Boundary Waters interlude.

Towards sunset on the second night the clouds began to break and the wind went calm. The sky, a somber study in muted grays all afternoon, showed flashes of sun to the west, shafts of sunlight rising up from behind the tree line. The clouds shaded to violet, deep blue and charcoal.

We had set the tent on a flat, grassy area that led to a west facing rock outcrop on a campsite on Cherokee Lake. As dusk lowered we sat on small camp stools and looked to the west. I sipped a metal cup of rye whisky from a distillery in Bend, Oregon that a friend had sent. A small cardboard box had arrived; bubble wrap, a bottle, a card: “BWCA. Enjoy”.

In the drifting time before dark the underside of the clouds flared to deep rose and the silence was as if a physical force. We sat in the darkening and looked at the fiery clouds and were transfixed. We had not seen a canoe since late afternoon. If there was anyone else on the lake we did not see them, did not hear them.

The color of the sky became as embers of a summer fire, glowing with heat. Then to nightfall. We watched the darkness come. We may as well have been alone in the world.

We went to the tent, zipped shut the door and settled into the overwhelming quiet of the vastness of the Boundary Water Canoe Area. Sleep came easy.

A day earlier we had stopped early, set camp in light rain and chill. The rain was never heavy but persistent. The day never warmed. The grayness drew in the horizon; the world compressed. At times the weather is an emotional force as much as a physical presence. This day was one of those, a day of diminished energy and gloom, bereft of springtime optimism.

We portaged two times on the first day. One portage ran close to a small but powerful stream and tangled on the brush along the far shore was a canoe, upside down and pinned by the current; yellow-green of Kevlar stark in the spring woods. Sally had read a week earlier of a paddler who capsized and nearly drowned, had to sleep in cold woods and walk miles to the road. This was his canoe.

Darkness settled early the first night. I coaxed a campfire to life and we sat next to it, rain suits hooded against the drizzle. On the far side of the lake a river cascaded through a valley in the trees and we could hear the steady murmur of rapids and the rush of water.

We had no visions of an epic journey or heroic feats, no expectations of high mileage or long hours at the paddle. We had come as we are wont to come, come to the big woods and waters, and come in a spirit of respect and in the hope of a renewal. Come to the Boundary Waters looking to the balance of two questions: Does one go to the Boundary Waters to escape the humdrum? Or does one go to return, return to something elemental and rewarding, a basic need unfulfilled too often in our daily lives?

Some go to the Boundary Waters as pilgrims on a spiritual journey. Some go to fish. Some to rack up miles and cover ground. We just go. We left fishing gear at home; too often it becomes a distraction and at worse devolves into score keeping. We cared not of miles covered; we’d do what we felt like doing on each day. We had no schedule, no agenda, no goals other than to be there in the presence of big water and big woods and solitude.

Spring had come late; ice held on, temperatures balked at any rise, May seemed more as April. We took it as it was given to us, paddled the first two days under cloud and rain, camped in snug tent, built campfires against the dark and the chill. We had no complaints.

We saw a moose, improbably large in the new growth where a forest fire had laid the ground black not many summers ago. We saw late migrating waterfowl, saw loons and geese. We heard birdsong and loon yodels. We paddled bluewater lakes and portaged on trails slick with mud and fragrant with pine scent.

It is a land of contrast, the Boundary Waters. Spruce and cedar and pine crowd the landscape. Lakes are scattered everywhere, sinuous rivers surge with spring runoff. Hills rise and fall to the horizon. Harsh rock walls hint at the turmoil of eons ago when the land was in the torment of forming. It is a land of beauty and quietude, a land of peace and rest.

But it is an unforgiving land as well. It is nature at its most primitive and pure. One must always be mindful of that.

It is a landscape large and expansive, seemingly endless and boundless. Humans in this land are insignificant and unimportant. To spend time there is to realize that. Human ego falls to dirt and decay in this land. One cannot get too full of oneself in this country. One must fit in as best as one can for in the end nature will always prevail.

On the third day the sun came to the land and the temperature rose to the 70s. We paddled in the glory of that day and in the vastness of the Boundary Waters. We paddled past high rock faces and in the small cracks and seams of the rock spindly trees had sometimes taken root and grew, against all odds. In the fragile trees and unforgiving rock, warblers flitted and called; small birds as jewels in the hard world, singing songs of optimism of spring.

We made camp, set a fire, waited for the sunset. Sparks lifted from the fire; sweet smell of cedar wood smoke. Loon call. Then dark. Then silence. And in that, the peacefulness we sought.

River Flows...Seasson Change

The river runs as memory on this March day. Thick ice shrouds the river; one remembers the river but cannot see it. Late winter ice covers all and if one did not have memory one would not know of river; one would not suspect flow and surge of water hidden under ice.

I ski upriver knowing the direction of river flow because of my memory. There is no indication otherwise. I know the ice is thick but how thick? I do not know, know only that March sun brings warmth; ice begins to weaken and the restless river, hidden from view, comes to life. I know the ice will fail and rot. I do not know when.

So I ski on this day, kick and glide, kick and glide, ski upriver on ice that may be thick, may be thin; ice seen from above is without certainty on this matter. Ice breakup will come soon. Today I trust the ice. I ski.
The river pulses beneath the ice, runs silent and steady as lifeblood beneath skin; unseen, unheard but vital. Life sustaining – both water and blood.

The ice is a mystery as is summer fog; both hide more than they show. One cannot tell by looking the strength of the ice or the depth of the fog. One cannot ascertain how thick the ice, how sound the ice, how safe the ice. One knows that under the crust of ice the river flows, ancient and endless, with power and with promise.

I wonder if animals, more in tune with the world than humans, if animals sense the river below. Can they feel the tremor of current? Do they know the river runs there? Do they have memory? Are their senses attuned in a manner unknown to us?

I feel nothing, my feet in sturdy backcountry ski boots over a pair of wide skis. I sense nothing that suggests water. I feel only the slide of ski, hear the raspy whisper of ski on snow. I know that the water moves beneath me, the heartbeat unseen and unfelt of coming spring.

I ski upriver a mile or two. In one place, close to shore, there is moving water, a small ribbon of black water moving fast where the ice has given way. I stand near; watch the flow, the ropy twine of open water that has pushed to the surface and then dives back beneath the ice, a harbinger of what is to come.

A week later I return with Bella and we walk into the valley where I remember the river. On this day a narrow thread of river is open; the ice has given way, the moving water flowing into spring air. Shelves of ice extend over the water then fracture and fall. We walk on remnant ice to the edge of the river now exposed to reality, no longer held to memory.

It is snowing. We stand on the river edge in the falling snow and look across the moving waters. I watch the river and in doing so watch the season. A week ago, firm ice. On this day, moving water.

Open water is irreversible; when it comes to air and sun it does not freeze over again. Snow will come and snow will go; temperature will rise to glory and drop near zero. Fickle. But when the river runs free under the March sun it will not go to ice again until the gray days of winter.
I know this and I know that to watch early season river water is to watch the season changing.

Early water holds menace, a dark spirit, cold and without mercy. Come summer it will flow languidly and inviting; not now, not at first open water of the new season. Now it is one step removed from ice but hardly closer to sustaining warmth.

Bella regards the moving water as if a constellation at her feet. The twisted strands of current, the floating shards of ice. Does she sense the malice of the dark, cold water? Does she feel the inviting trance of moving water as we do, for moving water is as the surge of flame in fire, intoxicating in its power and its mystery.

She moves onto a sloping shelf of thick fallen river ice and I call her back. We leave the river and walk to the truck.
A day later I return, drawn to the drama of it all. New snow overnight, gleaming white, scarred by fresh track. I ski to the tracks. Wolves. A pair of them.

Do the wolves feel the current ‘neath the ice? They must scent the rich water smell, they must know their world is altered. A week ago we, the wolves and I and Bella, could range over the wide meadow of ice. Now the open water shuts it off.

I follow the purposeful track line of the wolves, parallel to the open water. Then the water shifts closer to shoreline and the avenue of the frozen ice constricts as the river takes it. At the end there is not enough ice to walk on, only cold, dark water. The wolf tracks turn into the thick underbrush and are gone.

I turn back and ski along the remaining edge of ice. There is the call of geese and the flit of chickadees. There is high sun of late March. There is ice and there is snow and, now, open water. The scene seems very complex and of the same, very simple.

Soon all traces of ice will be gone and the river will run wide and dark and strong. From the open waters spring will rise and with it hope of better days.

The season does not turn, it flows, flows like the river, flows from ice to water, from freeze to thaw, from dark to bright, from memory to rebirth. I stand in the warmth of the sun and then, in time, ski from the river into a spring day.

On doing nothing...

Nothing is sometimes enough.

Or, on second thought, doing nothing is sometimes enough.  Doing nothing of particular importance or value other than just doing it.  Doing nothing that can be measured in the currency of the day-to-day, nothing that stands out or rises above, nothing out of the ordinary.  Doing nothing.  Sometimes that’s enough.

Doing nothing: A state of mind as much as anything. Idiot work, my dad called it.  Just doing something to unwind the stress. Doing nothing, that’s pretty much what he meant.  A physical act; a mental reward.

I split firewood the other day.  Doing nothing?  Close to that for me. I don’t need any more firewood; I’ve got enough split, stacked and under cover to last me for years.  I only use it at the hunting shack.  Do I need more?  Not really.

But on a day under ragged gray cloud with air heavy with the chance of rain, on a day when the wind blew hard enough to chill but not with enough force to keep one inside, on that day I needed to do nothing.  Nothing special, nothing heroic, nothing exceptional.  Just do nothing.  That would be enough.

The wood was oak.  Cut to length a year ago, hauled uphill and then rolled down the other side; loaded in the pickup until the truck sagged with the weight.   Then driven to my hunt shack and dumped without ceremony.

I’d planned to split it during deer season but hunting got in the way.  Don’t know why.  I always plan to take some time midday during that week to split firewood or do chores or go out with the camera. To do nothing.  Last season that didn’t happen and I don’t know why.  So the wood lay under snow and under cold and, this spring, under April rains.

Lay there until I had a day when I wanted to do nothing.

I found my leather work gloves, worn by use, scarred and battered but the leather soft and formed to fit my hands by the days of work wearing them.  I hefted the splitting maul; held it to the thin April light.  The maul blade is pewter gray from use, the handle long and solid and smudged with dirt worn into it. It is a simple tool, a wedge on a stick but built to purpose and in that purpose useful.

On some days simplicity has value above complexity and the splitting maul has an appeal that goes beyond function, goes to appreciation of good design that stands the test of generations and needs no improvement, no updates or uploads.  It simply works as intended.

