Snow Day!

Well, I made it to a park and took a walk today. I was supposed to be at home taking down the Christmas decorations. I figured what the heck and took my camera into the woods instead. I found myself at Locke Park in Fridley, a place that I had not visited in a long time.

Click on images to enlarge them
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Me -
This photo taken under instruction from my wife, for what purpose I have no idea. But here I am, grinning like an idiot. I was fortunate enough to be able to use a picnic table under the pavillion as my tripod. I would set the timer and then go scamper to that tree that I was posing in front of.

Trail & Creek Pictures -

The Last Remaining Eligable Bachelor of his kind-
Talk about overstaying your welcome!

Bridge over Creek -
I think as a kid I must have crossed this bridge on my bike a thousand times. But I never saw it in the winter before. Probably the most important thing that I was able to today was to see an everyday object for new, as if for the first time. A beautiful blanket of snow helps.

Wish I were there

A great photo as seen on the Sawbill Newsletter:

The Sawbill Trail seen from the inside of a moving vehicle

According to the weather forecasts we are supposed to get about 3-5 inches of snow tomorrow. Since it won't be all that cold I am optimistic that it will be that cool kind of snow that sticks to tree branches and looks something like the picture above.

Now to just plan my getaway...

Whoops!

As seen on Startribune.com.
Link to the story here

A fog in my throat

This morning there was a fog bank straddling the metro area. The cold air caused the fog to form frost on all the tree branches. It doesn't take much window dressing to make this world look like a magical place. I kicked myself all the way to work because I didn't have my camera with me. By noon the magic will be gone.

Freewrite: Here and now

Disclaimer: This was written in one "take" over lunch.

The smell of dead leaves beneath my feet, the bite of the wind against my face as winter, still far off, begins to grow it's teeth. High spirits glide between the trees and my mind throbs in the silence of the forest, voices music and the sound of machinery still echoing in my skull. In their absence I am aware that my ears are ringing.

The wind thrashes the treetops high above, but on the forest floor it is like a conversation overheard in an adjacent room or a crowd as heard from outside a stadium. 100 feet between peace and torment. Somewhere nearby the same wind rips across the open waters of a lake and churns the bottom of a shallow bay, covering and uncovering the rocks in an endless cycle. Elsewhere it flattens the tall grass of a clearcut meadow and scatters the voles and rabbits into hiding. In the middle of a tamarak swamp deer take refuge, and the wind is hardly more than a suggestion that something is going on outside the walls of the compound.

All of these things I picture in my mind's eye as I stand on the path in the forest. There are more places than I can imagine, each alive and vibrant in this moment.
We break down where we are going and where we have been with units of measurement to indicate our movement. A mile down a path, a hundred feet up a tree, 12 feet deep in a lake, etc. But isn't each step of a journey from "Here" to "There" a new "Here?" With each footstep and branch the "Here" changes and is a little different than the previous or the next. Or would you entertain the thought that the entire planet is one giant "Here?" The Superior National Forest contains Three million acres of land, water, rock, and trees. That's more "Here's" than you could hope to visit in your lifetime. And it's just a speck on the map compared to the rest of the planet. Also consider this: Each "Here" has a history and a future. While it is important to study these, I wonder if we spend enough time studying the "Now."

As I listen to the wind I wonder what is happenening below the leaves in a thicket a half mile up the trail at this very moment. I wonder what is happening six inches under the muck in the eastern edge of a duck slough near what used to be my family's farm in western Minnesota. I wonder if anyone is freezing to death on the side of Mt. Everest right now. I wonder how many scorpions per square mile live in the Sahara desert.

I wonder.
I wonder.
I wonder.

I wonder about this world that God has given us, and how we march through it in such straight lines without ever taking the time to enjoy all three dimensions. I wonder about the time that each of us are given, and how we waste so much of our lives worrying over the future and dredging up our pasts. I wonder if any of us ever really learn to use history as a learning tool to prevent mistakes in the future, leaving us free to focus on the here and now.

Early Winter Deer Kill

The November 2005 Sawbill Newsletter describes the aftermath of a deer that fell to a wolf on Alton lake this weekend. A very cool piece of nature reporting. The writer took some early-ice risks that I would not have taken in order to get some choice photos of the kill:

"....the ice was so black and clear as to be nearly invisible, giving me the illusion that I was skiing on open water. My heart was in my throat a few times as I could feel the ice sag beneath me and watched cracks shoot out from under my feet."

Maybe not as bone-headed as the nitwit I saw on Animal Planet this weekend, trying to get close-ups of a Spitting Cobra, but the consequences of a slip-up could have been just as deadly. Nature doesn't care who you are. It'll eat you up just the same, as surely as a wolf will eat a deer.

More PBS Freeloading

Have I mentioned that I am not a contributor to PBS? Yet it seems most of the television shows that I bother mentioning in this blog come from there. Hmmm. Anyway there was a great documentary about Dorothy Molter last night. Don't know who she was? Don't feel bad because I didn't either until I watched the documentary.

For those of us who love the outdoors and the wild, this woman really lived "The life." In this day and age where we are fascinated with stories of success, attend efficiency seminars and read books on how to do more in less time, we really have shifted our perspective on the signifigance of contentment in our lives. The prevailing wisdom these days is that contentment is the end and success is the means. But to Dorothy Molter, success was the end and contentment was the means. She was happy with where she was and what she had. She demonstrated that you don't need to be successful in order to be content, you need to be content in order to be successful. You don't see very many people who can walk that talk, and that makes Dorothy Molter a hero in my eyes.

