Some Conversations

At the Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, I stepped on a stone the wrong way and twisted my right knee.  From that point on, I was in some pain, which was made worse when I had to drive thousands of miles, using that leg. 

It wasn't until today that I've been able to walk for three miles.  Walking time is thinking time for me, the time when I work out stories.   Today, however, I was thinking about conversations I had on my trip. 

There was operator of an RV Park. She had left New York State to marry a real cowboy and settle down on a small ranch.  Now, about to turn 50, she was divorcing him and wondering where to go with her children.  She was thinking of going back east.   Taciturn western men don't talk all that much.  Rugged individualism can equate to downright rudeness.   

I met two women at the North Dakota visitors' center at Beach, who drove the pilot cars for the over sized trucks that carry the giant wind turbines going up all over the United States.  One of them had just been in Montana, her fiftieth state.  Later, I would see the giant blades turning throughout the western states.

In Pomeroy, Washington State, I stayed at the county fairgrounds and talked to the construction workers who were putting the great turbines in place. One worker was stringing the wires that brought the electricity from the windmills to the power plants.  He lived in a tent at the fairgrounds.  He said he believed in a balanced federal budget, but felt that the money spent on alternative energies was well spent...especially when it created jobs. 

At a Motel 6 laundry room, I talked to a young married couple who were in the foreign service.  They had just returned from Afghanistan.  They had been to Yellowstone and were now on their way to Glacier National Park, to look at glaciers while they still existed.   They seemed to feel a certain pessimism about the future of the country.  Sad. 

In Gold Beach, Oregon, at another laundromat, I met a fellow from Oklahoma City who was vacationing on the West Coast. He didn't want to leave Oregon, he said. He was born in Oklahoma, but he hated the idea of returning, because there had been 30 days of temperatures above 100 degrees.  The state was burning up, and people worried about another dust bowl.  But he had a good job there and would have to go back. His sadness sticks with me.   

At Wilsall, I pitched my tent at the Ft. Wilsall motel next to a tepee and surrounded by log huts.  I loved the spacious shower, and would have stayed two days, but the manager said she had booked the entire place for a cowboy yoga group.  I still wonder what cowboy yoga is!    

The scenery was lovely but it is the stories I heard and the people I talked to that stay with me.   

Peering through the Window

When I was a very little girl, I would be packed into the back seat of a sedan with my sisters and off we would go on outings.  I don't remember much about where our family went, but I do remember the trips home in the dark.  The radio was always on, often with some broadcast of a series. As we listened to the stories, I looked out the car window at the farmhouses we passed.  Some of them had picture windows, a relatively new idea back then.  Through those big windows, I could see people moving around in lighted rooms.

Who were they?  I wondered.  Did they know that people driving by were looking in on their lives?  None of them knew the name of that little girl, yet there I was, watching what they were doing, even if it was only a burst of information as we went by.  It was a nosiness that has stuck with me all my writing life.

Now I am writing a daily blog.  The "stats" information Blogspot provides doesn't tell me the names of those who are reading my words, but it does tell me what countries they come from.  This week, I know that besides the many American readers, citizens from France, China, Egypt, India, Latvia, and others have been looking in to see what I am doing.

I am like those people in the picture windows.  I am not certain who is checking in to see what is happening in my life.   I can guess that the fifteen Germans who suddenly appear together on the Blogspot radar are students who are studying English. I wonder if the once a day visitor from France might be the penpal I've had for over thirty years.  Is the UK visitor Nancy?  I am certain that Rocky is checking in on me from Amsterdam.  But who are the rest?

I will keep the curtains open on my window and let the world watch.  But who are you watchers?  I wish I knew.  

Home for a While

I needed to be home at Mathom House to take care of business and Rascal, who is purring on my lap as I try to type this.  He is full of chicken so has forgiven me for the time I spent playing with chipmunks and hummingbirds.   

Gary is still at Laura Lake, lucky guy.  By the time I finish up here on Monday, he will have packed up and moved to another national forest campground, possibly Lake Ottawa in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  The rules are simple, one can camp in any forest campground, but only for fourteen days.  We'll have to be elsewhere by Monday. 

Meanwhile, I must finish up some writing projects, take care of bills, mow the lawn and pull some weeds.  There's laundry to do, friends to call, bird feeders to fill.  

Then it's off for the next summer adventure.  The last two days at Laura Lake there was a chill in the air, the first touch of autumn.  I mean to soak up as much sunshine as I can.  Can one fill one's soul with warmth before winter sets in?  I can only try. 

