Milestones

 

New Visitor at the Bird Feeder

We are ready to put 2020 in our rear view mirror. This week, Julia celebrated her 60th birthday. Mine is coming up in a few weeks.

Julia's sister gets credit for the party favors.  I baked the cake from a cake mix box.  One time, I tried a cake from scratch and it looked more like chocolate flat bread. The party was just for the immediate family, but it was nice to have both Allie and Justin home for the event.  Allie heads back to California at the end of the week.

Justin plans to go back to college during the third week of January. There are still some caregiver issues to sort out, but things are much more promising than last fall.  Justin has good priority for the vaccine, but things are rolling out slower in Wisconsin than some states.  UW-Whitewater has done a good job keeping its virus numbers low after a rocky beginning.   

My knee has not been right since the fall at Wildcat Mountain State Park a couple of weeks ago.  I've been limping around and staying out of the woods. I'm pretty sure that I stretched or strained that ligament above the right knee on the right side.  It has felt better the last few days.  The knee hurts the most when I get up from sitting.  After walking around for awhile, it feels fine.

Callie and I hiked both the Lodi Marsh and Gibraltar Rock this week.

Callie wanting to play ball at sunrise

Early, early retirement

 This past week had its ups and downs.  Julia was beginning to count her final days at the eye clinic.  All year, she's been saying good-bye to patients who she has seen for over thirty years.  We laugh because some of them tell her that she's too young to retire or that she isn't allowed to retire because they don't want to switch vision providers.  

Many of Julia's peers in the profession plan to continue working indefinitely.  I've been pushing her to retire early for the past several years so that we can see more of the world while we are still active and healthy.  I would much rather live on a little less each year than live on more but be tied down to a job.  In fact, I'm convinced that I could live on a lot less. Julia isn't willing to go quite that far.  

Things definitely changed after Julia sold her remaining ownership share to her former partner about a year ago.  She became, as she says, just another worker bee.  The complication of Covid didn't make the year any easier. 

On Monday, with only two weeks left until her official retirement, Julia called and said that she was coming home for good. Her former partner had just tested positive for Covid, and the clinic would be closed during Julia's remaining two weeks.  It wasn't the ending that she expected.  

Plus, because the former partner had worked the entire week until feeling symptoms and then testing positive, Julia had some exposure risk.  She was confined to quarantine in the lower level bedroom and bathroom until recently receiving negative test results.

That's one dart dodged. There are a couple more to dodge ahead.  Against my advice, my daughter Allie came home for Christmas.  She works remotely anyway, but I didn't think it was a good idea due to the enhanced risk. Julia and Allie disagreed, so she is here.  Allie will wear a mask for awhile, and we'll see.  She says that the plane was uncrowded, and that she stayed masked from door-to-door.  

After New Year's, my son Justin has his annual full day of doctor visits and tests at the hospital.  I know that every precaution will be taken, but the hospital just doesn't seem like a great place to spend time in right now.  Almost all of Justin's medical visits have been by video conference or telephone this year, but there are certain tests that need to be done in person.

My hiking has been limited this week to in-town sunrise walks. I've been a bit anxious.  Callie says I just need more outdoor time.

What's Covid?

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Sweet Wanderings

As winter closes in, we made a few local trips to make life sweeter.  The first stop was to Cross Plains at Enchanted Valley Christmas Tree farm to select our favorite type of Christmas tree:  white pine.  

Callie approves

We've always liked the long needles of white pines.  A native Wisconsin tree, white pines seem to have fallen out of fashion at Christmas tree farms.  Everyone wants balsams or Frasier firs.  We planned to cut down our tree, but the small grove of white pines at the farm was not open to the public so we settled for a pre-cut.

On the way home, we stopped at a driveway honey store in Sauk City.  We like to buy local honey, but this isn't the best time of year to find it.  Someone was advertising their driveway store on Facebook marketplace.  

We were skeptical but our skepticism vanished upon pulling up at a small ranch house with a glass case of different sizes of honey.  There was a metal box with a slot for "honor system" money deposits. We picked up a couple of two pound containers, deposited our $20 and were on our way.

Julia and I continue to make our sunrise hikes at Gibraltar Rock at least twice per week.  After yesterday's hike, I made arrangements for a maple syrup bulk buy in Hillsboro, Wisconsin.  Again, Facebook marketplace provided the name of a non-traditional supplier.  

Hillsboro is in southwestern Wisconsin and a little more than an hour drive.  The maple syrup farmer did not have a retail location, so we agreed to meet in the parking lot of the Hillsboro Brewing Company.  

