Articles

Column: Everybody needs a regular destination

This bench is mine. It sits just 2 miles from the house (for a casual 4-mile round trip) above the shore of Lake Superior.

• Eddy Gilmore
• The bench

Column: Glad the groundhog got it wrong

As I scrawl these words on a lovely evening, smoke from my woodstove wafts from the chimney and twists up and through large snowflakes falling like feathers. It’s snowing again, as it did the weekend prior, and I welcome it as if it were manna from heaven.

• Eddy Gilmore
• Skiing

Column: The lure of the wilderness cabin

I am writing this on the evening before heading out to a wilderness cabin north of Ely with some pals.

• Eddy Gilmore

Column: Dealing with adversity, and being ready for it

“Today was the best day and the worst day. It was the worst because I broke my elbow, and the best because I got a Popsicle.” These words were the final analysis of a recent day experienced by my 7-year-old son.

• Eddy Gilmore

Column: Quality time with family and neighbors vital to healthy communities

Following recent snows, many of our enviable ski trails were groomed and ready to be used in short order, while some streets in nearby residential streets still waited to be plowed. This is awesome, and yet another reason to live in and enjoy Duluth, Minnesota.

• Eddy Gilmore

Column: Operation Piano Rescue

The great travesty of the presidential election of 2012 is that no single candidate addressed a crisis that is silently destroying much of our heritage: May God save our pianos!

• Eddy Gilmore
• Piano moving

Column: Off Munger Trail, peace of mind at Ely’s Peak

As the last of the leaves flutter in the wind and give up the ghost, family adventures need not drift by the wayside or be sacrificed on the altar of busyness.

• Eddy Gilmore

Column: Nothing beats biking up the Shore

Last week, I found myself belly up to the bar in Finland, at a place called Our Place. A buddy and I were smack dab in the middle of one of the finest bike rides of my life.

• Eddy Gilmore

A run through a forest museum

Here is a portion of a day, the third, of my family’s recent vacation in the backcountry of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (just three short hours from Duluth).

• Eddy Gilmore

Adventure begins when things go wrong

Father’s Day was a glorious all-day event in my home. So committed was my trio of kids and spouse to making it special, they eagerly celebrated it with me a week in advance. Of course an epic adventure was in order.

• Eddy Gilmore

Columns

Adventures in community

This column has morphed, of late, into one involving my family’s adventures. This one is no different, but will demonstrate that adventure is a concept and attitude that can and should be viewed broadly.

• Eddy Gilmore

More enriching activities will benefit everyone

Boom. Just like that, it’s dark by suppertime now. With little warning, darkness descends like a sheet flung over the birdcage. Deficiency of vitamin D, known as the “sunshine vitamin,” has been associated with rickets, increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment in older adults, severe asthma in children, depression and even cancer. Apparently, the sun is a bit important to our well-being.

Eddy Gilmore: Children thrive when they play outdoors

Somehow a switch got flipped. My kids went from whining and complaining in an unbearable fashion while hiking in a forced-march fashion through some of the most beautiful country in the Midwest to floating on the wings of eagles as they ran the mile-and-a-half home to the little cabin where we were staying deep in the middle of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park in Upper Michigan.

• Eddy Gilmore
• Last Child in the Woods

Eddy Gilmore: When the natural air conditioner fails

This has been one inferno of a week in Duluth. Like most households here, our family hasn’t viewed air conditioning as a necessity. We prefer to not have it at all, and have avoided installing the window units for a couple years. By the time I pulled them out during the recent steam bath that entombed the area, they were covered in dust and other basement detritus that had collected over the years.

• Eddy Gilmore

Eddy Gilmore: Father’s Day with forest and family

The entire week prior to Father’s Day saw my family and me chilling out on the North Shore of Lake Superior, mere feet away from the crashing waves. We were ensconced in an idyllic private setting a little before the township of Colville near the Kadunce River between Grand Marais and Hovland.

• Eddy Gilmore

Eddy Gilmore: Simply winning isn't the goal in the exchange of ideas

Budgeteer columnist Eddy Gilmore ponders our nation's tendency to choose party over thoughtfulness.