Guest Post by Phil Kiper: Charged by a Bull Moose

 Charged by a Bull Moose

This Happened to Me, and I Lived to Tell About It

On Wednesday, September 18, 2019, I was in the first week of my annual four week stay in Northwest Ontario, Canada.  I always try to plan my arrival around the opening of the ruffed grouse hunting season and some of Canada’s premier walleye and smallmouth bass fishing.

Northwest Ontario has some of the best grouse hunting in North America.  They are usually plentiful and easy to hunt.  I often drive old logging roads and try to shoot them with a .22 rifle.  Yes, it is legal and also not very sporting.  The .22 rifle and my bifocals make it more of a challenge.

My preferred way to hunt grouse is to go on long walks down old logging roads that have now grown into very narrow paths.  When the weather turns colder, the grouse move to these old roads for the clover that grows in the sunlight and other choice forage.  The bush in the fall has a memorable smell of damp earth, falling leaves, and decaying vegetation. Mushrooms are everywhere.

In this part of Canada, the vegetation is very dense.  It is often impossible to see more than a few feet off the trail.  As the leaves fall, the bush opens up to give a better view of the forest floor and surrounding area.  It is a country of mixed hardwoods along with every type of coniferous trees imaginable.  As you look into the bush from the trail, you have a view of fallen trees, thick underbrush, soggy lowlands, and rocky outcroppings.  This is very remote country.  These old trails run for miles.

On this particular afternoon, I was hunting on my favorite walking trail.  It is about an hour out and an hour back as you ease along, hoping to see a grouse.  I occasionally have my limit of five birds before I reach the end of the trail and often have at least a couple for a nice dinner.  They are delicious!  Their Latin name being “Bonassa Umbellus”, which means, good when roasted.

A third of the way down the trail and old abandoned beaver pond opens up the bush to allow for a better view.  Due to the beaver’s industrious work of building dams and flooding timber to build networks of ponds, these areas are often magnets for wildlife.  These ponds, consisting of intricate dams and numerous lodges, create a fantastic view of the fall foliage. They are great places to sit and take a break from walking and fill your lungs with cold, crisp air.  They are wild, and they are spectacular.

Moose live and thrive in these dense, soggy places, and I have had the pleasure of seeing several of them.  Last year I arrived at this pond and found a young bull moose standing on the far bank.  He had not seen me and was slowly walking back toward the bush.  I was hidden well, behind some vegetation growing around the pond, and so I cow called to him.  It is a voice call used by moose hunters to attract bulls during the fall breeding season.  The idea is to make this bull moose think that you are a cow moose.  Moose have great hearing and sense of smell, but they are notoriously near sighted. When he heard my call, he turned around and moved back out in to the open ground.  I was about fifty yards away on the opposite bank.  He stayed in the open for about fifteen minutes and then leisurely walked away.

Since he left in the opposite direction I was headed, I felt safe walking on down the trail and continuing my grouse hunt.  In just a short distance, a different bull moose walked out of the bush right in front of me and very close.  He saw me about the same time I saw him.  We had a stand-off from about thirty feet away.  I had no idea what to do so I took a phone video of him and didn’t move.  He was smaller than the first bull and eventually walked on down the trail. I followed for a short distance until he moved back into the bush and quickly evaporated.  It was amazing how quietly he moved through such thick cover.  I continued on down the trail with no further moose encounters.

I told a friend of mine about my encounters.  He had a cow archery tag and had been hunting hard with no success.  We thought with those bulls hanging around, there must be a cow somewhere nearby.  The next day he went out to the pond to sit awhile, hoping a cow might emerge.  After sitting for an hour, he decided to cow call. To his astonishment, a giant bull moose walked out into the open area of the pond.  My friend has a very shaky video of this moose.  

Big bull moose are amazing animals, and they can be very dangerous.  They are the largest member of the deer family, and while in rut, they are the only animal that may know that you are a human and just don’t care.  This bull was probably a 1100-1200 pound animal and capable of moving very quickly.  As soon as my friend could, he left the area.  We both felt fortunate to have been that close to three different bull moose without anything bad happening.

