Come on, people now, Smile on your porter: Perpetually Electrified by Young Blood Beer Company

Everybody get together
Try to drink smoke beer right now

Last summer Young Blood Beer Company announced they'd be opening a brewery over here on the east side of Madison on Stoughton Road just south of Buckeye Road. The announcement was quickly followed by the caveat that there would be no tasting room nor beer garden at the brewery. This news was met with loud groans that reverberated throughout the Elvehjem neighborhood from Cuco's Mexican Restaurant who were briefly excited at the prospect of hordes of hungry drunks only a block or so away.

And so, while a new Young Blood drinking establishment did not emerge, it seems that you can quaff their brews more readily at home as this brewery has greatly expanded their ability to put cans of beer on store shelves. Well, it seems like it to me, anyway, when I go to liquor stores.

I was writing about a beer from the shiny new Starkweather Brewing Company yesterday and came across a quote from their co-owner and brewmaster, Peter Schroder during my extensive research: "We’re not the young hipsters just doing sours." This sums up my impressions of Young Blood fairly well. Not that they only make sours, but their portfolio has a lot of fruited sours in addition to other trendy brews like pastry stouts and IPAs. So I was happy to find out that they had brewed a smoked porter.

With the fate of Karben4's smoked porter, Night Call, unclear (see here), another such beer seemed in order. I don't see Alaskan Smoked Porter around much and so perhaps Perpetually Electrified could take the edge off of Night Call's demise, should it come, and help fill the smoked porter gap. Alaskan Smoked Porter is brewed with malt smoked over alder wood flames and I don't know what Karben4 uses/used for Night Call. Young Blood went alt Schule and used beechwood smoked malt for Perpetually Electrified which is the traditional choice for German rauchbier.

I did my level best to get the fizz flowing with my pour and it paid off in spades with a big, tan head of loose foam on top of beer so dark and impervious to light that H.P. Lovecraft would have heartily approved. When my eyes were finally able to penetrate the Stygian gloom in my glass, I saw a liquid of a deep brown hue, with a faint red tint. As best I could ascertain, it was clear. The beer smelled of a curious combination of the sweet and the smokey. First, there was a scent like raisin which was followed by one of what I think of as pan-berry. Not any one particular berry, just berries generally. A little honeyed sweetness rounded out that element. Next I found a little coffee underneath a moderately smokey scent.

Despite the big head, my tongue tasted a less than large amount of fizziness. That generic berry flavor came first on my initial sip followed by a goodly dose of smoke. The restrained carbonation made for a rather smooth mouthfeel. After swallowing, some sweetness lingered until coffee flavors took over. A herbal hoppy taste soon followed giving a mild bitterness and just a touch of dryness.

This beer was...not bad. With American porters, I expect the emphasis to be on coffee, bitter chocolate, and that fuliginous flavor from black patent malt or whatever grain yields that ashy kind of taste and for fruity elements to be in the background. Perpetually Electrified seems to have that reversed, not unlike a recent Baltic porter. "Maybe it's meant to be more of an English porter," I figured. But I'd expect an English version to be less fruity and more nutty and earthy tasting. Or am I wrong on that? Now I am going to have to seek out a porter from its homeland for comparison.

Perhaps the relative strengths of the flavors has to do with the fact that this is a big porter. It is 8.1% A.B.V., after all. Regardless, I wish the fruity flavors had more of a supporting role here. On the other hand, I really enjoyed the smoke flavor. It wasn't as strong as that of a Schlenkerla rauchbier, but it wasn't just a wallflower either. Hopefully the folks at Young Blood will try this brew again but tweak the formula.

Junk food pairing: hearty, smokey beers pair well with meat so a bag of Old Dutch's Ripples BBQ Pulled Pork Wrap potato chips is the way to go.

How zaftig! How Żywiec!: Baltic Porter by Żywiec Brewery

It wasn't all that long ago that winter had just given way to spring and I was reviewing a different Baltic porter. That one was made right here in Madison. It had a strong stone fruit flavor, too much, in fact, for my taste. Well, today we have another big, dark lager, one that you will likely find in the all the taverns and inns from Międzylesie to Lubin. Or Lublin, for that matter.

