Charles Orland Fines

 

June 6, 2014

The first thing you might want to know about the village of Leroy is how to say it and how to spell it. I'm finding that this is a slightly touchy subject here and I don't want to go poking any hornets' nests with a stick. But when someone asks you where you live you have to say something if you don't want to look like a simpleton. Even writing that first sentence I had to make a choice.

To start with, there are two basic ways to pronounce the name. One man I asked explained it this way, if you lived down by the railroad tracks you said LEE-roy, and if you lived up on the hill you said Luh-ROY. Actually the railroad tracks have been turned into a popular trail that runs from Grand Rapids to Cadillac, but you get his point.

I asked a woman what she said when people asked her where she worked, and she said sometimes she said LEE-roy and sometimes she said Luh-ROY. I asked her if it depended on who she was talking with, and she replied, no, it depended on what mood she was in. That seems to me as good an answer as any.

The thing is, if you put a return address on an envelope, you have to put something down there in black and white. You can weasel out like I did with the title of this piece and use all caps, but that doesn't get you far because there are multiple spellings used in town. I have seen Leroy, LeRoy, Le Roy, LEROY, and LE ROY, plus two others I can't reproduce here and are like the last two except the ""E"" is smaller, what is called small caps. Take your pick, but it's not like it doesn't matter. In case you flunked French class like I did, le Roi means The King. Which king isn't clear yet. Could be Elvis, could be Jesus, or maybe someone I never heard of. I haven't investigated the history behind this yet, but now that I think of it Elvis hadn't been born in 1873.

The undercurrent here is that there may be class distinctions involved, which of course we all realize don't exist in this country. When you refer to the largest city in Michigan, do you say Duh-TROIT or do you say DEE-troit? People who say the latter tend to come from the South or are country or perhaps military, but it does not jar to hear anyone refer to the DEE-troit Tigers. If you appear on the Antiques Roadshow with the flower container your great-grandmother handed down and the expert refers to it as a “vahz”, are you going to hold your ground and call it a “vase” or will you knuckle under?

So far my take on this is that most folks who were born and raised here seem to call it LEE-roy and look on all the rest of this as a bit silly and pretentious. That avoids the question of how do they spell it. I suspect that the folks who started this town in 1873 might have been considered a bit silly and pretentious by the folks who built the houses and shoveled the manure. Perhaps in return those hard working stalwarts were considered boorish and lacking in culture.

I do intend to investigate the history of this quiet little village. It won't surprise me to find out that originally it was spelled LeRoy. The problem is that most folks not familiar with the place look at that and either say Luh-ROY or ask you how to say it. I may change my mind, but when I order some business cards and return address labels I'll probably side with the farmers and mechanics and truck drivers and waitresses and go with Leroy. Okay, I might fudge and go with all caps like in the title. I dunno, even the post office says Le Roy. I'm still thinking about this.

I can't help it if this has echoes of the song about Leroy Brown, it seems unavoidable, tho perhaps young people and the very old don't carry that load. I also can't help it if I seem to be stirring up trouble when most folks here would prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. Our neighbors to the north and south don't have this dilemma. There's only one way to pronounce and spell Reed City or Ashton or Tustin or Cadillac or Big Rapids. Wouldn't you know I would end up in a place that has controversy entwined in its very name? Okay, okay, I'll be quiet for now and mind my manners. Shhhh!

This is obviously not a finished presentation. While I'm getting settled in and setting up this website, here is the basic information you need to know. I am not trying to make my living from writing services, but am always glad to pick up a little extra income. I am happy to work with local people but can also work online with anyone including those in other countries. Here are some basic categories I may be able to help you with.

• Words
• Copyediting
• Plain English
• Custom Work
• Business Writing

SHARPENING SERVICES

As with my writing services, I am not trying to make a living sharpening knives and other tools, but am always glad to pick up extra income. It makes most sense to do local work since shipping costs can be more than the sharpening costs unless we are talking larger quantities. I hope to set up at farmer's markets before the season ends but for now I am doing work at home. I can sharpen the following general items.

So far I have provided some freebies for local charitable groups and picked up my first paying job. I have been working with quilters for the first time and welcome more in that area. Word of mouth is my best business asset. Someone suggested I put out a sign by my house. I'm not sure I want those regular hours.

I am not set up to sharpen professional woodworking tools or stylist scissors. These take special grinders and jigs which I do not have. If you have something that doesn't fit my list, please run it by me. I am still in the process of sorting out my tools and equipment but will work with you in any way I can. Prices for basic and easy sharpening start in the $2-5 range and can go up from there depending on the size and condition of the tool. My goal is for both you and me to be happy with the work done.

 

For those of you who have transferred here from the old Glenn Shores site, explore the LEROY and MEANDERINGS tabs. For those of you who are new, if you have time on your hands I have put up a link above to all the old material on the old site, click on MUSINGS.

With the best of intentions, this site is pretty much now for those wanting to stay in touch by reading my sporadic wanderings. It continues to amaze me when someone mentions they are in fact following along, but it does keep me going. My goal of including photos has not worked well so far, but I haven't given up on it.

My endeavors here in providing sharpening and writing services have not panned out, but you can still contact me if you have something that needs doing. I may or may not be able to handle it, but run it by me. Blessings to all of you who read these stories.

 ~Charley

HUH? WHERE AM I?

June 7, 2014

I have been here a week now and am slowly recovering.. Recovery seems to be much faster physically than mentally. The stress of this move and all that led up to it has taken a serious toll. I expect to gain most of it back over time, but I'm sure there has been some permanent damage. Life moves on and that involves getting older with all that entails.

I am surrounded by boxes with paths. Most of the boxes are unlabeled in the rush to get out by the last contractual day. I could have filled up a 26' rental truck with what I gave away, threw in the dumpster, and left behind with my brother-in-law who may bill me for dealing with it. You can only do as much as you can do. Friends saved me from total disaster and I am forever grateful. Other friends fell by the wayside.

I really like where I am, consider it the best place in the world to end up. Most people would not feel that way. It is like taking a time trip back to the early sixties and no one I have run in to here is interested in changing that. I feel at home here and am going out of my way to fit in without making waves. I have accepted the civic responsibility of mowing my lawn. A good place to live and die.

Every day I have been making some progress in a forward direction and I guess you can't ask for more than that. There are backwards movements, but more forward. I look at this chaos that surrounds me and figure it will take a year to get it under control. No, that's not quite right. It's under control now, I just have a very hard time finding things, even something I just found and set down somewhere. It will take a year to get the place under what someone else might call under control.

Most people look on these moves as opportunity to get rid of excess baggage. Yes, I brought some of that along, but not as much as what I left behind and am already missing. A lot of the excess is what my wife left behind when she pulled up stakes and I probably should have dumpstered it long ago. I have a painting  I tolerated for umpteen years over the mantle and carefully brought with me. Wife says take it to Good Will.  I'm trying to establish the value of it first. So be it. I continue marching to my different drummer and the end gets clearer day by day.

There have been apparent victories and defeats, but more victories. I need a brush hog mower for the tractor I managed to get up here. Grass in fields a foot and a half high already. Went out the day before yesterday in search and found new ones around a grand or better, used ones not that far behind. Absolutely the wrong time of year to be buying this machine. Best time November or December. Decided to check out Craig's Llist for the first time in my life.

Brush hog for sale for $350. Hmmm. Listing only eleven hours old. Called the guy and found out he had been running it with an older model tractor than my own antique. Short story, I drove up, bought it, he delivered it, end of story. Not quite. Went out today to hook it up and  get some mowing done before the forecast rain and thunderstorms. A lot easier with two people but I managed. Wouldn't hook up to my power take off. I don't know enough about it to diagnose the problem. Hoping someone in town can solve it. Ups and downs.

There is a remote possibility that this guy ripped me off but I am not considering it. My instinctual assessment of him came up roses and his wife was one of those rare specimens who could back up a trailer and was an actual helper, far outside my experience or expectations so far, tho my second wife could have qualified without her kids. Just another problem to solve amongst many.

Every day I find something else I was looking for, and if I'm lucky I put it somewhere where I can remember. This house is so big it's a fifty foot walk from the front to the back where I have sealed off the three guest rooms, sixty feet if I have to get up in the night to pee. This means that if I come up with fifty solutions to the mess a day that involve walking from one end of the house to the other I have walked something like a mile.

Not counting trips to the basement, many of them to feed this worthless, yowling, complaining cat who I have to feed in the basement because the dogs are too old to navigate the stairs to steal his food. Doesn't matter if I just fed him, he just ate that same food an hour ago and wants something different. In my younger days he would have long ago been in kitty heaven but I'm trying to learn my lessons here.

That's the whole point here, learning my lessons. I am determined, but life is hard. I think I am being given a bit of a break after the enormous stress of moving here, but it isn't over. I had to leave the remnants of my move in the care of the only friends who answered the call. What they did didn't meet with the approval of my brother-in-law. I am still awaiting the verdict. He vacillates between reasonable and the opposite, as does my sister. Whatever price there is to pay, if it puts an end to any obligation or relationship with what I left behind, it will be well worth the price.

NOTHIN' TO DO

June 10, 2014

 People ask me what there is to do here. I answer, nothing. People ask me why I moved here then. I answer, because there is nothing to do. I'm pretty good at that. There is absolutely nothing here to attract developers, tho a few may have tried. In poking around I have come across the occasional million dollar home out in the boonies, but for the most part I imagine this place doesn't look all that different than it did a hundred years ago, certainly fifty. There is a hardware store in town that got its start in the nineteenth century, as did many of the businesses and buildings.

I imagine it is a hard place to make a living unless you find a special niche or commute. That too is one of its attractions for me, in that I live on Social Security and don't have to worry about the basics, tho there isn't much left over after that. A good place to live under those circumstances. There is an elementary school halfway to town, so there are kids here. I can hear them yelling at what I take to be sporting events. I suspect most of them will move on to greener pastures. As they should. I think it probably takes someone very special to succeed here.

Leroy is about halfway between the cities of Big Rapids and Cadillac, both within the neighborhood of 10,000 people if memory serves. That is where you go if you need to buy something at Walmart or Meijers or Tractor Supply or Staples or consult a doctor or lawyer or accountant. It's something like a fifty-plus mile round trip. If you just need orange juice or gas or a 9/16"" bolt, it's cheaper to get it here in town even if the markup is a bit steep.

You can find places around that are even lower on the economic scale if you are looking for a cheap place to buy, but not by much, and you would pay the price of depressed area living amongst the occasionally desperate. Leroy is not desperate. Most houses are kept up, most lawns are mowed, the general atmosphere is of sustainability. I have accepted my civic responsibility of mowing my lawn for the first time in several years and pull grass invading the flower gardens.

My neighbors on each side proudly fly the American flag. They would not have understood me letting my yard go wild in the years before I finally escaped. I wanted to pretend I was living out in the middle of the woods rather than under the thumb of suburban Chicago occasional visitors protecting their property values. People here protect their property, but not with suburban Chicago values, and I can't imagine anyone with that service-to-self attitude wanting to live here.

I saw a waitress wearing a tee-shirt proclaiming Leroy to be the greatest little town in Michigan. I think that may sum it up. I spent twenty years in Oregon and wanted so much to live out my life there. Not to be. But I think that Leroy just may be the closest I have come to that ideal since leaving Oregon twenty-five years ago, both in the land and the people. Oregon was a real hard place to make a living too. Most people couldn't make it there without moving to a big city. I really like this place.

WALL TO WALL

June 12, 2014

I sit out on my back patio in the late afternoon sipping a Mike's Lemonade or a Heineken or even a glass of water. My water comes out of a 2"" well and really tastes good. It's an old well in a little room off my basement and I am told if it ever fails I will have to drill another. One of the prices to pay for living in a house 50-60 years old. Another one is having to buy adapters to plug my three-prong electrical devices into my two-prong outlets. Actually the house was built in two stages so some of the outlets are newer, but overall it's an oldie but goodie.

The back yard faces north. That means I can choose to sit in the shade of the house or move out a bit into the sun, depending on the day. My back yard is a valley, courtesy of the last ice age, with my house on a rise and the far reaches a hilltop planted in Red Pine. The valley is actually a wetland, and would be a great pond if I could afford to dig it out and the DNR would approve. As it is, it is not quite wet enough to qualify as a swamp and not quite dry enough to raise cattle or sheep. It does raise a lot of mosquitoes.

I have only made it to the back of my property once, and that was last winter in the snow before I bought the place. There is a very small area where you can get thru without rubber boots, and I have not been able to find it again so far. Part of my problem is that I have the dogs with me and I don't want them wallowing around in the muck and then going back to loll around on the carpets. This house has more carpeting than I would have chosen but I am trying to adapt.

In my last house I bought a bathroom scale to keep track of fluctuations. It was about one foot square, and the only place I could find in the whole house to put it where it wouldn't be in the way was in the kitchen. One square foot out of a thousand available. That's no way to live. Now I have three times that including the basement and garage, plus the barn. Talk about luxury.

I have an electrical device called a Chi Generator. ""Chi"" is pronounced ""Chee"" or ""Kee"" depending on your preference, but it refers to life energy in the Eastern tradition. You put this device on the floor and lie down with your feet resting in two u-shaped slots. When you turn it on, it oscillates back and forth, and the effect is something like if you held a fish by its tail in the water and gently shook its tail back and forth making its whole body do a sort of swimming motion..

This is supposed to increase your life energy, and indeed when it shuts itself off by timer and you are suddenly still, you do get a distinct buzz of energy along with a most peaceful feeling. It also loosens up these old bones to the point of hurting and needing a stick to get back on my feet. Anything loosening up the rigidity of old age can't be bad. But my point is that I wasn't able to use it at my old place because there was nowhere to lie down.

Now I not only can lie down on the floor in my bedroom, I get to do this on a really comfy carpet. The dogs love it. They have commandeered two of the three carpeted closets as their own bedrooms.Three closets? Carpeting? Have we all died unbeknownst and gone to Heaven?

CLOP CLOP CLOP

JUNE 22, 2014

Since my last entry we have passed the Summer Solstice here in the Northern Hemisphere, and days are technically, if not noticeably, getting shorter. The first half of this year for me is like having wakened from a bad dream. I slowly continue to recover from the intense stress and most days now are like having died and gone to heaven in comparison.

Not that days here are problem free, but the problems are manageable, and more important working on them is to my benefit, something I have not experienced much in the past 25 years. True that working on problems is most always of benefit, but the change in attitude and motivation after having crawled out from under the bus is remarkable. My problems now are on the order of buying a used brush hog mower at a good price and then discovering that I need a special adapter to run it off my tractor’s power take off. Or sopping up my dog Missy’s alpha bitch over-pee on the previous doggie resident's message, and belatedly remembering that paper towels and toilets don’t mix well. Or having to get inner tubes in the back tires of the riding lawn mower that came with the place and were going flat in a couple of days.

Ordinary frustrations and setbacks. Part of the deal. I’m a homeowner now for the first time in my life and no one else is responsible, whether they are living up to their responsibilities or not. I have no one to answer to and no one to blame but myself. More than ever I am discovering that I do like living alone. I really like it here. Every day it occurs to me that if this was the last day I get to experience this life on Earth for whatever reason, it would all have been worth it.

The high point of my life up to now was the time I spent in Oregon, especially the last three years alone living out in the woods with no electricity on 240 acres with no obligations or commitments other than to God. This beats that. So far. I sit out in my back yard most every day and luxuriate in the view, trees as far as I can see, most of them under my stewardship, rolling hills courtesy of the last Ice Age, no houses in sight unless I go to a particular spot, more or less quiet other than the occasional traffic noise of yahoos speeding past in overloud pickup trucks.

Seems like half the vehicles up here are pickup trucks. Probably less statistically, but they more than make up in presence what they lack in numbers. And I’m halfway up a hill, or down, depending which direction you are traveling, so a lot of folks are either picking up speed for the next hill or gunning it to make the grade.

But also there are way more farm tractors going by than what I left behind, and new to me are All Terrain Vehicles which apparently are either legal here on the road or tolerated, and which make me think of getting one for myself. But most of all those testostrone-fuelled pickup trucks are mostly cancelled out when I hear the clop clop clop of an Amish horse and wagon going by like it was 1820, father, mother, bunch of kids, friendly wave, life is good.

LEROY AGAIN

JULY 1, 2014

Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to talk about how to spell and say Leroy, LEROY, LeRoy, Le Roy, LE ROY any more, but I'm still thinking about it, still asking people about it, and still learning. It's the sort of thing you don't bring up in polite conversation in a group to avoid arguments, but I'm making progress sorting it out one-on-one.

I still have yet to read the official history of this town, but I did make the acquaintance of the head of the local historical society so I've got my foot in the door. So far this is what I'm coming up with. Locals born and raised here tend to spell the name of the town as LeRoy and pronounce it as LEE-roy.

All well and good, I can live with that, but as a lifelong wordsmith and puzzler of things wordy, I know that most people in the outside world seeing the name LeRoy are likely either going to pronouce it Luh-ROY or ask you how to pronounce it. I have yet to run into a local who insists that it is to be pronounced Luh-ROY, but no doubt they exist and are good people.

Mind you I haven't brought this up yet with the head of the historical society, nor the local librarian, but I'm getting a feel for it anyway. This isn't entirely academic. I ordered checks for my new local bank account today. I asked that my name and address be all caps, which pretty much fudges the question. LEROY.

That's how packages get delivered to me. LEROY RD in LEROY, MI. Nine out of ten people seeing that are going to say LEE-roy, which is what the natives say and everyone around. But I'm trying to get some business cards and return address lables printed up, so what do I have them say?

If I use all capitals letters it bypasses the problem but it doesn't give the nod to local custom, and it is quite important here to nod to local custom in order to be accepted. Most of my business cards will be given out locally, so the nod should probably go with LeRoy. But most return address labels will be going to outsiders, and LEROY would probably avoid difficulties.

Jeff, the guy who worked on my car today, was raised here. He's ordering business cards himself. We talked about this. His sign says LeRoy (no space) and his bill says both LEROY and LeRoy. He himself says LEE-roy. Farmers say LEE-roy, the guys in the hardware store say LEE-roy, these are people whose opinons and customs matter to me.

So what am I going to put on my business card? For that matter, what am I going to put on my new website if I ever get it going? I'm really going to try to get it going this week but I'm writing this ahead of time in expectation. These matters may seem inconsequential to most but I'm sensing that they are of far-reaching consequence and I'm only starting to get my feet wet here.

I do find this fascinating, both as a wordsmith and as a now resident, altho I suspect it may not be quite as fascinating for someone on the outside. These distinctions may in fact be tedious for many. I expect to learn more as I go along, hopefully not making too many mistakes along the way, and I will probably add to these thoughts as my education grows.

RAZZASQUE

July 13, 2014

We here in LeRoy (pronounced LEE-roy) have just finished celebrating Razzasque Days. And how, you might ask, does one pronounce Razzasque, as well you might. The official announcement and schedule in the Cadillac News, the area's major newspaper, gives this guideline: (Razz-As-Que). I don't know about you, but I don't find that very helpful.

Aside from questions of accent, ""Razz"" is pretty straight forward. It's what you do to your friends when they goof up. And ""As"" is slightly less straight forward, but let's take it as in ""As the World Turns"". Now we come to ""Que"". How do your pronouce that? A quick check with dictionary.com gives two meanings. One is for 'Que, which is California hip for ""barbeque"", and the other is for the abbreviation of Quebec, the French speaking province in Canada.

Okay, everyone knows that ""que"" as in ""barbeque"" is pronounced ""cue"" as in ""cue ball"" or ""what's my cue?"" Let's write that as ""kyue"". Now the pronuciation of Quebec may not be helpful here. It is variously pronounced as ""Kwi-BECK"" or ""Kih-BECK"" by Anglo speakers. The French apparently do it more like ""Kay-BECK"". None of this is helpful to figuring out how to pronounce ""Que"".

If I had come across the word ""Razzasque"" before I moved here, I would have assumed it went something like ""Ruh-ZASK"". That ""que"" ending is often Anglicized as a ""K"" sound as in Dubuque, Iowa, which usually is pronounced ""Duh-BUKE"". There are the Basque people inhabiting the border between Spain and France and we usually refer to them as ""Basks"". Probably most educated people in the Western world recognize that ""que"" ending as what we like to call a ""k"" sound, tho the French probably shudder.

I heard an authoritative voice in LeRoy speaking before an assembly of probably fifty locals admonish someone who spoke of Razzasque Days and said that the accepted pronunciation by the locals was ""Ruh-ZASS-kee"". This was duly noted by me and practiced and memorized. This is backed up when you check out ""que"" on dictionary.com and you find an ad for a dating service connected with Albuquerque, New Mexico. That's ""AL-bu-KER-kee. If you want to try to date someone from Albuquerque, that's your business. I've got enough problems of my own

All well and good. Then in the midst of the Razzasque festivities I had occasion to exchange pleasantries with someone I would consider a major player in this pronounciation game and he somberly informed me that the correct pronunciation was Ruh-ZASS-kyue, as in cue-ball, as in cue the record, as in what's my cue?. This was not what I wanted to hear. You can see that I have put a lid on the can of worms surrounding the pronunciation of LeRoy by taking the lid off the can of worms concerning Razzasque Days.

Oh well. It only happens once a year, so I have a year to sort this out. I did attend. Sort of. I saw the children's parade. I bought a probably cheesy porch ornament saying Welcome and featuring a frog in a hammock, which seemed somehow appropriate and expresses my sentiments to the community. I finally got to see inside the local museum and got information as to how I might participate in the local historical society. I ate a Kielbasa probably for the first time since I left Wyandotte in my youth, tho they are indistinguishable from a Chicago style hot dog, at least to my uncultured taste. I met my other next door neighbor.

The festivites started on Friday, and this was a good day for kids. I considered entering the 5K race Saturday morning, which as I understand is a walking race, tho I might be confused. I was still in bed when it started, partly because I stayed up to watch the fireworks display Friday night from my bedroom window only a quarter mile away. Maybe next year. Saturday was when things got serious. I thought to continue my now customary visit to the Farmer's Market and had to find a parking place way off and walk. The roads were plugged. This little village of maybe 250 had probably thousands of cars and trucks parked on either side of every open road and in people's yards and in every available space. The few vehicles that were left mobile were inching along. I walked to the Farmer's Market, which was closed. How could they compete?

Unfortunately it rained late in the day, tho fortunately it held off until then. Probably didn't affect the folks in the Beverage Tent. There were softball tournaments and the Junior Miss Leroy competetion, arm wrestling competitions, parades, a car show, and music, which I missed. There were an astounding number of people at these events, mostly not including me since one of the characteristics of introverts is not being able to handle crowds well.

This was the most I have seen young people here. That was encouraging. And no idiots. I did not see a single cop the whole time I participated, and none was needed, tho I'm sure things would have been handled speedily if necessary. I didn't win any of the raffles, tho that won't stop me from trying again next year. Maybe by next year I will have figured out how to pronounce this festival, possibly not to the approval of everyone concerned, but more or less in synch with the general populace. Happy Razzasque Days!

HOUGHTON LAKE

July 16, 2014

If you picture LeRoy (pronounced LEE-roy) in the middle of a clock and you go out in the 2:30 direction about 70 miles you come to Houghton Lake, which is both a lake and a city. Go about 50 miles  in the 4:30 direction to find Mt. Pleasant. Roughly 70 miles again at 7:30 will find Muskeon on Lake Michigan, and 50 miles at 10:30 hits Traverse City. Cities are few and far between up here tho small towns and villages are everywhere in between.

I went to Houghton Lake last week to pick up a battery at the local K-Mart. Why didn't I buy a battery in LeRoy or in nearby Cadillac or Big Rapids? It was a special battery made to run electrical devices that ordinarily run on household current thru a device called an inverter. I am trying to put together a mobile sharpening station so I can set up at farmer's markets and such and this particular battery seemed to offer the most bang for the buck. Made by Sears and available online and thirty-some bucks cheaper than in the store, if you could find it in a store near you, which I couldn't. Sears now owns K-Mart and the closest place to pick up the battery bought online was Houghton Lake. No home shipping available on this item. It weighs about 60 pounds.

So off to K-Mart in Houghton Lake with online directions. There is a two-lane highway from Cadillac to Houghton Lake which everyone takes because it's the only way thru aside from back roads. Not a very interesting drive. The land is quite flat up there and not very fertile. Where around here folks might raise cattle, up there folks might raise Christmas trees. A lot of the land looks swampy with stunted trees, mostly spruce and cedar with a lot of dead trees interspersed. Don't know if they died in a drought or fire or just drowned. Where the land opens up you can see for a long way, but there isn't a lot to see.

My directions set me off around Lake Houghton. This is the biggest inland lake in Michigan and you can spot it on a Michigan map, about the next section down from the fingertip of your middle finger on the Michigan mitten. Really high up, tho not as high as the land to the northwest. And flat. I couldn't get over how flat the land was. Cadillac is like that too. Anyway, off I started around this lake, which I suppose is eight or ten miles long.

Passed a waypoint with a sign showing it as good for binoculars or cameras. I looked out and all I saw was tabletop flat with no trees. Are these people that isolated up here? No time to investigate as I was on a mission with sketchy directions. Kept driving and driving on the road that went around the lake and no K-Mart in sight. Plenty of cottages and houses along the lakefront tho. Cheek to jowl in fact. I simply do not understand how people can live like that, but to each his own, and they might as well all be concentrated in one area out of the way. Really, with no exaggeration, anyone in any of these houses could have stepped out and pitched a rock and hit the house on either side, and this went on for mile after mile after mile. And every one with a septic tank draining down to the lake.

And no K-Mart. Too late to turn back now and nowhere obvious to stop and ask directions. There didn't seem to be a lot of people around anyway. I'm thinking most of these dwellings are summer places for people that live elsewhere and who don't spend a lot of time here. Much like what I left behind when I moved north. One thing I did find interesting was that these people had wire cages to put their trash out in. Bears? They didn't look all that stout but maybe. Or coyotes. Just across the road from the houses was mostly woods so who knows. Bigfoot? Probably I should have stopped and asked but I was starting to wonder if I was going to make it all around the lake in this lifetime.

Finally I came upon a commercial area with a gas station. In the olden days you could pull into a gas station and whoever was there would know where everything was and how to get there. Now we have GPS, and that we doesn't include me, but I did have my online directions and had long passed X marks the spot. As it happened this gas station knew where things were and I was headed in the right direction.

And as it turned out, the K-Mart was about a mile away from where the online directions first sent me all the way around Houghton Lake, so I added maybe an hour onto my trip but saw things I wouldn't have seen otherwise. And I got my battery at a significant saving. This was a big store with maybe a dozen cars in the parking lot. Not a happy picture for the annual report but it worked out well for me. But I went home a different way headed south on a freeway and soon ran into hills and tall hardwoods just like home.

Not the end of the story as I went back this week for another battery at the same great savings, this one hopefully to get my motorized utility cart going to replace the wheelbarrow I've been using to haul stuff and which is getting old. This time I knew where I was going so I made several stops along the way. One to the West Branch of the Muskegon River and a mile or so down the highway the Main Branch. This was especially interesting to me as the Muskegon River runs thru my home county of Osceola and goes thru Big Rapids to my south where I do a lot of my shopping. The Mighty Muskegon it gets called around here by some, and I have seen it when I would have been scared to be out in a boat on it. Some day I hope to make it up to the headwaters.

And I went back to that observation point I had passed by on the earlier trip to see just why anyone thought there was anything there worth seeing. And I was astounded. Okay it was a swamp and to some extent created by people, but well done. Apparently at some point in the past Houghton Lake had extended this far, and maybe as far as all the flat land I had driven thru. When they built the north-south freeway 127 here it enclosed the western boundary of this wetland, which extends for maybe six or eight miles alongside it. You can see the freeway something like a mile away but all in between is a pristine wetland with an observation deck and channels cut into it and even a pier where folks with physical disabilities can go fishing. There are cat tails and lily pads and water flowers, and according to the signs abundant wildlife, tho I didn't see any unless you count some bird poop on the observation platform.

Well, yeah, I've got one of these in my back yard, but admittedly not in the same league. I went five miles out of my way to see this and so glad I did. Sorry that I can't yet post pictures on this site but one of these days. Leaving Houghton Lake I drove all the way down to Mt. Pleasant, which was not especially worth seeing, at least the part I was in which had a Menards store where I scored a tool grinder at a thirty or forty dollar saving. Mt. Pleasant is home of Central Michigan University, which I passed on the periphery, and whose FM radio station I frequently listen to. Maybe next time I'll visit the campus.

This whole trip totalled something like 190 miles, and it occurred to me that this was about the distance from the golf course near South Haven over to Wyandotte, down river Detroit, where I made periodic trips for high school reunions, which we had every five years. It was a grueling trip for me. increasingly so as the years piled up, and the last time I thought to myself, ""Man, I don't think I can do this again."" It would be a different route now, but going thru the Detroit Metropolitan area. I dunno. What I do know is I drove the same distance here at my leisure and had a good time and saved sixty, seventy bucks in the bargain. I call that a good day.

TELEVISION

JULY 17, 2014

Before I moved here I was watching television an average of four hours a day, sometimes more. Nothing essential tho I did see a lot of good programs on PBS. But I also watched local and national news, not to forget the latest Hollywood news. It was a drug to help me thru hard times and I knew it. When you're watching TV your mind either turns off or goes somewhere comfortable. There were lots of times when there just wasn't anything worth watching and I would turn it off, but not often enough. The alternative usually was something I just didn't want to deal with, as good a description of my situation there as any.

Yes, it would have been better if I had dealt with my situation and overcome it in victory, but sometimes you just have to tough it out as best you can and wait for something to change. That certainly has happened and I'm now in the position of starting a new life, and hopefully doing it better this time around. And so far no television.

Not entirely by choice. Part of the deal I made with the woman who sold me this place included her TV set along with other furnishings. It was a big one, and I assumed it was a digital flatscreen in not paying much attention to it. It turned out to be an older one with a tube. Tube, that's what we used to call TV's back in the day. I tossed my own ancient tube in the dumpster along with the converter to run it, and left the aerial attached to the house, thinking I would soon have satellite TV at my disposal.

I have never had cable or satellite television in my life, tho I did get to experience cable years back when I was housesitting for my sister and discovered you can have a hundred channels at your disposal and nothing worth watching. I was content with broadcast TV but I discovered that not only was this TV set that weighed about as much as me not digital, the local satellite services don't include broadcast TV. I had a digital TV I had never used and I bought an antenna that was supposed to pick up stations better than most. And I couldn't find the remote for it anywhere, couldn't program it with the buttons on the set itself.

So I bought a used digital TV from some upscale people in an upscale lakeside community way out in the sticks, people who made me take my shoes off so as not to soil their house when they showed me the set. It was working hooked up to an antenna and it had a remote. Took it home and hooked it up to my antenna. No signal. And the remote turned out to be not the original, and there was no manual. Are you starting to get the idea that maybe I wasn't supposed to be watching TV? I was.

In the month and a half I've been here I have not missed watching television at all. Occasionally I hear some news on the radio, but for the most part I have no idea what is going on in the world and couldn't care less. I usually listened to public radio in my car with news updates and programs, and now that radio has given up the ghost. Fifty years ago I spent a week camped out in the remote boonies in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico and I was aware that World War III could be raging and I would have no idea. This is the first time since then I have been that out of touch. I kind of like it.

CHURCH

JULY 20, 2014

LeRoy has three churches, a Methodist, a Lutheran, and an Evangelical Covenant. It also has a bar on the north end of town. I've been to all three churches now, tho I haven't been to the bar yet. I went to them in the order listed, the Methodist being just half a mile from me. I walked to the Lutheran church this morning because my car is broke down and waiting for for the weekend to be over to see the car doctor. It's a good walk, something like a mile, and that's about the same for the Evangelical. This is probably the first time in my life that I've been within walking distance of three churches.

When I was very young we lived next door to a Baptist church out in the country and I walked to that. By myself, tho looking back that seems strange. My father came from a Methodist background, my mother Presbyterian, and I suppose neither one of them would have considered ever going to a Baptist service.  I have no idea why I started going there. I was six at the oldest and maybe younger. All I can remember is the big tank for baptisms up behind the stage but I imagine the church left its mark on me. I sat up front as I remember. God at work.

We moved from there when I was seven and summertimes I walked to the Evangelical and United Brethren Church which was maybe a mile away, about the same distance as the one room school I attended for a short while. I went to that church until I was maybe twelve and I sat up front there too. The main thing that sticks in my mind about this church was that there were men there wearing bib overalls. I have asked other people about this since and no one else remembers that. Still it sticks in my mind in a positive way. They obviously would have been local farmers who nowadays would have a different uniform, if the church was there, which it is not, eaten by a freeway.

Until now those are the only churches I remember walking to. I'm guessing that even here in LeRoy where a lot of people live within walking distance, few of them walk to church, if they go at all. I would most likely have driven this morning if my car was running. But I got to church earlier walking than driving. A bit warm for walking today but not too bad. And they let me sit in back now without pressure to move up.

I went twenty years without going to church before moving here unless you count Doggie Church, which I do. I speak of Doggie Church in Musings of the Greenskeeper.  Going without official attendance for twenty years might cause jaws to drop in the regular church-going population, but looking back I made way more progress in my spiritual walk then than any time before. I went to church in Oregon for fifteen years after committing myself to God as an adult, but when I moved back to Michigan I never found a home that felt comfortable. Part of this was that my wife and I had much different needs and requirements in the spiritual department. We got married in a Lutheran church because that was where I was going at the time, but it was not her cup of tea.

Even after she had moved on up to Cadillac, I had no desire to go to church in the South Haven or Glenn area. Maybe mostly because I didn't want to be there at all and with exceptions didn't care for the people in the area. Didn't seem to hurt me any. I read, I studied, I prayed, I meditated and contemplated, and I had trouble keeping up with the growth I experienced. Maybe not so much growth as catching up. Anyway, ending up here in LeRoy and starting a new life, it seemed like a good time to explore church community again, since community is involved at the core of what Jesus and the apostles meant by the church, or to translate that word without so much baggage, the assembly, the meeting, the gathering together.

When I first got serious about following Jesus, I attended a Foursquare Church, which is in the Pentecostal or Charismatic tradition. Good people and I learned a lot, ended up leading the high school age kids in Sunday School, one of the high points of my life. Five years later circumstances intervened to move me on to a little country charismatic church where I learned another set of lessons of mostly a negative order. Those lessons are just as important as the positive ones, and along the way I have found that my growth mostly consists of two steps forward, one step back. At this point I just assume that part of what I'm learning now will probably have to be altered, adjusted, or just plain abandoned as more light comes along.

I ended up in a Lutheran church in Oregon, where I was very happy. On the surface Lutherans are in a different room than Charismatics or many of the Mainline churches or Evangelicals. Like Episcopalians and Catholics and Orthodox, they worship out of a written order of service that goes back near the beginning, tho not quite. This can either seem boring and repetitive, or connected to millions of past and living worshipers as a means to approach God and make a difference in the world. The center of these liturgical services is the sharing of communion, the final meal of Jesus before he was killed. Bread and wine, body and spirit.