I tilted a bolt of oak upright, stepped back and raised the maul.  A pause; then the maul arced down in a rainbow’s trajectory, a quicksilver flash of blurred light of steel.  Impact: A satisfying crack as metal met wood.  Then the blade came to a stop and the pieces of split oak fell aside.

I set the piece upright, turned it, lifted the maul, repeated the rise and fall.  Again and again. When I had a pile of splits I stacked them under the firewood shelter’s roof and stepped back, set another piece of oak upright and reached for the maul.

At times I held a piece of fresh split oak, breathed in the sour scent of the wood and looked at the grain. I held the split in my hand to behold the richness of the wood, the deep grain and the tawny color of oak. I thought to myself that if I split it thinner that I could take it home, resaw it on the bandsaw, plane the wood smooth and have a clear piece of oak for a workshop project.

I think that every time I split oak.  In the end I tossed the piece to the stack and continued splitting.

The work warmed me; I tossed my jacket as a shed skin, rolled up my sleeves, split more wood.

The work tired me; I pulled off the gloves, leaned the maul against the pile of oak, took a break.

I walked to the top of the hill overlooking the lake. The lowlands are flooded; we’ve had a lot of rain this month and it shows in the low areas.  The sun was pushing through the clouds and there was sunlight filtering through the trees in the flooded area.  I saw ripples on the water, movement.  I looked closer through the trees and in the water below I saw wood ducks.

There were five of them, maybe six; they kept moving and I couldn’t get a clear view for the trees and underbrush.  But wood ducks; that I knew.  The males were as jewels on the dark water in the thin glow of afternoon sun.  I watched them until they moved out of sight and then I was chilled and went back to the work, to the doing nothing.

I finished splitting the oak.  Stacked what I had.  Stretched my back.  Then I walked to the shack and rested the maul against the wall.  I looked down the hill.  The wood ducks were gone; the dark waters still.

I had gained nothing of true value in the afternoon.  There was no monetary benefit, no accounting in black versus red, nothing that should change the course of a daytime let alone a lifetime.  There was only a comfortable fatigue and a rack of pungent scented oak stacked to dry, inert and lifeless as stone.  That and a sense of timelessness as the afternoon had passed, a relaxation of body and mind both, the simple pleasure of doing nothing.

But there was satisfaction in the task, the measureless feeling that is all too often fleeting at best, missing completely at worse.  One can find that in simple tasks with peace of mind that is not in proportion to effort or importance, can find that in doing nothing.

There are days when doing nothing is doing enough.

Springtime at the sugar shack.

The wheels of season change have begun to turn. The end of winter sputters to a grinding halt and surrenders to the quickening pace of spring. I feel this in my bones; I feel it in my gut; it comes to me in memory. I see the change, I feel the change; I find the scent of change in the March air.

The earth beneath my feet hides complexities of soil and taproot. I know that somewhere in the darkness of dirt and tree root lies the heart of the maple tree and to that heart comes lifeblood of sap and the sap runs skyward in the indefatigable pulse of spring. I do not see this but I know it to be true.

The maple tree does not herald the coming of spring in loud calls as geese or sandhill cranes, does not dance in gaudy sunlight as the rush of spring streams; does not take the stage with drama or flash. Maple trees stand tall to the March sun and in their trucks the life force of spring surges unseen, unseen until the drill breaks bark and sap shows to the light of day and the light of a new season.

I tap maple trees to help friends who gather the sap. I use a cordless drill, let the sharp drill bit spiral in. An inch and half deep; the drill cuts; wood shavings fall to the snow. The hole is clean. I reach for a tap and pound it in with the poll of my hatchet. The tap bottoms out and I connect the line to the tap.

In the afternoon on a warming day the drilled hole shows a quick, slight drop of sap; the run is beginning.

I move on, taps and drill and lines to work. I drill and tap nearly 300 one day; over 300 the next. The novelty of the process quickly fades. I work under a falling snow, wet and chill on one day; under a rising sun the next. Necessary work. The basic groundwork merging the run of the sap to the modernity of the synthetic tubing and vacuum pumps.

There is an explanation for it all, for the subsurface magic and the flow of sap loosened from the grip of frost and flowing upward to the blue sky (think of it; a liquid flowing straight up as if to defy gravity as inexplicable as a stream running uphill!). There are studies and facts and reasons for it all, for this wondrous process of water and mineral to sap and thence to syrup. I do not care to know. I prefer to dwell in the mystery.

I do not need fact to clutter and distract from what I would rather see as a miracle undefined by sterile numbers of science and fact. I do not need an answer found in a Google search. I would rather stand in the March sunshine with my hand on the rough bark of a maple tree and watch the steady rise of clear sap. I would rather stand in ignorance of the scientific explanation for in our world there remains too little mystery and too much of the reasons why things work as they do and in that knowledge comes separation from wonder. At times I would rather have wonder than fact. At times I prefer miracle to knowledge.

I have a capacity for the ledger sheet of life and of late that capacity is filed by wondering about the levels of natural immunity plus vaccines that will lift us to herd immunity or the morass of numbers on sales reports at work or if it’s spring forward or back. At times I tire of numbers and find solace and comfort in the simple mystery of sap flowing and the amazing process of nature that gives up sap that can be made to syrup, that takes crystal clear sap to smoky gold syrup, that transforms the tasteless sip of sap on my tongue to the powerful sweetness of fresh syrup.

I do not mean to be a Luddite on this, do not mean to rail against progress of facts and science. I mean only that at times one needs a break from it all. One needs time in the wood lot in the company of trees more aged than I, in a natural world that needs no explanation only an understanding that time in the March woods brings comfort.

When the trees are tapped and the sap is collected the fire box under the pan is filled, set to fire; flames rise. The sap comes to the pan and the process of making syrup begins. The boiler is large and shines in the glint of dull steel. The stove door is opened, the fire box is aflame with the fury of firestorm; a log loaded, a second, then the stove door closed with a metallic clank.

The boiler is housed in a small building with a pitched roof that reminds of a chapel. The walls of the boiler room are cedar and the roof is vented.

Above the rage of fire the steel pan lies and the sap comes to a boil and reduces in volume. Steam rises and in the steam is the sweetness of syrup in the making and the small room is shrouded in the fog of the sweet-smelling steam and in that the mystery of the syrup making.

The steam rises like a spirit and in my mind that is what it is for the spirit of the syrup is a magical and steeped in mystery.
The mysterious and wonderful alchemy is at hand in the steamy room, an alchemy that works magic on clear sap and turns it to liquid gold. The sap boils, the room is still. And then, syrup.

I taste the heavy, unbearably sweet flavor of maple syrup still warm from the boiler. Outside darkness has fallen. Stars shine bright. It is springtime at the sugar shack.

A cold morning to ski.

The mourning doves came at sunrise, fast-winged, graceful, drifting out of shadows at the edge of the yard, flying from the darkness of the night. They landed in the branches of the burning bush next to the house.

It was very cold. The sun had broken the tree line to the east and the doves perched in its light but the sun had no warmth, its glow a false promise, promised but not fulfilled. It was 20 below zero, perhaps colder.

At a certain point it does not matter; it is only numbers. At a certain point it goes from being cold to being very cold and after that further delineation of the actual temperature is meaningless, save for bragging rights. There is, in the north, a measure of pride in having the coldest temperature on a morning, a Northwoods one-upmanship where the coldest temperature on the backyard thermometer wins the day. But numbers are only numbers; real cold is a presence beyond measure.

In deep cold there is something as elemental as bone, sharp as crystal, hard as granite. Cold is more than numbers; cold is a state of mind and a state of being, the unlikely mix of emotion and reality. Serious cold, the cold the past days, carries power as a force of nature, carries an element of fear as do shadows at midnight under a dark moon.

The doves perched on the wire-thin branches, fluffed their breast feathers against the cold. When the low angle light of the morning sun aligned one could see the thin puff of breath as the birds exhaled, a fragile cloud that rose for a too-brief moment then faded in the bitter cold.

The breath vapor of the birds was the only thing suggesting warmth on this morning. There is no more weight to a cloud of breath than there is the a shadow, no more warmth than the winter sun can deliver, yet on this day that faint rise of breath carried the optimism of life in the winter cold.

I watched the doves and wondered how they can survive the cold. I kept the dogs inside for if they were to be let out the birds would likely take wing and in flight use energy better conserved for sustaining life. In winter cold the heartbeat of life is maintained by harboring the heat of the body and in that, holding the cold at bay.

To say that it warms up on such a day is misleading; the day never truly warms, only becomes less cold. I waited until the day became less cold and then I did what I do on a day off in winter, I dressed for the cold and went skiing.

The first step is the hardest step in leaving the house in the cold. The step from warm house to bitter cold out of doors. That is the most difficult step of the day. The house is comfort; the out of doors a challenge. The indoors a luxury; the cold day a harsh and demanding reality. I closed the door behind me and walked to the truck. The snow squeaked in that unique sound it makes only in bone-aching cold.

I let the truck run to warm up, exhaust lifting as the breath of the doves had lifted. I drove to the trailhead; the thermometer on the truck showed the outside temperature at 10 below. I parked the truck, walked to the trail and began to ski.

I learned decades ago that if you are comfortable when you start to ski you are overdressed. One needs to be chilled, trusting the effort and exertion to come will bring warmth and comfort, or at least what passes for comfort on cold days.

My hands were cold on that morning, my legs and face chilled and I had doubts about how I’d dressed. But I also knew that the first fifteen minutes are often like that, chill and self-doubt of the wisdom of the effort. I knew that things would get better. Probably.

To ski on days of bitter cold, to do anything outside in the bitter cold, is to take on a measure of tension and anxiety. One is always aware of the underlying risk in it all; to make a mistake in the cold is different than making a misstep on days of forgiving warmth. The weight of risk is always on ones shoulders in the same manner, perhaps, as that of a swimmer who pushes off over deep water where consequences of error are magnified by the potential for loss. One makes choices; one accepts the risk.

I skied alone on the morning, skied slowly for skis do not glide well in the cold, skied in the beauty of a sun-filled day and in that found satisfaction. My breath huffed out in clouds as the breath of the doves had earlier in the day, gone quickly to the cold as the birds’ breath had been lost to chill.

I skied because in my heart I am a skier, skied in the cold because it is what I have done all my life and the reward of a day of beauty is worth the inconvenience of the chill. I was alone in a place I wanted to be, performing the simple kick-and-glide of a skier, aware that come evening I would sit and watch the Super Bowl and its excess and bloated self-importance but that I would be better served in my time on skis.

I was warm when I quit after an hour or so. I stood in clear air and took a deep breath, took in the sun, the blue sky and the crystalline snow. I felt good about having skied. I felt that in the bitter cold I had accomplished a small but real victory.

Sometimes that’s all we need.

Then I stepped to the truck and drove the warmth of home.

