Happy New Year!!!!

The Snelson-Owen Family wishes you all the best of the New Year and hopes that your Christmas and Festivus was filled with warmth and joy.  Lest you think we are rarely timely,  we wish you all the love the world has to offer on Valentine’s Day,  see we are also sometimes early!

Never ones to let convention tie us down too badly, we finally take a moment,  near the beginning of the new year, to share a bit of news with those we cherish. 

This year has been one of transition for Heidi and myself and the girls. We once again put the Rockies in our rear view mirror to see what fortunes might be found in the Midwest.  Specifically, I took the District Ranger position at the Laurentian District on the Superior National Forest.  Manage some half million acres of public lands +/- of Northeast Minnesota just south of the Boundary Waters Wilderness.  My office is in Aurora, MN and Heidi talked me into buying a 103 year old house in the adjacent town of Biwabik. Both towns are just about an hour from the Canadian border and in the arrowhead region of Minnesota.  There must be a way to shape the hand to demonstrate but a friend put it well. “ Jesus, you may as well be in freakin Canada.”

The chosen house was a wreck but Heidi saw the potential.  After many cuss words and loads of work and endless sums of money,  Heidi’s got herself a very comfortable, bright, Victorian style home with tall ceilings and century-old charm. Now that most of the work is behind us, I have happily settled in as well.  

I put in a garden and a greenhouse and thanks to cousins in the region, am trying to fill the back yard in fruit trees and raspberries as well as garden.

We started our new adventure in the northwoods in mid March.  When we put in for the job, our hope was that being here would allow us to see my Dad a little more often during his final chapter.  He had other plans and decided to join Mom over the great divide just about a year ago as I write this note.  One can’t help but miss them this time of year and being back in my home state brings even a greater flood of memories.  Along with the memories comes the delightful opportunity to re-engage some cherished aunts and uncles and cousins.  A bona fide crazy lot, and  just as wonderful as I had remembered and perhaps appreciate more than ever before.

We dragged April with us across half the continent and she enrolled at the University of MN in Duluth this past fall.  Art Major for now,  lord I hope she gets over that.  But it’s just her first semester and she passed all her classes, even Russian.  She says she is happier than she can remember.  It is very nice to have her home for her break and we have been the grateful recipients of her certified massage therapist credentialed skills. 

Maia is gainfully and permanently  employed with the US Forest Service in Cuba, NM.  Something to do with recreation.  We were able to travel to Montana this spring and celebrate her graduation with her BS in Forestry from what used to be called the U of Montana School of Forestry when I went there last Century.  Now it’s called the College of Forestry and Conservation and they’ve salted in a bunch of granola “sciences”   like recreation. What a good forester is doing working in recreation eludes me but we are sure pleased that her current pursuit is accompanied by a regular paycheck.

There is some talk about a boyfriend that we are going to meet for the first time next week.  I have a Timber Management for Line Officers training in Albuquerque and Heidi and April are going to join in on the trip and get out of this deep freeze for a week.

As the locals tell us, this past summer was a doozey for biting insects, worst they remember.  There was record late and deep snowfall last spring and this December was the second coldest on record or some such thing.  For this part of the country that’s saying something.

We just returned from visiting Heidi’s folks for the Christmas Holiday in Kalispell, MT where it had been raining in the valleys and snowing in the hills. We left with days here sometimes crossing into the single digits above zero range during the day and double digits below zero at night and have returned to having the governor decree that all schools will be shut down on Monday due to deadly cold weather.  First time such a thing has occurred in 17 years.  No relief in sight.  Weatherman jabbering  about  88+ hours before the state will see above zero temps again.  What a tough people exist in this place.

The shine on my pitch to Heidi that it really isn’t that bad, when we talked about moving here, has worn off.  The look on her face is more bitter with each passing death-threatening day.   But at least no biting bugs. Thursday we fly out to NM where Maia was wearing her jeans jacket to go to the post office last night.   That may help.

One of the reasons for leaving Colorado was so we could actually consider owning a house and property.  Well this fall we acquired 40 acres of St. Louis County with about a half mile of the St. Louis River  dissecting the place.  The river place is about 15 minutes from the house.  It is a wonderful piece of ground that includes some nice hardwood timber and two oxbow ponds, and is bordered by 80 acres of State of Minnesota property.

I was able to get a couple of deer stands put up before hunting season and brother Kerry was able to come up and give it a go.  While weather was tough going, it was good to have Kerry join me for the hunt.  No venison but we’ll try and improve our odds next year with some food plots and habitat improvements.  Lots of deer on the place but they sure disappeared into the pine plantations across the road when the wind started blowing  (most of the season). 

Heidi and I will likely put up a cabin in the spring and do a big garden.  I am shopping for some chickens on the internet.  Not having the cluckers around makes life a little more empty. 

I really am enjoying the job here and the staff seems to be humored by me.  Solid, smart, progressive peer group and a courageous boss that knows the outfit can be more and gives us the reins to make it so.

Heidi continues to be a good sport about all this.  Although she squashed my intent to buy a 28” snowblower with heated handles. Heidi is spending her days painting (the arty kind) and working on her house, taking the neurotic dog for walks, and generally keeping the corporate good tended to.  You may notice that the card that enclosed this note is a bit of art that Heidi put together with the holiday in mind.  In a few more days, Heidi and I will have been married for 26 years.   How’d that happen?

Peace.