This was one of my favorite kinds of morning here at the moomincabin. At least as long as it doesn’t happen every day. It was warm enough to hang out on the moomindeck for coffee and soon it started to rain, as predicted. For most of the morning, the rain ebbed and flowed but it was warm and the winds were calm. About noon or so, the wind kicked up into a decent nor’wester and we had a deluge, as maybe you can see. No lucky-shuckial activity although that would’ve been fun, just rain.

We had planned a little boondoggle down to Moran to drop off some North Country Trail (NCT) crapola at a storage unit there. I’ll write more about the fish market a block or so down the street another day. It was a fascinating place and we could’ve had lunch there but we wanted beer/whine and although you can buy it (and drink it) there, we weren’t sure of the procedure. We did buy some fish (fresh caught and flash frozen) and whitefish spread. On the way out I saw a sign for “soup quality” wild rice (something like that) and was sorry I didn’t notice it before. We’ll have to find another excuse to visit the Moran storage unit.

From there we drove up to the Buckhorn in Trout Lake, where they have an actual bar you can sit at and we shared a BLT and fries. The GG has been to the Buckhorn umpteen gazillion times, during his NCT trail maintenance years. Every time I’ve been in the area, it has been closed for some reason or other. I was not disappointed in my first visit!

Speaking of wild rice, the GG asked something like, “Isn’t ‘moomin’ a word for wild rice?” Nope, I don’t think so. It is a Finnish children’s book series, Finn Family Moomintroll. I have informally named the beach, cabin, and environs after this series, partly because my family name begins with Fin. I love the moonintroll books but I am not one iota Finnish. I have a tiny scrap of Norwegian, otherwise 75% Scot and some Irish, etc. According to the Ancestry spit test.

I googled “moomin” and “rice” just to be sure. No, “moomin” doesn’t mean “wild rice” BUT “manoomin” is an Anishnabe word for wild rice. Anishnabe is one name for the area Natives (also Chippewa and Ojibway). The Anishnabe folks sometimes call themselves “Nish-nobs” but I think that’s an affectionate internal name and with my northern European origins, I feel it would be disrespectful for me to use it to refer to our local Native Americans.

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