The documentary is called "DOROTHY MOLTER Living in the Boundary Waters" and according to the PBS web site it's not scheduled to run again anytime soon (At least in the Twin Cities market). You can shell out $33 to buy the video online or you can just stop by the Dorothy Molter museum the next time that you pass through Ely.

Deer = Rats?

Strib Article: Deer and people clash in Minnesota

Suburban dwellers of the Twin Cities metro area have similar complaints about Canadian Geese. Who is encroaching upon who's living space seems to be the question. Unless a day comes where people are corralled into the cities, stories like this will continue to get play. America has a Love/Hate relationship with itself - So gleeful about the housing boom, so sad that some mean people want to kill the deer that wander into these new neighborhoods.

Blood Money

Well it looks like the predicted winter weather is about as serious and memorable as a Viking superbowl run. There's about an inch of crust on the ground here. It'll be a bear to drive on in the morning but not even worth shoveling. It will be gone by Saturday.

It's true that I love the snow and the cold weather even more so than the average Minnesotan. This never fails to mystify my Filipino friends and relatives, who left their island paradise to come here and brave the Minnesota winters for the purpose of sharing in this great prosperity that we Americans take for granted. Wearing your clothes in layers, warming up your car in the morning, keeping a survival kit in your trunk, all these things are alien concepts to my compatriots. Winter to them seems to be something to be endured, rather than enjoyed.

But not me. I have always loved winter, always embraced the cold. The fact of the matter is that in the winter of 1994 I actually donated plasma to raise up the $50 I needed to purchase a snowshoe kit. I was terribly broke in those days and I was desperate to get my hands on a pair of snowshoes. Every other day for a few weeks I would go to the plasma center on the East bank of the U of M campus, Near the Arbys and the Oriental garden resteraunt, and wait with the drunks and the other poor students to sell my plasma.

How it works is that they run a needle into a big vein on your arm and they hook you up to a machine. The machine takes your blood, seperates the blood cells from the plasma, sticks the cells into some solution and pumps it back into your arm. It hurts like a bitch when they reverse that flow, let me tell you. My original plan was to earn enough money to buy a set of snowshoes and fish flasher. To this day I have still to realize the dream of winter lake trout fishing & camping in the BWCA. I was really hot for the idea at the time but my enthusiasm for this money making scheme waned after an incident where they couldn't hit my vein straight on with the needle but instead nicked it and I ended up with a large & nasty-looking splotch of blood under my skin from my bicep t about midway down my forearm. I had enough bread to buy the "Build your own" snowshoe kit so I stopped my visits to the plasma clinic and tabled the idea of getting the fish flasher.

It takes several cycles to get the plasma out of you. The blood comes out, the cells and the saline go back in. Repeat. I would guess that you are on the table for about an hour, maybe 90 minutes. Your options are pretty much to read, strike up a conversation with the transient on the table next to you, or watch the movies that they so graciously provide on televisions suspended from the ceiling.

The second to last time I was in there (The last time they got a good harvest from me) They showed "The Bodyguard." I remember that I was reading Love in the time of Cholera and did not pay attention to the video at all, yet somehow the movie must have permeated my brain, because that night when I slept I dreamt that Whitney Houston and I were working together as prison guards. She was guarding the chicks, I was guarding the dudes. (It must have been some sort of Co-ed prison) While I was watching my group out in the yard one of them shivved me. Whitney stayed with me until the ambulance arrived and we fell in love as a result of this simple act of devotion. We went on to get married, buy a house, raise kids, etc. It was pretty messed up. It was one of those dreams where it seems like a really long time has passed, and when you finally wake up you are disoriented because only a night has gone by. The dream has never recurred, and Whitney has never crossed over into my dreams again since. I was never much of a Whitney Houston fan to begin with so why I picked her for the dream never really made sense to me, but I will tell you this: Even though we were only together for a few hours, we loved a lifetime's worth. Dude! Isn't that a quote from the Terminator?

That winter I ended up spending a weekend at my sister's cabin instead of going to the BWCA. Although I did not winter camp or fish for lake trout I did have the chance to put my snowshoes to work. I remember resting by the warmth of the woodstove and following to the Olympics at Lillehammer. It was a good dry run for the winter trip to Eagle Mountain that I took in 2000.

I wish for one more warm day so that I can get a coat of varnish on those snowshoes. I plan on getting some miles out of them again this year. It would be a shame to let them go unused, seeing how I paid for them with blood money.

27-year-old walleye found in Lake of the Woods

Read the story at the strib site.

That fish dates back to the Carter administration and the first Star Wars Movie! It never occurred to me to wonder how long these fish might live if they are not harvested or predated upon. Or Gill netted.


1:00 PM - I removed the photo of Mace Windu and the reference to 'Going out like some sucka." Not everyone might get the Samuel Jackson reference plus I don't want any trouble for linking to a SW.com photo.

Hunkering Down

It sounds like we have a little winter weather headed our way. I took the precaution tonight to get the sandbags into the back of the truck and move it away from the garage wall so that we can all get in easy tomorrow. Space is such a premium in the garage that I usually park it up against the wall, so that we have more room to get in & out of the small car. But tomorrow we will take the truck, just to be safe. It's not that I think that there will be enough snow that we will be at risk of being stuck. Nope, I pretty much just want to surround my family with as much metal as possible when the weather is crappy and we need to drive somewhere. All my other winter stuff is at the ready, too. Coat & gloves, snow shovel, extra boots in the truck, etc. Inside our shelves are full and the fridge is stocked. This isn't preparation due to predicted weather but rather because Sundays are grocery day and we just stocked up for the week. My assessment of my family is that we are hunkered down and ready for whatever nature decides to throw at us.

