As the 21st century raced past on the Minnesota Highway 33 bridge, the 18th century nestled in along the St. Louis River in Cloquet on Saturday.
Sitting in front of his tent (white canvas, like all the rest) Kenny Hurlbut, aka "Fiddlesticks," was making a sheath for a knife he had already made.
"This really happened here -- right here, where we're sitting," said Hurlbut, 59, from the Bovey area, referring to a rendezvous of fur traders, circa 1790.
"If you'd been a tree growing here, you would have seen the Native Americans and the voyageurs. Can you imagine the singing?"
In a rich, no-microphone-needed baritone, Hurlbut launched into a voyageurs' song, in French. It was a song they would have sung while paddling their canoes, Hurlbut explained.
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Hurlbut also plays a few instruments: fiddle, tenor guitar, tenor banjo, five-string banjo, dobro guitar, harmonica, fiddle, six-string guitar, piano and mandolin. He has composed a couple of fiddle pieces: "Willow's Waltz," for his wife; and "Swansons' Reel," for Ken and Bonnie Swanson, founders of the St. Louis River Historical Encampment, which is in its eighth year, or 220th, depending on how you look at it.
"I laughed when Cloquet had its centennial (in 2004)," said Charlie Lembke, 76, of Cloquet. "In the 1740s, the French were pretty much all over here."
Lembke has been in poor health recently and had thought he might miss the rendezvous. But he found he couldn't stay away. "It's just family," he said. "I had to come down and see because most of these people I've known for years and years."
The rendezvous seems to have that effect on people. Bonnie Swanson was there, in 18th-century apparel, even though she had surgery for breast cancer on Monday.
"We love it," she said. "The fun of the history, of learning it -- we're looking more at the romantic side of history."
At some re-enactment camps, Swanson said, participants won't even acknowledge the presence of people from the 21st century. But the Swansons want the re-enactors in Cloquet to interact with visitors and answer their questions.
And the 21st century can come in handy at times. Hurlbut acknowledged that he might make a run to "Fort Wal-Mart" for supplies. At another tent, Darrel Aune, 44, of Ironton, Minn., said a trip to the store can involve culture shock for everyone else. Changing into contemporary clothing is too much bother, Aune said, so they'll shop in their rendezvous clothes.
"Imagine Don in his full Indian regalia and warpaint going into a grocery store to buy a gallon of milk," Aune said, pointing to a neighbor at a nearby tent. "You do get some looks."
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The looks can go both ways. One of the items Aune makes and sells is a fire piston, developed 2,000 years ago in the Philippines and independently in France in about 1745. It's not certain if fire pistons ever made it as far west as present-day Minnesota, Aune said. If they didn't have fire pistons, people might have used steel and flint or natural substances to create a spark. All of those things eventually were replaced by chemical matches.
The strangest question Aune has been asked as a re-enactor was about the fire piston: "Where do the batteries go?"
Not far away, Jerry Loss, 55, of Minneapolis, was selling 15 flavors of rock candy and 13 flavors of licorice, including blue raspberry, or -- as he told one child -- Swiss smurf. Visitors were coming by at a trickle, but Loss was philosophical about slow sales.
"This is a slow show, but I like the slow ones," Loss said. "I get to fool around and hang out with people. And I get enough to cover the gas."
