Everest Quercus

A bone shuddering thud, immediately followed by an electric sting racing up through hands and arms.  The pause, surprise and awe that it did not go.  A glance filled with ill intent.  The creak of stained, heavy leather gloves.  Panting.  A deep breath and a little bounce, like a fighter waiting for the bell.  Finally, another swing, all the way from the toes, and Ker-rack!

There it is.  Now we're splitting some wood.

Splitting firewood is about the most rewarding work I can do on a cold winter morning.  The smell of cleaved hardwood mixed with sweat has been a touchstone for me since early boyhood.  Nothing conjures happy images of my father more quickly or completely.  My parents heated with wood for most of my childhood, and my step mom, Carolyn, still augments her winter warmth by burning wood every day.  So I continue to split.  Concerns of climate change not withstanding, there is comfort to be found in putting up for winter.  Canning, pickling, and splitting wood that we may emerge from the frigid dark once again, alive and raring to go.

It all began back on Maple Avenue.  I'd been an apartment dweller for my entire life, six years young as it was.  To suddenly have my own yard to dash around in, my own trees to climb, my own garden from which to swipe peas and brussel sprouts, was a gift from on high.  Then one fine autumn morning, a huge truck appeared out of seemingly nowhere, and dumped a massive load of white oak right in the center of my playground.  Another load soon followed.  Everest Quercus, a towering mountain of firewood.  Limbs longer than I was, rounds taller than I, heaped and tangled across the yard.  There were bugs under the bark and mud torn up from the yard.  It was the greatest thing I'd ever seen.

Choosing to invoke the selective hearing granted to all children when parents warn against taking certain actions, for days I clambered over and around it, sprayed the garden hose on the top to see where the water would come out, pried and pulled to see what was in there.  My jungle gym and fort, and the beginning of my first big adventure.

Soon enough, men I did not know arrived to help my father break down my fort.  They wielded chainsaws and cant hooks, wore long wooly beards over flannel shirts and pants so dirty my mom would have never let me be seen in them.  And they swung splitting mauls.  That sound of splitting the logs into burnable chunks -- half fastball jumping off white ash, half crunch of hard snow under foot.  The action, the dynamic nature of it all, was intoxicating.  I remember thinking there was a certain gravity to this new situation, though I obviously couldn't verbalize that thought at the time.  Something big was going down, and I wanted in.

So Dad would set me up with a stubby little end cut, the easiest to split, and start a wedge for me.  Wedges are often used in conjunction with a standard maul on rounds that are too big for the splitting maul.  And with six-year-olds.  He'd hand me a little two pound hammer -- I remember it now, a blue Estwing -- and I'd tink tink tink away at that wedge until I'd made my little split.  Or until I got tired or bored, much more likely.

I had to choke up on that hammer quite a bit with my little pink paws, and somehow, whether through exuberance or inattention, I finally managed to mash the tip of my right pinkie finger between the face of the hammer and top of the wedge.  I remember I cried at the sight of my own blood.  I remember my mother hovering somewhere between harried, concerned, and angry on the drive to the hospital.  I don't remember how many stitches I got, but they followed the blackened nail around the tip of my finger in a perfect tiny crescent, and I was chin-jutting proud of that in the days that followed.  I'd earned my stripes.  One of the boys.

That run to the ER aside, splitting wood has been generally good to me.  It's one of the times you can stand outside pouring sweat, the mercury burrowing below zero, icicles clinging to your beard, and not have to worry if the rescue plane is going to find you in time.  I like to unbend my back every once in a while, and lean on the maul.  Think about pioneers and lumberjacks and other manly stuff.  To feel muscled and strong, robust against the cold.  Like I actually have my shit together for once.  It's a chance to slow down and workout at the same time.  And if you practice long enough, you can ring the bell every time at the carnival, and win your girl a Bon Jovi mirror.

Of course, even on a good swing, not everything always goes according to plan.

Some woods are more testy than others.  There comes a point in almost every session involving big wood when you are forced to decide whether or not you can carry on.  You have your wedge started in a huge round, probably for the second or third time.  This guy has decided to test you, deflecting your best attempts to cleave, stack, and burn.  You begin with some slightly tentative swings, making sure the wedge is driven, and all is right with the world.  Now it's time to bring the pain.  You coil and bend, storing all the energy to be released in one massive effort. Getting your feet set, you begin that big power swing, the best one in your arsenal.  Knees, hips, shoulders snap into action as your fists slam together at the end of the handle, the head of the maul wails down squarely on the wedge, all the force you can muster behind it.  PING!  Nothing... until, after a few moments heavy breathing, you begin to hear the faintest crackling.  The frozen fibers beginning to give up their bonds.  And you know, this beast will fall like all before him.

