“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature–trees, flowers, grass– grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
Mother T. nailed it. God is the friend of silence.
I’m looking forward to some silence. The world seems noisier these days.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
Once in a while I need to leave town for a quiet overnight with Wife 1.2. Our choice is usually the Brewery Creek Inn, Mineral Point, Wisconsin. It’s a quiet and quaint place. Interesting, since in 1830 its population was greater than Milwaukee and Chicago combined. This is how quiet it is now. It’s wonderful.
It’s also just down the road from Governor Dodge State Park, one of our favorite places to get out and about. We had intended a nice loop of nordic, but some numskull forgot the key to the Atlantis. Oops. Luckily, the numskull also put a few pairs of snowshoes in the back of the truck. Because of this, Numskull was redeemed.
Numskull also broke out the vintage gaiters. These are classic 60/40 cloth gaiters in the finest 1983 color styling. They’re all faded and the grommets are rusty, but the bloody things still work. I usually donate or recycle gear before it gets to this point. For some reason, these 27 year-old gaiters are still in the bottom of the bench by the door where we cram extra gloves and hats.
I normally don’t need gaiters, as I normally wear mukluks for snowshoeing, but this was a little bit of a test. Wife 1.2 was wearing her Ojibwa shoes she laced a decade ago, nicely spar varnished and with a new pair of leather bindings. I was using a modern pair of aluminum and neoprene shoes with aggressive crampons and a super-duper binding system worthy of some geek at JPL.
It was a lovely day. High 20s, little wind, and a nice flat light from an overcast sky. The trails around Twin Valley lake were lightly trodden since the last snow, except for the tracks of a perfect-pacing coyote and a modern ‘shoer using a pair of Tubbs from about 1998 – 2000. Yes, I can tell. Being a snowshoe track geek is somewhat more esoteric than being a bird geek, but the sentiment is identical.
The small creeks that feed Twin Valley are spring-fed and run all year, but with the warmer weather the leads were further out into the lake than usual. Just a few hundred yards away, ice fishermen parked their trucks on the ice, a good foot thick in most areas. They had elaborate set-ups; large tents (no doubt heated) and one genius had procured an old truck camper and put it on skids, drilled holes in the bottom and dragged it out onto the lake. As if all that testosterone could be contained by that flimsy camper. I have to admit that in the 26 years I’ve lived in the icebox that is Wisconsin, I have yet to see a single woman ice fishing except for my daughter and her friend.
So we walked. I felt that this would be a good test of our respective styles of equipment and get some pros and cons. I was surprised by quite a few things.
First, I was amazed by how noisy my shoes were. Lots of moving parts and pivots, combined with the cold decking made it a little difficult to walk quietly. Wife 1.2’s Ojibwa’s slid quietly through the snow. I had her stop so I could walk, then had her walking showed me just how hard it would be to sneak up on wildlife. Nod goes to the Ojibwa shoes.
As we walked the trail I stepped off to take a picture. When I turned around I saw Valley View Cemetery. We would have walked right past it if I had not stepped off the trail. Google maps says it’s called Pleasant View Cemetery. Google maps is not always correct. But you can see why you’d miss it.
It might be one of the loneliest cemeteries in Wisconsin. A half a dozen monuments and headstones, most of them illegible, the names weathered but still beautiful. I bet it’s lovely in the summer. I’ll be back to see it soon enough. When I did a web search for Valley View and Dodgeville, I found very little, but I did find a request for bids for doing the lawn maintenance. I wonder if anyone took it, since it’s pretty tough to get a mower in there.
Brushing the snow off a few headstones, I wanted to find some names somewhere, but the same thing happened over and over again…worn letters, illegible, frustrating. I really wanted to find a name I could take back and look up on the internet…to get more info about these people who were so isolated.
Not a clue. Nothing.
Ingebretson. 1839 – 1909. That’s it.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace. To avoid the first danger, one should plant a garden, preferably where there is no grocer to confuse the issue.
“To avoid the second, he should lay a split of good oak on the andirons, preferably where there is no furnace, and let it warm his shins while a February blizzard tosses the trees outside. If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the weekend in town astride a radiator. “
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Substitute rock elm and hickory and I’m livin’ it.
The Shack has no furnace but the Upland 17, an old stove that I brought with me from our old house. We heated that cottage with that cast iron box, all 800 square feet of it, and it kept us warm many nights while our small family grew to a bigger one. Canoelover Jr.’s first word wasn’t mama or papa. It was hot. The helicopter parents who lived there before us had removed it and were sorta freaked out we were going to put it in. They were convinced our children were going to spontaneously combust.
