Freckles Across the
Border
To him the porter
openeth;
and the sheep hear his
voice:
and he calleth his own
sheep by name,
and leadeth them out.
— John 10:3
We just got back from the Land of
Sky-Blue Waters, my favorite place. My family has been going up there for more
than 60 years. Until recently, we had a wonderful white cabin, built by my
grandfather, dad and uncles, that you could reach only by boat.
This pine-scented paradise is a
chain of four big, deep, glacier-cut Minnesota lakes bounded by endless forests.
There are whispering birches, soaring granite cliffs, chuckling falls, bad
eagles, otters, bears, and beaver dams with so much life, they sing in the sun.
These lakes - Kabetogama, Namakan,
Sand Point and Crane - are so big, it would take you most of a day to boat from
end to end. Teeming with walleyes and bass, they're so far north, half of the
waters are actually in Canada.
The area's a microcosm for current
events. The land and water used to be spotless. But ever since the
environmentalists started "protecting" it, there's litter and giardia.
They say socialism spells the
demise of private property, and indeed, the feds took away our land and
demolished our cabin, using the power of eminent domain on us and other property
owners to make a national park. It was an eerie precursor to the recent U.S.
Supreme Court decision.
Now most resorts are out of
business, private cabins are gone, it's depopulated except for mosquitoes, and
back to how it looked hundreds of years ago. All this was at taxpayer expense
of millions of dollars, even though we told 'em the waves of tourists they predicted
would never materialize because it's so remote. And we were right.
The whole thing made me so sad, I
couldn't go there for several years. But I yearned for it, desperately. So last
week, we rented a cabin at one of the few remaining resorts on the south end.
And we got another shock.
One day, we wanted to boat to the
Canadian side of the lake to fish. We purchased licenses, for nearly $20 apiece, to take two walleyes each.
But first we had to pass through a
Canadian security checkpoint. The guard scowled at our documentation and searched
the boats. Our guides were nervous; he could shut them down for any infraction.
The five older Williamses had our
driver's licenses, but the youngest - Maddy, 5 - obviously didn't. We didn't
exactly have her birth certificate on hand, either. So she had no ID.
We told the Canadian official where
our cabin had been, and named some familiar names and places. But Dudley Do-Right
was on a power trip. He stood on the dock with his badge and clipboard,
frowning, while we squinted up at him from the fishing boats in disbelief.
Was he going to jail us as
suspected child-snatchers?
Was he going to strip-search us,
exposing our naked hides to more mosquito bites?
Did he think we had nuclear
detonators in the boat's live well?
Did we look like terrorists, in our
ancient fishing hats with pink blotches of Calamine lotion on our bug bites?
Four million illegal aliens sneak
across America's borders scot-free, seriously weakening our country in many
ways . . . and yet we can't do what our tax-paying, law-abiding, war veteran,
job-creating, all-American family has done for 60 years, for which we paid $100
in licenses, without technically even setting foot on Canadian soil, since it
would be 30 feet underwater.
Luckily, it came to me. Maddy has
freckles across her nose and cheeks, just like me.
I put my face next to hers. "We're
mother-daughter freckle-faces. Isn't that identification enough?"
Maddy gave him her most melting
smile.
Dudley Do-Right softened. He waved
us through. But next time, have your papers - or it's the chair.
It ended happily: everybody caught
at least one fish.
But geez. Betcha we won't have
that much trouble passing through the Pearly Gates.
'Course, for that, we won't need
ID. The Fisherman knows who we are. We're already on His stringer.
Know what, Dudley? That's the only
Homeland Security any of us really needs. †