So I think I will probably end up in this tiny Lutheran church here in LeRoy out of choice, but I also intend to go visiting in the area maybe once a month just to keep perspective and get more acquainted with the body of Christ as a whole, which sure includes a lot of different folks. All considered Children of God by God Himself as near as I can figure out, and probably a whole lot more folks in that category than most church-goers might be ready to admit. Not mine to figure out, and thank God for that. I get along better with some folks that would never consider darkening a church door than I do with some that have multiple gold stars for attendance.

I will say this. These folks in LeRoy are the friendliest folks I have ever experienced as a whole, and not just church people. I am sure there are some clunkers in the crowd but altogether I have never experienced anything like the openness and acceptance I have here. Not that they are fools with no sense. Quite the opposite. But I am given the same opportunity to prove myself here as anyone else, and that means a lot to me. All three of these churches that I have attended have been welcoming and genuinely wanting me to return. In my experience that is remarkable. Yes, sometimes congregations are instructed in methods of building church size, but that is not what is going on here. Jesus said that you would recognize his followers by the love they expressed. I have found that three times over here and more.

BACK YARD ADVENTURES

JULY 24, 2014

This afternoon I walked to the far reaches of my back yard for the second time. The first time was half a year ago before I bought the property, and I thought it was both silly and foolish to buy a place you hadn't walked all over. I had tried it once earlier and discovered I needed boots to cross the one spot where the swamp narrows down and is shallow enough to get across. The first time I put on boots half a year ago there was snow on the ground and probably much of the water was frozen.

That first time across I was glad there was snow because it is easy to get disoriented back there in the undulating ground and extensive pine plantation. I didn't have a compass with me and was very glad when I ran across my footprints after making the circuit and needing to find the way back out. Today I had a compass with me and used it a number of times, but instead of snow I was carrying a pack of ten trail markers, bright red plastic strips with a clip to attach to branches.

But first I had a false start. Old Ralph, my fourteen-year-old Black Lab mix, saw me suiting up and started crying to go along. I really didn't want him with me because he is deaf, so you have to watch him carefully since if he gets out of sight he can't hear you calling. I wanted to enjoy my first time exploring my back yard with no time pressure, but I felt sorry for him as he has not had a good walk since we moved here. Both doggies and I were used to walking a mile a day or more, tho on the easier terrain of the golf course with mowed trails. Missy is half a year younger than Ralph but so crippled with arthritis this would have been too much for her.

So Ralph followed me all the way to the crossing I had determined was the best shot at getting across, me carrying my rubber boots which I put on and led the way across. And he wouldn't cross, just looked at me and cried. Oh for crying out loud! So I crossed back over and pulled my boots off again and took him back to the house. This summer could be his last chance at adventures so I didn't regret giving him the chance, but was glad to be on my own for this one. Maybe later in the summer if it gets drier and I work on the crossing he can at least get across once.

Anyway I made it across myself once again and took of my rubber boots, and marked the crossing with the first of my trail markers. Then I explored at leisure what I hadn't had time to see before and which I have only been able to see from outside my house at a distance off on the other side of the wetland. There are big open areas of water now, tho I think they probably dry up in an extended dry spell and couldn't sustain fish. You can't see the whole thing at once because it has some turns following the rolling ground, and my estimate of how big it is varied between three and five acres. It would make a terrific pond if it was dug out.

The pines beyond the swamp are planted in rows and there are thousands of them, maybe fifty years old and quite tall, badly in need of thinning. These are Red Pine, altho there are also White Pine planted on the property. This plantation is bounded on two sides by neighboring hay fields, and in the far northeast corner, which may be the highest spot on the property, you can see three more neighbors, none of them close enough to hear me holler if I got stuck in my swamp. Up until today I could see five neighbors from five different places in my yard, none of the places giving me a glimpse of more than one at once, and the great majority of places hidden from all.

I'm still not sure where the northwest corner of the property is. I found two separate stakes and it is hard to get a line of sight to anything identifiable on the other side of the swamp. But there were places where I could see my house and barn off in the distance, both strange and amusing considering I was still in my own back yard. The wetland determines how far you can go so you just have to follow alongside as it twists and turns. Even with hip boots I would be very hesitant to venture out into it without someone back on shore and a long rope.

Anyway I could recognize that I had circled the plantation and was nearing where I had crossed the swamp in the beginning. And I couldn't find it. I came to places I knew I had already been, and then backtracked looking for my trail markers and familiar terrain. I could picture exactly the little tree I had hung my marker on and it was nowhere to be found. This wasn't panic time. I wasn't lost, I could hear my neighbor to the west mowing his lawn, even saw him at one point, and I was completely oriented to where I was. I just couldn't find the crossing.

Back and forth, back and forth, no trail marker. Finally I came to a place that looked crossable, tho it wasn't where my boots were waiting back where I had crossed in. So first I put up several trail markers and then started across in my shoes, and it turned out better than my first crossing with stepping stones laid down that kept my shoes relatively dry. I was back across on the side where home was, but I didn't know where I was. There was another pine plantation in front of me and grass often taller than me. But I pushed on and soon figured out where I was and was able to find the way to the first crossing, where my boots were on the other side.

Made the crossing again in my shoes, and remarkably they kept the water out. Picked up my boots and determined to find the second crossing with the rocks. Looked and looked and looked. Nothing. So I decided to go back to the first crossing and call it a day. Looked and looked and looked. Nothing. This is the point when I was starting to wonder if I had the Twilight Zone right in my back yard. Maybe parallel universes with a wormhole crossing much more spectacular than my stepping stones. And my boots in hand were getting heavy.

Finally found the second crossing again and was starting across when I looked to my left and there fifty feet away from me was the trail marker of my first crossing staring me in the face, plain as day. Whew! I hadn't gone off the deep end. I did make my way back to the first crossing marking the way until I ran out of markers. I can find both of them now, at least from this side. I'm still not so sure exactly what's happening on the back side. Maybe a time warp.

FARMERS

JULY 24, 2014

Last week I went to a Wednesday night Bible study at a local church. Just getting acquainted with the community and the territory. It was fairly tame. Probably would have enjoyed it even more the previous week when, reading between the lines, there had been some vigorous argument. Maybe they were holding back with someone new and uncertain in attendance. Anyway my Bible studies take me places where the more timid angels might fear to tread, so I wasn't disappointed. No pressure to participate, which I appreciated.

My take on this gathering of perhaps a dozen people is that it was intended as much an opportunity for social interaction as spiritual edification. This fits in with my take on LeRoy in general as a pleasant and welcome time journey back to 1960, tho I remember 1960 well and I would not have been welcome there as I am today. Much in part, I would like to think, because I broke new ground and took abuse in the process, and made the world a little safer for people who think and act and appear a bit different.

Back before the electronic society, people tended to gather face to face to satisfy that part of human nature that finds comfort and security in groupings of whatever sort. At bottom it was a matter of survival. You're okay on your own until twenty-five folks from the next valley over show up wanting your horses and cattle, your wife, your land. Animals deal with this. These things are in our DNA, things to be overcome in our spiritual evolution, but there they are, insistent and loud. A village may have its problems, but it also provides protection. I watched the local volunteer fire department race by last Sunday evening on their way to who knows what. Hard to put out a house fire with no hydrants and no pond close by, but better than on your own.

A lot of people don't understand this today when your particular society might consist of people from all over the country, all over the world, people that you interact with on your computer, people that may well be closer to you than the folks across the road. This is real too. But these folks are likely not going to show up if your house catches on fire or give you a place to stay if needed. Life is a lot more complicated than it was in 1960, perhaps in very small part due to my participation.

The Bible study was only the first part of the gathering. Afterward these folks moved the gathering to Mr. Pibs, the local eatery which has gotten high marks from all my friends who helped move me here. I was sincerely urged to come along. I understood that this was important to them, but they did not understand the price this extracts from a true introvert. Extroverts gain energy from groups and crowds of people, introverts lose energy and have to run to solitude to recover. Different strokes. Another story for another day.

But introverts thrive on face to face interaction with one or two other people. And at this meeting I again met John, who I had met at a previous church visitation. His idea of retirement was to go to work for the Village of LeRoy in the dirty hands department. We talked about the deep ruts someone had driven in to the village park lawn before Razzasque Days, someone as it turned out being those same fire department guys I saw go by on their way to rescuing someone in trouble. As a golf course superintendent I could relate to this in an immediate way. I like this guy. He is hands on, he is real.

And I sat next to Ray, who most people might describe as an old farmer, tho he probably is no older than me, maybe younger. But back in his day farming took a lot out of someone. Even more so for his father. He said he was still farming but his son was doing most of the work. I can relate to that too. It turns out that he was raising oats amongst other things. This was the first time in my life that I have ever knowingly talked with someone growing oats. I am interested not only because I have eaten a lot of oats, but because oat straw is supposed to be good for dealing with algea in ponds, and I have ponds with algea. And I have never been able to find any oat straw anwhere other than something you can hold in your hand for big bucks.

So we talked after the session. I know where to go look at oats growing in a field. He agrees with me that the Amish tend to be good neighbors. I felt kinship with him. He could be my brother. This I would think is the ultimate aim of Bible study in general and particular. But I suspect he is more in need of coffee at Mr. Pibs than me, or at least more capable of handling it.

I am so happy to be living amongst farmers again. That's how I grew up, but it changed in the 1960's and 1970's. The place where I spent the past twenty-five years went from rural farm and vacationer to second home for people with more money than brains or sensibility. Not a good shift. I'm hoping LeRoy has more brains and sensibility than money. Across the road from me is a field that raises hay and planted crops. I've got fields to the north and east. I can hear cattle lowing thruout the day and see them occasionally from my back yard. I like farmers a lot. They are real people and they give me a chance to prove myself.

I like Ray and John. They are my kind of people. They might not understand all my meanderings, but they seem willing to extend a bit of tolerance and peace. People in LeRoy are like that. Not fools, but good people. Hard for me as an introvert to deal with a dozen people or fifty in order to find communion with one or two, but I'm thinking this is one of my lessons in this my new life. I'm trying. Hang in there.

FARMERS

JULY 24, 2014

Last week I went to a Wednesday night Bible study at a local church. Just getting acquainted with the community and the territory. It was fairly tame. Probably would have enjoyed it even more the previous week when, reading between the lines, there had been some vigorous argument. Maybe they were holding back with someone new and uncertain in attendance. Anyway my Bible studies take me places where the more timid angels might fear to tread, so I wasn't disappointed. No pressure to participate, which I appreciated.

My take on this gathering of perhaps a dozen people is that it was intended as much an opportunity for social interaction as spiritual edification. This fits in with my take on LeRoy in general as a pleasant and welcome time journey back to 1960, tho I remember 1960 well and I would not have been welcome there as I am today. Much in part, I would like to think, because I broke new ground and took abuse in the process, and made the world a little safer for people who think and act and appear a bit different.

Back before the electronic society, people tended to gather face to face to satisfy that part of human nature that finds comfort and security in groupings of whatever sort. At bottom it was a matter of survival. You're okay on your own until twenty-five folks from the next valley over show up wanting your horses and cattle, your wife, your land. Animals deal with this. These things are in our DNA, things to be overcome in our spiritual evolution, but there they are, insistent and loud. A village may have its problems, but it also provides protection. I watched the local volunteer fire department race by last Sunday evening on their way to who knows what. Hard to put out a house fire with no hydrants and no pond close by, but better than on your own.

A lot of people don't understand this today when your particular society might consist of people from all over the country, all over the world, people that you interact with on your computer, people that may well be closer to you than the folks across the road. This is real too. But these folks are likely not going to show up if your house catches on fire or give you a place to stay if needed. Life is a lot more complicated than it was in 1960, perhaps in very small part due to my participation.

The Bible study was only the first part of the gathering. Afterward these folks moved the gathering to Mr. Pibs, the local eatery which has gotten high marks from all my friends who helped move me here. I was sincerely urged to come along. I understood that this was important to them, but they did not understand the price this extracts from a true introvert. Extroverts gain energy from groups and crowds of people, introverts lose energy and have to run to solitude to recover. Different strokes. Another story for another day.

But introverts thrive on face to face interaction with one or two other people. And at this meeting I again met John, who I had met at a previous church visitation. His idea of retirement was to go to work for the Village of LeRoy in the dirty hands department. We talked about the deep ruts someone had driven in to the village park lawn before Razzasque Days, someone as it turned out being those same fire department guys I saw go by on their way to rescuing someone in trouble. As a golf course superintendent I could relate to this in an immediate way. I like this guy. He is hands on, he is real.

And I sat next to Ray, who most people might describe as an old farmer, tho he probably is no older than me, maybe younger. But back in his day farming took a lot out of someone. Even more so for his father. He said he was still farming but his son was doing most of the work. I can relate to that too. It turns out that he was raising oats amongst other things. This was the first time in my life that I have ever knowingly talked with someone growing oats. I am interested not only because I have eaten a lot of oats, but because oat straw is supposed to be good for dealing with algea in ponds, and I have ponds with algea. And I have never been able to find any oat straw anywhere other than something you can hold in your hand for big bucks.

So we talked after the session. I know where to go look at oats growing in a field. He agrees with me that the Amish tend to be good neighbors. I felt kinship with him. He could be my brother. This I would think is the ultimate aim of Bible study in general and particular. But I suspect he is more in need of coffee at Mr. Pibs than me, or at least more capable of handling it.

I am so happy to be living amongst farmers again. That's how I grew up, but it changed in the 1960's and 1970's. The place where I spent the past twenty-five years went from rural farm and vacationer to second home for people with more money than brains or sensibility. Not a good shift. I'm hoping LeRoy has more brains and sensibility than money. Across the road from me is a field that raises hay and planted crops. I've got fields to the north and east. I can hear cattle lowing thruout the day and see them occasionally from my back yard. I like farmers a lot. They are real people and they give me a chance to prove myself.

I like Ray and John. They are my kind of people. They might not understand all my meanderings, but they seem willing to extend a bit of tolerance and peace. People in LeRoy are like that. Not fools, but good people. Hard for me as an introvert to deal with a dozen people or fifty in order to find communion with one or two, but I'm thinking this is one of my lessons in this my new life. I'm trying. Hang in there.

CROSSROADS PICNIC SHOWCASE

JULY 27, 2014

Reed City is known as the Crossroads City. This is because two main highways meet there, old 131 running north and south the whole length of Michigan's lower peninsula, now mostly a freeway, and US 10 running east and west the whole width. In the olden days there were railroads, tho now they have been turned into hiking trails, which is probably what they were to begin with. Well, not for hiking, which is a modern luxury, but for getting places.

It's not the geographical center of the state, but in many ways it is a natural spiritual center you can feel, the place where northern Michigan begins and also the boundary between the western and central areas of the state. I find it highly significant to be living here in this particular place. LeRoy has the old highway now known as the Mackinaw Trail running right thru town, along with the White Pine Trail on the old railroad bed, which you can take to walk to Cadillac if you head north or Reed City and Grand Rapids to the south. Or ride your bike.

Friday evenings have developed a pattern for me this summer. Reed City puts on a free concert in the park every Friday from 7:00 to 9:00 or so. It is sponsored by the city itself along with various local businesses and individual donors, and it describes itself on its brochure as a ""World Class Variety Music Showcase"". I haven't recognized the names of the groups on the venue and most of them probably aren't going to get invited to those sessions in the White House, but as musicians they are like minor league baseball players. Didn't quite make the cut to the big leagues but could get called up at any time, and meantime giving you a good couple hours of solid fun and entertainment without having to spend a day's pay to get it.

They call it the Crossroads Picnic Showcase, and you can bring a real picnic with you if you want, eat it on the picnic tables set up on the lawn. Or bring lawn chairs or blankets and get front row seats. Buy popcorn or other goodies from the Lions Club. A lot of people sit in their cars or outside them, like an old time drive-in movie. It's pretty down home and relaxed, a far cry from the urban venues where you ordinarily would have to go to find this kind of music being played. Don't know about you but it's been a long time since I've been in a night club and I'm really not interested in paying the price on many levels to go back. These concerts take place in Rambadt Park, which is on the northwest side of the city on the curvey road where McDonalds is located off the freeway. If it rains they set up under the pavillion, band and audience, at the north end of the park. I haven't experienced that yet but I'll bet it's a trip.

The music is mostly centered around jazz and the blues, or their modern children, rhythm & blues and soul music. It's not that these groups are not aware of and influenced by other music, but these are the roots. And those are American roots, even if coming thru many channels to make something unique and beautiful. American music has influenced the whole world and there is no getting around the fact that the spiritual roots of the music has come thru the American Black experience, no matter the color of the particular musicians playing it today. Strangely enough, this is often appreciated in other parts of the world more than it is right here at home.

I regard this music as classical, in the sense that it is likely to be played and listened to in its best examples 500 years from now, if we last that long, along with the best examples of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. I sometimes listen to Oldies popular music from the 50's and 60's which I still regard as much superior to most popular music being produced now, but I am under no delusion that this music is going to be listened to much in 500 years. It's another story with the jazz and blues that come from that same period, a period that I regard as a peak, a Golden Age of music that took a detour with rock & roll, the British Invasion, and rock music in all its forms. The musicians who play these concerts are carrying on that classical tradition, but not in any sense note for note. The music in that tradition is prompted by an immediate musical spirit, and these folks are well attuned.

Most of the audience are Boomers and older, with occasional younger people. This surprises me on two levels. First, I am surprised that there are that many people of my generation that I would consider hip to the music. Even at the time there were not that many of my contemporaries who got outside popular music, at least in the white population. Second, I am surprised, and frankly a bit disappointed, that more younger folk don't show up. When I listened to this music as it was being born, my friends and I were a minority in the population at large, but we considered ourselves cutting-edge, and looking back I still think we were. Where are cutting-edge kids today and what are they doing? Why don't they recognize something that transcends all ages? Perhaps an ego-centric question, but in any case I have no answer.

What I do know is that the man picking these groups to perform has my musical preferences at heart and I greatly appreciate the opportunity to catch this series. I missed the first one, which I still regret, but have caught every one since. I'm having to leave a bit early now as the days are already getting shorter and I don't do well driving after dark, but each session leaves me glad I made it. There is something about live music that beats listening to a recording of the same music. The last session of the season is August 22, and the last four session from their descriptions strike me as especially friendly to those who may not be very familiar with the Golden Age of jazz and blues.

The sessions are free but the musicians aren't, and the promoters have a hard time making their non-profit budget. There is no pressure to donate, but there is opportunity and a few extra bucks helps make the world turn a little smoother. I don't know anywhere else within driving distance that puts on this kind of music at all, nevermind for free. One more example of why I'm so glad I moved here. Wish there were more people who felt the same. Give it a try. At worst an hour or two out of your life, at best discovering a treasure in your own back yard.

TWO MONTHS NOW

AUGUST 4, 2014

As of this evening, I am a member of the LeRoy Area Historical Society. I attended their meeting tonight and came home with a pile of material including the official Chronicles and a bunch of calendars with photos from a hundred years ago and more. Should keep me out of mischief for awhile. In large part the Society is composed of women  who have been around the block a time or two, and who know a thing or three about the area and its inhabitants, not afraid to speak up and set things straight. I expect to learn a lot. I also brought home a large white flower picked from a bush which, supposedly, you just stick in the ground and you have a new bush. It might need a little more stick to support the flower, but I stuck it in the ground anyway. We'll see.

I have been here a little over two months now. Let's take stock of the situation. If you walked into my house you would probably think I just got here yesterday. Boxes still everywhere, piles of unrelated objects here and there, open paths so you can actually get from here to there if you watch your step. Today I moved a large rug into my bedroom on top of the existing carpet, which is not exactly white but in that direction, maybe stone or eggshell or something. Not the color you would pick with two black doggies and a black kitty. We'll see.

I've been working away at it every day as much as I could stand, which some days is more than others. If it was only the house to deal with, it would still be overwhelming but doable. On top of the house I've got the yard, not as big a yard as my two next door neighbors but big enugh, fifty times as big as the yard I left behind which I ended up not mowing. I don't have that luxury here. And truthfully I sort of enjoy keeping it up after a fashion. That's what Adam and Eve were given to do, and if it's all you have to do you're good to go.

When I speak of my yard, I'm talking about the area I mow with the riding lawnmower, maybe two acres with flower gardens and trees. I don't climb down off the lawnmower and fire up the string trimmer. Enough is enough. The flower beds could use some serious attention with grass growing in and wildflowers picking up the slack where I don't have the time to do it right. But I've been hitting the closeouts at Lowe's and Menard's, have some hanging baskets of flowers, which are much easier to take care of, and have even been planting new perennial flowers and shrubs.

But beyond the yard is something like thirteen acres of field, wetland, and woods. That may not sound like a lot but it's more than enough for one geezer with an old tractor that sometimes runs and sometimes doesn't. I managed to mow maybe four acres with a brush hog, and there are at least another three with grass often as tall as me. It all needs mowing again and the tractor needs a new coil to see if that cures its ills. And then there are the thousands of trees in need of trimming and thinning and general care. The wetland can take care of itself.

The tractor sits in my barn. I couldn't do what I'm doing here without my barn. It's unfortunate that I had to leave behind my shelves and tote boxes, because that would have put me way ahead in my move toward order, but I was lucky to get away with what I did. And the barn can sit just like it is for a year. It's jammed up with piles and boxes, but there is a semblance of order to it. The problem is going to be when I start moving boxes of things out of the house into the barn. That's where I need my shelving and tote boxes.

And to move them I need my ancient three-wheeled utility cart that I managed to score from the golf course when I moved here. And it's not running. I'm hoping that all it needs is a good battery hooked up to it, but that remains to be seen. Yes, I can move stuff by wheelbarrow. The barn is a hundred yards away from the house and it's all uphill. Maybe fifty years ago I would have looked on this as a challenge.

I even have the battery to put in the utility cart to see if it will start. It's a fairly big battery and today was in the 80's and humid. If you would like to come push that battery uphill to my barn in a wheelbarrow, please give me a call. I'll get to it, but this is the kind of thing that keeps me dangling. I know, I know, just grit your teeth and do it. I'm working at it.

I've also been working on getting my sharpening business in order so that I can go mobile, work farmer's markets and what not, make house calls. What I need next is a canopy to fend off the sun and rain. Maybe I'll get a good deal on one as summer ends. This all takes time  I did get my shop set up in rough shape in my garage and I did get my first job, sharpening scissors for a ladies quilting bee that meets weekly. That was a big step forward. I find that I left my chain saw sharpener behind inadvertantly along with much else. That can be replaced with dollars, the custom built stand not so easily. Yes, that hurts, but glad to make it out alive.

So you can see that I don't have just one job to deal with, but something like seven simultaneous jobs all clamoring for immediate attention with others waiting in the wings. My critters would like to say that I have neglected to mention the most important job of all, my critters. Well, maybe. I will grant it is constantly immediate and mostly unavoidable, frequently distracting and irritating. Many lessons. When the pressure builds and I start yelling in response to the constant whining and complaining and begging, sometimes I stop and think, what if God yelled at me like that when I keep showing up for help? I'm working at it.

NORTHERN MICHIGAN

AUGUST 6, 2014

Every Monday I get an advertising paper in the mail called Northern Michigan News. Right now it's the only news I get and it's not really news, it's multiple opportunites to buy something. It has a classified ad section that is actually useful, at least to me, altho I would need a pickup truck to take advantage of some of the deals that catch my eye. But even as I attempt to slow down the flow of things I have had to buy to get set up here in my new home, I look forward every Monday to a new edition, and a good part of my pleasure comes from reading the name of this paper, Northern Michigan News.

I have mentioned elsewhere that in my mind, and probably many others, US 10 running east and west thru Reed City is the dividing line between northern and southern Michigan. Now I know the Yoopers have an entirely different take on this, which I can respect, but the Upper Peninsula probably ought to have been part of Wisconsin anyway, and I don't know the story behind the artificial boundary. In any case when I speak of Northern Michigan I am envisioning the Lower Peninsula, with the Upper being more like another state, which the Yoopers probably would heartily agree with.

In any case, I am living maybe a dozen miles north of that arbitrary boundary, and this gives me great satisfaction. When I open up that paper every Monday, it's talking about me and my neighbors. The idea of living in Northern Michigan is, after all, only an idea, and yet it conjures up a whole host of images that are missing from the idea of Southern Michigan. Bears, snow, cougars, the untamed wilderness, wolverines, it's highly romantic and exciting, tho not necessarily having a lot to do with day to day reality.

Still and all, if things had happened just a little differently than they did, I would now be living on 37 acres located half a mile south of Reed City. It was a really nice place and I could have been happy there, thought it was mine until events proved otherwise. I drive by it now and the house that I thought was a big step up looks kind of dinky in comparison to this house I'm in now, but it's still a nice place. Except it's in Southern Michigan if you accept this artificial boundary line of US 10.

And it is. I don't know if they get the Northern Michigan News that far south, but if they do, and if I had ended up getting it there, I would have had this nagging feeling that it wasn't talking about me. Fourteen or fifteen miles makes all that difference, at least in my mind. Now I know that we have enough divisions going on in our society without me adding more, and yet this is very real to me.

Now if you took me out blindfolded and drove around and stopped at various places and asked me if I was in Northern or Southern Michigan, I would have a 50% chance of getting it right. One thing you learn driving around the area is that the land changes dramatically from place to place, maybe most depending on what the glaciers were carrying where when the last ice age ended.

And yet there are trends that hold true. If you are driving north from Grand Rapids, just before you hit Osceola County, which is where I am now, you start seeing big boulders piled up in the median and off to the side. This is as far as the glaciers got with their heavy load before turning around and dropping all baggage. It's not like it starts one foot over the county line, but it's noticeable, and it peters out as you keep going north into Wexford and Missaukee counties. The land starts getting flat in many places up there, and the soil is poor. It's like the glaciers plowed off the topsoil there and dumped it here.

So altho my heart responds to being in Northern Michigan, I really don't want to be so far north that all you can grow is Christmas trees. A good part of my long term plan is to be where you can plant carrots and potatoes and beans and have a halfway chance of getting thru the winter. I looked at properties in Missaukee County while exploring the area, and their official brochure features a cover of Christmas trees growing in a foot of now. They have in their favor that they tend to let folks mind their own business without a lot of rules and regulations, but you can't eat Christmas trees if difficult times come along. Well, you can, but that's a hard way to go.

So I'm here close to the southern boundary of Northern Michigan. I didn't put in a garden this year, but if push comes to shove I've got a shovel and a grub hoe and a rake and some seeds, and the land to grow it. It's growing grass now as fast as I can keep it mowed, and that's the sign. You can tell an awful lot about a piece of land just by looking at the grass it grows. Hay farmers this year are just about getting their cutting baled up when it's time to cut again. Not knowing what's normal here, I'm thinking it's an extraordinary year for hay. I know the corn here was ankle high one week, knee high the next, waist high and before you blink taller than me.

Maple trees flourish here and they aren't dying like they are a hundred miles south. I suppose if it keeps getting warmer they could start dying here too, but this really is Maple country. I've got some old Maples in my yard that may be a hundred foot tall. I guess I'm going to have to learn how to tap them for syrup before I leave the planet. As you drive north, the Maple trees dwindle and get sporadic, replaced by scrubbier trees that more fit the picture of romantic Northern Michigan.

So I guess you could say I'm living in the best of both worlds. Far enough north to escape the taint of urban culture, but not so far as to make life a grind. I'm no longer interested in living on the frontier, which is a young man's game. Hardscrabble farming will wear you down and the big trees are pretty much all gone. There aren't enough deer to support the modern population and wintertime shuts most things down the further north you get unless you cater to skiers and such.

I'm glad I ended up north of US 10, but not too far. I've tended to live much of my life on the cusp between this and that, between the Great Depression and the Baby Boomers that followed the war that ended the Depression. Between urban and country living, between academic and working class cultures, between white collar and blue collar work, between established and young folks ways of seeing things. All in all I'm happy to be right where I am here just over the border in Northern Michigan.

TURKEY FEATHERS

AUGUST 8, 2014

Yesterday I needed to work on my tractor and on my utility vehicle. I don't like mechanicing and was having a hard time forcing myself to get started, so I solved it by tramping around the back part of the property for a couple of hours until it was too late to do anything else.

One thing I wanted to find was the open space in the pine forest I can see from my kitchen window where the light from my neighbor's hayfield to the north shines thru. From my kitchen it looks about as wide as a person standing in it would fill. It stands to reason that if you found that place and stood in it, you ought to be able to see my kitchen window, but it wasn't easy. I went back and forth for probably forty-five minutes not being able to see my house at all thru the trees, but I think I finally found it. Would have helped if I had thought to bring my binoculars.

I did find a couple of turkey feathers, wing feathers, pretty bedraggled but savable. A couple of weeks ago I found one by the side of the road when I was picking up litter and it pleased me to think they were in the area, if unseen so far. Pleased me even more to know they were in my back yard, even if at the far reaches.

I have not seen a lot of wildlife since I moved here, and I find that surprising. Yes, a few deer now and then, but not a single squirrel or rabbit. I saw a buzzard sail over today and have seen one every now and then, but certainly not daily or even weekly, and no hawks. Crows are common as are robins, but of course robins are the state bird and are required to be here. Doves show up fairly often, an occasional sparrow, but for the most part I don't see many songbirds. I tell elsewhere of my joy at finding Sandhill Cranes in the neighborhood, and that makes up for a lot, but they don't show up all that often.

The other night I was startled awake by sounds of bedlam, shrieks and howls and yelping. It was instantly recognizable as coyotes, but not like any I had ever heard before. Coyotes kept a low profile in the last twenty-five years I spent at Glenn Shores, and in the twenty years before that I spent in Oregon. Yes, you would hear them from time to time, rarely see them, and things seemed balanced.

The sounds I heard coming thru my open window were far from balanced. and I have never heard anything like it in my life. It seemed like it had to be two separate packs that had come too close together and a pitched psychological battle over territory was taking place. It was intense. I know one coyote can make a lot of noise but there could have been ten or twelve of them altogether. They were not trying to make friends.

I suppose it only lasted a minute, two at the outside. When it was over I could hear off in the distance a dog barking, quite possibly the same obnoxious little mutt that someone lets run loose at night and he carries on for hours on end roaming around and constantly barking. If he had run into one or the other of these packs of coyotes, a recurring problem might have been solved.

But I wonder if the strong presence of these coyotes and the noticeable lack of wildlife here aren't connected. You ordinarily don't too often see raccoons and foxes and skunks and possums because they usually operate at night, but I don't even see much roadkill in the area. I have never heard an owl since moving here. I haven't seen any mice, and coyotes eat a lot of mice. I would hate to be a doe raising a fawn with that congregation I heard the other night out on the prowl. I'm not even mentioning wolves and bobcats and cougars, tho these are not out of the question.

I don't know if people hunt coyotes up here. I have been surprised at the lack of gunfire in what seems like ought to be prime hunting ground, not that shooting has to be limited to hunting. At Glenn Shores the deer population often needed thinning and coyotes never seemed to be a problem. I'm starting to wonder if the opposite isn't happening here. But I've only been here a couple of months so best not get ahead of myself.

I did find evidence of one mouse. There is a huge sofa in the basement that came with the place. I had planned to move it out by the walkout part of the basement and use it for sleeping if the upstairs got too hot. The other day I discovered a stash of dog food secreted in it, and on closer inspection found a mouse had not only chewed him a nest, but totally ruined the couch with that awful smell of mouse pee you can't get rid of. This happened before I moved in. Now instead of my summer retreat, I need to find someone I can pay to haul the thing away. Oh well

And on my extended walk in my back yard, I discovered a second potential crossing thru my wetland at the other end of the property. It was too wet to cross in shoes, but I think with some work that I could make a way across so that I wouldn't have to go back to the first crossing I'm using now in order to return home. It wouldn't take a lot to build a trail a mile long on this fifteen acres, and I could get back to walking like I was before I moved here. Not sure if the doggies are up to it, but they need to get back in shape themselves. And I much prefer building trails to working on machinery and equipment.

INTO THE FAR NORTH

AUGUST 16, 2014

Into the far north of the property, that is, with the doggies this time. We had a couple of brisk days this week, more like fall, and the dogs are a lot more willing to go farther than the barn when it isn't hot and their tongues aren't hanging out. They wouldn't follow me across the stepping stones before, but this time they tagged right along and on into the piney woods. Probably not terribly interesting back there to a dog since it's nothing but pine trees and needles on the ground with an occasional fern. Since there's mostly nothing to eat, there aren't a lot of critters to sniff out, tho we did scare up a deer for the first time in our walks.

Probably made half a mile that first day, and we went back the next day and got in closer to a mile without a lot of backtracking other than using the same crossing to come home. I'm still having trouble finding that crossing on the way back and both times Ralph, the half Black Lab, found it before I did, walked on ahead like he'd done it a hundred times. I guess it helps if you can smell where you've been even if you're deaf..

The dogs are in better health than when we moved here and so am I. The nearly six years at Glenn Shores trying to sell the place with family obstacles took a big toll on me, especially the last year, and most especially the last month of moving. Stress produces a steroid hormone called Cortisol and before it was done I was swimming in it. It is meant to deal with short term emergency situations, but over time it wears you out physically and mentally, leaves you wide open for a range of stress diseases.

Of course the dogs weren't dealing with the same stress I was, but six years is a long time in the life of a dog. They basically went from middle age to old age in that time, and I did too. But I've been pounding down nutritional supplements since I got here and feeling significant recovery both physical and mental. Still a way to go, and there is a natural aging of the body that the best health care can only slow down. But the doggies and I are a little quicker to get up, a little more alert, and that's the right direction to be going. I did lose twenty pounds in the month I moved here, but I'll get some of that back this winter and five of it was excess from stress eating anyway.

I'm making slow progress on getting my tractor and brush hog going. Today I took the coil off the engine of the tractor in preparation for putting a new one back on. This tractor is old enough that all its engine parts are more or less identifiable and accessible with a basic tool kit, but it still involved reaching into cramped spaces and working with rusty nuts and bolts, something I don't enjoy as much as I do telling about it. One of those bolts is sitting with penetrating oil on it to see if it comes loose better tomorrow. Or the next day.

I thought I was going to sharpen the brush hog blades right on the mower. It's hard to tell the front of the blade from the back, so I guess it's time to sharpen it. But I found out the blades were able to wobble up and down many inches, and the nuts and bolts holding the blades on are much bigger than I'm equipped to handle. So I have to get my tractor running again, then hook up the brush hog and run it into town to someone with the tools and expertise to get those blades off, and see what else needs doing to get it into good enough shape to mow my field.

I did mow it once, but it was tough going and it took a lot out of my tractor. Probably would have mowed as good if I had replaced the blades with baseball bats. So my goal here is to get things going to the point where they more or less work, and meantime the grass is still growing like crazy. Yes, if I win the lottery I'll be down to the John Deere or New Holland dealer getting me a new tractor and brush hog and probably a few other items. In the meantime we've got one old tractor, one old brush hog, two old doggies and one aging cat, with one old geezer in charge of the whole shebang.

