The Bear Creek Trail

This past Wednesday I rode my bike out to Wisconsin Point via the Osaugie Trail and the Bear Creek Trail. The Bear Creek Trail is also known by the name given this route by the Ojibwe people, Makwa Ziibiins Miikana, and even though I've convinced my spell checker to accept that, my fingers and brain are going to stick to calling it the Bear Creek Trail for the remainder of this report.

While I am always awed by the beauty of the land, water, plants, and animals every time I venture out into these woods, something else that strikes me as quite wonderful is how people have been inspired to not mess this place up. Wisconsin Point is largely unspoiled and undeveloped public land with a single paved road running its length and a few parking lots where people can get out of their cars and enjoy the land and the views. There is a picturesque lighthouse at the end of the point and beaches that are good places to find surf-polished agates.

The Bear Creek Trail, which lets non-motorized folks reach the point, is a 2.2 mile meandering path through the woods. It took a decade of planning and several years of work to make this tiny old native trail into a meter wide accessible but environmentally considerate trail. Over forty bridges and boardwalks span the creeks and marshes and the trail is now enjoyed by hikers, dog walkers, and bicyclists. This is not trail built for speed, but for contemplation. At various points a bench and a beautiful view encourage one to stop, sit, and wonder.

I think it is important and essential to our survival that we keep conscious of how our actions impact the world. Enough footsteps become a path and our paths through the world do change the world, for better or worse. I don't think progress is a bad thing, I'm thankful for the humans who mapped and built the trails I'm riding on. But I also think we must be aware of the direction in which we are heading and not allow ourselves to be blinded by speed in our haste to get somewhere else. We manage to screw a lot of things up and do some things right. I'm glad there are still places where I can stop, sit on a bench, look at the trees, listen to the birds, and think about the ways I'm making my way in the world. 

The Poplar Wetland Basin

On my bike ride this morning, I stopped by the Poplar Wetland Basin. This little bit of land, about the size of two city blocks, is a neatly engineered bit of water routing. Some of the rain runoff from the city streets is channelled into this area instead of dumping directly into Lake Superior. The marshland serves as a giant filter. As the water slows here, cattails and other plants break down some of the salt and petroleum pollution and a lot of particulates sink to the bottom of the ponds. Before the city was here, much of the land was marsh and the Poplar Wetland Basin is a restoration of some of that original marshland. Understanding how the world worked before we decided to pave the planet can, if we're smart, show us how to lessen our impacts on the place and maybe undo or at least lessen some of the damage we've done.

One little wetland isn't the whole solution, of course, but it is a good example of local stewardship in action. The blackbirds, ducks, and geese seem to happy to call this bit of wetland home.

A Moment of Zen

Sometimes a Zen master will whack a pupil with a stick to bring their awareness into the present moment. We, and when I say "we" of course I mean "me", are often living in our own heads, thinking of the future or the past. We actively imagine something else or somewhere else, ignoring what is right in front us.

I try as much as possible to get out into the world beyond my own brain, to feel the sun, wind, or rain on my skin, to hear the birds and smell the trees and still I get distracted. But the world is full of Zen masters.

I was intent on my camera, walking with my eyes and lens zoomed in on a distant goose, when a SLAP! brought me into the moment just a few feet away. A beaver I'd damn near stepped on jumped into the water, smacking his tail as he dove. He then surfaced and circled back. "What part of 'be here now' don't you understand?" he seemed to be saying. Of course I was already regretting the great shot I'd missed as I took a couple of mediocre shots of my damp teacher. I still have so damn much to learn. It's a good thing the world is filled with so many teachers.

THE AUBURN CONFERENCE by Tom Piazza

Earlier this month I read LIVING IN THE PRESENT WITH JOHN PRINE, a terrific book. Prine, of course, was an interesting fellow, interesting mostly I think because he was a keen observer with a genuine affection for people. He was a guy you'd enjoy hanging out with. In reading Piazza's book, I realized that Piazza and Prine were similar souls and the book gave me a sense that not only should I spend more time with Prine, something I can do thanks to all the recordings John left us, I also wanted to spend more time with Piazza's thoughts.

