The Sturgeon Trail - Part 2

     Gary and I have been volunteering for years to patrol and guard the sturgeon that go upstream on the Wolf River system from Lake Winnebago, as part of a program run jointly by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the volunteer organization Sturgeon for Tomorrow.  We almost always do a night guard in an isolated spot along the Wolf River.  We see very few people in those places.  We sit on lawn chairs, read, write, and talk as we sip our hot drinks and snack.  When one of us gets sleepy, its a short climb into the bed in the back of Gary's van.
     This year our scheduled patrol date of April 18 passed without the sturgeon spawning because of the cold temperatures.  We called the DNR to re-schedule, but because Gary has to leave on business, we had to agree to a day guard.  When we arrived at sturgeon camp at 6:00 a.m. yesterday, the "sturgeon general" told us that our favorite spots were all flooded.  There was no way we could go there. All that was left for us was the Sturgeon Trail on Highway X west of New London.  We were fed a hearty breakfast, given our 2011 caps, told to pack our lunches, and off we went.
     The Sturgeon Trail is the second busiest of the spawning sites.  Instead of sitting in comfortable lawn chairs, we mostly walked for miles up and down the trail, talking to hundreds of people. We were less guards than concierges, Gary said. We answered questions, some of them downright silly.  One of the elderly women wondered why we didn't put the sturgeon closer to the parking lot!
     Most of the complaints were about the lack of spawning.  At 7:00 a.m., nothing was going on. The females will not lay their eggs until the temperature in the water reaches 53 degrees.  Later on, things sped up and there was enough thrashing about to keep our voyeurs happy.  Most of their questions could be answered to pointing them to the informational signs along the trail.
     All anyone needs to know about sturgeon spawning, or for any other wildlife mating, is that it's like guys in a bar, males looking for females.  They will do anything to impress the ladies and that means they can be incredibly stupid. Some male sturgeon have been know to bash their brains in against the rocks.
     Most of the people were well behaved, though there were the parents who insisted on holding babies over the river so they could look down at the fish.  They didn't realize the strength of the current in the Wolf River.  One slip and that child would be gone.  It gave this grandmother the willies.
     Gary took a drive over to the city garage because it was listed on our directions.  There he found the DNR tagging fish and took photos with his cell phone.  I had to stay behind and was jealous because in all our years guarding, I had never seen this.  I stayed on the trail, but directed anyone with children to head over to the garage for the show.
     The Winnebago system has the only healthy population of sturgeon left in the world so people come from all over to watch the show. During a slow time, some folks from La Jolla, California stopped to talk. I was working on my blog.  They wondered if there was all that much happening in my life to fill a blog. I explained what I was doing and that I would be in California in July, telling stories and traveling.  No where near La Jolla though.
     Things got busier in the afternoon on the west end of the trail so I stationed myself there on a folding chair.  A Lutheran pastor from Iowa had brought a busload of his teenagers to see the show.
     Then came the highlight of my day.  The DNR crew showed up to net and tag sturgeon on our banks.  It was a simple operation but it required muscle.  They had to catch them then drag the monsters, some around 100 pounds, over to the staff that measured the thrashing sturgeon (longest 70 inches), inoculated them,tagged them with a sub dermal bar code, and recorded all the information. Some of the fish had been tagged years before by the older members of the crew.

      Dan Folz and Mike Penning were the  patriarchs of the crew having done this for over fifty years.  They started when Gary and I were just kids.  Dan is called Father Sturgeon.  He is so big that he looms over everyone.  One of the crew said they couldn't start without him and we would know he was there when the sun was blocked out.  In the old days, the crew tagged at night behind a bar.  A belligerent drunk came out to demand what they were doing and Folz stood up.  The drunk's head came up to his waders.  The guy went back into the bar.
     Dan and Mike told us that in the old days, the Lutheran minister from Seymour used to come out and help.  When they went back to their truck, they would find a gift from him in a bottle marked "film remover".  It contained Jack Daniels whiskey.  Reverend Lange was the minister in my church back then.  Whiskey?  I would never have thought it of him.
     By this time there were crowds of people watching, so when the DNR had a sturgeon, we all yelled "Incoming!" so no one would be knocked off the bank by a thrashing tail as the fish was brought over for its procedures.  The children were all wide eyed, watching this show. We could see future environmentalists in the making.
     And We'll be back next year, no question about it, but at a quieter spot.
     Anyone interested in the sturgeon guard should check  People of the Sturgeon: Wisconsin's Love Affair with an Ancient Fish, by Kathleen Schmitt Kline, Ronald M. Bruch, Frederick P. Binkowski, Bob Rashid.