I did talk with the farmer who has the field right across the road from me, and he did graciously give me permission to walk the edge of his field on back as far as it goes to explore that neck of the woods. I will still need to talk to someone else to go all the way to the White Pine Trail, but that's for another day. I am so happy to be living amongst farmers again. When I was young I didn't realize what a privilege this was, and then the land changed hands to where farmers were few and far between. Farmers are the salt of the earth. Truly real people with their feet on the ground and connected to reality.

The farmers here are still family farmers, tho the scope of the farm is bigger than when I was coming up. But not the big mega-farms owned by corporations intent on squeezing out every last nickel at the expense of Mother Earth and all her children. Both farmers and business people here are just decent people doing their best to make a living without stomping on their neighbors or the planet in the process. Yes, I'm sure there are a few clunkers in the mix, but for the most part I think it is not all that much different than it was a hundred years ago in the Chronicles of LeRoy book I'm working my way thru.

 Things went awry when the tractor replaced horses and oxen. Some attribute the Great Depression to this in that the land no longer needed for pasture and hay was planted in crops that drove prices down to next to nothing and beyond. Cattle up here appear to be mostly grass fed. I consider that a big plus. I also consider the growing presence of the Amish here as a super big plus. More on that some other time. Truthfully I am glad that I don't have horses or mules to take care of on top of these two old dogs and one old cat.

MORE ADVENTURES

AUGUST 18, 2014

Today started off pretty humdrum. Got up and spent the morning in my usual reading, writing, communing with God, praying, contemplating, meditating, checking my e-mail, checking my forums, blessing the land, all this in my pj's. It was a fairly decent day, and this morning I actually got dressed to go out and bless the land. Wasn't sure the doggies wanted to go for an extensive walk but gave them the opportunity. It's supposed to be raining off and on the rest of the week.

It was a bit warm and I didn't expect them to follow me across the stepping stones to the piney woods, but they did. Good enough. I wanted to scope out the way between a pile of rocks and the alternate crossing thru my wetland, with the idea of working up a game plan for when my Workmaster utility vehicle is running. Not really interested in wheelbarrowing those rocks unless I have to.

When we got to the alternate crossing, Ralph, my half Black Lab old guy, forged on ahead and started across. A couple of years ago I could have called out, ""Not too far!"", and he would have stopped, but he has gone deaf, at least to the sound of my voice. Possibly selective hearing. In any case I could hear him splashing along and there wasn't any turning back.

So Missy and I headed across. Missy is a lot smarter than Ralph, tho Ralph is the one with the big heart. We made our way from clumps of grass and cattail to more clumps until they ran out and the water was over my shoes. No turning back now as Ralph was thrashing his way along. I could only hear him because the grass and cattails were from waist high to shoulder high, sometimes over my head, and certainly all of it over the doggies'  heads.

I think in the dim recesses of Ralph's mind he knew this was the way home and he wanted to go home. Missy and I finally made dry land with no Ralph. I could hear him whimpering and struggling back where we had come thru. I tried getting Missy to stay put while I went back to get Ralph, but neither one of these dogs understands the concept of staying unless it is something they want to do. Ralph was getting louder and more frantic.

So back I went, blowing the whistle I carry which Ralph can hear. He responded with cries, but didn't come closer. Finally I found him stuck in an open area of water and unable to get out. My shoes were soaked at this point and the water was a foot up on my legs, so I just waded in out to where he was and grabbed him by the collar and scruff of his neck and hauled him out. I still had my stick and my Tracfone was hooked to my belt, so we could call 911 if push come to shove and I didn't fall down and get the phone wet Probably would have been a first for the 911 dispatcher, and maybe a first for the LeRoy rescue squad as well.

Fortunately we didn't have to call, but unfortunately Ralph couldn't walk. His front legs were working but not his back ones. I didn't know if he had suffered a spinal injury or what. I know he has fallen down on my slick hardwood flooring and couldn't get back up until I dragged him over to a carpet where he could get some purchase for his feet. This seemed more serious.

So I straddled him and picked him up behind his front legs and heaved him forward to better ground. He struggled and strained but could barely claw his way forward a foot. At this point in my life a 60 pound bag of concrete mix is about my limit to pick up, and that's just moving it from the stack to my cart, or from the cart to my car. Ralph weighs about 60 pounds and we had maybe 500 feet to go, most of it uphill.

He would manage a few feet on his own and then collapse. And he kept wanting to go downhill because that was easier, but downhill went back into the swamp. So I ended up boosting him step by step all the way up to where the lawn started and it got more level. He did better then but still could only go a few feet at a time. I was starting to think about doggie wheelchairs and taking him out multiple times a day to pee, and one of the things I hadn't done so far was to come up with a vet for critter emergencies.

When I finally got him up to the front lawn, which is more or less level, I let him lie while I tended to Missy, who had managed to get home alone on her own thru unfamiliar territory. She seemed to be fine, or at least no more wobbly than her usual. Both these dogs are 14 now, which is really old for dogs this size. Conventional wisdom says that doggie years are equal to seven of ours, but I don't agree. Six years would put them around 84, which is about the shape they are in for really healthy people. Five years would make them about 70, and I know 70-year-olds that are about as decrepit. In any case they are too old to be struggling thru swampland, as am I.

But all's well that ends well. Once Ralph got his breath back, he got back on his feet and even managed to climb the steps to get back in the house. I was greatly relieved, sent a multitude of thanks Godward, and am still most grateful not to be dealing with a paraplelegic dog. Yes, at some point it is kinder to help them on their way to doggie heaven, but especially with rescues there is an obligation to go several extra miles. He has a slight wobble he didn't have before, but not noticeable if you aren't looking, and that may go away.

I had to abandon my stick along the way, but I went back later in the evening and found it. And when I got back home I had a message from my neighbor to the west who I now call the Bean Lady. She has four rows of beans that are more than she and her husband can handle, and I have been doing my part to help. Found out that she is a nurse, and I have a soft spot for nurses. Spent pleasant time with them and their brother-in-law, if I understood that right, who hails from England, my ancestral homeland, and always glad for the opportunity to talk with Brits and get some mirror perspective.

So it ended up a good day and could well have been the opposite. I got the new coil put on my tractor and it started up after I remembered to plug the coil wire in. Hooked up my brush hog ready to take it to town and get the blades off to sharpen. On the other hand my old Workmaster utility vehicle which was waiting for the tractor to be out of the way to see if its new battery would make it start, made shrieking, grinding noises instead of starting. Some you win, some you lose. All in all it was a blessed day as it turns out and I go to bed happy.

INTROVERSION

AUGUST 19, 2014

I have studied a lot of different concepts and subjects in the course of a lifetime, but one of the more useful ones to me in the last year has been investigating the difference between the introvert and extrovert. Personally, I was vaguely aware that there was a big difference between the two, and I was more than vaguely aware that there was a stigma attached to being an introvert. There was something wrong with being an introvert, something that needed fixing, and when everyone finally became an extrovert the world could finally relax and enjoy itself, let the good times roll!

Maybe yes, maybe no. One of the things that I discovered in the last year is that Sigmund Freud, the famous psychoanalyst from the preceding century, and the century before that, labelled introversion as a psychological aberration, something wrong, something off in that dark corner where neurosis lived, even psychosis. This was a really influential guy who made some progress in figuring out what makes us tick, but he sure blew it on that one, along with many others.

Even at the time he was condemning something like half the world to darkness, there were other voices raised who saw the introvert as an asset to humanity, a corrective, a valuable resource that just might be needed to get us thru tough times and unexplored territory. Their voices weren't as loud as old cigar-chomping Sigmund who gave us the stereotype cartoon of the troubled person lying on a couch spilling his or her pitiful guts out to the wise, bespectacled, bearded person sitting in the chair taking notes.

So what have I learned? First off I learned that rather than a despised tiny minority of the population, introverts, depending on how you define things, occupy at least a third and maybe a half or more of folks at large. Let me say that again in different words. Introverts may constitute a majority of the world's population. Now it does make a difference how you define this, and it does make a difference which culture you are talking about. The American culture is boisterously extrovert, and if you live here you might assume that this is the yardstick to be used worldwide. But if you want to disrespect introverts numerically worldwide, you might as well be disrespecting women. That one doesn't pay.

Folks who live in the Eastern half of the world might have a different take on it. They might look on the in-your-face conviviality and back-slapping first-name glad-handing as terribly offensive and rude. Different strokes. But wherever you might be in the world, and whatever the cultural expectations, there are folks who get energized in crowds of people and noise, and folks who lose energy in that situation. That might be the basic difference between extroverts and introverts.

One of my neighbors is a wine maker. He takes it quite seriously, is interested in the science of it, and he doesn't drink the stuff. I'll take a moment here for that to settle in. I guess it's like the most successful owners of a bar or tavern would be someone who didn't drink, but it still is a little hard for me to grasp. Back in college days we made our own beer and consumed it as well, tho we soon learned there were limits beyond which the price was too high to pay. If I understand correctly, the woman who I bought this place from acted as a taster for my neighbor, but she's gone now. The man's wife gives him feedback I am told, but she's not really enthusiastic about it. If my information is halfway correct, opportunity knocks.

So this man gives a wine tasting party once a year in August, and I was graciously invited even tho I had just moved here. There were something like a dozen different bottles of wine resting in iced cradles available for all at will, plus a whole table of food that folks brought to the party. There were maybe 75-80 people there, probably more if you had kept count from beginning to end. It was one of the best parties I have ever been to in my life.

In the first place, at least while I was there, no one got drunk, no one got loud and obnoxious, no one argued, and this with a totally open bar. I guess someone could have picked up a wine bottle and guzzled it down, but no one did. It was about people who knew each other and were comfortable with each other gathering to celebrate their community and the fruits of the earth. Maybe my favorite was the Cranberry/Grape, but it was closely followed by the Peach and the Pear, and possibly edged out by the very nice Big T, which turned out to be tomato. Okay, I know, tomato wine? You should try it. There were many others available, some of which I had already tried. This guy is a good neighbor.

I left early. That's what introverts do. I could feel my people saturation gauge rising the whole time, not because of any rude behavior, because people were extraordinarily friendly and accommodating. It would have peaked out much earlier if it had been indoors. Introverts reach their limit with many people and the small talk that lubricates it all, and have to go grab some solitude to recover. But introverts also have a lot ot offer the world in the kind of response that may not work well in give and take repartee, but given a night to sleep on it and give it some thought might make a difference in a positive direction. Different strokes.

So another neighbor and I got together recently and tipped a few beers and told stories with a crowd of four people including me. That I can handle better. That I am more comfortable with. It isn't that introverts don't like people and want to be alone, it's that there are limits to the energy level beyond which an introvert suffers loss rather than gain. It's not that extroverts are shallow and stupid, far from it, but the optimal operating atmosphere for introverts involves a lot less people. That's where they can best do their thing.

The wine tasting party is an annual event and I am already looking forward to the next one. I expect to do even better because I expect to know more people in the meantime. Possibly I will have been able to give feedback on the latest batch between now and then, perhaps if lucky even be able to contribute to it in some way. This neighbor donates his time to maintaining the White Pine Trail between here and Cadillac, maybe fifteen miles. That's more my style. Slowly I am trying to learn how best to fit into this remarkable community I have been so fortunate to end up in. Drinking wine is not a bad way to go

WRITING SERVICES

This is obviously not a finished presentation. While I'm getting settled in and setting up this website, here is the basic information you need to know. I am not trying to make my living from writing services, but am always glad to pick up a little extra income. I am happy to work with local people but can also work online with anyone including those in other countries. Here are some basic categories I may be able to help you with.

• Words
• Copyediting
• Plain English
• Custom Work
• Business Writing

Two people so far have not known what wordsmith means, one a high school graduate, and one college educated. I may need to change that, but basically it's like a blacksmith works with most anything iron and steel, and a wordsmith works with most anything to do with words. If I called it writing, it would cut out editing and proofreading and a lot more. If you want someone to tweak something you have written yourself, I can do that. If your needs don't seem to fit what I offer, feel free to run it by me anyway. You can find my contact information above.

COMMUNITY

AUGUST 25, 2014

If you think about it, which I happened to do this morning, there are four months until Christmas. Less than a month until autumn officially arrives. Time seems almost out of control, like the accelerator is stuck and the brakes aren't working. Labor Day is one week away. How can that be? It signals the end of summer in many ways, and it seems like summer is just getting started. Where did it go?

I don't know what passes for normal here in terms of weather, tho my guess is that like the rest of the world there is no longer any normal, which I guess you could call the new normal. There have been some days when it got hot enough to not want to do much, but I don't think it hit 90 degrees here all summer. One night in August I woke up just about dawn and it was 39 degrees out. In August. Yes, we are in the north country, but that's remarkable to me. Maybe ho hum for folks that have lived here all their life.

I'm not complaining, mind you, I don't like super hot weather, tho I don't like cold weather either. And no, I don't want to move to Hawaii. I lived there once for nine months. I rented a room and opened the window, closed it when I left. I am already thinking about dealing with snow, glad I wasn't here last winter, and hoping there won't be a repeat. My driveway is a gravel horseshoe that goes downhill from the road, just looking at it, difficult to plow.

I have never had a snow blower in my life, never ran one, but there was one for sale in the paper a week ago and I thought about it. There is a snow blower attachment in the garage that goes on the riding lawn mower that came with the place. Maybe that will work, I dunno. It looks difficult to put on, but then I tend to make things mechanical more difficult in my mind than they actually are. And sometimes my mind is right. My tractor has a back blade which works in a pinch, but you really need to push snow, not pull it. Yes, you can run it in reverse, but that's a hassle and I have trouble seeing behind me. Why am I thinking about plowing snow in August?

Yesterday I served as Acolyte in the church service I've been attending. Acolytes light the candles before the service starts, put them out at the end. Sounds simple, kids can do it. It brought back memories of being in a high school play, nervously trying to remember the moves and what comes next, trying hard not to screw it up, great sigh of relief when it is over. I didn't have the right wiring in my mind back then to be an actor, or a muscian, or a dancer, or anything that involves memorizing a set sequence of anything. Even more difficult at the tail end of life.

Next week I'm reading the prayers and the scriptures. Now that I can do because you don't have to memorize anything, it's all written down on paper. One of my few moments of victory in college was winning a poetry reading contest, and I can still taste the sweetness of that one. This church is what is called liturgical, which means it follows a form that goes back something like 1600 or 1800 years. Essentially it's all written down in a book. Some folks consider that empty and meaningless, and indeed it can be, but so can a supposedly open and free service if you aren't tuned in to the right spiritual station.

Anyway, I have been making this particular church part of my exploration of community here in LeRoy. This is the first time in twenty years that I have been going to church regularly, and it's the first time in many more years than that I have been actively involved in a community. Not that I'm spending a lot of time at it, but for me it's a stretch. A couple of weeks back I met two guys running for judge as well as my current state representative.

These guys struck me as decent, common-sense, actually working for my benefit and the benefit of the community at large. First time I shook hands with a politician since I shook Richard Nixon's hand back when I was maybe eleven years old. That would have been when he was running as vice-president under Eisenhower. Where I spent the last twenty-five years I became used to politicians serving themselves and often their ideology while posturing as decent and common-sense, working for the people. One of the answers when people ask me why I moved here.

Now my mailbox did carry a lot of pitches before the last primary election from people offering to go to Washington and add to the bitterness and gridlock and vitriol that keeps anything from getting done. The three I met did not appear to be part of that. Slowly I am getting my bearings here and expect to have a much better handle on it by next November. I attended a village meeting in LeRoy to see how things happen here. I was the only one there outside of the council or whatever they call themselves and the state representative who showed up. They also struck me as decent, common-sense folks looking out for the best interests of the community.

And actually I'm not officially a resident of the village of LeRoy, tho if I had a golf ball and a five iron I bet I could knock it into the village limits since it's all downhill and paved. Might take a Mulligan or two. I wanted to attend the LeRoy Township meeting that same night but it was cancelled. That's how I met the two candidates for judge, not the same judgeship. They were also waiting for the doors to open so they could make their spiel, and it was not until a local came and read the sign on the door that we understood why the doors were still locked. So I got a private and personal town meeting with two guys I hope I don't ever have to see officially, but I intend to vote for them both. Fifteen of their minutes plus travel time for each. That's an expensive vote. I'd like to think I'm worth it.

BLESSINGS

AUGUST 31, 2014

Blessings may depend on where you're looking at things from. My two old dogs and an aging cat have no idea how lucky they are. All are rescued and lucky to be alive. They have as much food as they can eat, home-cooked in the doggies' case, and a doorman to let them in and out on demand. A roof over their heads, a soft bed to lie on, protection from predators, and a certain amount of affection. I say ""certain"" because they tend to complain about their situation, and from my perspective it seems they complain constantly, tho they do shut up and go to sleep a fair amount of the day, which is part of my blessings.

My wife came to visit the other day for the first time in the three months now since I've been here. The critters were overjoyed. Finally someone who understands us and will treat us with the respect and affection we so richly deserve. Yeah, yeah, well, okay. They not only stopped their complaining while she was here, they shut up and were at peace all night after she left and half the next day. Of course she had not been listening to this constant barrage for months, years on end. I'm only glad it is my cat squalling at the top of the stairs when I come in from being gone, and not one of the cattle I hear from time to time bellowing off in the distance. Cattle are loud, but a quarter mile distance makes a lot of difference. These critters will get right up in your face if you ignore them.

Well, better than having grandchildren permanently dropped in your lap in your declining years, at least from my perspective, and there are those in that unfortunate position in these troubled times. And push come to shove, probably better than coming home to an empty house echoing your footsteps. I dunno. All I know is I like my solitude and like to be left alone when I'm working, and these critters, if nothing else, have lessons for me to learn.

Speaking of blessings, yesterday I bought a dozen duck eggs from a pretty lady at the local farmer's market, and then when I went to Cadillac to get a wire brush to clean up some rusty axes, I found a 1939 Chrysler Royal coupe in restored condition sitting in the Walmart parking lot. People, it doesn't get any better than this. I am also of a 1939 vintage and I don't remember ever seeing a car exactly like this before. A coupe is a car with no back seat, only the front seat and the trunk starting right behind that, maybe sometimes space to tuck in some groceries or a small child. Some had rumble seats in the trunk where more people could sit but I don't think this one did. It was basically a sporty car for a couple, probably a younger couple, or maybe a guy out looking for female companionship. My father had one until I was seven, only it was a Mercury, not that I remember it in detail but I've seen pictures. A Mercury then was a fast Ford. A nice car, had a V-8, whereas that Chrysler only had a straight 6. Probably the Mercury would have won a drag race and possibly a style show, but I might still go with the Chrysler today just to keep me out of trouble. Someday I'll figure out how to insert a picture here.

This car caused me to start thinking about if I won the PowerBall Jackpot, how much would I be willing to fork over to make it mine. This is called covetousness and is frowned upon by God. The figure ten grand popped into my head, and later, looking it up online, a similar car out in Washington state asking $12,500 or best offer, Yeah, $10,000. I'm somewhat partial to Chrysler products anyway, having driven many of them in my life out of financial necessity, and never having had one of them absolutely quit running on me. But let's face it, trying to keep this old Dodge Neon running, with any luck the rest of my life, thinking about a $10,000 fun car is not exactly in the realm of reality. Unless I win the PowerBall.

I did think a lot about getting a chiminea for my back patio. A chiminea is basically an enclosed cooking stove with a chimney. Or chimbley as I like to think of it. Thus chiminea, Spanish, it supposedly was invented in Mexico where folks are extremely inventive and practical, tho I can't imagine it not being many more thousands of years old. You can spend three, four, five hundred bucks on a really good chiminea, but I'm not that crazy, unless I win the PowerBall. I finally bit the bullet and got this one at a bit over a hundred. It's sheet metal but should last ten years at least, maybe twice that and outlast me if I take good care of it.

And I'm not sorry. It's designed as a northwoods cabin with a chimney and a cutout of a moose which glows when the fire gets going. Fits right in with the place, and the more expensive alternatives were more like steam punk, which would have been nice in another setting but would have jarred here. Way before I got here, my neighbor to the east as a favor trimmed up a bunch of spruce trees that were blocking the view of traffic coming when pulling out of the driveway. Said it took him three days. That's a nice neighbor.

Anyway there is a pile of branches a bit too near living trees to set off without danger and damage, so I've started whittling down the pile with my chiminea. This would be easier if I had my Workmaster utility vehicle running to haul loads of branches, but so far I'm doing okay dragging a big armful at a time. The chiminea has an opening somewhat like a small fireplace, and I can cut up most of the branches with pruners to fit. Tonight I used a handsaw to cut some bigger ones.

It's not practical but it sure is enjoyable. I build the fire and get it going, and then sit in front of it as dusk falls and watch it like some folks watch television, perhaps with a jelly glass of cheap wine. I suppose I could buy a video of a fireplace burning and watch it on TV, but it wouldn't be the same. A fire is alive and breathing, never ever the same again in a million years, a means of peace and contemplation, and how else do we get back to the Garden of Eden where we got our start.

There's some awful things going on in the world, I'm vaguely aware. There are those who would say I should not only be aware but doing something to solve the problems. I dunno. Seems to me that as far away from the problems as I have managed to get here, I might just be doing more to solve them sitting by the fire and connecting with God and blessing the world, than I could setting off on crusade. Anyway, that's what I've been doing lately. You're welcome to join me.

HAPPY LABOR DAY!

SEPTEMBER 1, 2014

On the golf course Labor Day weekend was the third of three potential chances to break even for the season or in the olden days even make a profit. The other two were Memorial Day and Fourth of July.  Around here weather would not have been helpful today with only diehards and the desperate willing to chance the passing rain. So glad I'm not tied into that any more.

On holidays I always gave my help the day off if they wanted it and did the work myself. If they came in and worked a crucial few hours, I gave them a full days pay. On Labor Day especially, it just doesn't make sense for working people to be working other than police, fire, and medical emergency. Some people don't mind working, need the money, but the holiday has become just another business money maker like Christmas and Halloween and Mother's Day. Oh well.

There are sales now with most holidays and I was out there taking advantage of one to buy a hydraulic lift for riding lawn mowers, something helpful if you want to take the blades off and sharpen them. The only riding lawn mowers I was experienced with before cut a swath between five and fifteen foot wide, and this one I have now cuts maybe three feet or a little better, and you can't go too fast or it punishes your backbone. My neighbors have bigger mowers, but still probably in the four foot range. They really crank. One of them sounds like a squadron of B-26's crossing the English Channel, the other one sounds like a B-29 on a long mission out over the Pacific. I have a vintage people-power push mower but this lawn is too big to fool around with that. It takes me about as long to mow my lawn as it does to mow ten greens. That's long enough. A little too long if you ask me. I've mowed enough grass for one lifetime and more, but you've gotta keep up appearances. A flock of sheep and goats would solve this whole problem, tho I'm sure it would create others.

My tractor is still sitting there in downtown LeRoy refusing to cooperate with simple solutions. The brush hog is ready to go, but the tractor is holding out, problem unknown. All I want to do is mow my field, expand my walking area, and create some trails so a different mile long route is availabe every day. The grass I mowed with the tractor before it got cantakerous is still much shorter than it was when I mowed it the first time, but too long for comfortable walking, me or the doggies. It needs mowing now and once again before snow hits.

Well, whatever, take it like it comes. There is a fairly big fire ring made of rocks in my yard under the maple trees  and I spent a sweaty day a few days ago when the weather was right burning a big pile of branches and leaves which was built with the philosophy that if you cover anything with leaves, no one will know it is there. I learned long ago on the golf course that leaves are meant to be mulched right where they are with a rotary mower, returning all that hard work dredging up various minerals back to Mother Earth. Making slow progress.

Today marks three months exactly since I moved here. How am I doing? Well, if you come to visit I've got chairs set up for two of you, and could handle five more without much trouble. But about half the boxes of various and unknown stuff are still left sitting there in my living room so it looks like I just got here. I've never had a dining room table before since I was a kid, and this one still is unusable because of being covered with boxes of stuff. I could move them easily if I had my Workmaster utility vehicle running, which it isn't in spite of the many days I spent getting it ready to fire up.

People I really don't want to have to deal with all this with a wheelbarrow, especially since it's an uphill climb to the barn. The bicycle I bought a couple of months ago and put together enough to run it up and down the road, is still sitting there in the barn waiting for me to take it to the White Pine Trail. I've been working on my sharpening sideline, working with quilters who use scissors and rotary cutters, doing some knives and a whole slew of axes, but still not ready to set up at a farmer's market and waiting for a good deal on a canopy. I did finally replace the chain saw sharpener I lost in my move here with a better model, but I haven't used it yet and would like a working relationship with a timber faller or wood cutter. I sharpened a knife as a freebie for an older woman I met named Trudy because I liked her and my number two wife was named Trudy, but that doesn't pay the bills.

Basically I'm juggling seven balls at once, more or less maintaining with the occasional dropped ball, but not making a lot of progress in any one area. I have bright moments like finding some fresh grated horseradish at the Save-A-Lot from some folks who must be Yoopers since they call it  ""Troll Smokehouse"" and explain it is ""Cuz Wer' Under Da Bridge"". I celebrated Labor Day this morning with an extra tea bag in my cup of tea, followed by scrambled duck eggs with horseradish and a side of home grown green beans, so there are payoffs.

Overall I would say I'm not anywhere near as far along as I had hoped to be with winter already looming around the corner. I looked at the snow blower attachment today that fits on my riding lawn mower and it looked pretty intimidating. Not my problem today, but soon enough. If I'm doing okay I'm looking at what is directly in front of me to deal with and letting the rest take care of itself. Believe me, this sounds easier than the actuality of doing it, but that's my main lesson to learn in LeRoy these days.

KABOOM!

SEPTEMBER 5, 2014

Big thunderstorms last night. Sounded like a couple of inches of rain fell and I fully expected to go out this morning and see my driveway washed out again for the fourth time. Not so. I was greatly relieved since it was obvious the day I got here to find a big rut that I needed to dig a couple of diversionary ditches across the driveway to run the water off to the side. And I procrastinated thru two more washouts, all three requiring me to rake up the sand and gravel, shovel it into my wheelbarrow, and struggle it uphill where it came from.

You would expect anyone with two brain cells to rub together to have dug those run-off ditches after the first time fixing it. What can I say? At least tonight I finally went out and dug them. We'll see. They aren't foolproof but they should help, and I'm trying to get a load of crushed concrete hauled in, some of which will go toward further improving the driveway so there isn't a channel there to wash out in the first place.If this was all I had to do, it would be done.

And I did get my lawn mowed yesterday before the big rain. That made it easier to pick up all the sticks and branches that came down in the wind last night, altho as it turned out only four-tenths of an inch of rain actually fell. While I was mowing the back yard I was keeping close watch as usual because the grass grows thickest out in the middle and various critters can be hidden in it. I saw a flash of something green hopping and struggling to get out of my way in the jungle and got off to rescue it thinking it was likely a Leopard Frog. Turned out to be a big Katydid. Was glad to see they live here too. You don't see them very often and I always consider it a good omen to find one.

Then when I was done and pulling the mower up by the garage to blow the grass off, there in front of me was a little snake, all coiled up and challenging me and my mower, all six inches of him. Not sure what kind he was, but he looked like a little snake I picked up out of the creek at Glenn Shores when I was maybe twelve years old. He didn't like being picked up and bit me to prove it. Had to shake him off my finger and he left two little fang marks. I went up and looked in my snake book. He was either a Water Snake or a Copperhead. I'd never heard of any Copperheads being around there so I waited to see if I was going to swell up and die, which I didn't. However being older and wiser, I moved this guy out of the way on a shovel. I was wearing gloves but they had holes in them, and little young snakes can be ornery.

I had a big Blue Racer bite me back then around that same time when I was trying to pull him out of a bush that was growing by the house. He was probably three feet long and just minding his own business, so another lesson learned. I've always liked snakes and was glad to find so many here. I've herded a rattlesnake barefoot away from a dwelling in Oregon with no problem. There were a lot of snakes at Glenn Shores when I was a kid but then they mostly disappeared and you could go years without seeing one. I have a picture somewhere of me from about that same age around twelve sitting on the back of an alligator down in Florida at the local reptile farm. If I had to pick out one picture to sum up my life, it would be that one.

So when I remarked in the past that I didn't see so much wildlife here, that was not entirely so. And this evening I saw a brown frog out in my back yard, and I've seen a tiny green one in one of my hanging flower pots. Somewhere packed away in one of these boxes is my reptile and amphibian book from my childhood. I might run across it a year from now if I get that far along in unpacking, but tonight I ordered a new and improved one online. I also ordered a star book.

There is a star I can see out my bedroom window lying on my bed, and I have thought all along that it was likely the North Star, tho aware it might just be wishful thinking. What better to epitomize moving up north than to see the North Star out your bedroom window? It was always the only star I could see with a big Cottonwood Tree blocking most of the view. It was in the right direction at the right height, and mostly it didn't seem to move, tho it was hard to remember from time to time when I could see it. Going to different parts of the house and looking out other windows I thought I could identify it by the Big Dipper's pointer stars, but then I couldn't see the Big Dipper from my bedroom.

So the other night I went outside at 2:00 in the morning and spent an hour out there trying to sort it out. The North Star is the tail end of the handle of the Little Dipper, but I have not been able to see all seven stars of the Little Dipper for something like twenty years. I used to spend a lot of time after dark on the golf course setting sprinklers, which were old and decrepit and had to be babysat thru all their cycles..I clearly remember nights with a blaze of stars across the sky and all seven stars of the Little Dipper distinct, and then it changed. Yes, my eyes have gotten bad over the years but I could see better than most back then. Part of the change has been increasing light pollution, which surprisingly is nearly as bad up here. But I think most of it is atmospheric pollution.

In any case I could only see three stars of the Little Dipper, the two outermost on the bowl, and the end of the handle, which is the North Star. I went in and got binoculars but they didn't help. I could see more stars but not in the distinct patterns I remember. So I'm 95% sure that's the North Star I can see out my bedroom window and I'm claiming it. To be really sure I need to go to an online star program where you can see the sky like you can't see it in real life any more.

While I was digging the ditches across my driveway a flock of maybe ten Canadas went by heading south. This was the first time I had seen geese here and I was pleased to see them. Didn't need to have a bird book to identify them. We would sometimes have a flock of Canadas on the golf course covering a fairway, with golfers making a path thru them in a golf car like Moses parting the Sea of Reeds. Maybe these geese were just heading to bed for the night, but why were they heading south? September is just getting rolling. Do they know something we don't know?

NORTH-EAST OSCEOLA

SEPTEMBER 7, 2014

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours poking around the north-east corner of the county. Went out 20 Mile Road to Marion and stopped off at Dighton on the way. I don't know how to pronounce Dighton and never heard anyone say it. I guess I could have stopped and asked someone there but that would have instantly made me a flatlander. Bad enough I got out and took a picture of the grocery store with one gas pump, then the abandoned old timey store across from it which you could probably buy if you were interested.

Folks in Dighton appeared to be struggling to stay afloat. Looked like it might have a population of around 50, depending where you measured, and it made Ashton look like a metropolitan area. Ashton is about four miles south of LeRoy and has maybe a hundred people, a grocery store of sorts, a fire station, and two churches. Dighton had one church, and I hope to visit it some day. On the way there I passed a number of residences and farms along 20 Mile that probably are worth five or ten times my place, and one of which might have been equal to the whole hamlet of Dighton in real estate value. Perhaps not in people value.

I had been in Marion before when I was out scouting property before I moved. It has over 800 people and a business district larger than Tustin's, which has something like 250 people, same as LeRoy. Hey, if you can get lunch, gasoline, a dozen eggs, and a half inch bolt, what more do you need? None of that was available in Avondale, the next place on the map I went thru on my way back. I'm skipping Ima, which I had already been to looking for a part for my tractor. There is a big tractor and farm implement store there and nothing else other than the other three corners.

Avondale had four corners too, all dirt roads, with a church on one of them and a sign saying they have lay speakers, which means they can't afford a paid preacher. Pretty good just keeping the building open these days. I would like to visit that one too. Avondale has 57 people, which I learned on another corner with the town sign, or rock actually, and in front of it a big sign proclaiming the availability of a business opportunity. I took it to mean the building next door which looked like an old general store from times gone by but no longer in business. There were people living in it tho. I've got pictures of all this but still haven't figured out how to show them to you here. Give me some more time, please, I'm working at it.

Now I can imagine someone from Chicago or elsewhere saying, ""What are you talking about? How can anyone live there? What is there to do? Why would I buy a summer home there?"" Well, that's why I live here. They ruined Glenn Shores where I moved from, but they are not likely to follow me here. Or if they do, they tend to prefer their own little enclave with birds of a feather. My biggest victory this past week was getting my field brush hogged.

I mentioned elsewhere that I got my tractor and brush hog home running on two cylinders and crossed fingers. I bought some Marvel Mystery Oil and Seafoam to throw in the crankcase with the idea of running it some to see if I could bust something loose, a carbon buildup or whatever. Before I could get that together, my next door neighbor showed up with his tractor and brush hog, the brush hog looking as beat up as mine but the tractor ten times mine in every way, looking like it just came off the showroom floor. Actually it would be his son's tractor, but they work in close coooperation.

I pushed my poor old beater hard and did possibly ten percent of the work, if that. My long overdue field got mowed due to my good intentions, but mostly due to my neighbor's good heart. Plus he likes to mow. My project now is to figure out a method of most efficiently removing labels from wine bottles so that my other neighbor can use them in his wine making hobby. I guess you have to call it a hobby if you don't drink the stuff.

And actually it is more for the benefit of his wife, who I understand has the job so far of getting those labels off. It isn't fun, but I think it could be done easier than scraping away at them with a knife. I'm making progress with a paint remover that runs off a hand drill but I haven't worked out the kinks yet, and I haven't even spoken with the lady doing it to find out what she has been doing. I'm guessing here, but my guess is that she would probably not choose to be known as the wine lady.

In other news, I saw a bat one night while sitting out with my chiminea. Where there is one bat, there are more, and bats are vital to civilization as we know it, and are in trouble. As are bees. I've seen them here as well, tho not any more than at Glenn Shores. And the wildflowers here appear to be limited for unknown reasons. The goldenrod I'm sure are welcome as winter approaches, but they are already past their peak.

I went to the Old Rugged Cross Museum in Reed City the other day. The Old Rugged Cross is a fairly well-known Christian hymn written by George Bennard, who retired and lived out his days in the aforementioned Ashton just south of me here. I figured I had better stop before they shut down for the winter and I was pleasantly surprised. There are not only exhibits taken from his residence, but artifacts in general going back to the time this area displaced the Indians. An old fire truck with a big brass bell mounted in front probably twenty inches tall which I wish I had. Kids, I think, would like this museum. I may go back. Maybe they'll let me ring that bell.

And I got an insulated coveralls suit on sale at under half price. It's a bit early, I know, tho you never know, and I figured it wouldn't be this cheap come winter. I figured it would be useful if I manage to get the snow blower attachment on my riding lawn mower. Only when it arrived and I tried it on to see how it fit, it was a bit snug on top. Not now, but extrapolating to winter when I wear a lot of clothes in layers, I could see it being too tight, even tho I got size extra large.

I was debating whether to exchange it for a size larger when the thought hit me, wait a minute. The mail lady comes early in the morning, early for me, and even earlier if she has a package which she drops off on her way out rather than on the way back using the mailbox if she doesn't have a package. I wasn't looking forward to having to haul myself out of a cold wintry bed and get dressed to go out to plow my driveway and mailbox.

Stroke of genius, I could wear this coverall suit over my pajamas and no one would know. Maybe put a sweater on or a jacket, but there was ample room for that. The mail lady already is used to seeing me answer the door in my pajamas, and actually I often wear them until noon or so working on the computer. If I were President I would work in my pj's but I suppose realistically there's not a very big chance of that happening. Now she might guess that anyone weird enough to still be in their pajamas at 9:00 in the morning is weird enough to plow snow in them. But everyone else will think, what an industrious fellow, I bet he was up before daylight. Sounds like a win/win situation to me.

END OF SUMMER?

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

Fired up the old chiminea tonight thinking it could be my last chance in shirt-sleeve weather. Ten day forecast is talking about an inch and three-quarters rain tomorrow, and not hitting seventy degrees the rest of the week. As with all my weather observations here, I don't know what is normal, and don't know if normal exists any more here than anywhere else. In any case I felt like this could be my last chance in quite a while to relax outside without being bundled up or in rain gear.

And having thought over my project of hauling branches from my brush pile a hundred yards by hand, tonight I fired up my riding lawn mower, threw a chain on it, and hauled back three manual loads in one trip. In a way this was a victory, and in a way it was a defeat. A victory in the sense that sense prevailed and I made best use of what God has given me here, a sensible life program. A defeat in the sense that this old beater lawn mower hopefully is going to last me the duration, and every non-essential use is going to presumably shorten its lifetime.

I told my neighbor as we discussed vehicles and equipment that I still think in terms of the only new car I ever bought, a 1964 Volkswagen, which cost about two grand. A new Ford or Chevrolet or Plymouth would have been about the same, but not as much fun. Now if my mower gave up the ghost because I had abused it too much, a new low end mower would cost about two grand. This simply doesn't compute in my mind. And I could replace my ailing tractor for another two grand plus five hundred. This may be chicken feed compared to new cars and tractors in the twenty to thirty grand range, but not on a Social Security income. And let's not even begin to discuss pickup trucks costing forty or fifty grand. Have mercy!

So I'm back to my major lesson these days of dealing with what is right in front of me, looking neither left nor right, neither forward nor back. Got branches to haul? Got a running lawn mower? Bingo! Now my neighbor offered the use of his tractor to haul stuff, and I might well take him up on that at some point, but a load of branches? Give me a break, I'm trying to be responsible and self-sufficient here. Bad enough that I'm dealing with a cat who could give beef cattle lessons in how to moan and complain, cut my meat into smaller pieces, turn my bowl around, I don't like this food, open up another one.

Really, people, I'm seriously trying to rise above concerns of the ego, which is what those are. And complaining because my tractor needs major surgery and I need a truck or van in addition to my car, and I have too much to do and not enough time to do it. not to mention enough money, please stop sounding like your cat. I gave my two dogs a bath today out in the back yard with a hose and nozzle gun. Really a two-person job but we made it thru. They complained much less than the cat, who didn't get a bath. Figured it was the last warm day in a while and I better take advantage of it. A victory.

And I got a truckload of crushed concrete delivered this afternoon, something I had on my list of things to do for three months now. Partly to fill in the ruts left by whoever hauled away heavy shop equipment last spring before I moved in, and also to fix my driveway so it doesn't channel water in the exact wrong place. If we get something like two inches of rain tomorrow it will be a test of the ditches I dug, but at least I've got a big pile of remedy. And a lawn mower to haul it. Another victory.

When I was out exploring the north-east corner of the county, I came up on a county campground marked with a sign. Turned in to check it out, not that I need to go camping. I used to go camping to get away from my situation but now I could go camping in my back yard if I took the notion. Nothing to get away from. I didn't look at my map but just started following a road. It had one on those signs that say this road not plowed in winter, which I have learned is short for don't drive on this road unless you have a pickup or a jeep or an ATV.

Well I have been using my little car for a pickup for many years out of necessity, so I forged ahead. Road was dirt, which around here means sand, and was in fairly good condition. The sand was wet, which helps. The road kept going down and down, probably to the lake I was thinking, altho in actuality the lake was on the other side of the highway when I turned off. I kept getting more and more nervous the farther I went. I've already been on roads here where you didn't dare slow down or you would get stuck, and with no way to turn around.

So I listened to the voice of reason and turned around while I could and headed back. And the road went down and down and down. What? I'd already been going mostly downhill to the place where I turned around and now I was going downhill on the way back. People, I can't explain this, only report it. It reminds me of the block in the city of Ann Arbor I ran across fifty-some years ago which had five right angle turns before you got back to where you started. I can't explain that either, tho I have have considered going back and finding it, or at least writing a story about it.

It helps in such situation to have someone with you to ask ""Are we going downhill?"" or ""How many corners are we turning here?"" or ""How many stars do you see there?"" or ""Do you see a halo around the moon?"" Both of my neighbors on each side have good women to answer such questions, tho that isn't exactly the right way to say that because those good women are my good neighbors too. And speaking of good women, I went to the local Historical Society meeting last night

These are older women for the most part, I'm guessing many of them widows, tho I don't know for sure. Now I have lived thru and suffered wounds in the Great War Between Men and Women back in the 70's, and I am painfully familiar with all the issues and the shaky peace that ensued. This is entirely irrelevant to these women. They are astoundingly strong and smart and self-assured, but not pushy, unless you step on their toes. I try very hard not to do that. Their knowledge and the ability to recall it is equal to any PhD I have ever known. They are the keepers of the heritage of this remarkable community, and when they are gone, there may not be anyone to replace them.

SOLITAIRE

SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

I play a lot of solitaire. It's my game. Not many people play solitaire, and amongst the younger generations it would probably be considered boring and with no point. I find it interesting that both my brother and sister independently have ended up playing solitaire, tho our parents did not. It's not a social game like poker or bridge or checkers or chess. And obviously I'm not talking video games here, altho the games I play are on the computer and not with physical cards.

There are a lot of different solitaire games but I only play two of them. My favorite is named Bristol and came on a collection of games called Eric's Ultimate Solitaire CD. I can't find a date for when this came out but I'm thinking it was in the 90's and I have never gotten tired of it. I don't know if that says more about the game or about me. I've tried a few of the many other games on the CD but they just don't interest me.

There are little helpful suggestions that come up from time to time as you play the game, and one of them says, ""Don't be afraid to try something new."" Yeah, yeah, I'm perfectly happy playing Bristol daily now for probably fifteen years or more. It's more of a strategic game than your basic Klondike, and I'm pretty good at it by now. Sometimes I make a spectacular win and the game comments, ""You've played this before!"" Yes, probably thousands of times. I routinely score wins in the 70% bracket and sometimes get up in the 80's. Better than real life. It keeps track of how many hours I've played, and when it gets embarrassing, I just erase it and start over.

The other game I play is Klondike, the mother of all solitaire games and the one that has come with your Windows computer for untold years. There is a certain amount of strategy to Klondike, but it is more a matter of playing the cards you are dealt in a logical and disciplined manner. And after playing many, many games, you start to figure out that when your cards are dealt it is not a random deal like you, hopefully, get at a casino or if you are playing Klondike with physical cards I can tell when I've been playing too much when I recognize the hand that has been dealt.

Still and all, it serves its purpose, and after many years of honing my technique I am usually able to maintain a 50% win average, which is better than you get at the casino, tho obviously money is not involved here. On rare occasions I bump it up to 51% for a time, but lately I've been running at 49% and that has seemed to correspond to how my life has been going. Nothing spectacularly bad, but a few more defeats than victories, and that makes it more difficult to maintain a positive attitude.

For example psyching myself up to do more than the usual single load of laundry, and hanging them all out to dry in the sunshine between passing rain showers. Yes, I'm taking my chances, no, I didn't check the radar, and no I didn't expect them to completely dry, just get a start on it so the drier wouldn't have to work so hard. And when I heard the clap of thunder, before I could get out to bring them in, it was raining so hard there was no point. When it quit, the clothes were wetter than when I had hung them out and I had to run them thru the spin cycle before putting them in the drier.

Now I realize that this is what is called a white folks problem. I realize there are people in the world starving and persecuted and tortured and killed, tho I'm not dealing with that, and most thankful for it. But life is easier when things go right. I drove nearly thirty miles to get some things not available closer, and amongst them a drapery rod. No, I'm not home decorating, this is part of an ongoing project to conserve heat by putting up thermal drapes. And when I got home, no drapery rod. Called the store, yes, they had it. Drove all the way back the next day to get it. White folks problem.

I could go on and on but I will spare you. It was a bitter blow when my tractor gave out after the very difficult job of getting it moved up here with all the implements. Another when my utility vehicle, which also was a pain to get up here, won't fire up and run. I finally got a load of crushed concrete delivered, and got a start on fixing my driveway using my lawn mower to pull a little garden cart. Yes, one of my neighbor's offered to bring his tractor and front loader over to do it, and that's really a nice thing to be able to take advantage of, but my goal here was to be as self sufficient as possible for as long as possible. We'll see.

Not all bad or even close to it. I took on a roofing hatchet as a favor to the woman I bought this place from. Looked like some kid had used it to try and chop a steel pipe in two. I would have tossed it, had it been mine, but I surprised myself by hammering and grinding and gluing it back into fairly decent shape.  Gave me enough confidence to finally take on another hatchet I had given a friend, and which the head had come off. Pounded and chiseled and ground my way to victory on that one too, tho it remains to be seen how it works in real life.

Real life, there's the kicker. Slowly, slowly, I'm trying to get accustomed to the idea that none of this victory and defeat stuff matters in the end, it's how you played the game. Kids are supposed to learn that early on. Didn't help that I was working on the golf course when I should have been playing games. Oh well. I've got a big sign on the wall over the place where I feed my dogs that says ""NO WHINING!"" Of course they ignore it, but I don't and sometimes it seems like I'm whining as much as my critters, which is saying a lot. If I'm at all on top of my game, I'm remembering that the way thru involves being thankful for it all, the supposed bad along with the good, and the realization that the bad for me would be a big step up for a lot of people in this world.

So my Klondike solitaire game is currently running at 49% and so is my life. Both are going to go up in days ahead, and both are going to go down again. Sort of like waves on the ocean in slow motion. My mind understands that my happiness does not depend on circumstance, but is entirely a matter of choice and is found within. My critters don't seem capable of grasping that, but if I live long enough I might get ahold of it. I'm working on it. Deal the cards.

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2014

Technically, today is called the Equinox, supposedly the day when day and night are equal lengths as we move into long winter nights. According to Weather Underground, which is where I get my meteorological information, the day was seven minutes longer today than the night. I'm sure there is a logical explanation for this discrepancy but I'm not so sure it would be beneficial to study it out.

I know that last summer at the Solstice, when daytime is the longest of the year, I figured that it was about eight minutes longer here than at Glenn Shores, where I moved from, maybe a hundred miles to the south or so. That makes sense if you remember that on the Solstice north of the Arctic Circle, the sun doesn't set at all, just circles the horizon. On that day, the farther north you are, the longer the day should be.

Unfortunately the opposite holds true, and on the Winter Solstice the sun never rises north of the Arctic Circle. I figure that winter night is likely eight minutes longer in LeRoy than in Glenn Shores, which seems like a small price to pay for being here rather than there. In any case, as the sun was going down I went out and stood in the middle of LeRoy Road in front of my house, running east and west, to see if in fact the sun was setting in the middle of the road.

LeRoy Road is hilly and there were some clouds in front of the sun, so I ended up driving a mile to where I could get a better view. Still some hills in the way and not like looking out over Lake Michigan where you have a true horizon. But I extrapolated and called it good. All seems to still be going according to plan, not that plans can't change, but there's one less thing to fret over. Not that fretting does any good anyway.

This afternoon I stopped by to see how my quilting ladies were doing at the Tustin Lutheran Church, and all was well. Scored some home made mini-pretzels and some banana bread, which was a great start for my afternoon adventure. I headed west on 20 Mile on into Lake County, which I have barely seen in all my explorations. Came to the little village of Bristol, which is basically a modern era gas station/ grocery store by the side of the road, and then proceeded on a zig-zag route to Luther.

I knew of Luther from conversations with the man who acted as my buying agent in my search for property here. He said he went there once a week with friends to shoot pool, that it was fairly peaceable in the daytime, but you had to be careful at night. He said he wouldn't want his wife to go out there at night unless she was armed. Hmmm. Shades of the Old West. Or Southside Chicago. However it has a museum and a library and a park, so balance that out.

Anyway, I had been looking forward to seeing it for myself and here it was on a spectacular bright and sunny day. There had been a sign a mile out of town listing four churches available in Luther, including one Catholic, which are hard to come by in these parts. I saw two of them in town, a Methodist, and a Baptist with a sign proclaiming it as Fundamental. Fundamentalist churches are a dwindling variety these days and I thought it interesting that they would advertise that particular take on things.

These were right in town, and so were two bars, one of which might qualify to be called a saloon. I guess if it came right down to it, I would probably be more comfortable sitting in a saloon that in a fundamentalist Baptist church, but your mileage might vary. It didn't occur to me to go in and have a beer, and I thought I was pushing things a little anyway walking around taking pictures. But I may go back. And on the way home I passed a sign saying eggs for sale at $1.50, turned around and bought a couple dozen from a woman with a Dayglo red ponytail, not so far from home as it turned out. And I finally found out where Dewings Corner is, only about three miles from home. I had been reading about it in the local history books and now I know. Another modern era gas station/ grocery store as it turns out.

When I got back home I worked on restoring my friend Pia's hatchet and a few chores, but I didn't want to waste such a nice day and so I headed out to clear some trail. This is not at the top of my list of favorite things to do, but it is right up there, and sure beats such things as housework and mechanicing and bookkeeping. At first I took my dog Ralph with me because he was anxious to go out, but he's not really a work dog and soon gets bored, so I brought him back.

Spent a couple of hours with pruners and handsaw, limbing up trees and widening the path down to the only crossing so far onto the back part of the property. Not like you couldn't get thru before, but you were ducking and dodging branches, and no way you could have driven a work vehicle thru. If my tractor was running right I would have hooked up a trailer and hauled out the brances for burning, but as it was I just piled them by the side of the trail. Good enough for now. I really enjoy this kind of work.

More and more I am feeling the loss of my tractor. It was crucial to the operation of this place as I envisioned it, not that I couldn't get along without it. I haven't investigated what it would cost to rebuild an 8N engine at an official tractor dealer, but I'm guessing it might approach what buying a running replacement tractor might cost. What I really need is someone who totally gets off on working on old tractors and is bored with nothing to do. Not holding my breath on that one. And I wouldn't mind having a somewhat newer tractor when it comes down to it. Take it like it comes.

So we are officially now in the last quarter of the year, winter is right around the corner even tho the long range forecast has a series of nice days like I remember September from the olden day. I'm not looking forward to winter, as I'm not looking forward to getting another year older, but hey, what are you going to do. I am looking forward to maybe figuring things out a little better and getting a little better at dealing with adversity, fingers crossed and prayers offered. Hope this fall treats us all well.

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SEPTEMBER 29. 2014

The other morning looking out my kitchen window as I started my day I saw a rabbit for the first time. However this was not one of the Cottentail Bunnies I was used to at Glenn Shores. Not as big as a Jackrabbit I would see out west, but definitely hunky. My mammal book is somewhere in a box so I went online and was amazed to discover it was a Snowshoe Hare, the kind that turns white in the winter. I thought they would only be in the far north but apparently they extend far south in their range, maybe to Virginia or the Carolinas. Don't know as they turn white down there, don't know if they do here as far as that goes.

I ordered a mammal book online, not that I expect to see a bunch of new critters, but you never know. I already got the snake book and star book I ordered. Unfortunately the first use of my snake book was to identify a snake I accidently ran over with my mower and it didn't survive. Was a Water Snake maybe a foot long, and from the markings compared to the book, it was a Banded Water Snake which isn't supposed to be this far north by a number of states, only Northern Water Snakes.

Well, probably it hadn't read the book. In any case Water Snakes seem to be as varied in appearance as people, and apparently as ornery. That was a Water Snake a couple of weeks back the size of a pencil challenging not only me but the mower I was riding on. Hopefully, like people, they tend to settle down a bit as they get older. I felt really bad about the one I ran over, but things happen. I buried it with full honors where it left its body.

And my star book confirmed that it was indeed the North Star I was seeing shining thru my bedroom window. I find that somehow both comforting and energizing. It occurs to me that since this star never sets, it is shining on me 24/7, even in daytime when I can't see it. Obviously it is shining on you too, but that may not mean as much to you.

I also saw my first Turkey crossing the road on my trip to Luther. Nice to confirm their reality other than thru the feathers they leave behind. Or, according to neighbors, their poop, which their dog delights rolling in. They don't seem to be as fond of Turkeys as I am. And I saw a herd of Buffalos on that trip, huddled in a bare dirt farm yard and not looking very happy. Buffalo need space and grass and  strong fences, which are expensive. That land over in Lake County doesn't appear to be as good soil as it is around here.

Also saw a hobo, tho I doubt if that will be included in my mammal book. And I might be doing him a disservice by calling him a hobo, but it was a one second flash as I passed him resting under the shade of a roadside tree. Had a bicycle with big plastic bags strapped on. Could have been a local out collecting bottles and cans to make ends meet for all I know. One of my life goals has been not to end up a hobo, but that outcome is still up in the air.

I put up bird feeders last week, and so far they are a success. The first bird there the next morning must have been on Facebook with 500 friends. The Bluejays are the usual pigs and bullies, but so far I have not seen House Finches, who ruin it for everyone else. Gold Finches, yes, and Chickadees and Nuthatches and many Little Brown Birds too far away for me to identify. The occasional Woodpecker and one Cardinal.

And a Chipmunk who can climb the steel pole like it was an express elevator. I guess if a Chipmunk can get up there, so can a Sqirrel, but they haven't showed up yet, and I'll deal with that if it happens. Word spreads fast. In any case it took me months to get them up and this is the time critters are bulking up either for the winter or the long trip south. Heard Sandhill Cranes today so they are still here, not likely to show up at my feeders, but you never know. They might be able to reach them standing on the ground.

I also ordered a Mushroom book, which I have never had. Not a lot of different mushrooms here that I have seen, but they are plentiful at times, and I would like to know what they are. Wish I had the time to just walk around all day with nature books identifying my companions. I don't know all the trees here yet and the leaves are starting to turn so I'd better get busy with that too.

In the meantime I've been trying to get my string trimmer going enough to whack down the waist high grass and head high cattails and berry vines growing in my projected trails. Some success so far but it's eating up string faster than a chipmunk at the bird feeder. Took it to the local dealer looking for a replacement head with blades and he said it was too old to get parts. Poked around online and maybe found a solution.

At least it has a manual. The riding lawn mower is so old there is no manual available and probably no parts. I've been using it as a tractor and I got the bigger lawn trailer going that came with the place. Used it to haul in some brush from out in the field and it did fine. Loaded up a load of crushed concrete in it late today, trying to beat the rain and do some more fixing on my driveway.

In renovating the trailer I had oiled the catch that lets the trailer dump its load because it was rusty and sticking. Hauling my first heavy load today, the catch let go and partly dumped the load in the first hundred feet on the way to my driveway, trapping the trailer. So now I have to hook up my little trailer about a third the size and shovel the dumped load into it in order to get the bigger trailer back. And strap down the catch release lever. At least it didn't do it in the middle of my front yard. Sure miss my tractor.

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OCTOBER 8, 2014

I moved a lot of rocks today. How many? I dunno. I was playing the guessing game after I finished and I thought 500 pounds might be in the neighborhood. Then I thought, that's only ten fifty pound rocks and I surely did more than that. I can still pick up and carry a fifty pound rock, but not very far. Say from the rock pile to the little trailer, and then from the trailer to the crossing to my back woods I'm building up.

That poor little trailer. It's probably meant to carry something like a hundred pounds, and true to the pattern of my whole life I overloaded it, not to the point of blowing a tire or tearing up a bearing, but definitely pushing it. And toward the end of the day I devised a way to skid the bigger rocks that might blow a gasket in this aging body on a shovel.

When I was a kid on the golf course at Glenn Shores, we had a stone boat. This was a wooden sled built stout and it was for hauling rocks too heavy to lift into a wagon or trailer. I expect most farmers back then had such a device to deal with the big rocks that were turned up in the new fields. I doubt very much if you could find one today. Today if you come on a rock to big to pick up and haul away, you just bring out your tractor with the front bucket, dig out the rock, and roll it into the bucket to take wherever you want.

That's assuming you have a tractor with a front bucket, which I don't. At this point I have my little lawn tractor pulling a little lawn trailer. And we did pretty good. Didn't near finish the job, didn't even get it half done, but made considerable progress considering what we were working with. And I enjoyed it. Enjoyed it while I was doing it and am still enjoying the telling of it as I recuperate.

My next door neighbor showed up while I was prying rocks out of the ground for the next load. He was going to haul me a load of slab firewood from the local Amish sawmill, and they were back in production with hardwoods. Didn't mind taking a break from prying those rocks out of the ground at all. So now I've got something like a cord of hardwood slabs to cut up at my leisure. Slabs are what the sawmill saws off the outside of the log and is useless for lumber, but makes okay firewood.

Not that I have anything to burn it in other than my chiminea. But it's like a down payment on the future reality of a wood stove that hopefully will replace this propane fireplace insert that came with the place. The woman I bought the place from had a wood stove, and after her husband died, one time she forgot to close the door to the woodstove after it got going, which can set your house on fire, and which scared her so much she got rid of the wood stove and had the propane burner installed at great expense.

I really wish someone who wants a propane fireplace insert would get hold of me and offer to trade me straight across for a decent wood stove. I'll negotiate. In the meantime I've got a big pile of wood that needs cutting up and splitting and nothing to burn it in, other than my chiminea if I feel like camping out or there is a serious emergeny situation. My neighbor did bring up the possibility of him bringing his tractor down by my crossing to haul rocks for me with his bucket, and that is feasible. But it would drastically change the whole setup. Yes, if I had a running tractor with a front bucket I might use it to haul these big rocks, but I'm trying to make do with what I've got as much as possible.

It's about satisfaction. If I was in a business situation, it would make sense to hire out someone with the proper equipment to do what I want done. Or to buy the equipment myself. But I'm not in a business situation, at least not one that needs access to my backwoods for me and my doggies and whatever motorized vehicle I can get going to cross over for whatever reason. There's some serious rock piles back there which I would need if I ever get to working on the second crossing, further up the swamp and a much more serious project.

So anyway, here I am, tired, hurting, but a good hurt because I accomplished much of something I had been wanting to do since I got here four months ago and counting. If I can keep this up before the snow flies, I will have a crossing that not only will take my WorkMaster utility vehicle if I ever get that going, but my tractor, if I ever get that going, and maybe even my neigbor's tractor if we figure out a reason for it to be back there. As he pointed out, even if I get my project finished before winter, next spring it is likely to be flooded over.

That's cool. If need be I can lay down concrete blocks that will let the water pass thru while giving me a pathway across, as high as necessary. And I really don't have to be able to get to my back woods, but it's a big victory when I can. Another big victory  recently was contacting customer service at the Stihl website and finding out there was a replacement head for my string trimmer that has blades capable of dealing with the ferns and berry bushes and occasional current bush, not to mention waist high tall grass and head high cattails.

I figure I probably put in a thousand feet or more of new trails after I got that new bladed head. Wasn't an entire victory since my doggies don't like the new trails and I figure the stubs left from mowing ferns and berry bushes hurt their feet, but my program is farther along with winter knocking at the door. If all goes well, eventually I'll be able to walk those trails barefoot, and so will my doggies, if they last that long.

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OCTOBER 21, 2014

I'm thinking this fall has been one of the most spectacular ones in many a year. Yes, maybe all autumns this far north are spectacular, I dunno. This is Maple country, and Maples are spectacular. I feel kind of embarrassed asking people here if it's always like this. Pretty much a flatlander question. But reading between the lines of what I hear, I think this one was special. And in poking around up here over the past three years looking for property, I don't remember one like this.

I've tried to document it with my camera but I still haven't learned than when you see it, you had better click that shutter now or it's gone. Too many times I have said, oh, I'm in a hurry and I can get it tomorrow or soon. And mostly fall colors are more than willing to wait a few days for you to get your act together. Not this year. Every time I put off a shot of something irreplaceable, it is followed by a severe wind and rain storm that rips the scene apart and leaves it lying on my lawn.

There have been some truly astounding scenes worthy of a postcard out on the freeway. Many excuses not to stop and document what is available here just driving thru, but today was way past its prime and I knew if I didn't stop and get it today, it would be gone forever. So I had business in Big Rapids and stopped on the way where I had seen the best postcards available, even if they were looking a bit tattered and yellowed out.

Was there maybe five minutes at most, realizing I was not only putting myself in increased danger, but also everyone else. Come on, people, I'm just trying to capture a few postcards, give me a break. And here come the cops, lights flashing, state police, two of them, wearing camo. What, has World War III been declared while I wasn't listening? I don't remember two state police in one car since I was in my youth, and never in camouflage dress. They were nice and polite, listened to my explanation of what I was doing, and drove off without looking at my ID or giving me a hard time. Said people had been phoning in about me. Come on, people, five minutes? Well, I could have been a loony old man in serious trouble, granted.Those were hard earned pictures.

 I saw two separate flights of cranes going over about the height geese ordinarily travel, each one with seven members. I don't think they were heading south but just winding down their day. And I saw one solitary crane flying at about a hundred feet, close enough to see more details, tho I still don't know if they fly with their legs trailing staight out behind. They do fly with their necks extended like geese, but they are bigger and, for lack of a better description, more delicate in their overall form. I'm guessing they could give someone as hard a time as a goose, tho, if you messed with them. I sure like having them around but I expect it must be time for them gathering for the long haul south. I guess I won't get to see that any more, tho I won't count it out.

I heard an owl the other afternoon out walking in my back woods. A big hoot owl like I remember from Glenn Shores, probably a Great Horned Owl, tho you rarely ever see them when you hear them. And I heard a coyote for the first time in quite a while a few nights ago. Sounded like the one that the first time I heard it I thought it was a loon out in my swamp, which greatly pleased me until I thought that it wasn't very likely I would have a loon here other than on my license plate. Ducks, yes, I have ducks. Mostly Mallards as near as I can figure. But I haven't seen them lately either.

A lot of mushrooms lately with the rain. I haven't taken my new mushroom book out with me but I did identify a big violet cap in my back yard as a probable Blewit, listed as edible. Hmm. Not too many violet mushrooms around but I dunno. The mushrooms that came up in my front yard this summer were almost certainly Fly Agarics or Aminita Muscaria. Listed as Poisonous. If I am not mistaken, these mushrooms are hallucinogenic and were the basis for supposed witches' flights on broomsticks. Maybe forty years ago I might have been tempted to see what would happen if I nibbled on one. Not today.

I've been working on my crossing into my back woods. Dug out a trench to carry the overflow from my swamp which was starting to get things soppy, and it has been carrying anywhere from an estimated one gallon a minute to five gallons a minute. That's not a lot when you consider that I have something like five acres of wetland, which is a lot of area when it rains an inch. I've got a drain tube I'm going to put in for a culvert and I've been hauling rocks to fill in the low spots. Got it to the point where I took my wheelbarrow to the other side where there is a big rock pile maybe three hundred feet away. Wasn't sure I could manage this but I figured out a way thru the up and down where there is only one stretch where if I don't get enough of a run at it I would have to stop and unload some rocks.

I really like working on this, and on more and more trails thru the property. Like it way more than cleaning up the house and unpacking my mess from moving. If I had been born a generation earlier I would probably have joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, the workforce of young men who built trails and planted trees, and constructed some amazing log castles that have lasted until today. They were a way to put to work the vast unemployed of the Great Depression for the public good. Some people regarded them as on the dole, but they were the basis of the army that won World War II for the Allied Powers.

Tonight when I finished working it was getting dark, and when I shut down I could hear a dog barking in a harassing way, and a bleating cry of some unhappy animal out beyond my back woods. Not at all familiar here, my first thought was that some sheep had gotten out and was lost and in trouble. Then I thought it might be a young deer with a dog that had run it down, even tho fawns are about half grown by now. Anyway, it was insistent enough that I got in my car and headed up the road that runs alongside my back woods, where the sound was coming from. There were a couple of deer out in the neighboring pasture at full attention and the sound was near.

Dug out my flashlight and walked over where it was coming from, with some new fencing and equipment I hadn't seen. Finally came upon a goat in a fenced in pen who was carrying on, and was soon joined by two others, possibly her young. Not your usual goats but exotic with floppy ears and I had to look close to make sure they weren't sheep. In any case they were obviously intended to be there and the dog couldn't get to them. I'm guessing they were just moved there and not happy about their new situation. They came up to me unafraid, but there was nothing I could do for them other than to make sure they were okay. Their fence didn't look all that secure so maybe they'll come visit if they figure out how to get across the swamp.

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OCTOBER 25, 2014

My egg lady told me a sad story today when I stopped by to buy a dozen eggs. Her big doggie, who was polite enough when he figured out you meant no harm, and who was fully capable of dealing with any threats to chickens or children, ran out into the road two weeks ago and was run over and killed. As if this was not bad enough, two days ago her other dog, who could have been the twin of my old Ralph, died, as she put it, of a broken heart. We both shed a tear or two in the telling. Just part of life, she said, but you know it was a hard one to deal with.

I've only been buying eggs from her for a month or so, but she already has taken a place in my heart of adopted daughter. I messed up my one chance with my own true daughter, and so I am always looking for a second chance to make things as right as can be in an imperfect world. Actually she probably is more of an age to be my granddaughter, but daughters are special to me. My first wife and I both knew our child was going to be a girl long before ultrasound, and I was glad. I don't send enough prayer energy the way of either my blood daughter or any of my adopted ones, but I'm working on it.

The autumn leaves are entering phase two as I watch it unfold. I have eleven big Maples in my side yard and ten of them have already done their thing and are ready for winter. The eleventh is holding on strong for reasons best known to itself, maybe 20% of its leaves still on in spite of a really strong wind today. I mulched leaves with my lawn tractor until near dark today but I'm going to have to go out and do it again for this one tree.

Out driving around, the Maples are just about done. They are the show-offs, the ones with scarlet and orange and bright yellow, the ones you see in pictures of autumn leaves. But now there is a second act to follow, not as spectacular, but one I haven't seen before. I'm not really sure just who is involved, but the primary color is yellow, and not the bright yellow of the Maples, but more subdued, more subtle, more understated. Many of them I think are what is called Popple around here, and maybe Poplar in other places. Not a large tree, more something that pops up in roadsides and around swamps and low-lying land in general.

But many of the trees that I passed off as Popple thru the summer, I now am thinking are Birch. For reasons unknown, I didn't see the white trunks until the leaves started falling. Were they white all summer, or did they turn white with the frosty weather? I would love to get out there with my tree book and spend a couple days, but every one of those days winter is a day closer and I'm not ready yet. Also today I noticed for the first time a conifer I have been trying to think of the name of without success. Conifers are evergreens like pine trees or Christmas trees, but this one would make a terrible Christmas tree because its needles turn yellow in the fall and then drop off. I only remember ever seeing one of them before at Glenn Shores, but I bet I saw a hundred of them today on a trip to town. And oaks. They look like oaks, a rusty brown leaf, but I haven't seen an oak tree since I got here as far as I know. I really have to take a few days to check these things out.

In the game of life, where you win some and lose some, I have been running at 50-51% lately, unlike my Yukon Solitaire game which stubbornly has been staying at 49%. An example, I took my Mondaine watch to Walmart to get a new battery put in, but the jewelry woman couldn't get the back of the watch to stay on. Mondaine watches are Swiss, and the face of the watch is like the official Swiss railway clock you would see in a train station there. Modern and simple and  artistic, but not arty. They aren't hugely expensive but a step or three up from Timex and not something you would toss when the battery gave out.

So I took it in a baggie to the best jeweler in Big Rapids, thinking if Walmart puts in batteries for free, a jeweler must be in the ballpark. The woman who waited on me looked at the watch band, which is leather and was separating on one side. I had just been letting the little prong hold the two halves together and vaguely thinking I would try rubber cement some day. She showed me a band that would fit and I observed that it was not as fine a leather as my band. This is a nice watch. I don't wear it working.

So the jeweler who was going to do the actual work came out and he looked like he might have played center on a college football team. Really big guy with big hands that made you wonder how he dealt with little tiny gears and screws and such. He took my watch and in maybe five minutes brought it back, and started pawing thru the watch bands without saying anything. The woman said, oh, he doesn't want a new band. I said, I'm going to try fixing it with rubber cement. He looked at me with scorn and contempt, handed me the watch, and walked away. Six bucks if Walmart had been able to get the back on, twelve bucks here. Sort of a loss, but my watch is running again so call it 50%,

I had recently gotten a bottle of rubber cement for something else, so I thought this was the perfect time to try out my plan. When I got home I applied a thin layer of rubber cement between the two halves, and then put the prong thru the holes of the two halves so they would line up, in effect buckled it up like it was on my wrist. What I didn't know is if it would bend and be flexible when the glue was dry. Next day it was like new again, worked like a charm. And if it starts to separate again, I can just dab in some more rubber cement. Let's kick that up to 51%. I would go higher but let's not push it. I considered going back to Mr. Contemptuous and showing him, but again, let's not push it.

On a roll here, someone rang my doorbell and wanted to know if I would let him go pick some apples for deer bait. Said he sold them and would pay me. Talked with him a bit and he struck me as genuine, so I said, sure, go ahead, and it's a freebie. My deer aren't keeping up with the apples I have and he looked like he needed a break. In response he asked me if I liked fish. Sure, I said. How would you like a package of frozen Crappie fillets for trade? Great, I said, thank you. Crappie is a pan fish pronounced Croppie and called Specks locally because they are speckled. Really good eating.

I talked with him and his girtlfriend as they were finishing up. Didn't get as many apples as they had hoped but it was a stretch carrying what they got up the hill. Said he would be glad to help me out with anything I couldn't handle myself. He has a truck and with his help I might have been able to get the 6 foot chain link fence advertised in the classifieds a week ago that would have made a great beginning garden fence. Even better, he said his uncle has worked on old cars and tractors and might be able to get my old tractor running again. Still have to check that out but we're running at 51% here, maybe higher.

Went to Big Rapids this afternoon to get in on the last day sale on shelves at Menards. Bought one big enough I had to have help getting it out in my car with a price tag to match, but should get me going on moving some of these big boxes out of my house and into my barn. That's a big step in the right direction after having to leave my existing shelves behind at Glenn Shores in this move. Hurts to have to buy something over again you already had, but I'm still calling it at least 51%. It occurs to me today that there are only two months left until Christmas. Not that I am a big fan of Christmas, but it's there, like it or not, a big mountain you see way before you get to it. I'm not trying to get ready for Christmas but I am trying to get ready for winter. Today was warm and sunny, a reprieve. That definitely kicks it up to 51%, maybe even a tad higher, but let's not push it.

