Wild Beauty

There is a splash of blue where I do not expect to see blue. It is not the color of the sky; not the color of water which, of course, is usually the color of sky; a glint of blue-violet in the mass of greenery. Then gone. I turn my head; all I see is green leaf. Then it is behind me.

I am riding the bike on old fire lanes. To ride is to relax but it is not to be without focus. I am focused on the gravel ahead, the rock and the divots, the puddles and the potholes. The forest to the side is mostly a blur of green; there is very little definition to it, just the mottled green and gray and browns. It is a good growing season what with all the rain. Then that flash of blue. There; then not.

The road is muddy in places. I ride on, steady pace; can feel my heart beat. My legs ache and I am glad for that; I want to push a bit and leg ache is the barometer for effort.

The road winds and rises and falls. Then ahead alien color; orange. A sign: Road Closed. I slow and ride to the sign and coast past it. The road ahead is washed out, rutted and gutted where the rain has run off with speed and volume and washed away portions of the road. I stop.

One hundred yards ahead the road looks passable. I stand, think it over and then lift the bike off the gravel and into the woods and push it through fern and mud.

The mosquitoes come down in clouds! They land on forehead and forearms, legs and back; I breathe them in. I push the bike faster. Both of my hands are holding the bike; I cannot swat the bugs. They dig in. I rush as best I can.

I regain the road, swing a leg over the bar, click into one pedal and push off; engage the other pedal as I go. I am covered with mosquitoes but I pedal hard and find a speed and rhythm and only then do I hammer away at the bugs.

I ride on, bug bites and all. I ride the 20 miles that remain between me and home. All the time in the back of my mind is the glimmer of blue I saw miles behind.

The next day I drive back to where I’d seen the blue. I park the truck, spray myself down with bug repellent, lift camera and close the truck door. The bugs are bad again. I walk down the road and into the woods. The woods are heavy with humidity, dark underfoot, rich green overhead. I walk 100 yards then cut to my right.

Ahead of me the woods open up over a boggy area perhaps a city block in size. The open area is filled with wild iris flowers, hundreds of them. That is the blue I’d seen from the bicycle; that is what I’d caught the glimpse of as I’d ridden past. A bog-full of iris.

I see iris often, along the wet areas, along lake shores, tucked into marshy areas that I kayak or canoe past. They stand, in those places, in small clusters; a handful of plants, a dozen, or just a few. But I’ve seen places, only a few, where they grow in profusion, dozens and dozens and hundreds and hundreds. Now I’d found another. I’d never known it was there.

The bog beneath my feet is soft and mossy, vivid green. It gives as I walk across it; in some places there is standing water. It is very soft underfoot and the greens are unique and rare. Everywhere there are irises.

They stand tall over long, pointed leaves and the flowers are blue and blue-violet and all shades and hues of those colors. It is very quiet and it is very beautiful and it is a very special place.

I kneel in places, camera on tripod, looking for a photo, lining the flowers up in the morning sun, looking for the right light and the right angle. When I kneel I push the moss down and my knee is in water and in a short time my pants legs are soaked. It does not matter to me. I take a lot of photos. I want to hold in a photo what I see in that bog; the iris flowers in bloom on an early summer day.

After a time I give it up as a fool’s errand; there is no manner in which to take it all in. A camera cannot capture it. I simply stand and look.
I stand in the bog on the moss like I am standing in a garden or a cathedral where the light

comes through stained glass and all is beautiful and peaceful. I stand in the garden of the irises with the high arching dome of summer sky overhead and I do nothing more than take it all in.

After a while I walk slowly along the edges of the marsh where bog meets woodland and sun is lost to the shadow of the trees. Everywhere there are irises. Everywhere, beauty.

Two weeks ago I stood on the shore of big water on the Canadian border and looked to the distant horizon and the endless sky of the Boundary Waters and in that was taken by beauty expansive and wild and bold. Now I stand on a sunny June day a handful of miles from home in the county forest and a bog the size of my neighborhood. I hold a flower smaller than my hand. I find beauty in equal measure.

In wild things and wild places we find our peace. And beauty; beauty is where one finds it. In the blue of lakes large and wild or in a flower that glows as if lit with a blue fire.

The awe-inspiring reality that is the BWCA

There was no reason to believe that the rest of the world existed. There was no manner in which to judge if we were the only ones left alive on the planet. There was nothing, nothing except everything: The big lake and the overarching sky and the boundless woods, the wind and the crystal air and endless time.

To the south, the sound of stream running over rock. West, the setting sun. North, an expanse of lake and on the horizon, Canada. Nowhere did we see another person. No human sound rose into the evening air. No smoke from campfire smudged the sky. No contrails or planes in flight. Sound of geese; sound of wave on shore. Nothing else. We were alone.

We had paddled that day from Lower Basswood Falls, north on Crooked Lake, all the time nudging up against the underbelly of the Canadian border. We crossed Wednesday Bay, Thursday Bay and turned south on Friday Bay.

“At sundown I start a campfire just because it seems the right thing to do. The cedar burns hot and fast and the color of the coals is the color of the sunset.”

We stopped mid afternoon, tired. A decision: Push on or pull up for the night. We leaned over the map to see what lay ahead. Three portages and one was a beast, nearly a mile long. We talked it over, Sally and I, then we turned the canoe toward shore. We’d stay the night.

We made camp on a west-facing spit of land with the breeze in our faces. That would help keep the bugs at bay. I cut firewood and found a bonanza; dry cedar! Perfect. Sally set up the tent, unloaded cookware. I split wood and stacked it.

We did not see another soul that afternoon and evening. We were alone in the vastness of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

We had put in the previous morning under a rising sun on the last day of May. We were a day late; circumstances, as they say, beyond our control. We had no clear idea of a route, just two possibles: We’d paddle north for a day and then turn west in a longer loop or to the east for a shorter one. It would all depend on how we felt after the first day.

