Blog’s Pause (Paws) Button

Earlier this week, I celebrated my 58th birthday.  Justin and I slept in until Julia and Allie drove back on the day after  their cross-country ski race in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.  Allie finished second in her age group, and Julia was tenth in her age group.  I’m sworn to secrecy regarding the number of people in their age groups, but Allie came home with a big medal.

Upon arriving  home, Julia made her best cake ever: a  three layer chocolate and peanut butter birthday cake.

We ate a birthday dinner of meat and potato pasties, purchased from a bakery in Iron Mountain, Michigan.

We are in the final stretch for getting Justin’s caregivers in place, doctors’ appointments, durable medical equipment updates, and adult children back to school.  In the event that everything works out, confirmation will be evidenced by no blog posts for a few weeks.  I’m hoping that my next post will detail new travels, instead of  an explanation for why things didn’t work out.  There are a lot of moving pieces at this point.

Callie is in charge of the blog while I’m off-line.

Keep on, Keepin’ On

The beginning of the year hasn’t exactly started with a bang, but we are taking a couple of steps forward with every step back.

For a quick family update, my father-in-law Gene is out of ICU and in a normal hospital room.  For the most part, he has reached the point where his vitals are all in a normal range.  Gene is working on building up strength, eating enough calories to get the feeding tube removed, and moving into a rehab facility as soon as that happens.

As for my son Justin, he lost all of his caregivers from the first semester and has signed up for an agency to manage his caregivers second semester.  It will always be a battle to have enough caregivers for him.  This agency seems confident about meeting his needs.  Time will tell.  As happens to a lot of first-year college students, Justin fell off the tracks a little bit with regard to schoolwork and doing the things his doctors have told him to do to keep himself alive longer (Example:  Using his bipap machine at night).  Justin seems confident that the second semester will be better.  We all hope for that.  Actions always speak louder than words.

My daughter Allie has been Justin’s caregiver during semester break, earning some extra money.  They don’t always get along, but she shows up for work and gets the job done.  Allie is saving up to buy Julia’s car in the spring, so that she will have a vehicle for her summer internship in Milwaukee.

Amidst the chaos, I’ve made time to hike almost every day with my dog Callie.  She pretty much demands it, not relaxing until she’s had at least several miles of hiking and another half-hour of running up and down our hill fetching a ball.  After that, she’s quite sweet and calm.  And I’m ready for a nap.

Fern Glenn Segment (Ice Age Trail):
A short distance away from the popular Gibraltar Rock segment, Fern Glenn may be the least-traveled of the segments near Lodi.

I know that I often overlook it and haven’t hiked Fern Glen in several years.  Heavily wooded with steep ups and downs, I don’t enjoy hiking this segment in the summer.  It can be hot, buggy and without many views.  In the spring and fall, the trail is often muddy and not much fun either.  In the winter, however, the trail shines.

A fresh snow had fallen the day before, and no one’s footsteps were visible.  I went back a couple of days later with daughter Allie and dog Callie.  There were a few footsteps besides my own, but we didn’t encounter a single person on the trail.  Sometimes, not seeing other people is exactly what I need.  I wasn’t exactly alone.  A couple of dozen Canada geese, late for their wintering spot, honked loudly overhead.  Squirrels scolded us for invading their domain.  Two whitetail deer crossed my path and quickly moved beyond.

Because the fresh snow lay on top of slippery ice. I wore my new Yaktrax Pros.  I lost my previous Yaktrax on a muddy trail in North Carolina.  These devices are relatively cheap and effective-at least on Wisconsin terrain. They aren’t meant for use in mud, rock or concrete and should be temporarily removed when crossing those surfaces.  It just takes a minute to slip them off, and it was my own fault for losing the first pair.

I’ll conclude with another excerpt from my Appalachian Trail thru-hike.

First Day Hike

The end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019 have presented some difficult challenges.  When life gets tough, go for a hike.  A number of state-owned properties held First Day Hikes on January 1st as a way to encourage Wisconsin residents to get outdoors during winter and to enjoy the natural beauty.  We went on one of those hikes last year at Gibraltar Rock.  Maybe a dozen people participated due to extreme cold weather.  This year’s hike featured five inches of fresh snow and temperatures in the balmy 20’s (warm compared to last year).  With our new dog Callie leading the way with snarls towards any potential stranger danger, we tried to arrive early to avoid crowds and succeeded on the first half of the loop.

On the way back, we passed at least 60 people and several dogs, so the narrow trail was a bit more crowded than I like.
I’m not one to complain though.  Our Ice Age Trail is a treasured resource.  As more people discover its beauty, more resources can be allocated towards its completion and management.  When we started the hike, there were three cars in the parking lot.  When we ended the hike, both parking lots was full, and dozens of cars were parked on the side of the  highway.  For people willing to brave the crowds (not me), a huge thermos of hot chocolate and sweet treats were available on top.  Instead, we rushed home for naps in front of the wood stove.                                                

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: