Feeling Better

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

-- Dylan Thomas

Today, I walked two miles.  That may not seem like much but it's the first time in two weeks that I could stride through Seymour at a good clip.  I have been feeling stronger each day but today I felt that I was almost back to myself.

One night at Lake Ottawa, I couldn't sleep.  Almost all the night, I lay in bed listening to the forest sounds and thinking about getting old.  The aging part has never bothered me, but getting weaker does.  I want to keep on charging through life rather than creeping timidly.  

As morning came on, I decided that the best way to recover my health was to plan future adventures and look for new challenges, and that is what I have been doing this week.  

The challenges will be writing all the stories I have swimming around in my head.  It means finishing the final draft of my current novel.  I have several non-fiction books to get out there, too.  There's the tale of Jake Dog, my Australian shepherd.  There are the travel books and maybe one about coming of age in the 1960s.  

There are still places I want to visit:  Ireland, Botswana, Brazil, and Hawaii are on the list and others, too. 

To do everything I want to do, I have to be healthy, so I am working back to a regimen of walking, swimming, biking, and exercising. Healthy eating is part of the plan.  

I will rage against the dying of the light with joy and enthusiasm.  

Rascal and Home

There were several reasons I had to leave Lake Ottawa and come home to Seymour today.

I am in the process of moving my accounts from one bank to another. That is confusing enough, but I also have to arrange to have bills paid automatically from the new account. Each bill has an entire new system to figure out.

I have to edit eight short stories that I originally posted at Black Coffee Fiction for a collection Wade Peterson and I are putting together.   I'm organizing two new storytelling tours, one to Illinois in October and another to the South in February.  There's the mail to go through.  Harvest time is here, with the garden's produce coming along.

None of this can be done from a national forest campground.

But the most pressing problem is this one:

Rascal has been living here in Mathom House since September 9, 2011 when his previous owner dropped him off.  As Gary pointed out, I should have known the little guy was a terrorist from the get go.  He was a devil when it came to dragging half dead little chipmunks and baby bunnies into this house.  He has never believed any human should sleep late in the morning.  He used to climb to the top of the headboard of my bed and leap upon my recumbent form which was a wake up call I could live without.

He isn't the worst pet I've ever had, that honor went to Mean Old Ms. Baby Doll who hated everyone except Chris, and especially loathed Gary.  He wasn't that best, that was Jocasta, the cat who helped raise Chris, watching over him in his crib and coming to get me whenever he woke up.

However, once I take in an animal, good or bad, it is an adoption and I never back out on the relationship.  Rascal stayed.

Now he is nineteen years old with not so many years left.  He doesn't like being alone in the house, yet doesn't want any other cat around for company. More than anything, he likes having me here.  He likes me feeding him, changing his litter, and petting him and letting him rest on my lap when his bones ache.

Darn that cat, I feel guilty when I go off on one of my trips. So here I am, away from the forest I love and once he got his food, his clean litter and a little petting, he went off to sleep and has ignored me ever since.

***

Wade Peterson finished his Corncob and Michael today at Black Coffee Fiction http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com  I wondered how he was going to find the end to that one!

My cousin Charles and Sean and Chris are still working their way along the Pacific Crest, but the National Forest Service is re-routing hikers because of forest fires.  They still feel lucky however, because some of the people following them seem to be permanently stuck back in California.  http://3gaycaballeros.blogspot.com

Rainy Day Ambition

Camping in the rain isn't all that bad.  Today I had time to read books, write out postcards, attack a very hard sudoku puzzle, organize my day planner, and take a nap.

Gary did much the same with the addition of washing the camper which is easier to do when it is raining. It doesn't make much sense to me because he'll do the same when he brings the camper back, but he tends to be obsessive about such things.

Earlier, we went the six miles to Iron River for an outing.  Gary went to Ace Hardware for some gizmo he needed, but it is a huge warehouse of a place full of stuff I haven't the least interest in.  Other than watching the employees going around on little silver scooters to help customers (amusing), I would rather stay in the van reading.

I could have done the same at the thrift shop since we had already been there this week and bought what we wanted in a two dollar bag sale.  We were in and out in ten minutes.

