Tree

I'm reading Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder

Louv says that it is only in the last thirty years or so that children don't have access to the outdoors. Partly because of the parents' fears, partly because of disappearing habitat, partly because of rules set by municipalities, children spend their days with their computers and indoor games. They don't take their bikes off on adventures.  They don't play with other children at twilight, catching fireflies. They don't build tree houses.

It certainly wasn't like that when I was a child. By the time I was six or seven, I regularly hiked alone to the woods at the edge of our eighty acre farm.  I wandered around looking for wild flowers, watching rabbits and squirrels. "The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses,” Louv said and it was true for me. 

It was also true for my son.  Chris and his friends built ramps to do tricks with their bikes.  Today, the police would be there to tear down the ramps, to warn the boys that what they are doing is dangerous and send them home.   Chris was out having adventures I knew nothing about which is as it should be.  

But we saw the beginning of that obsession with safety.  Soon after we moved to this house, someone in the neighborhood called me on the telephone and said, "Do you know what your son is up to?  He's climbing a tree."  

I went to the back yard and looked and sure enough, Chris had gone up a box elder. Furthermore, he and his friend Scott were building a tree house.  They hadn't gotten very far. 

I thought about it and realized that when we lived in duplex in a suburb in Illinois or when we lived in trailer parks, there were no trees worth climbing, just little "Charlie Brown" trees no taller than me.  

There was only one thing to do.  

The neighbor never called me again with a complaint about Chris.  She figured out she was dealing with one crazy woman.  Or a woman who didn't want a nature deficient child. 

The Farmhouse

From November until last week, Gary lived in the farmhouse in Illinois, visiting his Aunt Shirley daily in the nursing home, doing repairs on the farmhouse, and taking care of the day to day needs of the farm.  I visited him from time to time down there, but had to stay here with my own concerns, one of which was Rascal as he came to the end of his life.  

Gary only came north a couple of times.  When he did plan a drive here, it was often canceled because of winter weather or events in Illinois. He finally said he was leaving Illinois and the farmhouse and packed his van.  He was to leave on a Sunday but his aunt died the night before.  He was there for another week.  

I told him the farmhouse was holding on to him and it felt that way to me when I was there.  Generation of Gary's family lived there and perhaps their ghosts hung on. With Shirley's death, there will be no one living there.  

Today, I posted a short story at the Black Coffee Fiction blog http://blackcoffeefiction.blogspot.com

I took those feelings I had in the farmhouse and put them into "The Farmhouse".  The story was too long for one posting, so it will conclude next week.  

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Tomorrow I will be signing my new book Decades of Love and Other Disasters at Sissy's on North Main Street here in Seymour.  With all the interruptions this spring, we didn't publicize it very well but I still hope to sell a few books.  

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Finally a real spring day.  I cleared three more flower beds.  I have to get busy because by May 15 we could be camping.  All those beds have to be done before then.  

I walked three miles around town to exercise my weight down. By mid-summer I should average five miles a day. I need to lose about 25 pounds and I can best do that by walking.  

I helped Gary clean out his camper which he intends to trade in on something bigger. We will be driving to Door County on Sunday to examine a candidate.  The new camper will have a better heater and air conditioning, neither of which we would need all that often. Northern Wisconsin is delightfully cool in the middle of summer which makes it a destination for the people of Illinois. The temperatures never really drop low enough to worry much about heating until October when the campgrounds close. The campgrounds never open until mid-May and by then we won't need much heat.   

In the new camper I will have my own office so that I can continue to write each day, but I will be the one coming back to Seymour every other week to check on the house and collect the mail. Because I will be traveling so much, Gary thinks I need a better car.  He is currently considering a Volvo. I don't want a new car that depreciates the moment I drive it off the lot. A couple of dents would be nice because then I can enjoy my car without worrying about the least scratch.  I do want a decent stereo and air conditioning, two things that have been lacking in the Mercury Sable.  

