Comfort with Discomfort

It would be easy for the uninitiated reader of all the wonderful outdoorsy books and blogs out there to assume that all we do in the outdoors comes with ease and comfort.  One can read entire shelves concerning life afield, and never encounter a mention of biting ticks and mud and soggy feet.  In much of our literature there exists a dearth of reality, in which the protagonists always bag the game with ease and aplomb, and usually have some schmaltzy life-affirming quip to back up their legendary shooting.

Never having experienced the sport, a novice might wade into fly fishing, quite literally, without any consideration given to the fact that they might someday find themselves staring, rather startled and vexed, at an impromptu piece of feathery jewelry dangling painfully from an appendage they'd not intended to pierce.

It ain't always wine and roses out there.  In fact, it rarely is.  A lot of times, it's even gonna suck a little.  If you do what we do outside, you're going to sunburn and shiver, bring home scrapes and bruises along with a full game pouch.  Or end up with a fish thrashing on the other end of a crank bait buried in your leg.  Them's the ropes, but it isn't often addressed in the glossy mags or erudite literature, and I think a touch of reality is in order.


Excursions for most of us common folk begin with throwing the gear and some food in the truck. Then we do what we do all day, and haul it all back out of the vehicle, slightly more muddy than it was when we left home.  There are no dog handlers, no chefs, no maître d'.  It's up to us to power through the slogging and sorting, the cold and wet and tired, bird cleaning and deer gutting by headlamp, because this is what we love to do.  The vast majority of the time there are no panoramic vistas or transcendental moments.  Those are the rare treasures we seek but seldom find, and they are that much more powerful in their rarity after countless hours sitting in the cold or stumbling around on slippery river rocks until we take an unplanned swim.

The following is taken from an email I was forced to send to my entire contacts list years ago, as referenced in one of my very early (and pretty amusing, if I do say so) posts here -- Falling Down

It was going to be a glorious morning.

Waders on, fly rod in hand, I made my way down a slick bank to enjoy a few casts before officially starting my day.  It was then that I suddenly found myself flailing at nothing, enjoying a rather pleasant -- if unexpected -- weightlessness.  Followed immediately by a free fall to a muddy, wet finish.  I stuck the landing with my chin, and the Romanian judge gave it an 8.6 with a the full level of difficulty rating.

My phone is toast.  The screen shattered somewhere between the second and third full twist in the pike position, with no way to retrieve the contacts.  It also feels like I bruised my duodenum and sprained sixteen ribs, but that's not the point of this message.  Please reply here with your contact info if you wish your number(s) to be in my phone.  Or don't, if you're sick of me.

Of course replacements are currently backordered, so Verizon has kindly provided me with a lovely Bakelite rotary-dial eight-pound loaner to lug around in case the need to call in danger close air support should arise.

Have a nice day.

It was actually an abysmally useless early Windows phone for the sake of setting the record straight, but that isn't what we're driving at here.  This is: Much of what we do outside leads to a lot of hanging around slightly bored, getting frozen solid or cooked like a brisket.  Yes, there are those glorious moments of accomplishment, but there's also a lot of waiting around in the rain -- and trust me, there's a very fine line between the badass-ery of hunting in the freezing rain and simply sitting in a sopping duck blind like you were dropped there by a short bus.

I recently listened to Meat Eater's Steven Rinella among a panel of guests on a very popular podcast.  In the course of their discussion about the physical demands of hunting, one of the guests (I can't recall which) summed it up by saying that sometimes you just have to become comfortable with discomfort.  I'd never heard it put more succinctly, nor had I realized that was precisely what I and many other outdoorsy folks do without ever thinking about it.

Years ago I took my neighbor and friend in Madison ice fishing for his first time.  He was a professor at the UW, southern by birth, and a hell of a good dude.  An outdoorsy kid decades before, after years cooped in classrooms and meetings he was finding his way afield again in his free time, and I was frankly honored to take part.  He mentioned that he'd like to try ice fishing, so when I knew the bite was on we bundled up, and hit The Triangle on Monona Bay right downtown.

