It has been said that philosophy is like being in a dark room looking for a black cat. I affirm that existentialism is like being in a dark room full of bobcats looking for a tail. It’s hard to write a poem which ends insightfully about going into the woods in August. Three times we went out the back door... READ MORE >
Interesting fact: There are more rocks in Trout Lake than there are grains of sand in all the oceans of the world. That’s how it seems to me when we snorkel the shoreline. I saw schools of perch fingerlings, already with their characteristic vertical bars. There is no color to them underwater, only the brown and green of the water... READ MORE >
I took a phone call at the store where I’m grateful to be employed. A man on the other end asked if we carried spare inner tubes for a kid’s bike. I walked over and checked the shelf and confirmed we do, a lot, in various sizes from 12-inch to 24-inch and up. “And” he hesitated, “do you have anybody... READ MORE >
My uncle David has followed his bliss and made his life at the confluence of the mighty Mississippi and scenic St. Croix rivers. Down there his nickname is “Riv,” from “The River Rat.” His beloved first dog was named Croix. When my brother and I moved up here some few years ago, my uncle David gifted us two old 10-foot... READ MORE >
In the days of high summer, in the tourist times, the fishing times, I instructed people in the rather odd, really difficult techniques of fly-casting, the casting of a fly in order to catch fish. I always started off the instructions on grass. Meaning we learned to cast on sod or as near to it as we could get that... READ MORE >
The rains have not come. I count nine or ten months since we’ve been at normal water levels. Or longer. I wish they’d come. A pious man might pray for them, another might do a dance, a third might’ve offered a sacrifice. The Flute Reed River is now just a silent brook, a dry drainage, of stagnant shallow pools and... READ MORE >
Earlier in the spring we were taking stock of the old raised garden beds left fallow for some years. The chives were already coming back, and in. The strawberries’ leaves were green already in the strawberry terrace. Some onions had survived somehow. I pointed to one raised bed, and told my brother: “That’s your asparagus hill.” I could tell because... READ MORE >
I walked out the store with our local DNR fisheries officer, who has always been kind and helpful to me – about which I feel surprised too often and then grateful. We were talking fishing: fish and waters and bugs and similar. We talked for a good ten minutes. I haven’t been fishing too much. Sometimes I feel like a... READ MORE >
Those summer seasons when I worked at the state park I carried a confusing set of keys ringed on a clip that was hooked to my belt loop and jingle-jangled when I walked but which I couldn’t hear when I was pushing the mower or swinging the weed-whip. The smallest key was easy, and it was a padlock key to... READ MORE >
I finally confronted the bear that has been bothering us the past seventy-two hours. “Confront” is too dramatic a word. It was light evening, and we were inside the cool cabin relaxing, the pups under the bed. Foxy the Brittany, who has the best nose and is most curious and watchful and defensive, sprang up and ran to the screen... READ MORE >