My previous encounter with this style was with one brewed in collaboration by Giant Jones Brewing Company and Working Draft Beer Company. While it had all of the requisite flavors, they were out of balance for my palate, with a taste akin to plum leading the charge while coffee and dark chocolate, my favored Baltic porter flavors, came in much smaller doses. These tastes are provided by dark malts and add bitterness which, in combination with hops, acts as a nice counterpoint to the sweeter aspects of the beer from the paler malts. I rather doubt that the Giant Jones/Working Draft brew was extraordinarily sweet, as in I don't think it had more sugars in it than the imported Baltic porters that I recalled. But having a fruitiness as the primary flavor tricks my brain into tasting more sweetness than is actually present.

Hoping that my memory wasn't failing me, I figured I ought to trust but verify.

It having been quite some time since I'd last had a Baltic porter brewed somewhere near the Baltic Sea and having had a couple domestic versions that didn't appeal to me all that much, I sought out an imported version. I think Madison's eastern European population lives mainly on the west side so it was off to Woodman's West. I noticed that there wasn't any Baltika like I remembered being there previously with "previously" likely meaning 10+ years ago. Plus, they used to carry 2 liter plastic bottles of Russian beer, as I recall, as well but I saw none of those. Was this a boycott of Russian beer because Putin invaded Ukraine? Or the result of making more room for craft beer? Perhaps Russian beer is simply imported less and harder to get a hold of. Regardless, I was able to find Żywiec Porter, the only imported Baltic porter they had on hand. It is Polish so points for going back to the motherland on this one.

According to the vast repository of all human knowledge, Wikipedia, the Żywiec Brewery dates back to 1856 and the town of – quelle surprise - Żywiec which currently resides in far southern Poland. There was no state of Poland in 1856 and instead the town was part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. Today the brewery is owned largely by a corporation, holding company, or some other legal entity that has the word "Heineken" in it and, also according to Wikipedia, has a capacity of 5 million hectoliters which apparently comes out to a little over 4 million barrels.

Besides being a brewery that still uses green glass bottles, Heineken is a brewing leviathan. It's a multinational company that makes a gagillion barrels a year in facilities around the globe. I get the impression that Żywiec is to Heineken as Leinenkugel is to MillerCoors or AB-InBev or whatever conglomerate owns them these days. And just as Leine's corporate overlords have ensured that Summer Shandy is found in every state in the Union, Żywiec's have willed that their beer be available in Madison, Wisconsin.

I am getting better at pouring and was able to get a big head of tan foam in my glass. It was moderately firm stuff. The liquid was a deep, deep mahogany and of fine clarity as I was able to see a fair number of bubbles inside. The aroma was heavenly! Full of cherry and chocolate, it smelled like it had been brewed in collaboration with CocoVaa as it was as if I had just taken a deep whiff over a box of chocolate truffles. There were also hints of coffee and tobacco.

So far, so good.

One drop was all it took to know that this was a big, rich beer. It had a heavy body like the proverbial motor oil. My tongue got a goodly dose of malty sweetness that was a little caramel, but more like honey. Cherry lingered in the background as other, non-fruity flavors kept the sweetness at bay. Coffee flavors lent bitterness while some fizz and spicy hops did their part. Much to my delight, it was also faintly smokey. The cherry and sweetness slowly faded after swallowing which allowed notes of coffee and a hint of bitter chocolate to take centerstage. Those spicy hops returned as well, adding bitterness to make for a rather dry finish. A healthy alcohol burn also aided this effort.

Oh, it left a lovely bit of lacing in my glass.

This is an archetypal Baltic porter. For me, anyway. There was a lovely cherry taste to be had here but it never overpowered the other, more savory, malt flavors. The coffee taste was great and I really enjoyed how it, the fizz, etc. worked together to keep the beer from being a cloying mess. This stuff is a heady brew at 9.5% A.B.V. and it tastes like it. My whole body began to feel warm after half a glass, which was rather nice on a chilly spring evening.

Free of vanilla and with subdued stone fruit flavor, this is the Baltic porter I remember, that I prefer.

Junk food pairing: Żywiec Porter is a big, rich brew with a complex mix of flavors and so deserves to be paired with something endowed with an equally intricate set of gustatory components. Start with a plateful of Super Pretzel Mini Pretzel Dogs and smother them with warm Cheez Whiz.