We started late, 11 a.m., and pushed hard for 11 miles and 7 portages. I’d packed the wrong portage yoke for the canoe and my shoulders ached from the unbalanced load. The portage trails were rocky on the high places, mucky in the low.

We got to Lower Basswood Falls at 5:30 p.m. and set up camp downstream from the maelstrom of the falls. I gathered wood, damp and soft; it was all that I could find. We cooked steak over a weak fire, ate dinner as the shadows grew longer. A loon swam close to shore near the canoe. We could see white survey stakes that marked the border between the United States and Canada. In the dark of night a loon called.

The next day dawned clear and mild. We made coffee, scrambled eggs and bacon. Loaded the canoe and pushed off. A mile north of the campsite we came to the Native American pictographs painted on the steep rock cliff that rises from the waters, 100 feet high.

The pictographs are the color of rusted iron. Nobody knows their exact age; hundreds of years for certain. We drifted close, looking up, for the pictographs are higher than one would expect (which begs the question: How did they paint them, given that they are far higher than the water line?). It was calm and quiet and we looked in wonder at the images; moose, pelican. To view the pictographs is to feel a connection with times long past, with peoples who lived and paddled and endured the winters in this wild land. We paddled back, drifted past the pictographs one more time. Then we paddled on, to the north.

By afternoon the wind had come up and we pushed hard into it, across the upper ends of Wednesday Bay and then Thursday Bay. We stopped for lunch, checked the maps and then paddled into the rising wind and on to Friday Bay. There were whitecaps on the lake, scattered but very strong and we worked hard into the wind to the far shore then turned south and made camp. It was mid afternoon and we were done for the day.

And there in that camp we were alone. It was if nobody else existed. There was only the wide and wild expanse of the Boundary Waters.

I find the dry cedar and stack it. I wander off with camera in hand seeing what I can see. We set up camp chairs and sit in the afternoon sun. We fish with no success. I tell Sally, “If we don’t catch dinner by 6:00 it’s mac and cheese.” We do not get a bite.

We cook over a small camp stove, the cedar lies unused. We eat dinner as evening falls and the wind drops. It is very quiet and very peaceful and we would not trade places with anyone.

At sundown I start a campfire just because it seems the right thing to do. The cedar burns hot and fast and the color of the coals is the color of the sunset. Then the sun drops below the tree line and darkness falls and all that is left is a smudge of pale light in the western sky and the glow of embers in the fire. Then the faint light in the west is gone as if a curtain has dropped. There is the sweet scent of cedar smoke. Sally goes to the tent for the night. I pour Scotch into a metal cup and sit in the dark. I sit for a long time in the night next to the waning embers as they fade to dull copper color then to black. I think to myself, “The real world seems so far away.”

Then think, “Or is this the real world?”

I do not find the answer.

American sacrifice is memorialized on the Normandy coast of France

The sand beach seems to run forever. Waves roll in from the north; reach over the sand and then retreat. The sky to the east is burdened with heavy cloud and the sun on this morning barely seeps through. To the west the land rises in steep cliff. Inland, where the sand gives over to grass and tree, high bluffs swell and block the way south.

The sand is firm beneath my feet. The air is cool and fresh. In the sand at my feet lies a single, long-stemmed yellow rose. The rose is dusted with sand and the yellow is aged. It lies, simple and unadorned, its beauty and vitality faded.

I lift my eyes from the rose and see a stark metal sculpture rising from the sand. Stainless steel forms, over a dozen of them, lift from the beach as if seeking flight. It shines bright in the weak sun.

We are on Omaha Beach on the Normandy coast of France. The metal work is a memorial to the American soldiers who came ashore on June 6, 1944.

“I stand at the water’s edge and squint my eyes and try to imagine it all. But I cannot.”

I stand on the sands of Omaha Beach and the waves come in behind me and I look to the south and see the bluffs that rise, dark in shadow on this day. The bluffs that were studded with German guns that raked the water’s edge when the American kids waded the surf to the sands of Omaha Beach.

And died; so many.

There is an iconic photograph of that dawn, taken from a landing craft. Black and white; slightly out of focus. In the photo you can see America soldiers in the foreground; then the water and beach. The horizon is dark with shadow and fog where the German fortifications were dug in. I stand at the water’s edge and squint my eyes and try to imagine it all.

But I cannot.

They rolled the dice on that day in June all those years ago, threw everything they had on the razor’s edge of sand along the north of France. It was all or nothing. There was no way to turn back. That day would turn the tide of the war. Or fail.
On that dawning the Americans came ashore and the German guns tore the air and the American soldiers died on Omaha Beach.

I walk the beach where the yellow rose lies, torn from a bouquet by the onshore winds. I walk in the shadow of the memorial to those that died that day. I walk, attempting to imagine what it was like and knowing there was no way I ever could.

There are houses now on the strip of land between the sand and the bluffs and nearby, a small restaurant. We stop for lunch.

There is music playing in the kitchen and I hear a faint harmonica riff drifting like the wind over the sand. I strain to make out the song. It is an obscure Springsteen song, “This Hard Land,” and I can hear bits and pieces of it and my memory fills in the words that I cannot hear. This hard land; it seems appropriate.

We have fresh seafood and I have a salad with foie gras. We order some local hard cider (they pronounce it see-der and I like that better). The restaurant fills slowly. I listen to the talk, the voices, the languages: Americans to our left, British at the small table, Germans in the corner. The Springsteen song ends. The chatter of the diners rises. Outside through the large windows we can see the memorial on Omaha Beach.

I have an unsettling feeling; the diner is built on blood-stained sands where on the June morning the young Americans came on shore under heavy fire and died on the beach and there seems something inherently wrong about a restaurant there. Outside a group of school children arrive on bicycles and run laughing on the beach in the shadows of the memorial. They run like spring colts in the sea air and their voices and laughter are like the cries the seabirds in flight.
We have a pleasant lunch.

In the afternoon we drive away from the beach, up to the bluffs and on narrow country roads that twist and turn like a small stream through the farmlands. At the end of the road is the American Cemetery.