It was a steely hard mid-winter morning with blustery winds, but I didn't own a shelter big enough for the two of us at the time, so we braved it on upturned buckets like everyone used to do.  We caught a passel of fat bluegills before the whirring glow of the Vexilar, and I called it for the warmer climes of home just when I began to worry he was going to turn blue and topple off his bucket in one big frozen chunk.

Months after that, as we drank beer and told stories in my living room -- I think he often took great pleasure in escaping what he termed the "insufferable droning of academicians" with me -- he shared that one of the things he was most struck by from our day together on the ice was that I hadn't worn gloves while I fished.  His wife corroborated this sentiment, stating that he'd repeatedly mentioned it and stared at her dumbfounded when he'd returned home. 

Now, any jigger of panfish through the ice will attest that when the bite is hot, you can't really wear gloves and remain effective.  They eventually get wet and useless or gooped up with fish slime and useless, and you can't really tie a knot or bait a tiny hook with them on anyway, so you end up tossing them aside to get your jig back in front of fish faces with as much alacrity as possible.  And your hands get cold, but you deal with it.

I don't share this story through some need to express online machismo (fishing without gloves had never occurred to me as exceptionally "tough" or even "fucking crazy," to quote our shocked looking southern professor friend), but to demonstrate a reaching of comfort with discomfort.  My hands get as cold as anybody's, but we ice fishermen know that putting gloves on in that moment isn't the right play.  You just ride it out as long as you're on the school.  First your hands sting, then they ache, then it goes away.  As long as they turn pink and not blue or white, you're fine.

Pro Tip- Occasionally huffing and puffing on frozen hands, whacking them on your legs and cussing, or boinging around furiously with your hands thrust between your thighs like you just smacked your thumb with a hammer are all perfectly acceptable substitutions for gloves during short fishing breaks.  But you don't do any of them in front of your male Arkansan neighbor.  You sit somberly and give your best Intrepid Ice Guide thousand yard stare from behind the beard and mirrored shades.  There is a manliness protocol when taking southern guests ice fishing.

When asked how I can stand to sit on a frozen lake or hunt in the rain for hours by my "city friends" I often equate this becoming comfortable with discomfort to being hungry in a meeting or sometime when you can't eat.  You acknowledge it and move on.  Toughen up, Buttercup.  Or alternatively, if you're gonna run for the truck every time you spring a leak and spurt a little blood... or take a massive digger on snowshoes right in front of your buds Pike and Rum Runner moments after proclaiming your expertise to them on said appliances...  maybe stamp collecting is a better option for you.

I'd love to try a hunt of ease and luxury someday.  Maybe a proper English driven pheasant shoot with a scatter gun that costs more than my first car (which isn't really saying much -- almost every shotgun at Dick's costs more than my rust and powder blue Volare station wagon did).  I'd make long passing shots with grace and humble wit, then retire to the library, all herringbone and tattersall, for scotch and talk of favorite dogs in front of a warming fire, the birds and guns left to be tended to by handlers and cooks.  

But my hunt will almost assuredly never end that way.  Instead, I track mud into the house, and drink PBR while starting dinner.  Brian combs burrs out of Buddy and carps about city people.  Or bird watchers.  Or people who ride bikes ("goddamn hippies")... mostly anybody who isn't us.  The man has issues and a rare talent for colorfully entertaining vehemence, but he knows his way around the woods better than almost anyone I know.


Just occasionally though, after all the discomfort, just when you've made your peace and accepted it, there does come that perfect fish or deer or bird.  Or simply a moment of grace, a pittance of quiet understanding at the feet of the natural world.  Perhaps a short escape into that perfect panorama.

"I Think I got One!"