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NOVEMBER 21, 2014

It's been awhile. We have been into a spell of weather that might be more appropriate for mid-January, and Thanksgiving is still around the corner. It hasn't gotten above freezing for more days than I can remember and it was down to 7 degrees last night, the coldest so far. Yes, I have moved up north, but people, this is not normal. Today was the first day in a long time it didn't snow and I finally fired up the snow thrower on my lawn tractor that I got buckled up just before this hit. First time I ever used one and I'm still learning. One thing I learned is that even if it's frigid out, don't wait until it warms up some or that powdery snow will turn to hard packing and plug up your discharge chute.

The birdies are hard pressed. When I first put out my feeders some weeks back it was like throwing armfulls of hundred dollar bills out of a helicopter. The Bluejays would put on a constant Dance of the Sugarplum Fairies as they jousted and jostled for the best feeding position, the doves were more subdued and cooperative, but still wanting their share, the sparrows and other little brown birds weaved in and out, catching as catch can, and the Chickadees were their usual bold, ignore-everyone-else, that-seed-is-mine self.

Then it suddenly slacked off to something reasonable. I suspect my good neighbor, Linda, opened up her own restaurant, much to the relief of my remaining birdies. She probably runs a much more high class establishment than I do, but I still have my clientele. Including turkeys. I counted twenty-four one day, tho it is hard to get an accurate count with that many moving around. The most turkeys I ever saw at once before was maybe ten, so this is a lot of fun for me. Linda doesn't think so. Their doggie, Lucy, likes to roll in turkey poop, and I imagine her out with a broom shooing them off and urging Lucy to do her part. ""Look out, here comes Linda and Lucy! Run! Let's go next door.""

Not much to worry about with turkey poop in up to a foot of snow where it drifted. It just hasn't let up, tho it is supposed to moderate for a few days here and then dive back down under the freezing line for many  more days at a stretch. They seem to do things a bit different up here. It was days and days before they even plowed the road out front. Why plow when people and school busses pack the snow down or blow it off? I've been going out every morning and shoveling out my mailbox, but I get the feeling that I""m the only person in the county doing that. And the mail lady has been driving thru my unplowed driveway to deliver packages too big for the mailbox, so what's the point? Well, she has been very nice to me and I figure at least on making a gesture. And unlike at Glenn Shores, the county workers here don't seem to wait for me to shovel out the mailbox before loading it up again with their plows.

I spent over a hundred bucks on snow shovels and salt trying to get ready for this. I've got two separate porches plus a sidewalk and the walk out to the birdies' feeding station, plus the mailbox, plus the barn. Plus the driveway, which everyone agrees is a really difficult one to plow.. It's a horseshoe and goes uphill to the road. This means that when you are driving out you have to be going fast enough to not lose traction, but not so fast that you can't stop if traffic is coming. Both my neighbors have much more sensible driveways.

I was out walking in my backwoods and I heard an owl one day, first time. Sounded like a Great Horned Owl, enough to strike terror into the heart of mice and rabbits for half a mile around, and how do they even find anyone to eat stupid enough to be out after hearing that big deep Hoo Hoo Hoo! But you rarely ever see an owl, so you have to guess who it is you are hearing. That was the only owl I've heard so far. No hawks yet. And I guess the Sandhill Cranes are long gone, possibly on the day I last saw them assembling in groups of more than a few. I wonder if they noticed I wasn't there waving when they flew over Glenn Shores?

Deer season started nearly a week ago, at least firearm season. About a month ago it occurred to me that in four and a half months I had seen four and a half deer here, if you count a new-born fawn as half a deer. But since then I have seen more than that, sometimes in a day. Mind you I am used to seeing half a dozen deer a day routinely, with up to twenty on occasion, so to me this is sparse. I have a doe with twins who has been coming to check out the bird feeder, and another doe who appears to be barren or to have lost her young to the currents of Nature. No bucks. And I haven't heard much gunfire.

I suspect that the deer population is not anything here like it was at Glenn Shores. I had a friend there who was a hunter and I let him hunt does on the golf course when they were so numerous as to be causing damage to the greens every time it rained. Sometimes it seemed like they were having hoe-downs. But when that simmered down, I only let him harvest bucks and I never have felt good about taking does because it leaves the young ones grieving and on their own half a year ahead of time in the hardest part of the year.

In Oregon I hunted but that was when food was a little more hard to come by and I had a lot more testosterone at my disposal. At Glenn Shores I looked on it as a wildlife preserve even if it meant managing the population to avoid winter starvation and dieoff. The older I get, the more I see things from the deer's point of view. And so far they have not figured out that if they give the bird feeders a good knock, it will spill the seed out on the ground. The Red Squirrel seems a little brighter but he doesn't eat as much.

I first saw a Red Squirrel in my back woods about a month ago. Fine, Red Squirrels are an indicator species for the Northern Hardwood Forest, which is what surrounds me here. We had them at Glenn Shores too, and if you are not familiar with Red Squirrels, they are terrible neighbors. Not as destructive as Raccoons, but right up there. If you just watch them out your window they are cute and frisky and amusing. If they get in one of your buildings you might get a new perspective. The ones at Glenn Shores finally figured  out how to get up to my bird feeders and were well on their way to working up a two hundred pound stash of seeds to make it thru the winter. Mind you a full grown Red Squirrel probably weighs less than a pound. Enough is enough. I got two of them with one shot.

But this one gives me pause. So far it's only one, and he seems to be a youngster. And yes, he kicked the chipmunk out of his winter home and took over his stash, and I liked the chipmunk. He didn't eat much and was more polite. But this Red Squirrel is only doing what God programmed him to do. He wants to live just as much as you or I do. But if I let him stay, next year there will be a lot more of them stealing a lot more food from the birdies, who only take as much as they need to get thru the day, not the whole winter and beyond. Yes, I could live-trap him and take him for a ride. But that's not a kind thing to do to critters in the wintertime.

So I'm dithering. Really don't want to off this cute little guy, and really don't want to have him plundering far more than his fair share with offspring lurking in the future. Have been asking God for a good solution, a hungry hawk would be nice, but like I said I haven't seen a hawk since I got here. Maybe what I need is a kid with a .22 or a .410 who would like the challenge, as I would have as a kid, and who would not be likely to take out innocent bystanders. Meantime I'm going out every morning first thing and sweeping off the snow and filling the feeders and watching my birdies dance for Mother Nature and God their Creator.

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NOVEMBER 30, 2014

Today was the first day of Advent, which is a church calendar season going way back when for those churches that like to keep the historical way of doing things. It has to do with the arrival of Jesus on Earth as a new born baby in Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago and so looks forward to Christmas. If you think about it, what were the odds that Jesus would be born on Christmas? Less than a month away now, and tomorrow the New Year will be a month away. According to the church calendar, today was New Year's Day, so to speak. This is the first time I'm paying much attention to this, tho I realize that it is not of much interest to a lot of people.

And of course you don't need a church calendar to tell you that Christmas is around the corner. Halloween almost got run over by the Christmas displays this year and the Black Friday sales seem to have been coming along daily for weeks, maybe a month. I'm sorry, but I'm old enough to where the phrase ""Black Friday"" only brings up images of a disastrous stock market crash, which is probably not exactly what the retailers are aiming at. I'm not a big fan of Christmas, but if you are going to buy something anyway, now would be the time to do it. Or the day after Christmas. Probably the week after now, maybe the whole month of January. My email inbox is overflowing with opportunities to spend my money. There's an odor of desperation behind the tinsel and the music.

I spent Thanksgiving with my wife at Ruby Tuesday's, one of the few restaurants my wife can eat at that stays open on Thanksgiving. Ordinarily it costs me as much to eat with her there as it does to feed four hungry men at Mr. Pibbs, our local eatery in LeRoy I much prefer. But she had some coupons that cut the tab down to something reasonable, which was a big plus. We mostly talked about our respective critters, which is a safe enough subject after talk of the weather runs out, and no unpleasant topics came up, which was a very big plus. So there's cause enough for Thanksgiving right there. And Ruby Tuesday has one of the best salad bars I've ever run across, so let's call it a win/win and be grateful. I really like salad.

I don't think I reported on Halloween. This was my first Halloween here and I didn't know what to expect. I only live half a mile from town but it's dark with houses few and far between, and traffic not heavy but often whizzing right along. It didn't seem likely that any kids would make it here, but I didn't want to start out as the Halloween Grinch and so I bought a bag of little Hershey bars, then got nervous and bought another. Turned on my porch light and waited. Nothing. .Had to eat all that candy myself over the next week or two. Better than running out of candy and having my outhouse tipped over.

Our first snow, which came incredibly early, melted in a subsequent warm spell, and when I went down with my doggies on a walk and came to the crossing to my back woods, it had several inches of water running over. I didn't expect to see that until next spring. I could have crossed it if I had been wearing boots, and the dogs could have managed it, but all three of us were glad when I turned around and went back. We had another snowfall after that, which melted in another warmup over the past couple of days, and now we are back into days of below freezing weather, tho apparently without the snow this time.  I don't know what is normal here, but my sense is that things aren't normal anywhere. While we were froze up, I was listening to a radio station out of Denver, which is a mile up in the air and in snowy Colorado, and they were forecasting 70 degree weather. Go figure.

I have been shifting over from outdoor projects to indoor. To tell you the truth, I would prefer no projects at all for at least awhile, but all this mess left over from my move here is still staring me in the face every time I look up, and outside is pretty much done for now, unless we come up with some Denver weather. I have a hard time with winter. Days are short, skies are overcast, and the lack of light results for many people in what has come to be called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or to put it into plainer terms, depression. It helps to know that such a thing even exists because it can sneak up and take you down before you even realize what is happening.

And I have found myself dealing with this over the past several weeks, pretty early for my usual schedule, and to be avoided at all cost. I've just got too much to do to fall behind now and get overwhelmed beyond any recovery short of springtime and the first daffodils. One of the methods of dealing with this effectively is called light therapy, and can involve a big rack of lights that you sit in front of daily, more or less replacing the sunlight that went south for the winter. It really works for many people, but I have found a better way, at least for me. It is a visor with bright, green colored LED lights attached under the brim that shine into your eyes when you wear it and turn it on.

It is called the FeelBrightLight visor and I have been using it for something like ten years with enough success to keep on doing it. But after my move I could find my visor, but not the power cord that recharges the battery. Looked everywhere, and ordered a replacement yesterday. I know as soon as the replacement comes, the original will show up, but this is a must-have item. I have been here six months now and still buying things that I either had to leave behind or can't find anywhere. Just ordered an Alaskan fur hat with ear flaps that I know I have somewhere in a bag of hats that refuses to surface. Now I will have two of them, but winter is here and I need it.

I've been going out and shoveling out my mailbox every morning it snows.Between feeding the birdies, shoveling my walk, shoveling out the mailbox, feeding my critters, it's taking me on the order of an hour or more after I get up before I can sit down with a cup of tea and get my own day started. Helps a lot when it doesn't snow. I've been bringing in the bird feeders at night because the seed gets soaked with daytime snow and rain and then freezes solid at night. My red squirrel is still sassy and without a care in the world as he jumps up on my feeders to add to his stash. I want to do this winter well.

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DECEMBER 6, 2014

Today was a nice day for December. Temperature got above freezing during the day but the ground is still frozen solid for the first time this winter. We had frigid temperatures before but there was snow on the ground and that is a good insulator. Lately the snow has been followed by weather warm enough to melt the snow and that lets the ground freeze up solid enough to bounce my stick when I go walking. Winter is definitely here, but that's not so bad in December as it is in early November.

Walking the dogs has been more complex lately. Missy, my Pit mix rescue, has been getting more crippled up. She's game, but going out to the back woods she was hobbling on the way back, and the way back involves a pretty good stretch uphill. I couldn't tell if it was arthritis or if she stepped on a sharp stob, but no blood and no obvious location of pain. I couldn't any longer carry her if she gave out, and would have to go get a sled or wheelbarrow, depending on how much snow. Yes, it's part of life, but it makes me sad.

Part of this is that I ran out of crushed eggshells to put in her food, not that I ran out of eggshells, but you have to put them into a food processor and grind them up fine. It isn't the eggshell itself that works, tho it does contain calcium and other minerals, but the lining inside the shell, sort of a film. You can buy this now at a good health food source, but it's a lot cheaper to use your own eggshells. For awhile I was putting them into my morning tea, but with only me eating eggs there's not enough to go around and I'm giving them to Ralph, my Lab mix rescue, too. We're all getting old, but the dogs are getting older faster and need all the help they can get.

Anyway, when I stopped giving eggshells, Missy got much worse, even tho I'm also giving them vitamins and glucosamine type supplements. And when I ground up more eggshells, she got better, even would run a bit for short distances. But not enough to risk going to the backwoods, because even just making a circuit up on top this side, by the time we are heading back she is falling behind and limping. So our regular walk is curtailed, tho Ralph is ready for more. But even he falls behind coming back up the hill. Getting old is not fun.

So today we had our abbreviated walk during the day when it had warmed up a bit, and it was getting toward late afternoon when I thought to go out again because the weather was relatively nice. Went to see if Ralph wanted to go, and he was sound asleep. I didn't disturb him, partly because I think sleeping people shouldn't be disturbed, but maybe more because I wanted to walk without having to babysit. So I headed out alone.

First thing I did was to determine in my mind exactly which pine trees I am seeing when I look out north from my house or barn. There is a fairly level line of Red Pines running east and west across the middle of the view which are mine. On the right is a taller stand that is closer, which is also mine, and is a different plantation which runs north and south. But on the left, looking from my back yard, Red Pines form a rising hump against the skyline, and I finally figured out that these belong to my neighbor to the north, not sure exactly who. They are taller than my trees and form a backdrop partly because they are planted on a rise.

But not enough of a rise to be that much taller than mine. The main difference is that my neighbor's trees were thinned and limbed, whereas mine were not. The difference is probably twenty feet in height and at least six inches in diameter. I'm assuming they were all planted at somewhat the same time, not necessarily so. But my trees were not taken care of, tho they were obviously planted well. They are way too close together and limbs are down where you have to duck under them walking thru where I haven't worked up a trail.

I have not measured and counted, but until I do I am guessing I may have something like 10,000 pine trees, mostly Red Pine but also a fair number of White Pine. That's a lot of trees. If I concentrated all my efforts on just them and I managed to live another twenty years, I might get it under control, with everything else going to ruin. It's too late to do pre-commercial thinning, and if you did it anyway, you would leave a horrendous fire hazard on the ground and wouldn't be able to walk thru . A logger might possibly agree to take the biggest trees, but they aren't all that great and what would be left would probably never catch up and would leave an awful mess.

If I dedicated myself to these trees at the expense of everything else, I would probably thin the least desirable trees, which is what you do in pre-commercial thinning, and build log structures right there in the woods. Not necessarily a bunch of log cabins, tho those too. When I lived out in the woods in Oregon, our main structure for community eating and gathering was built out of logs in an octagon shape with a fire pit in the middle. That's actually a lot easier to build than a regular log cabin because the logs are shorter. And a lot more pleasant to live in, at least in my opinion.

Back to my walk minus doggies. My crossing to the back woods is dry after being flooded in the last big snow melt. Is my 4"" culvert that I put in working? Maybe a hundred feet upstream from the crossing the ice is melted and I can see water flowing, maybe enough to get thru that culvert, and if not, where is it going?The whole swamp is frozen over, and I made some short forays out into it, trying to balance my risk with the probabilities, thumping with my stick ahead of me wherever I went. Obviously I made it, since I am here to tell the tale, but it was one more in a very long series of pushing the edge.

I crossed upstream from the crossing near where I saw water flowing. That's pushing it, but at worst I might have broken thru to a foot or two of water. Then I took the long way home and crossed over and back at the potential crossing between the two swamps which I think of as the Mackinac Bridge, actually got useful information doing it for the future project. But my biggest victory of the day was walking thru the cattail marsh along my eastern boundary, which maybe I could have done last summer in hip boots. Found a fencepost out there which I took as a marker for the three-way property meeting point with my two neighbors to the east.

Also found along the way a number of springs, some of which I had been scouting out before. You would think that summer would be the best time to find springs, but when the ground is frozen solid like concrete and you find a puddle or soppy ground, even a sheet of solid ice, this is pretty much unmistakable. Highly valuable information to know. In that my underlying, overriding motivation in living like this is my thought that we might indeed encounter disaster along the way. It is nice to have several sources of fresh water available for the digging.

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DECEMBER 11, 2014

About the title of this piece, Admiral Byrd was a famous Antarctic explorer when I was young. This winter so far has not exactly been Antarctic but even the locals are talking about how early and intense it has been so far. Not so much for December now, but it got going well before Thanksgiving, weeks before. I will say this, it has not snowed as much as it could have. I have only had to plow out my driveway twice, and that's a blessing. But things are frozen solid.

One unexpected advantage of this below freezing weather has been that my swamps have frozen over, and that has meant I could explore the last five acres or so of this property that were not accessible last summer and fall. It's not that I couldn't have put on waders and soldiered thru, but even with waders it could have been a bit iffy. I have no idea how deep the open areas of water are, nor how solid the bottom. My sense is that I would have been fine, but when you are out there on your own with no immediate help, it can get a bit tricky.

So lately I have been walking on top of the ice and doing okay. Still being cautious, and with good reason, but now a lot more freedom to explore. Today I was walking across the frozen cattail marsh that I call Lake Michigan in the scheme of things and came upon an area that had open water, not a big area, but definitely there and I could reach out with my stick and ripple the water.

Almost certainly a spring down there warming the water and feeding the swamp, and good information to know for future times, but also meaning that footing was precarious near the open water. I thunk the ground, or the ice, with my stick as I go along, and here it wasn't so much thunking as smushing, and I was starting to feel movement under my feet of ice giving way. And then my stick went right on thru. Before I extricated myself from this I pushed the stick down to the bottom and measured.

Twenty-two inches. Over my boots but not life threatening. At worst I might have lost a boot or two and had to walk back home on frozen ground in wet socks, not my worst life experience but to be avoided if possible. However out in what I call Lake Huron, it could have been different.

If you live in the Great Lakes area or are familiar with it, you know that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron technically form one big horseshoe shaped lake with the Mackinac Bridge crossing where they meet and the water flows on south thru Lake Huron. Further on beyond Lake Huron you have the Detroit River and the Ambassador Bridge. My setup doesn't exactly correspond in geographical terms, but sort of.

The swamp, or cattail marsh, where I discovered the open water spring is closest to my house and is maybe two acres in size. That's Lake Michigan. It proceeds thru a narrow opeing where I discovered this winter old pilings from maybe fifty or even a hundred years ago for what must have been a foot bridge, which will be known as the Mackinac Bridge when I get it rebuilt . They were hidden by the tall grass and cattails last summer until things got smushed down with the winter weather and snow. In the summer this growth is five, six, seven feet tall, way over my head in places.

Beyond the Mackinac Bridge, still to be rebuilt, lies Lake Huron, which is much deeper and had open water all last summer in places. How deep, I don't know. I'm guessing maybe not over my head, but when you are out by yourself in bitter cold with dark coming on, it is probably best not to push your chances too hard. There were ducks out there last summer. Don't know if it ever dries up, last summer was apparently wetter than usual. This swamp is maybe three acres in size and narrows down again for the Detroit River and Ambassador Bridge which is the crossing I worked on last summer and which would still be the only way to my back woods if the ice melted.

Beyond the Ambassador Bridge would be Lake Erie, which is the swamp I share with my neighbors, Butch and Linda, to the west. Maybe a third of that swamp is on my side, the rest theirs. More swamps lie downstream but I haven't talked to the people who own those to see if I can explore. Back to Lake Huron, I could tell that there were areas with different temperatures even tho the surface was frozen. Most areas had an inch of snow but some had no snow, and within them some had star shaped areas of clear ice that looked like water until I thunked them with my stick. I'm assuming that these are caused by springs and are probably most contributing to the flow of water I see in the Detroit River upstream from my Ambassador Bridge.

If I understand right, all this water is headed north toward the Pine River which takes it to Lake Michigan, the real Lake Michigan, by way of the Manistee River, north of Ludington. If I also understand right, when I look out my south facing front windows and see the hilltop of my neighbor's hayfield, beyond that ridge the water flows south to the Muskegon River which empties into the real Lake Michigan at, logically, Muskegon. So in the big picture I'm close to being on the divide between these two watersheds, but on the Pine River side. Pine River is the name of the school district here and also the elementary school half a mile east in LeRoy, pronounced LEEroy.

Is this tedious and confusing? I like to know where I am in the scheme of things, and surprisingly I am making great progress in this winter freeze. It never occured to me last summer that I could walk thru my swamps in the winter. I think they are probably frozen over higher than normal with a wet summer and fall, but I don't know what is normal here, this being my first time around. Probably the same as everywhere else, nothing is normal anymore.

So I've been enjoying going out in the late afternoons and tramping around until near dark. Good antidote to the winter blahs. I not only walked my eastern boundary, which is fairly short thru my Lake Michigan, but walked the western boundary thru Lake Erie. That one is much longer and took me a number of times walking back and forth to get it narrowed down. You can't see one end from the other and a compass is the only way to get close.

It helped a lot when I finally went online to look up what is called the declination of the compass reading here. Most people think the compass points to the North Pole, but it doesn't. It points to a magnetic cluster that moves around and is presently somewhere off in Siberia if I have that right. In any case I grew up thinking that the compass in Michigan actually pointed true north, but I discover that now it has moved to where it is six degrees off from true north here and you have to take that into account. When I did that, these property boundary lines made a lot more sense in reality.

I don't much care for winter and I have a lot of trouble this time of year with what is called Seasonal Affective Disorder, or in plain language depression from it being so dark at this darkest time of the year. I'm determined not to give in to that any more and it really helps being able to go out and tramp around in what last summer was inpenetrable swamp. Today I even had sunshine to do it in. Life is good. Come visit and I'll show you around. Bring your boots.

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DECEMBER 21, 2014

Today is the winter solstice if you live in the northern hemisphere, as most of us do. Things are backwards in Australia or New Zeeland or South America or South Africa, tho no doubt they would say the same about us. The solstice is the shortest day of the year. It is the time when the sun suspends its travel southward and begins to return northwards again tomorrow, along with increasingly longer days. The solstice is sort of like that pause you don't notice in between exhaling and starting a new breath.

The solstice is noted and celebrated all over the world in all cutlures because the sun's travels up and down the skies along with the seasons affects everyone. The Hopi Indians believed that if they did not conduct sacred ceremonies as handed down to them from the beginning, the sun would continue it's trip to the south until it disappeared and we all perished in the dark and cold.

The last I heard there were only a few very old men who were keeping this tradition and the younger ones were not taking their place. This is a sad place for an ancient culture to come to. And who knows, if the last believer dies with no one to replace him, we all might be in trouble. Some days it seems like we all are in trouble anyway, but if the days start getting longer again tomorrow, bit by bit, we should have another year at least to get our act together.

The solstice is very much connected with Christmas and the season of Advent according to old church traditions. For the most part the church has ignored the solstice, regarding it as a pagan celebration, but at the same time establishing Christmas as the birthday of Jesus near that time even tho no one knows when Jesus was born for sure, not even the year, nevermind the day.

My studies lead me to believe it most likely Jesus was born around what we now call Christmas anyway, even if the church wanted to take over existing celebrations of the solstice. The Romans had Saturnalia during this time of year with merry-making, festivities, and exchange of presents. Just add multiple Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays and here we are. My studies also lead me to believe Jesus was probably born around this time of year in the year 7 BC, give or take a year.

Which is pretty amusing if you remember that 7 BC stands for Before Christ. Of course that in itself is politically incorrect these days. Today instead of saying BC we are encouraged to say BCE which stands for Before the Common Era. LIkewise instead of saying more recent dates such as 2014 AD, which stands for the Latin of the Year of our Lord, we are encouraged to use CE, for Common Era. I understand the desire not to offend those of other or no faith traditions, but my question remains, common to who?

Not to get dragged down in arguments, this was the first time that I began to seriously study the church season of Advent. Not all churches celebrate Advent, but it is quite old, going back maybe 1600 years or more in the western wing of the church. Advent is from the Latin word meaning coming or arrival. The season of Advent lasts roughly a month before Christmas, and is connected with waiting for this event, as well as waiting for the return of the Messiah as interpreted variously within the Christian tradition.

I don't know why I didn't pay much attention to Advent before. It is celebrated in those churches who follow what is called the liturgical calendar and who base their order of church service on the ancient liturgy, a written out way of worship. This is most evident with Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans or Episcopalians, Moravians, Presbyterians, and Methodists. Traditions vary from church to church and thruout the world. The Eastern wing of the church has its own traditions.

The basic idea of Advent as far as I have been able to put things together from existing teaching and tradition, is the concept of waiting. The world waited in darkness for the birth of the Messiah, and we in turn are waiting in darkness for not only the celebration of his birth, but for his return. I'll be frank with you, this teaching is not finding a comfortable resting place with me.

I will grant you that if you pay any attention to the news these days we are living in some dark times. If you read any history over the past two thousand years, the same. War, murder, greed, conquest, self-advancement at the expense of poverty and suffering. Not a pretty picture. The 20th century took it to new levels.

My reading of the situation tells me that bad as it is and can be, we are doing better as a whole than those folks under the thumb of the Roman Empire back two thousand years ago waiting for a Savior to be born. The main difference in my view is that the Messiah in fact was born and lived out his life for our good as he was instructed and was murdered by those he came to rescue.

What difference did this make? In my view a world of difference, but I recognize that opinions vary as do beliefs, and perhaps we'll take this up more on another day. Today is about light. This may be the darkest day of the year in terms of total light, at least in the northern hemisphere, but from hereon thruout this next half year the light will increase day by day. This is an image of how we ourselves can increase in wisdom and knowledge and spiritual growth.

The best teaching I have run across so far in my search for meaning in this Advent season is by a man named Thomas Keating. He describes the basic meaning of the Advent season as focusing on light. Jesus said at one point, I am the light of the world. It bothers me that teachings on Advent focus on the darkness that surrounds us, when the Light we need to make it thru has been available for going on now two thousand years, whether you want to call that AD or CE.

We all have to make it thru this lifetime as best we can, and for the most part I tend to regard everyone as doing just that. Doing the best they know how with whatever they have been given. Some folks look like they are doing better than others. I'm thinking that from God's point of view, things might look a little different.

We have been given a huge gift as humankind, that those living in times recorded in the Hebrew scriptures only had to look forward to. The birth of the Messiah, and more importantly his death and resurrection, have made a huge difference in the potential of what we have available to us as we live out our days. Many regard this as a bunch of horse puckey, as is their God given right.

This is the darkest day of the year. It is not a time of sorrow and despair, tho many are in a situation that seems exactly that. There are a lot of people in desperate need all over the world. Jesus has come and gone. If he was indeed the Messiah, our tomorrows can only get brighter and brighter, no matter the circumstance that surrounds us, if we can only receive his Spirit.

If Jesus was not the Messiah, we are in deep doo-doo. A lot of people do their best to determine the answer to this question with their intellect. Good luck. Matters of Spirit can only be determined with the spiritual mind, which doesn't reside between your ears but in your heart. This is not an easy concept to grasp in a world where everything takes place in the intellect and in the feelings of the ego.

May God grant us all the wisdom and humility to understand why the Light of the World might best make its appearance in an overhang shelter for sheep and cattle in a backwater corner of creation under a repressive and totalitarian empire, and a kingdom that murdered infants to survive. Lord, we need your light today.

";;"1";"26";"2014-12-21 23:57:25";"64";;"2014-12-22 02:23:18";"64";"0";"0000-00-00 00:00:00";"2014-12-21 23:57:43";_fulltext"":"""",""float_fulltext"":"""",""image_fulltext_alt"":"""",""image_fulltext_caption"":""""}";"{""urla"":false,""urlatext"":"""",""targeta"":"""",""urlb"":false,""urlbtext"":"""",""targetb"":"""",""urlc"":false,""urlctext"":"""",""targetc"":""""}";"{""show_title"":"""",""link_titles"":""0"",""show_intro"":""0"",""show_category"":""0"",""link_category"":""0"",""show_parent_category"":""0"",""link_parent_category"":""0"",""show_author"":""0"",""link_author"":""0"",""show_create_date"":""0"",""show_modify_date"":""0"",""show_publish_date"":""0"",""show_item_navigation"":""0"",""show_icons"":""0"",""show_print_icon"":""1"",""show_email_icon"":""0"",""show_vote"":""0"",""show_hits"":""0"",""show_noauth"":""0"",""urls_position"":"""",""alternative_readmore"":"""",""article_layout"":"""",""show_publishing_options"":"""",""show_article_options"":"""",""show_urls_images_backend"":"""",""show_urls_images_frontend"":""""}";"12";"21";;;"1";"370";"{""robots"":"""",""author"":"""",""rights"":"""",""xreference"":""""}";"0";"*"; "113";"218";"MERRY CHRISTMAS 2014";"meanderings-20";"

DECEMBER 25, 2014

Merry Christmas from LeRoy (pronounced LEEroy). We got enough snow last night to paint the ground and satisfy those who need a white Christmas, but not enough for me to have to go to work clearing it. I'm calling that good. As it turned out, I got to spend the day with my two dogs and cat. I know there are people who would bemoan, ""Oh, you had to spend Christmas alone."" No, I got to spend Christmas in peace, aside from the usual complaints and begging, and many of my friends would say, ""You lucky dog.""

Actually the lucky dogs are my two oldsters, who got special treats and attention this day. Ralph, the oldest and most active, and I went for a walk late this afternoon that I am sure was over a mile just on this fifteen acres. Now that involves some loops and doubling back, but if you think that the outside boundaries of the property probably only amount to maybe 6/10 of a mile total, walking for a mile is pretty good and could easily be increased. Sure beats walking for a mile inside a mall.

Altho I have switched over my thinking from working outside to getting this house cleaned up and organized, my heart is still out there in my backwoods and wetlands and field. I've been scouting out places to set up a tent or tipi or yurt, also scouting out springs of water to supply them. My swamps are no longer safe to cross, tho chances are I could make it. Here before the end of the year it is like we went thru a hard winter freeze and now are in the springtime thaw. Feels like March out.

No, I""m not counting on that, just taking it day by day. I bought myself a smaller chainsaw I found on a very good sale and took it out yesterday to run out the rest of the tank of gas it came with. Limbed up some pine trees and an old apple tree that had been blocking some of the trails I am putting in. My big saw is just too heavy and cumbersome to be doing this kind of work. I had been going out with a handsaw and pruners to work on the trails, and this is very satisfying work to me, but when you have thousands of trees that need attention and other things that need doing, a little chainsaw can be a blessing.

The guy who sold me this saw was a blessing to me. This was the first time I met him because he usually works in the back of the store fixing things, keeping the place going. He is a bit wild looking, with extensive tattoos, skin hardware and hair to match, painted fingernails, but with a gentle soul lurking underneath his biker disquise. And he knew what was what with the chainsaws, unlike the clerks or even the manager I first dealt with.

He made me a super deal on a saw that had been used as a demo and hadn't run out its first tank of gas. No one else even came close. We also talked about a mini trail bike that is a great source of temptation to me and which I may possibly succumb to. No, I don't need a trail bike, but I would sure like to have it. I had a similar one ten years ago and gave it to a good friend, only to have it stolen by someone we both considered trustworthy. That hurts. That rankles.

That good friend is one of the few that I would adopt as a son and be proud and glad. I think my friend who sold me this saw is another. Mostly I run across daughters I would be glad to adopt, but sons not so much. Don't know why that is but probably has to do with why I seem to get along better with my female critters. Males tend to butt heads and go for alpha dog position, like my cat who fights me for my chair. Sorry, I'm the alpha dog in this house. But sometimes you just feel a kindred spirit.

I went to a Christmas Eve service last night for the first time in my life. Mostly Christmas has seemed to me something to be gotten thru, but these people in LeRoy are changing my mind about a lot of things. It took place at a church in the next village north of here, a sister church to the one I have been attending for some months now, one with the old Swedish words from pioneer days painted on the wall and a real pipe organ. Some of the people in my church were aware that I no longer do well driving at night and offered me a ride. Gratefully accepted.. One of my major goals in the church world is what is called ecumenicism, the desire to see all of the various denominations able to sit down at the same table and share a meal in harmony and love. Seems to me that holding a mutual service with your sister church is a good start.

Nothing unexpected happened. Scriptures about the birth of the Messiah were read. Christmas carols were sung. Prayers were offered and bread and wine were shared. Real bread, real wine. Candles were lit. I scored a poinsietta plant. Our ride home was with snowflakes the size of quarters coming down, but not treacherous. What's not to like? The best part for me was all the young people in attendance. Don't know what a typical Sunday is like there, maybe they were just out for the holiday, but it was encouraging in a world where young people are abandoning the church in droves.

That's a topic for another day, but I will say this. The young people today have a very hard way to go and I'm so very glad I am not faced with the problems they live with daily. To try and meet their needs with a church still mired in 20th century forms and thinking is a recipe for disaster. Young people may be inexperienced but they are not fools. They have a keen sense for the real even if they can't define it yet.

If you look at the state of the world today, if you follow the news or the story behind the news, I don't see how to avoid the conclusion that we have blown it badly. Yes, there is progress of sorts. Our material standard of living has the appearance of increasing, but those with memories as long as mine might question the overall gain. We seem to be losing in the spiritual realm, at the same time that there are new green shoots of knowledge and understanding springing up.

Aside from the need for retailers to con you out of your money this season in order to stay afloat, I believe we are making progress. Some of it appears negative or senseless. How many Black Fridays or Cyber Mondays does it take to equal or exceed the good news of the birth of light into a world steeped in darkness? I've been listening to Classical Christmas music all day on Pandora internet radio.

Some of those songs are silly like Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. But there's nothing silly about someone who is scorned and abused for being different, but then steps up to the plate and saves the scoffers and bullies with his special gift. Some of the songs like the Hallelujah chorus of Handel's Messiah usually make me cry. In spite of all the commercialism, this is a very special time of year that signifies a way out of the darkness, given to us those many years ago. Merry Christmas!

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JANUARY 1, 2015

Happy New Year! I'm cheating a little here, still about four hours to go and I'll probably be in bed fast asleep when the ball drops. In the olden days I used to go to a laundromat to do my laundry New Year's Eve at midnight just to see what kind of people would be in a laundromat at midnight on New Year's Eve. And there were always people there. This back in the day when you could leave a laundromat open 24/7 without theft or vandalism or assault or robbery or becoming a homeless hotel. Sounds pretty good, and in many ways it was. Still and all I wouldn't trade or go back.

For many years now I very consciously have known that I wouldn't want to go back one minute, given the opportunity. Yes, there are a number of instances along the way where I blew it more or less badly, some cringe-worthy on remembrance, but if the price paid for going back for a Mulligan, a do-over, was having to live out the rest of it over again, the price would be too high. That goes back as far as I can remember. I count myself fortunate and blessed that it only continues getting better and better with every day.

Am I on top of the world? Not yet, may not make it in this lifetime, but I'm getting closer. Yes, today I yelled at both of my male critters. A certain amount of crying and complaining is overlooked, beyond that it becomes increasingly irritating and on to obnoxious. After about the 457th false alarm with my cat going to the door, looking out at the frigid landscape and turning back, I assisted him out with my foot. Not the best solution, but there are limits. He did tone it down when I finally let him back in. And I cooked up ground turkey and chicken livers for all tonight.

