True knowledge in the north woods

This is my weekly Hibbing Daily Tribune column for Sunday, May 11, 2008. I archive my columns at my writing site.

True knowledge in the north woods
By Aaron J. Brown

The other day, my almost-three-year-old son Henry and I walked down to the lake to throw sticks, a favorite pastime of Henry’s and a ritual that has begun to grow on me. We normally throw rocks but our multiple April blizzards covered all the rocks with cold water. So we’ve been throwing sticks lately, different because they drift back to shore to be thrown again. You don’t get the satisfying “splunk” sound but the whole endeavor is much more sustainable, without the sharp rocks underfoot this summer. It’s kind of like driving a compact car instead of a Mustang. You get high off the ethos, not the pathos.

Henry is highly focused. I hope this means that in the future he will focus on kindness to others and getting a job after college, but for right now he focuses squarely on throwing sticks (or, in dry times, rocks) into the lake while Northern Minnesota’s natural world unfolds around us. On this one particular day, that world included loons.

You don’t realize how little you know about loons until you explain them to a toddler.

“Ducks!” said Henry.

“No, not ducks. Loons. They’re a little like ducks but, uh, different.”

“Ducks!” he repeated.

“No, loons. They’re Minnesota’s state bird. They’re black and white.”

“I throw sticks,” Henry concluded.

Four loons appeared in front of us. Two of them danced on the water, flapping their wings the way birds do in nature photographs in magazines I read at the clinic. Was it a mating ritual? I assumed the dancing birds were the males, but was it three males wooing one female or were these two pairs of loons fighting for habitation rights to the small lake by our house?

“Look, Henry. Those loons are dancing.”

“Ha,” said Henry. “Those ducks funny.”

I know people who know what those loons were really doing, but that’s the whole point. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Sure, I could stuff my brain full of loon facts only to be left with another question. What was that other bird that was swooping down at the loons on the lake, presumably protecting its nest near the shore? That bird has a name and story, too, as do all the other birds Henry and I saw that day. And you know, even after a lifetime in northern Minnesota, including a failed career in the Boy Scouts, a college botany class in which I received a B- and literally hundreds of observations by wily old timers, I still hesitate before identifying tree species.

Basswood? Plausible.

I know a lot of things. I know the historical dynamic of every presidential race of the 20th Century (the taller guy always wins, except when named John Kerry). I know the name of the talking horse from “Hot to Trot,” a movie starring Bobcat Goldwaith that I watched on VHS at my grandma’s house when it was a new release (Don. Just Don). And also know more than I should about adult contemporary hits of the 1980s and ‘90s thanks to a stint as an overnight disc jockey during high school. I know all these things and yet I did not know what those loons were doing on the lake last week. Not for sure, anyway. I would have traded hundreds of things that I know for that one thing I did not know at that moment.

We don’t know as much as we think we do. The more I learn, the more I realize that I don’t know much beyond the tip of my nose, if that. No one can teach this lesson better than someone young, short and curious. The very next thing I do after writing this sentence is to google loons. I need to know more about loons and most other things.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog: www.minnesotabrown.com.