That was last year.  On this afternoon, I was walking out the same trail again.  I passed the first pond and headed out the trail toward the second pond.  This pond is an active beaver pond, where the beavers have flooded the whole trail,

making it nearly impossible to navigate around it.  As I drew near the pond, a grouse walked out in front of me.  I took a quick shot with my .20 gauge shotgun and missed.  I eased on to the pond, and to my surprise, ducks started rising up from all over the surface of the water.  There must have been close to 100.  They just kept coming off of the water.  It was very beautiful.  There were a couple of beavers swimming around, and so I sat down to rest for a few minutes and just enjoyed the beauty of the place.

I stood up and started walking back toward my truck.  I stopped because I heard a frog croaking from a water filled ditch beside the trail. This was very odd for late September, but it had been unusually warm.  Because I stopped for the frog, I heard something else.  It was the unmistakable deep throated sound of a bull moose grunt.  It wasn’t loud, but I knew what it was.  I stood for a minute, and I heard nothing else.  I decided to grunt at him.  He immediately grunted right back at me and then nothing else happened.  I had no idea how far away he was, but I knew he was to my left and up on a small ridge.

The vegetation was so thick that it was hard to see more than a few feet up the ridge.  I really wanted to see that bull moose.  I wanted to be able to say that I had called in a bull moose.  As a young boy, I had read every hunting magazine I could find, and I had been entranced by stories of hunters dressed in red woolen shirts calling bull moose out in to the open for a shot.  I faced the ridge and cow called a couple of times. I instantly heard three rapid, aggressive grunts and then the sound of small trees being knocked down. I looked up the ridge and saw the tops of the trees as they were unbelievably being pushed over.  He was coming down the ridge, and he was coming fast!  He was much closer than I expected.

The first glimpse I got of him was at about 90 feet.  I could only see him from his shoulder back, but his body was enormous.  I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Hey, Hey, Hey”.  He was running down the ridge at an angle.  At my yell, he paused for maybe a second and then turned and came straight at me, head down, incredibly wide antlers smashing everything in his path.  I had nowhere to go.  I remember thinking, “This is going to be bad!”  When he was about fifteen feet away, I pointed my shotgun over his head and fired a shot. I moved to my left and tried to get behind some cover. He stopped only a few feet away from me and turned to his left, showing me his giant antlers. He raised his head and looked back at me with his enormous dark eye.  I had never seen a bull moose that big in my life.  He was massive!  He stared at me for a second and then pivoted to his left.  I wasn’t sure if he was leaving or turning to charge again.  I took off on a dead run and heard him crashing away as he headed back up the ridge.  I was alive!

I made it back to my truck in what seemed like minutes, and I think I was both laughing and crying.  I drove the few minutes back to camp and found my friend walking down the road to his cabin. When I told him my story, he was amazed and asked me if I got a picture of the moose.  “No I didn’t get a picture of the moose,” I said. “I thought he was going to kill me.”  The experience was that powerful.

I didn’t sleep much that night.  I kept playing the scene over and over in my head.  I realized that he was the top bull in that area.  When he grunted, he was letting cows know where he was and telling other bulls to stay away.  When I grunted back at him, I was challenging him.  Then to add fuel to the fire, I cow called.  Now he thought I was a bull and that I had a cow with me.  I was on his turf, and he came down that ridge with the intention of running off an interloper.  He was ready to fight and kill.  

The only thing I really can’t describe is the sound he made as he came down that ridge.  I am sure it was part of the intimidation factor.  The only way I could replicate that sound would be to park a loaded dump truck up on that ridge, have someone release the emergency brake, and let it roll down the hill knocking everything down in its path and picking up speed as it is about to smash you to death.  Imagine standing in the path of that truck as it comes down that hill, and you will get a little idea of what it felt like.  The whole thing probably lasted less than thirty seconds.