The 43rd Parallel

Newsfeed I

    I’m really terrified that more Ukrainians will die and that my childhood home and my parents’ home will be destroyed and I'll never be able to go back there.

WARMING OCEANS ARE GETTING LOUDER 

    Family says 11-year-old girl shot in head in Madison will be taken off life support

     the civil war has left more than five million people needing food aid, yet none has been delivered to Tigray since mid-December.

    this problem is more serious than The Power of the Dog itself, although it is inseparable from the offense of Campion’s misandrist, blasphemous anti-Western. Elliott’s unvarnished criticism (“piece of shit”) addressed the moral and credibility crisis evident in most contemporary films.

GUN-TOTING SPRING BREAKERS HIT STREETS

WINTER WOODWORKER TURNS OUT HUNDREDS OF ITEMS

    Quebec Maple Syrup Producers recently announced it was releasing about 50 million pounds of its strategic maple syrup reserves

 

 The Camera Eye (1)

    spring rains falling on the leaves that were never raked   and the drops drip on the window ledge because the gutter is not flush   without a TV it is quiet so I listen to the cats purr

    he once told me that he never wanted kids he died

    in a parking lot
    his sons over a thousand miles away
    alone

    a scarred hand lay carelessly on the sidewalk   lifeless it couldn't dial the phone for help  so he died there a body propped against the fence   found too late   cruel to die like his father   a scarred hand lay carelessly on the sidewalk

 

Aldo Leopold

    Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them, wrote Aldo Leopold. Now we face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television.

    Leopold was born on January 11, 1887 in Burlington, Iowa. As a boy, his father would take him into the woods and teach him hunting. Leopold spent many hours during his boyhood outside. He climbed bluffs, wandered the woods, and sketched the birds he observed on his treks. A new forestry school at Yale lured the young Leopold out east and he graduated in 1909.

    After college he joined the U.S. Forestry Service and was assigned Arizona and New Mexico as his territories. In 1911 he became the supervisor for the Carson National Forest in New Mexico. Before leaving the southwest in 1924, Leopold had written the Forest Service's first game and fish handbook and helped to develop the proposal to manage the Gila National Forest as a wilderness area. It would become the country’s first official wilderness area in 1924.

    In 1924, Leopold pulled up stakes and headed to Madison, Wisconsin where he had accepted a position at the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory. Nine years later he published the first textbook in the field of wildlife management. Later that year, he was appointed to a new chair position - Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics - the first, not only for the University of Wisconsin, but for the nation.

    In 1935, he and his family started spending time on a dilapidated farm along the Wisconsin River outside of Baraboo, some 50 miles north of Madison. The Leopold family planted thousands of pine trees and restored prairies. Documenting the ensuing changes in the flora and fauna further informed and inspired Leopold.

    He wrote about the changes at the farm looking to publish a book intended for a general audience. Unfortunately, just one week after receiving word that his manuscript would be published, Leopold died of a heart attack on April 21, 1948. 

 

Your Humble Narrator 

I love the springtime. Well, mostly.

The green is coming, warmer days are drawing near. It was a week or two ago when I was roused by robins just before dawn and heard the newly-arrived birds for the first time this year. Shortly after that I saw my first red-winged blackbird of the year. Unfortunately, I was driving so I didn't hear its stentorian cry. As stentorian a cry as a small creature weighing only a few ounces can muster, I mean.

While those male red-winged blackbirds are out looking for mates and a comfy nest near the water, out in the wooded areas, does are preparing to give birth later in the spring. Trees give serious consideration to budding and the grass contemplates growing while I dread pulling out the mower from its home in the shed to begin that weekly routine. Our cats are a little friskier now and Grabby is once again trying to sneak outside.

There's electricity in the air as we boreal types look forward to verdant scenes and shorts weather and, in general, getting out and about without donning heavy coats and masks and to cease cowering from Covid.

 

 ("Bicycle Mirror" by Doug E.L. Haynes)

It's been about 2 years since the pandemic began and with mask mandates ending, things are looking more and more like they did before March 2020. My spring is shaping up to be a busy one with a camping trip, several concerts, and many hours set to be spent at a cinema during the Wisconsin Film Festival on the calendar. Plus there will (hopefully) be much time spent on my bicycle cruising around the city and country alike.

