Photograph courtesy of the Minnesota Office of Tourism. The Arrowhead Trail tugs me aside. I drive to where it ends beside McFarland Lake and come to a halt at a low wooden bridge besides a beaver dam. The car ticks as it cools, and the sound of it carries through the still air. Low mountains and thick conifers rise from the russet underbrush into a wash of October sunshine.
Hawks are up.
They swirl in graceful patterns under a jet contrail so crisp it could have been painted across the sky with a fine camel hair brush. A beaver bobs up at the lake's edge and paddles away. From some hidden place along the opposite bank, the eerie call of a loon peals across the silvery waters, amplified by the lake's narrowness here, and heightened by its tranquillity. My drive began in Duluth, where Minnesota 61, the North Shore Drive, skirts mansions built at the turn of the century. Here, houses and landscaping only partially screen the shimmering of Lake Superior and beyond.