(mid-May 2022)
(Watch this entry's prelude.)
As the previous couple entries revealed, I’ve spent some quite welcome and extremely missed time at concerts recently. But there’s been more to this spring than live music.
When the Frau and I got home from Minneapolis, it wasn’t long before a record-breaking heatwave settled upon us. It was 90+ degrees for 4 days in a row which surely violates some part of the Geneva Conventions. I was hoping not to turn the air conditioning on until June but was forced to by day 2 of the heatwave. Thankfully, the intense heat only lasted a week or so.
One evening when it was still scorching outside, I took a nicely air-conditioned bus downtown to see the English physicist Brian Cox give a presentation. With him was his partner or sidekick, perhaps, Robin Ince, an English comic. They host the wonderful radio show and podcast, The Infinite Monkey Cage, a panel program that focuses on science and delves into such weighty topics as the lives of our hominid ancestors and what ancient rocks can tell us as well as airs intense arguments about whether strawberries, once picked, are still alive.
Madison was a stop on Cox's tour called “Horizons: A 21st Century Odyssey” and we were treated to explanations of Einstein's Theories, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics, the mysteries of black holes, and lots of big pictures of outer space.
Behind him were slides, videos, and animations to illustrate his lecture. I came out of it understanding quantum mechanics and black holes more than going in. But I still don't understand them. Ince would come onstage periodically to give us a brief respite from the big concepts by throwing in his own brand of humor. Cox is funny is his own right, don't get me wrong, but Ince had more of an everyman approach.
Things got fuzzy when Cox explained the black hole information paradox, though it was a really neat conundrum. So there's this thing called quantum entanglement which stipulates that particles can be affected remotely when something acts on another particle even if they are separated by great distances. I think that's correct, anyway. The paradox comes in when one particle in that pair gets destroyed when it’s home, inside a black hole, goes POOF! as the black hole "evaporates" and the particle is no more. If one particle in that entangled pair no longer exists, then the remaining particle would lose certain characteristics thought to be immutable.
Or something like that.
At another point, the screen was filled with, not to sound like Bush, Sr. here, countless of points of light. Cox explained that this was a computer animation of the entire visible universe and that each tiny speck of light was a galaxy. Now that really made me feel small and insignificant. A bit like being in the Total Perspective Vortex, I would guess.
Anyway, it was both an entertaining and fascinating evening and illustrated quite well that the universe is a very weird place.
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A couple days after being flummoxed by physics, I headed north, back to the Black River State Forest where I would do a little camping with some friends. I was there last autumn, as you may recall, so this time I would get to see it in the spring.
After a brief stop at the camp site, I headed to Wildcat Ridge for a hike. It is a bit northwest of the trails I walked last time I was up in Black River. "Norway Pine" sounded like a fine name for a trail with the promise of green trees and that fresh pine scent. Before long I discovered that the DNR ranger who put up the trail signs had a wicked sense of humor as it was only after you get a little ways along are you told that it's not just difficult terrain, but the "MOST DIFFICULT".
At least it was a beautiful day for a walk. Sunny for the most part, but not too hot. At one point atop the ridge, I saw dark clouds and heard thunder to the north but the rain stayed away. The woods were simply wonderful.
Pines and oaks were all around me and it was quite peaceful. I loved the silence. Well, I loved the absence of internal combustion engines and being immersed in bird song, the wind in the trees, and the occasional sound of a squirrel scurrying about.
There were some spectacular views to be had as I hiked along the top of the ridge, a few hundred feet above the land below.
I ended up walking a little over 6 miles in total. At about the 5 mile point I started down a different trail which was only rated as intermediate difficulty. Perhaps I was simply tired but I could not tell the difference between the trails. This new one seemed no easier to me as the hills had the same steep inclines.
Eventually I found myself back at the trailhead and my car with sore feet and a deep thirst. I returned to camp, pitched my tent, and settled in next to the fire with a beer in hand surrounded by good company. Just down a small slope from the site was the Black River.
It was calm and quiet along the shore - unlike our camp site which was continuously regaled by birds. I find it marvelous how the soundscape changes from city to country – from cars to birds. As I've gotten older, camping/spending time in the country has gone from a nice change of scenery to something more necessary. The change in my mindset in going from city to country now is more drastic than it was in years past and spending time in the great outdoors has a greater restorative effect. A palpable sense of calm descends upon me after being in the country a short time and part of my brain wonders if the invention of the city was really a good thing.