It was a typical pandemic transaction. The seller and I were both masked up and exchanged cash for 7 bottles of maple syrup. Grade A maple syrup is light in color and has a viscosity more similar to commercial pancake syrup.  It's the only type of maple syrup that most people know.

 

Grade B syrup is produced later in the season.  It's thicker, darker and has a stronger flavor.  It's what we prefer.  This maple syrup is unlabeled and ungraded.  It has a dark, rich color.  The Amish from around Hillsborough get between $15 and $20 per quart.  For seven bottles, the price was $12/quart.  I'll be sharing this purchase with our friends Dean and Dana.

After my parking lot transaction, I headed to Wildcat Mountain State Park and hiked the Old Settlers Trail.  Callie was happy about getting in a second hike that day.  

A horseshoe bend in the Kickapoo

I only saw three other hikers on a beautiful weekday that hit 50 degrees.  With those warm temperatures, the steep trail was turning from frozen to slick. Leaf and pine needle cover made the slick parts difficult to see. Not a problem on the uphills, but I had several spectacular saves going downhill where I managed to perform acrobatic moves to catch my balance while sliding downhill on mud.

Unfortunately, my fourth attempt at a save resulted in a hard fall. I was covered in mud on my entire left side from my knee to my shoulder.  I also managed to tweak my right knee, which made the finish of the hike less pleasant.  Still, it was a good day in the woods.  I treated myself to a chocolate malt from Culvers on the way home.

December Musings

Another Wisconsin deer hunt has passed, and I am free (more or less) to roam in the woods again.  

When I was a kid, stories of deer hunting scared me to death.  My friends told stories of older relatives drunk off their butts and running around the woods shooting repeatedly at something that looked like a deer. Sounded like chaos to me.  Deer hunting in Wisconsin has become statistically much safer, if not safe.  

There were only eight "incidents" this year with the one fatality being self-inflicted.  A couple of elk were accidentally shot.  An elk is much, much larger than a deer, but apparently two people thought they were shooting the biggest whitetail doe ever. 

The most concerning incident to me is that a young woman hiker was shot in the thigh on the Ice Age Trail.  The hunter thought she was a deer.  These are the events that keep me indoors during the main gun deer season. 

This week I was back at Gibraltar Rock.  Between the cold morning and people slow to return to the woods after deer season, the trail and parking lots were completely empty during this week's hike there.

This is actually one of my favorite times of year to hike.  Overnight freezing temperatures firm up the ground without making it slippery. Most of the casual hikers don't venture out and don't know what they're missing.

 

At home, we started and finished a new reading project.  Justin was talking about something he heard about life in Siberia.  I suggested that he read "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Justin isn't a big recreational reader, so we took it on as a family project.  Each night, Julia, Justin and I would take turns reading six pages aloud.  It took about a little over a month with a few days off.  

For those not familiar with the book, it's a novel based upon Solzhenitsyn's own work camp experiences in Siberia.  It focuses upon exactly one day from eyes open to eyes closed.  I read the book in high school under the careful scrutiny of my social studies teacher, Mrs. Ivonavitch, but I think I got a lot more out of it now as a voluntary read.  

It's a good book for the pandemic because the main character's focus is just on surviving in very difficult conditions.  There's absolutely nothing anyone would call exciting going on in the main character's life.  Just completing ordinary tasks becomes an exceptional challenge.  A crust of bread, thin fish soup with bones, laying brick, a fellow prisoner's bit of tobacco.  These were the subjects for our daily read.  

After finishing a book like that, one can't help but re-examine the small tasks that form the routines of daily life.  This week, I focused on making fried eggs in a new way.  My daughter and I love eggs over easy.  Juicy yolks for toast dipping.   Flipping the egg is the big moment.  A broken yolk means no yolk for dipping.  

Somewhere in my internet readings, I came across a French chef's video explaining how he fried an egg.  He casually melted a little butter in a pan.  Turned the heat to low.  Cracked the eggs into the pan.  Flicked a few drops of water across the eggs and covered with a lid.  The water turns to steam and helps to cook the tops of the yolks.  When there's barely a thin white membrane covering the yellow yolks, it's time to easily slide the eggs from the pan to the plate without need for a flip.

The result is a soft rounded white and a never-broken juicy yolk.

Simple Breakfast--Improved

 

Speaking of Allie, she is settling into her new San Francisco sublet apartment and making us all jealous with photos from sunrise walks before work.