Breathing the same cold air, we grew up, he and I. And I tell you now, all you who talk about red and blue states, you never lived in the North Country, because if you had, you would know that we don’t think about aligning ourselves with the religious right or the liberal left; we don’t think about aligning with anyone. In the far North Country, we think about, we battle, and we shake a fist at isolation.
Up here, we are alone, looking down, in a manner of speaking, on the rest of the country: unconnected to ever-perspiring Southerners, purse-mouthed Easterners, and unintelligible West Coasters.
The wind swept across our lake unchecked. At either end there was a town—anyway, we called them towns. Emily and Outing, Minn., stood at either end of the lake. One had a Red Owl store and a gas pump; the other had a house with the switch board in the parlor, a bait store, and an A&W root beer stand.
The one constant, the one steady influence, the one source of warmth in my life was Granny. I once wrote a poem called “Grandma’s Hands.” I don’t remember a line of it, but I remember collecting the lines. Sitting all the days of my growing-up watching her hands: tatting, padded satin-stitching, quilting, sewing, making noodles for Swedish meatballs, turning the compost pile, staking peas, digging potatoes, holding the pail to prime the pump, and putting those hands away deep in her patch pockets, lowering her head, and hissing, “Stay still child, not a sound,” as the mother bear lumbered by.
There was a day when Gran said we would go into town. Now that was pretty exciting: 85 miles north on Route 6N, to a real town. I didn’t meet him that day, but I think I saw him. I may have seen him, or after he was so famous and there were pictures of him everywhere, I may have remembered a photograph of him sitting on the broad porch of the dry goods store and thought it was a real memory. I don’t know. I know we went for supplies, and so, naturally, we stopped at Zimmerman’s Dry Goods. We got the stuff (whatever stuff), packed the car, and headed back.
It was late and dark—the pitch-black dark of the north in winter. There were no streetlights, and houses, if lit, were far back off the road, their lights a golden glow that hugged the boundaries of the house, never throwing light beyond. Light trapped inside—trapped by the warmth, I thought, fearing to come out into the cold night.
That is when Granny hit the brakes. Now her car, an ancient grey Plymouth, had no floorboard on the passenger side. It rusted out, I guess, but it wasn’t too much of a problem for me as my feet didn’t touch the floor if I sat back in the seat. The slam of the brakes, however, threw me forward and my foot touched air. I grabbed for the door handle, and the car door swung open just as Gran skidded to full stop. Altogether a good thing, as the door pulled me out and away. So there I was hanging half out in the night air, holding the handle tight, making it easier to look up as Gran said, “Look up!”
“There,” Gran said. “Take a good look and never forget it. Not everyone gets to see the Northern Lights.”
They—because I thought the lights were alive—were pastels, sheets of pastel colors that waved and shimmered like sheets drying on the clothesline in a constant but gentle wind. I could see them, yes, but I could also feel them in my throat, the way you see and feel a puppy or see and feel a bulging Christmas stocking above an open grate: right in the eye and throat. There was a sound associated with the lights—the sound that is the absence of sound, the swallowing up of whatever sound you thought you should hear.
The living lights stayed with us almost all the way home, and then we went up a hill, down a hill, and on the flat that was the way to the lake shore, and they were gone—as if there were light switches in heaven.
As I was falling asleep, I wanted to fight it, get up and walk and walk until I could see the lights again. Anyway, I didn’t. I stayed in the warm and thought as I drifted off: Gran said they were the northern lights, our lights, ours exclusively. They were God’s payoff to us in exchange for the cold and the hard ground and the loneliness.
Like I said, I don’t know that I saw him that day, but I did meet him later that year. It was in the city. I went to stay with Abby, whose name was Joan, but she liked Abby better. I was her best friend, so I called her Abby even when her family, parents, and brother insisted on calling her Joan. Her cousin came to the city to visit all the way from Brainerd and stayed at Abby’s house. Her mother said, “Joan, you and your friend have to entertain him—you have to take him along.”
We didn’t want to. When we walked down the street, he didn’t walk with us, but dragged behind or went ahead, and that was only one reason we didn’t like him—also, he was funny looking and looked at the world funny, but we had to take him along. So we went down the street to the Copper Kettle, and he went right up when they called “open mic” and sang. Abby and I were mortified, embarrassed, whatever, because he was scrawny and his voice was nasal and not very melodic. Abby asked if we could ditch him, you know, but we were afraid to and so… he kept singing and we kept sitting.
There was another guitarist that went up—big and blond and grinning. I thought he would be a star. I thought Bobby Zimmerman from Hibbing Minnesota would always be a scrawny, twangy, pain-in-the-neck country cousin. Yet, you know, I remembered the words he sang.
It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don’t matter, anyhow
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don’t know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on
Don’t think twice, it’s all right
So, there it was: a banner year for sight and sound. I understood that one was significant but not the other. I loved one and dismissed the other. I wanted to chase the light and run away from the kid with the harsh voice. And yet… I never forgot either sight or sound.
Later the whole world got mad at him. They said he had betrayed them, deserted them. They called him Bob Dylan then and said he had been the voice of a generation; they said his songs spoke for them but now he was gone, turned his back, changed his tune.
They hated him for that, and for the first time, I felt a kinship with Abby’s cousin. Bobby Zimmerman wasn’t the voice of a generation; he wasn’t the sound of some political cause.
Gran had a hickory nut inside. She was stronger than the cold. Her leathery skin grew dull, but her eyes were bright. At 101, she told me, “I am waiting for some more work to come into my hands.” When it didn’t, she stopped eating, closed her mouth, and then her eyes. She passed as much of that hard nut to me as ever she could, so I felt akin to the kid from Brainerd because I tell you now we don’t align ourselves. We don’t talk much, and we sure don’t speak for others; we survive and shake our fists at whatever made it hard. His words were not the voice of others; his words were the sound of his lone survival. His songs were the gravely, obdurate words, sung a bit quiet lest the fates hear. Like the lights, his songs were the triumph over and the compensation for the cold and the hard ground, the short growing season, the high-banked snow, the frozen pump handle, the whistling night wind, the lumbering she-bear, and the isolation.