We walk from the visitor center and ahead of us we can see the sea that meets the horizon. We stroll the pathway and then turn left and up a rise and then we are in the cemetery. And I cannot move.

I stand there and look out at a field of white crosses, row after row after row. The sun has come out and the white crosses gleam in the light, stark and pure against the rich green grass under the blue sky. There are over 9,000 Americans buried here. Nine-thousand white crosses. Nine-thousand lives given.

I walk among the forest of crosses. Most bear a name, a state, a date of death. Some read simply, “Known But To God.” And one does not know which is sadder; knowing or not knowing.

It is a silent place. It is a place of reverence. It is a place of sadness and joy both.

We leave the cemetery and drive back toward the sands of Omaha Beach. The war memorial shines bright and the ocean swells glisten. We walk again on the sands of the beach, over the fallen yellow rose. The sound of the surf is constant.

White sea birds lift from the beach and wheel and cry and circle over the memorial. They drift inland, over the sands of Omaha Beach, over the houses and the restaurant, over the bluffs on the high ground. The birds disappear in the direction of the American Cemetery and soar high in the spring sky, white birds against the blue sky over the pure white crosses of the men that died.

Paris. Again.

There are stories and then there are stories. There are stories that are neat and tidy like a gift, wrapped and tied off in ribbons. Happy Birthday. Merry Christmas. Stories like that. And then there are stories that seem simple and complete but in time unravel like a tightly tied running shoe lace that comes undone.

There are stories that you build tight and solid like Lego blocks; the parts fit snug and at the end stand firm. Other stories look the same but then a flaw, a gap and a story that of a sudden is no longer complete.

I wrote a story two weeks ago about a runner in Paris, about his near death and about two women who came from the pack of runners and saved him. Two anonymous women doing CPR on an anonymous man on a warm spring day along the Seine River. It was a story about a man dying and then, miracle! Not dying.

Death and dying and young men lost were on my mind. We’d visited Omaha Beach days before and the American Cemetery where 9,000 Americans lie under white crosses on the high ground over the beaches of D-Day. Maybe that was in my mind under the high sun on a Paris morning where a young runner in a white shirt lay near death. It was Palm Sunday; perhaps that was in the mix of thoughts that day with that man who lay dying.

 “What are the odds? A runner in Paris; my article in a Wisconsin newspaper; two women in New Zealand.”   -Mitch Mode

There were loose parts in that story: Who was the runner? Who were the women? What became of him? But overall it was tidy enough; sometimes answers are elusive even as questions are rock solid.

I sent the piece to the paper; they ran it on Sunday. I had a few people comment on it. Then it was over and done with.

Until it wasn’t.

Until a week or so later I got an odd request on Facebook Messenger, a friend request from a name that meant nothing to me. This was the day that Google got hacked and the web was buzzing with warnings about not clicking on things that seemed familiar let alone things that seemed suspicious.

Here was a request from a name I’d never heard next to the box that read: “Accept”.

I looked at it for a while, kicked it around, hesitated. Then moved the cursor arrow over the box and clicked: Accept.

A message: Was I the one who’d written the story about the runner in Paris and the women who did CPR to save him? The neat story, the tidy story, the one with a beginning and a middle and an end. That story. The one that was complete as it stood.

I wrote back: Yes.

And the story that was complete became something else.

The woman, Robyn, who wrote me had her own story to tell, the story of her best friend who was running the Paris Marathon and saw a runner down and stopped and performed CPR until his heart started. She did this without fanfare. Then she continued on her way and finished the race.

She got home and told Robyn about it, said it was not a big deal, didn’t want any interviews, no attention. She’s a nurse; said she was just doing her job. And I thought, Just doing her job? Tell that to the guy on the ground looking up at the blue Paris sky as it goes black and the world fades away.

Robyn’s friend was one of the women who I’d seen. She messaged me, her friend, and told me her story.

Her name is Mary. She’d been having a difficult race. Two bad knees, slow time. Thought about dropping out. Saw the guy on the ground and worked on him. She’s a hospice nurse; she’d done CPR before. The other woman was an anesthetist from the UK. They saved the guy.

He was a young man, looked late 20s, maybe 30, from Japan. Each runner has a number and on the number is their first name and their country. His name started with K. That’s as much as she knew.

Oh, and he wore a wedding ring.

That last part really bothered Mary. Was his wife waiting at the end of the race? Was she watching along the course, hoping to cheer him on? When you run distance your mind sometimes in goes strange directions. And the wedding band, that haunted Mary.

She finished the race. And she wondered: What happened to the man?

She got home and told Robyn about it and Robyn started looking online and came across my story and wrote me. From her home. In New Zealand.

I read all this and thought: What are the odds? A runner in Paris; my article in a Wisconsin newspaper; two women in New Zealand.

I wrote back and we, all three of us, started to search. We looked for news stories that might have mentioned the death of a runner. Nothing. That was the good news; he’d not died afterwards. We searched for injury reports. Nothing. I found a passing mention of him in a runners’ online forum in the UK. The writer had run past the downed man, saw the two women doing CPR, wondered what happened. Nobody knew.

I checked newsletters from Japanese running clubs. I woke in the middle of the night with new ideas and chased them down in the light of day.

It’s not happened. We have not found the answer. We’ve not found a Japanese runner with a first name starting with K who nearly died in the Paris Marathon.

We keep looking. But the story that looked neat and tidy now has loose threads, unanswered questions. Some stories are like that you know. They start out solid but then the end frays like a braided rope come undone and you are left in the dark of night with questions and no answers and a story without an end.

A spring day in Paris…

We took the train to Paris from the Normandy coast. It took two hours. The countryside looked like southern Wisconsin coming to season; spring green, flowers and trees in blossom. It was an easy train ride.

Paris was busy on Sunday morning under a sunny sky and rising temperatures. We took the Metro from the train station to the stop nearest our hotel and walked from there. The streets were crowded.