It always amuses me when you see the leading man in a movie, lantern jawline and not a hair out of place, at his gorgeous log cabin, splitting up perfectly dry and straight pieces of maple for the fire.  They merrily crack and fly apart with barely a touch from the axe or maul.  You'll never see him sweating and cursing, trying like mad to extricate the maul from a gnarled hunk of burr oak.  It's Hollywood, where all the girls are pretty and all the firewood is kiln dried.

Elm is my nemesis.  Like all of us who carry the maul and wedge, I can spot it in a wood pile from fifty yards.  Mocking me.  Daring me to even try.  I'm sure there are more difficult woods to split.  Ironwood can give you a backache just looking at it, I've heard.  Shagbark hickory, with all it's armored bark as a warning, will test your shoulders and your will.  Black cherry strikes fear in the heart of mortal men.  But that stringy elm gets me every time because it is so tirelessly indefatigable.  So unrelenting in it's ability to hang together.  It seemingly wills itself to remain unbroken, the Nelson Mandela of the wood lot.  Many a wedge have been lost in a round of elm, waiting to be freed by the addition of another wedge.  And then another.  Until you find yourself berating an inanimate hunk of cellulose like a homeless wing nut cursing the weather and hot dogs on a street corner.

There is a hydraulic wood splitter in my dad's shop right now.  It sits unmoving since he last laid hands on it.  I found him using it more and more often as he aged.  I ribbed him pretty hard for that, as was our loving way, calling him girl names and pronouncing that I would never defile myself in such a way.  At least not until I turned forty.  I know he's watching, so I haven't touched it yet, but splitting by hand for more than thirty seasons has taught me a thing or two.

Swinging with precision is usually more important than swinging hard.  A few stretches before you get going will prevent a lot of soreness, even if you do look like a goober doing yoga in a flannel shirt.  Burn the elm in a campfire so you don't have to break it down as far.  And wood gets heavier as you age.  A lot heavier.  Only three more winters until I can fire up that beautiful splitter, according our bet, and you can call me Shirley all you want when that happens.

Paging Dr. Freud...

A Beacon of Suck

Have you ever had the wind knocked out of you?  Have you been emotionally crushed by failing stupendously in an audition or interview?  Ever sit dumbstruck on the couch or in the stands as your team gives up the winning score with no time left on the clock?  I certainly have.  More often than I care to remember on all of the above.  If you have too, and you don't wish to relive those feelings, think seriously before becoming a hunter or fisher.

Sure, there are the halcyon days, fish and game around every corner and under every rock, the camaraderie and food and sleepy, hypnotizing camp fires.  But there are also the missed shots and lost fish.  The ones that stick with you forever, that pop into your half-awake mind, and keep you from falling asleep.  The ones that mark a geographical place indelibly in your mind, so that every time you pass it, you think, "there's the spot where I screwed the pooch on that one."

There is a short stretch of bank in Gibb's Chute, between the Mississippi River and Lake Onalaska, that haunted me for more than a decade.  I lost the biggest, baddest smallmouth I have ever seen at the end of my own line there.  I can see the red eye and tiger stripes now, glistening in the spray of his acrobatics, six pounds of pissed off riverine muscle and power.  He broke off at the boat, and before disappearing forever, leapt one more time behind me, my black Heddon Torpedo still dangling from his jaw.  The angling equivalent of flipping me the bird.  I'm secretly glad we got rid of the fishing trailer up there so I don't have to go back, and commit seppuku.

The bad ones feel like you've had the wind kicked out of you during an awful interview while watching your team fumble away a lead at the last possible minute.  Disappointment and self-loathing get together, and conceive a shame baby in your stomach.

Not all shots or lost fish.  Some shots happen so fast or were so ill-conceived to begin with, they don't have the investment to make you sick.  You learn this quickly as a grouse hunter.  Often as not, you're firing at where you think the bird might be through the spruces or balsalms, instead of actually seeing it.  Those misses are dismissed out of hand.  You're just happy when one magically tumbles to the forest floor.  Upland shotgunning is very often like that.  I'm still surprised all the time when a sharply swerving woodcock suddenly explodes in a puff of feathers, and falls through the willow thicket.

