land begins to open into the prairies. It's forest roads the whole way — two lane asphalt winding through pines and lakes, with an occasional small town interspersed on the journey.

 

In geological terms, it is a movement from the ancient rocks of the Canadian shield, which creates a lake country of craggy promontories and crystal blue waters, to the less dramatic, but still heavily forested land of lakes and streams and bogs that make the land seem almost more water than earth.

 

You don't notice the change unless you are watching closely. The forests get slightly less stately and the perimeters of the lakes slightly less rocky. But it is still just mile after mile of forested pathway.

 

There is one great punctuation, though — the iron range, or, "the range" as it is known; a long, thin stretch of land that contains the iron ore that fueled America's industrial revolution and shaped the culture and the people that lived, and still live, upon it.

 

The range is characterized by the "open pit" mines; breathtaking man-made Grand Canyon-like gashes in the land miles wide and hundreds of feet deep where earth moving machines three stories tall dig and move the ore that makes the steel that made America. They look like insects as you peer down upon them from the overlooks on the edge of the pits.

 

We made our way across that dividing line of the Range and continued through the forests to Bemidji, our old home town. It's a town of 13000 people in the middle of three Indian reservations, situated on the margins where the forests begin to give way to the vast prairies of  North and South Dakota.

 

As we arrive, we see that nothing has changed, but everything has changed. Like any place you return to that you left years ago, it is unnerving for its combination of familiarity and strangeness.

 

I do a ZOOM interview with a native language and culture group in upstate New York, and we settle into a 1940's cabin on the shore of Lake Bemidji, the lake where the Mississippi passes through on its way from its origin in Itasca 60 miles to the west to its ultimate terminus thousands of miles south at the Gulf of Mexico. The cabin is part of a once grand lakeside resort that has fallen into its current shabby state and now survives as a nostalgic curio with only faint echoes of its former glory.

We visit old friends and see old haunts, drive by our one-time homes and reminisce about how it was to live here and how we ended up where we are now. A million thoughts, a million memories.

 

I could write epistles about this homecoming, but rather than sort through the memories and sensations, I would rather give you pictures of two of my canine friends with whom I had joyful reunions: Sevvie, the dog I looked after last year when his owners were out of town, and Adele, a "dog dog" as I call her — the Platonic vision of a dog as I understand them — and the fourth in a line of excellent golden retrievers owned by an old friend of ours.

 

A better man, a wiser man, would talk about those old friends. But I am not that man. I am satisfied to leave you with images of Sevvie and Adele. More human encounters are coming soon. For now, these two fine doggies are all you get, and for most of you dog folks, that should be quite enough.

Grand Marais

This is a tiny jewel — both the town and the bookstore.

 

Drury Lane Books could be right out of hobbit land or a children's book of nursery rhymes. 

It sits right on the edge of the Grand Marais harbor, which is one of the few places along Superior's rock coastline that offers sailors and boaters a place to launch and live out their seafaring dreams.

 

This is not a land of deck shoes and big yachts.  These are outdoors folks — REI and hiking boots and cars with canoes strapped to the tops.  Families, too, who are willing to drive the 100 miles of rocky shoreline through the forested landscape of northeastern Minnesota for a stay in this one bright little town that almost hints of New England or the generous seaside towns of Lake Michigan.  But this is neither.  It is the great and unpredictable Lake Superior, and no one and no place here can put on airs.

Drury Lane was truly a jewel.  Another small, brightly lit, intimate store with colorful titles on wooden shelves.  Stores like this and Zenith are such wonderful antidotes to the manufactured literary pretentiousness of Barnes and Nobles and other chain stores.  Those stores had their day, shocking everyone with comfortable seating and coffee bars.  But now they are little more than shops for greeting cards and puzzles and flavor-of-the-day chick lit and romances. If they serve any purpose, it is as display units for books that people then go home and order from Amazon.  They are reaping their just deserts.

 

But these quirky little gems like Drury Lane are not just bookstores, they are experiences.  You want to go in them, not get out of them.  They beckon you to linger.  You feel you are among friends.

Our reading was at 6.  I expected four people and a random dog. But we again had over 30 people jammed in, making it standing room only.  I am learning how to present this book, though I fumbled the ball on my choice of readings.  But, no matter, I was among friends and the talk and conversation went swimmingly, and I am learning.

