Weeds?

Twisting, weaving, clambering and rising towards the light out a bivalve’s garden with names like Spatterdock and Spike rush the lakes are populated with aquatic plants.

  Encountering them when we are boating or swimming we act with an annoyance declaring them all derogatorily “weeds!” Some of these aquatic plants names are combined with and do end in weed like pound weed and duck weed.

They are more than unsightly weeds they are a home and sanctuary they become part of the fry and the fray along with vegetation mazes for the hunter and hunted from the minnow to the musky.

These aquatic plants may even obscure a Nibiinaabe the water sprite from Anishinabe folklore that has come out of hiding to see what I am doing … or it’s an otter that wants to know if I’m something to worry about – study the blurry photo and you decide – it happened so fast I’m not sure what it could have been???

They are more than just weeds they have function and splendor take a closer look next time you’re on the water this is some of what you might see.

Ghost Trees

The lakes of northern Wisconsin are surrounded by the bystanders of time from the tiny seedling to its cousin the sapling all the way to trees whose growth rings would take days to count to reveal its age.

               Trees young and old are subject to the constant forces of nature and time. Drought, ice, snow, lightning, tornadoes and wind shear can bring down one tree or many. The trees along a lakes shore that succumb to these powers and land in the water are no longer living but are still apart of life, they are ghost trees.

               In its life the limbs of a tall white pine is where an eagle rests as it surveys its territory or a branch of an oak could be where a squirrel builds a nest. In death the tee that falls and remains near the shore becomes a place for a family of ducks to preen and rest or a spot for a turtle to sun itself.

               When I snorkel past these ghost trees they look like prehistoric beings and I recognize that they have become a tangle of life.  Frogs, toads and fish use the trees branches to suspend their eggs.

 Bass build their nests under the sunken fallen trees and use it as protection while guarding their eggs.

A bryozoan attaches itself to a now leafless limb and begins to form a volleyball sized colony that will be broken apart by the waves of a fall storm to form other colonies next year.

Time, winter storms and shifting lake ice causes the fallen trees to lose their leaves and limbs and they sink lower into the water. The changes to the ghost tree attract new forms of life like the fresh water sponge with tiny green fingers that wave at me as I snorkel past.

A few years ago I came across a long-standing White pine that had sheared off from its base. The tree had been a fixture on the shore of that lake for so long that it would have taken 3 of me with arms outstretched holding hands to circle it.

The great tree now lay from where land met water out into the lake where its crown now reached out with half the tree above the surface half bellow in 20 feet of water. Time had removed the needles, smaller limbs and most of its bark but the larger limbs still held it up on the surface of the lake years later.

I snorkel to it a couple times a year and I try to make my body one with the tangle of limbs and be as still as they are and let my eyes be my only moving function and my mind pauses as I wait to see what might reveal itself. Pan fish are usually the first come out from hiding in its limbs.

  Averse to being seen walleyes materialize from the depths and under the crown a musky appears like out of a dream to see what I am.

If light can be both a particle and a wave, lichen are mutually algae and fungus, water can be liquid, solid and vapor and a tree is beauty, home, shelter and food in life as it reaches for the sun and shelter, sanctuary and ghostly beauty in death am I more then I seem?

The Outlet

The excess water of Star Lake spills over a small  impoundment and is then forced through the
narrowness of a six foot long culvert where it speeds up and mixes in air bubbles before it tumbles out and becomes the Star Lake Outlet Stream – a more romantic name it could use.

In the spring for less than two weeks the Outlet Stream becomes a water park of aquatic life that hangs out in the oxygen rich water that is looking for place to breed; a quiet place to deposit their eggs in the sand, gravel and in the crevices between the rocks or in the brush that has been forced to the edges by the current.

One day was surprised to find hiding in the rocks (the long black object) a Burbot – also called an Eelpout , a fresh water member of the cod family, spends most of its time in deep cold water – what was it doing  in the Outlet?

Yellow Bullheads

For those two weeks in spring you could pass by the Outlet Stream on a hike and stop on top of the culvert, look down and notice the flowing of the water and little else and go on your way. I consider it a privilege to put on my mask and snorkel, ease myself into the stream and become a part of this ritual of spring and photo it to share with others.

I look below the surface and witness the intoxicated struggle of the temporary inhabitants that don’t stop or take much to notice me in the ever changing flow of life in the Outlet Stream. These photos are compilation of spring visits from the last 3 years to the Star Lake Outlet look them over closely and see how many things you can name – not only its species but also give them a name, Jan, Stu, Angelica …

Suckers! or in Latin - Catostomus!

I’m a Horneyhead Chub! – or in Latin – I’m a Nocomis biguttatus! – Breeding males develop hornlike tubercles on the head.

