I awoke Saturday morning and looked up through the top of the tent where there was no rain fly to see the dawn light. Pausing a moment to prick up my ears, I was rather surprised to not hear any snoring drowning out the birdsong.
Another day in a sylvan paradise!
The path to the spot I've been using to relieve myself had a gentle golden glow as the sunlight filtered through the trees. The big man was illuminating my path or so I liked to think.
My bladder empty, I retrieved some iced coffee from my cooler to tide me over until later when there would theoretically be hot coffee available. I am normally the first person up when camping and it eludes me how my friends are able to sleep so long. I thought old people slept less. Must be the fresh country air.
Some people were planning on canoeing or kayaking this day. No doubt there'd be some fishing thrown in. Others were going to spend a leisurely day in and around camp. If yesterday's highlight was fellowship then this morning was to be all about Waldeinsamkeit as my plan was to take a hike in the Black River Forest.
There are two sets of trails in the forest and I recall hiking the Wildcat Trails because I remember encountering the sign for the Norway Pine segment and then later being exhausted because it's rated difficult. And now every year I go, I have to try to recall if I've done the Smrekar Trails or not. Of course I've done them. Multiple times, in fact. So I'm not sure why I do all these mental calculations and struggle to recall the last time I hiked this or that trail. The farm ruins are on the Smrekar Trail and I recall those well. Getting old can be no fun sometimes.
And so I set off for the Smrekar Trail with a second bottle of iced coffee at the ready.
I eschewed main roads and stuck to the back ones. This included several miles of gravel road that was able to accommodate only one car. Luckily I ran into no other vehicles on that stretch although I did see deer. Sadly, I was only able to get a fuzzy photo of deer butt.
The drive was pleasant and quiet. After 45 minutes or so I arrived at the trailhead. I immediately took care of some, er, business, ate a granola bar, and then I was off.
I didn't start too late so for at least the first half of the hike I was able to enjoy the sun accompanied by fairly cool temps.
I think that everyone who wanders the forest alone loses themselves in their own unique mess of thoughts.
For me it's always a mixture of things. My thoughts begin simply by admiring my surroundings. "What birds am I hearing?" "Ooh! That pine scent is wonderful!" "I hope there are no bears around here."
Eventually the mind wanders. My recently finalized divorce came to mind during the hike. I was glad it was over but couldn't help but do a post mortem on my marriage. I don't think it really did me any good as it was little more than self-flagellation. No new perspectives were unearthed and I still regretted marrying my ex. At that time I felt a lot of shame and embarrassment at having married her - a real blot on my escutcheon.
Now, as I write in August, some three months later, I feel much less embarrassment and less shame. But not that much less. Still, less nonetheless.
At one point I left the main trail to check out a scenic overlook and it was just beautiful.
By this point I was feeling good. The ascent up the ridge wasn't overly steep and the uphill march combined with the wonderful view conspired to induce exhilaration within me - physically and mentally. I felt attuned to my surroundings and open to the possibilities of life after my marriage. It felt good to be alive.
This area was really neat. The trees were more widely spaced allowing for a lush carpet of grass. Too many trees for a savanna but not dense enough for your typical forest. A heavily treed prairie? A lightly treed section of forest?
Walking down into this area just felt different. It was open but not too open. It felt expansive yet snug as well.
Here's a photo that I made sure had that Deakins-eque composition with the trail off to one side.
And another.
Another part of my life that I tossed around for a bit on my walk was my eldest stepson. My visit with him back in March, which I haven't gotten round to writing about, ended poorly. What to do?
This pine stand made for a nice, cozy passage.
I had discovered that, although he had grown into a 30 year-old man, he still had the maturity he did when he was 15. This made me feel very sad and I felt that way as I walked through the woods thinking about him. It is my sincerest hope that he matures into a true man someday and I would love to help him on that journey. While the odds are slim that I will have such a role in his life, I won't say never.
Despite this, I have a lot of empathy for him. Let's just say that his parents did not do right by him.
If I came to any grandiose conclusions or had any revelatory moments out on the trails that day it was that I should let my relationship with my eldest stepson lie. He showed no interest in changing and I cannot force him to so it's best to just let things cool off and see what opportunities present themselves in the future.
