No. It’s not. It’s squatting in my chest like a crack addict in a South Bronx tenement.
Coronavirus. From the Latin corona, meaning “crown,” and virus, meaning “rotten little bastard.”
Sniff,
Canoelover
Genus Galanthus, the first ones to appear every year.
Primavera is not a pasta dish. At least it wasn’t a pasta dish first. It’s a great Italian word…it’s fun to say. It sounds like it should, one of many words that does…opulent, cramp, beetle… It requires some lingual finesse and those words all are fun to say. I like words, and I confess that I sometimes read dictionaries for pleasure.
It is, of course, originally from Latin, prima (firsts) and vera (springs), the singular being primus and ver. No Italian worth their cannoli would be caught dead saying a word as ugly as primusver. If you care, the ver comes from the same root word as vernal, as in Vernal Equinox. I can’t help but think there’s some green (verde) in there too. Go back even further to Prot0-Indo European and the word is wesr.*
Spring has been here for a few weeks, but in my mind in only arrived today. That’s when I crawled around on my belly and took pictures of emergent plant life. After a long, hard, cold Wisconsin winter, it always amazes me when anything survives a five-month dirt knap.
The Sanguinaria canandensis is up. The leaves are up, but the flowers are the white buds that will soon accelerate and and overtake the leaves. A little explosion of white makes the Bloodroot a cheerful early arriver. Its name means Bloody Things from Canada. Canada sends us lots of plants and animals, apparently. Slap canadensis on the end of any Latin word and you have a new species. Like Homo cervasae canadensis (Beer-drinking Canadian). They are quite common.
The Trout Lilies are up too (can’t remember the Latin right now). Just the first peek of a leaf, but the flowers will come soon. The spotted leaves earn the lily its name, not the flower, and I love the speckled leaves as much as or more than the actual bloom.
Yeah, so there’s the big stuff (relatively speaking). Lovely, yes, but the thing that astounds me during Primavera are the primal forces that propel and drive life from the cold and inhospitable ground. Life is everywhere. The Sun does its part to warm things up, but somewhere inside a seed so small you can’t see it without a 10x magnifier loop is a powerful and unstoppable impulse to grow to the light. Those little two-leaved seedlings are everywhere if you look.
Yes, they are that small, and two days ago they weren’t there.
So yeah…despite the calendar, for my purposes Primavera beat the snot out of Inverno† a few days ago. There will still be a tug o’ war between the two for a few more weeks, but it’s all in the bag but for a few yanks of the rope.
Excuse the meetingspeak, but the takeaway is this: Things are exploding, and explosion is a riotous one. We will miss it if we blink…please do not blink. It is a wonderful few weeks, and a reminder that no matter how bleak things may seem in the Winter, Life always takes the pennant. It may go to seven games, but Life always wins.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
*The PIE root was a total surprise to me. Everything else is fairly straightforward.
† Inverno is Italian for Winter. It is suspiciously close to Inferno (Italian for Hell), but actually comes from Latin hibernum. Hibernate on that for a while.
In a show of true and ardent love for Wife 1.2a, I drove to Ikea yesterday to get her a new desk and some shelves. Her little desk was overflowing with detritus, and for the mind of Wife 1.2a, who is organized (but not OCD), it was starting to annoy her. Actually, let me rephrase to be brutally honest. She was within a few days of taking a really nice Gransfors-Bruks ax and channeling Lizzie Border. It was bad.
I took a day off (my boss reluctantly agreed) and drove the 240 round-trip to Schaumburg, Illinois. The literal translation of Schaumberg is foam town. My belief is that it should really be Einkaufenburg for the giant Temple of Commerce, Woodfield Mall. Alternatively, it could be named Olivegartenburg.
Ikea sits smack-dab in the middle of the asphalt jungle. Did I mention I don’t like Ikea? Let it be shouted from the rooftops. I hate Ikea. I have come to hate giant blue buildings as a result. It’s designed like a casino…they keep you disoriented so you shop more.
I went in, passing the Swedish names of things, some real and some, well, just dumb. Førk? Spøøn? Küttingbørd? Låmp? Kørkscrew? Ulgibøøkshelf? Actually, I made those up. But I had you there for a moment, didn’t I?
Canoelover is a chair.
