We Got Some Wild Wild Life

[All apologies to the Talking Heads...]

Took a trip to the cottage for the Fourth of July weekend (which for us ended on Wednesday night, when we rolled into our driveway at 9pm). Sadly, no pics are available because the digital camera had a dead battery and I forgot the charger. Since it's a Sony Cybershot, and Sony's design is completely ass-backwards, the camera cannot be charged via the USB that connects it to the computer. Our 35mm Canon came along, but as Hubby was appalled at the cost to develop a single roll of film (over $10), he refused to get a CD (a $2 upcharge) and we had 4 rolls...taken on one day.

The cottage is in far northern Wisconsin, a little over an hour from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (which frankly should just be part of Wisconsin, but what do I know). Hubby planned a surprise trip to the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness Area, and we spent all day Sunday hiking the various trails. My shins are still recovering.

What made it so special was that it was like a mini-honeymoon for us.

On June 23, we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary. Our original honeymoon was a two-week drive through Minnesota, the Dakotas, the northeast corner of Wyoming (Devil's Tower), and Montana, and it was awesome. We wanted to do something similar for our 10th, but with two kids under 10, it didn't seem like it would work very well (though they are OK for the 225 mile trip to the cottage, I doubt either of them would endure the 14-hour drives we took to get to the various destinations on the original trip). The other issue is one of money--we don't have any to spare this year, and gas and hotels cost money.

So Hubby came up with idea that we'd go to the nearest mountains, which happened to be in the UP. Added bonus were the Union copper mines (we'd spent 3 days in the Black Hills, where there are abandoned exploratory gold mines all over the place).  We hiked up to Lake of the Clouds, and drove to various sites along the south Boundary Road of the wilderness area. We climbed the tower at Summit Peak, which overlooks Lake Superior. It was a really great day--14 hours of just the two of us. And no bears. A few weeks from now, when the blackberries are ripe, that area is bear-tastic.

Wildlife on our lake this year has become more diverse. In addition to the pair of eagles (and their year-old progeny), the great blue herons (who keep pooping on our raft), the pair of loons (and their loonlets--so cute), the mallard family, belted kingfishers, veeries, and thrushes, we have two new species. A pair of common mergansers and a pair of broad-winged hawks have taken up residence:

A muskrat has also made a burrow nearby. Our dock seems to be its favorite place to dismember crappie and bluegill, to judge by the number of fish heads and bones I had to keep cleaning off the beach and dock. We watched it climb up onto the ladder on the raft daily to eat plants (no pics, sadly). Both Things got a big kick out of watching it swim around.

I am so grateful that we have a place like this to retreat from the world. No internet access, no TV, spotty cell service. It's wonderful. Tony's parents bought the land in the summer of 1977, and built the cottage the following year. It's been added on to (now 2 bedrooms!) and his parents have been updating things over the last few years, and all I can say is that we are a very lucky family to have such a marvelous place.

The view from the deck

Poems are coming out of this trip. My soul feels restored, and I'm going to do my best to try to keep it that way.

Protest Poem (revised)

I am (not)

I am not a union member

I am a taxpayer

I am not a public enemy

I am a professional educator

I am not a free-loader

I am a hard-working employee of the State

I am not a moron

I am a person who teaches kids how to think critically as they emerge into adulthood

I am not a slacker

I am a person who works nights + weekends beyond the 40 hours a week I spend on campus for the low low bargain price of $44,500

I am not a “have”

I am a person who took on debt to the tune of $70,000 for the chance to become a professor

I am not a home-owner

I am a renter because I cannot afford a mortgage (see salary and debt above)

I am not a leech

I am a consumer in the Wisconsin economy who will have less money to spend because of this bill

I am not a supporter of this grotesque abrogation of workers’ rights

I am someone marching in Madison and raising a voice in the Rotunda

I am not a thug

I am an unarmed citizen of a democracy exercising my right to free speech and redress of grievances

I am not the problem

I am part of the solution if only You would listen

All Is Calm

Gorgeous Saturday morning here in the woods. Bitter cold, but the sun is out and the birds are clustering around the feeders. Two squirrels were chasing each other around the giant spruce in the front yard earlier this morning, causing much twitching for our cat, Frankie (the other two were asleep in the basement, hiding from Things One and Two).

Thing Two is napping, and Hubby has taken Thing One on a run into town. I can hear the clock ticking over the whoosh of air from the furnace as it struggles to keep the house at 66 degrees (the thermostat says 68 but my indoor/outdoor weather station says that my thermostat is a big fat liar).

Hubby is working on another project for some friends of ours in Chicago, and I am curled up on the loveseat staring out at the winter landscape, writing and thinking about things to write.

I have started a new chapbook of poems about my family. I have a couple of poems I wrote about my dad during my MFA (and more on deck--they're crowding my brain, probably because this was yet another holiday season that went by with no contact--I don't know if he knows that he's a grandfather). I have one really good one (it's two pages) about my grandparents' marriage, and I have a few old ones about my mother that can come out of mothballs. I seem to have to be in pain in order to write. Thinking about my fucked up, completely dysfunctional family (and my family's history going back to the Potato Famine on one side) makes me sad. And for whatever reason, with the sadness comes the urge to create, to write--though I'm wary of cliche and been-there-done-that-got-the-commemorative-shotglass stories of alcoholic parents. That's what makes this complicated and time-consuming: writing this story in a way that's not stale and flat. Then too there's the feeling that I don't want people feeling sorry for me--I turned out OK, I think.

I would like to be able to do what my friend Chuck Rybak does so elegantly--be wryly funny and still make the reader think. I'm funny in person (though I make a better "straight man") but I don't seem to be able to get it to happen when I sit down to write.


Anyway, life is good here. I hadn't thought that I would ever look forward to January, but here I am, glad of the respite between semesters. Next semester I teach 2 sections of composition, 1 section of creative writing, and 1 section of an American Indian in Literature and Film course that I haven't taught since the spring of 2008. Both the creative writing and lit courses have healthy enrollments, and I look forward to getting to know another batch of students (though I will have a number of "repeats"--students who've had me for a different class who come back to take another one because they like me).

Yes, life is good.

Well, that's done.

Found out about the Wisconsin Arts Board's biennial fellowship awards on Sunday. Night. Deadline: 3:00pm today.  Have spent every spare minute at work gathering, winnowing, and writing. Finished at 12:30, submitted the e-Grant application and put the manuscript copies in the outgoing campus mail. The fellowships are $8000 each (7 are awarded to poets). That money would go a long way toward buying me some freedom. Childcare during the summer. Funds toward some trips. Also, winning one would really help me get tenure.  I've sent in my best new work. 

Now for the waiting.

The panel meets in October. Notification is in December. Tenure promotion file is due Jan. 4th. Decision made by the Executive Committee the last weekend in January.

The waaaaiiiiting is the haaaarrrrdest part....