Country Views - 'You can't go home'

By Tim King

“You can’t go home.”

That’s what Mike Tuomala told me a half a century ago. Mr. Tuomala was my supervisor on a 10 day U.S. Forest Service job in the late summer of 1971. We spent our days in the deeply physical work of clearing and repairing portage trails in the Boundary Waters.

Mr. Tuomala taught me, and two other young fellows, how to lay a stepping stone staircase on the down-hill slope of a forest trail so that it prevented erosion and so it looked as though those flat green stones so perfectly spaced had been in the trail like that for several thousand years.

We built that trail using picks and shovels and our young backs and hands. I can still see those stepping stones today in my fragmented memory. It was a work of beauty. We even dusted brown pine needles over our freshly dug earth so as to cover up evidence of our passage.

Mr. Tuomala taught us how to do difficult work well and to take pride in it. By doing so he taught us about the dignity of hard work.

At night we would eat and sit around a campfire and talk about the day’s progress. I don’t know if the other fellows heard it but on one of those evenings Mr. Tuomala, gazing into the campfire, wistfully said, “You can’t go home.” There seemed to be a profound lesson in that simple statement.

He was the grandchild of Finnish immigrants so I thought, at the time, that he meant that the Old Country would never be like the Finland they remembered and recounted to him. But, at the same time, I think he was referring to something larger than that.

Mr. Tuomala never explained himself and, since neither of us was much for chit-chat, I never asked. But, I’ve been thinking about what he meant this last half century.

Not being able to go home, I think, has to do with fallible memory, evolving culture, and the details of history. I knew a guy who came very close to going home by putting all that together on an annual basis.

I missed fishing opener this year.

My guess is my friend Daniel wouldn’t have. Daniel, for at least a couple of decades, pushed a boat or two into the river near where he grew up on opening day. He always went with some friends and a couple of his adult children.

The truth is that Daniel, who is gone now, would likely have disconnected the intravenous needles, dressed himself, and walked out of an intensive care unit to make that day on the river with his friends. It was a deeply important event for him.

I think Daniel did this because being on the river near where he grew up kept him connected to where he came from. Spending the day with old friends and family on the river also reconnected him with that important part of his life. Time with friends and family on the river he knew so well was good because there was the past, his history, and the traditional ritual of the opener.

But it was also good because there were surprises and a bit of adventure. Each year the people, like the river, were a little different. There was a new grandson and a full stringer. It was raining and somebody had a new job. An otter swam under the boat and there was a death in the family. Somebody fell in the water while landing a 14 pounder. The water was high or low and so were the people.

Life and the river flows on, stories are made and passed on and, given the chance, Daniel wouldn’t ever miss an opening day. That’s because he went home when he went to the river with his family and friends.

I hope that Mr. Tuomala eventually found his way home like Daniel was able to.