Wanna know what you are? Click here. Thanks to Kurt for the link.
Nothing to do with canoeing today. I do have some stuff coming up on reshaping the grips of off-the-rack paddles so they are better suited to your hand.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
P.S. I know that the character “ø” is Danish, not Swedish. I used it for effect. If Mötley Crüe can do it, so can I.
“The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” — Muriel Rukeyser
Yesterday I spent the day working at my business. It was a good day, though I left with as much undone as done. That’s normal.
The problem is the stories that kept creeping into my head. Things that need to be written down. Ideas that need recording, even if there are no words to record it. Amorphous blobs of thought. Strings of ideas that meander like one of my favorite rivers. An occasional cannonball that makes everything damp and somewhat annoying but is gone before a guy can even find a towel.
The problem is, of course, time. We all have the same 24 as everyone else, but even without a lot of TV, work and the rest of the necessities of life occupy much of our non-work time, leaving us with precious little discretionary time.
I don’t want to create a universe from stories, but I would like to create one little star, one that wouldn’t be there if I didn’t take the time to write down the stories that spontaneously appear in my brain.
What to do…what to do…
I always wonder about people who work until they’re 104 because they don’t know what they’d do without work to fill their time. Laudable, but spectacularly uncreative. Sure, it’s better to be carried out from your job feet first than spend all your post-retirement life watching game shows and playing 3-par golf on the local pitch and putt.
I love my business, the people I work with in the industry I help keep healthy. But I am missing a few things.
1) Time to write. I hate scrounging for a solid block of time to sit and contemplate the universe while scribbling down whatever flows into my head. I probably have the time, but what I lack is the perspective that it’s totally okay to waste time in such an endeavor. The nagging voice whispers go do something productive.
2) Time to read. Almost as important, I don’t read as much as I would like. I have a shelf on our bookshelves that contains all the books in my queue, ordered by date of procurement from oldest to newest. It’s getting longer, and I am adding books faster than I can read them. And there are some really good books…Florentine history, a few new books fromWendell Berry, a Ross King book on French Impressionism, a new Bill Bryson book, part of a Garrison Keillor snoozer and three books by Canadian author Stephen Leacock. You only become a good writer by being a good reader.
I’m finishing King. Leacock (pictured below) is on deck.
3) Time to think about nothing. Probably the most important of all. Western (particularly American) sentiment is that doing nothing is a waste of time. In part I agree, but I also think that doing something just to keep from doing nothing is just as pathological, maybe more so. The frenetic pace of some people makes me wonder what they’re running from.
I don’t want to be these guys.
My time in Italy taught me the joy of the dolce far niente…the sweetness of doing nothing. Without getting into a philosophical debate, I could argue that the act of choosing to do nothing is in and of itself a value and is therefore doing something. Italians get it. I’ve forgotten it.
They didn’t.
So I guess what it comes down to is that here is no doing or not doing, there is only authoring your life or letting someone else author it for you. Now is the time to dedicate some time to writing. Probably not here as much…gotta finish the manuscript first, the one that looks like moths finished off what the sawed-off shotgun couldn’t. Then I have another book in my head that I need to get out before it goes the way of a brick of mild cheddar left in the back of the fridge.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
Birch, that is.
I love birches for three reasons:
Because of birch bark, one can make birch bark canoes.
Though canoes have been made for who knows how many hundreds of years, the guy who make it all possible for the skill to be kept alive was a gentleman named Tappan Adney. Adney almost single-handedly rescued the bark canoe from oblivion. With other materials available, native builders gradually turned to canoes that required less care and feeding. So while native peoples across the northern US and Canada embraced aluminum, the old guys who built bark canoes were slowly dying off. With Adney’s careful surveys and measurements, along with the over 100 models of different types of canoes, the older folks were able to recall their memories and teach younger people how to build a canoe.
Now a few dozen builders keep the eternal flame burning
This particular canoe is a 16-foot Abenaki Algonquin built by a fine artist and craftsman, Aaron York. I commissioned it in 2003 and the original intent was to sell it and make a small profit (yes, really small). At $500 a lineal foot, a 16-foot canoe would go for about $8,000.