Ice fishing for me is almost always a solitary endeavor.  I like it that way.  Not that I'm a misanthropic hermit, guarding my spots with crazed eyes and a maniacal grin.  It's just one of the few things that I do well truly alone.  Most all of my favorite outdoor pursuits are done better with partners.  Bird hunting, coyotes, foraging for mushrooms and food, all are more efficient and pleasurable with partners.  You can deer hunt very successfully alone, but that's only nine days out of the year for me.

It think it's partly because when I decided I was going to become an ice fisherman in high school, there was nobody around to show me.  Dad had little interest in stinging hands, snotsicles, and bucket back.  I don't think he'd ever even been ice fishing.  Working outside, he was more interested in a hot meal and a cold drink in front of the fire on the weekends.  And he'd probably earned them.

So I struck out on my own, making more mistakes and learning less in a couple seasons that I would have in a couple hours with a little instruction.  The tackle and baits I was using at the time are comical to me now.  But with a little determination, a lot of chemical hand warmers, and the latest copy of the In-Fisherman ice fishing edition under my arm, I made progress.  I eventually grew weary of freezing on my bucket, and attempted to build a portable pop-up shack out of some old plywood and tarps in Dad's shop.  I found a discarded storm door in his mountains of construction site refuse, and installed that on the front, a gleam of satisfaction in my eyes.

Then I tried to pull the monstrosity out on the ice.  I think it made three or four fishing trips.  Initially, pride of ownership and the swagger of youth prevented me from admitting that it was too heavy to use on anything but glare ice.  I heaved and sweated, cursed and panted, and that was before I had load it on top of my car after fishing.  It ended up being relegated to the back yard on Lathrop Street in college.  With eight guys and two bathrooms in that house, it made a perfect place to relieve oneself of excess beer during parties, complete with a hole cut in the floor.  From ice fishing glory to makeshift outhouse, a precipitous fall indeed.

Back in the present, I have at my disposal piles of ice fishing tackle and equipment.  Specialized clothing and electronics, rods and reels, jigs and baits.  While I am no true expert on the ice, two decades of experience under one's belt goes a long way to improve the odds of putting a fish fry on the table.

I'd been planning to hit a convenient bluegill spot for a while, and was pleased when Roady called me early last week to tell me that his son was dying to go on his first ice fishing excursion.  Surely, ice fishing in a group can be a blast at times, especially when getting a kid involved is the point of the whole thing.  We set the time and place, and I was secretly thrilled when Roady and his son Cody braved chilly single-digit temperatures and an intense southwest wind to join me fishing for bluegills last Saturday morning.

It was with a little trepidation that I'd set up in the dark about an hour before they arrived.  The fishing had been reported as slow, the ice a little iffy in some spots because of our warm winter, and the weather was pretty brutal, at least for a kid.  I didn't know how long a six-year-old's fishing passion would withstand the conditions.

I'd considered bringing the power auger because it might have been necessary to pop bunch of holes searching for fish, and because I was a little boy once -- big noisy power tools are cool in the mind of a tike.  I stood taken aback then, when after drilling the first hole, I discovered that there were only about six inches of ice in this little bay.  Plenty of ice to be safe, mind you, but scarcely a third of what I am accustomed to this time of year.  Another reminder to take internet reports with a grain of salt.  No need for the power auger.

The wind picked up as the sun slowly made it's pale wintry presence known, chasing shadows to the far shore and lending little warmth.  As darkness gave way, I found the gills on my Vexilar (a sonar device used in ice fishing). 

For those of you not in the know, the broad orange bar represents the bottom of the lake.  The thinner green lines above the bottom are fish.

This is my home game in winter.  These are fish I know well, having been taught by them over the last 15 years.  They are city fish, as wary as city people can be when either are forced to be.  The spot is well known, and often produces well, but it gets fished hard.  To have any chance of success in this slightly cloudy shallow water, you have to play the finesse game.  Using ultra-light rods armed with 1lb. test line and miniscule #14 jigs, you deliberately, achingly slowly, lower your bait to them.  Make them watch it.  Make them want it, need it.  Like restaurant patrons waiting at the bar while waitresses glide by, gorgeous platters of succulent food going to somebody else, these fish need to be made ravenous before they will be fooled by your presentation.  You're half fisherman and half burlesque girl in this spot.  It's all about the tease.

