daybreak

...the first rays touch the vegetables at the Westside Community Farmers Market.





I buy berries, too. Because I can this year. Raspberries in Wisconsin, in the middle of October.






And now we're off.

the last of the red hot (warm) October days...

A lot of biking today. None of it recreational. To get to this meeting, to get downtown, to lunch, to work again – spin those wheels.

These are my last days of cycling for the year. Oh, I could continue, but it becomes too hard to fight the cold wind in the morning when dressed for teaching that, for me, begins at 9:30 and ends when any warmth from the day has fizzled out.

So I’ll end soon, but for now, I am intensely spinning those wheels.

I bike through a mixed palate. There are beautiful colors out there, sure and I do take photos when they seem especially pretty.






But there is a lot that looks spent and tired. A mixed bag, you might say.





Still, the skies look good for this week-end and so Ed and I are heading out again early Saturday. A different grab bag of outdoor events, but one that will again put me outside the range of WiFi until late Sunday.

Until then.

underwater

Forgive me. I feel slightly submerged.





I have a huge load of work to do (forty five exams to grade, paper assignment to write) and, because it continues to be lovely outside, I want a week-end off, which means that my evenings now are packed solid.

I’m swamped. Or swimped, if you prefer. Or – underwater.

And to think that just a few minutes before, biking to work in the early, early morning, the world seemed so ... right side up.

green

Much overused term these days. I cook a green dinner does not mean that I cook a dinner with greens. Nor that I am green at cooking it.

But if I step out in the morning, and I go to the market, and I say – hey, there are still greens to be had...





(I buy the brussel sprouts)

And If, on my way down Bascom Hill I note that the grass is no more no less green than it had been this summer...





...there wont be a doubt that we’re talking about green the color. There is still some of that left. Not for long, but it’s still there.

reflection

Is it a useless skill to be able to reinvent your life frequently? If X does not work out, you move to Y. Then Z. Then A, then B and so on.

You could argue that this smells of a restlessness that stands in the way of success. Giving up already? Stay with failure for a while! Savor its bite!

Someone said to me last week: of course you’re selling your condo. You’re so restless!

But here is the good side: I am never surprised when life takes an odd direction. It’s that? Okay: I’ll do this then. Exciting!

(Typically I can fully engage in the novel twist before I even realize that I am in an altogether new place.)

I thought about this today as I biked to work – taking a longer version of the bike path. I had time. The weather was magnificent.





The colors were those of a warm fall morning.





The light was gentle and kind.














I did not think about this on the way home, even though again I took a detour – this time away from the lake, so that I could stock up on lightly salted nuts from Trader Joe’s (no place has lightly salted nuts at their prices). I thought, instead, how lucky I was.

A colleague said to me yesterday that I looked so, well, cheerful. I take no credit for that – I have been cheery since birth. Whoa, she’s so giggly/smiley/cheerful/happy – I’ve heard versions of this all my life.

But, too, cheer is aided by luck and I thought this afternoon how luck had been with me just this morning, when I lectured in a brand new shirt that I discovered, minutes before class time, has the unfortunate inclination of popping open at the bosom with no provocation on my part.

(Yet another advantage that men have over women – if their shirts pop open, no one will laugh.)

My shirt remained closed all day long.


But the ride back was grueling. All those nuts in my backpack. All those blasted low salt nuts.





(Three of today's photos were snapped straight from the seat of my bike, in motion. Maybe you can tell which ones. Maybe not.)

summer maybe

You have to earn your rewards. Time off, restful pleasures – you can’t grab them as you please.

Unless you’re a goose or a squirrel.











And even there, I can only speculate about how many hours were spent on flying south or burying acorns.

I have many more thoughts on the subject of squirrels and hoarding nuts and the need for geese to fly south, but I can’t indulge this just yet. You guessed it. I have work to do.

But soon. Unless one of those youthful hunters hunts me down or I lose all use of my typing hands, I’ll get to the pressing musings on work and pleasure and life as we know it soon. Summer maybe.

Chippewa Moraine

There’s the crunch of leaves and then silence. And then the leaves again, closer this time.
Squirrels – Ed says. I’ve been listening to them.

It’s their evening dance, I guess. Most every other animal appears settled for the night. Not so the squirrels.