We walked south to the Seine River then turned on the sidewalk that paralleled the river. The sidewalk and street are well above the level of the water and midway between river and street was a one lane roadway along the river. It provides a pleasant diversion from the sidewalk, a place for a leisurely stroll in the evening. Grass borders hold picnickers and young couples with a bottle of wine.

On this day the narrow causeway was crowded with runners, a steady stream of them and I had a realization: it’s the Paris Marathon.

We watched the runners from above on the sidewalk.

I had no idea where on the race course we were. The runners below us looked slower than the race leaders, more like recreational runners out for a long day in one of the world’s best known marathons. Nearly 44-thousand runners started the race.

We walked on to a bridge over the Seine and stood again. A seemingly endless river of runners passed, a flowing stream of color and sound and motion. Most were happy. That told me they were midway in the race; by the end of a marathon nobody is talking much. By the end of the marathon things get very heavy and very quiet.

Then a runner fell.

It happens. Too many people running close together; easy to make a misstep and stumble, sometimes fall. A runner was down. The flow of runners swirled like water around a rock in the river bed. The runner did not move.

It was hot that day, unseasonably so. It would reach near 80 that day. Where the runners ran, below street level, was isolated from shade and breeze. It was direct sunlight; the heat was building.

You can get acclimated to heat over time. It just takes time. You do short, easy runs in the heat; build from there. You get used to it. Gradually. By the time a long race comes in the heat, maybe in June, July, you’re ready.

What can get you is early season heat, the kind that comes up unexpectedly, a spike from the norm. Temperatures as they had that day in Paris. Running long and hard in that heat can be a killer.

The runner lay motionless on the pavement.

A slim woman, a racer, stopped, knelt over the downed runner; looked up in alarm. Then she started CPR. The runner was dying. Stiff armed she pushed on his chest, paused, pushed again. Repeated it again and again. The runner did not move.

Another woman runner stopped, knelt. The two alternated CPR over the dying man. Minutes passed. There were distant sirens.

The stream of runners did not pause; nobody knew. There were just the two women over the prone man. Someone said, “Twenty minutes of CPR is the max.” How long had it been? Ten for sure. Fifteen?

Every ice cream stand in Paris had long lines that day. Cold ice cream cones on a hot day; what can be better? At Notre Dame Cathedral the line to visit stretched out across the courtyard like unspooled thread. It was Palm Sunday. There were no clouds; the sun shone and the temperature rose.

The fallen runner was not aware of this. He lay flat and did not move and the two women worked with urgency. Sirens; closer now.

 “One should not die on the streets in the middle of the day with thousands of runners streaming past and spectators to a race all eyes to it all.”

It was difficult to get to the racers. The ramps from street level to runners’ lanes have concrete barricades. This is a country familiar with terrorist attacks. It was less than a year ago when the driver of the big truck mowed down over 80 people. Getting to the runners pathway was not easy. Two ambulances raced past on the street, looking for a way down.

A four-wheeler pulled up; two people jumped off. One had what looked to be paddles for heart defibrillation. That man on the ground had still not moved; it had to be 20 minutes.

Two men ran up, security; blue uniforms and stubby-barreled semi-automatic rifles. They stood, diverted the runners. The woman on the four-wheeler took her turn doing CPR.

Death should be a private affair. One should not die on the streets in the middle of the day with thousands of runners streaming past and spectators to a race all eyes to it all. Death should be private. We watched. We knew we should leave. It should be private.

Unexpectedly, an ambulance. Then two more. A flurry of activity as EMTs surrounded the man.
And then, against all odds, the two women who had been performing CPR lifted their heads and their eyes met. And then they raised their hands and slapped hands. High five! The man was alive.

The EMTs took over, white coats bending as penitents under the sun. IV bags raised, shining silver in the sun as chalices. The man still had not moved but now there was hope. Now there was life. Death had been pushed back.

The two women who’d first stopped stood and stepped back from the man. They hugged. Then they turned and began to walk, stretching some; long, willowy legs, runner’s legs. They began to run, slowly, then with more determination. They melded into the river of runners and were gone. Nobody got their names.

The runners continued to flow along the banks of the Seine on a hot spring day, Palm Sunday.
They loaded the man into the ambulance.

We walked across the bridge over the Seine River. It was a very warm day. An ice cream cone sounded wonderful.

The last day: An early morning on a smooth frozen lake

It froze hard overnight. Morning sky was bright with stars; east horizon turning pale, a springtime sky. But the air was cold, a late wintertime chill.

The day prior had been mild; evening brought drizzle. Bare ground took the rain and turned to mud. On the lakes the top surface was wet and smooth; water a leveler no matter where it flows. Backyard puddles were as if jagged-edged mirrors. Lake ice held the water and in late afternoon light shone bright as polished silver. All level, all smooth.

Then the temperature dropped and it froze up hard. In the darkness before dawning the backyard puddles were iced and the lakes were smooth and dark. In the woodlots the maple trees stood tall and alert in the dawning. There was frost on windshields and yards. It was very calm as if the day, as if the season itself, was poised and about to change.

 “We skated down the length of the lake and the rhythm took over and there was nothing but the wind in our faces and the feeling that comes when doing a simple task well.”   

I got a text at the time the eastern sky was smudged with light: “This could be the last day!”
It was not, as it may have appeared, a forewarning of apocalypse or end of days. It was, instead, an observation: The lake ice was smooth and hard and it could be the last day of the season to blade.
I did a quick calculation. Predawn now; have to be to work by 8 a.m. Maybe, just maybe, if I get off my butt and move I can get in half an hour, forty-five minutes. I thought about it. Then I texted back: “Be there in 15 minutes.”

It is, technically, not ice skating. One does not use ice skates as such. We use ice blades which are not the same. Think of a skate blade, many 18” long, just the metal blade; thin and by itself nothing exceptional. Put that blade on edge, long side down. On top, is a flat deck so the blade and deck make a T shape when viewed from the end. On that deck one screws a binding designed for cross country skis. So, blade, deck, binding; an ice blade.