My Amish friends don’t build gates around their wood stoves. Their children are expected to respect the stove, and my guess is that their kids, like Canoelover Jr., touched the stove once, got a blister on the index finger, cried a few tears, and never touched it again.
But (as usual) I digress.
Aldo is a hero of mine. He understood a half century ago that we were already distancing ourselves from the sources of our sustenance. Milk comes from a jug, not a cow; butter comes from a box, not a churn; meat arrives on little plastic trays with clear wrap, a little pad to absorb any blood that would be a reminder that it used to be a living, breathing animal.
And heat, of course, comes out of the magic box in the basement, fed through magic conduits to grates that breathe heat into our rooms. In fact, the little magic box on the wall tells the big magic box in the basement that it’s one degree too cold and the magic box does its thing.
I’m grateful for the magic box in the basement, but I do understand where heat comes from. Frankly I prefer a wood stove heat to the forced air, but I’m not in a position to cut, split and stack enough wood to heat our home, with work and all that stuff. For now, I’m content to heat The Shack with the some small fruits of my labors.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
1. Wife 1.2
2. Kids 1.0 and 2.0
3. Dog 2.0
4. Friends 1.0 through X.0.
Gratefully submitted,
Canoelover
I have a new gig. Guest blogger on Art of Manliness. It’s fun and I recommend it. It’s not at all what you think.
My articles (so far) are here and here.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
P.S. Yes, I had hair back then. Well…more hair. Whatever.
So I was invited to be a guest writer for the website The Art of Manliness. It’s pretty cool, not at all what you think. If you read it, you’ll see what I mean. Not about being a testosterone-poisoned Neanderthal, but about some of the lost arts of manliness your grandfather knew about but your father somehow forgot (like shaving with a straight razor, how to dress and groom yourself properly, etc. There are also a few outdoor skills that were not transmitted. That’s where I came in.
Here’s one that I wrote that was a little too “canoe specific.” I’m reworking it to make it more generally adapted to any outdoor pursuit, which is probably a good thing.
——————–
What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other travel. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature.
— Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada 1968-1984
For some, the idea of a wilderness trip is a bit of a daunting task. The “what-ifs” are endless: what if I get lost, run out of food, sprain an ankle, get eaten by a bear, etc. Truth is you’re much more likely to get hit by a bus on your way to work than you are to be eaten by a bear. Frankly, you just don’t taste that good.
There is, however, a romanticism associated with the wilderness. John Wesley Powell, Marquette and Joliet, Lewis and Clark, Jim Bridger, Alexander MacKenzie, and dozens of other adventurous men set out to see what was beyond the horizon. It was often more of the same stuff that was on this side of the horizon, but once in a while they’d see something that took their breath away. As William Clark said, “Ocian [sic] in view! O! The joy!” After Nevada, I’m not surprised.
But that raises the question: Why should I venture out on my own?
Well, why not?
It is a myth that solo excursions are dangerous. Solo excursions are risky. Risk can be managed.
To risk is to be alive; to be human, to be manly. To risk without management is foolhardy and immature. Famous last words of a fool are often “Hey guys! Watch this!”
While it is true that you cannot eliminate all risk, you can mitigate it to where it is almost negligible, allowing freedom to do what you choose. Risk management requires just a few things.
Knowledge of Skills
It is a basic fact that the more skills you have at a particular task, the safer your task will be. Carpenters rarely put a chisel into their palm. Chefs burn themselves a lot less than home cooks. Truck drivers drive millions of miles without incident. I don’t swim out of a canoe unless I want to.
Skills come from humility, training, mentoring and experience. Search for the skills you don’t know, have the humility to admit it, learn all you can about the skill, find someone to teach and mentor you, then practice it on your own until you reach a level of competence. This is true for every skill, not just outdoor skills.
My experience is that the rarer the skill, the more likely you are to find someone willing to mentor you. Finding someone to teach me blacksmithing was fairly easy. I showed interest, demonstrated a desire to learn, and showed that I knew which end of the hammer was the business end. Seek out mentors, classes and clubs. Ask and ye shall receive. Then practice.
Knowledge of Self
This is just as important as skills. Knowing what you don’t know is as important as knowing what you do. As mentioned before, the keys are humility and respect for your environment. Both are required, and missing either can be anything from annoying to fatal.
Admit you don’t know something, especially if it’s something you think you should already know. That’s how you learn, and chances are someone else feels the same way. My experience teaching outdoor and primitive skills has proven time and again that the guy who is humble and asks the most questions learns the most and ultimately, gets the most out of the training.
I once had a leader from a large Scout troop show up for a moving water training session for their troop. “This is for the boys,” he boasted. “I already know how to do all this stuff.” He was one of the worst paddlers I’ve ever seen, and he left with nothing new. It was easy to find his mouth; I just couldn’t find his ears.
A Plan and the Ability to Execute
The best gear and the best skills mean nothing without a plan. Even a short day hike can be ruined if the weather turns and your raincoat is in the car a mile away. Ears get cold. You get thirsty. You go to the river and forget your paddle. (Yes, I have done that. I had to borrow a paddle leaning up against side of an unoccupied river house, which I returned with $10.00 attached to the paddle with a rubber band. Lesson learned.)
Now my gear is (mostly) organized with laminated lists attached to everything, and a master list for what gets loaded in the truck for each type of trip.
The Most Important Piece of Equipment
The critical piece of gear is between your ears. Learn to listen to that little voice in your head. You need to know when to bail.
A few years ago I took a solo trip in late trip in October. Beautiful weather, a little chilly, but no wind and a little sun. The sun was low and the light was perfect. Until about 10:00 that night. It started to blow, and sleet pelted the canvas of my lean-to. By 4:00 AM it was blowing like stink, 30 gusting to 40, whitecaps moving upriver. Unpleasant. After a leisurely breakfast, I paddled about 30 minutes and gained less than a mile.
It was 12 miles downstream to my car, but a mile from the next landing. I could have “toughed it out,” but a few whitecaps over the bow and I was convinced that I’d rather call. I probably would have been okay, but the risk of an unpleasant or potentially dangerous event was too high for me. I called Wife 1.2. She was relieved.
If I’m going somewhere I’ve never been before, I can minimize risk by learning as much as I can about where I’m going. Maps and websites are great, but talking to locals is the best way to get the real dirt on what’s going on. GPSs are great, but if the river is too shallow to navigate, you can know within three meters where you can’t go.
So you have the gear, the skills, and the plan and the local layout. If you’re a novice, maybe you go with friends first until you feel more comfortable on your own. Maybe you go with three or four friends and paddle or hike together during the day but camp solo at night. Ease into it. Gain confidence and practice your skills.
At some point, you will then want to go out on your own, whether it’s a hike, a paddle or a cross-country bicycle trip. At that point you’ll have the confidence that comes from skills, the right gear, and a plan. And a nice dash of humility, for safety’s sake.
Manliness is about knowing yourself as you really are, and there are few better ways than to spend some time with only yourself for company. You may find yourself going an entire day without speaking or spontaneously break into song, since no one is around to criticize you, even if you can’t sing for toffee.
You’ll find that your life is reduced to the simplest wants and needs; food, clothing, and shelter, and even that becomes simpler. Your meals become almost sacramental; eaten slowly, without haste, tasting rather than gulping. My favorite river lunch is an apple, some good aged cheddar and a nice chunk of bread, and ginger snaps the size and hardness of a poker chip. I may cook a little steak over a nice bed of coals from a downed hickory, split into thumb-sized sticks. Salt and pepper. That’s it, and that’s all I need.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
I have to choose between two October activities.
A 12 x 14 canvas tent (with wood stove), using big old cameras to shoot pictures in Yellowstone and the Tetons.
…or…
A week in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (same set-up as above).
Either way, I lose. The developer tank is half empty.
I’m taking advice and serious counsel.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
P.S. Another alternative is the Slate Islands. Arrgh.
When I got to work this morning there was a long, skinny box in the receiving bay.
For the record, long, skinny boxes in the receiving bay mean paddles. I like paddles, therefore I like long, skinny boxes. And this one…especially so.
Here they are…they turned out great. Some fine tuning, but the basics are there. They are lighter than I expected which is great, and the flex pattern is as good as you’re going to get without going to the $250-$350 hand-carved beauties. No hinging in the blade, and the top grips are pretty good. We hit the right price ($59.95 for the smaller one, now known as the Meadowhawk, and $79.95 for the big one, now known as the Dragonfly), came in under weight, and I think we have a winner.
A far cry from this:
After a long and difficult day, I gotta say it feels good to hold something in my hand that came out of my brain by way of some really talented people at Bending Branches in Osceola, Wisconsin. Thanks to the guys who put in a Saturday to get these entered into the CAD and CNC programs, so that it would get done without screwing up the assembly line. I owe you a case of Leinies, the official barter currency of the Northwoods, eh?
Respectfully submitted,
Canoe(paddle)lover
…but thanks to Wife 1.2, I was able to schedule three three-day solo trips on the calendar, plus a week in the BWCA on October.
