adventures of a canoelover

…Antarctica.

Just kidding.

I’m going here. The Sugar River. 42°36’42”, 89°23’53”. Hey, why not? We’re back under flood stage and it’s going to be 65 degrees and partly sunny. I’m running a bike shuttle so it’s gonna be a double-fun paddle/cycle extravaganza.

I love mid-week days off. It has a slight flavor of getting away with something, like skipping school. Actually, it feels more like being unemployed without the downside.

Try it sometime. You’ll notice as you drive to your hooky destination, you’ll see grim-faced drivers heading into town for work on the major arteries — Highways 14, 151, 12-18, etc.

Some of them see the canoe on the car, and I can see their grim faces relax a little; some of them might even smile a little. I guess I represent what could be.

All it takes is a solitary Sharp-Lobed Hepatica blossom. I admit that for me that the bar is set low, but then again, why set the bar high for happiness? Bring it on! Oodles of happiness in the form of flowers, insects, birds, mosses, lichens, and other things that grow.

If the plant thing doesn’t work for you, how can you feel bad about the world when a dog is so happy to be alive?

If a Sharp-Lobed Hepatica/Black Lab combination doesn’t work for you, there’s a significant chance you’re beyond all hope. Go do something whimsical right this second or you’ll die and be forced to live in the leather-patched tweed jacket section of hell where everything is deconstructed but nothing is enjoyed.

Sure you do. Everyone has them somewhere locked up in their parent’s attics.

Of course, now we have blogs. Now you can show your kid’s cute widdle bum to the entire cyber-universe.

This is one good reason that some people should not have access to broadband. Kyler, I am so, so sorry. There are good therapists out there who specialize in children of parents who over-disclose on their family blogs. A couple of years (with sessions twice a week or so) should take care of any trauma suffered from the hundreds, perhaps thousands of people seeing you on a potty seat. It’s not your fault!

I need to post something positive right now or I will be depressed for a fortnight.

Wisconsin has more than its share of nature’s temporal markers. If you see a blooming Hepatica, it must be mid to late April. Emerging May Apples. The first leaves of the Wild Ginger poking up through the oak leaves. Skunk cabbage. Dutchmen’s Breeches. Solomon’s Seal. Trillium of many varieties.

We took a nice walk yesterday at Governor Dodge State Park, just west of us in the Driftless Zone where the glaciers never made it. The topography is hilly and beautiful, and if you throw a bucket of water on the ground it will find its way to one of a thousand feeder streams and eventually end up in the Mississippi River.

This is a good time to walk Gov. Dodge because no one goes there when it’s “this cold.” We saw one other couple on the trail, and I’m sure no one else was out there. I was annoying I’m sure, as I was on my knees and elbows at every turn, wanting to take a picture of this and that. My good wife indulges me.

We were walking the Pine Cliff/White Oak trail, a loop of about 2-3 miles, which is a family favorite. We’ve walked it dozens of times, and I never tire of it, especially when it changes so much season to season. Large limestone outcroppings hide springs that keep the ferns and mosses happy, and the water flowing down the rock faces makes a wonderful music that is so welcome after a long, quiet winter.

The Sharp-Lobed Hepatica (H. acutiloba) is the first to catch my attention. It’s last year’s liver-colored leaves that I first notice, which is why the common name of the sp. Hepatica is “liverleaf.” This year’s growth was already starting up the middle of the plant, and there was at least one flower, small white lovely thing that is one of the first to show up once the sun melts all the snow. Also common were the emerging May Apples that will soon cover the forest floor like a thousand small umbrellas. You can see the flower bud easily on the emerging plants, and in a few weeks there will be large white blossoms hanging below the plant’s twin leaves.We are so fortunate to live in a seasonal place. Next week we’ll see Pasque Flowers, most likely. Magnolias are blooming, the redbud is starting to show redbuds, and the maples are flowering, so the bees are starting to get out and gather pollen, their first source of food other than winter honey.

I took 71 pictures. Digital, I hate to say it, is here to stay. Anyone want to buy a medium format camera?