Birkebeiner 2021.

The 2020 American Birkebeiner was one for the ages. Picture-perfect conditions; deep snow under blue skies and a warming late February sun; temperatures perfect for skiing, comfortable for spectating. Last year’s race, people commented, was about as good as it could be.

We walked from the finish line on the main street of Hayward to the sound of music and cheering crowds, to the smoky scent of bratwurst, walked among friends as the great tribe of Birkebeiner skiers put another one in the books. Things were good on that Saturday; things were as they should be. It was a great day to ski.

That night there were celebratory dinners and glasses lifted and news reports of the day and the race, reports also of a virus that had ravaged China and was now being found on the west coast. But only a few cases and far away from ski country. Things were good that evening. It was a fine day, that Birkie Saturday. Little did we know what was to come.

Little did we know that in the next weeks all that we took for granted would be fractured. Little did we know that COVID would come to us all. Little did we know that, for many, the Birkebeiner would be the last normal event in their lives. Little did we know…

By springtime most every major gathering had been canceled and lives upended and the cloud of COVID would weigh on us all. Every aspect of our lives was turned topsy turvy, everything we did was in a miasma of uncertainty and despair. The glory day of the previous Birkie forgotten, given up to the nervous times and dark days.

The American Birkebeiner announced last spring that come February 2021 they’d have an event but they did not know exactly what it would look like. February ‘21, back then, was a lifetime away. We had a lot to go through, we just did not know what.

Come autumn we knew what it would look like, the Birkie of 2021. Races spread out over five days to minimize contact; no spectators; limited on-course support, everything done with an eye toward reducing risk. And one more thing: The option to do a “virtual” race wherein a skier could do the Birkie distance on their own or with friends, do it where they lived to avoid travel and limit exposure; do the race distance and call it good. A virtual race in a time when so many other parts of our lives were remote or virtual.

Thursday I drove north as I’ve done most every Thursday of Birkie week for over 40 years, drove north through late winter woodlands in Northern Wisconsin but this year I did not drive to the land of the Birkebeiner, to Cable and Hayward and the long sinuous ski trail of the American Birkebeiner. This year I turned a few miles out of Minocqua, drove to the ski trails at Minocqua Winter Park to do the Birkebeiner virtually.

I had my reasons; I won’t bore anyone with them. It was simply what I decided to do after a lot of contemplation and consideration. I’d ski the kilometers required, do it as best I could – for that is all one can ask. I’d do the event on those trails, miss what I’d lose by not being there in person, take that as part of the lessons learned over the past 12 months, the simple fact that we may not like what we have but we need to deal with it as best we can. The simple fact that we do not always get what we want.

I was under no delusions that the route I’d ski that day was as difficult as the ski trail at the Birkebeiner course. I did not pretend that. I knew only that I needed to ski 43 kilometers in a reasonable time, do it on my own, do it in the solitary manner of cross country skiing.

Still, I was unsettled and unenthused as I started out. I skied with a marked indifference to the task at hand. I skied with no joy. I skied that way for four miles, maybe five, and then the ageless rhythm of skiing began to take hold, the balanced, symmetrical kick and glide that is at the heart of the sport, the flow that comes to me when I ski and has always brought comfort. I skied slowly and steadily, falling into the gentle technique that I have learned to love over the course of my lifetime.

When one races over distance one’s mind is engaged, aware of the subtle changes in glide and terrain, of fatigue building in muscle or breathing as it elevates. To ski competitively one must focus at all times. I no longer do that. Now over distance my mind wanders and I let it go where it will. In a long event, and this time I knew would be in the range of four hours, I would have plenty of time.

I skied in the comfort of memories of races now past, of good times and bad. I skied with the memory that it was the week of the anniversary of my mother’s death, skied with the thoughts of a dear friend, a longtime Birkie buddy laid low by a stroke last September, skied with the sadness of those memories. But skied also the with comforting satisfaction that in a time of turmoil in our lives one can find solace in simple tasks that tie us to the foundations of our lives.

I skied as I have skied for decades at the Birkebeiner and in that found the familiarity that so often escapes us this unsettled time. If we can do that these days, if we can find something, anything, that ties us to better times, then we are indeed fortunate.

I finished the forty-three kilometers, notched my forty-third Birkie. It had been a good day.

A new puppy: Adorable.

“He’s adorable. Don’t you think he’s adorable?”

Sally hands me the phone. There is an image on the screen of what appears to be an animal-like creature. It seems quite small, marked in black and white. There is a disembodied hand holding the forward end of the animal up. It appears to me to be a guinea pig but with slightly longer legs.

“It’s from the same breeder we got Fenway from”.

I look again and now recognize it for what it is; a Boston terrier puppy. For those unfamiliar with Boston terrier puppies they appear to be somewhat incomplete in standard dog terms, lacking as they do any semblance of tail, a distinctive nose or setback eyes. If Bostons came off an assembly line one would assume they were built late on a Friday afternoon with the weekend ahead and the workers in a rush to punch the time clock.

I tell her the puppy looks very nice. I feel that should be the end of the conversation. Why should I have felt that way?

“He’s five weeks old and he’s available. I think we should get him”.

I let that sink in for a moment. Slow-witted though I may be at times I realize that this is a time for a carefully considered response. How does one convey that this seems a terrible idea, fraught with peril at every step, a disaster in the making with consequences reaching far and wide.

“I’m not sure about that.”

“His name is Peanut! Isn’t he cute?”

I think to myself: Peanut. Peanut! Who in the world would saddle a dog with the name Peanut? A five-week old puppy burdened with the name Peanut may well be scarred for life! Peanut? That’s what I might name a Guinea pig.

I offer up that we already have two dogs. I point out that Bella is still a puppy and not a particularly well-mannered puppy at that; she, as they say, needs work. I mention that December is not a good time to house break a pup. I’d think, I tell her, that even three inches of snow would have the short-legged Peanut up to his belly in snow, cold snow! I remind her of sleepless nights with a puppy crying in the darkness. I say I’m not enthused about the name.

“We can name him whatever we want. See if you have any ideas”.

Looking back, that was the moment I knew it was over; the deal was sealed as they say. When one gets down to naming the big decision is over, all that remains is the details. Decisions in a marriage, given that there are only two parties, come down to either a split decision or a unanimous one. There is no other way to parse a two vote election so to speak. [One may be tempted here to launch into a discussion on votes and voting and results of the same but no, no such distraction here, however easy and however tempting. Let’s keep to the story at hand]

Two votes. Fifty-fifty. A draw. So it would seem. Reality suggests otherwise. Reality would suggest that in a marriage where the two parties reach what would seem an impasse that should one party feel more strongly about the outcome that party would be awarded a super majority and thus carry the day.

So it was that on a chilly Sunday morning on the last day of deer season we loaded the car with an empty dog crate and went for a drive.

I would not have hunted; I’ll admit to that. It had been a slow season. It had been a week’s worth of hunting over a restful November landscape where faded browns and fallen leaf lay in repose of a season now past. It had been a season in the time of COVID when two of us hunted separately and kept distance. No overnights at the hunt shack together this season. It had been a good enough season, one buck for the two of us and the fact that I was not the one who took the deer did not detract from it all. So in the hours of the season finale I took to the road with Sally to pick up Peanut.

When we got Fenway I’d been skeptical. He was coming into a house with two dogs, Riika and Thor plus a cat, Lady. He was small (though larger than the ill-named Peanut) and seemed easy prey for them. He surprised me. He is, as a friend describes, “tough as barbed wire.” He grew up confident, held his own against the world, reigns now as the 20-pound big guy in the house. Perhaps Peanut could do the same.

Peanut fit my hand. He weighed in at just under five pounds. I drove home while Sally held him and he made small whimpering sounds until he fell sound asleep. Sally had already jettisoned the name (thank the lord) and he is now Winslow after Winslow Homer the Bostonian painter. I’d named Fenway for the iconic ballpark; Sally wanted a Boston themed name.

At home we introduced the pup to the pack, Winslow to Bella and Fenway. Winslow perhaps recognized Fenway as a familiar dog and came to him. Fenway regarded the pup as if an insect, snarled at him when he got too close. Bella is a leggy griffon, six months old this week and towers over Winslow as if a giraffe, combining her height was a notable lack of coordination common in pups. She seemed to take Winslow as an animated chew toy brought to her for her pleasure.

It has, no surprise, been an interesting week. The dogs are adapting; they are, after all, pack animals. Given time and space they figure things out. Winslow is the pack runt but punches above his weight as they say.

Sally watches him, says, “Isn’t he adorable?”

And, against all odds, I agree.

October...passing.

A week after it fell, the October snow remains and in the deep ruts on the old logging road the muddy water pooled there has frozen. There is a bite to the air that calls to mind late November. The season passing has come early this year. The cycle has hastened ahead of schedule. It is early for the change but it is what we have this year when any semblance of normalcy is tossed to the winds. In a year when all seems topsy turvy, why expect the weather to run on track?

The gaudy riot of October color is memory; fallen leaf litters the ground, brown and fading where the snow does not cover. A few weeks ago the trees were crowned in gold. Now they stand bare. The small, shallow lakes on the drive to the woods are skimmed with ice. There is a restlessness at the uncertainty. What one takes for the norm is shown to be smoke and mirrors and all has changed.

“I hunt in the company of the ghosts of the old dogs, hunt in the presence of memories of other hunts and other hunters.”

I walk the harsh ground with Bella. She is near five months old, long-legged and thin of body, curious about the world. Big enough to get into trouble; too young to recognize it. Old enough to walk the woods; inexperienced enough not know exactly why.

I carry a shotgun and around my neck a whistle on a lanyard and, on another loop, the control to an e-collar. At the lowest setting the collar sounds a tone and vibration; next up a light shock. Higher, more. We walk a ragged road of mud and rut and rock, familiar to me; I hunted this with the old dogs, Riika and Thor.

I hunt in the company of the ghosts of the old dogs, hunt in the presence of memories of other hunts and other hunters. I hunt this season for the rock-solid familiarity of something I have done all my life and which at its heart remains unchanged in a world when all has changed as we move adrift into a new normal.

I had hoped for a crystalline day of bright sun and clear air when detail stands sharp and everything seems well defined. Instead, a hazy drawing down of horizon under lowering cloud. When I look into the woods the shadows blur and the mottled snow and dirt lack clarity. It is a dreary day, sulky and moody.

Bella moves out ahead of me and I stop and reach for the whistle, let her go and then give three sharp whistles. She stops. I whistle again and she comes back at a run, long ears flapping like wings. She sits next to me. I give her a treat and tell her she is a good dog and then we go again.

The two track follows the contours of the landscape, rises and falls and turns on itself. On the sides are mixed woods and brown ferns and the occasional leaves of blackberry thicket. Good grouse cover.