Lately, however, I've been thinking back upon the past couple years and trying to tease out some lessons, to understand the changes wrought during that time. I'm a terrible prognosticator and haven't come up with any insightful thoughts about how history will view the The Great Pandemic.

In large part, my reflections have led to me feeling very fortunate. To the best of my knowledge, I never caught the virus and only a few people I know did. They felt like they were shot at and missed and shit at and hit for about a week and then they got better. Since I earn my keep by making computers bend to my will, I was able to work from home as the virus spread. I am very cognizant of the fact that many people didn't have that luxury. A little more came out of my pocket for the beleaguered food service workers each time we did takeout. Even without a pandemic ongoing, I am a fairly patient person but I tapped my equanimity reserves on occasion and never lashed out at anyone who earned a living in the service industry. Those people put themselves at greater risk of Covid exposure, dealt with a lot of assholes as they tried to get customers to wear masks, and struggled often times with product and staffing shortages. Oh, but how quickly they went from "essential workers" and "heroes" deserving of our eternal gratitude to lowly, unskilled labor for whom a living wage was unbefitting.

Since I was to be working from home, I got in the habit of taking morning walks down to Starkweather Creek. With the lockdown in place, Madison was quiet. At first it was a bit eerie - as if I were in an episode of The Twilight Zone - but it quickly became quite beautiful. Without streets full of cars, the city became a very different acoustical landscape. The sounds of birds became clearer with the rusty screeches of distant grackles joining the boastful mating cries of red-winged blackbirds in a wonderful avian chorus. The gentle footfalls of squirrels that would have previously been drowned out in the morning rush could now faintly be heard.

As the weather warmed, I decided to finally get that bicycle that had been given to me a couple years previously tuned up and ready for riding. I rode all the time as a young boy up through high school. After college I bought a bicycle and began riding once again. A career change led to a car and, a few years later, a job change led to taking the bus. Then, in 2019, inspired by a friend who loved to perambulate, I started to take long walks. Along comes Covid and I start biking again.

Part of adjusting to working from home was to get away from there, to remove myself from a seat in front of a computer. Having done my 8 hours, I would often hop on my bike and zip over to a park, with Acewood being a favorite. It was incredibly relaxing to sit on the shore amongst the birds with their chirping a mellifluous soundtrack as I watched a turtle go under the water and tried to find where it had resurfaced. Or to wait patiently for a muskrat to swim by. Cranes waded near the opposite shore as mallards lazily floated between wedges of geese preening themselves. What a joy it was to watch the animals go about their day and forget about the pandemic and computers.

Madison spends a lot of time promoting itself as a small city that's big on urban amenities with a cosmopolitan outlook befitting much larger cities. It devotes much less energy to bragging about its park system which is wonderful. Not only are there neighborhood parks everywhere that are grassy expanses dotted with playgrounds and basketball courts, but also parks that are natural retreats with only trails that wend through tall grasses and wooded areas. And I enjoyed the peace and solitude afforded by many of them as Covid raged in the distance.

I read Thoreau's Walden and A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. This wasn't a back to the country moment c.1970. I didn't move to a rural area and become a subsistence farmer. But, with society in lockdown, I availed myself of the opportunity to get to know the non-man-made Madison more intimately. Doing so has helped me see it as a community to which we belong and that it deserves our love and respect.

And so I am looking forward to the progression of spring so I can get out and enjoy the myriad of parks in Madison and also head out into the neighboring countryside on my bicycle. But the spring also holds the anniversaries of the deaths of various family members, most notable being that of my brother. My joy at the return of migratory birds and the renewal of life is tempered by melancholy as the anniversary of his death approaches. But I make my peace with his absence every April and then move on to enjoy the season once again.

I love the springtime. Well, mostly.

A Little Light Spring Reading

So I have decided to try to read The Lord of the Rings again. I failed at this many years ago and was inspired to try again after a recent gaming session. My friends were talking about the new TV series based on Tolkien's writings, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and I sat there with a blank look on my face as I had no clue what they were talking about. Third Age? What's that? Ergo, I figured I'd best get it done.