While I was cooking dinner tonight I monitored a documentary on PBS about WW2 Conscientius Objectors. While I don't have a specific opinion to weigh in on that topic it did get me to thinking about the peculiar window in US history that my life has passed through. Both my Father and my Grandfather were drafted to fight in the world wars. My two older brothers served in the military but were young enough that they just missed Viet Nam. Had I chosen to enlist I would have ended up in the first Gulf war. But I didn't. Our country has not faced a serious threat since the second world war and I never saw the need to volunteer unless the country was threatened.

But as I get older I am finding that the perils that our country faces in modern times are not like those of 60 years ago. We seem to be imploding from within - We're drunk on the oil and other goods that we import. We are gobbling up our resources and outsourcing our jobs. We have restructured our families into dual income entities, yet are mystified as to why the traditional family structure is failing. As a country (Not me personally) we silently endorse the genocide of unborn children as a means to keep the population in check. Yet at the same time we wonder why there are children out there who have so little regard for human life that they are killing themselves and each other.

Before I go to bed at night I like to watch my son sleep. I take a few minutes out of my night and stand over his bed and I study his face, listen to his breathing, and tuck his blanket. I think about what kind of a world I am leaving him and I have to honestly say that I am not comfortable with the thought. There is still a lot of beauty and majesty in it but there is also a lot of ugliness and danger in it as well. I think about how I have never had to go to war, but someday he might, because somehow I failed to act in the here and now. Most nights I pray silently over him, not just for him and what type of man he might become, but also for me and his mother. I pray for what type of parents we will be and for the foundation we will give him to build his life on.

It's like getting ready for a storm that you don't know when it will hit or how bad it will be.

Treestand Confession

Chris weighs in:

Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 07:39
Subject: what I got

"OK, so I'm sitting in my stand opening morning and I hear some crashing in the brush behind me, and I know this is a deer. I stand and ready myself. Good news - I saw the deer before she saw me and she will cross my shooting lane. I calmly raise my rifle, aiming down the part in the trees. Then there was another crash Through the brush - I thought to myself, "This must be a buck." Indeed it was, not huge but the largest one I've seen hunting, complete with a well-developed 6 point rack. Well my composure faded as quickly as the doe did into the brush. I followed the buck with my weapon across the shooting lane without taking a shot. If I see the above-mentioned animal again I have a plan - One that doesn't include me choking due to a sudden case of buck fever."

Antler Envy

Miskowic & Cashman each got a buck this year:

Miskowic's deer



Cashman's Deer

These were taken from Miskowic's camera phone.
Not only does Cashman always get a bigger deer than Miskowic, he even gets bigger pictures of deer than Miskowic.

No word yet on how Chris did.

Thunderstick

My shotgun is a Remington Model 11 Autoloading shotgun.
It's serial number tells me that it was manufactured in 1921. It has the old-style safety (In front of the trigger) that they used from 1905 until 1928 when they switched to a more modern cross bolt safety incorporated into the trigger guard behind the trigger.

My father bought it second hand from the hardware store in Underwood for $10 back in 1939. As the story goes it was originally marked $20 and he walked away from it twice. Each time he walked away the price came down $5. The price was right at $10 (Keep in mind that $10 was the equivelent of $133 back in 1939), but my dad still wasn't going to buy the gun because he wouldn't have any money left to buy shells. The shopkeeper threw in a $.75 box of shells and the deal was struck.

66 years later the days of $.75 boxes of shells are long gone,
but the old girl is still knocking down birds.

Where Heaven & Earth Meet

Click to enlarge (Opens in a new window)


Words mean little in the north country. When hunting grouse, an unnecessary word can cost you a shot. It was Sunday, almost noon, almost the end of our weekend excursion. We advanced up a little road with caution, careful to make as little noise as possible. For a brief moment in time we had been able to tune out the outside world. We had replaced the mundane daily tasks of our lives with the excitement of keeping a canoe upright and the serenity of gazing at a distant shoreline. We had challenged our senses to identify shapes in the underbrush and to feel a tap on the line. We had experienced the adrenal rush of flushed birds and the tranquil peace of laying on our backs and gazing at the night sky. We had slept on the frosty ground, drank hot black coffee from tin cups, cooked meat over an open fire, used our compasses in real life situations and howled at the moon. None of these things necessarily in that order, of course. But now it was Sunday, and each man was starting to feel the outside world tugging him back. Each of us had lives that awaited our return: Household chores, Monday morning blues and joyful reunions with wives and children.

Q: So what of this fatal moment in a trip, when our inner mountain men must relinquish their hold on us?

A: We faced the moment as neither a mountain man nor a civilized man but rather as some sort of hybrid.

Such were my thoughts as I made my way up that twisting, claustrophobic little road with my two best friends flanking me. We encountered a set of gateposts and stopped to consult our maps. We advanced into unposted private land. Ahead was a clearing and some blue. The road emptied out onto a undeveloped lot that according to our map was the only access point to a small lake. Respectfully we lowered our guns and made our way to the shoreline. We did this not as hunters but rather as pilgrims, for in front of us was a vision, of Heaven meeting the earth.

