Catherine Friend

 

Equanimity

   Newcomers say it's hard to meet people and make friends when they move to Roseau County. Getting to know the locals was not a problem for Joe and Catherine Stenzel when they moved here twenty years ago. Roseau County is in a remote part of the U.S. And Beltrami Island State Forest where the Stenzel’s cabin is located is in a remote part of Roseau County. But that’s a good thing because the hardy souls who live in the Forest get to know each other for survival. 

   Joe and Catherine jumped into the Forest with eyes wide shut. They had seen an ad in the Minneapolis paper for a hunting cabin and drove into the Forest in a blizzard to inspect it. It was love at first sight. It took them five years to wrap up their affairs in the Twin Cities and settle into their new nest in 2004.

 The cabin had a wood stove and an outhouse. Over the coming years they moved their things up and civilized the cabin without losing the coziness. They continue to heat with wood, but an LP furnace was tucked away somewhere so they could be gone for more than a day. There's also an indoor toilet though Joe says he prefers the outhouse. Nature really does call to him.

   If you grow up in Roseau County you're likely to be related to half its 16,000 residents, and if you're sociable, you'll eventually get to know the other half. A newcomer meets the locals by joining a church or adopting a bar. Stenzels did neither. They met people who became their great friends by getting involved with organizations that served the community. For a partial synopsis of what those organizations were I recommend a reading of the obituary Joe wrote for Catherine on Helegeson's (Funeral Home, Roseau) website. Then read the profile her friends Kim Hruba and Gretchen Mehmel wrote about her that was originally published in The Raven in 2008, and reprinted in Kim's post in the Wannaskan Almanac on March 21, 2026. Then read the tribute Ginny Graham (teapoetry) wrote in the Almanac on March 23, 2026. 

   Teresa first met Stenzels at the Roseau County courthouse where Stenzels were introducing their mediation business. Teresa invited them to our St. Patrick's Day party. That's how we get to know people: serve them soda bread and beef stew. They invited us to the cabin for shepherd's pie and we were on our way. They were both wide-ranging readers and I'm a sucker for people who have stuffed bookshelves all over the house.

   Steve Reynolds and I were still putting out The Raven back then (Steve and Jackie doing most of the grunt work) and the Stenzels kindly offered to interview Steve and I. About an hour before they arrived, they called and suggested we have a wee dram of Irish whiskey to loosen our tongues. Uff da! Thank goodness they let me review the transcript so I could eliminate most of the ums and ahs. This labor of love by the Stenzels was proof that they could take an interest in anything.

   Not long after The Raven ceased publication, the online Wannakan Almanac was born to fill the gap. We recruited Joe and Catherine to each write a weekly post, Catherine on Mondays, Joe on Wednesdays. The subject matter would be whatever the writers wanted. Joe focused on the fascinating world of words and Catherine's specialty was poetry - both her own and that of others. For the first several weeks Catherine featured a poet she admired. As a former high school English teacher she provided an introduction to the poet, a few of the poet's poems and finally, three or four "explorations" inviting the reader's responses. There were no wrong answers in Catherine's class.

   Eventually Catherine started posting her epic poem The One. Epic poems by definition are long, and it took a couple of years to get through the text, which she had divided into 12 Songs. I thought epic ended too abruptly and told her so. She said that was how it ends and also told me nicely that I had to lump it. About four years ago she started sharing her Monday posting duties with Ginny. Her long-term health problems were taking a toll. We encouraged her to post The One again. I was glad to be able to give it a second reading because it can take some getting used to. 

   I found out only recently that the reason The One ends so abruptly was that she was giving most of her attention to her other big project: The Book. The book was a biography of her beloved Aikido teacher, Zenko. She had travelled back and forth to Delaware by train with her servive dog Bob to interview Zenko, or Shihan (master) as she called him. Back home she wrote up her interviews and reviewed what she had written with Shihan by phone. When the book was pretty much done, Shihan died of pancreatic cancer. The book then became Catherine's tribute to Zenko. It had to be perfect. She has been fine tuning  the book while looking for a publisher for the last two or three years.

   Joe told Catherine about a month before her death that her rerun of The One was coming to an end. We wondered what she was going to write for her biweekly Monday post in the future. Joe looked in the archive of The One in Catherine's computer and discovered there were eight more songs that hadn't been edited. I hope they can be edited posthumously so I can find out how her epic really ends. I also hope her book on Zenko eventually sees the light of day.

   Catherine grew up Catholic. She rejected that in her youth then extracted what she could from it as she got older before choosing Buddhism as her path. She liked to give people the short summary of Buddhism found in The Four Noble Truths: 1. There is suffering in the world. 2. There is a cause for the suffering. 3. There is a way out of the sufferin. 4. The way out is the Eightfold Path of Buddhism. If her listener was interested, she would recite the names of the eight paths. Treading the paths is hard and a lot of people give it up.

   The virtue of equanimity is a big thing in Buddhism. Equanimity can be tough for a passionate person so Catherine said she wasn't quite there yet. The goal of Buddhism is to realize what is real. Catherine posed this undying question often. Now she knows the answer.

In her element, with Reka and Bob, 2008