I went to 3 or 4 bookstores before I found the set above. Notice how the spine of The Hobbit has seen use while the other books remain untouched. One store would have 20 copies of The Fellowship of the Ring but none of the others. Off to the next store which had a surfeit of The Two Towers with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King nowhere in sight. It was very odd. Back in the day, used bookstores always had multiple copies of  these books as boys discovered girls and set aside fantasy novels.

In my first attempt, I finished The Fellowship of the Ring and got halfway through The Two Towers before quitting. Just reading the prologue a few nights ago was like pulling teeth and I was reminded of the slog that I quit midway 20 years ago.

Wish me luck.

To get in the mood, I've been listening to some music inspired by Tolkien and his work.

The Corona Diaries Vol 44 - Post Script: River in the Pines

(Before listening to the Post Script, make sure you've shown your true colors.)

A great version of the classic lumberjack song, "River in the Pines" by The Deep Dark Woods. A sad tale of a Wisconsin shanty boy and his love.

It is the middle ground between ale and lager, between Baltic and porter: Baltic Porter by Giant Jones Brewing & Working Draft Beer Co.

 

It wasn't all that long ago that there was snow on the ground and I was reviewing another Baltic porter. But that one had vanilla in it. Too much, in fact, for my taste. Well, today we have another big, dark lager just like you'd find in the all the taverns and inns of Tallinn, but without any vanilla added.

This one is a collaboration between two relative newcomers here in Madison: Giant Jones Brewing Co. and Working Draft Beer Company. As the bottle notes, both breweries opened in the same year, 2018, and, since they are located only about two blocks from one another, a collaboration was inevitable.

I will refer the reader to my review of Lakefront's vanilla Baltic porter for more but the abbreviated story behind the style is thus: the Poles got hooked on English porter in the 18th century and started brewing it themselves. A hundred years or so later, lager brewing was in vogue so they applied it to their beloved porter and voila! They ended up with Baltic porter, although the Poles didn't call it that. They probably just called it "porter". It was some late-20th century beer nerd with a taxonomy fetish who gave it the appellation we have today.

Most, if not all, brewing collaborations I've witnessed or been given the behind the scenes scuttlebutt by a participant consist of the brewmasters standing around drinking while brewing minions of the host brewery do all of the work. Once that's done, the brewers join their superiors in the quaffing. I have absolutely no idea what the collaboration here consisted of but, since I don't think Giant Jones has much capacity for lagering whereas Working Draft does as they release a new pilsner every week, it seems, these days, my guess is that brewmaster Jessica Jones and her crew walked down the street to Working Draft on brew day.**

While most of the press Giant Jones garners centers around the fact that the brewery is owned by women, the really neat aspect for me is that Giant Jones is an organic brewery. As CEO Erika Jones explained,  "All our ingredients and anything that has the potential to come into contact with our beer (such as no-rinse sanitizers) must be approved under the National Organic Program." Add in that GJ's beers are all 7%+ A.B.V. and you've got yourself some very niche products.

Organic beer hasn't taken off in the way other organic foods have. Go into your local food co-op and you're spoiled for choice when it comes to organic junk food. Organic cheese puffs? They've got them coming out of their tattooed, lobe gauged ears. Organic beer? Not so much. From what I've read, organic barley and hops are fairly rare. Still, Giant Jones offers a wide variety of beers at prices that are not ungodly so that situation may not be as dire as the articles I've read make it seem.

In an age when cans rule the packaging roost and hard seltzers and non-alcoholic beers are ascendant, Giant Jones with their big, organic brews in half liter bottles appear to be swimming against the tide. Let us hope they don't get eaten by a bear. You know, like some horny salmon do while swimming upstream.

My cat Grabby looked on as the loose, tan head atop my pour dissipated quickly leaving a glass of deep brown liquid with a red tint. The beer was clear! Still, it was too dark to discern any bubbles floating about inside. Cats have very good olfactory senses but, since she cannot speak Human, I have no idea what she was able to smell. For my part, I caught plum, malty sweetness, dark chocolate, and something like carob.