When I was a boy in Illinois, we had a neighborhood barbershop where my father  took me to get my hair cut.  The barber was a hunter.  He always had a huge pile of Field & Steam and Outdoor Life magazines.  I would look forward to going to the barbershop and reading those stories as the barber cut my father’s hair.  Later, when I got older, I would walk to the barbershop on my own and just sit and read. He would call my house and let me know when he had some new magazines.

  Outdoor Life had a story each month about some hunter or fisherman having a near deadly encounter with a dangerous animal. The story was called, “This Happened to Me, and I Lived to Tell about It.” I am very grateful for my near death experience with a dangerous animal, and I am very grateful that “I Lived to Tell about It”.

 

Guest Post by Phil Kiper: Two Deaths

Two Deaths

On April 30, 2011, I was in Washington, D.C.  I had been given the great honor of judging a national competition for high school students sponsored by “We the People”, a nationally acclaimed civic education program that focuses on history and principles of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  The competition was “The Citizen and the Constitution”.

Panels of high school students are given very challenging legal scenarios, and the students must arrive at a position based on our constitution.  Seeing the quality of the student responses made me very proud to be an educator in a public school.

Late that afternoon I received a call from my father.  My mother was in the latter stages of Alzheimers, and he did not expect her to live through the night.  He did not want me to come home to Illinois; he thought it best if we just all wait.  I ended the call and felt an incredible feeling of sadness but also relief.  The long goodbye of this horrible disease was finally ending for my mother and our family.  If you have lost a loved one to this disease, you will understand the conflicting emotions.  My mother was dying.

I was invited to dinner by two of my friends, one an educator from our town in Tennessee and the other a former Oregon Supreme Court Justice and constitutional scholar.  There was nothing to be done, and so I joined them.  It was a relief to have something to take my mind off of my mother for a few hours.  My friend, the constitutional scholar, is a great educator and has a way of making the most difficult concepts easy to understand. I always enjoy my time with her.   

Pam and I have stayed in touch over the years and spent some time with her in Monterey, California, last year.  She always wants to know what I am reading.  I don’t get asked that question where I live.

My mother, Dorothy Moit, was born in 1929, a child of the Great Depression.  She was a twin, but her sister Doris died as an infant.  The family story was that my Grandmother, Florence, had the two girls in bed with her and that Doris somehow suffocated during the night.  I remember going to the cemetery with my mother every year to put flowers on the grave of her twin sister.  I always sensed the sadness of her loss.

In those days, times were hard and money was scarce.  When my mother was 13, my grandmother left my grandfather, and he moved to a different town.  My mother, the youngest, dropped out of school and went to live with him. Often she would live at the YWCA as my grandfather moved around looking for work. She supported herself as a teenager by working as a waitress at Boylan’s Candies on Front street in Bloomington, Illinois.  It was a diner with a candy counter.  The chocolate candy was made upstairs and hand dipped.  Each piece had a swirl on top to match the filling inside; “C” for chocolate, “O” for orange, “L” for Lemon, etc.  Years later, my father would always buy her a box of Boylan’s candy on Valentines Day.  She also worked at Kresge's department store as a cashier and eventually became the head cashier, making sure that all registers balanced at the end of the day.  She was still a teenager.  When I was a high school student, she returned to school and received her GED diploma. I think she just had something to prove to herself.

The next morning I was eating an early breakfast at the hotel when I received the call from my father that my mother had died.  We cried together and then discussed our plans.  He wanted me to complete my commitment in Washington. “It’s what Mom would have wanted”, he said.    He was right.  It was one of the many things she taught me.

As I started judging the morning competition, I felt like the death of my mother was a secret that I should tell my fellow judges, but it isn’t something you easily drop into a conversation with strangers. I heard my mother’s voice say, “Quit whining and finish your job”.  At lunch I had a chance to speak with one of my heroes, Mary Beth Tinker, who in 1965, as a 13 year old Junior High school student, along with her brother, had worn a black arm band to school in protest of the Vietnam War.  She was suspended from school.  The case went through the courts and in 1969, the U.S. Supreme court ruled for Tinker in the famous case of Tinker vs Des Moines.  The majority opinion was that students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.  Mary Beth related a story to me that years after the decision, she met Dr. Seuss and asked him how he felt about the state of our country.  He replied as only he could, “We can…and we’ve got to…do better than this”.  My mother would have smiled to have heard of my experiences of that day.  I finished my schedule late that afternoon.  It was May 1, 2011, and my mother was dead. 