I've got to confess that too often my solution to these ongoing sources of stress is to picture the offender underground. I don't wish them harm, I don't want them to have an unhappy ending, I just want them to shut up for a bit, give me a break, I've been listening to this for years now, constantly, it gets old. And that's probably really the problem. They are getting old and so am I. Getting old is no picnic. It hurts.

Well, we're all in this together. Missy, my lady dog, doesn't complain much, tho she does like her treats. I can't take her for extended walks any more because her legs give out coming back up the hill and I can't pick her up anymore except maybe in an emergency situation. She likes to hang out with me as much as she can all day. Camps out on the floor wherever I am, and too often right in the way where I have to step over her to go anywhere. And when I do take here for a walk on more level ground, she lets me know when she has had enough by stopping and waiting for me to turn around. Then she likes to run ahead on the way back, get in front of me and slow down to where I go to pass her, then runs ahead and slows down again. You may have run into people like this on the freeway.

What can I say about this past year? First and foremost, I escaped. Not only finished up a 25 year sentence at Glenn Shores, but ended up in the best possible situation and location I could ever have come up with this time around. Not perfect by any means, but given the hand I was dealt I'm riding high, grateful for each day that comes along, and glad to take the rest of it like it comes. Wouldn't go back a minute.

The year really divided into two parts before my escape and after. The less remembered and said about the first part, the better. The last remaining treasure on the Michigan west coast was chopped up and dismembered, a crime against humanity and not a necessary one. It's a done deal, I get pictures from friends I left behind, friends who are themselves striving to escape. It's how the World System works. It's called Progress. I'm not going to waste any energy fighting it, mentally or physically. It is what it is.

The Players in this drama have made their choices and are living out ther consequences. That's how life works, the best I can figure out. I'm in the best possible place to live in all the world, at least from my point of view, and highly grateful for it. Yes, I have problems. Yes, I'm trying to figure out the best way of getting thru this winter, and winters to come, with the least outlay of money to stay relatively warm, relatively comfortable, relatively content. Perhaps I'm not alone. That's not bad.

In all of this winter weather that started way early, I have only had to climb on my snow thrower twice to clear my driveway. That's a big plus. I'm thinking that few of my neighbors would think that spending New Year's Eve at home was a deprivation, and that's a big plus.  I'm making slow progress, things like getting my yard light post to actually light up when I have visitors, things like getting the area in front of my fireplace cleared out from boxes left over from the move, things like getting thermostats set to maximize heat with minimal propane.

Things like connecting with my cousin who thinks pretty much like I do and understands this ongoing loss of energy that comes with growing older. Things like connecting with a friend from the olden days who understands how marital bliss can go awry, and who turns you on to a radio station from Denver that plays jazz and blues. Things like connecting with a church that not only doesn't eat your soul but feeds it. These are the sorts of things that keep me going and let me deal with the rest of it.

Happy New Year! I have a lot of private reservations in this ongoing scenario of things getting better and better. That doesn't mean that I don't think my own life can't continue to get better and better, nor yours. This past year got me to where I am, and there is nowhere else I would want to be. I fully expect this coming year to provide for my basic needs, to give me increase in wisdom and knowledge and understanding. I fully expect to become closer to God in unity and service. As to the exact course that this will take, your guess is as good as mine. Happy New Year!

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JANUARY 3, 2015

This morning I was looking out my office window into my back yard where my bird feeders are set up about fifty feet away, and there on one of my feeders munching on suet was a Pileated Woodpecker. If you aren't familiar with them, they are not exactly rare, but not at all common either, and I always regard sighting one as a good omen, the same as seeing a Praying Mantis or a Walking Stick or a Katydid. They are quite large for a woodpecker, about the size of a skinny crow, with a jaunty, red conical hat. If you are old enough to remember Woody Woodpecker cartoons, this is the bird he was modeled on, crazy, maniacal laugh and all.

The first time I ever ran into one, I heard it long before I spotted it, not its call, but the sound of it pounding on trees with its beak. I thought it was someone walking around in the woods with a big axe for reasons unknown, but soon it became apparent that no one could walk or even run fast enough to account for the widely spaced thunks I was hearing. They are quite impressive the first time you see one, probably three times as big as the biggest woodpeckers you are used to seeing.

Anyway I got my camera, not expecting to get a great shot from this far away with my little point and shoot, but wanting to add his picture to those of the deer and turkeys visiting the feeders. And as I stood up by the window, he saw me move even tho the room wasn't lighted, freaked out and flew away. I was sorry I had not been more careful, but the deer and turkeys had never spotted me even tho the deer are skittish and the turkeys mount guards to watch while the rest eat. Well, next time I'll know, if there is a next time. It was good to see it here, good to know they are around. I did once see two of them together going around pecking on trees, apparently looking for a likely place to move in and build a nursery.

There is a much smaller woodpecker, a Hairy, who for reasons best known to itself comes and pecks on the side of my house about fifteen feet up outside my bedroom. I don't know why it is doing this, but I do know I don't want holes in my siding. It's not likely there are bugs that far up, especially in winter, and there's plenty to eat out at the feeders. At first I was walking all the way down into my walkout basement and out the back door to yell at it, but that got old quickly. Then I figured out that I could just give my bedroom wall a couple of whacks with my hand, sort of like if your neighbor in the motel is up partying at two in the morning, or the person in the apartment above is practicing karate. It was back again today but at least it's not the Pileated.

Here we are in January, and in spite of of an early start to winter, I had only had to clear my driveway twice up until today. This afternoon made the third, and I think I will have to do it again tomorrow. The ten day forecast is running entirely below freezing day and night, with some dips below zero, so I don't think this snow is going away any time soon. We really have been fortunate up until now, tho I realize that skiers and snowmobilers and children might differ.

The water started showing again in my wetlands and I had to stop my explorations, tho it's freezing up again now and should be good to go for awhile, maybe until spring. I'm still surprised to find out that it is only in wintertime that I have full access to all fifteen acres. You would think that summertime would be the best time to look for springs, but last summer I used the trail down to my crossing without realizing there was a spring in the middle of it that didn't show up until this winter. Now I'm having to reroute around it, but glad to know its there.

I'm scouting out places to set up a tent or tipi, for me or anyone wanting to camp out. Part of that is having a spring of water handy. My best campsite doesn't have one anywhere near that I have found so far, but of course you can always carry water. I did that for years in Oregon when I was living out in the woods with no electricity and it worked fine, but even better was when I set up a gravity flow water line from a spring higher up the mountain. It was just like downtown, turn the faucet and water comes out. At least until a bear would bite the water pipe. That won't work here anyway because even tho this county reminds me of Oregon more than anyplace else in Michigan, there isn't a nearby mountain. May end up seeing if I can dig down to water in a likely spot.

I've beem taking advantage of the winter weather to get more work done inside the house. Still a long way to go, but making progress. Cleared an area in my living room of boxes on the floor and got them up on folding tables. That may not seem like progress, but it gets them up where I can sort them out and organize and rebox for eventual storage or use. Found the box of AA batteries I looked for everywhere and finally bought another. Didn't find my favorite green Stormy Kromer hat yet but I'm still holding out hope and not about to buy another. Takes years to break them in.

And I shuffled boxes and bags to free up a big eight foot folding table that I wrassled down into the basement where I'm in the process of setting up a shop for my sharpening tools and equipment as well as just a general shop. Was using my garage until it got so cold and that pretty much put a stop to any more work. These are not afternoon tasks but ongoing projects that take planning, tho as it turns out I mostly get stuff done as an afternoon chore anyway. Would rather be out building trails but this needs doing, and it's on my back until I get it done.

So we are into the new year, and I'm glad to be here with it. Seems like not just a new year but a whole new beginning for me, another chance to get it right, or at least better. Sometimes I think about all that needs doing and it gets overwhelming, so I try taking it day by day, moment by moment. Probably the best way to deal with life anyway, as far as I can figure things out.

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JANUARY 7, 2015

It was cold today, bitter cold. Had to tinker with the thermostat settings a bit to get the front part of the house up to temperature. Normally I keep the back of the house shut down and the front of the house shares enough heat to keep things at bare minimum in back. Today the wind was blowing, it never got above 7 degrees outside, and the dogs were ready to come back in after walking a couple hundred feet, the kind of day when you have to make multiple trips out to the bird feeders to make sure the ground birdies have something to eat.

I checked again out the window about half an hour before dark and there were three deer their scarfing up the seed on the ground. No birds in sight and maybe they were done for the day. But then I saw a dozen doves circle in to land and then take off again when they saw the deer. A minute or so later they tried again, but it's just too intimidating trying to eat between the feet of three deer when you're the size of a dove.

So I debated what to do. I don't begrudge the deer what's left over at the end of the day because it's hard making a living as a deer too in weather like this. But the birds were more vulnerable, much more likely not to make it thru the night without adequate fuel. And then I saw one of the deer reaching up to eat out of a hanging feeder. I had wondered why they didn't figure out this easy way for a real feed, but was glad they appeared not to have enough brain cells to make the leap. And there is no easy way to raise the feeders up any higher than they are.

Then I spotted three more deer heading up the hill toward the feeder. The most deer I had seen at once up to now was four, and it was definitely dusk with not a lot of time left for birds. Deer can eat all night, birds have to go find a place to sleep as much out of the wind as possible and trust they wake up in the morning. So down into the basement I went, opened up my back door and the deer took off. Took out a fresh helping of ground seed and went back upstairs to see.

A few sparrows came to eat along with a Cardinal. The doves never did come back. Maybe they went to a different restaurant, but usually most people feed birds from hanging feeders, not on the ground. I pay special attention to the ground feeders, the sparrows, the Juncos, the doves, those are the main ones that stay thru the winter. There are other birds that sometimes eat on the ground like Chickadees and Bluejays and Cardinals, but they can also eat out of the feeders. Occasionally one of the ground birdies figures out how to land on a feeder, but mostly they need special attention.

Anyway, it didn't work out very well this time. Ordinarily it wouldn't be such a big deal but in weather like this it becomes a life and death situation. Just going out to feed the birds or walk the dogs I am keenly aware that if I was out there and broke a leg or fell thru the ice or somehow couldn't make it back in, I would be a goner probably in an hour or so. I don't like to think about critters in dire circumstances, nor people for that matter. Not the kind of night to be sleeping in a cardboard box or even a house without heat.

I turned off my Christmas lights today, tho I haven't taken them down yet. Too cold. Yesterday was the end of the Christmas season in the liturgical church calendar and the beginning of Epiphany. The season of Epiphany celebrates the visit of the Wise Men to the baby Jesus, the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan at the start of his ministry, and the first public miracle of Jesus which was turning water into wine at a wedding near his home town. About 150 gallons of wine, which if you think about it was a lot of wine for a little country wedding.

Epiphany runs until the season of Lent, which is the forty day period before Easter week, which is coming pretty early this year. I'm learning about  these things for the first time in my life this year. Most churches don't pay all that much attention, and even liturgical churches may not do more than note them in passing. The tradition goes back something like 1600 years or more, and I'm finding it gets more interesting the more I learn about it. At the same time realizing that this may not be most people's cup of tea.

It was supposed to snow today but barely did, and I'm glad, hope that holds tomorrow as well. The next town of any size north of here is Cadillac, which is a center of winter ski activity, and I read in their paper that December snow levels were maybe a third of normal. Bad for them, good for me. I only had to climb on my snow thrower twice until the last week, and then it was two more times in two days. Not my idea of fun. But I can hear people saying, what did you expect moving up north.

Actually, it might not snow as much here sometimes as at Glenn Shores which catches the lake effect snows off Lake Michigan. And LeRoy is up on a ridge, a finger of sorts sticking down from the higher country to the northeast where Houghton Lake is. So sometimes watching the radar you can see weather heading our way from the west and then dividing to head north and south with this ridge acting like the bow of a boat.

I always felt like the weather at Glenn Shores was at the center of a blessing, and wondered if I could bring this along with me in my move. Way too early to tell, but I would say so far so good, even as bitter cold as today was. Of course weather goes up and down on its own everywhere anyway, so none of this is any more than speculation. Still and all I'm used to living in a center of blessing, and I go out every day to bless the land, all within, and all without. Last Sunday I wasn't sure I could make it out my driveway and I walked to church, so where's my blessing?

Well, it's here every day. I'm warm, I'm dry, I'm healthy, I've got food to eat and good neighbors. And if push comes to shove I can walk to town, no big deal, I often walk that far in my own back yard on good days when there isn't a foot of snow to slog thru and a bitter wind. Life is good and keeps on getting better. What's not to like? Of course there's always something not to like if you look for it, but why would I want to do that? We're in a new year and a new opportunity. I'll take it.

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JANUARY 14, 2015

Somewhere recently I mentioned that a Hairy Woodpecker was pecking on the side of my house and that I might have to resort to the .410 solution if he didn't stop. I went out and loudly explained this to him several times. I finally took a close look at the siding and there is a row of holes drilled about a foot long, with one place in particular being enlarged noticeably. This is not good.

The pecking continued, and when I would bang on the inside wall where the noise was, it would continue as if I didn't exist. How dare they? Making the long trek back down into the basement and out the back door I discovered that now I was dealing with a pair of Downy Woodpeckers. They are much smaller than the Hairy, who is small enough. I would say the Hairy is about the size of a skinny Robin, and the Downy is about halfway in between a sparrow and a Robin in size.

Now two of them pecking together means they are a couple interested in setting up housekeeping for the coming Spring with raising a family in mind. And from their perspective, they picked the ideal location. It's about fifty feet from a constant source of food, has a great view, is protected from the direct rays of the sun when it gets around to baking again, but in the meantime is located right over a baseboard radiator, and should be safe from most predators.

The one disadvantage is that locating there is a capital offense, which I have gone out and explained several times over. I admit that hitting a Downy Woodpecker would not be easy, even with a shotgun. They are fast, their flight is a series of swoops, and when they land they usually arrange to have something in the way. Still and all, the solutions are not many. I could get out my ladder and nail something over the holes they have drilled or fill them with putty or wood filler, but all they would have to do is move a foot or two and start over.

There are boundaries being crossed here and I'm hoping they can figure this out. I do understand that they are only doing what God has programmed them to do, but I can't say the same for my cat. I saw him running out of a part of the basement where he has no business the other day when he heard me coming, and having had previous suspicions I made a thorough investigation. Finally found a blanket where he had been peeing on it long enough for it to be not just damp, but sopping wet.

I was not happy. I tracked him down, cornered him, grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and took him back to the scene of the crime, wrapped the sodden blanket all around him while I loudly explained that he was within a fraction of an inch of having his neck wrung, and that if he did not completely change his ways he was going underground. He may or may not have understood this better than the woodpeckers, that remains to be seen. In his favor, all his life he had a kitty door to come and go as he pleased, and he much preferred to use the great outdoors rather than the littler box. That is not easily doable here and in any case he won't go out anyway in this cold weather. Annoys me a dozen times a day asking to go out, then looks out the open door, turns around, and expects a treat. Does anyone here want a cat?

The Red Squirrel has been busy too, but not up to capital offenses, just making an easy living off the bird feeders. When the snow gets too deep, he makes tunnels and keeps on truckin'. I see his tracks coming and going from the Maple trees beside my house, and I picture him with a fifty pound stash of seeds up in each one. He works hard all day, but he hardly takes a bigger bite than the deer or twenty-some turkeys who visit the feeder.

So it finally occurred to me that somewhere I had seen a packet of Cayenne pepper that survived the move, something specifically meant to sprinkle on bird seed to discourage squirrels. Looked all over, couldn't find it, bought a big cannister of Dark Chili Powder on my last food run, and sprinkled it liberally on the seed in the feeder the squirrel hits most often. Today I looked out of my kitchen window to see two Red Squirrels, one according to his movements my regular, and another up in the feeder with the Chili Powder chowing down. I watched him for at least five minutes. He was probably saying, ""Finally, they got a Mexican restaurant in this neighborhood. I'd better tell my friends.

Well, it may work on the deer, I haven't gotten there yet. There is one doe who has learned to reach and lick the seed out of the feeder. She doesn't empty the feeder, seems somewhat restrained, but still and all. I don't need her standing up and pulling the feeder apart with her hooves. I can afford the maybe cup of seed on the ground that the yearlings clean up a couple of time a day. What's next, a bear? I feel like I'm in an Alfred Hitchcock movie with my house under attack from critters. Maybe I need to put out a bottle of hot sauce for that one squirrel.

In the last ten days or so, two folks in their 90's have died in the church I attend, a brother and sister. While this is not a tragedy for someone having lived a long and good life, it is certainly a stressful time for the one remaining brother, in a completely separate category from being stressed by naughty critters. I spoke with someone else who said they had lost something like nine friends and acquaintenaces in three weeks. Well, winter seems like a good time to go if you are going to leave the planet.

For those of you who followed the Glenn Shores saga, you may be saddened to know that my younger brother, John, died last night. Apparently his end was relatively peaceful and easy, not something to be expected with lung cancer, and a great blessing for which I am grateful. I spoke with him on Christmas Day and he seemed weak but on top of things. I didn't expect him to survive the winter but didn't think he would leave this soon. He had a difficult life here and I'm hoping he does better on the other side. May he rest in peace.

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JANUARY 18, 2015

Today was the nicest day in quite a while, tho it never got above freezing. Sunshine most of the day and no wind, a happy break. I've lost track, but it seems to have been weeks now that the temperature has mostly stayed below freezing with dips below zero. A day like today when my thermometer shows it got up to 28 degrees seems like a heat wave.

It hasn't snowed a lot, but whatever did fall has stayed and not melted, nor compacted much because it was powdery. I would say there is six inches in most places and out in my back field where the wind has free rein there are many places a foot or more deep, enough to get in my high rubber boots I usually wear taking the dogs out for their daily walk.

Only that daily walk has been to the barn and back for all this time. That's all that Missy was interested in and all she could handle. Ralph was ready for more, but I wasn't. It was usually too cold and miserable and the snow too deep. Ralph has been complaining more and more, asking to go out many times a day and just lying out there in the snow. He's half Lab and built for that, has a huge winter coat from his Golden Retriever half, and he likes winter.

Today I decided it would be a good day to strap on snowshoes and take him for a real walk. We both needed it, we're both used to walking a mile a day, more or less, and I was losing all my motivation for getting things done inside even tho I had plenty of time. Walking doesn't just tone up the body, it tones up the mind and emotions. Since each half of the brain controls the opposite side of the body, when you walk, each step you take uses the different half of your brain and it becomes like a clock pendulum swinging back and forth in your brain cells. Quiets the mind and lets it heal from problems of the day.

I doubt if Ralph looks at it quite that way, he just likes to walk, tho even he is slowing down a bit. Part of my putting on the snowshoes was to break trail for him, but half the time he was off exploring on his own anyway. It was borderline needing the snowshoes. Yes, they definitely helped getting thru the open areas of my field, but once beyond there there was even less snow in the woods than around my house, and out over my frozen pond only a couple of inches.

So if I go out again I'll probably only wear leggings, assuming it doesn't snow a lot before then. And I was having trouble with my bindings coming loose. They are fairly high tech, nylon webbing, plastic straps and buckles, with a ratchet system to tighten them up. The problem is that the buckle is supposed to go on the outside so you don't loosen it with your other foot rubbing, but I can't reach them anymore on the outside, have trouble enough on the inside. I need a ten year old kid to put them on for me, but barring that I may have to go back to my trusted old spruce and rawhide snowshoes with canvas web straps and metal buckles.

Last night I woke up in the night hearing banging and crashing outside my window which I thought likely was coming from a bird feeder I have been leaving out by my garage door where it is protected under the overhang and has worked up until now. Probably a deer had finally figured out what it was and was knocking it around to spill the seeds out. But when I went out and looked today there were no hoof prints under it tho a lot of the seed was still on the ground. Wouldn't be easy to climb up to it but maybe a raccoon could do it, Are raccoons out in the middle of winter? I thought they would be hibernating. Same for possums. What else would it be? A coyote couldn't reach it and a bear would have just torn the whole thing down. Maybe it was a deer wearing snowshoes.

I remembered another mystery today that was never solved. This happened last fall when the apples were getting ripe and starting to fall off the trees. I was out with the dogs in the back woods, out in the middle of one of the pine plantations, when suddenly there was a good thump on the ground about twenty feet away from me. I looked over and there was an apple lying on the ground, a fairly big one, big enough to fill your hand, and when I went over to look closer I discovered it was about a third eaten.

Now of course when this happened I immediately looked up in the trees, expecting to see a squirrel, tho after thinking about it, there is no way a squirrel could have carried an apple that big up a tree. Then I looked to make sure there wasn't on old apple tree growing up between the pines, and there wasn't. Nothing but pines. Hmmm. I thought and thought. Nothing. Now if Isaac Newton hadn't already discovered gravity with a falling apple, I might have done that and become rich and famous. However as it was, and remains, I have no idea how a partially eaten apple falls out of a pine tree, and chooses to fall just as I am walking by. Seems pretty elaborate for a prank, and who would pull it? And how would they know I was going to walk right by there? I dunno.

But speaking of apples, there are still some hanging on at the top of a few trees, out of reach of the deer, but they must still be falling from time to time because I see a lot of tracks underneath. The apples don't look so great, but I'm guessing the deer are in no position to be picky these days. Maybe I should put my ladder out for them. Maybe it was a deer that took my ladder last fall when I left it out a few days and put that apple up the pine tree. But how would they have gotten it to fall just when I walked by? Maybe tied a long string to it, I didn't look that close. Well, too late now, I'll never know.

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JANUARY 19, 2015

Three Red Squirrels today at my bird feeders. My own, who has taken to making observation posts along his tunnel under the snow to the feeders, and pops up out of them like a Prairie Dog, watches the Papa Bear squirrel who has apparently taken a liking to the chili powder I've started sprinkling in the seed. This squirrel looks twice the size of mine and must be intimidating. Maybe it's his father. And today there was another smaller one, the size of mine. I'm hoping this is not a budding romance.

I think the chili powder is discouraging my squirrel, who seems to be spending more time on the ground where I don't mind him, but with the big guy I have to go down to the basement and open up the back door to send him on his way. Yesterday I ordered ten pounds of Cayenne Pepper online. This is much hotter than the chili powder, tho there are different grades of hotness and the top grades are pretty expensive, so I went with a cheaper one to see how it does. I can use the chili powder in the kitchen. If you're wondering why it doesn't bother the birds, I dunno, but they either like it or don't notice it. Maybe it helps keep them warm.

And the chili powder does seem to have discouraged the deer from emptying my hanging feeders. I don't mind if they clean up what's on the ground and I'm not putting chili powder on that..I had nine deer at once in my back yard the other day, which is more like what I was used to at Glenn Shores. It's interesting to watch them. They seem to respect whoever gets to the feeding area first and there isn't any pushing or shoving, unlike the bluejays. Others wait their turn and by the time their turn comes there usually isn't much left.

And I think I solved the mystery of the midnight plunder of the feeder I had left out by my garage. Yesterday I let the dogs out and Ralph started barking, which he doesn't often do. I went out and several hundred feet away was a critter of some sort having a hard time in the snow, maybe a big old cat, maybe a raccoon, but on closer inspection turned out to be a possum. It was above freezing for the first time in a long time but I don't know what he would normally find to eat this time of year.

He was heading toward the house and I didn't want the dogs to tangle with him so we went back inside. Never saw him again, and he didn't mess with the regular feeders or clean up the ground seed, which I wouldn't have minded. I imagine he's having a pretty hard way to go along about now. I did think of a solution for the mystery of the apple that fell out of the pine tree, which on thinking about it obviously must have been a pineapple.

I took Ralph out for another walk this afternoon, this time without snowshoes, and it was about as difficult with or without them. Snow a foot deep in many places and underneath melted down a bit from the warmer temperatures the last couple of day so you had to pick your foot up out of it with each step. Ralph was having trouble with his paws loading up with packed snow and having to stop and chew out the lumps. I had trimmed the hair on his paws recently but I didn't get in between his toes and that's where it collects.

We got way past halfway on our circuit and he wimped out, refused to go any further, and headed back the way we had come. It was much shorter just to keep going, which I did, but I pictured being out after dark with a flashlight and a whistle and maybe a sled to haul him back if I could find him. But when I got back to the house he was out in the yard waiting for me.

And then I did something I've never done before. I watched the sun go down online. This was not the actual sun, but a virtual astronomy program called Stellarium which shows you the sky as it would appear exactly where you are located and you can look in all four directions like you are standing in the middle of a ten or twenty acre pasture with buildings and trees and hills on the horizon. Out my window it was overcast but I was watching what I would have seen if it was cloudless, including seeing it set earlier than the official time because of trees blocking the view.

When it had set, I was still suited up from my walk so I went out again. This time I was in search of springs that might be showing up in spite of the frozen ground and swamps. I went where I had found the biggest one awhile back in the cattail marsh closest to my house. It was still there but I discovered a whole line of unfrozen spots along my closest piney woods. This is where I would start digging a pond if I was going to do that.

Then I went into the pines to scout out a campsite in relation to this spring with the idea of checking it out again next summer when it dries out. Things look a lot different when they are all grown up in cattails and grass, and I need to put up flagging now. I was walking toward my eastern line when I spotted movement out beyond a neighbor's pasture, maybe a tenth of a mile away. There in the growing dusk and quiet was a horse and buggy heading north up the dirt road, heading home, could have been a movie set in 1870, an easy, peaceful feeling.

Then I headed toward my western line where I haven't been able to find any signs of a spring. My biggest swamp which has some open water was frozen over enough for me to walk all the way on top of the ice and down the narrow passage to my crossing where I couldn't walk in the previous freeze because of thin ice and still open water. I'm thinking the water was still moving before on thru the culvert I put into my crossing, but now it had stopped moving as it waits for a real thaw.

And on the other side of my crossing I did find some soft spots, not open water, but places where instead of my stick thumping on solid ice or frozen ground, it would go down into the mud and it was obviously warmer right there. Not big areas, maybe three feet across, something you could put on boots in the summer and dig out to see what would happen, could even do that in the winter as far as that goes. This was a promising find as I had not been able to find any potential water here other than the swamp runoff, and it's a good camping area otherwise.

It was getting dark now so I headed home up the western line and discovered another radio or cell phone tower I hadn't known existed, off to the northwest maybe a mile and a half away. And a couple of yard lights I'm blissfully unaware of at the house because of my lines of trees. Back at the house as it was getting dark for real, across the road in another neighbor's hayfield, sounds like angry giant mutant hornets, which turned out to be a snowmobile.

It made several large laps in the snow-covered alfalfa, probably not doing it a lot of good, then thru a ditch and screaming up the same snow-covered dirt road I had earlier watched the Amish horse and buggy go peacefully by. Quite a contrast. The snowmobile sound faded into the distance and is gone forever. I'll take the picture of that horse and buggy to bed with me and it will be with me the rest of my life.

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FEBRUARY 8, 2015

There may be more than three squirrels coming to my bird feeders but that is the most I have seen at one time. This is not exactly a war, but it has resemblances. I sit in my office looking out my window at the bird feeders, fifteen feet below and fifty feet away. I watch them come in and note their actions. My objective is not to defeat them or I would just shoot them, tho that in itself would not be simple and I wouldn't sleep well. They are fast and they are smart, but they are getting spoiled with such a good thing in abundance.

What I want to do is slow them down, and so far I seem to be succeeding. Not holding my breath on that one tho, these squirrels are clever and resourceful. But so am I. My ten pound package of cayenne pepper arrived and proved to be a big improvement over the chili powder, which I have retired to my kitchen. The chili powder did seem to discourage the deer from eating out of the feeders but not the squirrels. The cayenne is a big step up in hotness, and altho I still have squirrels occasionally up in the feeders, it is not nearly as often or as blatant.

Along with the cayenne I tried physical restraint. My feeders are set up hanging off of two curved wrought iron poles, the poles being square and about the size of your finger. The squirrels are able to shinny up these poles even tho I sprayed them with silicone, which should have made them slippery. Ha! Score one for the squirrels. You can buy actual squirrel baffles, bowl shaped with a hole in the middle for the pole to go thru, maybe a foot or so across. These cost ten or twenty bucks, which sticks in my craw.

So I bought an aluminum pie plate for a buck and a half, which came inside a clear plastic container, top and bottom, for holding the finished pie. Voila, a cheap squirrel baffle. I tried the plastic container top first, cut from the outside to the middle and made a hole so I could slip it over the pole that the squirrels mostly climbed, duct taped it closed again, and had it resting on a piece of coat hanger wire I had wrapped around the pole.

And it worked, sort of. The squirrels couldn't climb beyond it and eventually stopped trying. They just went over to the bush growing next to the feeder and climbed that, jumped over to the pole above the baffle, and continued on their merry way. Drat!  So I started cutting the bush back, branch by branch. I would sit in my office and watch to see which branch they were using to jump from, run downstairs and cut it off, then back up to watch some more.

I've gotten a miniature brush pile going from all this, the bush is starting to look a bit lop sided, but I think I managed to put a stop to the jumping. These guys are amazingly athletic, could play Spiderman in the movies. I've seen them make four foot leaps off of what looked like a twig, no sweat. But they do have limits and I think I reached them. I watched them climb up the bush and look up at the feeder, the little wheels in their heads obviously going round and round, then turn around and climb back down. Ha!

Until the wind started blowing strong, and it was banging my cheap plastic pie plate baffle around and scaring off the birdies, and the whole point of this operation is to feed the birds, who would otherwise have a much harder way to go this winter, seemingly without end. I don't know if a twenty dollar baffle would bang around in the wind, not about to find out, and I ended up taking the plastic one off so the birds could eat in whatever peace and quiet a bird can get, which isn't much.

And the squirrels started back up the pole, but not so often. They were going up the other pole too, but on that one i had a feeder that only had a few seeds poking out of a sea of cayenne, and that seemed to work too. I thought about making spiked collars of coat hanger wire around the poles, which likely wouldn't be bothered by wind and might actually work, but we seem to have reached a stalemate of sorts.

Mostly now the squirrels feed on the ground, which I don't mind. How much can a squirrel eat if he's scurrying around from seed to seed and not like a pig in a trough. And while the little guy or girl who lives by my house was spending all day running back and forth with bulging cheeks, these squirrels who are coming in from afar can't do that. I watch them heading in from my back woods and scurrying across the no man's land of my back yard. They come a long way for this good thing.

Watching out my window, I imagine myself as Commander-in-Chief sitting in my situation room watching the operations on the big screen. All my generals are off snoozing somewhere, and anyway they are too old to catch a squirrel anymore, it's all up to me. Sometime I imagine the squirrels in their own situation room several stories down underneath the big cottonwoods, watching their own screen to see if I have put out fresh seed or have gone to town so they can eat undisturbed.

It's the deer now that are running me ragged, mostly the yearlings, and I'm giving them a lot of slack because they are young, and the winter is long and cold. Already they are appearing on their own with Mom either off in the background or not in sight. I put out seed on the ground for the doves and other ground feeders, and the yearlings show up, twins, brother and sister by the looks. They pretty much lick up every last seed, and sometimes nibble buds off my poor old bush.

So I wait until they leave and go down, put out more seed for the birds, and here they are back again. Or maybe it's not them, maybe it's another set of twins, who can tell? Maybe if I sat around all day with binoculars and a notebook for ten years I could tell them apart, but as it is they are just deer and they keep me busy. I'm thinking that if they wore name tags it would help but I haven't figured out how I could accomplish that yet. And if I did, what would stop them from switching their name tags around just to confuse me?

I don't put cayenne on the seed I put on the ground and don't really want to. Usually the deer disappear during the day, only showing up early in the morning and toward evening, so I can handle that. And it is fun to watch them. At this point there is peace in the valley, more or less, but who knows what those squirrels are thinking up.

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FEBRUARY 27, 2015

You might have heard me whooping and hollering if you live this side of the Rocky Mountains. I found my favorite green Stormy Kromer hat that I had been looking for all winter long. For those of you who never heard of Stormy Kromer, he was a baseball player and steam locomotive engineer in the early 20th century who was always losing his cap sticking his head out the window of his locomotive. So in 1903 he designed an extra strap to go on his baseball cap around the back to help hold it on when the wind blew and to cover his ears when it was cold. His wife sewed it up for him and it worked, has been working ever since.

People back at Glenn Shores would remark what a great hat it was but no one there recognized it for what it was. Up here I frequently have people remark, ""Hey, that's a Stormy Kromer!"" They are made in Northern Michigan and I have no idea whether they are recognized anywhere else. They really are nice winter hats, wool, warm, nice enough to wear to church but practical enough to wear cutting wood.

This wasn't one of my lucky finds that happen while I'm looking for something else. I made a concerted effort one afternoon after sporadically looking all winter. I was hoping it hadn't fallen by the wayside somewhere in my move because it takes about five years to break one in and you can't just run out and replace that. A lot of things in my move got packed up in big plastic construction size bags that are about all you can pick up when they are full, and I started unpacking the ones still left one by one.

Found other things I was looking for along the way, but finally after a couple of hours down at the very bottom of a bag, there it was. Major victory! And not only found my favorite green, but also a red one with no brim I had forgotten all about which I often wear indoors on bitter cold days to help stay warm. Speaking of bitter cold days, the temperature right outside my house has gotten down to 26 below recently, and was 31 below further out in the boonies.

The coldest I had ever experienced up to now was 20 below so I'm breaking new ground, tho the wind has been calm when it was that cold and it didn't feel all that much different. Wouldn't want to spend a night out in it tho for sure, and it has to be hard on outdoor critters. Last night it only got down to 22 below and then climbed to 26 above in the afternoon, a veritable heat wave. I went snowshoeing late this afternoon with the sun shining brightly. Has been so cold that I haven't gotten out much and miss the exercise.

It was 15 above when I left, 12 above when I got back, and I probably made a mile or more, a good workout. It takes about three times as much energy going thru snow deep enough to need snowshoes, plus all the hassle of suiting up and strapping on. It's just too deep for the dogs, even with me breaking trail. They do okay as long as they can stay up on top of the crust or follow my trail if it's packed enough, but if they step off just a little they are up to their butt and struggling to get out.

This has been going on a long time now. The last thaw of any kind was way back in December, and that after an early start to winter in early November. Every ten days or two weeks the temperature peeks up above the freezing mark but not enough to melt the snow before heading back down for another couple of weeks. It isn't just here, the whole eastern US has been abnormally cold while out in California they have had record highs and continuing drought. Given the choice I'll take the cold if it means enough precipitation to grow crops and feed critters.

And it hasn't snowed all that much this winter, tho it seems like every snowflake that has fallen is still here. Probably a foot deep average, six inches in my back woods protected from the wind, couple of feet where the snow can drift. Nothing like at Glenn Shores where I would often have a five foot drift in my back yard from the lake effect snow. My neighbors have been really good to me this winter plowing out my driveway for me while I was still psyching myself up to go climb on my old beater snow thrower.