Old Snappy

               Tuesday
June 9th  2020 a summer daylong awaited for – sunny, a high of 87 predicted and what better way to spend the day then snorkeling? I enter the waters of Star lake at 10:40am, water temperature a fortifying 66 degrees. Working my way down the shore to two small islands I checkout what activity might be photographed around a large red pine that had fallen down and out into the water. Unpredictably nothing … no fish, no bugs no frogs in the tangle of broken trunk and limbs so I photo the limbs reflection on the underside of the surface  when I notice a rock turn and look at me?

               That’s no rock – it’s a snapping turtle – a large 18 inch long shelled snapping turtle – that is showing no fear of me – I name him Old Snappy.

Notice the size of those feet and claws and look at that face … Old Snappy has the regal look of wisdom, placidity and mostly don’t mess with me I’ll eat that camera and your hand for lunch.

               I say good bye to Old Snappy and I work my way out from the shore and out to the islands and discover that the lily pads have just started to come out.

I also come across some freshly hatched out of the nest bass fry (the black spots) and if you look closely you can see the parent fish coming out to shoo me away.  

After close to three hours of snorkeling I head back to where I put in and as I’m just about there a tadpole crosses over me – just another day if you take time to notice it.

I am a minnow

One of the best times to go snorkeling is early morning, the
lake is calm and quiet and the rising sun makes for great underwater photo'ing. So it was out the door by 7am and geared up and in the water by 7:20am, the water a balmy 65 degrees. I snorkel my way out to a sand bar when I encounter a curl of hundreds possibly thousands of minnows. I know any sudden movement will spook them so I pretend I’m just a log – just an ordinary log that has drifted away from the shore with a camera in front of it. I try not breath hard from my snorkel for concern it may agitate the minnows.

The minnows become used to me being there and they encircle me and for a few brief moments I become a minnow – a 6 foot 3 inch 200 and some pound minnow – I was part of the minnow nation.

Signs of Life

Every day we are surrounded by the signs of life. 

The signs can be official, guides or advertisement.

Signs can be puzzling with more than one meaning.

“Stop”, “Yield,” and “Caution” all have the same intent but different meaning.

“Do Not Enter,” “Wrong Way” and “Dead End” can be a warning or a life story without a conclusion.

Some signs we ignore, some we miss and some we misinterpret.

Some signs we disbelieve, some we challenge and some we are provoked by.

A sign could save our lives, alter our lives or change the direction of our lives.

We look for signs, search for signs and wait for signs.

And sometimes there are too many signs.

Signs can be mysteriously veiled in plain sight.

We can miss our intersection even though the signs told us this was it.

And we can pass our exit and not miss it.

We long for signs to places we can’t get..

We can make no choice or the wrong choice and reach the same choice with the signs of life

Cycle of Life

The cold dark winter never seemed to end and when Mother
Nature finally gave a tease of spring and the roads near my house cleared of ice and snow I hopped on my bike for some exercise and to soak up some natural vitamin D.

My sitting muscles had not been on a bike seat in over 5 months so at about the 6 mile point of my ride I was needing to remove that afflicted body part from the torcher device they called an ergonomic bike seat.

I picked a spot to stop and rest next to a small stream that now with the spring melt was trying to act like class 3 white water. I “carefully” sat on a bench just off the road in the warmth of the sun, my pasty white arms and legs exposed to the sun like flesh solar collectors trying to recharge my batteries.

Watching the water flow past a molecule at a time to obscure places, the sun’s rays dancing off the water and making me squint I refocused my eyes down the road that crossed the stream. I noticed someone else out on this sun filled day walking a dog.

My mind drifted with my eyesight from dog walker to stream, to a crows shadow crossing in front of me and then back to the dog walker.

As time passed I could make out more details. The dog walker was an elderly woman still wearing her winter parka and those big dark sunglasses that cover your regular glasses and she used a cane to help her walk. The dog was timeworn with grey spreading back from its nose past its ears and down its chest. The dog was at the end of its leash not pulling the woman along but leading the way.

I closed my eyes enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face and after some time I reopened them and noticed the women and the dog were moving at a glacial pace but were getting closer. When they got to the bridge that crossed the stream I waved but the women was looking straight ahead and I thought she had not noticed me. With the leash still taught the dog was the first to cross the end of the bridge nearest me and I waved again and said “hello!” The woman was still focused straight ahead and I thought she hadn’t heard me until she stopped and said “be glad you’re here to see this” and the dog squatted and peed and that seemed the equivalent of a urinary mic drop. The dog and the women turned to head back the way they came from.

I felt the power of the statement from the walking mystic and “be glad you were here to see this” was running on a loop in my mind. I knew the statement had meaning if I just took it literally but I suspected there was more. Waves of electrical impulses moved across my brain like a lightning storm crossing the Great Plains - there were more things I need to see and do.

I needed to go to New York and run with the bulls down Wall Street.