Sturgeon Guarding - Part One

We've spent the day on sturgeon patrol.  Instead of our quiet little corner in the boonies where we never talked to anyone but spent the day reading and birding, we were assigned the Wolf River Sturgeon Trail off Highway 10 east of New London.   After Bamboo Bend in Shiocton, this is the busiest site in the program.  We were  busy talking to visitors for twelve hours, telling them about the sturgeon, giving them advice about other sites, watching the Department of Natural Resources tag the big fish, and walking back and forth on the trail.

We've come back exhausted, tanned, exhilarated ... and very, very tired.

I'll write the entire day up tomorrow.  

Plans for Tomorrow

Tomorrow is that royal wedding thing.   Some of my friends are getting up early to watch the ceremony.

Tomorrow is the week of the annual sturgeon guard.  Gary and I are getting up early to watch our fishy friends.

I like to participate in history.  A few weeks ago,  I went to Madison to circle the capitol chanting.  I lived in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in 1968.  The hippies, yippies and protests were something else. If I were in London in Westminster Abbey, I would enjoy the wedding firsthand, but watching television is not the real thing.

When the Twin Towers went down in 2001, I went outside and began transplanting irises and planting bulbs.   I continued working in my garden that whole week as everyone else in the neighborhood watched the catastrophe over and over.   In the end, they had essentially shell shocked themselves to the point that 911 was used to sway them as voters in the next elections.  Me, I have a garden of perennials that come back each summer. I think that is a better way to remember the tragedy.

When Princess Diana died and the funeral followed, Gary and I went camping.  While people were watching television, we were hiking in autumn sunshine in Door County.  The usually busy campground was quiet.  The entire funeral can be found on the internet if I ever decide to watch it.

Tomorrow, the sun should shine, the temperatures moderate.  We'll ask for a quiet guarding place where we can do some bird watching.  We'll take lawn chairs and books to read. We'll get a start on our summer tans.  This is what we do on beautiful spring days. After days of rain, that is appealing.

The entire Windsor wedding will be replayed on Friday night if we choose to watch it.  But we probably won't.

 

Killing a Dog

I belong to a writers' group that meets once a week at the Copper Rock North, a coffee shop.  We meet to present our fiction, usually short stories, for the others' critiques. Wade selects a topic each week and we try to work out a story following his suggestions.  Once a year in November, we participate in NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

Every so often I kill off some fictional character.  We have all committed murder on paper.  Where I have drawn the line is killing a dog.  Wade was the first to commit canine-cide, if that is a word.  I told him it was terrible. Then Nikki joined in and even worse, she murdered a sweet, harmless family pet.  Last week, Joe jumped in with a hit and run doggy death.  Awful, I said.

Wade told Jen and me that we were the only two writers who had left dogs alone.  Our assignment was to get it out of our systems.  "It's holding you back," he said.

So after thinking about it for over a week, this morning, I did the deed.  I wrote a short story  wherein I killed off Puddles, a tiny dog my neighbor Linda refers to as a "drop kick mutt."

Wade was right.  A writer should not avoid any topic.  The story was funny.  It's already gone out to face rejection by editors.

No matter my fictional proclivities I truly am a gentle person who has never hurt anyone.  Seriously.

A Rainy Day

This morning, I woke up to rain coming through an open window in my bedroom.  My bed was damp and the rug next to the window was wet.  Darn, after yesterday's sun, this was a disappointment.  No gardening or exploring spring today.  I closed the window.

No matter what the weather, I try to exercise, so I went off to the aquatic center to swim for almost an hour.  Later, I did stretching here at home.  This evening, the rain let up to a mist, so I managed to walk two miles.