I married up.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
I don’t like resolutions, because they’re usually related to a negative behavior: “I will stop overeating…I will stop smoking…I will stop using so many ellispes…”
What I do like are positive affirmations; “I will drink more tea instead of pop; I will buy more local produce; I will replace ellipses with semicolons.”
I have been thinking about this a lot these past few weeks. It makes little logical sense to choose an arbitrary date to begin a new thing. I mean, why wait? Truth is our lives are arbitrarily divided up for us, and there’s no reason to buck the system.
Last night the new Office Max family calendar was revealed, already starting to fill up with little phrases like “Darren to OR” and “Ian Trumpet 4:30.” Wife 1.2 uses different colors for different phrases. It’s filling up fast, and unless I get busy, the profound will be crowded out by the mundane.
No, this is not my calendar, nor is it the calendar of anyone I know. I can only hope it is fictitious, but I imagine it bears a striking resemblance to several in Alpine, Utah. Especially the hearts because it’s February. Special.
So here are the things I want to get on the calendar before it fills up with things that someone else can do.
I used to put these on the calendar and for a few years, I held myself to them. In 2009 I ended up cancelling a few because “things came up.” In 2010, I didn’t even get them on the calendar. Shame on me. They’re going back on now.
It’s probably the single best thing for my brain, these solo trips. It’s pretty exhausting sometimes for a guy with ADD to live in the complex, plate-spinning world of running my own business, balance family life, and fulfill church and other volunteer work responsibilities. Frankly, I think it’s exhausting for everyone irrespective of their brain physiology. That’s why there are so many metaphors: too many irons in the fire, too much on your plate, etc.
I like one iron in the fire.
On a solo canoe trip, my brain reverts to its simplest state. I paddle, which is a form of kinetic meditation. I prepare elaborate and illogically complex meals, another form of mindful practice. I listen for sounds normally crowded out by the artificial cacophony of the mechanized world. I look at the world around me with an artist’s eyes, looking for images, shapes or colors to be captured on film or its digital equivalent.
So good for me. They’re going on the calendar. Tomorrow during the first planning session of 2011. Wife 1.2 is a planner, thank Buddha.
A week or two ago I wrote about missing film. That lead me to dig out some of my old film cameras and make sure they’re in good working order. It also prompted a friend to loan me his 1948 Speed Graphic 4×5, complete with all the original stuff. Talk about taking a step backwards: this is like programming a mainframe using punch cards.
There is, however, something good about programming with punch cards; you better pay attention or your job will either crash or completely drain your mainframe account with an endless while/do loop. You need to be intentional and careful, and take the brain cycles necessary to observe. A 4×5 forces you to do the same sort of introspection before releasing the shutter. It also forces you to think because it costs about a buck just to take a picture, and that’s before developing. If your exposure is off, you get a nice picture of an Antarctic whiteout or the inside of Mammoth Cave.
So the process is this:
The idea of a snapshot has only been around since the Kodak Brownie came out. Snapshots were generally about the subject matter, not about the composition, light, etc. In other words, a hasty shot of your friends standing by a really cool old ’57 Chevy might be a bad picture, but it’s about documenting the people, not the experience. That little camera democratized photography, but it changed the fundamentals of how people thought about photography.
I will be taking pictures that are not formally composed, hoping for a lucky exposure as I fire off a burst at an eagle taking off with a fish in its talons. That’s fine. But with the film cameras, I will be forced to slow down, take a deep breath or six, and take my time.
Son 1.0 is a High School Senior (and about to be updated to Son 1.1 as soon as he finished his Eagle Scout project). This means that his time in our home is limited.
This little dude is now 6’2.5″ and has to duck to get around in the basement. I do not know how this happened.
Self-explanatory, but I will explain it logically because it’s my essay/blogthingy and I can do whatever I damn well please.
Statement: I am in love with Wife 1.2.
Assumption: People enjoy spending time with those they love.
Therefore: I enjoy spending time with Wife 1.2.
Furthermore:
Statement: There are competing priorities in life.
Assumption: All priorities can be placed in order from lowest.*
Assumption: Rational people put higher priorities before lower priorities.
Assumption: Rational people put their highest priorities before anything else.
Assumption: I am rational (please suspend your judgement and disbelief).
Assumption: Nothing is more important to me than Wife 1.2.
Therefore: Dates with Wife 1.2 should be the highest priority.
Like this one.
Give me a break. I needed at least one mulligan.
Respectfully submitted,
Canoelover
* I put giving Dog 2.0 a bath way down on the list. She hates it, I hate it. It moves up the list with rapidity in the case that she rolls in her own excrement. Which she did last night. I am still perplexed why an otherwise intelligent animal would do such a thing. Then again…maybe Divine was on to something.