Top to bottom: A field of Purple Trillium, Hepatica, an emerging May Apple, Large-Flowered Bellwort, fiddleheads.

A Spring Azure (Celastrina ladon ladon). If you walk in the woods in the Spring, you may be lucky to spot one of these little guys. They are one of the first butterflies to be seen in Wisconsin in the Spring that doesn’t hibernate here. We were lucky to see it—it is a Gossamer and very, very small. It is slightly bluer than in the picture, the photo was a bit overexposed in all my excitement.

For more information about the awesome array of butterflies (and odonates too!) go to www.wisconsinbutterflies.org.

A few years ago, actually eight years ago, I build this shack. This is, as my wife says, what happens when you don’t build enough forts as a child.

It’s a simple structure, 12 x 16′ because I wanted to create as little waste as possible. The total waste from this structure filled one and a half wheelbarrows, except for the gable ends, which created two large triangles of OSB that I could not use anywhere else. The windows were recycled from a cabin that burned down, the stovepipe likewise. The wood stove was the little Upland we used heating our old home.

The best thing about the shack is its proximity. It’s 60 feet from our back door, our little cabin in the woods that we can visit without burning any gas.

This week is our anniversary (24 years) and we were going to go camping for the weekend, but the thunderstorms and high winds convinced us otherwise. Instead, we went camping in The Shack.

Lofts are essential components of any good shack, and sleeping lofts are the sine qua non—you stay warmer longer as the heat rises in cooler weather, and with a door cracked and the loft window cracked in the summer you get a nice flow through of air such that air conditioning is totally unneeded.

So we went camping last night.

I really like camping.

Especially with a shackmate like this one.

We dodged a bullet with the weather and were able to pour footings before it started raining. We had to pump out a few times because of a high water table and some of the soil is sandy and silty so water moves through it fairly easily.

The formers were fast and amazingly deft with big chunks of rebar. It’s really a treat to watch tradesmen working like a well-oiled machine. No wasted energy, minimal communication — stuff just gets done.

We’ll hopefully get to get the forms set for the retaining wall and sonatubes tomorrow, then we wait. We’ll pour those Monday if the weather holds, wait three days and backfill. Then we wait a few more days and put up the steel beam, and start to tie into the building.

Who needs me? Who needs any of us after this amazing technological breakthrough.

http://kayakpaddling.net/

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the future. It’s the Stepford Instructors. Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. I would love to see this done with Kelly Blades doing the MST3K commentary.

It’s actually harmless…unless someone things they’ve actually been instructed after watching these clips.

Today, after several bureaucratic snafus and delays by a petty and insignificant man, the construction on the deck behind Rutabaga started up in earnest. There was a large, and I mean large backhoe. Jim, the driver/artist, was amazing. I believe he could pick a sliver out of my finger blindfolded. He could dig out a dandelion without disturbing the surrounding turf. Frankly, I’d say the guys spending a bazillion Euro building the massive super-collider at CERN would be better off splitting atoms hiring Jim. Just tell him how you want the atom divided, which orbitals you want where, and there ya go.

The footings will be poured tomorrow, Lord willing. We had soil testers out today and with a little bit of stone added, I think we have a good footing, but it has been such a wet year I was concerned it would be worse. Silty sand, not clay, is a good thing. I also learned from Dave, the soils engineer, that the worst soil upon which to build is Houghton Muck. I have no idea what H.M. is, but it caused Dave to grimace uncomfortably. I can just see the contractor — “I’m sorry to tell you this…you have Houghton Muck. There is no known cure.”

The world is a lovely place right now. A short walk around the neighborhood today showed evidence of Bluebells and Lungwort, as well as May Apples and Hepatica. Saw a few Dutchmen’s Breeches too, and other early spring things too numerous to mention.

…just some friends from work hanging out in the back yard by the fire pit while the youngsters (myself included) played 500 with a rugby ball.

No one was hurt. Except we decimated Valerie’s canoe cake. Clever, but also amazingly yummy.