"These your hunting dogs?"
"Yeah."
"What are you after?"
"Bears. The season just opened."
The dogs' owner just came out of the woods. He is tall and rangy and gray all over: gray jeans, jacket, baseball cap, hair, skin. Not fast or willing with words. I do not try to pet his dogs who peer from their kennel box mounted on the pickup tray. Their noses, black truffles tuned to the staggering multitude of smell molecules, twitch.
Good for bears? I used to hunt with my father as a kid, and still remember a joke about a hunter who bought a bear dog from a stranger. But right after it smelled a bear, the dog panicked and got between the hunter's legs, shivering all over. Furious, the hunter found the seller and yelled: "What did you sell me? This here is no bear dog. They scare him shitless!" "I am surprised," the man said. "I tried him on ducks, and he hated water. I tried him on hares, and he just sat down. So I figured he must be good for bears..."
I pull Gray Guy's tongue and learn how he hunts: he uses bait. Bait? Yes. What kind? "Anything they like: corn, grain, pancakes..." and I think: this is like nailing someone who came to dinner you set out with great care. Later I check Wisconsin bear hunting regulations and yes, you can shoot your bruin diners here, providing your bait is not "located within 50 yards of any trail, road, or campsite used by the public, or within 100 yards of a roadway having a posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour or more." I am guessing that if the posted road speed is lower than 45 mph, it is OK to bait bears right along such road and nail them in plain sight of a passing school bus. But I hope I am wrong.
We decide we better go and play on nearby Black Lake. Northern Wisconsin offers many, and they are often sandy-bottomed and surrounded with mushroom bearing forests. Sweet, kind lakes.
Playing on Black Lake involves a deliberate paddle to some interesting spot, and then staying put and looking for pictures. Hours pass, and we are still trying to photograph an array of floating vegetation, shaped like arrows, ribbons and wrinkled bonnets. And just like in our early digital days when we had only one camera body and had to be really polite in order to have our turn, we try to be on our best behavior. Stuck in one small canoe we became instant Siamese twins: one moves, and another loses the whole hard won composition of a watery close up. In addition, the slightest breeze drags our boat around and makes the whole exercise strangely futile, and at times infuriating. You ALMOST have it, and then the canoe drifts right over your floating subject, the blinding water reflection you tried to avoid comes right in, and you have to start all over again but what you saw will never happen the same way twice. We know that if we really want our subjects to hold still we should climb the nearby bank, wait for the wind to drop, and forget all this watery business. But this is not why we are here.
We are here because -- feeling I am sinking up to my nostrils in some thick disability muck -- I cancelled my second hip replacement surgery in July and pushed it out of my way and into December so we could just -- go. And because John experienced a stroke of genius and decided that if I cannot walk well I can still paddle. He also found two used canoes on Craigslist, both excellent and wonderfully cheap, and we bought them. The traditional Canadian 14-footer will be used in the Catskills, while Julia -- named after her previous owner -- the folding wonder resembling an elongated umbrella when fully opened, came with us. Neatly packed, she fits on the side of our Toyota Tundra truck and becomes utterly invisible. Once assembled, she can travel on top of our rig, lashed down by John who scales the camper's roof with the fluid ease which makes my jaw drop. We are reluctant to subject Julia to high speed interstate travel, but once we reach a bunch of lakes laced together by rivers we slow down and she, sitting on our roof like a 17-foot long green lizard, is quite safe.
And we are also here because this fall we want to paddle our way West, stopping for days or even weeks in some wet places. Photograph. Cook. Walk. Reintroduce ourselves to wilderness from a new watery perspective, which calls for a novel set of precautions. Beaver lodge ahead? Watch out for masterfully sharpened willow sticks parked under the surface by the workaholic rodents: they think winter food, and we think punctures in our tender canoe skin. A nice put-in spot we used this morning? Never too speedy to embrace modern gizmos, we still do not have a GPS, and come evening we better find the spot in the approaching gloom, or we will shiver all night curled up in Julia instead of sleeping in our camper bed. The morning breeze building into a steady wind, with white caps to follow? Paddle toward the nearest lee shore, before our canoe begins to drift and bounce on a heaving lake like a dry leaf.
But we are lucky again and locate the spot and the camper.
When we camp on the ground in high desert, I do a rattlesnake walk before we crawl into our joined sleeping bags. But out in the forests of Wisconsin there are no rattlers, only uneven terrain to park our truck. And since I want to sleep with my head elevated just so, I often have to do a rock walk and look for the right stone I will slide under one of our truck's wheels. John will drive the rig on top of it.
And as I look for the best rock I see my MA in architecture is still useful. For it to be functional, I need the rock of the right size. And the right shape, so the tire would climb it easily. And I need to avoid sharp corners which may puncture the rubber. And it should not be so big that I bust my lower back and end up with my sleepy head as elevated as I want -- but in pain. And I like the rock to be beautiful, too. Dunno why -- it just feels good to have this way.
©Yva Momatiuk