A sheltered little bay reflected the sky and the fall colors. The campsite behind me had probably been there for a thousand years, with different men calling it home. And they would have been crazy not to. The blustery wind that had harassed us on Fourmile lake was reduced to a shocked gasp, as though we had stumbled across one of the wood's secrets. The wind weaved through the pines and the stubborn Birches like a busybody at a party, shushing us to secrecy. I closed my eyes and felt the clean air on my face and inhaled the scent of the woods. They smelled sweeter here than anyplace else I had been all weekend. As I entranced myself with the tranquilizing colors of the lake I felt my worries and troubes slide off to one side like butter in a hot skillet. Unencumbered, I reveled in the moment. My inner mountain man had been turned loose for a little longer.

We had stumbled across a site that was the quintessential wilderness to us, a place where earth and sky meet water, where a man and a campfire make a welcome part of an elemental foursome. I turned away with a certain degree of melancholy, because allthough I had felt the exhiliration of discovering this beautiful and unique listening point I also felt a certain amount of guilt, knowing that I had trespassed in order to make that discovery. Our only judge and jury that day were the trees, and they were not returning a verdict to us. Left to interpret my own case I would like to think that the end justified the means, as long as I don't repeat the crime. But I let myself off with a warning. Even though I know that this place exists I do not feel as though I can go back, and that is perhaps the most bitter punishment of all.

As we made our way back to the truck we maintained our silence. We weren't hunting now and could have spoken at any moment. But each step away from that stunning vista was another step closer to our exile from paradise - back to civilization and our 'normal' lives. In an hour we would be eating our last lunch as we broke camp. In two we would be creeping along the edge of Superior, returning to our normal lives like a slumbering child returns from his dreams.

Banjo Moon

I am still working on my "official" report of what happened on my recent fall trip with the guys. I have lots of pictures to sort through, resize and post. I attempted a couple of panorama shots, one which worked great (The campsite) and one which I am not happy with (The lake). I also got one tremendous shot of the moon which still makes me grin every time that I look at it. It's my wallpaper right now.

Fourmile Lake -
Click to enlarge (Opens in a new window)


This is the lake that we stayed at.
This photo set was taken in the morning on Sunday, October 16, 2005. It's knit together from 6 different photos that I took from a tripod. I had a really rough time of tring to match up the middle shots to the end shots, which is why the sun looks like it does. I hope that you like it, because I have already put as much work as I am willing to put into it.

Fourmile Lake - Our Campsite -
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I got really lucky with the campsite. This photo set was taken on Friday, October, 14, 2005 while Mike and Chris were setting up the camp. It consists of 5 different photos (again, taken from the tripod) that went together practically like a set of Lego's™.

Money Shot!
Click to enlarge (Opens in a new window)


OK, So I am not a professional photographer, so when I take a picture like this, it is a big deal to me. I am posting it with no watermarks in case you want to download it, or whatever. There are probably only four people who read this blog anyway so I'm not worried. If you do decide to use this photo for something online, please be sure to give me credit!

More photos and some writing to come soon!

Gone Fishing

OK, I had a boatload of work to do tonight - Another client meeting that goes right up to 5:00. It pretty much forced me to write work tickets for the changes from home, since I won't be in the office tomorrow and the work is time-sensitive.

No sense whining about it, the tickets are done. Now to catch a quick nap before we blast out of here in 4 hours.

The Dharma Bum & I hit on an interesting topic, that of why fishermen are reluctant to disclose where they fish. I maintain that it is about as natural as giving a buddy your girlfriend's telephone number. Selfish? Yeah. Insecure? Maybe a little. But it is what it is, dammit. I am really looking forward to not seeing anyone besides my friends for a couple of days and I don't want to jinx it by telling everyone from here to Thailand where I'll be. I may be irrational but my heart is in the right place.

Have a great weekend -

Two more days

The guy's annual fall trip is set. We met this past Sunday and poured over a map of Superior National Forest and picked our spot. Meals were planned, to-do lists were created.

The plan is to be at our campground by early afternoon. We are bringing a canoe and some rods to try to coax some walleye out of the lake. The shotguns are coming with too, for self-defense against any ruffed grouse that we may stumble across. Guitars will be packed for doing the cowboy thing around the fire at night. I am looking forward to seeing the stars without the interference of city lights. I am praying for some good northern lights. I cannot wait to breathe some air that hasn't been breathed before.

We meet at my house early Friday morning and leave from there.
Somehow I don't think waking up will be a problem like it is on a regular work day.

With Both Hands

Preamble (10:00 AM):
Today will be my first attempt to angle for trout by fly. I have had most of the gear for years and I have never used it. I want to go fishing and there is no boat in my near future, thus today I will combine the traditional joys of fishing with the new challenge of fly casting, framed by a setting of solitude, hiking and QUIET. Well, not exactly quiet - There will be all those sounds that have been there in the background that I have conditioned myself to ignore and/or tune out: The sound of moving water, birds, bugs buzzing around my head, wind blowing through trees, even the sound of my own heartbeat. In the hustle, bustle, hurry and rush of life we lose those things. Well today I am going to grab on to them with both hands and take them back. That is what this day is all about.

Destination:
I am going to focus my efforts on exploring a branch of a large river system in Winona county. There is a lot of bank there for the walking, and hopefully I will be able to avoid the crowds.



Summary (11:00 PM)

Incidents & Encounters
The drive down south was not uneventful; as I made my way through the cities a rather large thunderstorm system fell upon me. Torrential rain and high winds did their best to stop me and did in fact slow me down considerably. Once out of the city and traffic, my journey was smooth. as paved roads gave way to gravel, my spirits began to rise as the reality that my time (for this afternoon at least) was my own. Lost in my thoughts I was barely able to slow down in time when a doe crossed the road in broad daylight. I rolled slowly past where she had come out of and sure enough I saw a confused fawn hiding in the trees. If I hadn't slowed down he might have tried to follow his mother and gotten creamed.