I was invited by another friend, a proponent of civics education, working in D.C., to join him and a friend of mine for a dinner at Dupont Circle.  It was great conversation.  He was a close friend of retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor and told great stories of events surrounding her tenure.  He told me that he would be happy to arrange a meeting with her if we were ever in the same town at the same time. My mother would have liked that too.

On our way back to the hotel we drove by the White House and you could see that a group of people were assembling.  My friend remarked that this was unusual at this time of night and that  “something was going on”.  I got back in my hotel room, turned on the TV, and all of the news stations were alerting the public that the president was about to make an important announcement.  Rumors were flying around and so I decided to go to the lobby and see if anybody knew anything.  The giant TV in the lobby was on, and in a few minutes, President Barack Obama walked to the microphone in the White House and announced to the world that special forces of the U.S. military had killed Osama Bin Laden in a raid.  The most wanted man in the world and the architect of the 9-1-01 attack was dead.  

Some other people from our group were in the lobby.  One of them suggested that we go to the White House.  I jumped into a cab with a couple of guys I really didn’t know and rode the few minutes to the White House.  We arrived when the crowd was fairly small, but within minutes, the crowd grew in size and enthusiasm. Chants of “USA”, “USA”, were everywhere.  I was living, in person, a moment of American history.  I had never in my life cheered the death of a human being, but I cheered that night.  This went on for awhile until the crowd became drunk and disorderly.  I stepped back into the shadows to watch.  It was May 1, 2011, and Osama Bin Laden was dead and so was my mother.  I caught a cab by myself and went back to my room.

The next morning I flew back home, Chicago to Bloomington.  I spent some time with my dad and tried to relay to him my conflicting emotions surrounding these two deaths and the amazing experience of the past few hours. My father was a World War II and Korean War veteran, and I’m sure he recognized the power of these conflicting emotions.  It was May 2, 2011, and I was still grieving one death and celebrating the other.

Almanac: Quarantine Sunday

Almanac: Quarantine Sunday

Weather:  cloudy and cold, occasional light rain

Flora:  oaks shedding seed pods, 

tulip poplars full of blooms

Fauna:  blue-tailed skink on the porch, 

squirrel raiding the bird feeder

Customs:  worship service and Sunday School

Food:  odd lunch for Sunday-- chili and hot dogs, cupcakes for dessert

Clothing:  blazer, scarf, jewelry—first time in days

Postcard picture:  valley green with stripes and patches of plowed earth

Today’s headlines:  More than fifty thousand deaths

Biggest fear:  Opening up too soon

Saved From Oblivion

Today's prompt was to write a poem about a handmade item.  This poem is about a canoe my friend Shauna carved for me.  It was meant to be put in the Sequatchie River to take a journey, but he was too cute to part with.  I used to do a unit inspired by book Paddle to the Sea by Holling C. Holling.

Saved From Oblivion

The boy sits in his canoe,

hands poised to hold his fishing pole,

his round face and bright eyes

turned up to see the world

passing by his little boat.

Supplies are packed all around him,

kept dry by waterproof coverings.

He is prepared for his long journey,

his paddle to the sea,

a trip he never made because

I couldn’t part with him,

too dear a gift to send away

out into the unknown.

I saved him from destruction,

even oblivion,

but then,

he didn’t get to see the wide world,

and for that I am sorry.

AV 1982

Today's prompt was to write about an out-dated technology.

AV 1982

 Film is loaded and fed 

through spindles and slots

with a rapid fire 

click click click click.

Light flickers;

an image begins to appear.

Sound is more unpredictable,

lips may mouth words 

spoken seconds before or after.

It is so distracting one can hardly focus.

Care must be taken 

so there will be no melted celluloid.

But the students are abuzz with excitement.

We watch in the strobing light 

as exotic things parade through our classroom.