Though it’s not really night yet. The first dazzle of stars is becoming visible, but it’s just past seven. Still, within a few minutes, we’re both asleep.

As usual, I wake up frequently. It’s the way I sleep – one stretch, than another, some long and dreamless, many with the usual stories running through them. This night I know why I'm waking. It’s turning cold. I was sleeping on top of my sleeping bag after supper, now I’m loosely inside. Several hours later, I’m zipped up solid.

When we had pitched the tent in the forest of the Chippewa Moraine (a tad over 200 miles northwest of Madison) on a tiny isthmus between two lakes, it was so warm that we kept the tent rain cover off. It’s splendid to have nothing but  fine mesh between you and the forest (it's been so warm that there are still the occasional mosquitoes). Until it gets cold. Then you wish you had thought less about the splendidness of it all and more about setting up the protective layer against a crispy cool night.


But oh, the weather! It’s the unseasonable warmth of this October that pushed us up here to begin with. Initially ambitious, we thought of going up to Michigan’s UP this week-end. No, too much driving for a two day trip. Ed suggested a ridge trail just a couple of hours north of Madison. Lakes! -- I tell him. We need to wake up to the noise of the waterfowl and a mist rising above still waters!

Last time we camped, the mist did indeed rise up over waters (not so still then -- it was the Wisconsin River) in breathtaking wisps of pink. That kind of image stays with you. Up in the Chippewa Moraine, there are more than twenty lakes within a day’s hike. The Ice Age Trail, that old friend of ours, passes right through – up one ridge, down the next, through a mixed forest of birch, maple, oak, and conifers.





The perfect backpacking week-end. Not true: one thing that I suppose may have been a bit less disconcerting. These two days have been designated as the days of the youth hunt in Wisconsin. Kids can hunt deer, so long as they have an adult with them. If you’re hiking, you’re advised to wear blaze orange. A warning that even dogs take seriously.





Not Ed though. Wear the vest, I tell him.
I’m wearing a bright red t-shirt.
...the color of maple leaves right now, I point out. But I let it go. I’m his shield We’re traveling together this time.


The Chippewa Moraine is just north of the small town of Bloomer.





And just outside of Bloomer, we come across a rally.





Harley people, Ed says. Having, for business reasons attended many a motorcycle rally in years past, he talks freely about the image of a Harley person, about the styles of bikes. To me, Harleys are loud. I can’t imagine Ed on a Harley.

Did you ever own a Harley? 

No, but I had an Indian. A 1948. 

Loud? 

Of course.
Why did you have it then? 
Cheap.


We’re sitting at a picnic table outside the Chippewa Moraine Ice Age Interpretive Center. We have with us a Subway to split for lunch. Below, a prairie stretches toward one of the lakes and beyond.










Shortly after 1, we set out. Not a heavy duty hike – four hours (nine miles) out one day, then, circling a bit more, five hours (eleven miles)  back the next. But what a hike! We are amidst a canvas of intractable, at once vivacious but also muted and gentle color.











In spite of the noise of the occasional gunfire, we come across no hunters and only once do we sight a white tail deer. Frogs, we do see frogs.





Snakes, too. More than one.





And over one of the lakes, loons croon with that characteristic plaintive song of theirs.





The trail continues mostly through county parkland and Ed reminds me that much of the dedicated forests are there for hiking because hunters have lobbied hard for their preservation.











When the trail leaves the county forest, it climbs up to a prairie that is beyond beautiful. We talk about the difficulties in establishing a prairie on land that for too many decades has been losing the battle with quack grass and creeping charlie. Still, when you look at these meadows you think nothing is impossible and you tell yourself – we should do this back at the farmette. Maybe.





Camping is free and unrestricted, here on county land. We pick our spot on the isthmus. I’m surprised that there are still a few mosquitoes out at dusk. Ed lights his ancient stove and boils water for the pouch dinner we’ve taken along. The sun sets on the lake at the foot of our tent.
















...at night, a crash rouses both of us. Falling branch, Ed mumbles. But it’s not. There is a further sound of twigs breaking. Deer. It must be deer. I know I’ll spook them if I go out to explore. I stay in my warm bag and the noise quickly fades, replaced by a windy patter of falling leaves. When a gust picks up, it sounds like rain. A dry rain hitting our tent. From a starlit sky.