There were moments when I was deep in thought and then was shaken from my pondering by a startled deer a little ahead of me or by a moth. Or is that a flutterby butterfly? The hike was a great mix of introspection and being in awe of nature and its beauty.
By the time I got back to the car my legs were getting sore. My hike was 7-8 miles which is a long way for an office jockey like me. Not only was I ready to relax but I it was also time for some company.
When I got back to camp it was only late morning so there was hot coffee on offer along with conversation with friends who were now awake. I made sure that the mini cherry pies that my ladyfriend had sent along were eaten. This did not take much effort as cherry pie and coffee is a classic combo with or without the Dale Cooper recommendation.
I spent the rest of the day close to camp along with the other folks who didn't get out on the river. A little reading here, some chatting there. And a short walk down the road. Come late afternoon a trio of friends who live in the area stopped by for dinner and conversation and this swelled our ranks to 13. The elk kielbasa I had brought went down well and I had a blast going from conversation to conversation amongst my 12 companions.
Some of them I'd known for only several months and others nearly 40 years. I don't know what I'd do without them all.
Yesterday was Willow's second birthday and so I invited a small group of friends over to celebrate. That meant she got extra play time which saw her leaping and grabbing and scurrying around with abandon. She just loves her tube and wand toys.
I bought her a can of special Asian fusion tuna chow which she, of course, didn't eat. Oh well. Instead she got extra Churu which she licked right up before going back to playtime.
For the humans I grilled some kabobs but we started with apple cheddar scones that I baked (gotta use up those apples) and some rye pretzel thins & garlic cheddar schmear. I'd been looking for the rye variety for a few weeks but had no luck until a few days ago when I spied them at the Willy Street Coop. For dessert I made a blackberry clafoutis.
That photo of the clafoutis looks like it was made by the Scarlett Johansson alien lady from Under the Skin with that impenetrable black background.
Both tasted good but the scones weren't as thick as I'd hoped. I am unsure if the baking powder didn't do its job for some reason or if I simply rolled the dough out too thinly. Probably the latter.
Look at my sweetpea! Such a princess enjoying all of the attention and posing for the camera.
Here she is when her uncle left.
Willow enjoyed all the extra play and attention while I appreciated being able to celebrate her birthday with friends. I think for Piper's last 2 or 3 birthdays it was just me and her so it was wonderful to be able to make the occasion a communal affair.
Back in May I slipped in a camping trip just before my parks sticker expired. Some friends and I have made a late spring camping trip up in the Black River State Forest an annual event, more or less. I get to see a couple folks whom I don't see often and this year we had a couple new people to boot.
This year I stopped in at Sand Creek Brewing for some suds before heading to my camp site. It turned out I was the first of my group to arrive at the campground. The day was simply lovely, sunny yet not too hot. And, more importantly, skeeters were few and far between. Would I even need to bust out the Deet?
It felt wonderful to be amongst the trees. The smell of spring was in the air and, as someone who lives near an airport, I cherished being serenaded by whippoorwills and all of the other birds that lent their voices to the avian chorus instead of airplanes. My divorce was a mere two weeks old and this was just what I needed to shake loose some of the anxiety and stress surrounding it.
On the other hand, I had adopted my new cat, Willow, only a week before and I felt a little guilty leaving her just as we were getting to know one another. Would she remember me when I returned home?
Before long my tent was pitched. With no rain in the forecast for the weekend, I let the rain fly remain in the bag.
As I was erecting my tent, my friends started to arrive. My campsite was a bit bigger than some of the others and, since I was the only resident, we chose it for our communal activities. Next came the all-important lighting of the fire.
Before darkness started to settle in and I was to commit to a seat around the fire, I went for a short walk. It was just gorgeous.
During my perambulations I received a text from my ladyfriend who was taking care of Willow in my absence. My new feline friend was enjoying her couch fort.
By the time evening rolled around, we had all found a place by the fire drinks in hand. We ate dinner and BS'd deep into the night. Most of us there gamed together so we nerded out a bit though conversation was all over the map. There was the occasional lull when we collectively became entranced by the flames and stared into the fire mesmerized. It was simply a joy to be surrounded by friends old & new as well as the woods.
When I'm with my friends, the Fish song "The Company" often comes to mind.