To eat pot roast with vegans

To play Twister with lepers in India

To drink water out of a hose with alcoholics on a brewery tour

To send my thoughts out to stud so they can breed with rainbows

To color inside the lines with invisible crayons

To ride a tilt a whirl through time and not throw up

To become my best friend -

But before I could start I had to get my aching ass back on that bike seat and ride that 6 miles back home … it was the cycle of life.

Dam Times

Spending time home alone in what could have been called my
dating style but now everybody is doing it, social distancing I have had thetime to do things I always told myself I wanted to do. Most mornings with token effort I extricate myself from my bed – sometimes its late morning – and attempt to do some yoga trying to stay more flexible then a 2X4.

               I then make some coffee and as I wait for it to brew I check out my beard in the mirror. I have let my beard grow for the last 2 weeks and it has come in a lot grayer then I expected. And it’s not that cool hip solid color grey but a patchwork grey with black and some red. After some closer evaluation the red turns out to be spaghetti sauce – and yes I have had spaghetti recently. My beard looks like I am wearing a fury demonic Rorschach test face mask that will easily keep people 6 feet away from me.

               I am also working on learning to play the harmonica, a gift that was given to me years ago that has been waiting in a desk drawer for this moment. I have glanced through the introduction of the “For Beginners only, how to play the Marine Band type Hohner Harmonica” hand book skipping past the parts about scale and register, how to pucker your lips and how to draw and blow right to Mary had a little lamb. After what seems like minutes of practice with no part of my playing sounding like “Mary had a little lamb” I go into an improvised freestyle blues jam that incites my house plants into unrestrained applause that only house plants can bestow.

               All this takes me away from my worries for only so long before my mind goes to places like – will I have enough Placebos to keep my Anatidaephobia under control? Anatidaephobia is the fear that someplace there is a duck watching you – it’s real – I have it. I try to calm my worries and fears by staring out the window at the squirrels (I don’t have issues with squirrels) while trying to clear my mind by remembering the first names of the 3 Gabor sisters.

               Every so often I sneak out of the house and drive out to the Willow or Rainbow dam’s to get some fresh air and exercise and do some photo’ing of ice that has formed over the cold nights. As I appreciate these majestic creations that may only last a day or just a few hours a line from one of the polka prophecies’ keeps running through my mind – “In heaven there is no beer that is why we drink it here” – dude!  

The End

You have nothing to fear but lack of toilet paper – will be the slogan of this new version of March madness. We hominids have prewired in our DNA the instinct that we have very little control over the things that happen in our lives but we still head out hunter gathering as much toilet paper as we can carry content that we are doing something to prolong our survival.

               There is advice all around us on what we can do if we should run out of toilet paper. We could use paper towels, newspapers and coffee filters. Not wanting to waste anything in these trying times do we make coffee with the filters first? And I use a French press that’s going to be interesting.

               At the beginning of time when we humans came into being, germs and viruses were here to welcome us even though they couldn’t see them early man knew they were there and illustrated them the best they could on cave walls .

Germs and viruses have been by our side from natural catastrophes to wars and even personal occasions like holidays, vacations; they have even joined us on our cruises. All that time we have been trying to not just kill them but eradicate them from our ecosphere. Now they are taking it personally and are trying to exterminate us in a winner takes all wrestling match with no champions belt for the winner not even orange slices or a participation trophy when it’s over.

Being quarantined in our homes with no professional or amateur sports to watch will that lead in 9 months to an outbreak of Corona babies?  And will any of them be named Covid? In 20 years could you be attending a wedding ceremony and hear “do you Covid Wasserstein take Covid Green to be your wife?”

               Being self-incarcerated with little to do and too much time to do it will we have to take up the ancient barbaric practice of reading books? The horror! On the back cover of books will appear sentences of praise like “Compelling, thought provoking, an excellent read and even better toilet paper.”

               In this new circumstance we’ve entered it’s hard to know what the right time is too publicly and appropriately express our anxiety because internally it seems all we can do is panic. In an occasion of hyper awareness we don’t want to end up resembling a deer that can’t decide which way to move and in a fit of indecision jumps in front of a 18 wheel truck and becomes road kill – we don’t need to become panicky road kill.

               If this is the end how do we handle it?  Will the end be an upheaval of fire and brimstone, death and destruction as we gather to watch from the edge oohing and awing like we were at a 4th of July fireworks? Or will it be more like a Fellini movie nearing the end of the film time worn clowns come out lead everyone in dance, the screen slowly fades to black, roll the credits and Fine - Italian for end. In my version we take the time to enjoy the setting sun,

observe that glowing orb disappear below the horizon and we think fine – English for tomorrows another day.