With that setup one can use cross country ski boots, clip them into the binding and be ready to go. The end result is essentially a speed skate but less expensive if one owns ski boots.
It is rare that conditions are right for blading. Early season in a bad snow year is best. The lake ice is thick enough for safety and there is no snow to hinder glide. A season like that comes along infrequently with that combination; good, clean ice, thick enough to support one and clear of snow.

Early season is best.

But late season can be exceptional.

We’ve been winding down the winter of late. Snow is long gone, ice remains. Sunny days or days of rain flood the lake surface. A good, hard freeze firms up the top layer; snow melt and rain water in the afternoon become hard ice come dawn.

I drove in haste and parked the truck, met my friend. The two of us walked down to the lake, clipped into the bindings, took a few tentative skate steps. The lake was gray and any traces of snow gone with the warm afternoon and rains of the day before. The blades glided smooth and easy.

We began to skate, the long blades clacking on the hard ice. The ice was the dead color of ice that will not last long in the warmth of spring. There were striations in the ice, deep fractures that spoke of a restlessness, of shifting and moving and uneasiness as the winter ice battled with the springtime sun. We skated across them; they were not open, not this morning.

A small circle in the ice ahead; ice fishing hole, augured through the ice. I stopped, reached my hand down to the bottom where ice gave way to water; twelve, maybe fifteen inches thick. The ice was clear and pure below the lead gray surface. We went on.

In all things physical there comes a rhythm when done well, a synchronized motion as arms and legs work together and at such time effort seems reduced and pure movement is all that exists. We skated down the length of the lake and the rhythm took over and there was nothing but the wind in our faces and the feeling that comes when doing a simple task well.

It is a small lake, 250 acres or so, and with the fast ice we went from one end to the other in a short time. To the east the sun was breaking the tree line; it would be a beautiful day. We looped at the end of the lake, bladed back to where we’d started, then repeated the down and back.

It is easy to think that such times will go on forever, that the ice will be perfect and the temperatures on the rise and the sun breaking into a clear sky. It is easy to think a perfect morning will not repeat tomorrow. That is not true; all things end.

Sometimes the best we can hope for is to take satisfaction in simply physical acts, skiing or riding or paddling or skating. In those often mindless tasks one can put the burden of the day to come or the day just past, put them to rest, out of one’s mind.

We bladed that morning with the clear mindedness that comes at times as this.

A sharp, loud cracking noise, the sound of ice fracturing, not breaking apart yet but starting that process. A week ago was the rumble of making ice; now the whip-like crack of decay.
It was time to quit.

We walked from the lake into the new day and the rising warmth. In the woods the tall maple trees pulsed as if waking from winter slumber. In the afternoon the sap buckets would be full. By night sweet syrup off the boiler. Ice blade season was over.

An annual pilgrimage signals the change of seasons, new adventures

I find myself drawn, inexplicably, to late season ice. I do not know why. I am not comfortable on ice. Anxiety rules; stress tightens my gut. Yet I seek late winter ice.
Used to be I ended my ski season on lake ice. I’d ski a big lake studded with ice anglers.

On good days a bit of snow crust would soften about 10 in the morning under the March sun. Skis could hold an edge in the softening snow but it remained granular enough that the skis would glide as if on ball bearings. I’d make a long loop, dodging ice fishing holes, skiing the edge of the lake and then out across the middle.

I’d ski for an hour, maybe more, fast and easy. I’d come back to shore for a picnic lunch and sit in the sun. Then I’d drive home with radio talk of college basketball’s March Madness. I had my own March Madness; me and the skis and the ice.

“I stood and watched the water and knew something had ended, that winter was gone and with it things undone and pledges unfulfilled.”    –Mitch Mode

One year I went late and there were no fishermen on the lake. I skied out far from shore and wondered why I had the lake to myself. Then realized that the ice was dark as a grave and nobody was out because it was perilously close to breakup.

I said to myself, “Shoot, that’s why nobody’s out here.” I was near the middle of the big lake. I stood there on the black ice and gazed at the shoreline. It looked a long way away.
I started to ski, easy at first and then faster, fast as I could go, heart racing not just from exertion but from the realization of the stupidity that had gotten me out too far, too late.
I made it to shore that day. The ground felt good. It felt safe. Being on ice puts me on edge.

In the waning days of late winter I look for the shelf ice along the Wisconsin River west of town. I know a place. A place, when conditions are right, that has long stretches of ice extending out over the water. In cold of winter the ice is firm and hard rock solid, as safe as ice might be. I never go there then. I wait.

In the days after February rolls to March I drive, park the truck where the road changes from drivable to impassible. I take skis or a fat bike and make the rest of the way either kicking and gliding on skis or pedaling over hard crust on the bike. There is a ridge where the high oak woodlot slides down to the river valley and I go down that hill fast, go down to the river at the end of the slope.

When conditions are good I go upriver on the ice that remains. The river water runs dark and cold; the current is smooth and rising with snow melt. The sheets of ice extend from shore to water and then fall away. There are cracks and crevices everywhere and at water’s edge the shelf ice is broken and tilts to the current.

The water is gunmetal gray and moves without sound. Pieces of ice float; the water is very cold.I go upriver on the inside edge of the ice and if I get too far out to where the ice plate has broken I slide toward the water and have a moment of panic at the thought of going in. I never have. But I worry.

Half a mile upriver there is a small set of rapids and past that the ice is usually gone and I turn back and follow my tracks to the landing where I have started out.

I am anxious at all times and I do not know why I do it; there is simply something about the late ice and the change of seasons and the failure of the ice shelf that appeals to me. I do it every year, late, when March brings sun and warmth and the ice shelf collapses and falls away into the river.

When the ice is gone winter is gone. When that shelf ice fails and falls winter does not come back no matter how cold it may get. The ice crumbles and calves as the winter falters and fails. When the ice shelf is gone the backbone of winter is fractured, forget what the calendar says.