On the water - At last
With my late departure and storm delays, I did not reach my entry point until almost 2 PM. I had chosen a little county road where the bridge had been taken out, leaving a nice little dead-end. As I pulled in my heart sank as I saw three fellows sitting on the tailgate of their truck, eating sandwiches and chatting quietly. After determining that they were on their way out and not in, I geared up and headed down to the bank.

With no prior experience or mentorship with another trout fisherman, I really had no idea what I was doing. But I committed to doing it, whatever "it" turned out to be. I slowly made my way downstream, trying not to make a ruckus. The weeds were thick and almost as tall as me. in chestwaders I advanced with little fear of itchweed or ticks, leaving and rejoining the overgrown trail whenever it suited me. About 75 yards in I found a good-sized pool, about the size of a baseball diamond.

I was standing at home plate, and directly down stream on the opposite bank was second base, a small creek inlet. Third base was an outlet from the pool, a riffle where the river continued on it's way. First base, slightly downstream on the opposing bank, was a large tree with exposed roots hanging into the water. Directly in the center of the stream bed, lying at a right angle to the first base line, was a fallen tree, marking the entrance of the pool like a large exclamation point.

I stood there at home plate and took this all in. That's when I began to notice the risings. Small ones along the third base line, but the largest and most frequent over at first base by that big tree. At last, the game was afoot. I eased my way into the stream and cautiously made my way up the first base line. I stopped on my side of the fallen tree and as I did I noticed a handful of little trout scatter for the safety of the opposing bank. Fair enough. I waitied. I stood there quietly, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Blend in with the woodwork, be part of the stream. Maybe not a welcomed part of it, but at least an accepted one. In time, the surfacings at first base resumed. So I am still in the game, I thought to myself. With my manueverings, first base was in easy reach.

My casting was terrible, a real mess. I started with a 14 Adams and over the course of 45 minutes or so I started to get the hang of things. Eventually I was able to get get the fly to land where I wanted it, without the tippet and the line crashing down on top of it and creating a terrible ruckus. Well, generally speaking, I guess. Finally I was able to serve one up right down the middle - The fly drifted lazily past first base and out toward second. Out of nowhere there was a small surge and my fly was gone. My reaction was too imediate and too powerful. I set the hook like I was after a dogfish and I jerked the fly right out of the fish's mouth. I repeated the cast precisely, and this time I did not miss. Unfortunately the fish was only on for about 5 seconds before the tippet snapped.

My only other Adams was a 12 and I quickly tied it on. A few minutes later and another solid hit. I was more careful and this time the fish stayed on for 10 seconds before the tippet snapped. As I stared at the stream in disbelief a brown trout jumped straight up into the air, arced about 3 feet above the water and gracefully swooped back into the water, nose first. I may not have been meant to catch that fish, but I was meant to see him and I could live with that. He never jumped again so I assume that he was able to disgorge my barbless hook.

Out of Adams of any size, I tried a couple of imposters with no luck. Remember, I basically had no idea what I was doing. I switched to a black Wooly bugger and afer a couple of casts my luck changed. The bugger was out of site when the strike occurred, but I could see the strike just fine by watching the end of my line. I set the hook carefully, mindful not to horse it too much. After a brief struggle I landed my first trout, a nine inch rainbow. He was hooked up into the eye socket, luckily with no apparent damage to the eye. The barbless hook came out easily.

As I let him go he took a quick barrel roll to the bottom of the stream, landing belly up. I was able to get a hold of him again and I gently cradled him, facing upstream so that the water flowed through his gills. After what seemed like a long time a puff of air came out of first his right gill and then his left. Then he seemed to perk up. His head started to move side to side and his tail started moving. At last he swam away slowly, off toward the dugouts. The game was over for him today. Not long after I caught another rainbow, this one smaller. he went straight back into the rotation with no troubles.

Not too long after that I wrapped my bugger around a high tree branch and that was the end of it. I tied on another and moved up to the pitchers mound to try my luck with second and third base, but they weren't buying what I was selling. Considering myself well ahead in the game, I wrapped it up and made my way back to the truck for some lunch on the tailgate.

Homeward Bound
Afterwards I tried other spots but I was unable to repeat my performance in the baseball diamond. When the shadows started getting long I packed up and headed back up to the city. I was content with the knowledge that for a few hours at least my worries had been pushed to the back of my mind. I had gone into the world and experienced the sensations that I had forgotten about - Sights and smells, not just sounds. Maybe most importantly I had heard the sound of my own heart beating once again.

A new Angle

I remember a time in my life when July was the funnest month of the year. This month has been anything but. My mom is still laid up in the hospital. At work I have several projects coming due at the same time. At home I have doors that won't latch and a steady stream of water coming out of the bottom of my furnace due to some central-air problem. And last friday the fuel pump on my truck went out, preventing me from taking a personal day on saturday to go fishing. It almost sounds like a country song of some kind. If my dog up and died on me I would be all set.

Then I watched a PBS documentary on Beslan this evening. There are many words that can describe the horror and the anguish that those families experienced last September, but I will not go into them here because I feel that by and large they have already been spoken and really it is not my place to weigh in when the people themselves did so very well. As a parent I was more focused on the faces, the voices and even the physical environment of the town of Beslan itself. I saw hard-working people, thin but not malnourished, living in a concrete and all-right angles sort of working class town. No sign of the flabby opulence that we Americans enshroud ourselves with.

