Fleet Farm Time Machine

Suspended with feet drifting up for the surface in water as clear as the air, face down with one hand clamped on a piling grown slimy with feathery green algae.  Frozen in breath-holding time above a clean cobble bottom – this is how I first fell in love.

It wasn't big, but it was ours

It seems nearly impossible now, but there was a time when a simple auto mechanic and a school teacher, merely by the location of their modest ranch home amid the ever-multiplying McMansions along one of the most picturesque and adored lakes in Wisconsin, could be afforded access to a small private beach denied to those nearby with much greater means.   That is indeed how the world worked when I was young.

Records were kept on index cards in little wooden boxes at the public beach house back then, the gateway to all summer fun, much like Mom's box of cards for creating cherry cheesecake and Salisbury steak at home.   In a rite of spring dripping with that rare satisfaction rendered when the “have-nots” triumph over the “haves,” local kids would troop into that little clapboard beach house, and announce our names a little too loudly in case there were any rich kids from Illinois within hearing distance.   Surnames would be ticked off on the cards, and small fabric seasonal passes would be freely dispensed from a roll much like tickets at a raffle, square nylon patches little more than an inch square with the year embroidered in a circle around the perimeter.  One for each member of the household and a few extras for guests.  But ours came from the roll with the colored embroidery thread.  We got red or blue or sometimes gold, depending on the year, while those from away got only black and only after they payed.

That little colored badge of honor was quickly sewn on the lower left thigh of your trunks to be displayed proudly for the gate attendants and life guards the rest of the splashing and frolicking summer, and more importantly, for the kids emerging from shiny foreign cars with air conditioning and upholstery who had to hot-foot it all the way across the sweltering blacktop to the far entrance of the public beach.   The yuppie scum.

All socioeconomic injustices temporarily waylaid, we were free to cross the much shorter route to our gated private beach.   Or, more often, to simply hop the fence and tear down to the water in unbridled youthful glee for a day of cannonballs and jacknives on top of each other.   The gate attendants knew who we were anyway.   They were our babysitters and waitresses in winter.

In our house we had to finish our chores before mounting bikes for the almost daily speed run down the huge hill to the water, and I submit that was cruel and unusual punishment.   Dishes or vacuuming or the inexorable pain of cleaning a bathroom.   Imagine the horror.  But once our work was done we were set free to rocket our way to sunburned freedom.  On that ride down “The Big Hill” I was stopped more than once by Mr. Hutchinson, the town cop, for passing cars on my single-minded mission to achieve soggy summer fun.   The posted speed limit there was (and still is) a residentially staid 30mph, and I can happily recall glancing over to see the startled visages of drivers as I shot idiotically by on the double yellow line.   I cringe to think of the stitches and dental work (or much worse) that would've been involved had I ever put that old Schwinn down as it began to shimmy and wobble in my haste to get to the beach.

As we grew into rowdy young men, burgeoning with hormones but still too young to drive, the true proof of manhood among us was the ability to ride our bikes back up that same hill at the end of the swimming day without once touching the handlebars.  A feat I came very close to achieving many times, but never completed, I'm sorry to report.   I can rest easy now, from the remove of adulthood, with the fact that I failed.   I believe all claims of having achieved this monumental task were exaggerated or flatly untrue.   I don't think it's possible for a kid to do, and you wouldn't either if you saw the hill or a topo map.  Except for maybe in the case of Brian.  He claims to have done it a generation before me, and I believe him.   He's not normal.

Yet another rite into young manhood was the willingness to sleep “under the stars.”  There came a time when even the flimsy comforts of a tent and foam pad were eschewed by all who wished to deem themselves men of the woods.   We'd practice our young bushcraft skills, often giving up on the bow and drill fire in collective resignation that a one-match fire was almost as cool as a no-match fire and far more comforting than none at all.   Having mutilated a couple flimsy perch or shiners with a fillet knife and fire, and maybe with some wild greens or berries, we'd enjoy our paltry repast. Things were sometimes bolstered with hot dogs or beans or Oreos from home, but young mountain men in the making have amazing powers of selective memory, and these treats we summarily erased from the public record.

We'd stretch out in the grass and gaze up at the stars, fully codified in the belief that we would one day be remembered among names like Boone, Lewis, and Clark.   But here's the thing: Even on warm summer nights, even as a malleable, nearly indestructible pre-teen, you don't get a lot of sleep sprawled out right in the dirt.  Not if you've evolved past that stage twenty-five millennia prior to trying it again, anyway.

