An answer to an age-old question

When I had left home on Friday Madison was fairly green. Some trees were fully in bloom while many others were almost at that point. Up north at the Chippewa Moraine Rec Area it seemed that they were a couple weeks behind us. This was completely expected as Osseo was much the same. I got there a bit after 9 and hit the trail after a brief stop at the interpretive center.

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. And doesn't it just look like a glass full of summer? 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.

Not dead yet: print-only publications: the pub

My first issues of the pub are here.

the pub is a print-only newspaper from Chicago and I subscribed after seeing an ad for it in the classifieds of County Highway, another newspaper that you cannot read online. When they arrived I felt grateful that I could receive a publication in the mail without my wife scrutinizing it and for not being accused of wrongthink as she yelled her fulminations up at me from the bottom of the stairs first thing in the morning. It saddens me to recall what an arrogant, self-righteous, insulting stormtrooper of the far left she became.

While County Highway has a libertarian streak, the pub is decidedly left-leaning and covers Chicago(land?) exclusively. For instance, I have read the article on Cut Cats Courier, a worker-owned bicycle delivery service in ChiTown.

Another piece detailed how some Chicago musicians are leaving Spotify.

Honestly, these wouldn't be out of place in County Highway. I think the pub is a bit less polished, a bit more proletarian with fewer professional writers. Not a bad thing by any means, mind you.

In addition to getting writers and aspring writers into print, the pub sponsors many events such as a movie night and lino cut print lessons to foster offline community. To top things off, a favorite brewery, of mine, Dovetail, is one of their "distribution hubs" meaning the latest issue can always be found there. Just like Rauchbier.

Milwaukee seen in the classifieds

Scanning the classifieds of County Highway an issue ago I noticed that Milwaukee was well represented.

Ooh! Hidden thoughts! Interesting. 

An old fashioned pen pal. Nice!

Is Wisconsin particularly haunted?

I have been catching up on the last few issues of County Highway, "America’s Only Newspaper". As I noted previously, it's a very interesting paper but it generally avoids the Upper Midwest. That changed 3 issues ago with an article about Wisconsin supper clubs by Meaghan Garvey.

Read the opening line:

"It's been said that Wisconsin has more ghosts per square mile than any state in America..."

Who has said this? I have lived in Wisconsin for over 37 years and don't recall ever hearing this claim. Anyone ever heard this?

Regardless, it's a fine way to open a piece.

I appreciate the reference to the Rouse Simmons a couple sentences later, though. The article was illustrated with a few ads including a couple for Lehman's Supper Club and, upon seeing them, I immediately said to myself, "I know that one! I've been there!"

The Corona Diaries Vol. 106: Where are those confounded plums?

(late-August 2023)

(See the wonderful prelude.)

I admit to being thoroughly shocked that the kids were up and awake the next morning at a fairly early hour. It’s just not like them as I was under the impression that they prefer (and are able) to sleep until late morning, like 11, if not until the early afternoon. This has certainly been the case when they stay at our house. Maybe they’ve turned over a new leaf. Or perhaps they were simply being accommodating of the old farts whom they knew were accustomed to rising in the antelucan darkness to take coffee with the dawn chorus.

They drove over to our hotel and we were soon off to Connell’s Orchard which lies out in the gently rolling hills northeast of Eau Claire. While still fairly cool out, it wouldn't be long before the sun heated things to a toasty 85 degrees or so. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous as we drove down a series of mostly straight, though sloping, country roads to get there. The foliage was still verdant and the air rich with that country smell of trees, grass, and wildflowers. (No cow poop.) At one point, I saw a bunch of cars lining both sides of the road ahead. The first thing that came to mind was that another family farm had gone under and that there was an auction being held. Thankfully that was not the case. Instead, a church was having a potluck picnic. It seemed that it had drawn people from as far away as Seymour with the promise of tasty eats and fine company.

I have no recollection of ever having been out this way back when I lived in the area but decided a return trip was needed even before reaching the orchard.

Once we parked, I made a bee line for an observation tower that afforded one a nice view of the orchard in addition to a slide that was fairly high up.

It was simply lovely. The hills were lined with apple trees that went up and disappeared into the distance. Eve would have been spoiled for choice. Clusters of raspberry bushes were tucked between and, presumably, made for borders where a section of one pomaceous variety ended and yielded to another.