At Angeli's supermarket, we got our cappuccino and free doughnuts and sat down to read the store's flyer, but the television was blaring in the food court with the usual Fox News misinformation. (Fox News viewers always score worst in current events test.) This time, the pundits were blaming President Obama for the Great Recession, which began in 2007, long before he was President.  They blamed him for the cuts in Medicare, when the cuts were inserted in the budget in the Republican controlled House of Representatives.  The female hosts were shrieking their opinions.

It is always Fox News at Angeli's, just as it is in doctors' offices, repair shops, anywhere there is a captive audience.  Not this time, however.  Gary went to the television console and turned the sound down.

We fully expected the old timers in the food court to object.  One table is usually filled with five old men who discuss (and I mean parrot) whatever Fox News has fed them. They weren't at their usual station.  When Gary turned down the sign he got a thumbs up from the rest of the people who were there.  Later, he turned the TV to another station entirely with no complaints.

Gary says next time he is going to study the television console more carefully and bring along a remote so he can switch the channel while the old farts are watching.  

More on the Keweenaw

On the way to Copper Harbor yesterday, we were stopped by road construction near the town of Albert, just north of L'Anse.  To our left was the Ford Sawmill Museum.  We were already too far to turn in and take a look, but next time, I want to.   I looked into it and found out that Henry Ford, who had large timber tracts in the area, started the sawmill in 1935 to provide lumber for his "Woody" station wagons.  The mill continued operations into the 1970s.  There is a large pond to the right of the highway where logs were floated in from the surrounding area.  The complex includes a workers village.

Ford kept producing cars through the Great Depression so I expect the workers were pretty happy to be there.  

At Houghton we passed by Michigan Technological University and I was so impressed. Houghton is so far off the beaten track that I assumed the place was small but I was wrong.  The 2010 U.S. Census says that Houghton's population is 7,710 but with the students that number swells to about 22,000.  The buildings swallow up the south end of the downtown. Houghton's streets are paved with bricks.  Old buildings have boutiques and exotic restaurants.In the summer there are outdoor cafes.  It would be a charming place to go to college except for the weather.

There several places in the lower 48 of the United States that have claims to bad weather.  International Falls, Minnesota usually shows the coldest temperatures on the weather forecasts.  Death Valley, California is inevitably the hottest.  There are two cities that vie for the honor of the most snow: Buffalo, New York, and Houghton, Michigan.  In the winter of 1978-79, Houghton had an astounishing 32 and 1/2 feet of snow, not all at once, but I remember pictures of people tunneling into their homes and businesses.

Gary talks about moving north but I wonder if we are hearty enough old timers to take the winters.

***
My cousin and compadres have passed their 2,000th mile on the Pacific Crest Trail with a mere 650 to go.  They expect to be in the State of Washington in another two days.
You can read about their travels at 3gaycabelleros.blogspot.com

Copper Harbor, Michigan trip

We're just back from a long day's trip to Copper Harbor, Michigan.

Copper Harbor is on the Keweenaw Peninsula which juts way out into Lake Superior. It is the northernmost town in Michigan. Isle Royale, one of the national parks, is out across the waters.  My mother told me that Copper Harbor was one of the prettiest places she ever went to.  I would like to go when she did some day, when the fall colors were at their peak.  On this trip we saw only a touch of red, a promise of more to come.

I grew up knowing that U.S. Highway 41 went past Green Bay and Appleton and on to the world.  I didn't know it started at the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula and went all the way to Miami Beach. It makes me want to hit the road and follow it all the way down this February.

From Copper Rock we took the Brockway Mountain Road up to the ridge and looked down on Lake Superior.

Back in Copper Harbor I had seen some signs about the Raptor Watch, so when we got to the visitors center and gift shop at the highest point on the road, I asked the clerk about that.  She laughed and told me it was in March.  Birders came on snowmobiles to watch the big raptors fly through the valley.  She said it was called the "Oops Migration" because the birds think they are going to Canada as they fly up the Peninsula and don't realize they've made a mistake until they reach Copper Harbor.  Then they have to turn around and somehow find Duluth before they can go north again.