I can get excited over big bluegills and perch, but losing a few here and there doesn't really rate on the soul crushing disappointment scale.  That's probably part of the reason I don't fish for them much anymore.  There are no stakes involved, other than whether or not I have to clean the deep fryer.

  Look very, very closely at the other end.  You won't see the coyote because he kept right on running.

I was a great practitioner of missing from an early age.  A prodigy, even.  Pigeons, chipmunks, and squirrels often remained unscathed in our yard, snickering at the boy who couldn't shoot, safe on their perches thirty feet away.  Cans and baby pumpkins swiped from the garden sat unmoving and inert on the fence rail, unfazed by my attempts to murder them.  It taught me humility and the value of practice.  It also taught me not to shoot dime store pellet guns with any faith.  That thing was a pile of crap.  When I finally learned how to sight in a gun, I tried to get that one on paper.  It was given away or lost shortly after that.  No point in sighting in a gun that sprays pellets around like a drunken Mardi Gras reveler chucking beads all over the place.

As I grew older, under the guidance of Dad, I eventually became a fairly good rifle shot with my .22.  He paid me a bounty on woodchucks from the garden and Grackles from the bird feeders.  $1 for the woodchucks and $.25 for the Grackles.  On a good day, I was pulling down $2.25 after school.  Just enough for bait and a couple cold sodas for Josh and I.

I went on to win some Boy Scout and NSSF rifle shooting competitions with that little gun.  Not exactly Olympic gold, mind you, but you get the idea.  I was 14, seven feet tall and bullet proof with that rifle in my hands.  I can still look through that Lyman target peep sight, and be immediately calmed.  Like some people looking at a famous painting in a museum, I guess.  The squirrels no longer paused to mock and chatter.  Mostly, they ended up as pot pie, one of the first dishes I ever learned to cook on my own.  Or skinned and gutted on a stick over a campfire when we wanted to play Rambo.  Not delicious.   Even when Brian and I go after them to this day, the standing bet applies.  First guy to make anything but a head shot buys the beer.  I seldom have to buy.

Still, I miss.  Seemingly all the damn time.  We all do, at least those of us who get out there enough.  I can't think of anyone I've ever consistently fished or hunted with who hasn't missed a shot or pulled a bonehead move to lose a fish.  It happens.  The big fish comes unbuttoned or the deer doesn't tip over, and there is this pause.  Time freezes while your stomach balls up in a monkey knot, and then, if you're with friends, the jeering begins almost immediately.  Not that we want our buddies to fail.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  It's more a form of intimacy, for lack of a better term.  You wouldn't laugh at a stranger if he missed, or a client, but when one of the boys doinks an easy lay-up it off the rim, look out.  That's all part of the fun.

Of course, this is all leading up to the story of my miss yesterday.

I met up with my buddy Rick to do a little coyote calling, our first trip of the year together.  I like hunting with Rick because he brings great coffee.  I've successfully given up almost all coffee, but certain concessions to sanity have to be made in the shivering pre-dawn darkness.

We'd made two sets with no action by the time the sun was fully up, and were set up at our final calling station of the morning.  Rick was fifty yards downwind of me, I was manning the mouth calls.  Foregoing the howling we'd tried in our earlier spots, I set right in with the bunny distress.  After a few rounds of dying rabbit, a coyote appeared out of the blue.  I hadn't seen him come in, as so often happens, but there he was, popped out from the edge of the frozen cattails, just staring in our general direction.

We tried and tried to coax him across the little creek that separated us, but he was having none of it.  Cottontail distress, pup yelps, barking; he was a rock, firmly planted and unwavering.  I knew he wasn't going to hang out all day, so I decided to take the shot.  It was fairly long (187 yards on the range finder I won in our deer camp raffle), but certainly a make-able shot for the trendy Ruger .204.  I had a good rest, plenty of time to get comfortable and take a few cleansing breaths, no wind to speak of.  In through the nose, out through the mouth.  Don't strangle the gun.  Relax.   I held and felt my heartbeat and squeezed.

Nothing.  That gorgeous dark gray dog just turned and trotted back into the marsh.  That was it.  And there I was, a shining beacon of suck in the soft morning light.  I had no idea where or how I missed as that sinking feeling set it.