Enter Jake Dog

It was Christmas Day, 1989.  Mean Ol' Ms Baby Doll had been with us for almost two years.  I had no idea that our lives were incomplete.

Then I walked into the kitchen of my mother's house and there he was, a puppy who looked lost in a world he knew nothing about.  He was adorable.  

My youngest sister who lived in Milwaukee had a roommate who had a brother, who had bred his Australian Shepherd bitch and wound up with four pure bred puppies in his small apartment. All was well until the landlord discovered what was going on when neighbors complained of the barking at all hours. His sister solved the problem by taking in mother and pups and hiding them from her landlord by putting them in a very dark, very damp basement. 

It didn't last long.  Homes had to be found for the puppies. She convinced my sister that our aging mother needed a herd dog.  And here he was, on Christmas Day, scared of everything around him. I looked at the big paws, figured out he was going to be one big dog, looked at my little mother and knew. There was going to be a dog in my future. 

His name was Jack, or to be precise, Big Jack, the biggest of the litter.  So it said on his papers.  For some reason, my mother objected to Jack. She changed his name to Jake.

For a few months, he lived with my mother but as he grew bigger and bigger, she couldn't handle him.  More and more, I was the one that came over to take him for his walks. He bounced around the snow like a furry rubber ball dragging me with him. He was a handful for me and I was not five feet tall like my mother.  

Gary was good at training dogs so began to help out. We walked together, teaching him to walk with us and not tear our arms off. As January, February and March passed into spring,  poor Jake, who had been trained to do his business on the snow, became confused.  Smaller and smaller patches of snow had to be found. He looked at us and whimpered when he couldn't find those melting white patches. 

In May, my mother decided he was my dog after a lot of suggestions from her friends about taking him to the pound. That was something we could never do to that sweet little dog. Jake would live with Chris and me, but we agreed that my mother and Gary would share dogsitting while I was off on storytelling tours.  

Gary became alpha and would remain so. I was somewhat lower on the pecking order though he was fond of me as he was with everyone.  

Sweet Day

After a nasty winter and a nasty April, spring is finally here, that sweet Wisconsin spring I so love.

With a warm day, I was able to do yard work.  Wearing a sleeveless top, I raked up the front yard, pulled some weeds, and trimmed shrubs.  I threw the yard waste into Gary's little trailer. He added the branches he trimmed from the apple tree and off we went to the city dump.  There is nothing that says spring as much as a visit to the city dump.

We sat on the back deck and read as we started our summer tans.

After supper, I talked Gary into a drive over to the Shiocton marsh.  I hadn't been over there since before I went to Illinois the last time.  A week can make a big difference. The  ice has completely melted leaving the marsh flooded, perfect for migratory birds.

There were birds all over the place but with so much water, they usually were too far away to photograph. The one exception are coots who never seem to be afraid of anything.

 Gary was swinging his binoculars this way and that, calling back his observations to me.

He is a wizard when it comes to identifying birds.  In that short mile of marsh, we found northern shovelers (a lot of them), Canada geese, red-winged blackbirds, coots, mallards, pie-billed grebes, buffleheads, tree swallows, hooded mergansers, redhead ducks, ringed necked ducks, wood ducks, sandhill cranes, blue-winged teal and a pair of muskrats.

On the way home, we watched the flood of geese heading north, countless V's against the blue sky.  It was a priceless day, made sweeter by the long, long winter.

The Camper

Another day with rain forecast so Gary decided we might as well go look for his next camper. He found the one he wanted on line.  It is located at a dealership in Suamico, north of Green Bay.  It was a pleasant drive as we talked about the coming summer.  Winter wheat is not showing green yet.  Yesterday Bob Manzke thought his wheat hadn't made it through the winter but now we wonder if it is simply to grow this year. 

Pulaski, Sobieski, Chase, Suamico.  As the miles passed, we talked about camping to come.  We want to be at Boulder Lake, a National Forest campground as soon as it opens for the season, but that means having the camper ready by mid-May. From there, the camper will be pulled to Lost Lake, then Laura Lake, then Lake Ottawa.  We're allowed only two weeks at any campground.  

