If you have not read
books by Carl Brookins you have no idea what good stuff you are missing. I have
been a huge fan of his for years now. Please welcome Carl to the blog today as
he has a few thoughts about the inevitability of change and legacy…
Currently, the novel
I’m promoting is titled The Inside Passage. It’s a sailing
adventure that relates the story of one man’s transformation from a
conservative, strait-laced hard-working businessman who always followed the
rules, to a more self-sufficient, flexible individual who seeks justice through
any fair means, while necessarily pushing the boundaries a bit. It’s a story of
evolution and change.
Change will occur in
January with the swearing in of a new president. In 1973 after my family moved
back to the Twin Cities, we found a lovely piece of property on the bluffs of
the upper St. Croix when the widow of a local farmer sold and moved her young
family to a more hospitable location. We build a crude cabin and had an
occasional garden. As the years passed a replacement for the crude cabin was
necessary. We mounted a project involving a group of friends and erected a
geodesic dome after a design by Buckminster Fuller and supplied as a pre-cut
package by a local company. Time passed and we acquired a gas-fired
refrigerator, a propane range and built a sleeping loft. Long rope swings from
mature oaks allowed the growing gaggle of children to swing excitedly out and
back over the brush and snow-clogged ravine.
The passing of the
years saw the farmer who leased the open fields for crops and pasture go into
retirement and the land went fallow. We continued to host rural weekend camping
parties for scores of colleagues and friends, roasting whole hogs, sides of
beef and birds over open pit fires built of the downed oak trees from our
little preserve. Friends brought beloved pets to bury in remote areas of our
forest grove and we skied the narrow deer trails, hauled water and firewood on
toboggans by snowshoe and marveled at the solitude and even the random
snowmobile tracks of trespassing neighbors. A few hunters helped keep the wild
life in check.
With the departure of
our tenant farmer, we decided to re-forest the open fields. We acquired
thousands of white pine and red oak seedlings and over yet another weekend of
partying, with help from the DNR and a local farmer who supplied a tractor, we
consumed great quantities of beer, ate steaks and hamburgers and with many
friends, planted sweeping groves of trees, trees which have now grown to forest-sized
maturity visible from space, trees that are re-enriching the land to what it
once was after the glaciers receded.
Now, years have passed
and we grow older and less able to tramp through the underbrush and up the
steep bluffs. We have decided to sell the land, a place I visit only
occasionally now, yet one filled with fine and rich memories of children
growing, of family outings, tenting and tussling with sleeping bags and cooking
gear, of carpentry, and hide and seek. I recognize the flowers that blossomed
and enriched our lives, even for only a single season. I hear from the hunters
who ranged across the open fields and accept their thanks and recognition for
the good memories are what remain.
The land will soon
belong to the state and become a part of one of Minnesota’s fine state parks
which abut our property on two sides. We hope the state will remove the little
detritus left which reveals the occupancy of those who benefited from that
land, and we will see nature continue to reclaim its rightful own.
Yesterday we received
the expected certified letter signifying that the state will exercise its
option to purchase the property in question and our names will be inscribed on
the title abstract as former owners. Fences and signs will appear and we will
become subject to the state park rules like all citizens of the state.
Another milestone has
passed, another family change carefully executed. It is the passage of time,
the rotation of the stars, the inner adjustments of life, inevitable and
inexorable. Although I now rarely visit this land, this anchor to windward, I
will miss its presence, the sure knowledge it was there to be enjoyed, when it
is gone.
Carl Brookins ©2016
Before he became a mystery writer and reviewer, Carl Brookins was
a counselor and faculty member at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul,
Minnesota. Brookins and his wife are avid recreational sailors. He is a member
of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Private Eye Writers of
America. He can frequently be found touring bookstores and libraries with his
companions-in-crime, The Minnesota Crime Wave.
He writes the sailing adventure series featuring Michael Tanner and Mary
Whitney. The third novel is Old Silver. His new private
investigator series features Sean NMI Sean, a short P.I. The first is titled The
Case of the Greedy Lawyers. Brookins received a liberal arts degree
from the University of Minnesota and studied for a MA in Communications at
Michigan State University.
@carlbrookins
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