Morning. Maybe the best part is now. For those wisps of predawn mist over the lake.





...for the pink sky and birdsong....

Ed boils water again, this time for pouches of apple cinnamon oatmeal.


 


We pack up camp and by 8:15 we’re back on the trail.





Up one ridge, down the next, pausing every now and then, for the gold studded prairie...











...and the lakes...





...and a snack of dried apricots and nuts. The sky is a touch less blue this morning, giving us a chance to see it all in different light. Morning light.





And then, afternoon light once more.





A mix of trees, a mix of colors.






The perfect, fair-weather backpacking trip. Worth the nearly four hour drive.

On the way back to Madison we stop at an Eau Claire mega-Target. Ed picks up a pack of Dove mini ice cream bars.

There are 17 little bars in there!

It was the best deal per ounce...

I understand that, but that is a lot of ice cream calories!

He takes out a handful and we distribute the rest to the people in line.

Don’t tell anyone, but Wisconsin is one hell of a beautiful state.

days like no other

Oh fickle blog poster! The sun comes out and my computer time goes down.

But truthfully, I was indoors again today, all day long.

Except for a brief hour-long walk with a daughter...










Or at least we intended it to be one hour. We got lost. More than thirty years living in Madison, with perhaps a hundred Arboratum visits under my belt and today, for the first time, I get lost in the woods.





We emerge eventually at the opposite end of the park. It is clear as anything that I will now be late for a meeting that I have scheduled for 4. I call Ed to help. Ed zips over on his motorbike and helps stall the people waiting for me. Thank you Ed.


In the evening, my daughter and I meet up for dinner on the Square. For pub burgers at Graze.





It is a gorgeous night – and the people were singing, they went nah nah nah nah nah...

Fine -- in truth they aren’t singing, not at this point anyway. It is the Homecoming Eve and after dinner, we follow the tail end of a parade down State Street. The night is hot and the parade is ending with fire jugglers and the streets are packed. 





The Homecoming celebrations culminate with fireworks at the Union Terrace. My daughter and I are there, on the dock, waiting for a concert inside the Union and even though we have back row seats for the concert, we have front row seats for this interlude of fire in the sky over Lake Mendota.






What concert are we attending, you ask?

It is of music that I first listened to more than forty years ago. Indeed, the artist – Joan Baez, then traveled to my home country and performed live (in Poland) at the Sopot Music Festival (this was in 1970). It was only the second time that a western pop artist of any note would come to perform before a live commie Polish audience (the Rolling Stones were the first to do this, three years earlier, in 1967).





In those years, I too liked to strum the guitar and since I sang mostly American folk songs, I usually had an attentive and generous (albeit tiny, composed mostly of friends) audience.

The summer after my high school graduation (we are now in 1969), I attended a young adult camp with my boyfriend. He was Catholic and I was not and I think he and his family hoped that I would convert.

His mother was at the camp as well and one evening she said, wistfully almost – give the guitar to Nina, she has the voice of Joan Baez.

She was an incredibly sweet woman, always looking for the good, even if it was a futile endeavor. I understood that day that she probably liked me more than my boyfriend did. I sang my usual JB favorites with that bittersweet knowledge and I tried not to mind that my boyfriend was not really listening.


Tonight, Joan Baez sang to a packed house of people, mostly my age. Next to my daughter and myself was another mother and daughter combo and that mother, too, teared up when Baez sang – you just sort of wasted my precious time... I wondered how many in the audience had once had lovers or some such entities who just sort of wasted their precious time.


The evening was splendid. I rode the bus home humming don't think twice it's alright...



[Ed and I are taking off early Saturday. We’ll be back Sunday evening. More on the where and how when we return.]

choices

I want time off this week-end. And a few hours off tomorrow afternoon. The price tag? Today is a very very long work day.

Outside my office, the sun is as brilliant as ever, the leaves are at their highest magnificence, but it hardly matters. I don’t even bike to work. No time. No time.

Here’s the one shot that I took – on my way to the bus stop.





I work, with the idea that I have a brilliant weekend before me. How good is that!