So we'd be up early.  Very early.   In that light that isn't really even light yet -- the bottomless pre-dawn calm. A time of day known best to duck hunters, third-shifters, and young knuckleheads who think it's rad to dirtbag it right on the ground.

What was there to do at this hour? The same thing there was to do every day all summer long – make for the beach.

Lake Geneva is one of the largest kettle lakes in Wisconsin.   A kettle lake, in quick and dirty lay terms, being a dent in the ground left by a retreating glacier and filled with water.  It is spring fed, deep and cold, and almost heartrendingly clear.  Like looking through a window into the earth.   One of those lakes where you park the boat in twenty five feet of crystalline water to fish for spawning bluegills in fifteen feet of water, instead of anchoring in five to cast up into two.   And sometimes, if you're paying close attention when you pull a thick spinning gill up out of those depths, you will notice a long, heavy pike or musky hovering deep down there in the wet void.   A monster of the deep glaring back up through the window.

Standing in the fishing section of the local Fleet Farm (a mid-western hardware store chain) the other day, I spied the cardboard and plastic packets of Eagle Claw snelled hooks.  The very same packs that inhabit every tackle shop, hardware store, and gas station peg board near water in the known universe, and seemingly have since the beginning of time.  They have bronze finish bait holder hooks or little gold aberdeens snelled with an eight-inch leader and a loop on the running end.  You know the ones.  I know who buys them too – twelve-year-old boys who ride their bikes down The Big Hill to the beach before the sun comes up.

Seeing those snells hanging there, I was instantly transported back to that little beach in the last throes of night, the sun not yet coming up over the drumlins seven miles to the east across the flat, dark plane.

Armed with the loop of one of those snells over your little finger, you could slip into that cold spring water and swim out to the weed line at the very deepest reaches of the white and blue swimming pier.   A few big breaths to prepare, and then a long dive down through the clear nothingness to the bottom in earliest slanting dawn.

Grab onto the pier and hover there.  The shimmering mosaic of flat round skipping stones before you in the quickly gathering morning, nature's most perfect fresco. Let the twinkling golden hook fall from your hand and hang by its leader.  Still yourself.  Just be.  If you are patient, if you become nothing in the water with your bowl cut hair standing on end and tickling, a curious sunfish will come up from the sashaying green and bite that bare hook, and you will be pinky fishing in paradise.

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.

A Diminutive King and Fallen Castle

This blog entry has been written in concert with a tying tutorial I did for my bluegill fly pattern, the Disco Cricket, over on The Fiberglass Manifesto, and author Cameron Mortenson's "Year of the Bluegill" initiative. Please head over there and check it out.  You fly fishers in particular should really enjoy the entire site.



I know a lot of us began our fishing careers chasing the humble little bluegill.  We stood there on shore, some of us with a cane pole and a bobber, and flicked squiggly globs of leaf worms to lily pads in the shallows, in hopes of hauling in a fish or two.  We didn't notice the differences between the varied species of these diminutive scrappers, nor were we aware of their many names -- long ear, shellcracker, pumpkin seed, red ear -- they were all bluegills to us kids, probably bream ("brim", as they say) to our southern counterparts.  Honestly, I still have trouble keeping all the different, brightly painted little guys straight sometimes.

Many of us learned to fish on bluegills because they are often so willing to bite.  As any muddy little kid with a sunburn and a Zebco can tell you, they will sometimes even bite on a plain gold hook when the bait can runs dry.  That makes the sunfishes royalty of the novice youth fishing world.

They're also very accessible.  Almost every splotch of blue on the map has at least a handful of sunnies patrolling the shoreline, darting into the weeds when you walk up to the bank.  Nothing is better for a kid learning to fish than actually being able to see what he's going after.  The fishing itself can be a very visual affair as well.  You can see the curious little ones swim right up, and take a nip at your bobber.  I know for myself, I wasted many a childhood afternoon trying to figure out how to catch those guys, matching wits with a three inch fish and losing.

When you do finally get a couple years of bluegill fishing under your belt, you know even more what to look for.  And what to listen for.  When the day finally comes that you spot those pie pan spawning beds laid out like honeycomb on lake bed, when you hear that little spluck! noise they make sucking in bugs from the surface, you know you're in for one of those days we fishy folk dream of.

The final part of the equation has to be the tremendous fight these buggers put up.  A bluegill flat-out pulls his little butt off.  They dart and dive, and the bigger ones do that fun spinny thing, like a maple seed falling up in reverse.  All great fun to cut your teeth on.