The company I choose is solidly singular
Totally trustworthy, straight and sincere
Polished, experienced, witty and charming
So why don't you push off, this company's my own
During my divorce it felt like they circled the wagons around me and being with them always made the stresses of the process seem that they had an end in sight, my (ex-)wife a memory that became ever more distant. For this I will be forever thankful.
Sitting around that fire I felt totally comfortable, fully myself. Nothing needed to be hidden, no mask needed to be worn.
With the sun having set, the creatures of the night got down to business and we heard the calls of coyotes, the hoots of owls. I wanted to turn to my Renfield and say "Listen to them, children of the night. What music they make!"
My ladyfriend and I have been to Chicago a few times in the past couple months or so. It has been wonderful to once again have a companion with whom to explore the city and all it has to offer. Well, some of what it has to offer, anyway. The cool bits.
Back in June we went to see Theater of the Mind. The lady was already in the city spending time with friends who lived on the far north side so I took the bus from Madison to Union Station where we'd meet as she was going to take Metra downtown. It was grey and cloudy as the bus dropped me off on Jackson Blvd. with the iconic Sears Towers just a couple blocks to the east.
The older I get the less I want to drive and so taking the bus was really nice. When I wasn't watching the scenery, I got some reading in and never had to worry about Chicago traffic. Once I found my ladyfriend, our first stop was our usual Loop lunch spot, Elephant & Castle, a chain of English-themed pub & restaurants. There are two in downtown Chicago and we tend to hit the one on Adams which is half a block from La Salle and on this day this is where our ultimate destination was located. Plus going there gives me a chance to walk by The Rookery where my grandfather worked.
Going in we found that there was soccer, er, football on every TV. Shocking, I know.
Being a beer lover, I wonder about the paucity of beer from the British Isles on the menu. Guinness, London Pride, and Speckled Hen was all, methinks. I don't expect any Black Country Ales or any of the other fine brews I sampled in England last year but those Iron Maiden brews are tasty and available here in the States. The Trooper, at least, is fairly common.
A creature of habit, my ladyfriend ordered the meat pie flight just like always.
The joy on her face when it was placed before her made me so happy to be with that woman. Not just at that table in that restaurant but to be her boyfriend. I adore how little things make her ecstatically mirthful. The lineaments of her face seem to have been permanently altered to give her a smile. I love how upbeat and positive she is, how she always stands at the ready to explore and try something new, even if we eat at the same place beforehand.
We crossed the river on La Salle. There's Marina Towers and behind them stands the former IBM building where my parents met. I think that's the Aqua in the middle in blue. Just across the river was our destination, the Reid Murdoch Building, someplace I don't believe I'd ever been previously.
Theater of the Mind is hard to describe. Interactive performance art? Created by David Byrne, he of Talking Heads fame, and his Frau, Mala Gaonkar, it's a journey to the center of your mind guided by your late pal, David. The ad copy notes that the show was inspired by neuroscience and we learn on our journey that our senses are easily fooled and that memory is not as accurate and encompassing as we sometimes believe it to be. With such imperfect tools, maybe our sense of self, our identities, are houses built on sand.
To begin, our group was ushered into a chamber of (not quite 32) doors. In the middle was a miniature house and our guide opened its roof revealing nametags for us. Once we had all assumed an identity, our guide then chose a seemingly random door and we made our way into the next room. It proved to be a viewing parlor at a funeral home where our friend David's casket sat before us atop a bier which was, in fact, a piano.
Ere long the casket is opened...from the inside. David emerges to greet us. Our David was played by Kelli Simpkins whose mild androgyny seemed a perfect fit for such a performance. Clad in a cream colored suit that gave off strong Stop Making Sense vibes, David reminisced a bit before an introductory speech that prepared us for the rest of the show.
Taking a seat at the piano, David introduced us to the tritone and a weird aural illusion whereby two notes are played that some people hear as ascending while others hear as descending. No wonder this deceptive musical combination was called The Devil's Interval. The parlor had a checkered floor and David demonstrated a simple optical illusion with it before ushering us down a red hallway that looked not wholly unlike the airlock in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I felt a bit of the unheimlich at this point as it was a Dave in that scene too.
(All photos are from the show's website. I think.)