You can slam a heavy jig slobbed with a wax worm or thick plastic to the bottom and catch a few fish here, but you won't catch many, and they will be relatively small.  Concentrating hard on whisper-thin, fragile line, I slowly teased and taunted them until one finally committed to my offering.

Roady arrived shortly after that first fish was iced, a hyper, North Face-clad munchkin in tow.  Cody was plainly thrilled to be there, firing questions at machine gun pace, barely able to sit still, not a care given to the cold.  I gave him a rod rigged with one of those heavy jigs that are much easier to fish, and set him to fishing as quickly as I could.  There was little chance he would be able to concentrate enough to fish a tiny jig slowly on line barely thicker than his young blond hair, so I went with the less productive, much easier-to-fish bait, and prayed.

Stifling a laugh as he shook the living hell out of that rod like he was strangling a cat, I tried to explain to him that he should jig a little less rambunctiously, while attempting to show him how to use the Vexilar.  I had my doubts, thinking the mysterious looking ring of rainbow lights would be too complex and boring.  How wrong I was.  The computer age has blessed his young mind with an understanding of electronics that would've baffled me at his age.  He was soon reading the screen with the ease of a seasoned ice man.  It was a hit, and I don't think he would've been nearly as interested without the whirring glow of the sonar to keep him occupied.  I know the feeling.

I freely admit this ice fisherman's heart went a little soft when clambered up into my lap, without announcement or pretense, in order to get a better angle on the hole.  He jigged and jigged, mesmerized by the screen and the image of his bait going up and down in the water column.  He asked a question after question about the fish and the water.  He wanted to know if there were sharks there.  Then, while Roady and I were talking to each other, not even paying attention to Cody, he was all over one.

"I think I got one!"  Are there any sweeter words to the fishing teacher?  I looked over, and sure enough, there was the rod tip, arced over and dancing.

Soon enough a little bluegill was wrapped in little hands, and the smiling would not stop.  His first fish through the ice.  We marveled over his catch, and took pictures.  We congratulated him and his mighty fish catching abilities.  We high-fived.

A bluegill a piece and smiles all around...

Cody fished basically on his own for quite a while after that, sitting in dad's lap for warmth and comfort.  Flush with success, he wanted badly to catch more fish.  I wanted it badly too, but it wasn't in the cards.  He eventually grew bored of staring at the screen and shaking the rod way too hard, and as Road and I sat in my shack, we glanced up to see him go rocketing by on his belly.  He'd had enough sitting still, and was tearing around the ice, flopping on his belly and sliding it out, Slip-n-Slide style.  It looked like a blast, but Roady and I agreed we'd probably end up going for stitches in the chin if we tried it.  We aren't young and rubber anymore.

There was a little drama and some crocodile tears getting him out of there.  He wanted to stay, of course, and he was seriously pissed that we'd thrown his fish back, no trouble accusing his dad of being the single worst fishing guide in history.  He wanted to eat his like I was going to mine, and he was making that very clear.  All of which I took as wonderful signs pointing to our fishing adventures together in the future.

I watched them all the way back to shore, doing the ice fisherman's shuffle you do to prevent falling.  Then I got back to the business of actual finesse fishing.  I caught a few more fish, but it was approaching mid-day, not the best time to be in this fishing hole, and my heart wasn't in it.

It was with Cody.  His vibrating excitement when he got there, his vociferous protestations while leaving, and most of all, the screech and smile that accompanied his first fish through the ice.  I remember my first fish vividly, through the same heady, sentimental lens I recall my first kiss (Hi, Kim - sorry, but it's true, swaying to Stand By Me on that deck not withstanding).  The fish was a rock bass in about 15 feet of very clear water off the end of the Country Club Pier in Fontana, and I watched him inhale my night crawler against the pale background of his spawning bed far below my feet.  To this day, I have no idea why, but I cried when Dad thwacked him on the head with the handle of his pocket knife to stop the flopping around so he could clean him.  