Last week I rode the fat bike to the river on a day of late chill and cool breeze but when I got there the river was wide open and full and the ice had gone to ruin in the thaw of earlier days. I stood on the edge and watched the river flow silently. There were two otters in the distance. They saw me and moved away then dove and I did not see them again. When they were gone there was nothing except for the river and the woods and what little ice remained.

I rode the bike along the edge of the river where crusty snow gave way to dirt and then back to snow again. It was chilly and I thought, how odd to be chilled when the temperature is 20; a month ago that was thaw weather.

I hoped I’d find more ice to ride on but it was gone. The long white ribbon of ice that I’d hoped for was no more.

I laid the bike down and walked to the river’s edge. The water was moving like time itself moves, moving steady like the wind and cloud and the seasons. I stood and watched the water and knew something had ended, that winter was gone and with it things undone and pledges unfulfilled. It is that way with seasons; they flow like the rivers in our lives, moving all the time. We look back at opportunities lost; look ahead to the new times.

I turned my back to the river and to winter and rode the bike up the hill and into a new season.

The Birkebeiner that wasn’t

In the old days there were Friday Night Fights. Grainy TV and two boxers in the ring; a square of canvas reality bound by rope as if the intent was to confine within the boundaries the energy and mayhem of those inside. Two boxers; a fixed arena; slugging it out.
At times one fighter would be hopelessly overmatched, struggling against all odds, against all hope, against what seemed the cruelty of the world beyond the ring.

You’d always root for him. We love to pull for the underdog, for the certain-to-be-loser, hoping against hope that in the waning minutes of the final round, down but not quite out, against the ropes and seemingly without hope, the underdog would reach back and unload the haymaker of the right hand and connect hard and in the end raise his hands in triumph. Against all odds.

It rarely happened. What are the odds? What odds that the overmatched pugilist, pummeled time and time again, would rise up in victory? Slim and none. That was the chance: Slim and none. Not unlike a team in the Super Bowl being down a couple dozen points at halftime and coming back to win. Really, what are the odds?

That was the story last week at the American Birkebeiner. A week of thawing weather hit like the heavy-handed punches of a boxer and put the race on the ropes. A day of 60 degrees; a hard shot to the body. Another 60 degree day; a right hook to the jaw. A warm day, again; a body blow like a boxer taking a hard hit, staggering back on his heels. The Birkie took on a personality, an organic being not just an event. You felt bad for it in the way you would for a person.

The weather pummeled the Birkie. Temperatures above average and not by a little. Early week and a breaking news report; the lake over which the last kilometers of the race ran, Lake Hayward, was opening up near town. The race director, via Facebook video, summed it up: “We can get you on the lake; we can’t get you off.”
Wham! A hard shot to the head of the Birkie. Now the race would not finish downtown in Hayward, that glorious three-block stretch of Main Street, covered with trucked-in snow and lined with throngs of cheering spectators. That would not happen. The race would be shortened.

The skiers watched it unfold. Watched the weather come in big and dark like an overweight puncher, seemingly all fat and flab but no, with a mean streak cut into its soul with a jagged knife and the ability to hit hard. The race stood like the patsy and took another blow.

The big haymaker came on Monday night when hard rains moved in, near an inch and a half. The rain beat and battered what remained of the race course, that hard-packed ribbon of compacted snow that ran from Cable to Hayward and on race day would be the center of the ski world for many. The rains hit it and hit it hard and left the race backed into the corner, beaten and bloodied and stumbling.

After the rains came they announced the race would, at best, go halfway, from Cable to Co. Hwy. OO, known in Birkie parlance as “Double Oh.” The Birkie was on the ropes and barely hanging on.

The rain on frozen ground left pools of water in low areas. The race crew brought portable generators and sump pumps to remove the water. The sound of generators and pumps filled the late February air in the middle of the winter woods; the heartbeat of the race on life support.

There is always hope. It springs, so we are told, eternal. There is hope when Rocky is beaten to a near pulp; there is hope when your team is down 25 in the Super Bowl; there is hope when Aaron Rodgers throws a Hail Mary that rises into the stratosphere before rainbowing down toward terra firma. Always hope.
The hope last week was the snowstorm forecast for Friday.

Five inches, maybe eight. Did someone hear a foot? Yes, a foot of snow coming in on Friday! They’d pack that snow down and Saturday morning run a race, a race shorter than planned but a race nonetheless. The snow would fall hard and pile up and the Birkie would swing hard, connect and raise arms in triumph.

Against all odds.

The snow was the hope and the salvation. That big storm was the Hail Mary come to Birkie-land, the Rocky Balboa comeback over Apollo Creed, the beaten and downtrodden rising up in triumph. The snow, the big snow, oh yes, that would make all things right and the largest race on the continent would rise up in all its power and glory and majesty.

On Friday it would snow; on Saturday we would ski. It was destiny. It would be the Miracle Birkie.

It didn’t happen. Not even close. The big storm was a narrow band of heavy snow but it moved south, shifted just a few degrees off target. The storm, on the weather map, was the shape of a dagger, long and thin and pointed. It missed the Birkie trail and in so doing cut out the heart of the big race.

Thirty miles away they got snow. Thirty miles; the distance, give or take, of the full length Birkebeiner, Cable to Hayward, start to finish.

On Friday morning skiers in town for the race pressed faces to windows and looked out at gray, funereal skies and snow flurries. The forecast had changed; less than an inch was due.

On this day there would be no comeback; on this morning there would be no glory; on this day, only heartache and disappointment and loss.

Eleven o’clock Friday morning and the announcement came: The race was cancelled. There would be no miracle comeback this time around.

February weather ….

I look at the weather forecast with a sense of foreboding. It looms as something not quite real, ethereal and dark like a thin edge of storm cloud etched dark on the horizon. It is unsettling as a sound in the dark of night. That’s all a forecast is, really: A sound in the dark that suggests ill will to come, nothing concrete, thought versus a reality, portent with the power of suggestion.