If the 9/11 attacks could be summarized as an attack upon America's way of life, then Beslan could be summarized as an attack on the Russian people themselves. The men, women and children who were brutally murdered, the families which were shattered, all of these people were the salt of the earth, as far away from the cause of the Chechnyan conflict as you could ever hope to get. And my heart went out to them, because they were me, their children the same as my own child, just as innocent, just as precious, their lives just as valuable.

In short my viewing experience led to a paradigm shift for me, in terms of my perspective: My mom is getting first-rate health care. I have a secure job at a company with more work than it can handle. I own a home that can be cooled on my whim. In my household we not only own two vehicles so that we are never really stranded if one breaks down, but we also own them free and clear.

In short I got no complaints.

My job, in a nutshell

In the key of "Dee"

An interesting article about some friends of mine:

Study: Chickadee chirps complex code

Office Observations

A bad work environment is like a captivity narrative, where the workplace is represented by the prison and the boss by the tyrannical warden. Except in this prison there are no bars on the windows and the cells have no doors. What keeps us inside? Our own motives - We need the money to pay for all of our stuff, we need the experience, we need to advance our career, etc. Two things to note here - We keep ourselves locked up, and everyone's motives are a little different than that of their colleagues.

My world war 2 generation parents taught me that you get yourself a job, you stick with it for 30 or 40 years and then you retire. The ongoing trend in today's society is to bounce from job to job, looking for that greener pasture. While it does make sense to me that one should transfer to a nicer prison whenever a cell becomes available, it seems to me that a large portion of the restlessness and unhappiness of my generation can be attributed to the fact that no matter what prison we serve our time in, we drag those bars along with us. The intensification of materialism has made it difficult to find jobs that compensate enough to pay for all of the stuff that we want.

I'm not harping against materialism, because I like stuff as much as anyone, and I'm always interested in accumulating more. But the next time that you find yourself complaining about your job, ask yourself this:

Does the problem really lie with your job, or does it lie with the things that keep you at your job?

Boat Dreams

It's been unseasonably cold and rainy -- It's gonna be cold all weekend. Do I wish that I was going to spend it freezing my butt off in a boat trying to catch some walleyes? You bet I do. Whether it's the child growing up or my father-in-law finally getting over here from the Philippines, sooner or later there will be more male fishermen in the family and the wife will no longer be able to put the kibosh on fishing trips. In the mean time I need to obtain said boat. I'm pretty sure that my sister would sell me dad's old boat - I know that she isn't using it and plus she could use the money. The question is how/where do I get the money. I am caught in a paradox where I never go fishing because I don't have a boat and I don't own a boat because I never go fishing. But I do know one thing - Time is flying by at an alarming rate. I can feel my body aging right out from under me. I better hatch a plan soon for getting out on the water, and taking that boy of mine with me. Or else the next thing I know I will be 79 years old and it will be too late.

Slow Climb

Resting Pulse: 68 bpm

I noticed an improvement last night. I still had to walk when my heart reached trip hammer status, but what I noticed was that the acceleration from resting to trip hammer was more gradual. My legs are still sensitive to the trauma when I run, so I am still using the fast/slow cycle that I described a couple of days ago. That seems to have paid off as well, as overall my legs feel pretty decent today.

Uneven Tire Wear

Resting Pulse: 70 bpm

I was lazy last night, didn't do my sit ups. Tonight I will run again.

I have been studying up on the wear of my shoes and see that I am an underpronator.

According to what I have read, how your feet feel and how you walk on them has a lot to do with how the rest of you feels. I am going to set up a meeting with a podiatrist and have my feet looked at.

Stop & Slow

Resting pulse: 70 bpm

Things are still coming slowly. I have slow down to walk during my runs and my shins are sore the next day. I have reverted back to a strategy that got me through 7th grade cross Country- I pick a landmark and run until I reach it. Then I pick out another landmark and continue walking until I reach it and then start running again and repeat the cycle. It's probably not a pretty sight but what it does allow me to do is keep moving and keep my heart rate up there without bursting the sucker out of my chest. Also it allows me to exceed my comfort level with my legs slowly instead of one big cataclysmic sprint which ends in me vowing to never try this again.

Until I get into better shape I'll just have to stick with it and do what I can.

Beat counts

Resting pulse: 72 bpm

I have taken to checking my pulse in the morning at work. I didn't run last night but will tonight. Also now that I don't spend the next day feeling like I was kicked in the ribs, I am also going to increase my situp count.

Quality of Life

I am not going to weigh in on the whole Schiavo deal because most people already have their opinion on the whole thing. One fat white guy's opinion isn't going to make much of a difference. But there is one thing that sticks in my craw and that is the notion that death by dehydration and starvation could possibly be considered a "calm, peaceful and gentle death." Life means different things to different people. Whether or not you view life as a gift from God has a lot to do with how willing you are to throw it away. Don't hold your breath waiting for the Pope's feeding tube to be removed any time soon.

Tonight I learned that one of my former Cub Foods colleagues committed suicide back in February. He was 41 years old, a husband, a father of two, with both parents still alive. I hadn't seen or heard from him in years and obviously have no idea what could have been so wrong that he would have killed himself. And it's not something that I want to understand. Life is just too good right now to even imagine wanting to end it prematurely.