The crusted snow crumbles under foot. It looks to have strength but that is an illusion, it is not what it appears to be. It is too granular to hold fresh track. We cross aged sign; deer track, snowshoe hare, another hunter who passed this way days ago.

The only grouse we’ll see goes up on my left and I raise the shotgun, track the bird in flight and pull the trigger. I miss. There are certain shots that when missed do not bring remorse; they are makeable but not with a very high percentage. I don’t feel bad for missing those. Others should have a bird on the ground and after those I berate myself to no end. This was one of those.

At the sound of the shot Bella stops short and turns to me, inquisitive but not fearful. I call her and she comes to me and I give her the spent shell to sniff and take in the evocative scent of just-fired powder and flash.

I am certain I did not hit the bird but we push into the brush and look regardless. There is nothing.

Bella and I walk in a ragged circle, out on the threadbare road to a Y, veer to the north and then cut back off trail into the woods. In the woods the world draws in on us. Thin trees stand in ranks as if at attention. Their spindly silhouettes reach to a sky of pewter gray. The trees are the color of bone. There are patches of balsam bearing needles of somber green.

Bella’s coat of ashen gray patched with chocolate brown matches the mottled forest. When she stands still she blends in. I think to myself I should get her a brighter color collar or a blaze vest. Then she moves and I can watch her, long legged like a colt, nose taking in the world and if my world is in tone of grays and muted color her world of scent must be as a kaleidoscope.

We move slowly, deliberately. We do not see grouse and any woodcock must surely have flown out in the wake of the snow and hardened ground.

Bella stand in the grayness of popple trunks and her color matches the color of the trees and her long legs match their profile. For a moment she reminds of an old Bev Doolittle painting where living, breathing animal or hunter merges with stolid trees and one cannot see where the one begins and the other ends.

She looks at me, then moves out to the edge of my vision. She hesitates for moment. Will she come or go? I raise the whistle. She turns to me, running in the deep cover, bounding like a spirit of Halloween over the downed trees.

After an hour she tires. She gets into the truck, curls up on the front seat, falls asleep. We drive home on an October day that seems like November and wonder what will come next.

Puppy. Gone

I was working with Bella off leash. Big trees, brushy cover; a good mix. She’d range out, I’d whistle, she’d race back for a treat. She never hesitated on the return. We’d been out for half an hour without a misstep. It was going well. I was proud of her.
We crossed an open area into some big woods. She moved ahead of me to an old logging road, stopped, looked back, hesitated.

Then she took flight, front legs reaching forward, rear legs extended in a power-drive.

For one instant I had a vision of the old Greyhound buses with the greyhound outstretched, running, always running. Bella ran in a blur of motion, in a race toward an unseen goal, full bore, running smooth. In that moment a thing of beauty; a dog running in joy and excitement, feeling exhilaration and in that instant running is the most natural thing in the world.

When I was young I could run and on special days, very rare, there would come a time of mindless running, effortless and smooth, times of running when the burdens lifted and feet became wings and I felt I could run forever. I no longer can, but my dogs show me what I’ve lost and in their best moments I see the power and the joy and I am reminded of a river running uphill defying gravity and defying all we take for fact.

For a moment Bella showed me that. In that moment I stood in awe. Then I reached for the whistle to call her back. Three loud, firm blasts. She never slowed.

She ran to a dip in the landscape. I lost sight of her. And then: Gone.

Bella was nowhere to be seen. I whistled. Again with the whistle and again. The silent trees mocked me. Then fear rose like bile and I ran, ran to where I’d last seen her, my heart pounding from the run and from the fear. I stood in the wood trail. There was no sign of her.

I whistled again. Silence. I ran in the direction she’d gone. The old trail split in a Y.

Which way to go? I went left up a hill and at the top of the hill stood, panting hard, looked over the valley, ahead to the rise beyond. Whistled. Waited. Nothing. She was gone.

I ran back where I’d come from, tossed my jacket and gear on the ground; if she came back that way she’d settle on it. Maybe.

Then I turned and ran deeper into the woods and I ran, ran like I’d not done in years.
The land rises and falls like rollers on the big water. Ridgelines hide shadowed valleys and on the far side of the narrow valley the land rises again. I ran on the old road on the contours of the ragged landscape.

Deer flags; white tails, brown forms. No Bella in pursuit. I ran deeper into the woods whistle in hand, raising it, blowing it. Nothing. I ran half a mile and stood on the edge of a field. I looked for the mottled gray of puppy, looked for moment and form. Stood, sweat running in my eyes, stood alone. Then turned back the way I’d come.

She was gone. Four-and-a-half-months old and no clue of real world peril, gone running in wolf country, gone to who knows where. Gone. Just gone. Taken up in ghostly woods and phantom shadows, gone to dark clouds of uncertainty and fear, gone. The deep, primal anxiety that lies buried in our gut rose to my chest.

I had no idea what to do. I had no plan. I jogged when I could, walked when I had to, ran on the down hills. I came to my jacket where I’d thrown it to the ground. No Bella. I left it there and went back to the west, toward the road, toward my hunt shack.

I’d have to call Sally and tell her the dog was gone, tell her I had no idea where she was and tell her…well, what would I tell her? What could I say? What words to speak?

I’d go to my shack, get the truck and cruise the paved road looking for her. I’d tell Sally to drive out. I’d put the truck in 4-wheel low and drive the old dirt road.

They were plans built on the shifting sands of panic and despair. Plans of desperation and, at their heart, hopelessness.

I crossed the blacktop road to the driveway that leads to my shack. I jogged down the two-track to my truck and the shack.

Bella was there. Bella was there with tail wagging and eyes bright and ran to me as if I was the most important person in her life. I told her she was a good dog even though I did not think she was. I told her she was a wonderful puppy even though I wanted to do her harm. I held her and rubbed her ears and, ever so carefully, reached for the leash and clicked in onto her collar.

How she got there I will never know. She had to have been over half a mile away in country she was not familiar with when she ran off in the direction away from that shack. She had to have navigated that, doubled back in woods she’d never seen, crossed the blacktop road to find the driveway and gotten to the shack. At some point she’d been in the lake, she was soaking wet.

I lifted her to the truck and closed the door behind her. I called Sally and told her we were coming home and she asked how it had gone. I thought on that for a moment, then told her it had been interesting. Told her I’d fill her in later.

Bella crawled to the back and lay down. She slept like an angel all the way home.

Time drifts...passes...

Time. People say it stands still, say it races or flies, moves slow or fast. But sometimes time simply drifts, ethereal as smoke, drifts as an October leaf fallen from tree or in a slow spiral of feather lost in flight; drifting on unseen currents. Time drifts through the years or the decades or a lifetime.

Time-drift starts on a given day, seemingly inauspicious, until years later when one looks back. Started for me on a day when I was a kid on a lake in summer sun at a resort with the sound of gentle wave, breathing the charged air of freshwater lake. Started in a boathouse with the sweet-sour fumes of outboard motor fuel and the dank smell of old wood; a boat rose and fell gently on the waves.

On the plank wood siding a placard, done up as an old Wanted poster: “Wanted: Old Mossback.” Old Mossback, a muskellunge of massive size, glowering countenance, malevolent eyes. Old Mossback, a world record musky and a reward: $1,000 to whomever brought him in. I looked at that and thought if you caught Old Mossback you’d be rich beyond measure.

We loaded the boat – dad’s uncle, a cousin and an uncle of mine and motored across Lac Vieux Desert to a small metal shack on a place called Duck Point. We fished, caught nothing, stayed overnight in the shack. In light of day the water was inviting but at dusk it turned opaque and gray and all I could think of was Old Mossback lurking. I did not want to be near the water.

Time-drift started there for me, paused for a handful of years then caught up again on an October day when we hunted ducks on Duck Point for that is why the shack had been built and the place had been named. Around the dinner table in the rustic shack in the wood-smokey air there was talk of bluebills and Northerns and I thought they meant fish; bluegills, I assumed, and northern pike. But no: Ducks.

Bluebills and redheads and cans, mallards and butterballs and whistlers, all migrants from Canada, all Northerns; ducks, not fish. I learned the language of the duck hunters and the ways of the hunt and heard the sound of duck wings, learned it over a crude table and in the duck blind and over after-dinner card games; we played 21 and nobody kept score and nobody took money.

We ate thick-cut steaks and bacon and eggs and buttermilk pancakes. We heard rain rattle the roof of the shack, slept four hunters in two sets of bunk beds in a shack that was 12-feet by 16-feet and you darn well better all get along because there was no room to hide from anyone if you did not. We fired up a crude wood heater and pushed back the darkness with kerosene lamps with tall glass globes. At night when the lights were off and the stove was stoked, the sides of it glowed ruby red. By morning it was stone cold and the temperature inside was about the same as out.

We shot ducks over wooden decoys on days of late summer warmth and mornings of bitter cold that covered the lake with skim ice and left our fingers numb. We saw days of huge migrations of ducks, flock after flock, thousands by noon. We had days when we did not see a single duck. But we were duck hunters; we never quit. Nor did time quit; time drifted.

The shack on the big lake grew to be my favorite place in the world. I dropped out of college and hunted there 30 mornings and I never regretted a moment. I sat in snow squalls and under cold rain; I hunted in mean winds and on days with the lake smooth as glass. I felt the rage of storm batter the shack, alone one night in the dark, wind-howl and waves pounding and on the static of a transistor radio heard of a ship missing on Lake Superior and then next day heard the name: Edmund Fitzgerald.

I hunted with my father and his friends, a kid in an adult world and they took me in. I hunted with friends, mixed generations, young and old shoulder to shoulder in the blind. When I started the older guys did the work; by the end I did the heavy lifting.

The old guys passed and the shack carried their memories and their legacy. After a funeral of the last one a friend turned to me, said “You’re the old guy now.” And damned if I wasn’t. The old guys were gone. Time drifted, ghosts came up in the night.

I hunted with Riika and Thor and Sally, brought some young guys into the fold. Hunted Duck Point, stayed at the Duck Shack, shot ducks on some days and not on others but never ceased to feel the power of the place. The Duck Shack was as if on sacred ground; the dusty windows could have been stained glass. Memories raised; time drifted.

Times pass; seasons change; so do we, all of us. I hunted less at Duck Point. Things changed. The details don’t matter; things just changed. I did not take the opportunity to buy Duck Point. It sold. All things come to an end.

This week we cleaned out the Duck Shack. Sally and I hauled a load one day; Ted and I went back for the heavy stuff; the boat, the outboard, the decoys. I closed the door, locked it, turned to the lake. The day was gray and heavy, the water hidden under gun-metal gray waves; Old Mossback may still lurk there for all I know, the thousand dollar bounty there for the taking.