My first sip revealed a medium-heavy body with a sturdy fizziness. It didn't taste as sugary as the aroma hinted that it might be but there was some caramel sweetness from the malt. Chocolate, carob, and a rather strong stone fruit flavor were present as was a touch of roasty malt taste. On the finish, most of those flavors faded away and a little coffee, which I expected to taste earlier, faded in. Spicy hop flavors made themselves known at last and helped make for a very dry finish. There was that boozy heat to help the dryness cause as well. The beer is 8.2%, which is fairly substantial, but not deadly, yet my mouth had this strong astringent feeling and I felt as if I could breathe fire.

This was not what I expected. The coffee and chocolate flavors which I had anticipated to be more prominent were instead relegated to supporting roles. For me, coffee and bitter chocolate flavors should be at equal or greater strength than fruity ones in this style. Otherwise it had a clean lagery taste. Admittedly, it had been a while since I'd had a Baltic porter that was brewed anywhere near the Baltic Sea so perhaps I was misremembering...? Plus, there's more than one way to brew a Baltic porter, right?

However close this beer is or is not to, say, a Polish take on the style, it's got too prominent a fruity taste for my, er, taste. It should be a co-equal flavor to coffee and dark chocolate, not its superior. Still, this is by no means an awful brew and, if you are, say, a big fan of Placek ze Śliwkami, then I recommend this one for you. For me, my half a snifter above was enough.

Junk food pairing: Pair your Giant Jones/Working Draft Baltic porter with a bag of Kettle Brand Korean Barbeque potato chips. Their sweet-salt combo goes perfectly with this beer.

**My guess was wrong. See this tweet. 

The Corona Diaries Vol 44: In the Pines, In the Pines and the Sun Rarely Shined

(Don't forget to start by showing your true colors.)

(late November 2021)

The next morning, I felt pretty good. Not very sore and that fresh country air does a body good. First on my agenda was to head north about 50 miles to Stone Lake. My parents and an aunt & uncle used to own cabins that were formerly a resort on 90 some-odd acres a few miles outside of town. I hadn't been there since c.1988 when I accompanied my father to the cabins to make maple syrup in the spring.

Stone Lake was a very small town of only a few hundred people and no stop lights when I spent my summers up there as a boy. I recall an ice cream shop up on a hill and the Stone Lake Pub which was a mandatory stop for my dad and uncle on the way to and on the return trip from the town dump. I drank a lot of Nehi soda there, alternating between grape and orange.

Truth be known, my last time in Stone Lake was not pleasant. Reflecting on it decades later as a man, the trip up there to boil maple sap was an attempt by my father to try and salvage his relationship with his youngest son. He had destroyed his marriage to my mother and my brother had moved out or was on the cusp of doing so. Their relationship was, in a certain way, over. 

My last memory from that trip was of us speeding back home down Highway 53 with the car's speedometer pegged at 85 as my father, drunk as usual, stewed in his anger, most of which was directed at me.

I was thankful that those memories were not the ones I dwelled upon as I headed north to Stone Lake. Would it be any different decades later? I was keen to find out.

The drive was fairly uneventful with just an occasional dusting of snow. At one point, however, the sun came out for what was the first time in a couple of days when I was just south of Rice Lake. It was quite a relief as I thought that I might have to go to a clinic to get treated for adult onset rickets before the trip was over.

Cruising into town, I was surprised to find a fancy wine bar that most certainly wasn't around back in the day. I parked and was greeted by a black Lab wondering who the city slicker was.

He was all bark and no bite, though. I got out of my car and found he was happy to have someone scratch his head.

Stone Lake looked pretty much as I remembered it. The ice cream parlor was gone but the hardware store I went to many, many times with my dad and uncle was still there. While the local craft beer bar was closed for the season, the Stone Lake Pub was still in business and had retained its faux stone exterior.

When I spent time on the water on our trips up north, it was on Sissabagama Lake and not Stone Lake but I walked down there anyway. Beautiful clear water and lots of the lake's namesakes.

To get to the shore, one must cross 4 sets of railroad tracks. Stone Lake has quite a neat rail history. Tracks were first laid in the early 20th century and the town was a stop on the Chicago-Superior freight route. Before long, passenger service was introduced and Chicagoans could head to Stone Lake or farther north to the port city Duluth on the shores of Lake Superior. Today the town is on a main line of the Canadian National Railway and sees trains loaded with freight heading to Chicago from Winnipeg and, I suppose, vice versa.