I was older then than Cody is now, but I hope he remembers his first fish through the ice with some of the fondness that I do mine.

Father and Son

Karmic Currency

There is a place I go where the water rushes over cobble.  Riffle to pool to run, it snakes its way through verdant fields and woodlots, a shimmering ribbon through emerald summer expanse.  The water is cool and raucous, in a hurry, yet easily distracted.  It alternately pulls at your legs and lulls to a snail's pace.  There are fish here, and big.  They do not show themselves often, but with patience and the willingness to learn they can be fooled into thrashing a fly.  More often, they choose to remain hidden, content to dodge the fool stumbling around the river flailing a stick.

There is a place I go where the snow falls on hemlock and spruce.  A spring burbles forth from the sand, it's pool wearing a crown of watercress.  The water runs away, to a place I have never followed.  I'm content to sit there, and watch through gin-clear water as miniscule grains of sand gurgle and churn.  I saw a bull frog there one time when I was a kid, and always somehow expect him to be sitting there again, awaiting my return, but he never is.  When the snow rests on claret branches of red osier dogwood, above the chatoyant pool ringed in deep winter green, I think it is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

There is place I go where the quartzite and shale jut and tumble jaggedly from the ground.  Pine and spruce cling bravely to seemingly impossible haunts.  I marvel at their toughness -- life just want to be.  Blackberry brush can make short work of light pants and pale legs there, but when I summit the ridge the view dulls the pain.  A vista like that could drive a man to write poetry.  Not this guy, but some guy.  The wind often whips and the river far below peeks from the trees on the bends.  At the right time of year, you can look down at the turkey vultures sailing effortlessly on thermals.



I live and work in the city.  In a great city that I love, no less.  Madison is a place with a thriving downtown, wonderful entertainment venues, and a gorgeous campus.  Lord knows, I've sipped or guzzled my fair share of beer at the terrace or in parking lots before a football game.  There are outstanding restaurants everywhere, the Dane County Farmers Market is an absolute jewel on the Capitol Square, and the people are almost always genuinely happy to see you.

But they aren't always "my people."  As an outdoorsman in the city, I'm often reminded that I don't quite fit the mold.  When people here learn that I enjoy being outside, they love to talk about camping, snowshoeing, and bird watching.  All things I enjoy doing on a regular basis.  But when the subjects of hunting and fishing come up they can sometimes drift away to the the next conversation at the cocktail party, a sidelong glance of disdain shared with their vegan doula life partner in the dreads.  Being a gun owner in this progressive town can sometimes feel a bit like being a leper.

Yes, I kill things and eat them.  So does everyone else, even if it's just broccoli.  I'm simply taking out the middle man.  I can see the line between taking in the beauty of a deer and eating it.  Deer hunters watch deer without touching a gun or bow for the sheer enjoyment of it more than anybody else.  I simply don't have a problem stepping up to the plate, and getting a little blood and guts on my hands.  You cannot get more free range organic than that.

But people have prejudices and preconceived notions about hunters and fishermen.  They range from the bloodthirsty killer, stalking the woods to maim, wound, torture and kill anything that crosses his path to the bumbling Bubba, too dumb to get a job and check to spend down at the food co-op.  I am decidedly neither of these.  I am consistently stilled by wonder and awe outside, and dedicated to learning about what I see and feel.

My father was an expert in the woods without being much of a hunter.  I seldom saw him stumped on the identification of a tree, flower, or bird.  And when he was, a point was made to go home to the sagging shelf of field guides, and look it up together.  This often lead to informal lessons in anything from evolution to forest succession to the carbon cycle.  No rods and guns needed.  I still carry much of that knowledge with me whether I'm carrying a creel or binoculars and bird book.  It opens an entire world of beauty and understanding to me every time I step off the path.