When I am on a trip, I schedule a time in the middle of the day for a long walk.  I do yoga in the evening after I've set up the campground.  I'll pack two or three swimsuits and hit the lakes or the ocean whenever I can.

If I don't do this, I not only lose muscle tone and gain weight, I find don't sleep well at night.   If I don't sleep well at night, I don't perform well the next day.  With no personal trainer on my tours, I must take care of myself.

Waking up to rain in a tent?  Well, that's a whole new set of problems.

The Good Shepherd Swamp

Behind the Good Shepherd Complex, a place that provides nursing and assisted living care as well as a pre-school, there is a nature area consisting of some upland woods but also a marsh.  

For years, I took my pal Jake Dog, an Australian shepherd, to the swamp.  In those days, there was a mile long trail that had been created by a Boy Scout for his Eagle badge.  After Jake died, I don't think I had been there more than once or twice.

This morning I began to wonder aloud if the marsh marigolds were in bloom.  In the spring, they are a swath of gold along the edge of the creek.  Gary organized an expedition right away.  The sun was shining the day was warm.  It would be perfect.

Right off the bat we found that no one had been going into those woods.  The path was so overgrown that it was mostly unrecognizable.  After all the recent rain and snow we were leaping over puddles, trying to find dry places.   I had the foresight to wear boots but Gary's sports shoes got soaked very soon.  But we persevered.  

We worked our way from south to north, looking for wildflowers. There were trout lily leaves everywhere, but they were not in flower.  The trilliums and jack-in-the pulpits were still a no show.  Gary doubted we would find any marsh marigolds at all.  But I charged toward the creek anyhow.  Finally, I found the plants, all in bud and then there they were, the golden flowers.  Just one patch.  By next week, they'll all be blooming. I'll be there.

As we stumbled and clambered through the swamp, the crows began to scream.  When this hiker hears a "murder" of crows, she looks up to see what they are cawing at. Sure enough, it was a pair of great horned owls who fly so silently, one would never hear them. They kept swooping through the woods pursued by the crows.  Gary wondered why they didn't leave to escape their persecutors.  

A few steps more and we found the problem.  An owlet had fallen or jumped out of its nest and was on the ground.   We snapped a picture and moved on.  Will it survive?  We leave that to the owls and nature.  It could be a fox will be feasting tonight.

One last surprise before we left, the first trout lily of the summer.  With all those leaves, there will be another golden carpet within the next two weeks.

We'll be back on the next warm day, Gary with boots. 

Hunting for Eggs

After services at the United Methodist Church, there was an Easter egg hunt open to the community.   It was to be held outside, but Lois, who organized the event, took one look at the sodden lawn, and decided it would have to be held inside.  That meant that every room, including the choir room, Sunday school rooms, the church, the kitchen and the library held bright plastic eggs.

During the church services, those eggs caused a certain amount of restlessness on the part of the children, who had already taken a look around.  Still, they behaved themselves well, as did my grandson Evan, who was there, too.  My choir did an anthem with the bell choir and another an old favorite.  For the hymns, I played the piano to Deb's organ.  I think I never play the piano with so much enthusiasm as when Evan is there. I hope he'll remember that his grandmother had some talent in years to come.

Vera, who has been singing with the choir for 75 years, was the recipient of the first daffodil bouquet from my garden.  From now on, until I leave on tour, there will be a bouquet each Sunday for some member of the congregation.  It's always a welcome surprise to someone.

Then it was time.  Each child was to find seven eggs and turn them in for prizes, and Evan quickly did that.  But then it was discovered that there were so many more eggs than the children could find.  Most of them left after winning their prizes, but Evan and his mother Tisha asked if they could help find all the rest.  They stayed until every one of them was found and returned to the boxes in the church library.  They enjoyed the hunt more than winning the prize.

Then at home, after our dinner, they decided to help me take the plastic eggs off the shrubs and find the ones that had blown off in the high winds.  They were off on another hunt in the warm spring sun.   Evan even noticed that one of the eggs had gone under the deck and went in after it.  He and his daddy played catch with one of the presents the Easter bunny had left. We talked about taking a walk, but never got around to it.

Of all the Easters I've lived through, this may have been the most pleasant.