A block over is the Stone Lake Community Wetland Park. You enter the park via a boardwalk which disappears off into the distance.

It leads to a small but pleasant wooded area where a moss-lined path takes you over gentle hills that look down upon the wetlands.

I ran into a couple people who were starting their days with a wetland stroll and they cheerfully bade me good morning.

This was not to be a lengthy walk but it was good to stretch my legs in anticipation of my next hike. On my way back to my car, I noticed that the vegetable stand outside the antiques store was being stocked by a young couple. I asked what was good and was told that the cabbage was especially tasty – nice and sweet. Four dollars later I had a fine head of cabbage in my bag and visions of gołąbki (Polish cabbage rolls) dancing in my head.

I bid Stone Lake farewell and hit the road for my next destination: a cross-country ski trail for a hike.

Heading down a county road, I noticed a doe on one side which thankfully just stood there watching me as I slowed down and cautiously drove by. A little farther down the road, I spied a couple of bald eagles. One was sharing a meal of venison with a crow while the other was about 10 yards away licking its chops having already feasted on the carcass. I tried to get some photos but the eagles were having none of it.

Within a mile I noticed a Paul Bunyan statue by the side of a road that intersected with the one I was on. More of a driveway, really. Sadly, there was no Babe. The weird thing was that there was no resort, no restaurant, no business at all by that intersection. Just houses. Apparently, someone in that vicinity simply likes Paul Bunyan.

And why not?

This area was part of Wisconsin's pinery and was home to a thriving logging industry at one time. Bunyan first appeared in print in 1910 but evidence suggests that Wisconsin lumberjacks didn't really know his tales until the 1920s**. Once they did, however, they came up with their own Paul Bunyan stories such as this one:

Paul Bunyan was driving a large bunch of log down the Wisconsin River when the logs suddenly jammed in the Dells. The logs were piled 200 feet high at the head and were back up for 1 mile up river. Paul was at the rear of the jam with the Blue Oxen. While he was coming to the front, the crew was trying to break the jam but they couldn't budge it. When Paul arrived at the head with the ox, he told them to stand back. He put the ox in the old Wisconsin in front of the jam. And then, standing on the bank, shot the ox with a 303 Savage rifle. The ox thought it was flies and began to switch his tail. The tail commenced to go around in a circle. And you know that ox switching his tail forced that stream to flow backwards and eventually the jam floated back also. He took the ox out of the stream and let the stream and logs go on their way.

The life of the lumberjack was not easy. Men would report to camp in the fall and not return home until the spring, although they did get to visit family at Christmas. They were in the woods before dawn so work could start promptly at first light. Lumberjacks or shanty boys, as they were known in the Upper Midwest, felled trees, trimmed the branches off, and put them onto sleds which transported them to the riversides to await the spring when the logs would be put in to float downstream to the anxious blades of a sawmill.

If all of the back-breaking work and the dangers posed by very large crosscut saws, axes, and falling trees weren't enough, lumberjacks also had to contend with a host of (mythical) creatures that inhabited the forests and posed their own threats. For instance, there were Axehandle Hounds, dogs that looked like dachshunds with hatchet-shaped heads and handle-shaped bodies. They'd roam the lumber camps and eat all of the axe and peavey handles.

But the creature that survived the decline of the logging trade and entered the public imagination is the Hodag, a native of Rhinelander. Driving into the town, one is greeted by a statue of the beast.

It inhabits the swamps in the area and generally feeds on the wild animals there but it won't turn down a meal of human flesh…

Just a few hundred feet from the Paul Bunyan statue was the parking lot and trailhead I sought. I parked and popped the rear hatch open so I could change my footwear. While doing so, I noticed a solitary boot just off in the woods. Was this a sign? Would I meet my end at the hands of a Hidebehind which caused the demise of many a lumberjack and was known to leave only a single boot behind?

Bootlaces tied, I hit the trail. It was fairly warm out and, though cloudy, it never snowed or rained, which I was thankful for, as I was allowed to enjoy the scenery without getting soaked.

The trail was not particularly difficult but I don't think I'd survive attempting to cross-country ski it. The most challenging aspect of it was trying to avoid tripping while navigating the divots and rills formed by runoff. At one point I found a branch on the side of the trail and made it into my walking stick.