Then comes the time in our fishing lives when some of us are overtaken with the need to find and fight the big bluegills.  This is no longer a matter of simply flopping a bait into the city park pond, and waiting for the fish to come play.  The bruisers aren't so easily fooled -- as the saying goes, that's how they got to be bruisers, after all.  They hang out in deeper water than their slimmer brethren, they're often much more finicky about what they'll eat, and they'll yank on your 4lb. mono until they've buried your hook in the weeds, and you're left with nothing but a glob of muddy salad to show for it.  We're not in the minors anymore, this is the show, and it's wonderfully fun.

Not incidentally, bluegills are my favorite freshwater fish at the table.  Always have been.  I know the walleye and perch people will be up in arms of over this, not to mention you brookie guys and those weird, scary catfish dudes, but that's the way it is.  Given my druthers, it'd be a beer batter bluegill fry and sweet corn, with a couple thick slabs of tomato, still warm from the garden sun.  Pass me a PBR.

That's what you drink at a bluegill fry, by the way.  Go ahead and check, it's in the Constitution.  Bluegills are not craft beer fish.

For the novice fly fisher, just as the young gear fisher, bluegills are often there to help learn the sport.  Newbie fly geeks are often nearly as helpless as any kid with his first cane pole, so it works out that the quarry would be the same.  Personally, when I picked up my first dime store fly rod, and began to cast to the dink sunnies in the shallows, I was swept back to the age of dunking worms with my brother, when we'd spent more time throwing rocks than trying to catch fish.

And again, the progression with the fly rod remains the same as it was with the cane poles and spinning rods.  Obsession grows.  Sooner or later you find yourself casting past dark out with the ticks and mosquitoes, seeking advice and articles, dreaming of truly giant bulls on a fly rod.  These are not the mythic salmon of Scotland or high mountain cutties, but bluegills, through some combination of their tenacity and willingness to bite, can become downright addictive.

I don't think we need to employ Cold War era spy craft, using double secret codes and marking park benches with chalk at dusk (as is the standard internet tradecraft of covert fly fishing operatives everywhere) when mentioning that Lake Onalaska, over on the western edge of Wisconsin, is home to some of the best sunfishing you'll find anywhere.

They've pretty much put the word out.

The lake is formed by a dam on the Mississippi River.  There are miles and miles of braided water through a stand of islands at the north end of the lake where the smallmouth bass and pike fishing can be excellent.  We've spent many days up there, and occasionally nearly had to spend the night there too, after losing our way in the dozens of  near-identical looking channels.  For some reason, I was always the one who had to get out, and pull the boat over a sand bar while Brian yelled threateningly from the back of the boat, "If I have to put this beer down..."

The allure of "the chutes" as they are known locally, all those back channels and wandering paths between spits of river mud and sandy little islets, is great, but the real action happens down in the bluegill water.  Spring and fall especially, when the bite is on, you won't have to ask where, just follow the armada.  Massive sparkle fleck bass tournament rigs, fairly bristling with every fishing electronic known to exist, pull up beside plastic, roto-molded jon boats in the shallows, and everybody catches bluegills.

Lots of fish. And big ones.  Consistently over time, the biggest 'gills I've ever seen in person.  I've heard every theory out there concerning how and why this place is a sunfish factory (I like the one about the river current washing scuds and other yummies down to the pig bluegills lying in wait), but I don't think anyone really knows how exactly it works.  The important thing here, as a far as the angler is concerned, is that when the time is right, you can fight the fattest 'gills you've ever seen until the basket is full, and get up to do it again the next day.  I have, and I can personally guarantee you that none of those fish have gone to waste.



Brian inherited the trailer from Marty years before I started coming to Onalaska for bluegill bonanza weekends.  "Ol' Number 14" had been laid to rest some decades before, deemed unsafe for human habitation by any sane person, on the top of a small wooded rise in a campground right on the water, lending great views of the lake and fall sunsets from the picnic table parked out front.

Getting unpacked for another weekend at the very swank No. 14

Lest you get the wrong impression, all was not Midas gold at the trailer.  The first time I was invited, the temps dipped well below freezing for our ice fishing weekend.  When we arrived after dark, there was no power in the campground and the furnace would not run.  Within minutes, Brian spilled the Coleman lantern he was attempting to light, sending a river of flaming white gas down the counter top.  The trailer didn't burn down, but only because it was too rotten to ignite.  That night my pillow froze into a point on one end, conforming to the inside corner of the trailer as I dozed warmly with my brandy sodden dreams on the floor, stocking cap pulled down tight.  I was immediately in love with the place.