More engaging than the slides 

that click past in frozen silence

or the still frames of filmstrips that are 

every day fare in the classroom, 

the films bring the far away into view—

            George Washington visits from Mount Vernon,

            an armless woman cuts her son’s hair,

            a red balloon floats through the streets of Paris,

until we hear the 

flap flap flap flap 

as the film slaps

 signaling the end of the reel.

Cheater That I Was

Today's prompt was to write about something stolen but not to apologize.

Cheater That I Was

April 13, 2020

When I was six or seven

I stole my first poem,

ripped the page right out of a book,

copied it onto my notebook paper,

passed it off as my own.

Turned it in to my second grade teacher,

said, “Look, Ms. Bridges, look!”

Won a prize for that purloined poem,

cheater that I was.

“Good poets borrow; great poets steal,”

so the saying goes.

I’ve learned that the trick is to make it your own

so that nobody knows.

Holy Saturday

Holy Saturday

April 11, 2020

Those women—

The women who loved Jesus

sat in a restless rest

observing the commandment

of the Holy Sabbath.

There was work to do

that needed to be done that very minute,

not tomorrow.

A body to cleanse,

to saturate with spices,

to wrap with cloths,

to love.

They could have chosen a different path,

to ignore the commandment

in these extraordinary circumstances.

Surely one of the women

made the case for action.

They could have made their way

to the sealed tomb,

confronted Roman guards,

realized the futility of it all,

left weeping hopelessly,

giving up on the task.

But sometimes the waiting—

the Holy Sabbath—

is the thing that makes

the next step possible.

They waited,

followed the rules,

did what was required

and showed up on time

for their real destiny,

Witness to the risen Lord,

First to proclaim

“He is risen,

He is risen indeed!”

Guest Post by Phil Kiper: A Little Late to the Party

A Little Late to the Party

By pure chance, last night, I listened to Chris Martin cover the 1975 classic Bob Dylan song, “Shelter From the Storm.”  The song with its cryptic lyrics is universally believed to be about the sadness of not knowing what you have until it’s gone.

     Now there’s a wall between us, somethin’ there’s been lost

     I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed

     Just to think that it all began on an uneventful morn

     Come in, she said

     I’ll give ya shelter from the storm

I was born in 1956, and I lived through some of the worst times in America’s long history.  I was a teenager during the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the resignation of an American president in disgrace.  Teenagers all over were taking the advice of Timothy Leary and “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out”. I breezed right through it.

I was raised in a very conservative Christian church with very talented leaders and wonderful people.  I think one of their main goals was to keep all of the young people so busy with church activities that we wouldn’t notice all of the unrest around us.  The world was spinning out of control and our church was like the moon, using its gravity to deflect astroids that might come our way.  Several years ago a friend of mine listened to me describe my church schedule and all of the control and guilt they tried to place on us.  He said, matter of factly, “You were in a cult.”  I don't think it was a cult, but I think you could see it from where we were.  I was once banned from the youth leadership council of the church for attending a “Carpenters” concert.  Yes, that’s right, Karen and Richard Carpenter.  You can’t make that stuff up.

I have had a wonderful life.  I am sure that I was spared by my church from many bad things that could have damaged or ruined my life, but I am afraid that I also missed out on the opportunity to think for myself, observe the circumstances around me, and engage in the world.  Why wasn’t I protesting the Vietnam War or working during my summers promoting the Civil Rights Movement?  

My youth is long gone, and like Dylan, I lost things that I never knew I was losing.  Singer, songwriter John Prine just passed away from complications of COVID 19.  In one of his songs, “The Bottomless Lake,” he cheerfully writes, “We’re all falling down, down to the bottom of a hole in the ground; smoke em if you got em.”  Amazingly, I have never smoked a cigarette or had a drink of alcohol or worn a black arm band to junior high to protest the Vietnam War.  It may be that I am a little late to the party.

     

Betwixt and Between

Today's prompt was to write an ekphrastic poem, which is a poem that reflects on a piece of art.  Another challenge was to create a poem that reflected the shape of the words.  So I decided to combine them in my poem today.

