Author: Jeff Forester

The moment flickered past while I realized that the last of them was gone, the last of the sixties counterculture iconoclasts, those world shakers and rainbow revolutionaries: Lenny Bruce, Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, John Lennon, Abbie Hoffman, Edward Abbey, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey, Hunter Thompson—all gone, the last by his own hand. I…

The iron ore mine in Tower, Minnesota, closed in 1962. Now Tower’s major industry is Lake Vermilion, an island-studded jewel and one of the last outposts of private property before you arrive at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Outside Tower, there is a turn to Old Highway 169, and then another onto an old…