I walked from the shack for the last time. Time drifts, then settles, the leaf to ground, the feather to dirt.
I texted Sally: “Leaving Duck Point.”

Puppies...

We woke them from their naps, mid-afternoon on a hot July day. They came outside, eyes lidded with sleep, unsteady afoot, moving slow as if the earth they walked on was shifting or had become as a boat in choppy water. They looked puzzled at the turn of their day. What, they seemed to wonder, was the problem? What reason to wake them from a deep and much needed slumber? What, in all this, was at hand?

“To look into a puppy’s eyes is to see the tomorrows and remember the yesterdays.”

Five of them. Chubby as butterballs, salt-and-pepper gray with splashes of chocolate on backs and faces, legs too short for their bodies, feet too big for their legs, eyes looking as if for guidance; tails wagging. Puppies.

Five weeks old. Five weeks into their lives, five weeks of stumbling and fumbling, of eyes opening and over-sized feet to trip over. Five weeks to have their world expand from whelping box to outdoor patio, to, this afternoon, a rare foray into the backyard which for them is the extent of the world as they know it.

Five weeks to charm all who see them, to prove once again that there is no such thing as an ugly puppy, five weeks and counting, growing every day. Five weeks for us to anticipate this day.

Sally and I have come to visit and to observe and to evaluate and, in another month, to take one home. Five of them, females all. The five others, the boys, stay inside on this day. We wanted a girl dog. We have the five-pack to pick from.
We watch the pups on this hot summer day, watch them climb up a small ramp and play with the scattered toys, watch them wrestle one with the other, watch them as they watch us. They seem singularly unimpressed with the two of us.

We observe them as if in a two-hour visit we can divine some inkling of what they will be as adults. We watch them and we play with them as if in doing so we can fathom the reach of their fast-beating hearts and know from that what they will become. We take them all in as if we have any clear idea of what we are doing.

We do not. We do not do this often enough to have a clue at what we are doing. We lift the pups up to observe temperament and body posture. They all are fine. We put toys at their feet; they regard us with a total lack of interest. We query the breeder. We do the dance of all prospective owners of dogs. We play the game.

In truth, there is not a dog among the five that we would not take. There is not a single superstar nor a dunce. No pup too big, none too small; no amazon in the making, no runt.

We lost two dogs in the past 13 months; two pieces of our hearts taken away. Two companions gone, two hunters lost, two of our family pack gone to memories. Two dogs no longer with us and every day we think of them, Sally and I and Fenway the Boston terrier who is only now getting over the loss of Thor, the big boy dog that Fenway adored. We have all known sadness. We have all lived in loss. We have all felt the ragged hole in our lives that the Riika and Thor had filled.

After Thor died we started to think about a new dog. Started to wonder about a hunt dog that would double as a family dog as Riika and Thor. Looked at the places in the house that no longer held a dog and wondered what dog could fill those spaces.

We circled around different breeds like a collie circles the flock of sheep, read volumes, talked to people of field and forest who knew dogs. Names and accolades of various breeds rose up for consideration. In truth there was never only one crystal clear choice. The world is full of good dogs that would do what we wanted. And the overarching reality of it all is that a dog is only as good as its trainer and in that arena we come up short. We’ll do what we can; the new dog will do what they’re able; we’ll work things out.

The world of possible breeds narrowed; a dozen, a handful, a couple. All would be fine.

We pondered and considered. In the end, one: a wirehaired pointing Griffon. The decision made; the contact with a breeder, the wait for pups.

The puppies romped at our feet. We picked them up, held them as if we were savvy judges of puppy temperament. The pups seemed fine with it all, their fat little bellies overlapping our hands, turning eyes upward at us, indifferent to it all.

We let them run across the grass of the yard, Sally and I on our bellies coaxing them on. The pups ran in joy and delight. At ground level we could see the world as the pups did, smell the grass as they could, see the rise of the yard to taller grass on the edges to trees lifting to blue sky and cloud. The world of the puppy.

To hold a puppy in your hands and to feel the bump-bump-bump of their heart on your skin and to look them in the eye, to do that is to connect with the pup on that day, at that moment. But more: To look at a puppy is to imagine the future; warm summer days and frosted September mornings, hunts to come and shoes to be chewed to shreds, to imagine headaches and joy, autumn birds on the wing and winter days at rest. To look into a puppy’s eyes is to see the tomorrows and remember the yesterdays, to see hope and optimism and purity of soul.

Of bikes and bears.

Come days of summer swelter I take to the bike for solace. I top two bottles with cool tap water. For the first hour the water holds chill; by the second it warms to the temperature of the day. I ride the smooth blacktop out of the city, heat rising in waves, turn south to rougher surfaced county roads, ride them and, twenty-five minutes into it take a sharp right turn onto a gravel fire lane.

When I ride the paved roads I can regard the countryside at my leisure. I see the fields with fresh cut hay; the scent perfumes the air. I pass houses; see kids at play, their voices lilting as birdsong. I dodge turtles on blacktop, swing wide of walkers, watch roofers working without mercy under the summer sun. I am as a tourist passing by.

I turn onto the gravel roads and it all changes. The old logging roads are pockmarked with potholes and corduroyed with ruts. Hit one at full bore and you feel it in your hands and your butt. Hit it at angle and risk a fall. I ride the gravel as I used to downhill ski; my eyes picking the best line, two or three turns ahead of where I am, defining a narrow path as if a ribbon laid down for me to follow.

When I ride the gravel roads in the forest of the Northwoods I am in the woods but my focus need be on the dusty gravel road ahead of me, not to the sides of the road where the forest rises as a cathedral and small creeks babble and roil. The irony of it all is that in pedaling a bicycle one gets closer to the heart of things but on gravel sees less of what there is to offer up. For sightseeing I’m better off in my truck in a slow cruise with the windows down and the radio playing.
So it goes. I ride because I’ve loved to ride from the time I was a kid and I’ve not lost that love over the decades and the miles. I ride the gravel roads with my focus intent on the best line and all the while the woods to the side blurs into a kaleidoscope of green and sunlight.

There are times when I chance a quick glance, look for a splash of ivory-white early spring trillium; when I slow near a lowland to look for the thumb-size pink of Lady Slipper; when I look for the bog that, this week, is filled with iris, their blue-violet flags over slender stalks of green.

But mostly I look ahead and pick my line and in that line define my world for the short-term. Thus it is on my gravel rides. At times, if fortunate, I will see the unexpected and take that a gift.

Last week, ahead of me on the ribbon on which I picked to ride, something that caught my eye, something that for some reason looked out of place, a darkness to the side of the trail. I looked closer, saw movement but not form. I slowed the pedals; looked again, let the formless darkness take shape.

With bears, there is drama. In the instant of seeing a bear one cannot escape the childhood story of Goldilocks, cannot shake off images of ink-black bear of nightmare emerging from dim moon light, cannot, never! ever!, shake loose of fable and rumor and dark tales of bear as evil come under its sinister cloak of black-blue fur with ivory fangs and ember-red eyes. None of it true but all of it, all the emotion, very real.

I plead guilty to that. I lived that in that instant. I fully admit that my first thought at the recognition of dark shape as black bear was the realization that all that stood between me and bear was, at best, a bicycle chosen in part for its lighter weight and that perhaps that would not be enough of a deterrent should the bear come closer.

So there was the moment of truth; I saw the bear, took it in for what it was, a fully grown adult bear: the bear saw me, took in what I was, a human and in that a threat. In that moment, that instant, as I paused the pedals and coasted toward the bear and the bear slowed its deliberate walk down the firelane toward me, in that moment all that mattered was me, the bear and the 40 yards that separated us. That was all there was in my world and his. The bike rolled; thirty yards.

I believe it was a boar. There were no cubs, no yearlings crowding it, curious and careless. There was a lone bear, a large one, in the season when bears are mating and in that I assume an adult boar on the move. That all came later, that realization, that rational recounting of the moment when bear and rider stood on the old logging road under the heat of the day and locked eyes and nothing else in their respective lives mattered.

In that moment life became still.

Then the bear turned in a sinuous and graceful pirouette and ran, long legged and fast (faster than I could ride) ran for the cover of the woods on the side of the road. The woods closed behind him.

I gave power to the pedals, rode slowly to where the gravel was turned by bear paws, looked into the woods on the side of the road. I saw the rich greenery of summer, shadows and dappled sunlight, a jigsaw puzzle of forest. I looked hard to see if the bear was there.

He was not. The woods were quiet and mysterious. It was if the bear had never been there.

I looked ahead, picked my line in the gravel and rode into the summer day.

Boundary Waters getaway...

In the time near midnight the sky went to haze and the stars, crystal-sharp at sundown, blurred; weather was coming in. Sunset had been perfect; western sky washed to dark rose, silver clouds backdrop the treeline silhouette; sun rays reached out like arms of gold. Then darkness came. Stars pin pricked the sky.

The breeze was west and north; kept the mosquitoes at bay. Campfire burned to red-orange coals; then gone. We zippered the tent shut. The night was quiet; later, a rattle of rain.

Sally woke me at 3 a.m., “Do you hear them?” I asked, “What?”And in the pitchness of night she said “Wolves. They’re howling.” I strained to hear and then, yes, very faint, wolves. Then I fell asleep and slept until sunrise.

I left the tent, boiled water over a camp stove, made coffee, watched the drift of steam from the hot coffee. It was still. It was quiet. I sat in the camp chair, sipped coffee and breathed deep of the clear air of northern Minnesota. Boundary

Waters air; clean and pure under a soundless sky on Snipe Lake.

Snipe Lake is a smallish lake with an air of enchantment about it; steep stone walls rise from waterline, moss-covered and ragged. In other places lurk huge boulders, hunchbacked, round shouldered, as if some prehistoric beast that we cannot name and cannot place, as if messengers of a time gone to ages. The beast-rocks gather in herds along the shoreline.

Boundary Waters. It is a harsh land of rock and spruce. But a land of beauty and peace, welcome at any time but even more now in these troubled days.

We camp on Snipe and then paddle and portage south to Long Island Lake, a sprawling lake of scattered islands that make navigation a challenge; from water level islands and mainland look the same. We make tentative probes with the canoe to find the gaps between islands and mainland, maps on our laps, compass in hand.

By mid afternoon the wind has stiffened; small whitecaps run determinedly ahead of the freshening breeze and we dig deeper with our paddles. The canoe moves slowly but steadily. The canoe is named, appropriately enough, North wind.
We bear to the lee side of an island, consider and reject a campsite there; we want a breezier site to keep the bugs down.

We paddle along the island and from the dusky greenery a shadow moves and a form comes from the shadow and takes shape and for an instant it reminds of the prehistoric stone-beasts on Snipe Lake; a creature from times before memory.

