It was a gorgeous morning, sunny with a slight chill still hanging in the air. Perfect conditions to take a stroll in the woods in search of Waldeinsamkeit.
Although the trees were still largely bare, I was afforded the opportunity to get unobstructed views of many lakes that had been obscured by leaves on previous visits. It's a trade-off: beautiful foliage or lake views.
Despite being able to see the lovely lakes as never before, I still chose to obstruct the view on occasion.
Having learned that Walden Pond is not, in fact, a pond, but rather a kettle lake and that the lakes here at the Chippewa Moraine Rec Area are all kettle lakes, I consider this place to be my Walden West. No offense, Mr. Derleth.
Since I didn't have much in the way of colorful foliage at my disposal, my eyes took a different photographic tack and looked to reflections on the water.
And, with the sun blazing in the sky, I found some nice spots where it was illuminating the forest. I loved how the pines looked in the sun, their green needles aglow as if they were finally getting their due for having provided color throughout the barren winter.
I am unsure what flowers these are but they looked very pretty and their pure white petals really stood out amongst the preponderance of bare branches as they soaked in the sun.
As my legs carried me along the path between the lakes, my mind wandered down its own trails. At times I was enraptured by the intense beauty around me while at others my mind was occupied by dark thoughts of my divorce. It was immanent. Barring any cruel twist of fate, I would become an ex-husband by the end of the month. While there are a few financial matters that will keep my wife and I tethered for a short time after the judge declares null & void the legal ties that have bound us for 10+ years, it is my hope that the divorce being finalized will accelerate the process of effacing my wife's malignant presence from my mind as far as possible.
Granted, I do not expect her to ever be fully erased as if I had undergone the treatment in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but it is my hope that she fades further from memory, that her presence casts an ever shrinking shadow over my life.
I logged into a largely disused email account of mine the other day and found a cache of email exchanges between my wife and me that went back as far as the day of our first date back in 2004. I read a couple and they overflowed with joy and a nervous excitement. Words carefully chosen to impress and entice amidst the blooming and buzzing confusion of a newfound attraction. One email my wife sent me had the subject "fuck, i love you". Now, of course, the middle two words no longer apply and would be omitted.
A couple dips into the dim and distant past were enough and I deleted the emails so as to continue the process of effacing her from my life.
Down the path I continued.
One of the great joys of my hike was the near constant presence of woodpeckers. I rarely saw them but heard their calls and, less frequently, heard them pecking. However, I lucked out and was able to get a moderately decent photo of one.
Walking along I heard on several occasions a splash in the water. When I looked in the direction the sound came from I usually saw a bare log and eventually cottoned on that the splash had come from turtles jumping into the water to avoid being seen by the human. Those turtles have good hearing. But I found that, if I stood still for a minute, the turtles would often hop back onto the log and resume sunning themselves.
At one point I heard the rustling of leaves just off the trail. Expecting a squirrel somewhere nearby I instead saw a garter snake. Presumably it saw me coming and slithered to safety. It remained just a foot or so off the path and was happy to remain still for a fine photo op.
I am unsure what type of bird we have here.
Is it an oriole?
I loved all of the shadows cast by the trees and how they fell across the trail.
At one point I came across this and got a definitive answer to an age old question. Ha!
This trip I committed to memory that starting my hike by going east at the trailhead is my preferred way to go. Going in this direction means that my two favorite spots on the trail that have bridges come towards the end, as if they are a reward for the previous 4 miles of walking.
The first spot has a bridge that crosses this micro-strait that connects two of the lakes and, when you get to the other side of it, there's a Leopold bench next to an evergreen. I simply adore this spot!
I took off my backpack and grabbed a drink of water before sitting down on the bench where I could enjoy a little shade. I don't know what it is about this view that grabs me, that commands my attention. You can see two lakes from this vantage point and I just love the tree. The scene has a certain symmetry to it with a lake on either side.
Sitting at this spot is the only time I ever don headphones and listen to music on a hike. Assuming it's not raining, I will sit on the bench here and dedicate 5 minutes to listening to a fan remix of "Silent Sorrow in Empty Boats" by Genesis. There's something ethereal about the washes of that Mellotron chorus sound that takes me away, makes me feel as if I have been transported to some kind of boreal Arcadia. The wind caresses my face as the aroma of the forest, of the earth heightens my sensory experience and seems to call me home.
This is a magical place.
The other spot is more like an isthmus with a bridge taking the place of a missing bit of earth.
This spot is wonderful because A) it is lined with pines and B) it's a fairly lengthy stretch were you have a lake close to you on either side. There are lots of blues and greens and all of the pines give me a cozy, snug feeling. And the views are spectacular.
From here it wasn't far back to the trailhead. The very last part of the trail is fairly steep as you ascend an ice-walled-lake plain. But getting to the top felt really good. Both my body and mind felt exhilarated. I think I had pondered my life just enough and opened a door to a path away from anger. After a brief bit of relaxation, I took off and headed to a brewpub I'd been meaning to try for a few years - Heart of the North Brewing Co.
At one point as I was driving, a large bird flew across the road and perched atop a dead tree. I pulled over and found that it was a turkey vulture.
Heart of the North is in Ladysmith and I cannot recall the last time I'd visited that fair town. Maybe sometime in the early 1980s. Although I drove past the brewpub initially, I circled back and found it.
While not packed to the gills, there were a fair number of people there enjoying a drink and pizza. I found a seat at the bar and ordered a salt and lime ale which was their lowest A.B.V. offering and just sounded like the most refreshing brew on the menu. I asked the bartender if it was a sour beer as I have seen many a Gose with added salt and lime.
Upon hearing my query, the woman next to me said, "No! It's just tastes like lime and is really refreshing. It's what I'm drinkin'." Her comment was said a bit emphatically and with a tone of incredulity, as if I had asked a silly question.
The bartender said that it was not a sour brew. Indeed it wasn't. It seemed to be a blonde ale with a bit of lime flavoring and sea salt. Having sweated more than a little as the day grew warmer, I welcomed the salt. The lime was, well, lime flavoring, but it was mostly unoffensive to the tongue even if it was more so to my sense of propriety which dictates that craft beer should use whole, natural ingredients.
The brewpub shares space with a greenhouse and so the setting was marvelous.
A few people left and a few more people arrived. Some of the new folks had finished shopping for plants and wanted a libation before heading home. Others seemed to simply want to enjoy the beautiful sunny day with a drink and the company of family and/or friends. The place had a definite local watering hole vibe.
For my second brew, I ordered their hefeweizen.
It was excellent. Plenty of esters to give luscious banana-like flavors which were complemented by a light body and a firm fizz. Just quite tasty and refreshing. Once downed, I hit the road for my hotel. Or was it a motel?
Driving into Bloomer I saw a sign for one Mark Hollister who was running for some local office and I then recalled the name of that fellow that Jason and I went to high school with but whose name we couldn't recall the previous day. It occurred to me that he wasn't gay but did dress to the nines and thusly I had conflated a couple schoolmates.
I checked in, took a shower, and went to a local Mexican restaurant for dinner. My phone had been left in my room to charge so no photos. The waitress was a beautiful young Hispanic woman who was very friendly and provided good service. My fajita salad was tasty and filling and a nice change from your more typical fare up north of burgers, pizza, and fried fish.
After dinner I kicked back on my bed and made good on my promise to myself of getting some reading done. In particular, my goal was to get an issue of County Highway done and dusted as I was 2 issues behind with the latest not far off from landing in my mailbox.
An article on the front page made me chuckle and shake my head.
For a short time my wife expressed great agitation at my reading County Highway as Walter Kirn is editor-at-large. In another attempt to verify that I was thinking only her approved, correct thoughts, she retrieved an issue from our mailbox and proceeded to vet its creators. It seems she scoured Kirn's Twitter/X feed and found that he was apparently friends with RFK or supported some of his initiatives as Secretary of Health and Human Services.
She would text me screenshots of tweets she deemed offensive and one morning launched into a tirade at the foot of the stairs while I was working about how Kirn was evil and County Highway was a propaganda rag for Trump, et cetera and so on. This episode was really depressing because A) Trump doesn't get mentioned in County Highway much and B) my wife would never even say good morning to me when she arose and I was upstairs working yet she was keen to yell up the stairs at me about how Walter Kirn is basically a minion of Satan bent on killing her personally.
At one point I told her that Trump is very rarely mentioned in County Highway because the paper is more interested in articles about people living off the grid in the New Mexico desert, a town fighting the government who wants to build a dam and flood a big chunk of land that these residents would prefer remain unsubmerged, The Eagles residency at the Sphere in Vegas, Wisconsin supper clubs, et al.
Her reply was both confounding and insulting. She told me that County Highway will eventually start publishing pro-Trump propaganda and, since I have become accustomed to reading the paper and its general vibe, I will just blindly accept whatever they print as gospel and go MAGA. Or something like that.
I guess it was her way of saying that she felt I was stupid. But this also flummoxed me because she'd often become frustrated with me for wanting to know more about various things before passing judgement. She even mocked me once for my proclivity of wanting evidence.
We'd be sitting around the living room and she'd doomscroll until she found something that profoundly offended her. Moving full steam ahead in a foul mood and determined to share it, she'd tell me about whatever someone who was likely a bot had said and I'd agree it sounds horrible but also slightly suspicious and so I'd like to know more about the context before castigating anyone. This was a problem because my wife simply wanted me to jump on her bandwagon of hate and denounce the offender unconditionally. Thinking for myself was not a good thing; uncritically accepting her view was what she wanted.
For example, she'd read something on social media about how J.K. Rowling was crucifying trans people in her front garden, tell me about it, and expect me to unquestioningly go along with her suggestion that Rowling's mansion be nuked from orbit. When I didn't she would grow even more visibly agitated.
Thusly her hypothesis that my irritating habit of wanting more than a tweet for evidence, to have a fuller picture before heaping opprobrium on someone would magically disappear at some point and be turned into affection for Trump mystified me.
Wowzers! I did not mean to prattle on that long.
I chuckled because the article was about a socialist. A socialist who wrote The Iron Heel, a novel that my wife had read about the United States succumbing to fascism, something that I think she felt was immanent. She may still, for all I know. The Iron Heel and It Can Happen Here seemed to justify her apocalyptic predictions regarding Donald Trump as well as feed her Cassandra complex.
This issue of County Highway also featured a jeremiad entitled "Stop Interrrrupting!" In it the author notes how often our phones interrupt us and that scientific studies show that it takes a long time for our monkey brains to focus once again on the important things in life after a bing! from our phones throw us off. The solution?
Because our humanity is at stake.
A fine rant for a publication that is print-only.
Simplify, simplify.
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