Fish Tales

Adventure and the Gate Keeper Bass

July 9th 2019 6:52am no clouds, warm and humid a perfect summer day.  The kind of summer day that made you forget about the long cold days of February in northern Wisconsin. I had biked the five miles to the 44 acre, sixty five foot deep Little Bass Lake in Oneida County. Little Bass Lake is surrounded by the Northern Highland American Legion State forest it has no homes on its shore just a two mile long dirt road that leads to a tiny parking area and a boat landing for non-motorized boats.  The first draft of this story was written after I had gone on a three hour circumnavigated snorkel of Little Bass Lake as I leaned against a birch tree drying off in the sun being kept company by a not so overwhelming annoyance of deer flies and mosquitoes.   

               The surface of Little Bass Lake was smooth and complacent interrupted occasionally by a pan fish breakfasting on a bug that lay on the surface. I gear up with my snorkeling equipment and camera and enter the water deep enough to put my flippers on. There is no shock to my system as I submerge myself in the water the warm days and knights have taken that out of the water.

               I adjust my mask and notice that I have been enfolded by a throng of tiny one to three inch sunfish curious to see if I may be something to eat. The sunfish scatter with my sudden movement forward as I work my way into a patch of lily pads.

               In theory I’m seeking to take that one exquisite underwater photograph but in reality the atmosphere of the adventure, exploration and experience cannot be fully summarized in words and photos.

               A chorus of croaking frogs echo’s across the lily pads as I serpentine through them and curious bass and pan fish shadow my movements. I move out of the lily pads and down the shore line past sunken downed trees and abandoned for this season fish nests.  Groups of fish come and go from my vision as I flipper over bright green clouds of cotton candy like algae that rest on the bottom made neon green by the morning sun shine.

               On the west side of the lake is a long and elevated Glacially formed bank with a unnatural cutout that had been hand dug by loggers in the late eighteen hundreds to help expedite the vast forests of this area to sawmills.

               I look down the dugout channel the sunlight not being able extend through the thick cover of leaves from the trees that lined its banks. The channel is fifty yards long and opened up into a swampy area on the other side. The channel is filled with three feet of water thanks to four years of record breaking amounts of rain and snow.

               I slowly snorkel in to the channel trying not to kick up sediment with my flipper-ed feet. The water is clear but dark from lack of light, the tees that line its banks roots poke out into the water in spots but nothing else grows in the dugout channel.

               Ten yards in a grizzled good sized bass with a scare at the hinge of its jaw (photo 006) possibly from a fight with a fishermen comes to within twelve inches of my masked face and seems to be trying to stare me down.

               I lightly flipper myself further in as the bass darts from one side to the other slowing down when it comes in front of me giving me the watchful eye , this must be the gatekeeper of the dugout channel. The pass to enter must be persistence when I reach the opposite end of the channel the bass has left me.

               As I enter the swampy end the water feels colder, ten to fifteen degrees colder the swamp must be the source of a spring. The swamp ranged in depth from eight to thirty six inches deep the water was clear and populated with several different verities of fresh water aquatic plants  their names I do not know and a half dozen very tiny pan fish that didn’t take much notice of me.  

               I try to orbit the edges of the swamp grounding myself on ocations having to back up and adjust my course. On one of my course adjustments I encounter a unique algae form. Six to eight inches long, two to three inches across attached to a stick that had fallen in the water is a pale see through green self-contained, artistically designed delicately formed geometrical universe.

               I admire and photo it wondering what it might be and as I move on I see more of them roughly the same size most attached to something but a few have come lose and are floating free. My skin has become goose pimpled, my hands ached with stiffness and an ice cream headache was farming in my frontal lobe from the cold spring water it was time to leave the swamp. As I neared the exit of the dugout channel I could feel the water warming and the grizzled gate keeper bass let me pass with little notice.  

               I enter the main part of the lake and investigate more of the shoreline and go around a point entering a small bay of the lake. At the end of the bay a great white pine has succumbed to storms and the consequences of time and has fallen in the water its trunk still attached to the shore (photo 009). Half of its great length is underwater the other half is above the waterline its branches (photo 010) reaching out to the sky making it look like a prehistoric leviathan entering the water after a nap on the sunny shore.

               I’m guessing that the tree was over a hundred years old; at its base I could not come even close to getting my arms around it and not having the patience to try and count its rings this seemed like a good indicator of what its age might be.

               The white pine for most of its life was a spot for eagles to sit and survey there territory or chickadees to build a nest to raise their young or to give a red squirrel a branch to sit on while it gnawed on a pine cone. Now it was providing shelter for small fish or a hiding place for bigger fish trying to surprise its prey the pine no longer living but still part of life.

               I watched and photo’d under the old pine a group of pan fish and bass who seemed unfazed by my presence until my stomach growled with hunger and the fish scattered out of my sight. So like my ancient ancestors who crawled up out of the primordial ooze looking for something to eat and wondering how many more miliniea it would be before they could get a pizza delivered I to needed to get out of the water and get something to eat.