A decade is too long.

Too long indeed!


I need to write I feel it... Follow it into the wilderness the wilderness of words.


So where is my wilderness.  Growing up on the muddy degrading banks of the Des Moines River I found my first wilderness or was it in the timber of Chequest creek no that cam later.


It was that baptism in the river I caught the bug the bug of the wild... Yes I know a dammed agricultural ditch is not what one thinks of a wilderness but it was my first.  Out there in a boat by myself, too young, but in those days boys were left to explore and I used that Mercury and aluminum to do my travels before I could anywhere else. I found myself making my own way and only occasionally meeting another person.  All limited to the few turtle trappers and old chain smoking river rats that one could con a short conversation out of.  Likely a mumbling ramble about yellow cats or price of soft shells.  They have now all but faded into the past... we no longer spend our time as we did once in the company of herons and beavers. Maybe that is why we see so few see them or even have time to commune with calls as we did in my youth.  How did the wildlife and wilds once our companions become so lost to us or did we lose them in our strive for a few dollars and a career or materialism.  Maybe this is about me or maybe I just moved to larger wilds.  The ducks drew me away from my first wilderness, called me to another like a drake looking for a mate. 


I've found many... all across the plains and into the largest true wilderness outside of Alaska...  It has been quite a journey... I'll try muse more on them but for now back to the first. 


I remember the first thunder pumper call I herd floating down one sleepless night on a warm summer night.  I was pitching jigs for walleye, something I did rarely.  There I was floating bouncing off the logs caught ashore and probing them with the jig hoping for a meal.  It was the call of that American Bittern that may have stirred my curiosity just enough to get me to learn the calls of the birds for identification.  Knowing the animals in the dark takes the fear away from the black it lets you know we are not alone, not at all. In that wilderness I learned the way of water and wildlife. I also saw how our use of that wild made it less, well less to me and less to the critters that made it home.  But it was still wild and that wild led me on, on to here.  For that I thank the fading river of my childhood coughing from the chemicals of corn production, tainted with the smell of hog effluent stronger than the castorium of its full character.  Some day maybe you will be whole again someday maybe children will eat you bounty again and new villages will arise from your shore.  Free villages ones with local markets and local vegetables to pair with the local wine, fresh fish and turtle, maybe a frog will remain to croak at the feast.  All is possible in time.

Confessions of an addict.

So today is July eighth and I had to look because my insomnia kept me up past midnight again maybe tomorrow. But in the last few hours my mind has traveled afar to many spots not one of which was a drinking establishment but a few bars a rock one and a few sand and mud bars. I may be in the complete grasp of my original addiction the duck hunting addiction. Maybe I drank to keep those summer thoughts out of my head but I think that may have been one of the reasons for my time not spent thinking of the pursuit of feathered friends with good canine and human companionship. In pondering the multitude of ways to improve decoy rigging and efficiency possibilities of blinds and sand bar setups . I thought I was nearing madness until I remembered a few weeks ago one of my fellow hunters commented he was re-rigging and going through his decoys in June so my case is a July case not as severe as a June case.

Through all of this thinking my mind often drifted to hunting experiences and they have been numerous but the ones popping in mind were not the 15 minute limits or the 20,000 mallards landing in a pothole they were the meager limit of three bluebills from a rock bar in in gale or the two wood ducks “stocked and spied” on a timbered pond and even the hand full of teal during a day on the river one Indian Summer. Interesting how the more meager days with friends are the ones that last not the big days with fools or the shootouts on the plains that are the burning images that drive my madness. So for today I will continue think of better decoy rigging strategies and good cord and fall days on the water hopefully I will drift to dream about them soon.

Just a short note. Guess my consistency on blogging is not good but that is okay. Well I have been spending too much of my time looking at people as well as looking at trees. You know we all have some similarities. One is that trees are alive and I think some people are too, as well as some trees have more personality than some people. Sorry to offend those of you with a tree personality. Well that was enough stupid for a few weeks maybe I'll see some more interesting stuff soon other than some trees with personality and some people without.

This morning I hope politics is much different than boxing because with the sentiment in some of the more red parts of America we don't need another Jack Johnson a century later. At least not in the political arena god I hope we have come a long way from Rubin Carter or Jack Johnson.

Good by to North Dakota

So with the fact that I am officially leaving North Dakota I thought I'd leave and ode, well maybe not an ode but a post. While not difficult to leave it does give my some mixed feelings. I have met some really interesting foalks up here but it is time to move to another chapter. Will I miss the wind. No! The scenery yes but I can always visit or move back in time that is the thinking about life nothing is very permanent, it ebbs and flows and if you are a wanderer like me it can take you many places and have many chapters. So as I leave this treeless plain for a hopefully more wooded part of the world it will be interesting to to look back. Having lived in many parts of the state and meeting what I am sure is at least one tenth of the population it will be tough not to look back. So to the plain good by! See you someday. To most of the people good by. To some good riddance. it is always interesting to start a new chapter and this will be a big new start.

Well I'll leave some beauty but I've always been able to find beauty where ever I land and hopefully I 'll find more beauty in my travels. Hell maybe I'll find the beauty I'll call home for the rest of my life, maybe the beauty I'm looking for to accompany me on my travels. It will all be interesting. So long Bad Lands, so long blowing dirt, so long folks and so long blizzards.