They both have snow throwers that are worthy of the name, and maybe have a bit of cabin fever to boot, but in any case it has made my winter a lot easier. Yesterday I had gotten up at 5:30 with a dog needing out and just stayed up to start my day, but then went back to bed around noon for a nap to catch up, sort of like two days for the price of one. Got up around 2:00 to find one of my neighbors out in the 10 degree chill plowing out my mailbox. I had shoveled it out but was thinking I was starting to run out of room if it snowed hard again. I know my neighbor was likely coming back from town plowing out his mother's house and stopped to do mine, but here I was just getting out of bed at 2:00 in the afternoon while he was out doing my work in 10 degree weather. That can't be right.

I guess it all works out in the end. I've been having more victories than defeats lately and that helps.One way I've been trying to pay back some is helping out at funerals connected with the little church I've been going to. I've been to three in the last several months and have been astounded at the size of them. Up until now the biggest funerals I have been to had maybe 50 people attending. These have been in the hundreds, standing room only. The last one was in the neighboring village of 250 people and had well over 300 people packed into a church built for 125, they lost count after they ran out of the little programs they give out.

It's certainly different up here. Maybe you could say it is different everywhere these days, and that certainly seems so, but I still would rather be here than anywhere else. The ten day forecast continues on below the freezing mark thru the first week of March, and who knows maybe the whole month. I've been putting up thermal drapes in my windows which helps a lot, still have a ways to go. There's a lot of windows in this house but the sun has been shining a lot lately even with the cold, so in the morning I open up my south facing drapes and at night I close them back up again. And I've got my Stormy Kromers when it gets intense.

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MARCH 12, 2015

Just got in from a couple hours of hard slogging on snowshoes. Probably made two miles not taking the same trail twice, tho I crossed over my tracks a time or two. It continues to delight me that I can walk so far on just fifteen acres without doing laps. It does occur to me that I may be exaggerating my distances, but I have a pretty good sense of how far I'm going. I recently bought a measuring wheel on sale, a device you run along the ground and it measures how far you go, but you can't run it in snow.

And by the time the snow melts I won't be able to run it across my swamps. I've probably put in more miles this past week on snowshoes than I did the whole previous winter. It was just too bitter out to have fun, and even the snowmobilers weren't out much until the last several weeks. My main motivation now is to cross my swamps while I still can, and today I tracked thru some standing water a couple inches deep.

One thing you don't want to do on snowshoes is break thru the ice. The snowshoes get caught under the ice while you're lying face down in freezing water struggling to find some way to get back on your feet. I have trouble taking off my snowshoes sitting down on a stool in a warm house, never mind reaching down blindly into ice cold water. So it's sort of a game of chicken I'm playing here tho the ice is still solid in most places.

And it's not like the water would be over my head. At least I don't think so. Today while I was out there I was trying to come up with ways I could cross the swamps in the summertime. Obviously I could just strip down to a pair of cutoffs and wade on in, and maybe that's what I would have done fifty years ago, but I don't know what the bottom is like and it wouldn't be good to get stuck out in the middle or sucked on down into the Swamp Monster's lair.

A pair of river walk sandals might be good. Pioneers weren't especially known as environmentalists and there could be broken glass, barbed wire, rusty nails, jagged iron, and who knows what all down in there. So maybe a pair of waders would work, tho you don't want to step in a hole and fall down in them. And waders are pricey. I suppose it's a bit peculiar to be thinking about this while trudging thru slushy snow over ice of unknown thickness, but being out there in the middle of a swamp gives a different spin to things you don't get looking out from the shore.

In any case, truth to tell I would much rather be out snowshoeing than getting my house in order, and I haven't done much of that lately. Official Spring is only a week and a day away, and I have not taken advantage of all this time on my hands to get much done inside. Boxes are still everywhere waiting to be unpacked and sorted. Yes, I have made some progress, but not enough to feel good about.

I did finally manage to get thermal drapes up on most of my windows, and that was a big step forward, if a bit late. I was putting off patching the leaks in the walls of my well house, thinking it wouldn't start leaking again until the ground thawed, but it started leaking again the first warm day. I'm hoping my hurry up patch job will hold but that remains to be seen. I had been thinking I would have to put a plywood ramp on the porch my old dogs use to get outside because they have so much trouble with the steps, and I thought I would have to wait until spring, not even knowing if it would work. But then a few days before the warm weather hit it occurred to me that I could build a ramp with snow, could have done it last December. Doh! Anyway they had a few days to try it out before it melted and it worked, but that didn't get any boxes unpacked.

There is an oasis in my living room with chairs you can sit in if you come to visit, and I hope to expand that over time. I've managed to keep my three back spare rooms pristine, and have had two guests so far stay in comfort. Of course these were guys and the acid test is to have a lady guest. I could be sent to jail without passing Go or collecting two hundred dollars. Some of this depends on warmer weather for things like putting together shelves in my barn for moving some of this stuff out of the house. And getting my utility vehicle running to haul the stuff out there.

Of course I had warmer weather this week and what did I do? Went snowshoeing. Well, these things have to work themselves out at their own pace, in their own way. Who am I to interfere? I will say that I am greatly heartened by this recent break in the weather. This past winter started early and stayed late. I'm not counting it over, but it was starting to be a real chore just maintaining some kind of positive attitude.

What did I expect moving up north? I'm not the only one around here more than tired of a too long winter, and they aren't calling this normal. But I don't think normal is happening much anywhere these days, and I wouldn't want to be out west where their drought continues unrelenting. And there was actually less snow this winter here than at Glenn Shores the winter before, so life without lake effect snow is a big plus. Even shoveling out my mailbox was a breeze compared to Glenn Shores. Life is good and Spring is on its way.

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MARCH 22, 2015

So I'm a few days late. Spring happens technically at the Equinox, which is the day that day and night have equal lengths, except that wasn't so this year. The day when sunrise and sunset happened at the same time was several days earlier than official Spring. Please don't ask me why. No doubt someone could come up with an explanation, but I don't know that I would believe them even if I could understand it. Spring and fall are by definition the time when the sun rises due east and sets due west, with day and night equal. More evidence that things ain't normal.

As to the weather, I think it did a hurry up because Spring was looking like mid January, except we didn't get a January thaw this year. The week before Spring was truly springlike, warm temperatures, the first since early December, and the snow finally starting to melt. I would say we are down to about 20% snow cover today, and this where the snow drifted or was in the shade. I went out last week on a day that it was pushing 60 degrees and made what I figured was my last chance trek thru my westernmost swamp to flag the property line, more or less. My last day on snowshoes as it happened.

Turned out to be a wise move as the next day my swamps were draining water and no longer safe to walk out on the ice. My intention in flagging the line was to get it as accurate as possible with a hand held compass so I could cut a trail alongside without cutting down anything on my neighbor's land. I think I've got it down within a foot or so, and good thing I kept refining my line of sight because my first attempts had me ten feet or so over on my neighbor's property and that's not a good place to be cutting down brush and limbing trees.

Speaking of neighbors, I finally met my closest neighbor the other day after being here going on nine months. He lives across the road and up a little piece, stopped by to tell me his dog had run off on the warm, sunny day, and asked me to look out for her. These are folks that keep to themselves and seem to have multiple changing residents, probably in order to make ends meet for them all. Never caused me any problem but never made any attempt to be neighborly either. So I was glad to finally make contact and the guy was friendly enough. Anyone who is concerned about their dog's welfare gets added points in my book. And he came back ten minutes later to tell me he had found her.

I'm still not taking my own dogs for long walks, but getting close. Ralph, the most able-bodied one, is frustrated by not being able to go beyond the barn. I've tried it with him a couple of times and had to rescue him from breaking thru the crusted snow and not able to get himself out. But what little snow is left has thawed and frozen down into a fairly solid layer that mostly I can walk on without breaking thru when it's below freezing. So probably I'll take him out with me in the next couple of days.

Missy, on the other hand, has trouble just getting up and down the porch steps and isn't interested in going very far. For awhile she was walking out as far as the barn with me, but the path got so that I was sliding off a foot or two into deep snow and we stopped going even that far. Now we should be able to go for longer walks on the more gentle slopes in my field, but it will take warmer weather before her joints start to loosen up a bit. Ralph ought to be good to go all the way to my back woods this coming week.

It was a long time coming this year. I still tend to think in terms of the golf season and things are probably somewhat on schedule now. At Glenn Shores we normally opened up around the first of April and by that time most of the snow was gone and the ground was thawed so you could mow the greens. The ground here is still frozen but if it doesn't snow a lot again, most of the snow should be gone by the end of the month. And I imagine that the season here is probably two weeks behind Glenn Shores. Never asked anyone, but April 15 might be a target date for opening locally. So glad it's only idle curiosity for me now.

In any case it feels like winter is done, tho I'm not holding my breath on that. Sun has been shining a lot even in below freezing temps. One thing I have noticed here that I have not noticed anywhere else, sometimes the sunset or sunrise effect on the clouds happens all the way around the horizon, like in a big circle, but not overhead. My theory is that this is because we are up high here relative to the land around, and the sky tends to be more clear overhead here while cloulds are seen off in the distance at lower elevations.

My neighbor with the beef cattle appears to have sold them. I haven't heard them for quite a while and the big rolled bales of hay he had stacked by my northeast corner are gone. I'm thinking that the ongoing drought out west and the rising price of beef and hay probably made it a no brainer for him. I do miss hearing those cows bellerin' off in the distance. He is another neighbor I have never met, tho I can see his house when I step out my back door to feed my birds.

The birds may have left with the cattle. I still have some but not like I had all thru the winter. No longer have deer or turkeys, tho the squirrels are still busy as can be. It was just as soon as bare ground started to appear that the flow of visitors to the feeders slowed down. I'm guessing for the birds that a lot of seeds that have been under the snow most of the winter are finally available and a welcome change from my storebought feed. But what the deer could be eating I don't know. Grass is brown and ground is frozen.

And I have no idea how turkeys manage to make it thru the winter. They must require a fair amount of food to keep going, and if all the seed is buried in snow, what could they eat? I dunno. I thought I saw a Robin the other day but it turned out to be a Cardinal. I thought I heard a Crane calling the other evening but it must be way too early for them. Wishful thinking I guess. It has meant a lot fewer trips out to the feeders to keep things going. While the deer were stopping by I was having to go out half a dozen times a day or more to keep food on the ground for the doves. I hear those doves now calling off in the distance, getting set to raise a new generation for peace in the world. I plan on taking my snow tires off this week and hoping it doesn't cause a blizzard. Happy Spring to all!

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MARCH 23, 2015

Bright sun but chilly, got up to 38 degrees today, not enough to melt snow, which still crunches when you walk on it. I think some of it evaporated tho since the air is dry. This morning as I took all three critters out for a short walk to the barn, I thought sure I could hear Sandhill Cranes calling from up the road in a corn field. Seems awfully early for cranes, I don't remember them migrating up over Glenn Shores until something like May. I don't know what cranes eat, but I would guess grass and such much like a goose. Certainly nothing like that around here right now.

There is a state-run area down by Glenn Shores that is managed for Canada Geese, and you can drive thru and see thousands of them. They plant corn fields specifically for them and some of them hang around all winter. Even after you cut corn, there are seeds that spill on the ground for an enterprising goose if the crows don't get there first. But last summer here was so cool and wet that the dairy farmer who owns that corn field had to cut it without it going to full seed. He ground it up for silage and I don't imagine it left a lot for any critters to eat.

So maybe these crane calls were my wishful imagination. I got on with my day, finally put my income tax figuring in motion, patched up another leak in my wellhouse for the umpteenth time, found an old dehydrator at a second hand store that just might work to keep my wellhouse dry if I can ever get the main leaks plugged up. It's old enough to be built to last for fifty years, not much profit in that except for me.

And I went out for another walk late in the day, this time with the new measuring wheel I bought recently which records the distance you travel as you roll it along. This was the first time I felt like there was enough snow gone to let it work. Had to run it over a few patches but it seemed to measure anyway in spite of the bumps, close enough for my purposes anyway.

It was measuring more or less what I had been estimating all these months, but it was good to get confirmation and I found my estimations were off in places that needed adjusting in my mind. I came to half a mile about where I can no longer cross my first swamp back home because of melting ice and where I now have to turn back and head for the one main crossing place left between my second and third swamps. Just as I turned to head back two huge Sandhill Cranes took off from my icey second swamp.

It was spectacular, the two of them making as much commotion as a 747 taking off, wings flapping thunder, ear-splitting raucus criess echoing from the hillsides, and a cloud of indignation left behind at being disturbed. I felt bad that I hadn't known they were there because I surely would have given them all the room they needed to spend the night in peace and quiet. Too late. If they had been here in previous years, they wouldn't have had some idiot out tramping around upsetting hard-working, decent folk just trying to make a living in a meagre economy.

But I got to thinking, if they were looking for a safe place to hang out, even raise a family, I would be cut off from walking on a good part of my back yard. I'm already cut off from the swamps unless I can figure out a way to navigate them in summer weather, but these birds were skittish and took off while I was still in the piney woods heading their way. And I remembered last summer hearing what at the time sounded like a flock of crows harrassing a pair of cranes in that same area. Life is hard.

Well, it will turn out like it turns out, but they are certainly welcome to stay if they are willing to share. I have no idea whether they can sleep in trees safe from predators, and no idea where they build their nests. I think they probably eat alfalfa because I have seen them in my neighbor's hay field, but the ground is still frozen hard and most grass is brown. I guess I need to study up on how their life cycle works.

Anyway, I finished my walk and made over a measured mile. Nothing else of note, but earlier in the day I had talked with my neighbor from across the road again. Strange to go nine months with no contact and then twice in a week. Turns out that all those young people coming and going I thought were roommates trying to scuffle up the rent, were actually his grown kids, and he even has grandkids in the mix.

On top of that he and his wife provide foster care for young kids, which can be stressful and demanding as well as rewarding. Plus he has five dogs, if I got that part right. He said he works construction which often takes him away from home, which may help explain why I haven't gotten to know him before this. I'm sure there is more to the story, as there is with us all, but I am glad to have what seemed like a peculiar neighborhood situation resolving itself, at least this far.

In the meantime I have been setting up a standing desk, that is a desk high enough you stand up to work at it. This is a growing trend with office workers, and is intended to alleviate the back trouble that comes form sitting down all day at a desk job. There are different ways of coming up with a standing desk, most of which seem to have in common costing hundreds of dollars and on up. Me being me, my solution was to take one of my existing desks and set it up on concrete blocks, a five dollar fix so far.

Not perfect tho not bad. I still have to work out the details but so far I have a place to work on one of my crafts projects and I am in process of setting up a computer.to work at standing up. We'll see how much I actually use it in the course of a day. And whether it makes any difference to my aching back. Who knows, if I set one up down by my second swamp, those old long-legged cranes might just come back and settle down.

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April 13, 2015

There was a thunderstorm several nights back in the middle of the night, just after most of the snow had melted. I woke up enough to hope the power didn't go out and to vaguely notice that I didn't remember hearing rain on the roof so loud before. It lasted maybe half an hour and went on its way. The next morning when I went out to get my mail, I discovered that my driveway had washed out big time.

This happened last summer too, several times in fact. The first few times it happened I just raked up the dirt and gravel and hauled it back up in a wheelbarrow to fill in the rut that washed out, but it never filled it completely so the water would just run back down the same place for a repeat performance. It was getting old fast.

So I ordered a load of crushed concrete gravel and filled in the rut higher than it had been before it started washing out. And I got smart and dug run off ditches across the driveway to catch and divert water coming down from off the road, which was my main problem in the first place. It worked all the rest of the summer and on thru the winter, thought I had solved it for the duration, which is a good feeling.

Until this last storm. I had set out a new wireless rain gauge I had picked up on closeout, and I put a tin can beside it to double check. You can't read a tin can from inside the house but they don't lie. The morning after the storm, my fancy rain gauge was reading .07"", that's seven hundredths of an inch, which is about like a heavy dew. After I discovered the Grand Canyon in my driveway I went and measured the water in the tin can, which was almost two inches, and most of that in about half an hour. That's a lot of rain. And so much for high-tech rain gauges.

After thinking about it, I checked the culvert running under my driveway and it was plugged up with dirt and leaves. I had never seen more than a puddle in the ditch running alongside the road and had never given that culvert much thought. But then I hadn't had nearly two inches of rain in half an hour before here either. It's true that my run off channels had collapsed and filled in over the winter, but there's no way they could have handled that much water anyway, and the water never even got to them before it overflowed the plugged up ditch and took out the driveway. Oh well.

I got my tools out of the barn and dug out the culvert. Looked at all that dirt and gravel washed down to the bottom of my driveway that had to be raked and shoveled and wheelbarrowed back up the hill, and decided it was time to go for a walk. My crossing to the back woods was running over the whole width, tho you could cross it in boots with no problem. I found a lot of other things to do until late this afternoon when I finally psyched myself up enough to tackle it again.

I did consider just leaving it like it was and conducting helicopter tours thru it, maybe run white water raft trips when it rained, but I suppose that sort of thing has to be licensed and someone would complain. So I started in on it and got it something like half done before I ran out of material, which was spread all over the bottom of my driveway and actually left that part better than it had been. The rest needs more gravel hauled over from my gravel pile, and first I have to take my snow blower off the lawn tractor, but that won't be nearly as hard as it was putting it on for the first time.

I don't even need to put the mower deck on to haul gravel. The grass is turning green in places but it's far from starting to grow, tho I did hear my neighbor out running his mower while I was working. He likes to mow so maybe he was out pretending his yard needed mowing, I don't know, I had enough to do as it was. Maybe I should have gone over to see if this overlong winter had left him crazed. Might have found him running it up and down his driveway, which I trust didn't wash out like mine.

I also need to get my utility vehicle out to get worked on, and my tractor as well. Either one of those would make short work of my driveway, and a lot of other things that need doing. I did manage lately to put shelves together in my barn and moved all the boxes out there that had been sitting on my dining room table since I moved in last May. Not that I usually eat at my dining room table, but it looks a little more civilized this way.

Spring does seem to finally be here, tho I haven't put away my snow shovels or snow shoes yet. Maybe next month. I found the first flower here today. One of my ongoing frustrations is not being able to post pictures of things I mention here. I'm sure it's simple enough to do once you learn how to do it, but the learning is beyond me right now. All in good time, as with the rest of it, but there is so much to do, or at least that I want to do, that it makes me tired just thinking about it.

Getting out of winter helps a lot. I walked down to where the last patch of snow on the property was this afternoon and it was gone. All this week is forecast to be warm with no dips below freezing. I think the thunderstorm must have thawed out the frozen ground, not exactly an April shower, but it seems to have kicked things loose so springtime can finally get going, better late than never. Watch where you're going in my driveway if you come visit.

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JUNE 21, 2015

Happy Father's Day! Happy Solstice and First Day of Summer! And Happy Birthday to John the Baptist, altho no one knows when he was born for sure but this is the time it is celebrated. John was sent to announce the coming of the Kingdom of God and the arrival of God's Messiah, who just happened to be John's cousin, Jesus of Nazareth. Speaking of Jesus, John said that Jesus would increase while he, John, would decrease. Jesus' birthday is traditionally celebrated around the winter solstice, the point in the year when days start getting longer again. John's birthday at the summer solstice is the point when days start getting shorter again, tho it takes awhile to notice the difference.

Father's Day has always been difficult for me. More times than not while my father was alive it left me with a knot in my stomach, a combination of dread and guilt and obligation and resentment. I imagine my daughter feels much the same, if she thinks about it at all. The family legacy has not been kind. When my father had just died in the hospital, my sister and I were walking thru the hospital parking lot together when a wedding from across the street finished with a stream of cars wildly honking their horns. I thought to myself, they must have announced our father's death on the radio, and bit my tongue as not appropriate to share right then. I did mention it later, and my sister said she was thinking the same thing.

My cousin says the day her own father died, my father's older brother, the grass was greener and the sky was bluer. What is this? Neither of these men were evil, not even mean spirited. They were respectable, respected, responsible, hard working, had careers in service to others, my uncle in the Navy, my father teaching high school. Why was it such a relief to their children when they finally left the planet?

If you had known my father, and some of you did, you would likely have found him seemingly intelligent, kindly, witty, even charming. He liked to conduct a conversation in directions that showed off his apparent knowledge of things, his education, his position in society, such as it was, and his generous spirit, such as it was. He liked to think of himself as a country gentleman, greatly respected and admired by his neighbors. He rarely had visitors. I never did know him to talk about anything real, but folks of that generation didn't anyway. I never knew him to speak of God, but I imagine if he thought there might be an afterlife, he hoped he would run into God so that he might tell Him what He was doing wrong as a favor and how to fix it.

He came out of a childhood of deprivation and poverty. His own father liked to wear rubber boots when he went out drinking, the better to kick his opponent if he got into a fight. He would send my father to the tavern with a pail to get a bucket of beer. He left the family repeatedly and finally died of silicosis from his job of grinding knives when my father was eleven. The family had to go on welfare, which was horrendously shameful in those days.

So for the children in this family to grow up and go to college and raise families, sending their own children to college in turn, was quite an accomplishment. Hats off! That they probably carried on their own father's legacy of narcissism and self-centeredness is understandable, if unfortunate. I didn't really start to get a handle on this until I came back in my fifties to work my father's golf course, which he could no longer manage and was losing.

Among other things I chose to get married again for the third time, which seemed like a good idea at the time, or at least it seemed like something God was putting together. While I would go out of my way to avoid interacting with my father any more than necessary, my wife, a social worker, would go next door to visit with him, her old high school English teacher.  Often times she would come back enraged. Bit by bit she began to understand how it was that I had struggled with dysfunction and depression most of my life.

If the sun was shining and business was good, it was my brother's doing. If it was raining and there were no golfers paying greens fees, it was my fault. There was nothing I could do right. This is the kind of thing you imagine as a teenager and then wake up to reality as an adult. Here I was fifty some years old and finding out those imaginations were real, and they continued to the day he died. I'm grateful to my wife for giving me the outside perspective on this I never had growing up or even after leaving home.

It must be said that I believe my father was doing the very best he knew how to do. He had no way of knowing what a good father was like and gave it his best shot. Maybe that is the best that can be said about my own relationship with my daughter. I would imagine she might say much the same except that in her mind I abandoned her at a most vulnerable age when the marriage ground to dust, something my own father was not guilty of. In effect my daughter has divorced me and I cannot blame her. Life is hard, but it is what it is, cliche or no..

And my third marriage seems to be on the way to official dust as well, tho we continue our pattern of not being able to talk with each other enough to get it done. It has become like living with a one ton bomb in the basement for me. Multiple opportunities for dealing with stress in a grown up way. Some days I do better than ohers. I haven't felt like writing much for some time now, but overall I think I'm doing better than ever and making progress.

The sixty-nine year saga of my relationship with the golf course at Glenn Shores has finally come to an end as far as I can tell. There is no longer any reason for me to have any obligation or responsibility or reason to deal with it. Whatever compensation for working all those stressful years for peanuts has come my way with nothing more expected. Was it worth it? Would I go back if I could and do something else? Silly questions, I know, but I find myself finally for the first time in my life in a happy situation, if you don't count the bomb in the basement, and if you don't count the years living alone in the woods in Oregon..

Would I have gotten here if anything was changed along the way? I can look back to my early childhood and see things that if changed would have meant an entirely different life for me. Yes, I would still have had my father to deal with, but the golf course has been the major influence and formation in my life. If the fellow teacher who told my father about the golf course for sale way back when had gotten a job somewhere else, my whole life would have been radically different, and quite possibly not for good.

I still dream about the golf course. It's one of the ways I know I'm getting too stressed. I still dream about my father as well. These things are so much a part of my life it is hard for me to think myself separate from them. It's what I have to work with as I sort things out these final years. Not all I have to work with, but the noisiest part of the story so far. No one knows the time of their departure, but if I had to enter the betting pool, I would say I have something like sixteen years left if I follow in my father's footsteps, sixteen years to quiet that noise and get things together.

My father had good qualities along with the difficult. He hung in there, he started from nothing and ran that golf course for fifty years before he died. He might not have been the ideal father but he never abandoned ship and he always did what he considered right. I catch myself doing things my father did, certain actions, certain reactions, a way of moving or holding myself or talking with the dogs. I'm getting old, and a lot of times now looking in the mirror, I see my father looking back.

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JUNE 29, 2015

My neighbor and I were standing on my front porch talking when a fairly large white bird flew up from the hay field across the road. My first thought was that it was a Snowy Owl, tho it only took a second to realize that didn't make any sense. Butch identified it as a seagull, which didn't make any more sense to me than a Snowy Owl, but he said they hung out at the dairy farm half a mile north of here, and this farmer is who owns the hayfield across the road. He had just mowed and wind rowed the first cutting, and evidently it turned up good things to eat.

We were discussing this when a bigger, darker bird came into view and circled. My first thought was it was a buzzard but Butch called it a Bald Eagle, and indeed it flashed its white tail when it turned. This was only about 200 feet or so from where we were standing and was by far the closest I have ever been to an Eagle that wasn't in a cage. I once saw a pair of one-winged Bald Eagles in a zoo in Grand Rapids that had been injured and rescued but this guy was out making a living in my front yard, so to speak. Butch was born and raised here and he said it was the closest he had ever been to an Eagle in the wild himself. A day to mark on your calendar.

No Eagles at my feeders in the back yard tho. Lots of Starlings. The young are out of the nest and flying, but haven't figured out how to make a living yet, other than to come to my feeder and beg for food. They will stand on the ground in the midst of scattered corn and seed, squawking with their mouths open while their parents scurry around picking up food and popping it in their mouth. I must say this irks me. I have Grackles and Red Winged Blackbirds and the occasional Cowbird, who all hang out with each other, and they are reasonable.

The Red Winged Blackbirds in particular I don't mind because they live down in my wetland, that's their habitat. They are fairly aggressive, not easily scared, noisy, sort of like Bluejays. I once saw a Red Wing jump up and kick a Turkey in the butt trying to get it to move on. The Turkey just ignored him, being about fifty times bigger. The Red Wings are attractive with their bright orange and red and yellow wing patches, and the Grackles are attractive in their own way with a purple sheen when the lights hits just right and pretty eyes.

If Starlings have any redeeming features, they aren't obvious. They do eat bugs, which is why they are here in the first place. They aren't native and some dimwit imported them to eat bugs and they took off like a wildfire. I have seen a flock of 300 in my cottonwood trees out back when the leaves were off, catching the warming rays of the morning sun and figuring out where they were going that day. Watching them move around in the trees looked like some giant brain scan with thoughts and sensations firing off here and there. Starlings are those birds you see in a flock of a hundred or so that all turn on a dime as if they are controlled by some shared mind.

They may eat bugs, and more power to them, but these in my back yard aren't eating bugs, they are eating me out of house and home, going thru enough in a day to ordinarily last four or five days. They aren't quite as bad a House Finches because they don't fight and squabble, but bad enough. I may have to adopt the same tactics I did with the Finches when they took over and ruined it for everyone else. Stop putting out the good stuff until they take the hint and go away and get a real job.

There have been some good visitors at the feeders. There was a Rose Breasted Grosbeak today and I thought I saw a couple of Baltimore Orioles a while back. A few days ago a Fox Squirrel showed up and tried climbing up to the feeders, bu he was too big. I really like Fox Squirrels and this was the first one I identified for sure up here. No Gray Squirrels so far, and I can do without them. Red Squirrels in abundance but my little guy seems to have staked out the territory and chases off others that show up, tho one day there was a really big one that showed up and intimidated my guy, so i had to go out and intervene. And the Chipmunks are back, bold and quick.

Hares are fairly regular visitors, and if I'm not confused there are also Cottontail Rabbits here as well, but more rare than the Snowshoe Hares. I still don't know if the Hares turn white in the wintertime here. Turkeys stop by often, always by themselves now, don't know why, and only once have I seen an identifiable Tom. No babies yet, and haven't seen a deer for months. I did see a Brown Thrasher at the feeder a month or so back. Goldfinches and Cardinals and Bluejays show up now and again, and the occasional Woodpecker of one kind or another. I haven't seen Sparrows for some time, which seems weird. A Woodchuck stops by now and then.

I had a pair of Canada Geese hanging out in my main swamp for some time and I thought they were nesting, but they disappeared. No ducks lately. There were some Sandhill Cranes hanging out for a while in early Spring, but I haven't heard any for a month or so. One thing I find strange is that I almost never see a Crow at my feeders. Perhaps too close to the house for them, but it didn't bother them that close back at Glenn Shores.

A couple of weeks back I was out in my front yard cleaning up after the dogs when a car stopped down the road, far enough away I couldn't see what they were doing, but someone got out. It was there a minute or so, and I was thinking of walking down to see if they needed help when it started up again, stopped when it got up by me holding a pooper scooper and looking quizzical. It was an old beater, driven by a pretty young woman all smiles with three little girls in the back seat.

She explained that she had stopped to help a turtle cross the road, said that there were people who would try to run over them on purpose, wished me a wonderful day.. God bless you, I said, thank you, bless your day. I would have added that the world and Mother Nature thank her if I had thought of it. People I have known who stop to help turtles cross the road invariably do it not only because they can get hit accidentally, but because they are aware of those folks at the other end of the spectrum who go out of their way to run over critters. What a world, but then it contains delightful people like this young mom with three little girls growing up learning to rescue turtles and spread sunshine, so we're making progress.

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JULY 8, 2015

An old friend from California from 46 years ago, Stormy Rice, stopped by and spent the night before heading on this morning. He is a singer and musician who never hit the big time, but is still playing music and riding motorcycles like he was when we shared a big house in Los Angeles those many years ago. His whole band at the time lived in the house as well as his girlfriend, now his wife. We called it the Clubhouse. It was next door to Richard ""Groove"" Holmes, a well known jazz organist, but he was gone working most of the time and in any case didn't have much use for a bunch of Rock and Rollers.

Stormy grew up in Michigan, which is how we came to know each other at all, tho we didn't meet until we both hit LA thru the mutual friendship of a now mysterious individual named John Knaggs. Actually he was pretty mysterious back then, but I had gone to high school with him and Stormy met him at college. He was just John to us, someone who wanted to break into film, and was decidedly different from everyone else. Certainly not Hollywood bound, and yet that was the lure. I still remember standing at the corner of Hollywood and Vine for the first time, this famous place I had been hearing about all my life, and it was just a street corner. But the thrill of it was tangible.

John was the one that rented the Clubhouse after I had helped him move all his film making gear from East Lansing to LA. I was supposed to be his assistant but I never really had much to do. John was unique in his thinking, often off in his own world, a genius in many ways and highly peculiar in many other ways. I was coming off the wreckage of my first marriage and often off in my own world myself. It never became clear to me just how this whole enterprise was being financed but I didn't have to worry about that.

In fact I didn't have to worry about much of anything as it turned out, which was a good thing because looking back I was highly stressed out and dysfunctional, tho I could complete an assigned task and carry on a conversation. I thought I was there to take care of John and the reverse was probably true. In any case John moved on after something like half a year, but before he left he moved his friend Stormy and his band into the house. I stayed. John disappeared from sight eventually. The best we can figure is he might have ended up with a hit on him, or in the witness protection program, or both.

In another lifetime I might have stayed and become a famous musician. Not this one. When I was a kid we lived in the downriver town of Wyandotte, which was right next door to Ecorse, and I'm sure that if my father had been hip he could have found a blues piano player in Ecorse that would have taught me how to play. As it was my father listened to barbershop quartet music during suppertime and I ground out piano lessons learning to play the Moonlight Sonata until I gave it up and started listening to super watt radio stations out of the South playing rhythm and blues.

Stormy let me sit in with them on piano for awhile, but it was way too little, way too late, something I still regret these many years later. Still, I have that memory and it is a good one. Musicians have greatly influenced my life ever since my teen years, and I would rather talk with musicians or listen to their stories than anyone else. One of my main frustrations in life is that I never really learned to play, never developed that ear and those inner bodily rhythms. I can listen and I can talk about what I'm hearing, but it doesn't come out thru the fingers or the voice. Maybe some day on the other side.

I spent about a year with Stormy and friends. We went on many adventures, some of which I remember, some of which are lost in the fog. These guys were six or seven years younger than me, I was the Old Fart. I turned 30 half a year before I left, a milestone at the time and in retrospect. One of the crossroads of my life took place when Stormy's girlfriend, Greer, asked me in all seriousness, ""Why are you always so negative?"" No one had ever asked me this before, I had never even considered that I was a negative person. Looking back I was depressed and angry, had been for as far back as I can remember, but at the time it just seemed a natural reaction to life, doesn't everyone feel this way?

I took that question with me when I left and I've been answering it ever since. Getting better with the answers, still have a ways to go. Before I left I got a job with the house painter who was painting the house next door where some poor old woman had died and laid there for months before anyone thought to check it out. This guy had the occupational house painter's disease. We would stop off after work for pitchers of beer on his tab, if we were lucky we would get a job working near enough to a bar where we could drink beer for lunch, and on really bad days he knew where there were bars that were open on our way to work. I guess those would be job benefits. Anyway I saved up enough money to buy a bicycle and put an ad in the LA Free Press, the alternative paper, for odd jobs.

Got some very odd offers and worked some highly odd jobs, but managed to scrape together a grubstake. I had pretty much spent a year in LA without a nickel in my pocket living off of the generosity of good people. I still hope that I was able to contribute a little something along the way, but a lot of this was a one way street and I wasn't all that aware of it at the time. In the end I packed whatever I had in a backpack and someone, Stormy I'm sure, took me out to the freeway heading north and dropped me off at an entrance ramp. This was just before Charlie Manson did his thing. Good timing.

That was 46 years in the past. I saw Stormy again maybe 15 years ago, we're both fuzzy on that, when I was serving time at the golf course and he was on a trip back to his home stomping grounds. This time when we met in front of Henry's General Store it was a couple of old geezers giving each other a big hug. We're both doing better than the last time we saw each other. He's still got the same girlfriend, now wife, and same motorcycle, now a classic, he had 46 years ago. He's not rich and famous, but he's got a good piece of the California dream. We listened to a CD he put together of his current group, some of who go back to olden times, tho not of the Clubhouse. A good basic blues band with rock and roll roots, white boys for sure, but they've got it and they're not giving it up for what's on the charts today. Hats off!

We took a walk thru my back woods and he pronounced it ""a good parcel"". Which it is. He was flabbergasted at all the stuff I still have unpacked and jamming up space everywhere, house and barn, shaking his head and still remembering me heading out with everything I had in a backpack. Lots of water under the bridge and over the dam since then. He appreciates what living in northern Michigan means, having done it himself, but there is no way he would want to pick up and move back here. And no way I could ever head back to California. We talked, we reminisced, we compared notes, we ate at Mr. Pibs. In the end there wasn't a whole lot more to say than, ""God bless you, take care."" God bless you, indeed, Stormy, my friend. You helped get me here where I am today.

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JULY 15, 2015

It was getting dark when I quit mowing tonight, but it was rain starting to fall that ended my day. That was why I was out mowing in the first place, to beat this rain that showed up about as forecast. In many ways it feels like I'm back on the golf course. I worked many a day there mowing until it was too dark to see where the line was, and it was my favorite time of day to work, especially after my brother finally agreed to have all golfers off the course by sunset. We closed the golf course something like five years ago, tho we continued to maintain the grounds for appearance, but even now as I'm mowing, I'm enjoying the absence of golfers.