Then the shadow comes clear; moose! The cow is dusky gray, the color of the rocks on Snipe Lake, its fur like a ragged old carpet. More movement, shape and form and color; two calves, golden of the color of a retriever, big eared and dark eyed, looking at us. We stay the paddles; the wind pushes us; it is quiet save for the splash of wave on canoe.

The cow looks across the waters, gazes dispassionately; the calves crowd closer. The cow’s legs are improbably long, spindly in comparison to her blocky body. For a moment all is still. Then the cow moves slowly into the cover of trees and the calves, taking one final look back at us, follow. Then the forest closes behind them and they become lost to the shadow.

We camp on a stony point that faces into the wind and the wind blows the mosquitoes into the trees and they do not bother us. I hike into the forest and find a downed cedar tree and cut it to firewood. I build a fire because I like the smell of cedar smoke and because the warmth feels good. A campfire brings more than warmth and the dancing flame draws one in contemplative silence.

Sally catches northern pike from shore, six or eight. There is something forbidding in the look of a northern pike. The sneering line of the jaw, the stiletto teeth, the hooded eyes; all I see in a pike is a look of meanness and malice. Sally fishes. I watch. The wind blows cool across Long Island Lake.

The wind does not drop with the sun. I watch the sun set, sip my Scotch, feel the wind in my face and see the darkness fall across the land. I am chilled; I zip the jacket up snug, pull a hat low. I sit and think of nothing. After a time I walk to the tent; day is done.

After dark, it rains but in the time before the rain comes I hear a barred owl call. I lie in the sleeping bag and listen to the owl and later, listen to the rain. Then I sleep.

We paddle north the next day and set camp in late afternoon on a high rise overlooking the water. The campsite faces east and the rise of land is bright with spring green but scattered coal black tree trunks spear the sky, remnants of the Ham Lake Fire that burned 75,000 acres in 2007.

The night brings chill and, again, rain. We find shelter in the tent and fall asleep to the sound of the rain. In the morning clouds roll across the sky and the breeze has a bite to it. It is in the high 30s. I drink my coffee with my back to the wind. A solitary moose comes from the cover 300 yards away, wades into the water and swims to the far side, shakes off and walks into cover.

We paddle out that afternoon and drive to Grand Marais and book a room at a motel named, appropriately, the Mangy Moose. We have been out of contact for the days we were in and turn on the TV, wondering what’s new, find news of fires in Minneapolis and turmoil across the land and overreaching COVID.

With that, back to reality.

In search of better times.

I turned off the radio because I didn’t like the news. The news was sounding a jagged drumbeat that would not end, all day, every day. It wore on me. I turned it off, pulled up some old rock music that lifted and soared and that is what I wanted on a Sunday morning when all we took for certain was being upended. The music drowned out the static.

It had been an uneasy week with little refuge. It was as if the western sky had smudged to glowering cloud and the cloud had built, not over hours but more slowly, day by day, and by week’s end the dark clouds had risen and thickened until they covered all in a miasma of gloom. It was as though distant thunder over the horizon marched in heavy feet closer, closer, until the dark skies were animated by the steady growl of thunder.

 On this morning I skied from the truck and away from the dismal world news in search of a day of my dreams when the snow is firm and the sun brings rebirth and the world comes alive to early springtime.”

We are not living in easy times. In times of unease it is sometimes best to seek out the world that lies off the pavement where any sound is pure and simple and it seems as if nothing has changed. Call it cowardly escape; call it seeking refuge; call it what you will. Words do not matter.

I drove the truck, blacktop to gravel to mud to ice and crust. I parked. I turned off the truck. I sat in the silence.

Then I stepped out, walked to the back of the pickup and pulled out a pair of skis and poles.

Does one leave the hard pack of pavement in a sense of flight from something? Or is it rather to find a welcome in another realm? I do not know. At a certain point it does not matter; what matters is movement and clear air and nature that – if all goes well – leads to a more peaceful mind, to sanctuary. I clipped boots to bindings, fit poles to my hands and started to ski.

It is a time of transition when what seemed certain goes awry, when the alabaster winter snow shifts to crust and decay, when the satin smooth track of XC trails degrades to abrasive ice. It is a time of upheaval and change when what was bedrock a week ago is now otherwise, when certainty and predictably crumble.

In the best of times late winter merges with early spring and one is never certain when the one ceases and the other rises to rule. But in the days of season shift in the woodlands the snow compresses and compacts and, given the right conditions, forms a crust that can support weight of skier. Those days are a unique sub-season, the season of crust skiing.

The time of crust skiing and the time of maple sap run overlap; the same weather drives both. Take a day of sun and thaw, temperatures in the 40s, follow it with a sub freezing night and another day that rises to warmth; crust can form, sap can rise, the season tilts, the balance scale moves.

I ski when I can. I ski on the fresh snow of December, in the cold of January, in the mishmash that February can bring. I ski on new snow and I ski on aged snow and I love it all. But most of all I live for the days of March when the crust covers the winter woods and I can ski anywhere and everywhere. I live for the time of March when remnant snow covers the landscape and the crust forms and I can ski on the old logging roads and the lakes and the slumbering river ice.

On this morning I skied from the truck and away from the dismal world news in search of a day of my dreams when the snow is firm and the sun brings rebirth and the world comes alive to early springtime. I skied for the joy I can find and I skied for the abandonment, however brief, from the world we now know.
I skied that day in search of a pristine world of unblemished snow on old logging trails that wind their serpentine way over hills and lowlands, under tall pine and skeletal popple and birch. I skied to find the purity that I needed, to find the bedrock of faith and hope that now is lacking, to find the joy that the off-trail skiing can bring. I skied out in optimism and expectation of better time. I skied to find release.

I did not find it. The old trails were worn and pockmarked, blemished by footprint and snowshoe track, by deer trails, by wolf print and wind-downed debris. The trails held uncertainty and blemish, threw me off balance and made the smooth ballet of skiing an ungainly lurching and awkward chore. It did not get better; it got worse. I had come looking for ease and comfort. Instead, I found what I’d wanted to escape.
I’m stubborn at times. I skied out farther; after all reasonable expectation was lost. I skied in hope of better times. I did not find it. I turned back. But on a whim as I neared the truck I turned on a side spur and coasted down a slope. I glided out of the shadow of the forest into sunlight. Ahead of me, the river flowed. It moved with power and purpose, dark and unyielding. On the far shore, geese. I heard their wild call of life.

I turned and ahead of me on the edge of river ice a perfect, pristine length of snow. I skied that too-short section of snow and it was silky smooth and pure and what I had yearned for all along. I skied under a springtime sun that brought warmth, yes, but more, brought promise of better times.

Out and back; five minutes. Then done. Then back to the truck and a return to reality. But for those minutes I had found all that mattered. It will sustain me

Dog... Cat.. Moving toward Detente..

There exists, between dog and cat, between Fenway and Trout, an uneasy detente broken by sporadic and unpredictable skirmishes. It was not supposed to be this way. We had hoped for common ground and a consensus that would allow each a level of, if not friendship, at least tolerance, one for the other. At times we find cause for optimism. Then, dashed hopes in a spat of cat and dog, both of which can run from a host of demons but cannot outrun bloodlines and inviolate DNA.

Fenway, the Boston terrier that at times I refer to as the Boston Terrible has suffered loss; his two old mates, Riika and Thor, gone now and the pack of three, comfortable in their hierarchy wrought over time now splintered; Fenway the lone dog standing. He is middle aged for a terrier. He is graying, his face and eyes frosted with white hairs and there is sadness to him at times, as if the sadness and the graying have descended in tandem.

Trout is the interloper, the new kid in the house, a two-year old black-and-white cat (a tuxedo) full of energy, mischief and the unquestionable standoffishness of cats mixed with undeniable affection. Trout can turn it on, turn it off; affectionate one minute, aloof and haughty the next. Such are cats. If one desires consistency in personality look other than a cat with their flighty mannerisms. Perhaps a goldfish or a reptile.

We said, “They’ll work it out.” For the most part, they have. For the most part the two of them, both black and white, looking like litter mates, for the most part they have worked it out. For the most part.

But they have their moments. They have times when detente is lost as calm and order are lost in a swirl of wind storm under a blue sky. Yes, they have their moments.

There was, most telling, the chair incident. Fenway’s chair, the one he favors in Sally’s office, the one he snuggles into and naps under an old blanket. He sleeps in comfort there; he sleeps in peace; he is content. Until Trout found it. Until Trout took it as her own. Until Trout settled in and curled up and napped. And Fenway was unaware that she was there.

Unaware that is until he jumped from floor to chair as is his norm, as is his habit, as is his claim to the chair and all that it entails. Jumped effortlessly from the hardwood and arched through the air like an NBA forward moving to the basket and came down hard and fast on the slumbering Trout who reacted in an instant with flashing claws and mighty hissing and a whip-like punch to Fen.

Fenway was off the chair as if it was electrified which, in a sense it was, charged with the alarmed cat who threw a few quick jabs like a featherweight boxer, tat-tat-tatting in rapid fire punches like sparks on a frayed wire.

And Fenway, poor Fenway, ran as if the gates of Hell had opened at his heels and were unleashing all manner of demons in a chase. He ran to the back door, cried for Sally to open it and then outside where the weak-willed Trout will not venture. There he found comfort in the gray chill of late winter. He stayed out for a long time, ears laid back, trembling with the cold and the fear.

When he came back inside he was unsettled, humiliated, embarrassed and hurt of feelings. We picked him up and assured him he was a good boy. It did scant good; he did not find comfort. He sulked and cowered for a day and another and only then did he come back to his normal self.

We were concerned. This is not what we anticipated. For one thing, we fully expected Fenway to be more aggressive. He is, after all a dog, no matter how little a Boston terrier actually looks like a dog. He should hold his own and then some in the company of the smallish cat. But he did not. He gave it up to Trout.

She began to stalk him at times, belly low to the floor, eyes focused like death rays, step by step moving in on him as if on prey. We broke that up when we saw it and Trout, as cats do, simply changed her personality as if lifting a veil and gave us that look: “Me? I was just strolling along. Where’s the problem?”

They continue to work it out but there is the simmering tension between the two of them. They mostly get along, consider each other with curiosity if not affection, nose to nose, feeling things out. Most of the time it seems to be working. But there is memory and there is lineage of cat and dog to contend with. Neither can escape the coiled DNA they carry.

I see them begin to escalate and yell at them across the room, “Social distance, dammit! Three feet apart, six feet, whatever!” And at that the moment is broken and they move apart and pretend not to care.

But I know that if they had doggie and kitty cell phones and were able to use them they’d be on Twitter or Facebook exchanging snarky comments to their faux friends who would urge them on to more nastiness. As the drumbeat of social media roils the world around us the last thing we need is for our pets to have that outlet. In this lacking they remain elevated above the social norms of humans and for that we are better.

Fenway seeks out a patch of sunlight where it shines on the living room floor. Trout moves along the edges of the room like smoke drifting on a breeze; silent and smooth. Fenway’s eyes follow her. She pretends not to watch him. Tension builds.

They are working it out. Slowly. Very slowly.

A picture perfect day to ski the Birkie

In the waning stages of my father’s slide into the darkness of Alzheimer’s we would go for drives. I would drive out of town onto the country roads where greenery and lakes, fields and woodlands, sun and clouds were all stitched into a quillwork of a Wisconsin summer. We both enjoyed these times.

Conversation at times was strained; it was always one-sided. How could it not be? He had lost a lot. We did the best we could.

There was an afternoon in July when the sun filled the world and the heat shimmered and it was as wonderful a day as one could imagine and on that afternoon I took in the dome of blue sky and told my father, “There is not a cloud in the sky” and drove on.

“I skied on a day of dreams for rarely does a skier have the alchemy that produces perfect snow and perfect weather.”

Minutes later, an eternity for the ragged memory of an Alzheimer’s victim he said, gently, so as not to offend me, a manner of courtesy he never lost: “You said there was not a cloud in the sky but over there…” He let the words slide away and lifted his hand and pointed to a scrap of white cloud in the majesty of the blue sky! The only cloud in sight; the only fragment of a cloud in the entire, now-mostly-cloudless sky.

Since that day I never, ever, use the phrase, “There is not a cloud in the sky,” without turning full circle, face lifted skyward to see if, in fact, there is not a cloud in the sky. It is my father’s gift, one of many.

Sixteen kilometers into the running of this year’s American Birkebeiner on the top of a gentle rise on a picture perfect day a skier in the track near me exhaulted, “What a day! There’s not a cloud in the sky.” And I, slow skier that I am, took the time to slow ever more, turn my gaze upward, inspect the sky and, after all that, reply, “Not a single one!”

But by then he was gone. I skied on with thoughts of my father in my head. The Birkie is a long race; you have a lot of time to think.

The Birkebeiner took place on a day made for skiers. It was mild at the start, mid-teens but there was a gentleness to it and the chill did not last. The temperature rose with the sun, climbed to 20s and then the 30s by late morning. Mid afternoon it topped 40. All under the growing power of sun of late February that, at times, was alone in a cloudless sky. Add to that near-perfect snow and it was a Birkie for the books. Had you written a script for a one-of-a-kind day to be on skis you could not have done better than what was served up this time.

I ski, by way of honoring those skiers who have completed the most Birkebeiners, in the first group that start the race, hitting the trail at 8:10. Behind me will come near 7,000 other skiers. Ahead of me on this day one skier who skied out fast and left me and the rest behind. So in a fluke of timing and race conditions I skied, in this huge race, totally alone for over 10 kilometers.

I skied that day as I had skied all season, at a steady pace, comfortable, not pushing too hard; I’d need energy late in the race. But more: I skied in a sense of awe and wonder at the day, of the beauty of late February Wisconsin woodlands where I have spent winters all my life. I skied the hills of the landscape under a cerulean blue sky among stately trees and crystal white snow in a world of beauty. I skied on a day of dreams for rarely does a skier have the alchemy that produces perfect snow and perfect weather.

The fast skiers who started after me caught me and passed me about a dozen kilometers into the race. Then the floodgates opened and for the rest of the race a torrent of faster skiers left me in their wake. Which is fine with me. One gets out of the Birkie what one puts into it; they’d done the work, I had not. They had the legs; I did not.

I never know if I can finish the race. I stand at the start with a potent cocktail swirling in my guts; anxiety and excitement, self-doubt balancing the comfort of experience, questions with no answers. Along the trail an occasional skier would see the color of my bib (which indicates the general number of Birkies skied) and say, “Great job on number 42.” I’d say, “Forty-one and a half. I’m not there yet.”

I play the mental game: There is a major feed area about halfway; I push to get there. After that there are still 29 kms to go. I count them down. When I get to the sign that indicates 15 kilometers remaining, then and only then do I think that I can finish the race. Until then I am not certain. After that I think I can hang on, come whatever.

My thoughts wander during the race like clouds in the sky; I do not focus solely on skiing. My mind lifts to my father’s words on the cloudless sky; thoughts drift to my mother who died during the week of a Birkebeiner years ago; memories come to me of races and racers and how things come and go and how some things never leave us.

It is not an easy race. There is the distance and there are hills and there is the mental game. But there is, at the end, Main Street in Hayward and the finish line and I cross it and someone says, “Hey, 42 Birkies! Nice job!”

I thank them and then look up. I want to see if there are any clouds in the sky.

Skiing...in times of cold

In times of cold, skis glide poorly. Snow at subzero temperatures is unforgiving. It is abrasive. It is dry. On cold snow, skis do not slide well. There is nothing to do to change that. It is a fact of winter cold, of Wisconsin cold, of the cold of January and February when the frigid air takes hold of our world as if a cat on prey, holding fast, digging deep, showing no mercy.

Such is life. Such is winter. Winter stresses all. Car motors resist spark; furnaces run ceaselessly; my dog Fenway limps into the morning, hobbling on three feet, one lifted high to avoid the ice. Darkness falls early; dawn comes late. Biting cold, bitter chill, slow skis; it is the burden we bear in the heart of the northland.

But there is this: In winter we find beauty. In winter: Simplicity. Snow, bare trees, overarching sky. A simple world. And in that simplicity is elegance, purity and a spareness that no other season shows. To know winter is to know an elemental time of no distractions and nothing extraneous. In winter lies simplicity and elegance.

Gone in winter the clutter of other seasons. Gone the jumble of leaf and dirt. Gone the confusion of color and shape. Gone the gaudy beauty of October and the spring green of May, gone dust and heat and sound and scent. Those seasons hold abundance and treasure. Winter stands spare and stark and in that we find elegance.

Come winter and our world is stripped to bare form of dark tree trunk over wind-drifted snow. There is little color to distract; there is no scent carried on breeze; sound is muffled. Winter is painted of a spare palette, calligraphy as much as broad strokes of brush. It is a time of simplicity and minimalism. In that it is special.

Summer air can be dusty and smudged, heat mirages shimmer and images waver; detail is lost. Winter air is pure and crystalline and detail is sharp as if etched or detailed in fine ink on white parchment. In this comes the beauty of the season.

One makes of winter what one will. One can see it as harsh and unforgiving and hostile to the pulse of life. One can cower at the cold, rage at the snow, huddle against the nature of it all. Or not.

One can, on the morning of chill, leave the warmth of home and take it all in. One can take it for what it is which is unique and beautiful and special. It will not last, the cold and the snow and the evening darkness come early. It will pass as all seasons pass. The variable is how we will deal with it.

In the thin light of dawning when the sky to the east is clear and the last of night’s stars fade overhead, at that time the day is defined. In the eastern sky will come the faint bloom of early sun but no warmth. Clear mornings bring the cold of Wisconsin winter and one only has to look to the east to know the weather at hand. Clear sky; cold air. The yin and yang of winter.

The irony of winter is that the coldest days bring the most beauty and to take it in one must leave the comfort of home. In the days of subzero air beauty is found as it is at no other time of the span of a year. Take it for what you will. Take it as you can.

In winter, I ski, Nordic style. I have skied so long in my life I no longer question the Why of it all. I simply ski. I can wax romantic at a certain level and opine that it is in my blood, my bloodline of Scandinavian ancestry, of my father’s family, immigrants that they were. I can point to my childhood and downhill skis as a three-year-old, those misty images that are so long gone that the details fade and only the memory remains: I was young and I skied.

But in the final telling only this: Come winter, I ski. It is part of who I am.

And this: Come winter, I will ski in the cold. Another memory, this of a day when I was much younger, skiing downhill with my mother and it was 20 degrees below zero. And we skied. I remember cold hands and a rope tow and my mother and I skiing and I wanted to quit and she said, “One more run.” I made one more run and then went inside to warm up. When warmed, we went out and skied again.

I was 12-years-old and on that day I learned I could ski in the cold and I could enjoy it. It changed my life. In every winter since, I have skied and I have skied in the cold, the subzero cold of Wisconsin when it comes down on us. I am not special for doing that; it is simply part of who I am. Some people go into the cold, some do not. I am one that does. I am not special for that.

The cold skiing connects me to my 12-year-old self and my mother. It links to the Norwegian and Swedes who were my father’s family. It forces me from comfort into an unforgiving world and when I come back I better appreciate the warmth of home we too often take for granted.

I skied this week with temperatures below zero and skis running slow. I skied as I could; fast days are gone to memory. On a long uphill I stopped and stood, clouds of my breath in the chill air. I looked to the woods and the sky and I saw winter’s purity and elegance and striking beauty. I stood, I looked, I took it all in. And in that knew how fortunate I was in times of cold.

Rebuilding the team after a couple of tough losses

“Trout.” The word hangs in the air on a January afternoon as the winter sun holds in the sky of the month of chill and darkness; there is substance, both the word and the sun, but both evoke another season. Trout.

I ask Sally: “What do you mean? Trout?”

I am fully aware that a cottage industry has grown up over the inability of men and women to communicate effectively in simple terms. Words that seem clear to one are baffling to the other. More than that, ideas and concepts and grand visions that seem crystal clear to one side are curtained in incompressibility to the other. It as if one peers from a window and sees what one sees and then breathes on the glass and the sharp image is fogged over and nothing is the crystalline no matter what words are used to describe the scene.

Trout. The word has meaning; of course it does. But I was under the impression that we were discussing possible names for a cat. Have I missed something? It seems likely that I have.

We brought a cat into our house this week. We wanted a companion for Fenway who seemed adrift and out of sorts after Thor died earlier this month. When Sally brought the odd looking Boston terrier, Fenway, home at 8 weeks, we had a cat, Lady, and two dogs, Riika and Thor. The foursome had some work to do but they got it done and after some scuffles and turf issues, hissing and barking, they worked out the pack hierarchy.

We had good years, the small cat, the small dog, Fenway, and the big dogs.

Lady died a year and a half ago. The dogs missed her, all three of them. They adapted. They did well. They were a pack.

Then Riika died in June and it was all over. The threesome was now two and Thor and Fenway were unsettled. Thor took it the hardest; he never came back to where he had been. Summer and autumn came and went and our big guy just gave ground. He was tight with Fenway but Riika was the dominant dog and when she was gone Thor was heartsick.

Thor died in early January and Fenway took it bad. His pal was gone. He looked for Thor every day. He seemed older and more somber. In truth, Sally and I did as well.

