View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

As I open my eyes, I am for a moment wondering if it is night, because it is dark outside. But then I realize it is 6 o’clock; my usual waking-up time. The nights are longer that’s all. Fall is coming. Soon.

Grant and I have had a cabin on Lake Koronis for almost 30 years. We both think Lake Koronis is the world’s most beautiful lake. To me, it looks like a Norwegian fjord with its many bays and hills and its three islands. One of our favorite activities is to jump in our old boat and just glide across the lake. Worries and tasks undone disappear as we listen to the songs of the loons and the chatter of the seagulls. But now, our boating days of this summer will soon be over, so we pack our breakfast of sandwiches and fill a thermos with coffee. The breakfast spot today is by Second (Winther) Island. We turn off the engine and just drift as do our casual conversations.

It doesn’t take long before our chat switches to politics. A presidential election is in the cards not long hence, after all. One of the many tales spinning on the internet is that governor Walz’s teaching for a year and subsequent trips to China have made him a spy for the Chinese. We talk about how rumors and the spinning of tales based on hear-say are even more common now than before the advent of the internet and the many sites available to us with one click.

But I suppose we are all guilty of slander. The talk in our little south-side-of-Lake-Koronis neighborhood was of the extravagant remodel of a cabin not far away. And even more tongues were wagging about the name given to this “cabin” with its five bedrooms and six bathrooms. “The Eagle’s Nest!” Didn’t Mr. X know that this was the name of Hitler’s hideout in the German Alps? Surely there are eagles around and some of them even nest in a few of the old oaks on the south side. But “Eagle’s Nest?” Mr. X must then be a Nazi we all decided. Besides, he wasn’t very friendly or neighborly, we all thought.

What tales do people spin about me?  I taught German for 27 years and went on countless trips to Germany. I also taught Holocaust studies in my college German class for 12 years. Do people think I am a Nazi? Or maybe a Zionist?

As a child I spun tales to amuse and scare my friends. We lived in the woods east of Oslo and as we played here, I told my friends tales of gruesome creatures whose presence we could clearly see by proof of broken branches and piles of pinecones. My tales made us all scared, including me.

I had the spinning of tales from my father, who loved to tell me stories. And the more he talked the more detail-rich and fantastical the stories became. Now, I am left with telling stories of my beloved father to my kids and grandkids, neither of whom ever got to know him. I might exaggerate a little when I tell of his adventures, but I am only trying to paint a picture of a brave and loving man. And all of the stories I tell of his experiences in World War 2 are real.

As the morning turns to day and the lake’s color becomes the vivid blue of the summer sky, we reflect on stories and tales. I tell my sweet husband, who like my father, is kind, charming and accepting of me, that we as humans can never just tell a tale, but must often embellish a little. And as we live our lives towards the inevitable end, we all are stories in progress. Stories to be told and maybe even embellished by those we leave behind.