This summer I'm mowing about three times as much as I was last year. This might seem strange in that for the last several years at the golf course I didn't mow my yard at all, but there I was trying to stay sane by pretending I was living out in the middle of the woods somewhere, anywhere other than where I was. By the time I left it was getting difficult to see my little house behind all the tree branches and weeds and berry bushes.

Now I'm living right where I want to be so it's a different story, and even tho I'm not living in the middle of woods, it's close enough. If I took the notion I could set up a tipi or a wigwam or even a log cabin in my back woods and live there for real. I'm guessing there aren't too many people who would consider that a desirable option, but for me it's like money in the bank.

When I left Los Angeles forty-six years ago hitch hiking with all my gear in a backpack, destination unknown, I had two places in mind that I wanted to check out. The first was the Hoopa Indian Reservation, also spelled Hupa, a tribe in northwestern California.  I can't remember now why I thought this would would be a special place or how I happened to hear of it, but in any case I made my way there with my thumb.

I probably expected to find Native Americans living out in the forest, hunting and gathering and generally doing cool, back-to-the-land things. The only image I retain is of a row of similar modest but modern frame-built houses on a street, and out in front of one was a real Indian mowing his lawn with a gas-powered push rotary mower, wearing a tee shirt and Bermuda shorts. The only thing more incongruous in my mind would have been if he had been on a riding mower, but his yard wasn't big enough for that.

The next twenty years I spent in Oregon in places that either didn't have a yard other than the forest, or if they did it was the kind where you didn't have to do much of anything. And when I moved back to Michigan, it was at the golf course where I could jump on a tractor that cut a fifteen foot swath and make a couple of passes around my house.

But now here I am in LeRoy where even tho folks are down to earth and realistic, they mow their lawns.  Part of my deal in getting this parcel included an old beater Troy Bilt riding lawn mower with a snow thrower for winter.  So far it has done the job other than a stretch of really steep bank alongside the road where it gets tippy and I use a self-propelled rotary mower that also came with the place. Except the piece next to my neighbor, Rex, which he kindly offered to mow for me with his more stable mower of much more recent years.

But I think about that Hoopa Indian sometimes when I'm out mowing my yard. Who wudda thunk? And not only mowing my yard, but now mowing a much bigger area of field that would be growing up anywhere from waist high to over my head if I was not mowing it. Some of this I had intended to mow with my tractor and a brush hog, and if I ever get my tractor running right again I may still mow once or twice a year on parts that I'm letting grow up into tall grass and wildflowers for the bees and critters. But the lawn tractor can't handle grass that tall.

I would estimate that I am now mowing something like three acres with my riding mower, maybe another two that I'm letting grow wild for now. A lot of it I don't cut short, raise the mowing deck all the way up so the flowers and little critters still can make it. But I cut trails thru it all, cut close for the walking pleasure of me and the doggies and whoever else happens by. It's a pretty rough ride but it's like creating a giant landscape painting and highly rewarding for me. My goal is to be able to walk all my trails barefoot but I'm still digging out roots and stobs as I find them.

 

Last summer I was just trying to keep things to where folks driving by wouldn't be shaking their heads and clucking their tongues. Oftentimes I would hear my neighbors mowing when I was trying to stretch my own schedule out a few more days, and I would think, man, those guys sure do mow a lot, what's wrong with them. This summer I find myself often going out and mowing just for the pleasure of it, not long days at a time, but a couple hours here, a couple hours there the next day, a sort of meditation with ear muffs. I'm not mowing a particular spot more often, just a lot more spots to mow.

I dunno, maybe I caught something from my neighbors, maybe it's something in the water. Maybe I'm just finally getting over all those years of drudgery on the golf course. Some Amish folk moved in two houses down and they have goats. A dozen goats would probably do a lot of this mowing for me, especially with some sheep thrown in, but for now I think I'll stick with my old lawn tractor as long as it and my back hold out.

Some good friends from Grand Rapids spent an afternoon here and helped me set things up to include pictures in these stories. That was a big step forward for me but I'm still climbing the learning curve. We'll see how this goes.

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JULY 23, 2015

My first mystery is something I noticed on going out to feed the birds around sun up. Something like a giant fan running off to the east or south-east, maybe a mile away or so. Not every morning, but often enough, tho lately I've been running my own window fan to cool the house down in the night and that covers the sound I'm talking about. It isn't super loud, but it sounds like if you were living right next to it at six in the morning, you wouldn't be sleeping in.

I've also heard it at 2:00 in the afternoon, again not loud, you might not even notice it if you weren't listening, sort of like freeway noise. Could there be giants living in LeRoy running a giant window fan or vacuum cleaner? Seems like I would have heard about that by now if so. It doesn't sound like farm equipment working, especially the same sound over and over. Maybe a renegade Amish with a huge leaf blower? That doesn't seem likely either, especially since there aren't any leaves to blow until fall.

There's the potato factory in town, but I've never heard anything going by it other than big rigs idling while getting loaded. If's right in the middle of town and I would think townsfolk might have something to say about that loud a noise at 6:00 in the morning. I've thought about getting in my car and tracking it down like a storm chaser, but so far my motivation at dawn hasn't been strong enough.

My second mystery was also a sound but only happened once, and this was around dusk. I was in my back yard when out of nowhere a giant animal sound, almost certainly a bird, arose out of my big swamp and echoed off the hills. I'm talking loud. Cranes have a very loud call that you can hear a mile away, but this was louder. Cranes have kind of a rough squawking cry, but this was more melodious, kind of warbling, maybe something a ten foot tall turkey might do, or a turkey with a bullhorn. I walked down to the near side of the swamp and didn't see anything. Didn't want to walk around in my back woods to get closer and scare it off. Haven't heard it since, no idea what it was.

My third mystery is again a sound, and I can hear it right now as I write this. This one is more electrical in nature, and I can only hear it certain places inside my house. It's like my refrigerator or well pump running off in the distance, but those both run continuously until they shut off. This sound is intermittent, off and on, and I can't hear it now. The closest thing I can compare it to is an arc welder being used far enough away that you can't hear the spark, but close enough to hear the hum of the transformer. It runs for a few seconds, then stops, runs again and stops, then runs for a minute.or more.

I mostly notice it in my office where I am right now. It's over my garage and close to my circuit box in the basement, but when I go down in the basement or listen down the stairs, nothing. In fact usually when I get up to try tracking it down, I no longer can hear it. Sometimes I can hear it near my front door, and there is a transformer on a pole outside, but when I open the door, nothing.

This is not new to me, tho the electrical sound is. There is a mysterious earth sound that usually few people can hear which initially was called the Taos Hum, because it was first noticed in New Mexico.  But it gradually became noticed in more places and eventually most people heard it as more like a diesel engine working off in the distance or even underground. Sometime it booms and has gotten so loud in places that it keeps people awake at night and the police switchboard is kept busy with people calling about it.

No one has an explanation, tho occasionally an official will attribute it to something like a power plant in the neighborhood that has been working for 75 years without making undue noise, and no one believes it. I heard this noise at Glenn Shores for years, off and on, mostly at night, tho it's like traffic noise, you don't usually notice it unless something calls your attention to it. I figure it's an earth noise and part of the ongoing earth changes like the unusual weather patterns world wide. What makes me pay particular attention to this noise here is the electrical nature of it, which I have not heard before.

My last mystery is not sound related, and I could have solved it if I had not been so lazy. I was looking out my back window early in the morning where I watch for birds and other critters coming to my feeder. Way at the back of my yard was a hare eating grass, There were some branches of a bush in the way, but I could see a low-lying object on the ground about a foot away from where he was eating. It was dark and kind of squatty and a bit lumpy, not moving. I got out my bird watching binoculars and still couldn't make out just what it was.

Then the thought hit me, I wonder if it's a tortoise. If they have been running a race all these thousands of years since Aesop wrote the story down, they must have worked out a routine by now where they stop and take a break and grab something to eat. Or they could just have become friends hanging out. If it was a tortoise, I wouldn't be able to see it moving if it was eating grass a hundred feet away.

I thought about going down to see but I didn't want to scare off the hare so I decided to wait and see if the other object, or tortoise, also left when the hare did. And I forgot about it, didn't think to check until the next day, and it was gone. I did walk down there then, and there was nothing at all where I had seen them. But there were a few branch tips with leaves off my cottonwood trees lying around elsewhere. Hmmm.

Could what I have seen by the hare have been a branch tip casting a shadow with the rising sun? Then why wasn't it still there where I had seen it? Where did it go and how did it get there? I wish now I had taken a picture, but it would have been blurry and with a bush screening it, sort of like bigfoot pictures you may see from time to time. I wish now I had thought to keep looking until the hare left. I'll admit it is not likely to have been a tortoise, but it's not impossible. And it could have been a plain ol' turtle. I've got swamps, I've surely got some of those. For now it will have to remain an unexplained mystery along with the giant fan and the giant bird and the phantom welder in my basement.

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AUGUST 14, 2015

It would have been in June of 1969 that I hit the road hitchhiking north out of Los Angeles with my belongings on my back. As related elsewhere, I had two destinations in mind to visit, the first being the Hoopa Indian Reservation, which turned out to be not at all what I had expected. The second was also a group of people living out in the woods in southwest Oregon, and they turned out to be more than I expected. I don't know who told me about them, I only had directions to find them, and they apparently didn't have a name.

But when I finally found them, about seven miles off the freeway north of Grants Pass, up a logging road,  LIFE Magazine was there shooting a cover story. I have a copy of that magazine, which was published July 19, 1969 and was titled The Youth Communes: New Way of Living Confronts the U.S. The cover shows a group of six people, around my age of thirty at the time, standing in front of a primitive log structure with three young girls in front. They are dressed in what might have passed for festive clothing in the old West a hundred years earlier. Everyone has long hair and the men have beards.

They didn't dress like that all the time. My Levis and tee shirts fit right in, but it was still a huge culture shock for the locals to see a longhair. We would go to town to get food and supplies, and people would stop in the street and turn around and stare with their mouth open.The day after the LIFE Magazine was published was the first landing of mankind on the moon, and it was quite a contrast. Two or three weeks later the Manson murders happened and even tho longhairs weren't considered freaks so much in the big city, it was probably a good time to be gone from Los Angeles.

I had no intention of staying any longer than it took to learn whatever skills they had in living out in the woods. There was a core group of maybe 25 or 30 people, some of whom came and went, and another group of visitors, which included me, and sometimes got up around 20 or 25 people, mostly passing thru, but also some like me hanging around. I set up a campsite off by myself and as it was summer I didn't need a shelter other than a tarp if it rained, which it mostly didn't. No one seemed to mind me being there and I helped out with the work and projects.

The magazine article didn't give the location of this group but after it came out there was a noticeable increase in visitors. Mostly this was a positive in that they brought food and money and supplies with them, probably considering the group effort as beneficial and wanting to support it. But it was a lot of people and sometimes things seemed like they were getting out of hand. As it got toward the end of summer and the visitors were dwindling, I was told that I either needed to join up with the group officially or move on.

I wasn't ready for this. I hadn't learned all that I wanted, but at the same time I had an aversion to groups and joining, especially where there seemed to be more dreams and idealism than hard, practical reality. Many of them referred to themselves as The Family, which brought to my mind Charlie Manson, not the best association. But they were good people, some of them hard working and down to earth, some not so much. I just wanted it to go on like it had, but there was a meeting at which I had to decide then and there, and I chose to stay, for twelve years as it turned out. I never did call the place The Family, that always embarrassed me. I called it Brushy Gulch, an apt name, which is where it was located on the side of a mountain some miles west out of Sunny Valley.

That first winter they let me stay in a tipi they had set up near a cabin. Mind you, this was just out in the woods on land that was not good for much other than growing trees for timber, and it had been logged over. There was no electricity, no running water, only primitive logging roads, and thankfully no zoning. Some folks had built nice log cabins, some were put together shacks. The main building was called The Lodge and it was an eight sided log building with a firepit and circular seating in the middle, ledges around the walls where people could sleep, and a kitchen area off to the side with a huge wood cook stove they had gotten out of an old local stage coach hotel. This is where people ate together and hung out.

The tipi was okay, but I hadn't had time to build up a winter's supply of firewood and most of what I got out of the woods was wet, because in the wintertime it rained. A lot, tho occasionally it snowed. A tipi is basically a conical tent with an opening at the top to let the smoke of your fire out. But you have to let air in for your fire too, so the tent is set up a couple of inches above the ground and the draft comes in underneath. This would be miserable to live with so you have a circular liner inside maybe four foot tall that goes all the way to the ground and the air hits it coming in and rises up over the top.

When it snowed I would have to go out and shovel away the snow from the bottom of the tipi so the air could get in. I never could get a decent fire going with the wet wood and ended up putting a tin stove in the middle with a stovepipe. Not as romantic but a lot more practical, tho you needed a kerosene lamp to see at night. I didn't much care for living so close to people but it got me thru that winter. The next winter I moved way up high away from everyone and set up a tent with that same tin stove.

It was obvious to me that this enterprise wasn't going to succeed with no dependable source of income and I started to voice that opinion. Response was mixed, but this was a very hard place to make a living and these were for the most part college educated folks not well suited to working in a sawmill. I heard about this job called tree planting and got information where to apply over on the coast about a hundred miles away. It was the time when the job was just starting to switch over from mostly older bums and drunks to longhairs, and I got a job with some skepticism as to whether I could hack it. Was some of the hardest work in the roughest conditions of any I've done but I stuck it out and got good at it. They provided room and board and transportation as you moved from job to job, and I paid off the rain gear and caulked boots, called ""corks"", that I got on credit when I started so I could work, and saved up enough to get a hundred dollar car to make it back and forth from Brushy Gulch as the work ebbed and flowed.

I stayed in that line of work, reforestation, for the twenty years I stayed in Oregon. I planted over a million trees, did pre-commercial thinning of young timber trees, eventually ended up working with an outfit that did prescribed burning of logging slash all over the Pacific Northwest, fought and mopped up forest fires as needed, and generally helped in the replacement end of the logging industry. I continued living up Brushy Gulch for twelve years when I wasn't off working somewhere, and when I left I had been living alone on those 240 acres for three years all by myself. That's another story.

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AUGUST 15, 2015

Treeplanting was a seasonal occupation. Mostly spring and fall, some in the winter when the weather allowed, and summers mostly off. It was just too hot and dry then for tree seedlings to survive. Later on I got into other kinds of work in the woods, but I started out as a tree planter and stayed at it off and on the whole twenty years I was in Oregon. Planting trees commercially is hard work. I figure I planted over a million trees in the time I was there.

A crew of tree planters works as a team, much like a sports team. A contract specifies a specific number of acres that are to be planted with a certain number of trees in specific spacing, usually something like 7' x 7', tho working a logged over piece of land on the side of a mountain it was impossible to get neat rows in a grid like on a checkerboard. So you came as close to the specs as you could while working with reality and working as fast as you could. It all had to work out on paper and there was an inspector.

There was a lead man, who set the pace, and a tail man, who ran the newbies and cleaned up mistakes so the job would pass inspection. Everyone else was spread out in between, the size of a crew varying but maybe averaging a dozen, more or less. You might picture all these people stretched out in a straight line seven feet apart moving together like a ruler across a page, but the reality of the woods meant that you often could only see the man ahead of you and you had to follow his line whether it zigged or zagged around obstacles and obstructions. There was some leeway, but you couldn't plant too close to the next tree, nor too far away. If you looked at it from above in a helicopter, the line of planters would have been moving forward as a jagged diagonal, lead man in front, tail man bringing up the rear.

You carried something like two to five hundred small seedling trees with bare roots in a big bag strapped around your waist. You had a planting hoe, called a ho-dad, tho some said ho-dag, which had a long, narrow blade maybe four inches wide and a foot and a half long, something like a mattock. You would pick your best spot, swipe away a square foot of grass and forest litter down to bare dirt, swing the hoe like a splitting mall and yank up on the handle to open up a deep hole in the ground, pull out a seedling tree by its top and whip it into the hole so its roots went down straight, green side up as they said, pull the hoe out of the ground and slam the hole shut with it, giving it a final kick closed as you ran to the next spot seven feet ahead.

When you knew what you were doing, you could plant something like 1200 trees a day, more or less, depending on conditions and size of the trees. In rocky ground you might be hard pressed to get 500 trees planted in a day, but under ideal conditions I have planted 2000 trees in six hours and called it a day. On average you might be planting something like three trees a minute, and you did this on the run working just this side of running out of breath, maybe something like running a marathon or playing basketball in the NBA. Government tree planters didn't work that hard, which is maybe why the governments hired commercial planters to plant their trees.

When you started out as a newbie, they would put you at the back of the line where the tail man could show you what to do and watch over you. You had to plant your trees the prescribed distance from the line of trees the man in front of you was planting, and pretty quickly you learned that it was much easier to keep up if you could follow the planter rather than searching for the little trees he had planted. The first day I badly bruised a tendon in my right arm from slamming the hole shut with the hoe, and had to switch over to planting left handed. I just kept doing it that way and it was years before I realized I was planting backwards.

However many trees you could load up in your bag, when the lead man got to wherever they were half gone he would holler out, ""Reverse!!!"" Now the tail man became the lead man for the second half of the run back to the landing, and if you were a poor newbie trying to keep up and not get run over by angry planters, you had your work cut out for you.

I soon learned that being at the back of the line was not a good place to be, unless you were the tail man, and I started moving up as quickly as I could. This involved assessing the skills of the man in front of you, working on your own skills and pace so that you started to push him until finally he would say, ""Why don't you go ahead of me."" I speak of planters as men because they all were when I started. Later on the occasional woman would come along, and they were always treated as equals in my experience. Any woman who can hold her own in work that most men can't handle gets a tip of the hard hat, but it would be silly to speak of men and women tree planters to be politically correct. Maybe in the government crews.

Eventually I worked my way up the line until I was #5. The lead man was a young, skinny Indian from British Columbia who was in the lead because he could outplant everyone else. The next two guys were white guys in their 50's, that being remarkably old in reforestation, as it is in professional sports. All three of them lived from pay day to pay day, when they could pay off their food and cigarette tab, get drunk, and lose the rest of their money playing poker with the foreman. Transportation was provided and everything else went on the tab. That was their life.

The fourth guy was more my age, and I could tell he was up there on bluster, wanting the glory of being #4 but not really wanting to work any harder than he had to, maybe hanging back a little and thinking of himself as a second lead man. Most of the guys behind were just putting in their time, didn't care as long as they weren't back with the newbies. I started pushing this guy hard, one step behind him. kabam, kabam, kabam, three trees a minute, four trees when I could, five, kabam! Finally he just stopped and turned around and said, ""Why don't you go in front of me.""

Yes! I had no interest in pushing the front three guys. They were the foundation of the crew, the elite, and they genuinely deserved respect and admiration for what they came out and did day after day after day. I felt like they had watched me work my way up to plant with them and were not sorry to have me there. I tried to make their work easier for them whenever I could and roomed with some of them in the motels we stayed in out on the road. Interesting to hear your room mate get up in the middle of the night, go to the refrigerator, chug down a beer without stopping, and go back to sleep. Never missed a day's work.

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AUGUST 18, 2015

Tree planters generally take the summer off until the rains and cooler weather start in late summer or early fall. They may find other work but many looked on it much like the summer vacation you always took from school. I was looking forward to the end of my first season, probably much like professional athletes look forward to the end of theirs after a long, hard grind. My plan was to visit Michigan from my new home in Oregon. This was in 1970 and it had been five years since I had been back there to visit, seven since I had moved out of the state.

I had saved my money and bought a 1953 Buick for a hundred dollars. The reverse gear was starting to go out and you had to be careful how and where you parked it. This was when the expression that something weighed about as much as a Buick meant something. You didn't want to have to push it back out of some angled parking spot if the reverse gear wouldn't engage enough to move it. It had a big straight eight engine that started and ran fine, but you had to carry a gallon of cheap oil with you and stop every couple of hours to put more in, It was a great cruiser and would really boogie on down the road. It occurs to me that now I am once again driving a 17 year old car with a reverse gear that is acting funny, tho it doesn't use oil and I can push it by myself if need be. Not as much fun as that old Buick tho.

Anyway, off I went back to Michigan and my old stomping grounds at Glenn Shores. Don't remember much about my visit there, but it probably involved my father trying to talk me into staying and going back to work for him on the golf course. Maybe not. By then my father had lucked on to a peculiar old guy named Jake who lived in a travel trailer which he would take to Florida in the off season. He read books and talked to himself and didn't have much use for people. I liked him.

But in any case, coming to Glenn Shores just solidified in my mind how much I liked Oregon, and after a suitable stay I headed back.I don't remember the trip back until I got to South Dakota. I don't remember freeways, but if they were built at the time I wouldn't have been on them, at least not once I got west of the Mississippi River. That old Buick loved country roads and those big tires would smooth out the bumps and hug the curves. Not that there were a lot of curves in the eastern part of the state. That was flatland, farm land, cattle country. It was where you started seeing more cowboy hats and fewer straw hats the further west you drove. Maybe two thirds of the way west was the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, tho there wasn't anything in particular to see other than dry grassland and barbed wire and the occasional cow. There are rivers that run thru South Dakota but I wasn't by one here.

In fact I wasn't by much of anything and it was getting dark. This was not a main highway, there wasn't a lot of traffic, so I found a place where you could pull off the road a ways and set up camp, basically just lay out my sleeping bag, didn't build a fire. I definitely didn't want to start a range fire, and there wasn't much around in the way of wood anyway. Lots of grass and you could hear cattle off in the distance. An occasional car or truck would go by but I was pretty much out of sight. The stars came out, and this was back when you could see stars in the sky, especially if you were west of the Mississippi.. Feeling like I was getting closer to home I drifted off to a peaceful sleep.

At dawn I woke up and was lying there in my sleeping bag gathering my thoughts for the day. It was chilly and I was in no hurry to jump up and get going. I heard a car slow down and stop next to where my car was parked. This was a Sunday morning. Four young Indians in their early 20's got out of their car and started walking around my car, looking in the windows. I figured they were likely going home after a night out partying, stopped to see why this car was parked on their land, maybe to see if there was anything of value for the taking. I figured I could be in trouble.

I was maybe a hundred feet from my car and they hadn't spotted me yet, but surely they would. I sat up and called out, got my legs out of the bag but didn't get up. Thankfully I had worn my clothes to bed. I had a knife under my pillow but I left it there. This was not the time to be in any way belligerent or threatening. They walked over.

Before they could say anything, I started talking peace. Literally. Not any big explanation or ""Hi, how are you,"" just ""Peace! Peace!"" I realize that sounds a bit like some hokey old western movie, but it seemed the most appropriate thing to say at the time, and some 45 years later still seems like it was my best shot at coming out of this in one piece.

I could tell they had never seen a longhair before, maybe not even in their own people, maybe not since Custer tho I was hoping that wouldn't come up. In any case they seemed to be reserving judgement while they figured out just what kind of animal I was. I told them what I was doing, where I had been, where I was going, and that I had just stopped for the night to sleep, was getting up and would be on my way. They listened. They seemed to be accepting that I meant them no harm, no disrespect.

But then the biggest guy of all, who wore glasses but was taller than me and probably weighed twice as much, just couldn't stand it any longer and fell on me like a brick wall collapsing and smacked me upside my jaw. ""Peace! Peace!"" I hollered. There was nothing else I could do, I was totally at their mercy. Then the obvious leader of this group intervened. He was not as big, but still built like a Coke machine.

He pulled the big guy off me, stood him up, punched him hard in the stomach, causing him to break wind and bend forward in pain. Then he punched him hard in the face, breaking his glasses. Not a word was spoken by anyone. He looked at me, nodded, led the way back to their car, the other three following. They got in it and left without looking back. Judgement had taken place, justice had been served, an apology had been given, all in a silent minute. I was lucky to be alive.

Mount Rushmore was not all that far away and it had been my intention to stop and see it. At the time I was not aware of just how horribly offensive this monument is to our original Americans, what a blasphemy it is in the middle of their stolen sacred ground. That the Crazy Horse memorial is under construction does not begin to make up for this, may be adding insult to injury for some. In any case, while looking at this admittedly impressive sculpture, I was wondering if my jaw was broken. It hurt for days. Perhaps another bit of justice, I don't know. My guess is that five years from then, all four of those young men I encountered had hair longer than mine.

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AUGUST 23, 2015

Most people decide to do something like go out and haul a load of brush, they climb on whatever piece of equipment they are using, start it up, pile the brush, haul it, unload it, and go do something else or possibly reward themselves with a break and beverage of choice. My days often don't go that smoothly.

Over the summer I have cleared probably a quarter mile of trails, perhaps more. I don't know if that sounds like a lot or a little, but in any case we aren't talking about hacking a way thru the wilderness. Maybe a third of this fifteen acres is planted in pine trees, mostly Red Pines but some White Pines. I still haven't figured an estimate of how many there are but it has to be in the thousands. Most of them are planted in rows, so it is a fairly easy choice to figure out which place between the rows would make the best and easiest trail. And going across the rows, the deer often have figured out the best way. I played barefoot in the woods when I was a kid, and started clearing trails 45 years ago when I moved into the woods in Oregon. It's still one of my favorite things to do.

The trees haven't been taken care of since they were planted, tho someone did a good job planting and they had a good survival rate. They have never been thinned out and they have never been trimmed. This means you have a bunch of trees growing too close together for optimal growth and there are dead lower branches sticking out everywhere in the way of walking. Clearing trail thru these pines mostly consists of lopping off those branches and getting them out of the way. Pine needles build up under the trees and keep most brush and grass and weeds from growing, which is a big plus, and they are soft to walk on barefoot once you get the sticks out of the way. I really like piney woods, there's a good vibration to them.

Thirty years ago I probably could have cleared that quarter mile in a day by myself with a chainsaw, and with a fire crew it would have taken an hour. Here we are talking all summer, not that I was out there every day or anything close to it. I don't like using a chain saw now any more than I have to, and it's a lot quieter and more peaceful to take a pair of hand loppers for everything up to maybe an inch and a half thick. I also acquired some battery powered equipment this summer to maintain the peace. Not nearly as fast but a lot more enjoyable. Then there are the branches on the ground to deal with, and two or three hours is about my limit now with this kind of work before it gets tedious and I get short of breath.

Yes, I could just leave them on the ground and sometimes I do, tossing them off to the side, but where they are too thick I pile them out of the way for later. One of the reasons I sought professional help to get my old Workmaster three wheel utility vehicle going early this summer was to haul branches. Put in a new starter, cleaned out the gas tank, put in new lines and filter and it worked fine. Until it stopped working. Many days of psyching myself up but took the carburetor out, not an easy job since it's down under the seat. I unstuck the needle valve in the float bowl and it started right up.

The vehicle has a small bed on it, but I really wanted to hook up the snowmobile trailer I hauled up here along with everything else. To do that I needed a ball hitch for the Workmaster. I know I have one somewhere but it could take months to find and would be a lot easier just to go buy another one. The closest place for the size I needed is 26 miles away. I don't like driving that far any more than I have to, and it took many days to psych myself up and come up with other needed things to justify the trip.

I had measured the hole in the hitch on the Workmaster but when I finally got the ball, the shaft wouldn't quite go thru the hole. I don't have a drill anywhere near that big, so I figured it would probably be easier to take a round file and enlarge the hole, which wasn't quite round, than it would be to get an even smaller shaft that 26 miles away. Took me days to psych myself up for that too, working down in cramped quarters, but finally the shaft went thru.

Until it hit the shoulder on the shaft above the threads which was bigger, and no way was I going to be able to file out the hole that big. Yes, I could have seen that if I had looked before I bought it. I solved that one the same day at the LeRoy Hardware store in town with big washers as spacers at forty cents a pop. Finally I was ready to hook up the trailer and go to work. Started up the engine and slowly backed out of the barn, everything finally coming into place. I made about three feet when it quit running again.

At least I knew what to do this time and how to do it. The problem was psyching myself up to do it since mechanics is tied with housework on my list of things I dislike doing. It took days again, but I finally did it. Started with no problem, made it all the way out to the trailer and hooked it up. It was a tight fit because those spacers I had used raised the ball up to where the trailer hitch barely had room to squeeze in over the ball. I wasn't sure I would be able to lift the latch enough to get it off again, but I figured I would cross that bridge when I came to it. I was good to go and the trailer worked like a charm. I didn't even have to air up the tires after sitting for over a year.

Piled up a big load of branches on the trailer and hauled it back by the house for use in getting a good fire going in my fire pit. Pine is not the greatest wood for wood stoves and small branches are not practical for long lasting fires, but it's made to order for something quick and easy. I unloaded the trailer with no problem and figured as long as I was on a roll I would go down the hill by my crossing to the back woods and get a small pile of apple branches I had cut last summer so I could get in to a rock pile. Apple wood is near the top of the list of good firewood, and anyway I wanted to make sure the Workmaster would pull the trailer back up the hill before I loaded up a heavy load.

Shadows were lengthening but this wouldn't take long and everything was finally smelling like roses. Until I tried snaking the trailer thru a couple of trees that were pretty close together with another small tree in the way. It became apparent that I was wedged in when I suddenly couldn't go any farther and couldn't back up. And the trailer hitch wouldn't come off the ball. Hmmm. Back to the house on foot to get my big pry bar and some big wrenches to take the ball off if the hitch wouldn't pry off. Pry bar didn't work. Loosened up the nut which apparently released enough pressure to let the hitch pry off with some scraping. Parked the trailer out of the way, figured out where I could get thru later if I cut down a huge patch of berry bushes taller than me, and loaded up those apple branches in the Workmaster so as not to end the day in defeat. Built a fire and sat and drank a well-deserved beer, maybe a couple. All's well that ends well.

Yes, I was going to drive the 26 miles back to Menards for the smaller ball hitch, but that was another day, and yes, I did find the last one hidden behind several misplaced larger ones, turning a possible defeat into victory yet again. Yes, the Workmaster pulled the trailer back up the hill, at least empty, when I went back to get it with the new hitch. I made a couple more loads of branches and it worked fine, unhitched the trailer with no problem. And no, I haven't cut down those berry bushes, but I've thought about it some. With berry bushes you need to pull the roots out or you have to do it all over again later. Just have to psych myself up to do it. All in good time.

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SEPTEMBER 23, 2015

Happy Equinox! I meant to go out at sunset tonight and see if the sun was setting in the middle of LeRoy Road but it slipped my mind until too late. Oh well, I'll have another chance in six months, if the sky is clear. Don't hold your breath on that one. Today is when day and night are equal in length by definition, but the Weather Underground almanac has the day seven minutes longer than the night. And I don't remember fall coming on the 23rd in previous times. Seems like all the seasons used to change on the 21st. Oh well, what do I know. It's officially fall.

Here's my latest acquisition. It's a Fiskars Staysharp Max mower, a hand push reel mower engineered for the 21st century and not like your grandfather's mower, unless your grandfather was a greenskeeper and used a similar looking push mower to mow greens. When my father bought the golf course in 1946, they had been using a push mower to mow greens for twenty years. He bought a motorized mower but kept the old one around, and when I was fourteen the motorized greensmower broke down and I had to mow the greens with the old push mower.

I thought about that today quite a lot while I was trying out my new mower. The greensmower had more blades for a finer cut and pushed harder, but the experience was still similar. Our ten greens totaled about an acre in area and I'm guessing that's about what I mowed today. Not all at once. I did it in three sections, with a good rest in between. This mower is built to be easier to push than the old standard lawn mower, but it still was a workout going uphill or thru thick grass. I didn't expect to get it all done today but once I got going on the last and hardest round, it seemed a shame not to finish.

Why would I do this when I've got a perfectly functional riding lawn mower for the main part and a self-propelled walking mower for the banks too steep to ride on? My back has been hurting more than usual for some weeks now, keeping me awake at night and making it difficult to bend down and pick up a piece of paper off the floor. I haven't been abusing it in particular and I attribute this to added stress and the resulting doldrums, leading to not doing much this summer in the way of hard work. I haven't even been walking every day and I'm really out of shape.

You might ask why, if my back was hurting more than usual, would I buy a machine I have to push with my back? I have found that some hard work, like cutting and splitting firewood, actually makes my back feel better. Since I'm not burning wood right now, I don't have the motivation to cut wood like you get when your woodpile is empty and snow is on the way. But the grass keeps on growing, and if you don't keep it mowed it gets harder to mow, so the motivation is built in and ongoing. Or so I figure.

I've been mowing my fast-growing front yard with an old push mower I already had, and it's kind of fun, and easier than getting the riding mower out of the garage for five minutes work. But I wouldn't want to mow my whole acre of yard with it. This new mower is three inches wider and pushes twice as easy. It was pricey and I thought about it for three days, but finally decided to consider it as an exercise machine, and one that I might actually use, unlike the ones I have gathering dust in my basement, some still in the box. This new mower does a better job of mowing than my riding mower and I can mow barefoot, but it won't mulch leaves.

When I finished up tonight, I was tired, but it was a good tired. I still hurt, but not as bad, and I could move easier, and I had actually worked up a sweat several times over. I've never worked up a sweat on the riding mower, and usually when I climb down off it my back is hurting worse than when I began. So it's a good start, but time will tell whether I keep this going or let it fall by the wayside. It's not that I won't ever use my riding mower again because I have many more acres of trails and fields to mow that are way too rough for this push mower, even if I was that crazy. We'll see.

I got my tractor back after a year of trying to get it fixed. Appears to start and run great. It had the old six volt starting system and the guy who fixed it put in a twelve volt system. Starting it before was always an adventure, and if you sneezed it would flood. I didn't dare shut it off once it started, and if I stalled it I usually carried a battery jump with me to get it started again. Now it starts up like my car with no throttle and no choke, tho it still needs a little coaxing sometimes to do right. Pretty good for 63 years old. And I figure it probably cost me about half what it would have cost if I had gotten the engine rebuilt at a tractor dealer. That's hard to beat, tho unfortunately the guy who did it is moving to California, but this fix ought to last as long as me and likely longer.

Haven't done much with it so far, but I did take it out to see what would happen if I tried yanking a dead bush out by the roots. Chained it up and gave it the gun and the bush just broke off leaving the stump in the ground. Oh well, at least I didn't pull it down on top of me. I went out yesterday with my riding mower and cut paths thru the tall grass in to where I've got some big Maple branches big enough to be called logs lying on the ground. Came close to getting stuck or even tipping over a couple of times, but it could have been even hairier using the tractor on uneven ground you can't see for head high grass and brush.

So I'm a step closer to getting those logs yarded out before the snow flies. If I could get over the hump of mixing up a fresh batch of gas and oil for my chainsaw, I would be on my way. Truth to tell I just don't care much any more for working with noisy engines. I got a little battery powered chain saw this summer that I use for cutting up bigger branches to burn in my firepit, and I don't mind using it. But I don't have to pour gas, I don't have to crank over and over on a rope to start it, I don't have to wear ear muffs, and I don't have to worry about the gas in the tank going bad.  If the Chimney Sweep would ever show up to see about taking my propane fireplace insert out, I would have motivation to cut all that wood up.