As I spent my spare moments this past winter poking at my flabby white belly, the realization slowly dawned on me that I am carrying around my waist roughly the same weight and bulk as my two year old son. I set two goals for myself and they are simple ones: Fit into my 2002 clothing by spring and fit into my 2000 clothing by fall. I have actually been employing my methods for a few weeks already- I completely stopped drinking pop and started carrying around a bottle of water wherever I go. For treats I will drink green tea or coffee. Also I have seriously cut back on sweets. I have cut back my starch intake (No easy task when you are married to a filipina who serves rice with everything, and most importantly I started excercising. I do situps at night before bed and tonight for the first time in ages I went jogging. As I anticipated, it was quite an unpleasant experience. I irritated portions of my lungs that I forgot that I even had. My legs don't feel that bad all things considered. But then again this first time out I only went .5 miles and had to stop three times. For those of you who are fit & trim and just don't get it, try strapping a 40 pound bag of salt pellets around your waist and then running around the block.

Well I am off to bed now, there's still one more workday yet this week. I imagine by the time I wake up all the joints in my legs will feel like they are constructed of broken glass.

Intangibles

I'm glad that I'm writing like this but man, I gotta tell you that there is a lot in my memory banks and I just don't know how to write it down into any context. I am a cornucopia of stories that contain no ascertainable point. Neither concrete starting points nor tangible endings. It isn't really that I don't have anything to write about. It's just that I struggle with finding a centralized point. Kind of like a truck with a bad drag link, wobbling down the road.

Perhaps a nihilist would jump in here and offer this diatribe up as proof that life is full of pointless moments, grouped together into larger, equally pointless coexistences. I am not a member of that camp, although in the past I have warmed myself by their fire from time to time. Most days (and today is no exception) I feel that there is great signifigance not only to to our lives but even to every little mundane moment that the things are made from. It's on days like today that I look at the apparent pointlessness of a nondescript moment in time, any given moment in my day, and say, "OK, so the significance of this moment is not readily apparent, but I trust that it will be revealed to me in time."

I think that most people can agree that this is one of the rewards that we anticipate upon reaching Heaven. We of course dread the moment when our sins are revealed and we are held accountable, but we are also dying of curiosity to see the final numbers on how much time we spent sleeping or waiting for the bus, how many hot dogs we ate, the actual mileage between each and every oil change and how many times we swallowed our gum vs. folding it neatly into the wrapper & throwing it away.

We wonder about things like these because life is cumulative. One of the hardest things in life is when we outlive our ability to maintain our own residence. When you have to get rid of your possessions in order to fit into a nursing home you are getting rid of more than just things. You are getting rid of the physical components of your collective history here on earth. Or perhaps in more direct terms you are destroying the evidence that you were ever here. We are more than happy to replace or upgrade our stuff- Cars, houses, golf clubs, etc., but nobody really wants to take a loss. That's pretty much why nobody wants to buy what nursing homes and planned retirement communities are selling. It's like conceding to our eventual defeat.

This of course is one of the biggest stumbling blocks in the Christian faith. I cannot honestly say that I have truly denied myself, not even just a little. I will close this rant today by declaring my intention to confront my own obsession with my belongings by by getting rid of something(s) that I have been hoarding for no good reason. I may not need to find significance in my life by understanding every single moment of it, but I have at least learned enough from the example of my parents to know that the sum total of my life's meaning cannot be defined by how much crap I have in my basement.

All the difference

A fresh blanket of snow today. Just a smidge; an inch, no more. still, enough to foul up traffic. It hasn't really melted yet so today the world is a silver lining to a sky full of clouds.

I think that the most picturesque snowscapes that I have seen have all been up around the north shore. I remember a grouse hunting trip with my friends on an old logging road a few miles west of Isabella, at the tail end of a lake effect snowstorm. About 6 inches of the stuff had come down. It started wet and as it slowly turned cold the snow began clinging to the trees, powerlines and virtually everything that it touched. It looked as if God had cast the likeness of the world in silver and given my friends and me free run of it. We began walking down a promising trail that quickly forked. According to our maps it rejoined, so we parted ways. My friends and the dog continued to the south and I went alone to the southeast.

The sky was clearing as we did this, and as I walked alone I looked up at the trees that towered above me. It was if I had wandered into the world's largest cathedrel, for in every direction that I looked I saw a more breathtaking stained glass window than the last, filled with the blue of the sky, the dark green of Norway pines and the golden glow of sunshine, framed behind the snow-covered branches. This was no man-made temple yet I worshipped there all the same, silently thanking God for the scene around me. Beauty of this kind is no accident.

As I slowly walked along the sun began to gradually warm the branches above me, starting a secondary snowfall in the woods as the trees began to groggily shake off the sediment. Chickadees and red squirrels were on the move now, quickly getting back to the daily business of winter foraging.

As the two roads slowly rejoined the dog came to greet me. A few more steps around the bend and I was reunited with my comrades. As we plodded back to the truck I wondered to myself what their experience had been like. I had no doubt that they had seen the same sunlight, blue sky, evergreens and snow-covered branches, but I wondered if they had really seen these things as I had.

As we pulled away to find another trail I thanked God again, this time for a safe hunt and for good friends with whom to share the beauty of the woods. We'd shared an experience, even if we had walked down seperate paths. I will always treasure the memory of taking the road less travelled that frosty late autumn morning.

Owl be back

I am having more outdoor urges today. Partly because it is sunny and warm, partly because the wife read my desperate plea for help from last friday and suggested that we could "maybe" go somewhere this spring. Wherever it is I hope that they have trees. Of course stories like this also get me itchy to go into the woods. Owls large enough to carry away children and small livestock. Sign me up!

I don't know what it is about owls that captures my imagination. As a toddler the story goes that whenever we drove past a red owl store I would get excited and point up at the sign. My Red Owl obsession was apparently acute enough that my grandmother took notice and made a Red Owl pillow for me. At the farm where my grandparents lived there was a wooded pasture inhabited by a great horned owl. I canot recall if I ever actually saw the bird myself, but what I do recall is that I had some very wild ideas about the appearance of any creature with the words "Great," "Horned" and "Owl" in their name. I envisioned some sort of ultrabird, a super-owl. Perhaps a man-sized owl with horns like a bull. In the mythology of my childhood the great horned owl that lived in my grandparents' pasture was like a flying minataur. Except instead of being mean he was wise, of course. Not just because he was an owl, either. this creature had decided to live on my grandparent's farm and to me that seemed like a pretty wise move on the owl's part.

These days I take in information and it just sits in my head like the wool fluff that you find in a pillow. I look back to those days and I reallize that the way a child can take that wool fluff and spin it into a golden tapestry, designed to suit their entertainment needs. It's a lost art, insofar as we all have it and by growing up we lose it. Day-to-day living, task-oriented activities, and duty-Duty-DUTY suck the creativity out of us, until we can scarcely remember what it was like to think like a kid.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but very soon I will return to the woods and look for my old friend the great horned owl.

Away for too long

I have to say that I miss it outside. Oh sure, you could say that I go outside all the time, if you count each time I scamper from the car to the door of an office or a shopping mall. But that would be like counting mold in your refrigerator as a houseplant.

I miss the sky overhead, from horizon to horizon, the wind on my face and the sound of a lake lapping in the summer or booming in the winter. I miss the jiggle of a peat bog under my feet, the smell of dead leaves and the aroma of pine needles. I miss walking through the woods and witnessing the living tapestry of fugi, lichen and moss. I miss the companionship of chickadees, singing in my ear and hopping from branch to branch as I make my way along the trail. I miss the raucous chattering of red squirrels, the hooting of owls and the chortling of loons. I miss the playful antics of chipmunks and the elusive tactics of the whitetail deer.

I've loved the forests and lakes since I was old enough to walk or swim in them. Even when I was young and the woods were a place full of witches, wolves and monsters I loved them, because they were also a place full of Fairies, leprechauns and dancing gingerbread men. As a youngster lakes filled me with a sense of trepidation as I imagined scaled beasts, swimming through the very waters I swam in. In my adolescence lakes filled me with a sense of thrill at the notion of scaled beasts, swimming through the very waters I dangled my hook in.

I remember the sense of loss I felt each time a weekend or vacation concluded, and how that feeling turned to longing as I waited for the next adventure to begin. Somehow the longer that you stay away from something the more that sense of longing diminishes, until one day you discover that you haven't really been outside in months.

Rude Awakenings

45 degrees in the shade. It wouldn't suprise me if some misled crocuses pop out, foolishly expecting the sun to stick around for a while. It will, at least through sunday. that's when old man winter is supposed to crack the whip and send us back into winter weather.

In the past two weeks the wife and I have been engaging in a new morning behavior: Intentional oversleeping. It is almost like an adult onset game of don't-touch-the-floor. It usually works something like this. Between 4:30 and 4:50 or so the child lets out wail because he has kicked off his covers and become cold. I get up and cover him, quietly coax him back to sleep, which he readily does. At 5:00 my alarm goes off for the first time. Now up to a couple of days ago I was simply engaging in 9 minute bouts of sleep between snooze button stabs. Lately I have just been resetting the alrm for 5:45 which is when I will be getting up anyway. I am not fooling anyone, least of all me.

The wife's alarm doesn't go off until 5:30, and she isn't fooling anyone either. She doesn't get up until 6:00. Lately I have been figuring that if you cannot beat them that you should join them, so I haven't been getting up until 6:00 either. Amazingly I am consistently only 15-20 minutes late to work every day. I would be in business if I could get up at 5:30 every day. If I were in business for myself maybe I would want to.

Groundhog Day

January has passed on into a warm February, but Punxsutawney Phil predicts 6 more weeks of winter. I've heard it said by some that January is the longest, bleakest month to endure, and yet I find myself suprised by it's passing.

Between the Tsunami and the election in Iraq there was no shortage of events that will continue to affect the world for years to come. But it when it really comes down to it, it was a pretty quiet month in our household. Joshua is over 30 pounds, and he has finally reached that transitional point where you don't really count his age by months any longer. Instead of saying tht he's 21 months, I say "He's almost 2."

February will bring about the last month of ice fishing and any other hardcore winter sports. By the time March is here we know that any threats of snow are just posturing and death throes. We are already reading the seed catalogs.

But between here and there are 26 more days of the real thing. If February is anything like January was, I will miss it if I blink.

Downsizing

Not a lot to write about today because the trivial things are too trivial and the deep things are too deep. Why is it that we can be lulled by notions like, "Yes, he has leukemia but it's only a mild form." That's about as comforting as knowing that people will be shooting at you, but they will only be using .22's. Sooner or later the stuff is going to kill you.

Doctors take their time scheduling you or calling you back, the unspoken rule being that a crisis on our part does not constitute a crisis on their part. I know how it is. Anyone who works with people knows that you need a certain degree of insulation in order not to be consumed by other people's problems. I just wish that the doctors and the people who run nursing homes weren't so damned bulletproof.

It's still hard for me to imagine the day when I need to hang it all up. When that time comes I just hope I still have the good sense to go out like an Eskimo and just wander off on to the ice pack.