Mary, the fourth wife and last wife of Nobel Prize Novelist Earnest Hemingway, has a history at Leech Lake and also here in our Oak Point neighborhood. Mary was a war time correspondent and writer herself. In her biography, "How It Was", Mary wrote that her father's and her favorite lake in Minnesota was Leech Lake. In 1904 Thomas and Adeline Welsh decided that the village of Walker should be the base of their lumbering operation. Mary was born on the high banks outside of Walker one Sunday morning in 1908. As a part of his lumbering operation her father had a rather large 120' by 36' paddle boat called the Northland that moved large "booms" of his pine logs up the lake to Federal Dam where they were sent on their way to the mills down river. Thomas Welsh is the namesake for Welsh Lake an 188 acre lake located along the Oak Point Road and also the Welsh State Forest.
Mary wrote about an annual early spring travel by buckboard or with sled runners across the ice and through the "Narrows" past Squaw Point and then headed up to the sugar camps located around the Hardwood Points on Sucker Bay. This was where the annual harvesting of maple syrup took place. Maple syrup would be processed until it almost was hardened then placed in trays where it hardened into sugar. This usually coincided with the Easter Season. Her father would usually buy several pounds of the sugar called siz-ahbah-quit placed in a clean new mokahk made of birch bark. The sugar season lasted until the lake was liquid again and the robins returned. I found no mention that Ernest Hemingway ever visited Leech Lake.
According to an archaeologist with the US Forest Service commercial harvesting to timber on Oak Point didn't take place until about 1910 which would coincide with the period where Thomas Welsh lumbered in this area.
Fishing Season
The fishing season for game fish, walleyes, northern and bass on Leech Lake ended today. The next fishing season begins on Saturday May 15, 2010. Fish houses south of US #2, which includes Leech Lake, have to be removed today.
Grandkids
Our son and his three children paid us a visit this weekend. We are now back to the boring quietness once again. With a great warm weekend we went fishing, shot the BB Gun, rode the 4-wheeler, played Cribbage, watched a movie and ate lots of food. We loved every minute of it, but it tired us out. My 9 year old granddaughter who is a math whiz, played our traditional Nitchals game of Cribbage. I lost the last two games to her. She told me that I would need to practice for the next time.
Sunset
Sunset view from Mounds Point across Steamboat Bay and first Porcupine.
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