So like they say, "When you are on you own not speaking out is like fight alone and that is the worst damned way to fight." Well I quit not speaking out and lost both fights off to a new one.

Global Warming? Small World and...

A few of today's short thoughts. Global warming is apparently just an environmental phenomenon and not a a sociological phenomenon. While our environment is getting warmer I'm certain our society is not. Every time we see colder tones in our politics and society. An obvious one in the greedy bankers with golden parachutes unconcerned with the public that they made loans to just to benefit their bottom line with no regard for how they were going to pay for such amenities a pay grade above their earnings. What was the bankers' reward one hell of a severance when they lost their job for destroying several young American families short term dream of home owner ship. What did the young and inexperienced buyer get oh some food stamps, a stimulus check and a very inadequate bailout directed to the banker who talked them into a house they could not afford just to build his retirement they he jeopardized with the very loans giving him that retirement--oh well we will all bail them all out and "us" in the process. Yeah global warming is not sociological our society just gets greedier and colder while our environment gets warmed and a little more borderline.

On a positive note their still are great people in this world that have individual warmth you all hopefully know who you are. I happened to run into an old neighbor from a couple hundred miles away and several years just a few blocks down the street...neighbors again at least for a short time. It is interesting how a small world it is. At least the encounter was good for a short chat and some memories. Made my day in reflection. It is good to see the warmth in others and see glimmers of humanity from day to day so that is good.

One more note. I was reflecting today on how my parents raised me to appreciate nature and the world around me. I think this was purposeful, if not one well orchestrated accident that turned out to a frailly good report, depend in on the angle of observation. I digress though. This I also think helped me teach them more about what they taught me to observe and enjoy. Mom was texting me pictures of the pine cones from the trees we planted so many years ago they grew, we grew to appreciate them. I wonder if they appreciate our growth as much as we do theirs. That work has brought something into our lives so many years later even if small, it is appreciable. The circle lives all around us if we pause to soak it.

Beauty and warmth is in small places and wonderful people everywhere!

Maybe with a little more sociological warming and environmental appreciation we can all feel home...I just want to feel home!

Substance, Existance and Econoomies of Scale

So I've been spending quite a bit of time thinking on substance and from there existence, since as a fact if we are here we are after all existing. Then I went into economies of scale why I'm not sure but after all it is the polar of substance but very entangled within our modern existence. So is substance really possible in its original form? Could any one o us really live sustainably in our environment upon our surroundings. I think very few of us could. I know that I could not possibly pull it off therefore I exist in my soundings. I think our move from substance to economies of scale has greatly removed us from the natural and therefore the supernatural. As I sit here typing on my cheap foreign made computer I think how differently we are connected to our machines than the substance and survival of every other living thing in the world around us, and therefore differently connected to our reality than theirs. Is this where we lost our view of the super natural, quite maybe. Maybe not maybe we just drifted away from the world we live in like a long and estranged marriage. Is it possible that this discord is why we are in the shape we are in nationally? I doubt it probably more the economies of scale especially when we tried to lend money like Wal-Mart sells cheep Chinese plastic crap and then just sole off the bad debt to others and ultimately the taxpayer. So it wasn't the separation from the substance that led us to this point but the economies of scale that rose from the separation form the daily struggle to exist that we call substance that led us to this point. So where will we go from here back to the small substance farming that we founded our country, hunting and gathering clans of the past or to bigger subsidized economies of scale feeding us crappy food and cheep corn sugar to further our "existence" and a deeper dependence on synthetic glucose monitoring drugs.

Hopefully somewhere in the middle, for all of us. Wow that was out there not where I wanted to go when I started but a trip nonetheless.

Today was an interesting day. The battle is always interesting. A few things stand out some days it blows, literally. It has been a long time since the winds beat me that bad. It got me thinking how the winds of life push us around from time to time and sometimes the world has more to do with where we end up than us. We get pushed and driven and then we end up where we are in the lull to deal with where we are. I guess being blown around is better than getting caught in the doldrums with nothing to drive and basically no where to go. So let the wind blow.

Then there was a reminder that there are places in life where we must be willing to give part of ourselves to others to better both our selves and others that brought me back to the thought of how we must all be willing not only to give part of ourselves but be willing to accept the parts of others in order to better ourselves. guess it was a day to remind me that the world is full of forces and people under many forces trying to co-inhabit in big world being pushed in all different directions. Guess it is time to quit pushing back and give and take a few pieces to get somewhere.

Well I will see how this works. It has been a long few weeks but I found myself today contemplating the leaves and the cigarette butts on my walk back from the store with my milk. It was one of those days a blustery fall day with a cold Canadian wind changing the feel of the year. I was contemplating how we push ourselves to define where we are form where we are and where we are going. After some thinking I was amazed, because in reality we should make our definition of who we are from just who we are today. With all the simple thing surrounding our lives we tend to look at the complex and get consumed by them why would we define our world on complex economics or politics. These days we tend to define too closely around political fields maybe not so much in ten days but today that id the feel.

Well there is a whole world to see and feel so why try to do more than make sure we see and feel as much as we can while we are here. Off to the field to see and feel some more tomorrow.