I think the red light was chosen not only as a contrast to the white light we were accustomed to but also to stimulate our night vision for the next room which was the inside of David's cranium. Minus the grey matter. Here we learned about afterimages which not only continued the theme of our senses being imperfect but also stood as a metaphor for our lives, our construKtion of memories. The people we meet, the places we go, and the things we do all leave afterimages when they are over or exit our lives and our brains construct memories from them.
But not every demonstration was about fooling our sense of sight or hearing.
At the night club we sampled what we later learned are called miracle berries. Then we are given lemon wedges and, instead of a big burst of mouth-puckering sour, they tasted sweet. These berries mess with your tastebuds something fierce.
The show moves from your senses to how your brain works and the role memories play. We go backstage and David describes, if memory serves, a job he had that involved watching security cameras. And so we watched a scene on a TV of a street. Every several seconds the screen would change to black very briefly and the scene would return. But something within it had changed. Although we witnessed a few dozen changes, I only caught a handful.
When you enter David's childhood home memory takes center stage. We stepped into a kitchen where everything is huge - the chairs are 10 feet tall plus, the counters tower over you. It's all the perspective of a young child. And then we were led to the attic where David talked a bit about his childhood and then we sat down and donned VR glasses. Although I had used them previously, it was genuinely odd to "inhabit" the body of someone else here.
We thoroughly enjoyed Theater of the Mind. Not only was it fun to wander around a large set and have my senses fooled, but it provided a lot of food for thought. The whole thing was quite Phildickian - as if we were replicants discovering that our memories aren't even ours. I was reminded of the Satanic panic of the 1980s & 90s when thousands of people "remembered" and made claims of ritual abuse (and even blood sacrifice) that were wholly without merit. On a more personal level, I thought of instances when my childhood memories were contradicted by friends and also the many, many times I failed to remember events that my ex-wife brought up in arguments.
For about a year prior to her filing for divorce and for a couple weeks after she did so, my ex-wife reproached me many, many times about incidents that I could rarely, if ever, recall. After countless accusations and loaded questions, I came to the conclusion that her Torquemada-like behavior was a mixture of lies and confabulation, of spite and misremembering.
My lady and I caught the El to Jefferson Park where we took a rideshare ride back north to her friends' place. As we waited, I glanced at the Gale Street Inn across the street, recalling that it had reopened and that I would like to go there sometime to see what's changed. Would the food match my memories of it?
Back at the northern edge of the city, I got to meet my lady's friends for the first time after hearing about them for months. We were treated to dinner before hitting the road for Madison and I had some extremely tasty beef brisket smoked by our host.
Two or three weeks later my ladyfriend and I returned to Chicago. A cousin of mine from the Bay area was in town to celebrate his recent retirement and so there was a shindig at the home of a couple other cousins of mine. In fact, just about everyone there was a cousin except for the significant others of cousins.
Everyone had a nice time. My family liked my new ladyfriend and she liked them. She got a laugh when one of my cousins complained that another had just spoiled the ending of Death of a Salesman. Ha!
Sadly my mother was unable to attend the soiree and finally meet the new woman in my life. However, this was remedied the following weekend as we went down again. This time she'd meet my mother and we would go on a neighborhood tour of North Lawndale with Dilla Thomas.
We arrived at my mother's place with plenty of time to spare and so we went and ate breakfast in Jefferson Park. We sat around and chatted for a long time after we'd paid the bill which I took as a good sign. My mother and ladyfriend got along well.
However, the time came when we had to give up our table and begin a leisurely drive to the west side. Since we had the time to spare, I drove us through the neighborhood where I lived as a kid and my lady got to see the house I grew up in. Looking at it from the street, I thought about being a young child and pictured the kitchen as I did then with everything being so tall a la Theater of the Mind. Just how reliable were my childhood memories?
North Lawndale is a west side neighborhood and the tour bus was to pick us up at the Douglass Park field house. We arrived a tad early and wandered the magnificent field house which was built in the 20s or 30s. It reminded me a lot of the elementary schools I attended in Chicago except that they weren't adorned with reliefs of mermen.
We discovered that the auditorium, which was more like a ballroom, was extremely well air conditioned. Also, that it was gorgeous, despite my inability to get a decent photo.
Thankfully my ladyfriend is a better photographer than me.