Unlike my last hike, this trail didn't feature much water but what there was of it was pretty.

At one point, the sun came out very briefly but it was still quite welcome.

After 3 hours – maybe 4, I cannot recall – I was back at my car. To be sure, I was a bit worn out after walking 6.5 miles or so, but, overall, I felt pretty good. Popping the hatch open once again, I sat down to change back into my gym shoes. At this point I discovered that my legs didn't work anymore. They just couldn't be persuaded to go up so I could rest them on my knees and untie my boots. Uff da! So I was forced to grab my pant cuffs and lift my legs upwards. You really feel it when you stop moving!

My next destination was the tiny town of Dallas (no stoplights) (or was I north enough that they were stop and go lights?), about 12 miles west of Chetek, where dinner and muscle relaxant awaited.

I rolled into town and pulled into the parking lot of Jen's Chopping Block where I had dinner. The smothered chicken was OK but the chili was surprisingly good. With a full belly, I headed down the street a block to Valkyrie Brewing Company.

Valkyrie no longer distributes their beer to Madison and, even when they did, its availability was limited, at best. It's a very small brewery that, as far as I know, still uses repurposed dairy equipment. Here's brewmaster Randy Lee showing off his decidedly low-tech brewing setup back in 2009 when the Frau and I were there.

There were no computers to monitor temperature or to open and close valves as the proto-beer was automagically transferred from one tank to another. I don't recall there being any electric motors to stir the wort either. Valkyrie is, in my opinion,  a "craft" brewery in way that other such breweries are not.

The taproom has been totally redone since we were there and now includes a mural by co-owner Ann Lee who loves to paint.

The bar had no stools as the Lees are keen on people sitting at the booths and tables together to socialize. Cribbage boards adorned each table to abet the pursuit of that communal vibe. And, as you can see, guitars and a mandolin were at the ready for anyone to entertain the masses with their musical stylings.

My first beer was Whispering Embers, a smoked Oktoberfest. It's an amber lager brewed with a portion of malt that had been enhanced with the flavors of smoke from beechwood. As I have remarked in one of these diaries previously, I just adore smoke beers. Setting down my empty glass and licking my lips to get every last drop, I noticed that the soreness in my legs was beginning to fade.  To hasten the salubrious effect, I ordered a Night Wolf which is a German Schwarzbier or black beer.

As the name indicates, it's dark in color but it's nimble on the tongue. Full of roasted grain, coffee, and dark chocolate flavors but never heavy or cloying, the style is a favorite of mine.

My legs were feeling fine by the time I left. The muscle relaxant worked like a charm.

Back at the hotel, I showered and put on some fresh clothes. The sun was nearly gone and clouds had moved in. It wasn't long before some snowflakes were to be seen. Since I'd been out of the loop for a couple days, I took the opportunity to check out the news back home.

I read an article stating that Madison's budget included money for 2 "community connector" positions which would provide translation and community outreach services to Hmong and Chinese Mandarin speakers. I didn't know there were that many folks who spoke those languages instead of English to warrant special city services. The times they are a-changin'.

One more Valkyrie beer went down smoothly as I did some reading before bedtime.

The next morning was time to go home. My vacation was too short.

Getting south of Highway 29, I had left "Up North".

My plan was to stop back in Osseo at a tourist shop for some souvenirs. But first I had to narrowly avoid a buck that had decided to run out in front of my car. One thing I do not miss about living in the country is having to dodge horny deer on the road every fall. Driving east through town, I saw people putting up Christmas decorations in public spaces and trucks full of cord wood when they weren't full of Christmas trees. There was definitely a festive atmosphere in town.

While I was eagerly grabbing kettle corn and bourbon barrel aged maple syrup for my Frau, I overheard an older woman talking to the clerk. She remarked, "…we did it to ourselves by buying everything online." Amen.

Buy local! Support your mom & pop shops before they go the way of the dodo.

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The bonus photo for this edition is a step. It sits on the terrace of a Victorian era home in Madison so I presume it was used when people boarded or alighted from a carriage. It was nice to see that this bit of history was preserved when the streets were torn up and repaved several years ago.

 

 

**I may have been using outdated reference materials. See the Wikipedia entry on the subject. 

(Listen to this entry's Post Script.)