I cannot express how much I love these small venues and the folks who show up.  I also had the bonus of an intimate engagement with a small sweet dog who was willing to indulge my dog love and dog hunger.  Truthfully, I think he enjoyed it as well.

 

 

 

Duluth

 

Ah, Duluth.  One of the most confounding cities I have ever known — equal parts rust belt industrial grit and magical child of Lake Superior, the most brooding, most changeable, most spiritually powerful of the great lakes.  People compare Lake Superior to the ocean, but it is actually a completely different beast.  The ocean has moods, Superior has a personality.  And that personality is one of a wild animal.

 

Today the animal is benign — shimmering waters gently rolling beneath cerulean blue skies. A joy to be in its presence, overwhelmed by its vast embracing calm.

 

Zenith, the bookstore where I am reading, sits at the lower tip of Superior in the industrial end of Duluth, a part of town that is trying to cast off its ground-in history of mining poverty and sailor bars to become a place of life and energy and youthful hope.  With the help of establishments like Zenith, it stands a good chance.

 

I love bookstores like Zenith.  They have such interesting characters and personalities.  Zenith has a delightful fierceness about it.  Gritty on the outside, it is beautiful inside, with shiny pine shelves and a well-curated collection of titles tastefully displayed.  It's almost like a guerilla establishment, fighting its battles from behind an unassuming exterior, and winning them one by one. It stands as a model for the other businesses and establishments in the area that are fighting their part of the struggle.  Not quite an anchor, not quite a hub, it feels more like a mentor, showing the way that an establishment with a vision and a large heart can stand against decay and lethargy and lead the way to a creative and exciting future.

 

The reading went well.  We had about 30 people — a good crowd — engaged and animated.  We went on for about an hour and a half, with talk and readings and stories.  This was the first day out on my own with Lone Dog Road and I had no idea how to present it.  But the Zenith crowd helped with their genuine enthusiasm and attention.  I'm feeling good about the book now, and ready to head north up the shore of Superior to Grand Marais, a tiny beloved harbor town at the jumping off point for people going to the interior and the great northern Boundary Waters and Voyageurs National Park.  This is going well.

 

 

Subtext Books at the University Club, St. Paul

 

What a wonderful start.  An evening reading at the University Club of St. Paul — a stately, century-old members-only European style social club situated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi river valley in an oak and stone mansion designed by the same architect who designed New York's grand central station.

In its earlier days you could imagine horse drawn carriages and butlers with waistcoats and lawn bowling in white suits — a Jay Gatsby reality sketched by F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose home is just a few blocks away on this tree-lined boulevard of gracious homes with porte cocheres and servants' quarters.

But on this night it was the site of the two Kents — Kent Nerburn and William Kent Krueger — sitting on high stools in front of about 100 people, engaged in casual conversation about writing and Lone Dog Road.

 

Kent Krueger and I really like each other and neither of us takes ourself too seriously, so it was relaxed and fun for all.  As well as being one of America's most beloved contemporary authors, Kent Krueger is a truly nice man, and I was honored to have him help me bring Lone Dog Road into the public for the first time.

The event was put on by Subtext books, a sweet bookshop in downtown St. Paul that is fiercely committed not only to the selling of books but to serving as a sanctuary and cultural anchor to a city whose downtown struggles to keep its grip on amenity and civility, just as do the downtowns of almost all big American cities these days.  The contrast between the mission of Subtext and the setting of the reading was a breathtaking snapshot of America's struggles and dreams in this crazy time, and it was a perfect send-off for a book that tries to speak in different voices of the struggles and aspirations of solid American folks of different races, classes, and backgrounds.

I went home buoyed by the evening and filled with hopes for the tour.

A quick night of sleep, a sloppy job of packing (when you are car-tripping sloppy packing is easily forgiven), and it is off to Duluth, a hundred and twenty miles north, where Louise and I had hoped to settle when we returned from our ten magical years in Oregon.  But that's another story.

 

So, here we go into our beloved north country, where the greatest of the Great Lakes looms and groans, and shapes the character of the town and the people.  I can't wait to be there.