We researched dogs, looked at hunting dogs, versatile breeds that would hunt upland birds and ducks both. But these things take time and Fenway was clearly unhappy.

We called a young friend who had expertise in cats went to the animal shelter. We came home with a cat.

The cat is small and delicate, black and white and in that matches Fenway. We brought her home and put her on the counter where she curled in tight, anxious ball of fur and regarded Fenway on the floor. He was very interested in her. They faced off. We kept them apart, the cat high on the counter, the dog on the floor. At night we planned on locking her in a room downstairs where she would not have to deal with Fenway. They’d need time to adjust.

The cat lay on the counter for nearly an hour then stood, stretched and jumped to the floor, face-to-face with Fenway. He leaned in, nose quivering. She let him come close, then swatted him with her paw and ran. We did not see her the rest of the evening.

I saw her next at 3:00 in the morning when she climbed on the bed, snuggled against my head, purring all the while. I told her she was a good cat. I rubbed her ears and then told her to go away. She did. For an hour. At 4:00 she was back. Again at 5:00. Over morning coffee Sally told me I looked pretty ragged and I told her I was ready for a nap. The cat was nowhere to be seen. One could only surmise she was sleeping after a night on the prowl.

Two days later we did not have a name. We did, however, have a better idea of what she was. Over dinner Sally had shown a photo of the cat to a friend who said, “She’s a Tuxedo” and he’d owned them and they were very special. A Tuxedo, not a true breed but named so for their black and white colors. So we had a Tuxedo. But still no name.

I began referring to her as “The Cat With No Name,” though at times I slipped and called her Lady, the memory of our sweet cat rising up to me.

I offered up the opinion that a name did not matter; cats do not respond to names, seeming to consider that beneath them, a trivial matter best left to dogs. Sally did not agree.

Then: “Trout”.

“What do you mean?

“The name for the cat: Trout.” She seemed to have a certainty about the name as if it was the most logical choice for a black and white cat. What else would one name a Tuxedo? I was baffled.

The name was offered up by a dear friend when Sally reached out for suggestions. As one might surmise the name made no particular sense nor did it follow any particular logic. The friend, years ago, had a black and white cat show up at her house. It was a stray, shy and it took some time to get the cat comfortable enough to come inside. One day it did and Sally’s friend looked up from what she was doing, saw the cat inside and for some unfathomable reason said the first thing that came to her mind: “Hi, Trout.”

So we have two black-and-whites now, Fenway the Boston terrier, and the cat.

The cat is on the bed. I look at her and say, “Hi, Trout.”

She ignores me.

Thor...

Thor died. That’s all one needs to know. Two words tell all. Thor, our big boy, our gentle soul, our sweet goofy dog is gone.

But with dogs as with people the story is never writ in two words, is never told of the time at the end, rather is scribed in the span that came before, the lifetime in which a legacy is built and memories bloom.

Dogs take our hearts as spiders build a web; a strand at a time, expanding, encompassing. By the end our hearts are bound up by their time with us.

I could have written that we lost Thor. But no, we lost Thor those times he went running crazy after deer while we hunted grouse. We lost him on a morning he got out of the yard and went racing around the south side of town. We lost him to the shadowy thickets, home of grouse and woodcock. We lost him on a day in March in the place the deer wintered and I found his prints mixed with the prints of wolves. We lost him over the years. But he always came back.

He came back after chasing deer. He came back that morning, heavy with skunk smell. He came out of the dark thickets in grouse cover and he came back after running in the territory of wolves. He was lost; but he came back. He always found his way.

He failed of late. He seemed to bear a burden of age and sadness, the weight a dog could heft when younger and fit but now in the aging times could no longer carry. He was fading. We knew it and he may have known it as well.

I was reading at days end last week and he lay on his bed next to the couch and watched me across the room. When he was born his eyes were blue, turned amber golden as he grew, now were faded. That evening he watched me as I read. He’d not been doing well. He’d become finicky in his eating, taking food one day, turning his nose at it the next. Then he stopped eating altogether. I read until 10:00 and then turned off the lights. But on a whim I took a spare blanket and stretched out on the couch next to him, reached my hand out and rubbed his head. He usually slept upstairs with us but this night we were going to leave him downstairs. I wanted to be with him.

Then in the darkness the tip-tap of tiny feet; Fenway came down the stairs and jumped up on the couch with me. Thor was Fenway’s best friend. Fenway adored Thor. Fenway had been troubled as Thor failed. Now he wanted to be with me and with Thor.

We slept, the three of us, but with Fenway on the couch I could not sleep well and at midnight, with Thor breathing easy, I eased off the couch and went upstairs. Fenway followed.

When I came down the next morning, Thor had died.

I made coffee and sat with Thor and the memories started to come, bright rays of light in the darkness of that January morning.
He was at his best when he ran, a long-legged runner, silky-smooth, running like a river flowing uphill, smooth and powerful, ageless and timeless, the elemental grace of a dog running forever young and beautiful. I remembered.

I remembered his kind eyes and his mild disposition. Everyone liked Thor (we could not say the same of Riika who was too intense and aloof for many, nor of Fenway who in spite of his closeness to Thor shares more of Riika’s personality).

I sipped my hot coffee. I let my mind go to times with Thor. He was a talented hunter who was lackadaisical about hunting. He loved it, but he did not live for the hunt. Riika hunted with intensity; Thor did not.

But there was a November day when we left Riika home and went, just the two of us. He was so proud to be the chosen one on that afternoon, he and I together. We took four grouse that day and Thor flushed them all and found them all and in the truck on the way home sat tall as if he was the most special dog in the world And for me, he was.

He was independent, bracketed as he was by the high octane intensity of Riika the elder and, in his own way, the diminutive Fenway who, as they say, punches above his weight. Thor chose the middle ground, showing no initiative to match the fiery heat of Riika, nor the overachiever in Fen.

Smart? You figure it out. Is a dog smart that learns to open the refrigerator and take food from the shelves? Thor did that. We had to replace the ‘fridge. Clever? He’d steal loaves of bread off the counter so we put them up too high for him, on top of the refrigerator. He figured to pull open the oven door and use that as a step-up to get on top of the stove and from there stand tall and pull the bread down. At 65 pounds, he broke the oven door. We had to buy a new stove.

So many memories.

There is a place we hunted, a rise of the land with a grove of young, graceful birch trees. It is a beautiful place. It never held grouse but we’d go there regardless. It was our chapel. I’d lean my shotgun against a tree. Thor and Riika would rest. In that place I remember him best, my handsome dog in the soft golden light of morning with sun dappling the leaves. So beautiful he was. So perfect.
Our house is emptier today; our lives as well. There is a void that Thor used to fill. It’s empty now. We need to readjust.

It’s going to take some time.

If only dogs could talk...

Come times of snow, the dogs’ world turns smaller. In the time of no-snow the twosome runs free across the backyard, east fence to west side fence, garage at the south to the garage bookending at the north. The yard is their world, their playground, their domain.

The dogs own the yard from spring break up through the dusty heat of summer to the time of leaf fall. Dawning to dusk, it belongs to them. In the dark before sunrise to the star sprinkled night sky the dogs can range; their horizons expand.
Then comes snow. Then comes the chill of November and the bitter cold of January and through it all the snow builds in layers, a bit here, a few inches more, a heavy snowfall; it accumulates and as it does the dogs’ world draws in on them.
In the first snows we let it all be; the dogs trace their web of tracks across the yard, back and forth, from lilac bushes to slatted fence; they stand at the fence to peer out at the world beyond. It is still part of their universe.

With time the snow builds too deep and we use a snowblower to cut a pathway from patio out into the yard in an inverted “U” and back to the walkway, giving them respite in the deepening snow. That becomes the core of their backyard. Their world comes in. I wonder at times if it weighs on them, if it brings a sadness in the contraction of what they once had to what they now must cope with.

One wishes that dogs could speak; they would have much to say. In this December I would ask them, “Does this bother you, this pulling in of your backyard?” I would wait their reply with interest. Do they feel the discouragement of so many that I talk to as the snow brings their world, their human world, in tighter?

The dogs cannot speak and can only run in the narrow pathway that is the width of a snowblower and now, with each passing snowfall becomes more confining.

I walk to the yard, kneel and lower my face to the level of Fenway’s head which, given his diminutive size of a Boston terrier, is not very high off the ground. From his perspective the world is a slice of sky above but to the sides the horizon is a shifting line, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden from view in a deeper drift of snow.

I think to myself that it is as I sometimes feel in the depths of a big city where buildings rise tall in dull shades of gray and glint of glass and the only glimpse of a natural life is the thin ribbon of sky that I can see overhead. This becomes the world of my dogs as snowfalls come and snow depth builds and much of what they can see is only strata of packed snow.

At times they break out, forge their own way in the snow to the back fence where they can look out beyond at the world as they see it in summer and fall. But most of their time is spent in the channel in the snow or the hard frozen brickwork of shoveled walkway along the garage. This is their winter world. I wonder what they think of it.

Thor, longer legged and head-held-high is less bothered by the snow depth. He can still see over the top of the pathway through the snow; he can still push his way out of the cut lane to the back fence where he moves tight against the chain link and breaks a trail as the deer now do in their deep-winter yards.

But Thor carries other burdens.

Age has caught up with Thor, age and sorrow. Riika was born of the same parents but two years before Thor. Riika became the foundation of the dogs’ world; she was the cornerstone, the dominant dog in the house and when she died both dogs were distraught. Fenway seems to have come out of it. Thor has not.

There is a melancholy about Thor now, a weariness that is not simply the accumulation of the years. His eyes have gone dull, his head held lower, his gait uneven. His age, yes; but more. He has not recovered from losing Riika.

Two months ago I took him hunting on a picture perfect October morning when fall color was just past peak and the morning chill was giving way to a too-warm-to-hunt afternoon. We were in the sweet spot; good visibility in the woods and the temperature just right for a dog to work.

We walked a mile that day, an easy loop in the glory of October in an area rich in grouse and woodcock. We’ve hunted all his life. He’d always enjoyed it, working with a lightness to his gait and a nose that took in the world of unseen scent. He loved to hunt.

On this day though, a reluctance, a hanging back at heel. He was not finding joy in the hunt. He always had hunted with bright eyes and high energy. No more.

I have a photo of him that I took that day. Head high in the golden glow of sun; background of grouse woods; a handsome dog. I have it in color on my computer screen. But another photo, rendered in black and white; stark. Of Thor showing eyes clouded, head low, carrying a burden of sadness on that day.

It was the last day we would hunt together. Ever. I knew it.

I watch them, Thor and Fenway, in the deepening snow. I watch the two of them in the backyard where the snow grows deeper and the days shorter. I think of times past. I think of time present. I avoid thoughts of the future.

I wonder what they could tell me if they could talk.