We liked the camper which seemed to have everything Gary wanted.  It's much bigger than what we're used to but with a better furnace and air conditioning, it would be warmer on cold nights and cooler on warm nights.  There would be a full shower and tub and a kitchen better than the one in this house. 

But the price was more than Gary was willing to pay, so back to the Internet he went.  He found a similar camper, newer and with even nicer touches and oddly, less expensive.  What I particularly like about this camper is the small room that will serve as my office.  There I can write in quiet or sit on the sofa to read.  I will be able to look out the window at, I hope, a Wisconsin lake.  

This camper is at an RV dealer in Door County, so off we go again tomorrow to take a look.  

I am enjoying the drives through greening Wisconsin so whether or not we find the perfect camper, I am content.  

Jake Dog and the Four Cats ... continued

As things settle down here at Mathom House, I can return to the tale of Jake Dog and the Four Cats. We left the story with the arrival and naming of Mean Ol' Ms Baby Doll.

Mean Ol' Ms Baby Doll was mostly a lump of fur and fat who sat around, ate, drank and pooped. She lived in this house for seventeen years yet those of us who knew her don't have too many memories of her. This we know:

She had white fur that she carefully tended. This led to hairballs that she spit out on a weekly basis. She shed constantly and because her fur was white, it showed up on every piece of furniture. She was not a friendly cat until I wore some dark article of clothes then she carefully rubbed up against me to show anyone in the outside world that I indeed had a cat.

She disliked me but she loathed Gary. If he came in the door, she went directly for his ankles. This was not a problem in the winter but during the summer shorts season he was an easy target. She had been de-clawed but her teeth were exceptionally sharp.

She kneaded every piece of furniture, claws or no.

She loved Chris from day one. There was no rational reason for her devotion, but she waited for him to come home from school. She liked to sleep at the foot of his bed. To my knowledge, she never bit him.

She loved catnip especially the wild variety we picked along the banks of the stream that traverses Seymour. We referred to it as Little Henry Gold. The moment we put some on the floor, she pounced on it putting her paws around it and glared at anyone approaching to guard it from interlopers. She munched it, she rolled in it, and when she reached her kitty high, she went to the water bucket and stared at it for an hour, her eyes glazed.

Whenever we had any company, Ms. BD came out of hiding and rushed to the new arrivals as if to say, “Take me home. These idiots are torturing me with bad cat food.” We had to warn everyone about those sharp teeth and tell them, “Please don't pet her.” Then she rubbed up against everyone, covering them with hairs.

Why did she have this behavior? I think the constant kneading probably meant she was taken away from her mother far too early. He hatred of all men probably meant she had been abused by somebody of the male persuasion.

Why she loved Chris so I never figured out. I was the one who fed her, changed her kitty litter and brushed her (always wearing gloves). Gary tried his best, bringing her the best treats, plying her with cat nip, and doing his best to pet her. All he got for his trouble were bite marks.

Despite what the humane society claimed, I was good to that silly cat. Others who observed Ms Baby Doll told me to take her to the pound, but with all the barfing, biting and complaining, she lived here for a very long seventeen years.

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Home Again

At 10:00 a.m. Gary finally closed and locked the door of the farmhouse on Plock Road.  From the time his aunt collapsed before Thanksgiving until this morning he lived in that old house with very few breaks. Today he drove home through snow to find himself once more home. 

So it's back to our lives, but setting up new schedules and making new plans.We live together, yet have separate lives. Tonight he is sitting in his lovely office, working at his computer to work out our summer camping.

Me, I'm downstairs writing with a cup of tea he made for me, eating the chocolate covered graham crackers he bought.
   
Like me, he keeps expecting a black and white cat to pop in to see him, but of course Rascal, like is aunt, is no more.

I wonder what happens next.