At one point I looked up to see an oriole flying overhead. Then I saw a blue bird sitting in a nearby tree.
Me, excitedly: Look! There's an indigo bunting in that tree.
Friend, incredulously: How can you tell it's an indigo bunting?
Me, donning an invisible deerstalker hat: Well, I only know of two blue birds in these parts: the blue jay and the indigo bunting. And that's no blue jay so, by process of elimination, it must therefore be an indigo bunting.
I don't have a great camera so there were times when I'd see a bird up in a tree and I would just zoom in all the way and take a snap hoping that I'd gotten a photograph of a bird and not just branches and leaves. Sometimes I get a decent picture like this one of what I think is a sparrow of some kind.
Other times I am not so lucky and I end up with an out of focus photo of a bird's butt.
I think this is the bottom of a goldfinch.
We also had a woodcock wander through our campsite. Cute little thing.
We cooked dinner, drank beer, and bantered until the wee hours. There is something deeply satisfying about sitting around a fire and staring at it. I don't know what it is about flames that captures our attention and imagination so, but I thoroughly enjoy letting it. When we hit the sack, the full moon was out from behind the clouds and I laid there with my tent aglow. So aglow, in fact, that I thought for a moment that someone's headlights were on but, no, it was just the moon.
The next morning was chilly and there was a haze on the river.
The birds were up too so I was greeted with their dawn chorus as I poked around my cooler for my can of iced coffee which was to tide me over until we could brew the fresh stuff.
My friends are smart and all have cots or an air mattress to sleep on while I am still making do with just my sleeping bag. Ergo my back was a bit sore. While I don't begrudge them their cots and cushions, I still prefer sleeping close to the earth. There's just something primitive about it, something atavistic about being close to the soil. It's where we come from, it's where most of the things we eat to sustain ourselves come from, and it is where we all return to in the end. Aside from a minor backache, I find sleeping close to the ground the perfect complement to being hypnotized by fire until deep into the night. Add in the fresh air and a river just 20 feet away and you've got all of the elements covered.
There's also something incredibly humbling thinking about how, as Brian Cox
related in his presentation, the ground beneath your feet and your body and everyone else's body and the ground beneath their feet are all made of stuff created billions of years ago by stars doing their thing and churning out the matter that comprises pretty much everything we know of. That's made of matter, that is.
After having downed some coffee, I stretched a bit and went for a walk to loosen up the old back muscles.
There is a short hiking path that starts at the end of the road that the camp sites are on so I took a stroll. While I encountered lots of birds, none of them could be bothered to sit still so I could take a photograph. A quarter mile or thereabouts up the path I began to hear the rush of water and soon came upon a stretch of rapids.
After my quite pleasant walk, I arrived back at camp to find everyone in some stage of waking up. A couple people were up and about while muffled words emanated from another tent. Eventually some folks went fishing/paddling on the river while the rest of us stayed on land to chat and watch the birds some more. Breakfast followed and then more BSing before we packed up our gear and hit road. Our stay was all too short.
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"So," I hear you ask, "what do you do when you're not going to a concert or camping?"
In addition to procrastinating on tearing my deck down, I go to the cinema.
I was looking forward to seeing The Northman as I really enjoyed director Robert Eggers' first two films, The Witch and The Lighthouse. His latest was based on the old Scandinavian tale about a fellow named Amleth. His father was murdered by his uncle who then proceeded to marry Amleth's mother. The boy grows into a man but never loses his desire for homicidal revenge. His life's mission becomes to seek out his uncle and loose his wrath upon him. Shakespeare moved the H from the end of the name to the beginning and ended up with one of his most popular plays.
It was good. Not as good as Eggers' previous films but good. I especially liked the scenes with the seers. And the twist when Amleth meets his mother after many years took me by surprise. I suppose the moral of the story is that fratricide just doesn't pay. Although historians that specialize in Viking history were consulted, I have to wonder if Viking rites of passage really involved all that farting.
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Bonus photo. Here's an old photograph of Grabby cleaning a young Piper.
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