While Piazza was writing the book about Prine, he was also working on a novel, one that John Prine wanted to read. John probably read it in heaven while sipping a vodka and ginger ale. I got to read it here on earth.

The book is THE AUBURN CONFERENCE and it is a fun speculation, a consideration of what didn't happen but might have if in 1883 a writer's conference took place at a small college in New York state. The big questions are "What is America?" and "What is the role of American literature?" And Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Frederick Douglas, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others all have something to say on the subject. The conference goes delightfully awry as egos and ideas clash and the discussion expands to include discussions of race, women's suffrage, and the roles and responsibilities of the artist.

Piazza does a wonderful job capturing the voices and the spirits of these varied writers, adding a few fictional folks to the mix including a romance novelist and retired General of the Confederacy. And an unnamed but very recognizable reclusive poet in the audience gives the novel its most quiet, hopeful voice, a sense that America and American literature will somehow endure.

Piazza's novel, which I'm sure made no best-seller lists and perhaps never even made back its printing costs, is a reminder that the dollar is a poor measure of value. MOBY DICK was a financial failure in Melville's lifetime. Emily Dickinson certainly wasn't writing for money. And Tom Piazza wrote the book that his friend wanted to read. I count myself very fortunate that I got to read it here on earth.

The ScumStack Debate

 

Lessons in Slowing Down

 

Superior Heat Wave

 

Spring Critter Update

It has been a lovely spring day here in Superior and our afternoon temps have climbed into the mid-seventies. I got out on my bike early this morning and got some nice pictures of birds against the bright blue sky.

I saw a family of geese over at Barker's Island and our back yard bunnies have been doing what bunnies do, so now it is baby bunny season. We count the bunnies as a major success in our back yard ecosystem, we had a problem with a colony of rats that were nesting under the back yard bike shed. We try to get along with all creatures, but the rats crossed the line when they chewed into the shed and then chewed the grips off Christine's bike. We live-trapped relocated some rats and I wound up killing a couple with my Daisy air rifle (and I did not shoot my eye out!). But it was the bunnies that really won the war of the rats, they took over the burrow under the shed and we haven't seen any rats in the past year. Christine feeds the rabbits and squirrels and they have figured out that we aren't a threat to them. I'm pretty sure that the healthy population of rabbits and squirrels is keeping too much seed from building up under the bird feeders and the rats have moved on to some place with less competition. Some folks say that squirrels are just rats with fuzzier tails, but our squirrels are smart enough to leave the bikes alone.

The bunnies and the squirrels mostly get along, but sometimes they fight over carrots. An adult bunny packs a hell of a kick so the squirrels have learned to avoid direct confrontation, but will steal an unguarded carrot if they have a chance and then run up a tree or hide the carrot some place that they think is safe from the bunnies.

Born to Retire

There is a great quote from Dave Prine in Tom Piazza's book LIVING IN THE PRESENT WITH JOHN PRINE. Dave is John Prine's older brother, the one who taught him how to play guitar and in December of 2022, Piazza interviewed Dave and Dave described what his daily life was like.

"Now all I do is play the banjo and the fiddle, and once in a while noodle on the guitar and enjoy life. I've been retired since '06, and I think I was born to retire. My day is mine, totally. I do what I want to do when I want to do it, and if nothing else, I take a nap. I'm eighty-five now, and I'm not as mobile as I once was."

Dave Prine is a very wise man. When I read those lines to Christine, she agreed with me that they sure echo our experience. I don't play music, but I'm pretty much living my life now in accord with Dave's principles. I think I was born to retire.

The news I care about isn't news on TV, it's mostly what is happening in my back yard. I read my local paper (electronic version) and I talk to local folks to find out their take on things. The big news at KD's this week is that we have a reptile shop opening here in town.

The big news from my back yard has been the fact that several Blue Jays are hanging out, juvenile squirrels are racing around, and new baby bunnies are taking their first cautious steps into the world. That's the news I find fascinating.

Living in the Present with John Prine

Life has a way of not going the way you planned. In February of 2020, John Prine told Tom Piazza, a musician and writer he'd been friends with for a couple of years, that he he was ready to work on writing a memoir. The weekend of February 27th, 2020, Prine and Piazza sat down with a tape recorder for what they figured was the first of a series of discussions about the book. Unfortunately, there were no follow up sessions. In March of 2020, the Covid virus shut down the world. On March 26th, John Prine was admitted to the ICU with COVID symptoms. He passed away on April 7th, 2020.

