Just An Outfitter
Life would be much easier if we were just outfitters. I threatened to fire Mike today when he was heading out to go to a meeting about the Gunflint Trail Volunteer Fire Department Hall expansions. He said that didn’t make any sense to fire him and I agreed and decided to "ground him" instead. He chuckled as he drove away in the pick-up truck.
No one ever said life would be easy and I’m sure I wouldn’t have listened to them anyway. Last Saturday night we had finally sat down to relax after a long day and were immediately alerted by the emergency page tones followed by the phone ringing. There was a report of a fire at a cabin on Gull Lake just down the river.
We grabbed our fire bags, a fire extinguisher, life vests and ran down to the dock. We could smell smoke in the air and could see a haze in the night sky. We picked up our neighbor next door on his dock and his next door neighbor on his dock as we made our way to the residence under suspicion.
We saw flames through the trees and one of our neighbors was ready to turn back for his fire pump. I urged Mike to continue on because the fire wasn’t at the suspected cabin and didn’t look like anything burning out of control. We approached the fire at mach speed only to find people relaxing by a campfire ring on their dock with a fire extinguisher at their side.
We then headed over to the property where the fire was thought to be at but there weren’t any flames in sight. There were no lights on and there wasn’t even a boat on the dock. We went back to the campfire on the dock to explain our presence and then headed back home.
Of course that fire equipment only made it as far as my laundry room and not back into its proper place. Just as the medical equipment from yesterday’s call hadn’t made it back to its storage place either. It was strewn about the laundry room floor as well.
Both Mike and I responded to a medical call at the Trail’s End Campground yesterday. We’re both First Responders and Mike ended up riding to town in the ambulance with the patients. Half of a day later Mike finally returned to Voyageur.
Being a part of the community we live in is important to both Mike and me. I suppose we wouldn’t have to be as involved as we are or do as many things for the community as we do. It would be much easier to be just an outfitter but then again nobody ever said life would be easy.