Brian and Dad, the power back on

No matter how many times her roof was resealed with blackjack, scrap sheeting, and prayers; rain always managed to run in, especially through the roof vent over the dubiously designated "living area."  Which was convenient, actually, because that's where the hole in the floor was for it to drain out.

She did have a working cook top and tiny oven, the latter of which hovered at random temperatures somewhere between glumly cadaverous and positively solar.  We used it to alternately freeze dry and vulcanize meals brought from home.  Bluegills were fried outside on the reliable old green Coleman stove, and we quickly learned where the local pizza place was.

Her greatest feature, though, was most shocking.  Literally.  After a long, soaking rain or in spring when the frost was coming out and the ground was wet, all of her metal surfaces would become electrified to the touch.  I'm not an electrician, but I remain fairly positive that wasn't right.

Brian and I would get quietly giggly on Blatz and Korbel back then, and invite fellow campers from around the grounds over for a drink.  The entire time just dying inside, waiting for them to unknowingly brush up against a wall or range hood and be jolted into a cussing streak. Yes it was mean and juvenile.  It was also some of the greatest fun I've ever had.  Closest I've ever come to peeing myself from laughter.

Buddy quickly learned that track would sting his little paws. Built in puppy barrier.

The allure of living in constant fear of being zapped, drenched, frozen or broiled alive on those summer smallie trips aside, the real reason for being there was the bluegill fishing.  At the right time of year, a limit of heavy 'gills could be acquired in plenty of time to spend the rest of the morning in junk yards looking for trailer repair parts.

Big, thick gills, too heavy for a heron, apparently.

It was not uncommon to catch them two at a time...

... or four...

... or simply have one greedy fish inhale every bait you could throw.

Ol' No. 14, beauty that she was, is gone now, trundled off to the big campground in the sky where the fish are even bigger and nobody gets electrocuted by leaning against a window air conditioner.  She brought us together, became our base camp for a lot of wonderful outdoor pursuits.  Not the least of which was embodied by the small but mighty, pugnacious king of the panfish in my mind, the ever-ready bluegill.

Spring: Stinky Asparagus Pee

The honeymoon has been cut a bit short.  The mercury tumbled down to more average levels the past couple nights, and while we are now experiencing temperatures still above average for this time of year, the nip in the air feels a bit foreign after the record-setting couple of weeks we just went through.

This blip in the cosmic weather trends has certainly been enjoyable for most of us paddlers, fishermen and foragers, but it was a painful reminder for some that Mother Nature holds their financial well being in her fickle hands.  Local syrup producers took it on the chin, a terrible season for them.  Orchard owners are spraying earlier than ever, and standing in wait to see if they will have a crop at all this year.  They can do nothing except wait and see now, like crowding around a craps table in Vegas, betting is closed and there is nothing to do but hope.

Still, the bounty of spring has lightened the hearts of those of us who look forward to her gifts every year.

We fished again last weekend.  Brian and I put yet more time in on Lake Delavan, the fish up in the shallows a full month earlier than they normally are.  It wasn't difficult to find the spots, an armada of fishing boats populated all the regular haunts, hungry for sunshine and a fish fry just as we were.

The fish were a little slow, but the conditions were pretty close to perfect so it was easy to sit in the boat all day, making the milk run around the lake and checking the likely spots.  When there is no wind, when the sun is warm and the churlish rain clouds scatter, you sometimes just take what you can get and remain thankful for that.

It's our habit, during such days, to recall trips that were not so pleasant, and smile -- that trip to the Prairie du Sac dam when the wind whipped and howled all day, so intense the anchors pulled free continuously, and we were forced into unwilling rounds of bumper boats with the other walleye fishermen.  Or that hellish float down the Wisconsin out past Arena.  Frisbee's housewarming party had gone long into the blurry morning hours, the hours when nothing good ever happens.  We arose early, and grimly fished through the blistering heat and pummeling hangovers, all day in the boat without a drop of water or an ounce of food because, in our foggy states after the festivities, nobody thought to buy any.  I have never felt worse in a boat; groggy, nauseated, and drying up to a cinder, but in that company, you never want to be the (and I can't use any other word here) pussy who calls it off.  The judgement would be unbearable.  We fished in the pained silence of our own making, and secretly prayed for it to all be over.  Less beer and more (any) water would've been a grand idea.