Remarkably, Tom Piazza took not only that too brief interview and combined it with his recollections of their also too brief two year friendship as well as interviews with other folks who knew and loved John Prine and has crafted a book that is not so much a memoir of a dead man, but something more powerful, a book that feels like the living spirit of the man himself. Reading the book feels like hanging out with John Prine, something that is a very worthwhile thing to do.

John is a great story teller and boy does he tell great stories in this book. And folks who know John tell great stories about John. John tells about meeting Bob Dylan at Carly Simon's apartment in 1971. John's first record isn't out yet, it's still two months away from release. So John is the new kid but he's hanging out with Kris Kristopherson and Steve Goodman at Carly's place and Bob Dylan shows up. Bob has a new song "George Jackson" which he plays, and Goodman, who's a smart Aleck, leans in and says "That's great, Bob, but it ain't no 'Masters of War.'" Bob is cool and doesn't smack Goodman (something I probably would've done) but then Prine to kind of defuse the tension starts playing "Far from Me" one of his (Prine's) new songs and Bob joins in after the second chorus! Jerry Wexler at Atlantic had sent an advance copy of the record to Dylan. Another buddy there, Eddie Olson, (Carly Simon must've had a huge apartment) says "Hey, Bob, there's some people back in Chicago that think John Prine sounds a lot like you. What do you think?" Bob looks at Eddie and then looks at Prine and says "The first time I heard your record I thought you'd swallowed a Jew's harp." Of course Prine cracks up as he recounts this tale.

Prine is always telling stories, like the time Sam Cooke entered a Sam Cooke sing-alike contest because he and his touring band needed gas money. The first prize was fifty bucks. They came in second and won a set of jello molds!

But the book is much more than just fun anecdotes about famous people, it's about John Prine being in the moment, whether he's buying shoes, eating hot dogs (John loved hot dogs), hanging out and loving life. John Prine connects with people in a way that is made vividly clear in the pages of this book. Prine doesn't try to direct his life, he's too busy living it.

Piazza copes with the grief we fans share at the loss of John Prine by giving us a book that feels like the conversation with our friend is ongoing. We'll always have the songs and the knowing smile. This book is like one more road trip with the top down, the radio playing an old song and John saying "You know, this reminds me of..."

The Littlest Voyageur

 

Hauling Stuff

I spent a couple of decades working in the bike business and I used to say that I was good at selling bicycling and bad at selling bicycles. One of my beefs with the bike industry is that they always want to sell you something new and I am big on keeping old things going and adapting what you have. Bike manufacturers in general (companies like Rivendell Bicycle Works are the exception) like to sell you a machine specialized for a specific purpose. Hell, one of the biggest brands in the bike world is called Specialized. So you should have a road bike for riding on the road, a mountain bike for riding in the mountains, no wait you should have a couple of mountain bikes, one optimized for downhill riding and one for cross country. And maybe you have a touring bike for, well, touring. But if you're going to be riding on gravel, you need a gravel bike. And so on. Every year there is some new thing you need.

A few years ago cargo bikes were the big deal. A lot of bikes aren't made to haul stuff, but that's the whole idea behind cargo bikes. I worked in various shops that sold cargo bikes and I've lived for decades without a car. You would think I'd be the target market for a cargo bike, but dedicated cargo bikes tend to be big and heavy and a pain in the ass to store. Now days most of them are also electric. But I always set up my various bikes to haul a bit of cargo and when I needed more carrying capacity I use this amazing device called a trailer. It works really well.

When our sons Peter and Eric were little, they got hauled around in bike trailers. When they got bigger they graduated to a thing called a Trail-a-Bike, which is like half a tandem that attaches to the back of a bicycle. That let me put their leg power to work. And then before too long they graduated to their own bikes.

Today, as part of our spring cleaning and downsizing, I hauled a bunch of records and a typewriter to the Northland Estate Store and then I hauled another trailer load of stuff Christine no longer needed to the Goodwill. My little trailer was all I needed.

Spring Cleaning