Out in it: Hunting up memories of the Baker brothers

This past Sunday I attended my church, which sits 15 feet up a scrub tree overlooking a plot of turnips and clover. The bustle and commitments of the week slowly dissipated as the hours crept, the snow and sleet turned sideways attacking my perch. I sat resolute — a shot at a late-season whitetail would be my only reprieve. Tucked in for the long hall, my mind turned to a great loss. This past week, a patriarch of the Baker family, Uncle Earl, passed away.

I sat saddened that I would never hear Uncle Earl and Aunt Sharon’s roaring laughter again. But my heart quickly lightened, recalling they had 66 years together, and that’s one hell of a run. I stared upward into the empty branches and swirling snow, imagining the reunion of Earl and his siblings. Being greeted with a warm embrace from his sister Leona, and his brothers Vernon, Eugene, Floyd, Jerome and Leroy gathered around him, slapping his back and presenting a new St. Croix fishing rod, already rigged, ready for new adventures.

For Earl, and the rest of the Baker clan, working hard, marriage, family, and friends proved the center of their worlds. Love for the outdoors also anchored them. Legend has it, the Baker boys would fish longer and harder than most. The Little Gunflint Lake walleyes would be harassed each spring as they camped for days where Little Gun dumps herself into the big lake. When Rapala came out with the original floater, the brothers refused to pay the going rate, carving their own lures and experimenting with different concoctions in the darkness, most nights not finding their sleeping bags until the sun broke free from the horizon.

There were also stories of mischief, a bear that crossed a little too close in the darkness, or the time a conservation officer confiscated their catch right out of the frying pan one May morning on the Gunflint Trail overlook.

Alas, an entire generation has passed. But I take solace in the fact that the reason I sit 15 feet up a tree waiting for a plump December buck is because it’s baked into my DNA. They may be gone, but they will never leave me.

My mind wanders to the predawn stillness of Little Gun, when the flower moon will rise and that old scrub tree will burst with new growth in the spring. Long after the weekend warriors have called it a night and the frogs mute their frantic calls, the water will calm and the moonlight will dance against the silent outline of the shoreline pines, you may find yourself lucky enough to catch the slightest whiff of a Swisher Sweets cigar drifting through the cattails … and around the point, just out of sight, the splashing of a net, and the echoing of thunderous laughter reverberating down the channel and out onto the big lake … then you will know the Baker boys are back at it.

Click here to read more about Earl Baker.

Bret Baker is an award-winning outdoors columnist and lifetime resident of Cloquet. He is a proud husband, father, educator and outdoorsman. Email him at [email protected].