A mid-February forecast of temperatures at 50 degrees makes me edgy. That forecast is to me the sound in the night on the fringes of hearing that leaves me awake and wide eyed and straining to hear more. It is only after a while I can relax and accept what comes.

That’s the way I am. A winter forecast of warm weather to come unnerves me.

I look at the weather forecast repeatedly through the day; first thing in the morning and last thing at night. And in between as if it might change by repeated viewing. It never does, never changes, at least not a major shift. I may as well look at it once a day or not at all and just take what comes of it. But I do look at it, look at it a lot.

This weekend’s forecast shows warm and a chance of rain and all this in what should be prime ski season with the Birkebeiner a week away. I don’t think of the Birkebeiner as often as I think of the weather but the difference is not as great as you may imagine. I never put on a pair of skis without thinking of the Birkie and usually, if the snow is good, I start skiing in December so the race is on my mind a lot; a constant, just like the weather.

Ski the Birkie enough times and you’ll see most of it all when it comes to weather. I’ve started out at minus 15 degrees and over 30 degrees. I’ve skied it during a snowstorm and during freezing rain. I’ve seen deep snow on beautiful days or decaying snow that left bare patches on days that smelled of springtime. I’ve seen good days and bad, good times and not so good; felt exhilaration and despair.

Now, with a week to go, I look at the weather forecast and feel unease and uncertainty. And I think to myself, “Why doesn’t it get easier?” For the worries still are with me in the days leading up to the race. I check the weather forecast with what appears to be an obsession, fret over the possibilities, worry with each day about the potential for things to go wrong.

Things blur with time. I can remember bits and pieces of races but I do not have crystal clarity of any of them. The Birkie to me is a tapestry of interwoven threads that form a whole cloth; no one thread stands alone.

Except, perhaps for one. A time ages ago, 1981, when we had a thaw come roll over the land like a wave of despair. I remember calling friends who were at Telemark Lodge when there was a lodge and when all things Birkebeiner were orbits of that place. I remember calling and asking of conditions and being told it was 60 degrees with pouring rain and the snow was going fast.

That was not good news but in my life it was the least of it.

My mother died that week. Cancer took her after a long struggle. I’d watched her suffer in pain without complaint. She died on a dreary day as February snow was decaying. Despair and sorrow were heavy on my mind. We scheduled her funeral for Saturday, the day of the Birkie.
I can’t really say if I felt any sadness that I’d miss the race. It wasn’t important, not that week. Not much was.

Then it rained that ungodly rain and the snow washed away and they could not hold the race. On the day the Birkebeiner was scheduled we buried my mother under sullen cloud in late February.
They did not cancel the race, they merely postponed it. As if, fat chance, there would be snow in two weeks after the original date. Except that there was. Except that a freak blizzard dumped a ton of snow on the race course and two weeks later against all odds and against all expectations they held the race.

I don’t remember much about the details in that race. I remember it was a smaller field of skiers; many who’d flown in for the original date could not return. I remember there was plenty of snow and the track was good. I remember that I skied very well, moving up through the ranks of skiers ahead of me, passing one and then another.

I remember getting to the halfway point and a friend was there and he looked at me in wide-eyed shock and said, “Geez Mode, you’re in second place!” I remember thinking to myself, I don’t think I can hold it.

I didn’t. The lack of training caught up to me and one skier and then another and another passed me. I remember leaning on my poles, dead in the water with a long way to go and knowing it was over for me. I remember wishing I could have skied a better race in memory of my mother.

I ended up, heck, I’m not even sure; 12th or 18th or something; a long way from second.
So it went. So it goes. Next year I skied it again and I’ve kept on skiing it.

But I still worry about the weather. I still obsess about the forecast. I still fret and worry. And every year, every single Birkebeiner, I remember my mother and all she meant to me.

Good old-fashioned skiing will cure what ails you

I’ve been fighting a cold. It’s not a big deal. I don’t want to sound whiney. My nose is stuffy; I feel clumsy; I nod off in the chair at night, wake with a neck-snapping jerk, think to myself, “It must be 10, 10:30 at least.” Look at the clock; 8:30.

I go to bed early, swallow mystery pills that Sally assures me will send a cold packing, eat hot soup and drink liquids. It’s not real serious, just annoying. There’s some nasty stuff going around, variations on the flu that’ll knock you into next week and leave you pale and wasted and not enjoying life very much. That’s serious. What I’ve got is just a niggling little thing.

I blame the weather. I don’t blame the weather for much but I blame it for my cold. It was the thaw over the past two weeks, that ugly January Thaw that came early and stayed late. Temperatures above freezing, rain, snow turning gray; gloom and doom ruled the land.

At long last it turned cold and things were normal except for the streets and sidewalks; they resembled a glacier. I walk to work on glazed walkways and think to myself that people my age fall and break hips and are never the same again. This does not improve my mood or my confidence.

But that’s not what I blame my cold on. No, I contend, and have for decades, that winter weather with temperatures in the high 20s and 30s is just not any good for a body. You often get humidity along with the rising temperatures, sometimes some fog, and it all just settles like some otherworldly miasma. And it makes you sick.

Or so I believe. I have no facts to back this. I don’t need them. Cold winter weather? Ten above, zero, below zero: Nobody gets colds or flu then. It’s the thaw that gets you.

I once read something to the effect that more people do in fact get colds during times of warmer winter weather but that was based on the fact that in moderate temperatures people are more likely to go out and mingle. And if they have a cold or flu they pass it along. In bitter cold, so the study went, people who are under the weather stay home and don’t mix.

Maybe that’s true. I prefer to think that cold weather, hard January cold, kills germs, and warmish, damp weather encourages their growth.

So I blame the thaw for my little cold.

I also blame the thaw for the fact I wasn’t able to do much to fight my cold. Short reason; the warm weather messed up the ski trails and so I was not able to get out and ski. And why, you might certainly ask, does that matter? Another of my truths: Cross country skiing can cure what ails you. Period.

There is nothing to back this up either, understand. No facts. I still take it as gospel, a rock solid foundation on which to enjoy better health in the winter.