The kids were out to pick raspberries and plums while the Frau and I were content to just stroll around and take in some sun and scenery. Emphasis on sun because it got rather hot rather quickly.

Both of the kids had cameras which I soon learned were actual 35mm film cameras. Good on them! I knew that they had both gone retro and become aficionados of vinyl records but didn’t know that their analog preferences extended to photography as well. I blame the boy's Luddite stepfather.

Ahem.

There was corn too and I wandered down a trail that led into a field of maize that I presume will become a maze before too long.

As I was traipsing down the path through the corn - I mean, you never know what woodland creature you'll encounter having a snack or if He Who Walks Behind the Rows is around, I heard an engine not too far in front of me. Was the corn being harvested? Was I going to be gobbled up by a combine and spit out the side to become a tasty long pig treat for some animals?!

What an ignominious way to go, meeting your end at the cutter blades of a piece of farm equipment when you're doing absolutely no farm work. I can just imagine the headline in The Chippewa Herald: "City slicker killed in corn combine calamity". 

My momentary anxiety quickly dissipated when the sound became less loud as whatever farm implement it was had turned away from me. I exhaled in relief and wandered the corn a bit more before heading back out to the apples.

This poor tree was bending under the weight of all the fruit it bore.

Considering how dry the summer had been, I was surprised that the orchard appeared to have a bumper crop on their hands. I don’t know how long it takes for an apple tree to bear fruit (a few years?), but even the younger ones had apples aplenty.

My Frau went to relax in the shade as the heat had caught up with her so I met up with the kids who had a full quart of raspberries and were in search of the plums. I had no clue and found no signs so I flagged down a woman who presumably worked there as she was zipping along on her riding mower. I probably looked like a novice semaphore signaler with a case of Tourette syndrome as I stumbled down the hill towards her frantically waving my arms around to get her attention as she was staring straight ahead and had a pair of hearing-protection headphones on.

With her blonde hair pulled back in a pony tail, she was clad in shorts and a white tank top showing off a fairly dark tan. Even more generous, though, was her smile which seemed genuine as opposed to a put-on for a dumb tourist who can't read a simple map. Maybe she wasn't really happy to dole out some customer service and instead just thrilled to be outside as opposed to inside in front of a computer screen. Regardless, I didn't feel too stupid asking her where to find the plums.

She told me that the desired fruits were to be found up the hill, past the blueberry bushes, and out near the fence on the far side of the orchard. And so we trekked over that way. The blueberries were easy to find.

They weren’t far from the fence that the mower lady had mentioned so we looked around and wandered between rows of apples.

Apples, apples everywhere
And not a plum to be seen!

I felt a bit silly not being able to find the plum trees. How hard could it be to find a row of them? So we started heading back towards the store and noticed that the mower lady was plying her trade, zipping in and out of rows of saplings. She must have noticed the glum looks on our faces and asked if we had found the plum tree.

Tree! A single tree!

We told her we had not and she kindly escorted us to it. We were in the right general area but a couple rows off and too close to the fence. On the way over, I asked her about the orchard and she explained that the land has been in the owners’ family for generations. Indeed, the plum tree we were headed to had been planted decades ago by a great-grandmother.

As we approached it, I felt like I was treading on hallowed ground. After all, this tree was many decades older than me. I wanted to tell the kids to pick the fruit carefully so as not to damage it lest we get run out of the orchard with brickbats.

Look at those plums!

They were smaller and bluer than the ones I commonly find at the grocery store. Must be a different variety.

Since it was still early in the apple season, most of the trees were full of fruit. We walked down rows of trees bearing green varieties and thought they simply looked delicious. And then we were ambling by a row of red ones and the air became sweetly scented with apple. I wonder why it is that some have a powerful aroma while others do not. Looking around, I don’t think it was that there more of the latter kind on the ground busted open. Those seemed to be scattered everywhere. I really think some apples just have more of some aromatic compounds than others.

Roaming the orchard was the perfect way to spend the day. I bought a couple apple fritters before we left and they were amongst the best I’ve ever had. While there was some sugar sprinkled on them, they weren’t glazed. This put the heavenly combination of fried dough and apple up front instead of the rush of sugar and more sugar. Just excellent.

As I've gotten older, I've become anti-glaze, anti-frosting. They're fine and I eat glazed and frosted pastries occasionally but it's really the grain tastes I favor. A good cake doesn't need frosting. I like the cake part. I love the taste of grains and the Maillard reactions resulting from cooking them. This explains the tersely worded tweet I sent Nabisco after they discontinued production of rye Triscuits as well as the severe depression I fell into when Natural Ovens Bakery stopped making their 7 Grain Herb Bread. It is also why I love beer but am not enamored of those that have been barrel aged, made to taste like Hawaiian Punch, or contain enough hops to fell a horse.

On an old man note, the girl – a teenager – who was manning the cash register was unable to make change correctly. It seemed like the register was broken or as old as the plum tree because it wasn’t telling her how much to give in return so she kind of froze, unable to figure things out on her own. Are kids not expected to learn how to subtract without a calculator these days? Or was it just this particular girl?

Regardless, I loved Connell’s Orchard and cannot recommend it enough. Just count your change.

********

A few weeks ago I subscribed to County Highway which bills itself as “America’s Only Newspaper”. It does so because, although the paper has a website, you won’t find any of the articles or content there, just an overview of the publication and info on how to subscribe.

County Highway is the brainchild of two writers: David Samuels and Walter Kirn. I am completely unfamiliar with Samuels – no offense – and know Kirn only as co-host of the America This Week podcast with journalist Matt Taibbi. Kirn mentioned the paper on a recent episode and I looked into it.

The website trumpets:

“County Highway is a 20-page broadsheet produced by actual human beings, containing the best new writing you will encounter about America. It features reports on the political and spiritual crises that are gripping our country and their deeper cultural and historical sources; regular columns about agriculture, civil liberties, animals, herbal medicine, and living off the grid, mentally and physically; essays about literature and art, and an entire section devoted to music.”

I was intrigued and, after a couple weeks of procrastination, finally subscribed. My first issue – the first issue. which is sure to be a valuable collector's item (ha!) – arrived recently.

I understood that it was to be in the form of a 19th century broadsheet but was still taken by surprise at the font choices. They looked positively old timey. The paper looked like something that had been read by Wyatt Earp as he sat in an outhouse doing his business.

I’ve read the reports and a couple essays so I’ve got a fair bit under my belt but still have many pages to go.

I have read about the Miracle of America Museum in Montana, failing wheat crops in Oklahoma, Appalachian protest novels, as well as a jeremiad against AI, big tech, and the future promised us by the Elon Musks of the world amongst other pieces. Oh, and one about the commercial development of the area around Joshua Tree National Park that I will mention because it fits in with a general theme thus far: it’s been largely Western in approach.

Montana, California, Oklahoma – nothing Midwestern, though Appalachia has gotten some column inches. So far nothing about my part of the country. So far.

The stories have been about the common man and woman. While the great and the good may be named checked or their influence noted, it’s the little people who have gotten the bulk of the ink thus far. The overall tone seems to be a mix of Hunter S. Thompson tempered by a dose of downers and Paul Harvey. There is also an element of weird America to be had as well as an America that is simply not conceived of by popular culture and the mainstream media. Nooks and crannies of an offline world that resists the ostentatious allure of TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter.

If the paper were to fall on hard times and throw a benefit concert to raise funds, the Bob Geldof/Midge Ure figures would be remiss if they didn't recruit The Handsome Family to the cause. Same for Wovenhand. The music of these bands captures the off-in-the-ditch vibe of County Highway with off-kilter and intense perfection.

This being the very first issue, I am eager to finish it and see where the publication goes in the next one. It’s weird to be reading a paper newspaper again and I cannot think of the last time I subscribed to a genuine print publication.

OK, I just thought of it but it's a magazine.

I enjoy the focus a physical publication brings with no browser tab sitting right there to lure me into checking my email or go off to waste time on Reddit. No indicators that I have a new text message appear next to the banner. The world is a quieter, slower, and more pensive place with a newspaper.

********

Bonus photo. The Frau bought the cats what I call a scratching tray. It’s this tray filled with rows of cardboard pieces for cats to scratch on. Apparently it has been laced with catnip and now Piper is using it as a bed and a couch too as she spends hours sitting on it, looking up at the picture window. She has even dragged her favorite toys onto it and squats on them like a hen incubating her eggs.