Worst Christmas Ever?

Those were my daughter’s words, and I can understand how she feels.  I haven’t blogged recently because we are going through a bit of a tough time.  Julia’s Dad had a stroke last weekend, and we’ve been spending a lot of time at the Intensive Care Unit at UW Hospital.  Christmas is also Julia’s birthday, so I’m sure this won’t go down as one of the best birthdays either.  Gene is in critical condition, and a lot of bad things can still happen. He did open his eyes this morning and gave a small thumbs up, so we are cautiously optimistic.


I’m going to focus on some of the fun stuff we have done together.  I’m not much of a fisherman, but Gene taught me how to ice fish.  This wasn’t the setting up the fishing shack with the gas heater and portable tv type of fishing.  This was drill your hole with a manual auger and plop your butt on a plastic bucket kind of fishing.  We usually caught fish, which is the only kind of fishing that I enjoy.

Gene also hiked part of the Appalachian Trail with me.  After my diagnosis and treatment with Lyme’s Disease, I headed back to the trail with Gene.  He was no backpacker, although he has been an oudoorsman all of his life  We hiked for three days together: 10 miles, 9 miles and 8 miles. Gene’s trail name was Tag-Along.   At the end of the third day, he declared that the A.T. wasn’t for him and hitched a ride back to the nearest airport.  For a nearly 60-year-old man with no backpacking experience, he did quite well.

Hug the ones you love (if you can; I’m not a hugger).  There are no guarantees, and life can change in an instant.  In Gene’s honor, I will go out of order today and post the end of his hike with me on the A.T. in 1996.

Something Missing

My wife Julia and I try to have a date night every week. This week, we wanted to do something festive, consistent with the season. Even Callie has the holiday spirit.

We both looked at the weekly Madison newspaper, and I saw that the Vilas zoo was having an event called “Zoo Lights” featuring holiday lights, activities, vendors, and pictures with Santa.  I thought that it sounded like fun.  It’s been a few years since I’ve been to the zoo.  Combining the holiday festivities with animals sounded like a nice change of pace from our usual eating out, beer, and live music.


The weather turned out to be a bit crappy. There was a light freezing rain, resulted in icy pavement and bridges.  The good news is that it was easy to find parking (frequently a problem at our zoo).  As we walked past the front gates and paid our $7/per person admission, I was struck by the multitude of bright Christmas displays depicting many of the zoo animals.  I’m not a huge fan of Christmas lights, but Julia is, so I was happy to see the smile lighting up her face.  Okay, let’s see some real animals.  Wait, where were the animals?

Oops!  The real animals were all sleeping and locked away in their buildings.  And the buildings that are normally open during the day….closed at night. My small smile turned upside down, Julia reminded me that the “Zoo Lights” was my idea for date night so make the best of it.  Julia had a great time.

The lights weren’t doing it for me.

Julia says that I look like the evil Emperor in Star Wars.  I think that’s a bit harsh, but perhaps there is a resemblance.

An hour later, I was feeling much better dining on Moules-frites and a Great Lakes Christmas Ale at Brasserie V on Monroe Street.

All’s’ well that ends well.

All my Life’s a Circle

The first real date with my wife Julia was at a Harry Chapin concert.  My college roommate Joe and I were big Chapin fans.  It wasn’t so much Chapin’s voice as his lyrics.  The guy had a way with stories.  Joe gave me permission to use his ticket to ask Julia out.  When Julia said yes, Joe gave up his ticket and missed the concert.  Unfortunately, Chapin died a year later at the age of 39.  I don’t think Joe ever got to see him in concert.  Thanks, Joe, for making the sacrifice.

One of my favorite Chapin songs is “All my Life’s a Circle.”  Part of the song goes like this:

“It seems like I’ve been here before;
I can’t remember when;
But I have this funny feeling;
That we’ll all be together again.
No straight lines make up my life;
And all my roads have bends;
There’s no clear-cut beginnings;
And so far no dead-ends.”

I thought of that song this week when I ran into Jeff, a guy I knew in high school and played a lot of sports with–mainly one-on-one basketball.  He was much better than I was in the team sport of basketball and later played college ball. I could compete with him in one-on-one playground ball.  I’ve run into Jeff every five or ten years–mostly randomly.  This week, Jeff spotted me at a poetry and art presentation at my favorite brewpub, Working Draft.  I think it’s probably been ten years since I last saw Jeff.  We’ve both aged and it took us each a while to do the recognition thing.  We both have a disabled adult child in college, and we joked a bit about the challenges of that.  I don’t have many friends from high school that I’ve stayed in touch with. It was good to see Jeff and strange to reflect how our lives keep circling on back.

I’ve spent the last few days hiking the Ice Age Trail with Callie, my new border heeler.  She loves our hikes, especially when we go fast downhill.  Hiking fast downhill (a/k/a running) was something that I did a lot of during my Appalachian Trail hike with a fully loaded pack.  With no pack at all, it’s fairly easy although I’m not getting any younger.

Growing older:   I’ve been doing some reflecting on the A.T. hike.  Over the years, different people have asked to borrow my trail journal, which I gladly loaned out.  But due to the miracle of the internet, I think it would be fairly easy to photograph an entry of the journal and put it at the end of my posts. Some people might find that interesting, and those who don’t can just skip over the end. I haven’t read it in over twenty years, so it might even be interesting to me.  There would  be some minor editing to partially preserve family privacy.

The thru-hike represented a huge shift in my life.  “No straight lines make up my life; And all my roads have bends.”  I went from being a fairly well-respected young trial lawyer, practicing on the civil defense side of things, to an unemployed guy living in the woods putting one foot ahead of the other for 2159 miles.  This all started in the spring of 1996. The original journal was scrawled in a small spiral notebook.  Pages were ripped out and sent home, where my wife Julia typed them up, best as she could, because my handwriting isn’t very good, especially when laying down in a sleeping bag. 

Quite a bit of the journal went into a local weekly newspaper.  A few excerpts appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal in a story entitled “Trail Attorney.”  A customer/psychologist/part time artist borrowed the journal to read at home and returned it to the coffee shop with an amazing hand-carved leather cover.   The photo inside the cover was taken by Julia near Front Royal, Virginia, a little less than half-way on the hike.

The first page is my wife’s introduction to the journal: