MINNEAPOLIS _ Similar to his three English setters, Keith Nord has always ranged far and wide. "I want to be moving," he said. "I don't like to sit."
A Minnetonka kid, Nord was a star quarterback in high school, though when he showed up in St. Cloud to call plays for the Huskies, he stood only 5-foot-9 and tipped the scales at 150. But he was fast: He ran the 440 in 50.1. And tough. Switched to defensive back, he loved to hit _ and has the surgical rap sheet to prove it: 25 operations, including two torn Achilles' tendons and five vertebrae fusions of his neck.
Nord was recalling this the other day in his west metro home, and recalling as well the years 1979 through 1985, when he was a defensive back and kick returner for the Vikings. He had promised himself when he was a kid that someday he'd play in the NFL
"It was just something I knew I would do," he said. "Something I had to do."
Now 61 years old, Nord's wholesome good looks are reminiscent of the fresh-faced kid he once was. But he's not so much interested in football anymore, and doesn't often watch it on TV. Spectating never was his thing. Also, he thinks the sport might have seen its time. "I don't think I'd want my son playing," he said.
As Nord spoke, two of his setters, Sky and Joe, frolicked in the backyard while Jenn, his wife, stood nearby. Filtering home from school were Emerson, 17; Easton, 13; and Avery, 8. Nord also has two daughters from a previous marriage, Katie, 32, and Alex, 29.
Outside, the day was fresh and the sky, blue. Perfect, Nord was thinking, for a long run and a sweaty workout. And more perfect still for lacing up a pair of boots, dropping a couple of chilled 7 {'s in his Parker 12 gauge and setting out behind Sky and Joe in Minnesota's North Woods or on North Dakota's prairies.
The latter landscapes were particularly on his mind. This was September and already sharp-tailed grouse were legal in North Dakota, as was his favorite winged quarry, Hungarian partridge.
Striding endless grasslands in pursuit of these birds is for Nord every bit as life-affirming as playing defensive back for the Vikings.
As a bonus, this fall, Nord and a buddy, Kurt Boerner of the Twin Cities, had planned to hole up after their hunts in a dream shack they had built this summer in northwest North Dakota.
Surrounded by wavy stands of blue grama, threadleaf sedge, prairie junegrass and little bluestem, the 24-foot-square structure's only neighbors besides grouse and partridge are bobolinks, Baird's and Brewer's sparrows, Dickcissels, sedge wrens and loggerhead shrikes.
That would have been this fall.
Except.
Except this past spring, Nord felt crummy. His stomach hurt, and his daily runs were a struggle. After his doctor figured out what was happening, Nord called Todd Saville, a schoolboy chum from Minnetonka, and said, "I've got good news and I've got bad news"
"Good news first," Saville said.
"The good news is I know now why I haven't felt well," Nord said. "The bad news is I have cancer."
The disease is aggressive, and Nord's time is short.