His brother, my uncle, is an amateur astronomer, among many other brainy and impressive things.  I remember him pulling out into the frigid Michigan night as a boy for a chance to view Halley's Comet through his telescope.  I don't think we ever saw it that night, but I went back to school so enthralled with it, that I did my 5th grade science fair project on the comet.  While I'm nothing more than a debutant star gazer now, I did take with me enough to learn many of the constellations visible in my part of the world, and I can find my way out of a navigational pickle if needed on a clear night in the woods or on a stream.

Growing up near the Kettle Moraine, we were inundated with glacial geomorphology in school as youngsters, and I can happily recognize some formations while afield, often boring my hunting companions with soliloquies on kame, eskers, and erratics.  Thanks to Brian, Woody, and a host of great cooks I know, I enjoy foraging.  Mushrooms, ramps, wild asparagus, and many others all find their way across my table.  This year, I want to pickle milkweed pods.  What?  They look delicious.  And when it really comes down to it, I enjoy nothing more than a good long strenuous hike or paddle. Work up a nice little froth and get the joints all loose and bendy.  No other gear required.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that most of us out there in the glades and valleys are not simply killers blinded by the thirst for bloody meat or knuckleheads fueled by Pabst and beef jerky.  It's not a Disney flick out there, but neither is it Saw 5.

So, how do we, as active participants, carnivores armed with modern weapons and ancient incisors, fit into the web?  With forethought and respect.

If we wish to exist out there, it is our duty to learn.  You don't have to be a walking taxonomic key, channeling Linnaeus at every turn.  There is pleasure to be had and knowledge to be gained without learning every name of every flower and bug.  In fact, I think some people (I'm looking at you, fly fishermen) can fall back on book learning and Latin a little too much.  I can remember asking my mother the name of a certain iridescent beetle on a leaf in the sunlight.  She replied, "I have no idea, but just look at how beautiful it is."  Genius.

As hunters and fishermen, our most important objective, our singular duty, has to be making a clean kill.  We're taking a life to enjoy the meat.  That also means the respect has to extend to the campfire and kitchen.

Sometimes a dinner bombs.  We overcook things, forget ingredients, or fail to learn proper technique.  Personally, I view this shortfall in the same light as poor marksmanship.  Practice in the kitchen is, for me at least, just as important as practice on the shooting range.  Without it, we are cheating that animal terribly in the exchange of karmic currency.  Not only do we owe it to the animal to bring the end as painlessly and quickly as possible, but we owe the respect needed to prepare it well, and enjoy it in good company.

Blue rare venison, fairly chased and respectfully prepared

2011, A Retrospective

I know a lot of you who read this are in these pictures, so I thought I'd post some of my favorites from 2011.  My initial thought was to remain within the theme of this blog; hunting, fishing, and food.  There are so may shots I like, however, that we are going to wander a bit into the realms of tailgates, weddings, and random parties as well.  I try to avoid the "grip & grin" hero shots in most posts, but I'll indulge in a few here.

One thing I've noticed already is that if I'm going to be posting a lot of pictures in the future, I need to stop taking shots with my phone, and start using a real camera.  Probably even invest in something a little grander than my little point & shoot, wonderfully waterproof and indestructible as it is.

That being said, enjoy the show!

We started off the year in Pasadena, and what a blast that was!  Right up until the Badgers lost.

I flew to New York to fish and camp with some friends.

Always tie flies with a rifle handy

Then there is Dingleballs, our annual charity event to raise money for the fight against Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma.

A little fly fishing in Michigan...

The lap of luxury

Plenty of tailgating...

Technically New Year's Day 2012, I know, but it's Lambeau!

Deer season...

Don't ask...

Now there's a trophy!

And a few more from the field...

Pee break...

I stumble into a decent tie once in a while

A nap in the woodcock woods

And if you've ever wondered what giddy full-grown fly fishermen sound like during a prolific 70 fish day, just have a listen.

Happy belated New Year, everyone!