If I’m fighting some ailment, achy muscles, a cold, some bug or whatever, I go skiing. I bundle up good, put on an extra layer of insulation, and then I ski, nice and easy. I work up a good sweat. I do not ski fast. I do not ski long. I just ski. Warm weather or cold, I just ski.

Then I go home, take a hot shower, have some soup and take a nap. Works every time!

I think it’s best with the old time classic technique; skating doesn’t have the restorative power. Classic skiing, kick and glide, letting the muscles stretch and work, that’s the ticket. Ask most any skier, I think they’ll agree.

The past two weeks, what with the thaw, skiing was not an option. I worked in the wood shop building drawers for kitchen cabinets and breathing in sawdust. It did not do me much good in terms of fighting my cold. Wood work and hot soup just doesn’t cut it compared to skiing.

So I blame the weather, both for bringing on the cold and for me not being able to do much about it.

So it goes.

This week we got some snow, not much but enough. The ski trails were buffed up; the temperature was in the high teens. Just right!

I dressed the way I normally do then added another layer on top. I slid a neck gaiter to cover my throat and hold in the heat. Then I went skiing. Sally told me not to ski too long and I lied and said I would keep it easy.

I was chilled at the start. Ten minutes in the heat was building and it was as it should be. It was cloudy and breezy but after half an hour the sun started to break through. The snow was fresh and white and beautiful. I skied for an hour, paused, then kept on. I did not ski fast. I skied steady and easy and let the heat build.

The woods to the sides of the trail were freshened with the new snow; shadows and drifts gave it a look that was somehow dreamlike as if I had been set down in a new place far from home. But familiar; I’d been there before. I saw tracks, wolf or coyote, fresh in the snow. One of them was large and I leaned toward wolf versus coyote but I don’t know enough to be certain.

I skied for two hours and I was tired by the end. I drove home and heated up some soup and sat at the table and ate it. It was very good. Then I took a long, hot shower. I told Sally I felt better already.

Cold weather to kill the germs and time on skis, a cure for what ails you as January slides behind us and February looms large.

Winter in the Northwoods: Never know what Mother Nature has in store

There is no cold like the first cold of January. January cold is pure and real and piercing, searing and deep. January cold is the real cold of winter and when it comes all pretense falls away; winter is here and it is here to stay.
The cold of what, two, two and a half weeks past now? That cold was the cold of January come home to us. Minus 15 give or take; couple nights running.

Daytime better but not much. Above zero but not a whole lot above.

The first day or two, that cold really hurts a person. It runs deep and brings chill and despair. Couple that cold with nightfall that seems to drop like a heavy curtain in late afternoon and one feels like the world has become a harsh and cruel place. We deal with it. Live up here and you’d darn well better find some way to cope. Either that or start the long slide to cabin fever. That affliction will leave one ill tempered and bitter at every passing day, treating the cold as personal affront.

We got through it, that bitter cold. Then came snow, part and parcel of a normal Wisconsin winter. Say what you may but cold always bites harder over thin snow. Once we get a good layer of snow down the cold never seems as bad.

Thursday a week ago we skied, a trio of us, skied as temperatures budged a bit over ten above zero. The sky was blue and the sun bright over a couple inches of snow. It was a pretty good day to ski though one can argue that any day of skiing is a good day.

We skied out in the winter woods, into clear cut areas and back into the woods. There was a breeze but in the shelter of trees it was bearable. The ski trail was near to perfect; freshly cut, clear snow, tracks of a skier and dog ahead of us.

We did one loop in an hour then started another trail and came upon a pair of skiers. We stopped to visit. I mentioned the skier ahead of us with the dogs, the ones whose tracks we’d seen. The one skier looked at me like I was daft. “There’s nobody ahead of you. Those are wolf tracks.”

Oh.

I recovered best I could: “I guess that’s why they’re so big.”

Wolves, three of them, smart and efficient had been using the packed ski trail instead of the energy-robbing deep snow off to the side. We’d skied over their tracks for a few miles. They were cruising the woods as we were and, as were we, on the packed trail for easier going.

The woods in the presence of wolves seem a different place than not. We skied on, easy and smooth and enjoying it all. But the shadows seemed a bit deeper than before.

On Sunday, on a different trail, I looked up and off to the side and saw a snowshoe hare still as a statue in the shadow. I coasted past, stopped and turned back. The rabbit (yes, I know, a hare not a rabbit but c’mon, you know what I mean) did not move. I got close, a few ski lengths away. It hunched there, white fur, black sparking eye and gray shaded ears.

Then I moved and it bounded away and was lost to the thickness. And I thought: Wolves one day, hare the next time out; both ends of the predator/prey spectrum. Thought; I wonder how much of this I ski past, head down, eyes on the track ahead. I like to think I see things but in truth I really don’t. My loss.

I skied once again; the third time of the past week, on a day when the weather had turned and the temperatures had risen. The evening prior we met friends and commented that it had the feel of late winter, of March. The air was heavy and humid and there was scent of dirt. Winter can deliver up a lot of things but scent is not one of them. Winter is cold and snowy but there is rarely scent in the air. On this night the darkness carried the scent of spring.

Next day I skied as temperatures bumped 40 degrees, a full 60 degrees spread from the cold of a few weeks earlier. The sun was high and bright and there were no clouds at all. The trail was moist and the skis very slow and I had to work harder than I like. January thaw had come.

I skied an hour and a half. I did not see another soul; had the trails to myself. On this day there was no wolf sign, no hares or rabbits, nothing moving at all. I pushed on the poles, skied one loop, then another and a third. It felt like spring skiing; warm and breezy and very nice. I thought of the swings in it all, the unpredictable pendulum of season and weather and what it brings to us. Nature is never predictable no matter what we think.

That morning someone had asked if I ever got away in the winter. I assured him I did, every time I went skiing. “No, no,” he retorted, “I mean south, Florida, Mexico, someplace warm.”

I told him, “No reason to.” And I meant it.