Lest you think that ridiculous, let me tell you that in twenty years it’ll be worth triple that. There’s a simple reason: supply and demand. There are almost no more birch that are of sufficient size to build canoes like this. This canoe came from a single sheet of bark, which is almost unheard of these days. Aaron harvested this particular tree in northern Quebec. He won’t tell anyone where. I wouldn’t either.
After I took delivery of this boat I called Aaron to tell him how astoundingly beautiful it was. He laughed and said that he would never build another like that, and that he knew when I saw it I would want to keep it for myself. When I saw the detail, believe me, I was tempted. It is a stunning boat. Aaron put care into this one, probably one of his best.
The dark brown insert is a piece of winter bark. During the winter the bark develops a layer of cambium that is darker, so it allows the artist/builder to do some artwork by scraping away the darker layer to create designs. This is not painted so much as etched. Using fine tools, Aaron scraped until he created this panel of the Algonquin deity of Lake Champlain. Padasoks (spelling varies) stirs up the lake with his tail and creates storms when the lake is not respected.
This was a ton of work. This deserves its own paragraph.
This canoe ( have named her Wanakiwide`e, which means peaceful heart in our local native dialect, Ojibway) has been hanging up in the shop for a few years. Pretty, but unhappy, Waanakiwide’e needed some TLC. With some pitch obtained from Ferdy Goode, another great bark builder, I took her down and loved her up. I pitched the seams that were cracked and put her in the water. A few seeps, but I’ll go over her again tonight and she’ll be as tight as a drum.
She’s alive again. I may still sell her, but it’s gonna have to be to the right person. I will not let her hang in someone’s “lake house” up north, high over the fireplace in a cathedral ceiling. She is alive again, and will remain so.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
P.S. If a lake house is more than 4,000 square feet, it’s not a lake house. It’s a mansion.
“Each bend in the stream brings into view a new vista, and thus the bewitching scene changes as in a kaleidoscope. The people one meets, the variety of landscape one encounters, the simple adventures of the day, the sensation of being an explorer, the fresh air and simple diet, combined with that spirit of calm contentedness which overcomes the happy voyager who casts loose from care, are the never-failing attractions of such a trip.” *
We agree with Reuben.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
*English majors, lay off. Go mutter to each other about run-on sentences. It worked for Reuben and it works for me.
“Despite her regal and majestic appearance, the Great Pyrenees is a keen worker, faithfully guarding her flocks no matter the weather or terrain. With her intelligence, scenting ability and excellent sight, she is an invaluable companion to the shepherd. The breed possesses a beautifully thick, weather resistant white coat that may contain markings of badger, gray, or various shades of tan.” – American Kennel Club
Our family has had at least one dog since the mid-90s. First was Winnie, a German Shorthair Pointer. I traded Dog 1.0 for a kayak when she was a little over a year old, already trained and she was as sweet as molasses and almost the same color. She was a perfectly well-behaved dog. We miss her.
Then there was Dog 2.0. Gracie is a field-bred Black Labrador Retriever. Semi-rescued from friends, she was supposed to be a temporary placement while the original family figured out what to do (four kids, small house and dad had allergies). After a week or so we just decided to keep her. Glad we did.
Dog 2.0 learned to be a great canoe dog from Dog 1.0 and a whole lot of training. Now almost eleven years old, we wanted an overlap with Dog 3.0. Looks like we’ll have it. We will need some training to make her a great canoe dog…and like Roy Schneider said in Jaws more than 35 years ago…”you’re gonna need a bigger boat…”
Having been around sporting dogs for almost twenty years it’s strange to have a puppy that is so laid-back. Gracie was wired even when she was asleep. I mean, she’s still a puppy, but she’s not constantly in motion like Gracie was.
And when I say strange, I mean awesome.
The bad news: she may end up big. Real big. The hope is that she’s like her mother, a rather diminuitive GP, not her father, a Newfie the size of a Shetland pony.
For now, she’s a living, breathing teddy bear, asleep on the floor next to Wife 1.2a.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
“It is not necessary to go to the Maine lakes for canoeing purposes; or to skirt the gloomy wastes of Labrador, or descend the angry current of a mountain stream. Here, in the Mississippi basin, practically boundless opportunities present themselves, at our very doors, to glive through the heart of a fertile and picturesque land, to commune with Nature, to drink in her beauties, to view men and commmunities from a novel standpoint, to catch pictures of life and manners that will always live in one’s memory.”
