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== 2 of 6 ==
Date: Thurs, Dec 6 2007 7:24 am
From: "Lee E. Frelich"
Bob:
Everyone who lives in Minnesota has jumped out of the path of a
falling
tree during a derecho, pointed their car directly into a derecho and
hoped
for the best (i.e. that none of the flying trees hit you), ducked
baseball
sized hail propelled by 100 mph winds (a few times), fallen through
the ice
on a lake (once is enough), canoed across a large lake in giant
waves (you
either do it or miss your next rendezvous), lived off of wild leeks
for a
week while lost in the wilderness (I did this in 1981), punched a
600 pound
bear in the nose to let it know you are not going to give it any
food, dug
a snow cave in a huge drift to wait out a ground blizzard while lost
on the
steppes of western Minnesota when the wind chill temperature was
-100, kept
a pack of wolves at bay by throwing stones at them throughout the
night
while camping alone 100 miles from the nearest village (the trick is
not to
run out of stones before dawn), shoveled the roof of their house to
prevent
collapse on a day when the high temperature was -15 (my father and I
did
that in 1979, and we walked right up onto the roof via a large
drift), had
heat stroke on a day when the heat index was 120 (Paul Jost and I
did that
in 2003), been trapped in the wilderness by a 100,000 acre crown
fire (I
did that last May as described in September issue of Backpacker),
and had
their ears frozen because they were on their way to a party and did
not
want to ruin their hair style by putting on a hat (ears thaw in
about 10
minutes or less and don't seem to suffer any permanent damage). A
typical
80-year-old grandmother from Minnesota is tougher than a Marine, and
because people in Minnesota live so much longer than in the rest of
the
country, there are millions of them around, so don't even think
about
invading and taking over Minnesota. Life here may seem adventurous
to you,
but its ordinary for us, and would not constitute a very interesting
article. Perhaps this posting might serve adequately as a holiday
greeting
from your Vice President.
Lee
== 3 of 6 ==
Date: Thurs, Dec 6 2007 7:52 am
From:
Lee,
You are right. I have experienced things similar to only about half
those things because I had only lived in Minnesota for about 18
months and got the residuals from MN while living in Wisconsin for
the rest of my life. In your list, you forgot to add jumping off the
edge of the roof of your home in winter and not falling because the
snow drifts were that high, or every time you find a remarkably tall
pine tree, it gets topped or felled by a severe storm within the
following few years.
Paul Jost
== 3 of 4 ==
Date: Sun, Dec 9 2007 7:15 am
From: Lee Frelich
Bob:
Those weren't my top 10 tough situations, they were just ordinary
situations with a couple fanciful ones thrown in for fun (the latter
can
only be detected by those with true deep wilderness experience,
unlikely
that someone from New England would catch on). My 10 tough
situations are
much more harrowing and much less interesting, and not worth
mentioning.
I am not sure I will be in my next book, or even the next three
books.
There are so many trees that are more important to feature.
Lee
-----------------------------------------------------------
At 04:52 PM 12/8/2007, you wrote:
>Lee,
>
> I hadn't got a chance to respond to your 10 top tough
situations.
> Wow, is all I can say. Next, we want to know the accompanying
details,
> your thoughts, etc. Fodder for your book. That's actually what
I'm
> waiting for. When it comes out, I want a signed copy and I'll
carry it
> around and show it to people and say, "Hey, wanna see what
kind of a guy
> the ENTS Veep is? Feast your beady little eyes on this and read
it, you
> wuss."
>
>Bob Levertt
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