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:

New Canine Companion

Towards the end of October, my son Justin called and said, “Dad, I want Elvis back.”  This summer, Justin decided to go to his summer transition semester without Elvis.  He made the same decision about the fall semester.  Clearly, however, he began missing Elvis.  Many of the students at Justin’s college go home on the weekends, and Elvis is a great compa-nion.  Plus, as a service dog, he can do some handy stuff for someone in a power wheelchair. Picking things up and delivering them is Elvis’ specialty.

So, of course, I said, “yes, when were you thinking?”  Justin replied, “Now, or asap.”  Julia, Elvis and I were in Utah, so “now” wasn’t practical.  However, I delivered Elvis back to his boy right after I returned from my trip out West.  Elvis has been with Justin ever since. Our concerns about Elvis fitting in at college and having Justin’s caregivers do the daily doggie chores have so far been misplaced.   That isn’t to say there won’t be challenges.  Justin managed to break his leg during the fall semester (fell out of his power wheelchair), and had one other trip in the middle of the night by ambulance.  Still, within the limitations of a young adult with Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy, Justin seems to be  managing things. He and Elvis will return home for a month at semester break. My daughter Allie will take over his caregiving responsibilities to earn a few extra bucks for a car that she is saving up for.

With Julia at work, the kids at college,and no dog at home, the empty nest has been too quiet, even for an introvert and silence-lover like myself.  I’ve been on the hunt for a new dog to hike and sit by the fire with.  Julia requested a smaller dog this time and a female.  She also didn’t want a purebred or a puppy and preferred a rescue or humane society dog.  Some of those criteria would not have been mine, but I could live with those guidelines.  This week, we narrowed the search down to Callie, a mix of Blue Heeler and Border Collie, sometimes referred to as a Border Heeler.

Callie was found as a stray in Indiana, spent some time in an Indiana shelter, and was rescued by a dog trainer in Wisconsin with Indiana connections.  She comes to us with basic skills and a sweet disposition.  I think she’ll fit right in.

Callie is about a year old, loves to hike, and was looking for a forever home.  Seems like a perfect match.

Transitions and Gratitude

The transition from living a sticks-and-bricks existence to mobile life is much easier to blog about than vice-versa. When moving about the country in the Brew Hut, I was experiencing lots of new things, including challenges that weren’t always fun.  Back at home, it’s easy to go back to the familiar and the taken-for-granted.  However, after living on the road for more than two months, I am grateful for a few things in Wisconsin that I missed while on-the-road..  Contrary to some bloggers’ assertions, the West is not always best.

• Plentiful, delicious water.  In large numbers, people have relocated from areas of ample water to areas where water is scarce and becoming scarcer.  I can’t think of a time when we’ve ever had a water shortage or rationing at home.  I live on a private well that draws great-tasting water from a deep aquifer 155 feet under the surface. The only water treatment has been provided by nature–years of filtering down through clay, gravel and rock.
•  Clean air.  Fire and smoke are part of life in the West.  Air quality can be bad.  The sky is often hazy even in the mountains and desert. Where I live in Wisconsin, we might have days where burning is banned due to dry conditions of the forests and/or grasslands.  But when folks talk about bad stuff in the air, they are usually talking about pollen/allergies, not smoke.  I’ve never woken up at home to the smell of smoke from a forest fire.  I’ve never had to wonder whether a hiking or camping trip might be interrupted or cancelled due to fire danger.
• Grass and other foliage.  Now that it’s November, there isn’t much green here either.  But we still have grass (even if it’s buried under the snow).  I missed grass when I traveled this fall.  Elvis the dog actually had to learn to poop on sand out West.  He thought that he was doing something wrong at first.  During the few times where grass was plentiful, he would roll in it like the greenery was a long-lost friend.  Having grass to bind together the soil means that there isn’t blowing sand everywhere too.

There are many other things in Wisconsin to be thankful for, but these three items jumped out at me since my return.  Obviously, I missed out on some family stuff while I was gone.  I am enjoying catching up and renewing daily life with my wife and adult kids. My days are filled with heating the house with the wood stove, baking bread and making yogurt, stacking and cutting wood, hiking nearby trails, and reading books and blogs.  It’s a different routine than traveling in the Brew Hut, but still satisfying.

For Thanksgiving, we made a quick trip to Lexington, Kentucky for a  get-together with Julia’s sister’s family.  It felt weird driving the wheelchair van instead of the truck/Brew Hut combination.  The header photo shows Justin (and Elvis),  along with my nephew and niece in their lovely Lexington home.

I have no big trips planned until mid-January.  That trip will bring me to a new country with old friends. Until then, the blog will mostly focus upon beer, coffee and local trails. The main deer hunting/gun season ended on Sunday, so the woods will soon be safer to hike in.

Back to Wisconsin

I arrived home yesterday after slogging through Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois for several days.  (Slog:  to plod one’s way through difficulty). Thankfully, I didn’t have any flat tires or mechanical problems, but the driving days were long without much time for exercise or enjoyment of visual beauty.