Phil and I visited Charleston back in November, and we visited several museums.  One of the museums had an exhibit called "Betwixt and Between" by Patrick Dougherty.  We were familiar with his work from a piece on CBS Sunday Morning, and so we were delighted to see one of his works in person.

I used words from this video to create my poem/picture.  You can see more images of the sculptures here.

My poem is based upon this picture.

Here are some pictures we took when we were visiting the exhibit.

Worry is Like a Game of Mousetrap

Sometimes things come into my life

that get me all cranked up.

No matter how many stop signs pop up

to tell me to let go of my foolish thoughts

someone eventually boots a ball into my path

that I just can’t ignore,

And then that ball really gets rolling!

All this worry puts me on unstable ground,

like a rickety set of stairs,

and sends me careening down chutes

that plunge me to new depths.

The troubles can flood my life

like an overflowing bathtub.

The 24-hour news cycle clogs pipes

and won’t let the water drain.

Sometimes I feel like I’m on a seesaw

with all its ups and downs,

or like a man diving into a pool

where the water is too shallow

to break his fall.

All this worry I consume like bait,

like savory cheese that tastes so good

because the worry gives me purpose,

tempts me with a sense of control,

fills my stomach with meaning.

And as I fill my belly with every new tidbit of information

And fret over each hard decision in all this craziness,

the cage descends and traps me in my own misery.

Primaveral Party

Primaveral Party

Some guests have begun to arrive

for this shindig called Spring.

The daffodils sent out the invitations,

but they never hang around

until the party is in full swing,

like a note sent in the mail

but cast off once the dated is noted.

Forsythia and Yoshinos arrived early

in their cheerful yellow and pink,

but shortly changed into garb of verdant green.

The redbuds came next,

appareled in eye-popping purple,

along with dogwoods in legendary blossoms 

dappled in blood and cross.

We are anxiously awaiting

the azaleas in wedding-gown white,

followed by the lilacs doused in heavy perfume,

like a man wearing too much cologne.

(You appreciate the effort

but have to keep your distance).

The last to arrive will be the little fringe tree,

shimmying when the wind stirs her up.

Then the guest list will be complete

for this primaveral party called Spring.  

Today's prompt:  Write a poem about a specific place.  I chose my front yard.

An Unexpected Detour

At the Canyon overlook

            Phil and I recently took a trip to New Mexico and Arizona. It was a vacation trip with no other purpose than to enjoy the scenery and each other’s company.  We got out there just as the Covid19 pandemic was beginning to take off, and after our eight days of travel, we made it home safely. We arrived home with a sigh of relief that we didn’t end up quarantined somewhere along the way, and that we made it through the flights and airports before everything got too bad.

            I had been to Albuquerque once but nowhere else in the region.  Phil had made this trip before with a group of history teachers, but he was happy to take me to see the sights I had missed.  I was especially looking forward to seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. It did not disappoint; sunset on the rim was beautiful.

            We had planned a circular route from Albuquerque with stops in Flagstaff, Arizona, and nights in Farmington, Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico.  In addition to the Grand Canyon we planned to see Monument Valley, Four Corners, the Painted Desert and all the arts and crafts Taos and Santa Fe had to offer. But isn’t it always the unplanned parts of the trip that ends up being the most memorable?

            We arrived in Flagstaff after dark and knew we had a short trip up to the Grand Canyon the next morning, so I raided the brochure rack in our hotel lobby to see what Flagstaff had to offer.  One brochure touted Walnut Canyon National Monument, an ancient Native American cliff dwelling site.  Our preliminary plan had been to visit Mesa Verde in Colorado, but it was closed for the winter.  Walnut Canyon looked like a suitable substitute, so we decided to add it to our agenda the next morning.

            When we first arrived at the visitors’ center, we noticed a steady stream of young park workers wearing special backpacks designed for carrying five-gallon buckets.  They were hauling debris, consisting of rocks and concrete, from a section of the trail that led to the ruins.  Each worker must have been carrying thirty to forty extra pounds on each trip out of the canyon.  I’m sure they were thankful that the morning was cool and crisp, and that the brunt of their labor would end before the worst heat of the day.  I heard one girl say that she had made six trips up and down the day before.  That would be quite a workout since the trail descended 185 feet.