Just look at the detail of the ceiling.
What seemed to be a dining area off of the auditorium continued the nautical relief theme.
Not only did the park have a pond, but also a rather sizeable swimming pool.
The basement is an arts center with a large area for folks to practice their painting skills.
Indeed, many had and, looking around, I discovered the park's namesake as there were many portraits of him adorning the walls such as this one.
His wife Anna also got some love.
Before we knew it, the tour's start time was almost upon us so we went outside and took our seats on the bus. Unfortunately the air conditioning was severely compromised and we were in for a sweaty ride.
Dilla explained that the park was originally named after Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas - not wholly opposed to slavery - but was rechristened in honor of Anna and Frederick Douglass - definitely 100% against slavery. He noted that it was the simplest park renaming in Chicago history as it required only the addition of a single S.
The tour began with Dilla noting the Central European and Jewish character of the neighborhood in its early days as the bus stopped in front of an old Turner Hall.
While I've known that Sears was a Chicago company since I was a kid, I'd never been to the old Sears Roebuck campus in North Lawndale which is now, sadly, boarded up.
Across the street was a disused colonnaded pergola that was part of a large garden that the company built as a place for employees to relax and take a break from the retail grind.
Dilla explained that the famous Sears catalogue and the company's policy of cash on delivery was a boon for black shoppers who often found themselves excluded from stores.
We also got to see the original Sears Tower - not shown.
I didn't know that Allstate insurance started as a subsidiary of Sears until we were parked outside their abandoned headquarters building.
As we were leaving the Sears campus, Dilla pointed out a warehouse that had been taken over by the Chicago Police Department. It turned out to be the infamous facility where dozens of people were detained and/or tortured under the aegis of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge. I had heard about this stain on Chicago's history but had never been by the infamous site.
After driving for a bit more we found ourselves outside the Dr. King Legacy Apartments which were on the site of the apartment that Martin Luther King lived at during his time in the city.
It was really neat to see this site where MLK lived in my hometown as it made for a nice bookend to seeing the house he and his family inhabited when they lived in Montgomery, Alabama as well as all of the civil right sites and museums there.
The final stop of the tour was a bit outside of North Lawndale - the Garfield Park Field House with its golden dome.
The façade was stunning.
The place was built in 1928 and was equally gorgeous on the inside. (Though not bigger.)
There were several reliefs on the walls of the entry hall. Not shown are the ones lauding the road building prowess of Illinois. They, perhaps, haven't aged as well as the others considering all of traffic jams and road construction that plague the highways of the Chicago area.
My only gripe about the place was that the air conditioning was down. D'oh. It just wasn't to be a cool tour.
Well, soon enough it was time to jump back on the bus and head back to Douglass Park. It had been another very interesting tour with Dilla full of great architecture as well as enlightening Chicago history whether it be about the park system, commerce, etc. or the darker sides of the city's past such as the torture scandal, redlining, disinvestment, and so on.
We drove back north and I decided that we'd give Gale Street Inn: The Next Generation a try.
The joint seemed a bit more upscale than the version I was used to and I felt a bit underdressed in shorts and a t-shirt. But no one minded. The menu seemed a bit less like a yeoman's steak/ribs/chop house, although those were still options, and it seemed an effort was made to appeal to a more discerning, shall we say, palate with fancy seasonal salad dressings, for example. I do recall that the more workmanlike chopped salad was no longer on the menu. (Or am I misremembering? Damn you David Byrne and your existential uncertainty!) I am not complaining, mind you. I mean, how could I complain with their French onion soup being amongst the best to ever go down my throat?
They did not skimp on the cheese and the broth was quite tasty. I swore I caught a touch of wine in there. Mmm...great stuff!
We dropped my mother off at her place after dinner and hit the Kennedy. I think she and my ladyfriend got along well. I was pleased that their first meeting went smoothly and that we all got to see some sights and get a large dose each of Chicago history.
On the way home we made a quick stop in Schaumburg at Deli 4 You where I grabbed a bag of snacks for my co-workers.
Maple syrup and paprika seemed like an incongruous combination so I went with it. Upon sampling I determined that either they needed less maple flavoring or more paprika or both. Still, I didn't let the unbalanced taste stop me from indulging.