So we laughed and remembered as we picked away at the fish last Saturday.  They were definitely not up on their shallow spawning beds, the glory days of spring panfishing, but they were milling around just outside where their spawning beds will be, and we were happy to be there with them.

In a quirky twist of fate that sometimes hits a fishing partnership, I somehow had all the fish in the cooler by noon, and Brian had none.  There's no difference in our fishing abilities -- a hook under a bobber in this case, no technical skill required.  We were fishing the same spots while sitting four feet away from each other.  It just happens from time to time.  I razzed him a bit, claiming to be the far better fisherman and asking if he needed any pointers,  because that's what you do, but I had no real claim to superiority.  There have been plenty of times in that very boat when our positions have been reversed.  You absorb the ribbing, and try to remember it can all change with that one big fish.

I'd hoped to surprise him that evening with morel mushrooms picked by a friend in Illinois, but that fell through at the last minute.  I took my turn cleaning the fish, made a beer batter, and we fried them up along with Brian's homemade corn fritters.  Our efforts were rewarded well, as we enjoyed the fish and fritters alongside asparagus fresh from the garden.  I eschew bland grocery store asparagus most of the year so it is that much more precious when it finally arrives, free to pick in the garden or discovered wild out in the woods.  It was bright green and sweet and delicious, perfectly cooked next to our fresh caught feast as we toasted our success with a few beers.

I know it sounds odd, but I count among the many glorious harbingers of spring that certain strong aroma that arises when the bladder is emptied after consuming the first fresh asparagus of spring.  And I apologize for bringing you into the bathroom with me, but there it is.

Sunday morning, having had our bellies warmed with fresh fish and a much more controlled celebration than that fateful housewarming party, it was time to forage. 

As we set out for a big parcel of unique public land, ramps (wild leeks, spring onions... call them what you will) were to be our main quarry.  The weather this spring has my internal timing all discombobulated, so I had no idea what we would find during our long stomp over hill and dale.

The parking area for this spot is a long way from the area in which we would be foraging.  We strode quickly across the fields, Brian with absurd jocular pride, asserting the wonders of his newly fashioned walking stick.  He let his English Cocker, Buddy, run long and free in front of us, and I smiled to myself, as I always do, at the perennial energy and bounding happiness of that little dog.

It can occasionally be somewhat difficult, as a combined hunter and general enthusiast of the forest, to concentrate on one objective.  Especially this spring when everything is so in-your-face right here right now.  I found my brain (and my eyes) bouncing madly from one subject to another.  Looking at or for entirely too many things in a rambunctious, flitting burst of velocity without guidance, energy wasted and unproductive.

Wildflowers peeked up from winter hiding, there was a better than average possibility of stumbling upon Indian artifacts in that area, I was on the lookout for squirrel nests in the trees for future hunting excursions, and we wanted to find deer and turkey sign (which we did).  I stared down into a kettle bog and wondered if it was considered an official part of the Kettle Moraine that covers much of that part of the state, then I wondered if there were two of the state's four carnivorous plants down in that bog.  I hoped for very early morels, and had my eyes peeled for ramps, lambsquarter, nettles, fiddleheads, and other yummy bits of green.  I pointed my imaginary shotgun at the woodcock Buddy flushed from a thicket, and listened to the alarm of wood ducks as he splashed down a creek.  I've never missed a bird using a pretend scatter gun in spring.  They're all easy shots when the gun is your finger.

Overload.  I was so out of sorts that I failed to identify Bloodroot when Brian asked, a quaint little spring wildflower I've known since childhood.  It can be toxic, so it wasn't found in my mental cacophony of edible plants, humming like the chaos of a tuning orchestra in that moment.

Slow down, knucklehead.  Take a breath.

I managed to slow the twirling Rolodex in my brain, and got myself together.  We spotted an Eastern Towhee with that unmistakable slash of rusty orange lighting up his flank, and a little turtle sunning himself in the grass.  We walked for a few hours over the moraines and down into the kettles, eventually stopping to sit in the shade, the unfamiliar sun and heat causing a sweat more suited for late July.  That's where we encountered another sure sign that warmer weather was with us.  We've already been in the bathroom once during this post so I won't go into detail, but ticks were found and removed from delicate places upon returning home.  Once again, more than a month early.