            After a short stop in the visitor’s center, which sat on an overlook at the rim of the canyon, we started down the Island Trail. As you descend the 240 steps, you travel through several different plant life zones, which are miniature versions of the zones spanning the West from Mexico to Canada, according to the official brochure.  It is unique to have such a microcosm within the twenty miles the canyon covers and its 400-foot depth.  We observed the yucca and prickly pear cactus at the rim, forests of fir, juniper and ponderosa pine as we descended, and we could look down to the canyon’s bottomlands where box elder and the namesake black walnuts grow. 

            The Island Trail leveled off and took us on a loop around the island (this island is not surrounded by water, but by air) where we could observe the homes built by a primitive people called the Sinagua (Spanish for “people with no water”).  They used natural recesses in the canyon walls, formed by flowing water that eroded softer rock layers.  Homes had several rooms, and walls built and plastered by the women provided protection from the elements.  Different parts of the canyon were inhabited during the changing seasons to provide heat or cooling, depending on what was needed.

            It was fascinating to take a step back to ancient times by walking the trail, but Phil and I were also struck by the more recent history that made our time travel possible.  During the Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) employed men to live in a camp and construct that trail with its 240 steps.  Most of the men in the Mount Elden camp were from Pennsylvania and earned a dollar a day.  The pay wasn’t much, but they got three meals a day and gained valuable work skills as they labored in the camp.

            Travelling down those steps and then hauling ourselves back up was quite a chore.  As we walked along, Phil reminded me of a passage from a book he loves, Boundary Waters,by Paul Gruchow.  Gruchow was writing about having the same experience we were having, walking a trail built by the CCC with a friend.

“You know there’s hardly a place in Minnesota that doesn’t still benefit from some Depression-era public works project,” I say.  “Dams, roads, sidewalks, picnic shelters, swimming beaches, buildings, rip-rapped lakeshores and river banks—it’s really an incredible legacy.”

“It’s amazing what we could afford when we didn’t have any money,” John said.  “This staircase in the middle of a wilderness, for one thing.”

“We’re having the longest economic expansion in our history, and volunteers have to keep this trail open because there’s no public money to do it.”

“And back home we’re laying off teachers and complaining about welfare moms and reducing hours at the public library.  It’s hard to be rich, I guess.”

During the height of the Depression, unemployment was twenty-five percent. We’re looking at those kinds of numbers again, coming out of this pandemic. It will take courageous leadership to steer us through the hard days ahead, but we may find some of our finest moments in the wake of these hardships. Maybe the legacy this crisis leaves behind will equal and even exceed the monuments left us by the workers of the CCC. 

Our trip to the Southwest took us to some famous sites along well-traveled roads, but it was the unplanned stop at a little known national monument that was the unexpected highlight of the trip. 

Phil in one of the rooms

The Island Trail

Some of the 240 steps

You can see parts of the Island Trail we walked
that encircles the island.

Trail marker about the CCC

National Poetry Month

It's beginning again.  For the third year in a row I am participating in Napowrimo (National Poetry Writing Month) by writing a poem a day.  Many of them will show up here.  The early bird prompt is to write a poem about birds.  So here's my first attempt.

Tail Feathers

 I saw a heron fly off from the pond today.

Truth be told 

I heard the whoosh of its wings

and caught sight of its tail feathers 

before it was obscured by the trees 

that lined the open space.

This is the way we see most wild things—

Indistinct,

Blurry.

Sometimes the wild things

in my heart are just as hard to observe.

I think I am on the trail,

close to Hope,

the little bird that keeps so many warm*,

nearing Dreams,

the raptor that lifts to new heights.

But then, with a whoosh

and a flap of the wings,

they are out of sight,

leaving behind a longing,

a hope of another encounter,

another brush with mystery.

______________________________________

This poem was inspired by an essay in Boundary Waters by Paul Gruchow.

This line comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson.