I grew up in the Boundary Waters between the United States and Canada west of the Great Lakes. There\u2019s water everywhere up there, and I think I learned to swim before I could walk. My life revolved around water. Swimming. Fishing. Partying. I could walk out of my door, down the hill, and straight into the water. I knew the feel of minnows nibbling on my toes. I knew exactly how much tension to put on rod and reel, what the line could handle, and how long a fish could fight. I ice fished in winter, and yes, I made a fair bit of money showing my little part of paradise to all the city slickers who wanted to see it for a weekend or maybe a weeklong vacation. Yes, I was one of those guys who flirted with the pretty daughters of rich bankers and business owners while showing the family a romanticized version of my life. The most beautiful and safe parts of it. I loved that life. I never wanted it to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I grew up in the Boundary Waters between the United States and Canada west of the Great Lakes. There\u2019s water everywhere up there, and I think I learned to swim before I could walk. My life revolved around water. Swimming.[…]↓ Read the rest of this entry…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character_profiles","uentry","postonpage-1","odd","post-author-jack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7008"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7009,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7008\/revisions\/7009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackofharts.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}