We never did find the ramps we were seeking for salads and pickling.  Not unless you count the ones spied on private land during the drive home.  There is time yet, and they will make their way across my table.  Nettles and lambsquarter have been procured, and the first morel of the year was spotted just this morning.  We are definitely in the foraging bloom of spring, whether another frost comes to put a damper on the party or not.  Nettle pasta with turkey (wish I had a pheasant) is on the menu tonight, and I am a happy camper... forager!

Buddy doesn't know or care about foraging, but he was elated to work the woodcock thickets like October.  And he still can't sit down for a break or stop that tail from wagging, even after all these years.

The Camp Road

Note:  Some of you have seen this before.  Those of you close to me may recognize the date, and my reasons for recycling it, slightly edited, today.

He turns the wheel, and the truck noses tentatively onto the camp road.  Its tires won’t feel the monotonous, numbing vibration of pavement at highway speed for days.  He’s made this drive many times before.  It is an exercise in familiarity.

Through the decades-old red pines the sun sets, bruising the darkening sky deep shades of indigo and orange, a sight he rarely regards in the city.  He slows to take it in, reminding himself that looking is not the same as seeing.  Though he cannot abide the primitive structure and repetitive nature of old country tunes in his real life down below, up here he allows the simplicity of the music to wash out through the speakers and envelop him.  As happens so often, the proper soundtrack is necessary to get deep into the groove of this place at this moment. 

There are no majestic outdoor magazine cover shots to greet him on the road. No massive buck in the prime of his rutting glory, no black bear sow sending her cubs up one of the pines.  Still, he knows they are not far.  He shot his first buck not four hundred yards from here.  He was so excited that he almost didn’t believe when it fell, it’s antlers growing grotesquely in his mind as he raced back to the camp to bask in the glory that would be bestowed upon him by the men that he loved.  So he takes comfort in the fact that they are in fact there, somewhere.  He smiles as he realizes, once again, that seeing is not the same as looking either.

The lake now appears on his right, a simple kettle filled with cold, clean water.  He thinks that he should try to fish it sometime, but knows he might never get to it.  Some half remembered tale about perch the size of your forearm seeps like smoke under the door from the back of his mind, but he can’t remember if the story was even about this lake.  They all run together after a while.  A circular pattern suddenly describes itself on that door in his mind, branding itself there like an Ouroboros -- the snake eating it's own tail.   Tie some classic wet flies from the partridge he shot here last weekend, roll out some long, elegant casts to the sunfish cloistered in that enticing bed of lily pads, fry those fish and enjoy over some beers with the boys, then have one of those boys guide him to another shimmering Popple thicket full of grouse to harvest more feathers.  Repeat.  A perfect circle.  The thought dissolves as the final beam of setting sun breaks him from his reverie.  His casts are only long and elegant in his dreams.

He glances over to the passenger seat, and she is there.  Shining like she used to before the surgeries and pain so smugly robbed her of that infectious, gleaming smile.  He’s known the memory of her was coming since he pulled onto the highway over four hours ago.  It is part of the reason he makes this long drive.  He tries to remember the music of her laugh one more time, but he still can’t.  He wonders why, but is not sad.

He is nearly to the camp now.  He is no longer thinking, merely remembering.  His mind is awash in short vignettes from years past on this road– digging out of a snow bank with an ice fishing skimmer… ambling alongside his hunting buddy’s long strides with no particular destination in mind… rattling the frame of his old truck off every rock and rut with another tale of the perfect hookset or most imperfect shot… stopping to collect himself so they wouldn’t see his suffering…suddenly noticing that he no longer suffers every time down this road.  Yes, a fine road indeed.

He draws to a slow halt in the yard, the warm inviting glow of the kitchen spilling into the night, illuminating cords of split and stacked oak.  The sweet, acrid smell of wood smoke permeates the cab of the truck.  He sits quietly.   When he does open the door, he is brusquely greeted by a cold, hard late autumn wind.  He is immediately reminded of a story his father enjoyed telling.  His father had once witnessed a shirtless Oregon man, standing defiantly in the chill spray of breaking winter surf.  His father had asked the man why he was enduring the torturous cold while the icy spindrift had cut at his own face.  The man replied, with a devilish gleam in his eye, “Because it is real.”

This is real, he thinks.  This is what I was built for.  He gathers his travel gear from the rear of the truck, and feels his familiar way through the darkness to the door.  He opens the door, is greeted by the sound of a familiar story being told around the single homemade table, and is grateful for the camp road that got him here.

For Erin.