At Eagle Harbor we stopped to see the lighthouse.

And took a quick snapshot of Jacob's Falls off Highway 26.

Then to Houghton where Gary could have his heart's desire...another trip to Walmart.

We're back at Lake Ottawa and I am so, so tired.  Tomorrow a lieu day with naps.  

Rain, Rummage and Blood Report

It's  rainy day in the Ottawa National Forest.  We make brief sorties around the campground between showers, but I've never made it as far as the boat landing.  When the sun shines, we go to the lake at the edge of our site fourteen campsite to see what's happening. Usually, not much.

With the weather such as it is, this morning we went to Iron River a few miles away.  We stopped at the post office to get post card stamps  but since I misplaced them soon after, the post cards will not be mailed for another day.  I did manage to get one off to Evan before that.  He does like his postcards.

We went to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store and lo and behold! there was a $2 a bag sale.  We proceeded to stuff a bag with two fleece jackets, one extra long fleece shirt, a diaphanous night shirt, and two sleeveless shirts.   The fleece is necessary as the nights cool down to the 30s here in the national forest.  The diaphanous shirt is appropriate for ladies of a certain age, Gary says. The sleeveless shirts come in handy on warm days. One was needed to replace the bloody one I threw out a week ago.

We told camper Linda about St. Vinnie's and sure enough she was there with her nephew Brandon.  She showed me two shirts he will wear when school starts down in Illinois.

I am feeling less like a hypochondriac today because Theda Care sent me the results of my blood work.  By comparing tests I had done at my yearly physical in May to those done a week ago in the ER and two days later at the doctor's office, I can see how my platelet count dropped dramatically but started to climb again two days later. I love the technology that allows me to keep track of my health.

We bought steaks at Angeli's supermarket in Iron River.  Tonight we will grill them with onion, bake a potato, and cook corn.  That should help the platelet count.

Tomorrow, we plan to travel to Copper Harbor, the northernmost point of Michigan.  By Wednesday, I hope to be strong enough to do the two mile round trip hike to Bennan Lake part of the Ge Che Trail system.

So our days go.

Recuperation

After we were last camping together, Gary packed up everything and moved to Lake Ottawa in the Ottawa National Forest, leaving the Lost Lake mice behind.  It is one way of solving a rodent problem. I picture them leaping from the camper as he pulled away from site 23.  Here in the UP we have only "bumble birds", his name for hummingbirds, to contend with.  He is cheerfully moving things around the new cook tent as I type this.

As for me, my blood loss and subsequent cold have left me wandering in a mental haze.  Back in Seymour, anything I tried to accomplish took hours longer than necessary. I am moving my finances from a bank that is too big to fail (so I'm giving them a hand) to an account at a local bank.  I wanted to set up bill payments on line from my account. After two days, I gave up and sent checks out to my creditors. When was the last time I used a check for anything? I can't remember but it was easier than trying to get through the electronic system.

Our friend Marty, a "troll" from lower Michigan camping here with Linda and their nephew Brandon, has the same affliction. He says it takes him over a week to recover from a nose bleed.  He has his cauterized every six years.  

Gary pointed out that when I lost blood from my nose some of it came from my brain which explains my befuddlement. I told him I now understood what men feel like when their brains cease to function when they are aroused. 

On the plus side, my dreams have been interesting. In last night's episode, my sisters whom I seldom see these days arrived at my house to celebrate my mother's birthday, my mother who has been dead since the end of the last century. I had nothing to say to them so kept escaping to my basement, my musty old basement, the end of which, in my dream, was in a golden glow facing a beach and a setting sun. But no, I had to celebrate my mother's birthday so up the creaking old steps I would go again to the living room where we all sat in a circle of chairs and stared at each other until down the stairs I would go again to get something from the freezer or find presents or some other excuse but really to breath in the sea air and soak up the sun.

Make of all that as you will. I am too exhausted to care! I will spend the next few days soaking up the real sun at the edge of Lake Ottawa and resting.

(Upers call those who live in lower Michigan trolls because they live under the Mackinac Bridge.)