Texas was interesting for its cotton fields.  I had no idea that there were still places in this country where cotton is grown in fields as far as one can see.  In fact, although I didn’t see any harvesting, the harvest must have been in progress because there was cotton all over the shoulders and roadways of the two lane “harvest to market” highways that I was traveling.

I stayed overnight in Lubbock, Texas at a nondescript RV park, which had this sign posted in each bathroom stall.

On Thursday, I drove the Tollway/Turnpike to Guthrie, Oklahoma.  A bad accident had occurred in front of the Cedar Valley RV park where I had made reservations–just before I arrived.  Passport America membership provides 50% off RV park fees, and this park was well-run, clean, and appreciated.  Unfortunately, I’ve run into some really poorly managed rv parks by Passport America, so it’s unlikely I’ll renew that membership.

On Friday morning, I drove through Oklahoma and into Missouri.  I found myself a day ahead of schedule (hitting myself for not staying another day in the mountains outside Las Cruces), and stayed overnight in Joplin, Missouri.  My initial plan was to stay for free at the Downstream Casino, but the electric utility post kept shutting off every time I plugged in, and I tried three different poles.   With temps in the 20’s at night, I fled to my first KOA and plugged in opsuccessfully, staying warm with my small electric heater.

On Saturday morning, I killed time by walking with Elvis on the downtown streets of Joplin, which has beautiful buildings.  Sadly, many of them are empty, and there were quite a few destitute people on the streets.  One woman asked if she could pet Elvis.  She ended up hugging Elvis and breaking down to cry, “I don’t know where my family is.”  I couldn’t help her with that, but she said that her day was already better, having spent time with Elvis.

My cousin Tim was due to arrive home from his trucking job mid-afternoon Saturday, so I still had a couple of hours to kill.  To my surprise, the George Washington Carver National Monument is only a short distance from Tim’s place.  Much of what I knew about Carver had been forgotten, so I appreciated the opportunity to refresh my recollection.

Carver and his mother were purchased and took on the name of his master.  While Carver was young, he and his mother were stolen from slave raiders.  The young boy was recovered, but his mother was not.  Carver’s father, a slave on another farm, was killed in an accident.  Carver found solace in education.  He believed that worldly goods can be stolen away, but an education belongs to you forever.

I left the monument with a great deal of respect for this man.

That afternoon, Tim and I renewed our long friendship by drinking mead from a local establishment.  I’ve known Tim since I was a young boy and spent many summers on his family’s Iowa farm, walking soybeans, making hay, and having a lot of fun when we weren’t working. I spent the night inside Tim’s house under a warm electric blanket.  Elvis seemed ecstatic to be inside a house and around people again.


On Sunday morning, Tim was heading off with his sons to a Kansas City Chief’s football game, and I was on the road.  I drove to East St. Louis, where the Passport America selection did not pass muster.  I continued on to East Peoria, arriving just after dark but before 6 p.m.  I had called to make a reservation at this Passport America park, and the owner assured me that he would either be there or come check me in when I called.  However, when I called, he told me that check-in would be self-serve.  I could set up anywhere .  No access to the advertised wifi,  showers, or bathroom, and the site was hard as heck to set up in.  But I made it through a cold night with my little heater.

When I went to drop off my check on Monday morning, a sign indicated that the office was closed and that he would be in at 9, 10, 11 or later.  I checked for a dropbox to set my check, but couldn’t find anywhere safe to put it.  The owner has my number, and I have a scathing review to write if he asks for the amenity-based full price.  We’ll see what happens on that one.  I doubt I’ll hear from him.

I drove through scattered snow and flurries, making it home by Monday at noon.  Since then, I’ve been enjoying the amenities of home and doing some home chores.  I mowed the lawn yesterday, which was covered in oak leaves but hadn’t been mowed for two months.  The temps are in the 30’s during the day, and colder at night.  I miss the warm temperatures of the southwest, but it was time to come home.  As soon as I clean the chimneys, I’ll be back to tending the home fires for the winter.

Eastward Bound to Texas

I woke early on Tuesday morning and drove from Tucson to Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Las Cruces is on the list of places that Julia and I want to check out to see if we want to live there someday.  It ticks a lot of boxes:  university town, close to the mountains, diverse population and culture, no snow in the city but winter sports available only a few hours away in the mountains.

I wasn’t going to have time to do much more than drive around, walk around and stay at an RV park in town, so I bailed on that plan.  I drove through town via Hwy 70 and then kept on going until I reached a road sign for Aguirre Springs, a BLM campground.

The road in was steep and windy, but the payoff was amazing. Why would I want to stay at an RV park when I could stay here for $7/night.  The place was practically deserted without any generators and no lights to mar the night sky.

I listened to the early election results on NPR and then went to bed early.  This morning, I drove to Lubbock, Texas, passing steep snow-capped mountains in New Mexico, and then cotton fields/oil wells in Texas.  I’m using my Passport America at an RV park in Lubbock for half the regular rate.  I’m also taking the time to start winterizing the Brew Hut with hard freezes and snow expected where I am headed for the weekend.