Don Engebretson
Making It Up As I Go Along
NW ONTARIO PHOTOS
I've lived my life in chapters, now that I think about it. Yes, I played in the famed Minneapolis punk band The Warheads. That sweatshirt is 40 years old. I've been a fishing guide, an underground miner (kids, stay in school!), a rock band manager, a corporate VP,
a landscape designer and a freelance writer. Of course a bartender. I've been a husband, a father, a lover and a fighter. I like growing old. Things finally add up, start making sense.
I was raised in Minnesota but it was the summers spent at the family cottage in Minaki, Ontario that shaped my character. That's where I learned to swim, waterski, fish and drive a boat, all the while relishing my tender, seasonal friendships with Canadian cottage kids. Sure, in my teenage years, my cooler, better-educated and infinitely more rambunctious Canadian peers led me resolutely astray, often to disastrous ends, but usually I had it coming.
I began writing about gardening in 1990 and soon was writing for national magazines and newspapers. Five times I won the top award from the Garden Writers Association (now Garden Communicators International). Yes, sit there in awe for a moment. You are reading the words of a writer in possession of numerous, coveted "Quill and Trowel" awards. I keep them in a box under my bed. In 2019 I wrote my debut novel, "Welcome to Kamini," inspired by my decades of summers in Ontario.
With my Canadian-born partner of 14 years, Karen, in winter I reside at my home in Nevada and in summer at her cottage in Minaki, Ontario, where we dated as teenagers.
​FOLLOW ME on FACEBOOK: Don Engebretson | INSTAGRAM: # writerdonengebretson
© 2021 by Don Engebretson. Proudly created with Wix.com