REGIONAL- The adventures of a wayward wooden eagle tossed adrift in a lake and the unpredictable circumstances that brought it back home is ultimately a story of strength of character prevailing over the violence of a summer storm.
Kabetogama Fire Chief Bryan Wichner began planning a week-long camping excursion with his wife, Cindy, and their children Bryanna, 16, and Zachary, 12, last November when he booked reservations for a campsite on Voyageurs National Park’s Wolf Pack Islands on Namakan Lake for the first full week of June this year.
The Wichners were joined by three of Bryanna’s friends for an overnight stay at their camp on Tuesday, June 8, and they all piled in the Wichners’ boat the next evening for the trip to the Ash River Visitor Center to reunite Bryanna’s friends with their parents.
“And that’s when we got caught in the storm,” Bryan said.
They were at the Ash River dock when the storm front blew through with reported wind gusts exceeding 60 mph as it doused the area with heavy rain and small hail.
“We waited for the main part of the storm to blow over, and as the sky lightened up, I figured we’d be able to go back, although it was still pouring rain,” Bryan said.
Keenly aware of the danger of added debris in the lake from the violent storm, Bryan proceeded cautiously, and sure enough, as the family was motoring in the main channel of Namakan nearing Wolf Pack Islands, he spotted a large object floating in the water ahead.
“I asked my daughter, I said ‘What is that?’ She said, ‘It looks like a log,’” Bryan said.
Eagle adrift
A little less than a mile northwest of the Wolf Pack Islands, and about 1,000 feet from the border with Canada, is Twin Alligator Island, the summer home for retired teachers Ivy and Herb Hanson. Ivy’s grandparents bought the island in the 1930s and built the cabin there in 1939. In 1976, as she was four years older than her brother, Ivy’s father, conservation officer Bill Callies, gave her and Herb a choice – they could either have the cabin on Twin Alligator Island or another three-bedroom cabin her parents had built elsewhere on Namakan.
“It took us a long time to decide which one,” Ivy said. “My grandparents had huge gardens up here, and we thought because we were teachers, we could live up here in the summer and take care of the gardens. My brother couldn’t, so we picked the island.”
For the couple’s 50th wedding anniversary seven years ago, their daughter, Calisa Karst, gave them a gift befitting their Twin Alligator Island home, a chain-saw-carved wooden alligator. And two years ago, when the artist, Ben Semler, of Brainerd, was selling off some of his display pieces, the Hansons picked up a bald eagle carving.
“It’s been sitting out on the dock,” Ivy said. “It’s heavy, really heavy. We never thought it would ever leave the dock.”
Then came the June 9 storm that knocked over trees on the island “that you cannot reach around,” Ivy said.
“Our daughter was up here, and she and my husband went walking around to see what damage was done, and that’s when they realized the eagle was gone,” she said. “Our daughter took the boat out to see if it was maybe in the area or onshore on an island near us, but she couldn’t find it. We finally decided it was gone.”
Eagle recovered
As the Wichners eased up on the large object they’d spotted ahead of their boat, Bryan noticed something odd.
“The closer we got to it, you could see white on it,” he said. “I thought no, that isn’t a log. We got closer and I said ‘Gee, I think that’s a bald eagle carved out of wood.’”
Knowing that its owners would be “heartbroken” to lose it, the Wichners plucked the bird out of the water with a collective mission to eventually find the owner.
But first, they had to continue on to their campsite, and it was a complete wreck.
“There was no way we could stay there that night,” Bryan said. “We grabbed all our important stuff and headed back to Ash River, loaded up the boat, and then drove home.”
The next day they returned, collected the rest of their gear, and left. The camping trip was done.
Searching anew
While the Hansons had resigned themselves to the likelihood that the eagle was gone for good, Ivy hadn’t completely given up hope.
“On an outside chance, I thought ‘I’ll put it on Facebook,’” she said. “I thought it couldn’t hurt. I got a lot of comments. People felt badly and hoped we could find it. A lot of people said let us know when the eagle has landed.”
The Wichners had also started putting out feelers. That’s when one of Cindy’s friends let them know that she saw Ivy’s Facebook post about her missing eagle.
“So, we had the person’s name, looked her up, and found out that she was friends with one of our friends, Jill Kiner, so we contacted her. She called Ivy Hanson, and within about 15 minutes she was calling us and couldn’t believe that we had her eagle.”
Ivy told Bryan that they would come in from the island to pick up the eagle, but Bryan instead wanted his family to deliver it, and made arrangements to do so.
Eagle returned
The lake was too rough for boating on the first day the Wichners had intended to go deliver the eagle, but the Hansons were waiting outside the next day when the Wichners pulled up to their dock with the precious cargo.
“They had it wrapped in a Carhart jacket,” Ivy said. “It only got a couple of scratches on it. We put the eagle back on the dock, and that’s when I took a picture of the whole family.”
Actually, it was a picture of the Wichners plus one, the Hansons’ 11-year-old dog, Jake, who took an immediate shine to Zachary.
“Their son really liked our dog,” Ivy said. “He was throwing things for him, and Jake was so happy to have a little boy to play with.”
“They connected right away, and they started playing,” Bryan said.
And the warmth was shared all around.
“They were so grateful to have the eagle back,” Bryan said. “They welcomed us into their cabin and showed us around the entire place and told us we’re always welcome to come back.”
“They were just so delightful,” Ivy said. “It was so nice that they were willing to return the eagle. He really is a beautiful bird.”
The picture will hold special meaning for all after what happened too soon after the Wichners left. Perhaps Jake sensed that the happy reunion with the eagle and a little time frolicking with a young boy was a moment too good to ever be topped; but for whatever reason, the beloved member of the family just laid down and died the very next day.
Afterthoughts
When asked what he hoped people might take away from this lost-and-found adventure, Bryan didn’t have to think twice for an answer.
“Could we have kept that eagle and said nothing about it? Yes, we could have,” Bryan said, “but that’s not the right thing to do, and that’s what I wanted to teach my kids. We found this, it doesn’t belong to us, somebody is devastated that they lost it, and we’ve got to try to get it back to them. I think the most important thing is to be honest.”