— Reuben Gold Thwaites, Down Historic Waterways
I often capitalize the Wisconsin River when I write about it, as in “The River.” People have noticed it and remarked that it’s a curious thing, but no one has ever asked me why. Maybe it’s obvious. I am Monofluvialist. Though there be streams many and rivers many, to me there is only one River.
This doesn’t mean that I won’t paddle other rivers. Unlike most deities, my river is not a jealous river. She is content to let me drift down other rivers, so long as I return home to her periodically. We have a good relationship. I understand her, she understands me.
If this sounds like I’m being flippant or even mocking of religion, let me assure you that I am not. Martin Buber pointed out fifty years ago that you can have a relationship with a person and treat that person like a thing, keeping distance from it, making it an object. Sadly, this is all too common…the ability to connect with someone is becoming lost, and Buber knew this. “All real living is meeting,” he said.
I admit to having a Buberian I-Thou relationship with my River. I love her, and we do communicate. I’ve spend so much time with her over the years that I can sense things on her river than I would miss on other rivers. Wind, current, shifting sands and islands…not sure, but I usually know what’s happening intuitively before I realize it cognitively.
“The traveler by rail has brief and imperfect glimpses of the landscape. The canoeist, from his lowly seat near the surface of the flood, sees the country practically as it was in pioneer days, in a state of unalloyed beauty.”
I’ve paddled all 83 miles from the last dam to the confluence with the Mississippi, many of the sections more than a dozen times. Sometimes with a group, sometimes solo; it doesn’t matter. I just love being with the River. I hold no illusion that she somehow protects me…it’s not that sort of relationship. She has spanked me hard and humbled me, but she has also allowed me to snooze unmolested on a sunny January day by creating a little windbreak where a guy could climb under his canoe, light a small fire and fall fast asleep.
Marquette and Joliet were not as taken with my River as I was. My guess is that they were a bit jaded after the difficulties they encountered (and would continue to encounter).
“The river on which we embarked is called Meskousing. It is very wide; it has a sandy bottom, which forms various shoals that render its navigation very difficult. It is full of islands covered with vines. On the banks one sees fertile land, diversified with woods, prairies, and hills. There are oak, walnut, and basswood trees; and another kind, whose branches are armed with long thorns.”
Plus ça change…that description would be recognized today as spot on. I would have added a few more adjectives describing the beauty of the place, but they were documenting, not writing prose.
Reuben Gold Thwaites is long gone, but his words live on in dusty little tomes with gorgeous covers (gold embossing!). Not by any means a best-selling author, he joins August Derleth, Ben Logan, George Vukelich, and Aldo Leopold (among many others) in a small confraternity of Wisconsin authors who knew how to write about things because they actually do the things they write about. Trust me, the number of people who still do things is shrinking daily.
Reuben was the editor of the Wisconsin State Journal during the late 1800s. That was before AP and the wires that provide the same damn thing to every newspaper in the country. The WSJ has fallen victim to the same cost-cutting culture-ruining business tactics that has made pablum where there used to be good, meaty articles, written by locals. The WSJ still has some local writers, but the ones I know from years ago have had their wings clipped a little (or a lot). Some retired when they saw the writing on the wall (“offend no one, especially advertisers” is what I think it said). Whatever happened, it’s not germane here, and I again digress.
The point is that R.G. Thwaites was a journalist who took the time to paddle across the Great State of Wisconsin, from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien, and documented it beautifully. He got his feet wet, and what we have these days, in my honest opinion, is too many people with dry feet. Reuben loved my River, and I hope to someday meet him, shake his hand in thanks, and go for a paddle together.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
P.S. Meskousing became Ouisconsan which became Wisconsin. Pere Marquette’s description is the first recorded name of the state I call home, over 350 years ago.
So Canoecopia 2011 is one for the history books. It was a wonderful, exhausting, exhilarating, feet-killing, paddlesport love-fest. I’m grateful to all who worked the show, attended the show, spoke at the show, or performed security (thanks, off-duty Dane County Deputy Sheriffs!).
The day after the show one has two choices: sleep in (a noble and good choice), or paddle Badfish Creek with a couple of hearty souls. Yeah, we went to bed at 1:00 AM that morning, but the anticipation of a paddle can wake me up faster than a cattle prod turned up to 11.
We had a few more people committed, but I think they were too entangled in the arms of Morpheus to get out of bed. Since I get up around 6:00 am every day, I’m pretty much incapable of sleeping in. So I was up.
I can’t tell you how good it felt to open the garage, slide a boat out of the rack and strap it to the top of my car. The gunwale brackets were still set to the Argosy width, so the gunwales nestled in with an almost imperceptible sound…a velvety snick. The gunwales were happy. A few straps over the top and my truck started looking normal again.
So Jon and Annie, Brenna (new staff!) and Brian (the new Level Six rep) climbed into a few cars and we headed south to the Badfish, just over the Rock County line. We didn’t leave Annie and Brenna in the kayaks on the trailer, but I thought it might be interesting. They could sit looking back at the cars behind them, as we used to do in the very back seat of the 1970 Ford Country Squire Wagon (avocado green with wood). You stare at the drivers…they stare back at you. Détente.
Then we’d flick a booger at them.
But I digress.
The air was just below 40 when we put in. The water was probably about the same. The sun peaked out a little and the light was luscious, and it felt warmer than it was. This is probably a Wisconsin/upper Midwest thing. When a photon hits the skin of a pasty Wisconsinite who has been hiding in his basement for six months, it releases endorphins. It’s a little known fact that pasty, winter-blanched Wisconsin skin can turn photons into opium. Your skin gets happy and you start taking off clothing.
Jon, Annie and I were in solo canoes, Brian and Brenna in kayaks. This was the first time that Brenna had been in a kayak, as she had been an experienced canoeist, camp counselor, etc. etc. Brenna was a wee bit nervous for about three minutes, Then she started playing around; learning stuff. She’s an autodidact kayaker. And it shows in her smile. I’m very proud of her.
Brian (our new Level Six rep) paddled another kayak…he had obviously done it before, but not in that boat and not in 40-degree water. He did great. It was fun to chat with him as we paddled along. Learned a lot about his life, his travels as a rep and his family.
Annie (look up cute as a bug in the dictionary and you’ll see her picture) was as always a good sport. This was her first venture out in a solo canoe. Jon has been giving her lessons, ignoring the Wisdom of the Ages, which suggests teaching a significant other how to do anything can only result in tears and pain. Annie’s a lesson in humility, readily easy to learn, and Jon is a great teacher.
I love people who are not afraid to try new things. It doesn’t have to be a big deal unless you make it one, I think. Trying new things stretches your brain. Once stretched out you can lay it on the dryer until it dries and then you can leave it there at the new size. Annie and Jon’s brains are both stretching and you can see it in someone’s eyes when they get it.
Jon and Annie are good together, I think. They paddle well together, side by side, which is how I prefer to do it. Side-by-side paddling is much more intimate than bow and stern tandem paddling. If we were meant to sleep like we often paddle, beds would be 3 feet wide and 16 feet long. Jon is patient and respectful, Annie humble and soaking it up. I’ve never seen her teach Jon, but my guess is that it’s a similar dynamic.
See? It doesn’t have to be a battle of egos. My hat’s off to both of you.
Yes, the water was chilly. Do you know how cold it was?
Luckily we all missed testing that thing all men hate to test. For yucks I checked the NEJM to search for something called “The Cold Water Effect: Shrinkage and Recovery.” No such luck. I guess somethings are meant to be a mystery.
Jon wouldn’t need to worry. Notice his almost perfect technique. I say almost perfect because I’m in no position to point out flaws, and I need an out. Jon’s one of the best technical paddlers I know. If you want to model a stroke, Jon’s your man.
We spent a nice half-day paddling. There was no need to get up early, we just moseyed down to the Badfish. When we got off the water, we were hungry, and the Harmony Bar has just what the doctor ordered — a Blue Burger, hot chips and cheese curds and a nice Becks NA. At least that’s what my doctor ordered. Next year, who knows?
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
This morning I needed some peace.
The world is so angry right now.
So if I need it, my guess is I’m not alone.
If we are peaceful.
If we are happy.
We can smile and blossom
Like a flower.
And everyone
In our family,
Our entire society
Will benefit
From our peace.
– Thich Nhat Hahn
______________________________
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
– Saint Francis of Assisi
______________________________
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