Of course, we walked down to check for hair and blood.  Nada.  Rick tore me a good-natured new one on the ride home, as is the right and duty of any hunting buddy.  I wouldn't have expected anything less, and I'm look forward to returning the favor the next time he shanks one into the rough.  

And Darkness Fell

A sniper mission, alone in the cold and dark.  No back up, no buddy, just a hunter and his tools under the stars.

I'll shuffle out of the bunk at 3am tomorrow morning, and rub the sleep from my eyes.  Donning camouflage that has been cleansed of human scent, I'll make my way through the night to match wits with the ever-cautious and intelligent coyote, my headlamp filtered red to safeguard my night vision and position.

There's an intensity to it that you cannot find in any other type of hunting in this part of the world.  Calling a predator in, with those fangs and sinister eyes, that demeanor of a killer, will make your hair stand up a little and make sure the ticker is in good working order.

I'm no expert coyote hunter, but I sure enjoy getting out there.  I like it because it is often a cold and solitary endeavor for me.  A test.  Can I force myself to get up and out in the dark, minimize my presence, and convince a wild carnivore that I'm a delectable morsel of bunny or mouse?  I like it because I see so few others doing it.  Anytime I can feel I'm just a bit on the fringe is fine by me.  Mostly, I like being out in the dark.

Darkness changes everything.  I've deer hunted out of the same tree stand location for two seasons now.  That walk in to it in the dark is still a little adventure every time.  I don't use flagging tape or reflectors because I can simply walk along the creek, but not being able to see more than a dozen feet adds a bit of mystery.  Things go bump in the night.  Your sense of direction can go a little sideways when creeping your way slowly through dense understory.  There is a quick moment when just a tiny creeping doubt sets in.  I'm never going to get lost walking in to that stand, it's easy enough that if I ever did I could never show my face in camp again, but that quick second of indecision in the dark still happens sometimes.  It's a welcome rush.

Distances grow in the dark.  It's easy to estimate where you are and how far you've come when the sun is out and the world is alive.  At night, with few visual clues, the trail can stretch and meander in ways you didn't think possible.  Familiar stumps suddenly take on the form of bears.  The stream that is supposed to be right here isn't.  Unnoticed initially, the wind sweeps around the compass, suddenly convincing you that you're walking in the exact wrong direction.  It all takes more patience and steadiness to get through than walking in the light, which is exactly why it is often more fun and rewarding.

Wade fishing a stream at high noon can be tenuous at times.  Moving water obscures deep holes, rocks and boulders lurk unseen, waiting for that one misplaced step.  Currents slink and flow in seeming harmony, lulling you into false confidence until they are suddenly tearing at your legs.  Now do it with a blindfold on.  The topwater fishing can be downright outstanding, but again, fortitude plays a role in dealing with falls and tangles in the dark.  One thing remains the same, however.  When the fall does come, and it will, get that rod up in the air.  A broken tailbone heals, absurdly spendy mangled graphite does not.  I know.  While sitting on an inflatable doughnut for a few weeks can be demeaning, replacing a fly rod is worse. 

The exact same stretch of water, a beckoning beauty in the daylight, becomes a dangerous, if intoxicating, mistress when the sun goes down.

Paradise

Perdition

Night has been driven from our lives for the most part.  A lot of us sometimes forget that at home or in town.  The sun goes down, street lights come on, and we carry on our merry way.  Traffic and signage, nightlights and the warm glow of the TV, all lead us down a path to thinking that night is simply a continuation of day.  Not too long ago people didn't live like that.  Daylight broke, we labored away to scratch out an existence on the land, the sun went down, and we retired to our sod house or teepee or log cabin to sleep the sleep of the dead. 

When I find myself out in the wilds at night I make it a point to enjoy the things I can't see or hear in my illuminated nighttime life most of the time.  A novice camper or night fisher is often taken aback, mouth hanging agog, at the number of stars that are up there once you get out from under the quilt of mercury vapor lamps.  Add the chorus of crickets often hidden by traffic noise or the ephemeral drapery of the northern lights, and the city dweller will often become suddenly still.  Mesmerized and quiet for the first time in too long.  Spellbound.  I'm a little jealous of that, and try to remember to force myself to take in the beauty, even when I've seen it before or I'm on a mission.

I will be on a mission tomorrow morning.  I will creep through the darkness.  I will melt into the landscape, and let hunter become prey.  And I will take in the subdued beauty of it all.