The Singing Wilderness

One of the requirements of the adult summer reading program is to read a classic.  There is no requirement that the classic be fiction, so I chose Sigurd Olson's The Singing Wilderness, which is listed as one of the top ten environmental classic by the Sierra Club.  Along with John Muir, Aldo Leopold and Henry David Thoreau, Olson wrote of the joy of nature and fought to protect some of the most beautiful places on the planet. He lived a long life canoeing and hiking in the lake country in the north of Minnesota and was instrumental in creating Voyageurs' National Park along the boundary with Canada

The singing wilderness is where we hear the sounds that are drowned out by urban life:  the calling of the birds, the roaring of rapids, even in the crackling of an open fire or the patter of rain on a tent. 

"Because of our almost forgotten past there is a restlessness within us, an impatience with things as they are, which modern life with its comforts and distractions does not seem to satisfy.  We sense intuitively that there must be something more, search for panaceas we hope will give us a sense of reality days and nights with such activity and our minds with such busyness that there is little time to think.  When the pace stops we are often lost, and we plunge once more into the maelstrom hoping that if we move fast enough, somehow we may fill the void within us." 

This is why Gary and I must get away to all that is wild as often as we can.  Here at Laura Lake we can watch the nuthatches and woodpeckers, we can argue with red squirrels, we can observe the pace of the wildflowers. Gary has no plans to return to Seymour until the Labor Day weekend.  I will be with him as often as I can during that period, and come September, I will be camping on my own in the Upper Peninsula.

Our friends the Battens have had a whirlwind of activity as they visit waterfalls, campgrounds, and lakes.  We enjoy their enthusiasm, but we are living a slower pace.  We have seen all their finds already.  They are still working folk and must fit it all into a week or two.  We are retired so we simply allow the beauty to slip into our souls.

Laura Lake



After the frustrations at the far too busy western campgrounds, Laura Lake is a treat.  Last night, Gary and I did a count of the campgrounds and found that only 13 of the 39 sites were filled. In our loop, our friends the Battens were the only other campers. 

We sit in the quiet and read the stacks of library books we brought along. Sometimes, Gary turns on the radio to listen to classic music.  Mozart, Bach, Beethovan, Sibelius, each sounds wonderful in a forest setting.

Laura Lake is not the biggest or fanciest of the lakes, but I have loved it since I first brought my son Chris here around thirty years ago.  Some years later, I nagged Gary until he was willing to take a side trip off Highway 8 to take a look at it.  He was smitten, too. Since then we have come here every summer for at least a week or two. 

Each summer I follow the trail around the lake to find old friends, birds, wildflowers or critters.

There is something about the light filtering through the trees, something about the quiet splash of waves, something about the soft whispering of the pines.  We have been here in every season, even hiking in during the winter.  We swim, we hike, we light campfires, we wallow in beauty.  

Sweet.

Morning in the Woods

I woke up earlier than Gary.  To let him sleep, I went out to the cook tent, got water boiling, and made myself a cup of tea.  Then I set to work. 

I am enrolled in the adult summer reading program at the Muehl Public Library.  I must read six books on a variety of subjects by the end of August.  I didn't get started until I got back from the west coast, so I have five to go.   I began to read the second book on my list.

Then the distractions started.  The whrrrr announced the arrival of the ruby throated hummingbird at the feeder Gary hung from the clothesline.  I had to take time to admire the sparkling colors as one by one, the birds whizzed in to partake of their nectar. 

I went back to work, recording the events of the previous day in my journal, the paper one I use on camping trips.  These go back two decades.  But then our neighbors from the next campground woke up and I had to observe their comings and goings, too.

We met the Battens, Marilee and Brad, last year when we camped at Beaver Lake and became friends.  They live in Illinois, but they love the Wisconsin woods.  Gary has made himself their guide, pointing out all the beautiful places the should visit.  Yesterday, they took his waterfall guide and went out to explore the many falls in the area. Last night we heard all about it when they joined us at our campfire. 

They took a walk down the road.  I finished writing in the journal.

Gary woke up in time to turn on the radio to listen to Laura Erickson's "For the Birds" on public radio out of Duluth.  Today we learned a bit more about cedar waxwings. 

And now I am on line, thanks to Brad's special wi fi hook up.  I bless him for this because I won't have to leave the campground in search of internet service to post this blog.

But I still haven't read that second book.  

Modern Camping

This week I'm camping with Gary and it's a far cry from the camping I got used to on my trip west.  Instead of my little tent, we have a camper with an extension to make it even bigger.  There's a cook tent with everything a cook could even think of needing.  There are comfortable chairs around the fire pit, enough to invite in guests.

Inside, spacious beds with an extra foam mattress.  We have a refrigerator and stove and a banquette for fine dining.  There's a toilet, closets, cupboards and more. 

Let us not talk about television, more than one radio, a generator, and electricity.  Somehow I survived without all of this for five weeks.

But we have Laura Lake, loons, ducks, eagles, chipmunks, red squirrels, deer and no doubt, bears, though they stay out of sight.  We went swimming in our private beach. 

Life is good.