Dispatch from Lake Minnetonka, MN
Text, photographs and web design by Erik Gauger

My brother and I drove past Olson's, and Snyder's, even across Olsen Bridge, not too far from Wayzata or Shakopee, and Gustaffson Street. "Mackenthun's!" "Mahtomedi" It was the annual parade in Mound, and people were dressed as woodchucks, rather chipper today, and jumpy too, but the geography of Minnetonka is surprisingly complex, given it's all islands, bridges, and swamps.

The parade meant only the backwater routes were open; it would take twenty minutes along marsh and through neighborhoods of military-cut grass and picnic tables and American flags to get to the bait & tackle shop. "Which way ya goin?" the officer said. "We're going to pick up some tackle!" Hans said. "We were thinkin' of going to the Mound bait store." "Its mighty problematic getting down there an' all. Best go to Spring Park Tackle."

This was a laborious affair, given the fair, and a parade of slow-drivers, in their Pontiacs, Lincolns and Buicks. We came here to visit with Grandmother, who dared us to serve fresh fish for breakfast, to see father throwing gasoline on the grill, and mother unwrapping a salmon from who-knows-where.

The tackle shop is a basement store near the abandoned 'Tonka Trucks' headquarters. Everything about the store was old, and damp-smelling. It is much the way I remember it, 23 years ago: father filling the minnow pail. The clerks were smoking, and drinking Mello-Yellow. One said, "Looks like a good day for fishin'." The other said, "yup."

Hans was already digging through lines and lures, reels and rods. I said, "how do you know all this?" "Six years of fish camp and I better know it!", Hans feigned bitterness. I had forgotten that, yes, he did go to fish camp for six years. We fastened lines and tied flies and practiced the cast and floated out on kayaks into glacial Minnetonka, a lake of 300 some miles of coastline, plenty of bays, and boats whirring about, and Hamm's cans bobbing.

Kayaking is a nearly perfect form of travel, and a better way to fish, than say, an outboard, which doesn't clear a flat. Like walking, kayaking is flexible and unconstrained movement; effortless and rhythmic. Unlike boats, ships and canoes, a kayak can take in a 3 inch draft and ride a 60 foot roller. Kayakers have crossed the Pacific, the Atlantic, circumnavigated Australia and looped around Cape Horn.

Great Plains Louisiana Bayou Paddling and driving the backwaters of bayou country with a swamp maverick who claims that Louisiana will sink, or face horrific damage from a hurricane, unless efforts are made to reverse the damage to the coasts and bayous. Lake Minnetonka Fishing with brothers on the shore of that all-Minnesotan lake in this Northern Great Plains suburban center. Port Sulphur Notes on fishing with Andre in the gulf after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the coast. Harmony, Minnesota Driving along the Laura Ingolls Highway. Texas Hill Country Texas' heart is a place unlike the rest of Texas, and also symbolic of the Great Plains. Stepping into the Hill Country.