A Visit with the Birds

As we pulled up to the feeding area at Goose Island, we watched a bird flit out of an outstretched hand in the truck in front of us. We hopped out of our car loaded up with bird food. Mike filled my dad's hand with food. A bird immediately landed in his hand and he was so startled he threw the food out of his hand. He decided to just watch Mike feed the birds.

The snow fell as birds landed all around us.

Goose Island is located in a La Crosse county park in the middle of the Upper Mississippi River Wildlife Refuge.

Whether you're walking the trails, hanging out at a campsite or canoeing around the island, the wildlife is visible everywhere. 

Red Bird

Red bird came all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,

Those dun-colored darlings,

So hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,

I know he has many children,

Not all of them bold in spirit.

Still for whatever reason-

Perhaps because the winter is so long

And the sky is so black-blue,

or perhaps because their heart narrows

As often as it opens-

I am grateful

That red bird comes all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else can do.

...Winter's gift is this, and it is my heart.

The warm and singing heart of the witch of the quiet cold.

Ariel Llewellyn, excerpt from Winter

A Night at the Quarry

We hopped in the car with 3 dogs and 3 kids and caravanned up to Medary Quarry. Medary is a 1 1/2 mile loop through an old rock quarry that offers scenic views and a big open trail to run around on. The dogs needed a run, the kids needed a run and the adults needed fresh air, open space and maybe a run as well.

The Bluffland Protection Program is a partnership between the Mississippi Valley Conservancy and the City of La Crosse that protects an eight-mile stretch of Mississippi River blufflands. The Quarry Trail is a connector trail from Hixon Forest to the Blufflands Preservation Area, which is part of the Medary Quarry. 

And nobody seems to know about it.

We walked, we talked, we were quiet, we listened to the rustle of the wind.

We explored. 

Found the geocache.

Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life.

--John Muir

The sun dropped over the edge of the quarry.

and its light formed a halo around us.

and we all watched it burn down.

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.

--Frank Lloyd Wright

Directions to Medarry Trail (also called Mathy): 

Mathy: Cty Rd FA, La Crosse, WI - From La Crosse: Follow Losey Blvd south to State Road (Kmart), turn left on State Road and follow up Hwy 33 (Irish Hill). Turn left on Hwy F and follow for 2.5 miles. Turn right on Cty Rd FA and follow for 1.5 miles. The trailhead parking lot is at end of road. -----Hike to Healthiness packet on lower right front corner of kiosk

Winter Camping in the Refuge, Goose Island

My husband and I like to do a lot of outdoor activities together.  Winter camping isn't one of them. Along came Larry. Larry, Mike's sidekick, is game for just about anything.  I generally show up at some point to hang out, take some photographs and then escape to a warmer, safer place. Let the high jinx ensue. So when the temperatures were dipping down into the single digits, they were in their zero degree bags, happy as can be.  I was at home in bed, happy as can be.

The sun was just starting to dip when I arrived.

Goose Island is on the Mississippi River, in the middle of the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife Refuge.  All you can see are woods, a bluffline and the river stretching out in front of you.

Here's my White Fang shot.

The refuge is 261 miles long.

It begins at the Chippewa River near Wabasha, Minnesota and ends near Rock Island, Illinois, spanning four states.

At the campsite with Larry and another recruit, Tripp.

Hey, they're multiplying. Larry met Joe, on the left, in the parking lot and invited him out to the campsite. True story. Joe was wearing a lightweight wool coat and Puma tennis shoes. He might not have had socks on. He did not camp overnite.

There are over 400 camp sites at Goose Island.  There isn't much competition in early March.

Mike staked out this hovel where they ended up building a campfire and hanging out.

They lived through the night. My husband told me the next day that Tripp fell through the ice. They had gone for a walk the next morning. The sun was shining, warming up the ice and there was a crack in the ice from a tree. As they were noticing this, crack, and Tripp is thigh deep in water. I'm gasping as he's relaying this to me. 

Me: "So he went straight home, I assume?"  

Mike: "No. We walked back to the camp site and he dried everything in front of the fire."

Winter camping is not for wussies.

Old School Variety Show - The January Show

The Old School Variety Show offers a fall, holiday, winter and spring show to gather friends and newcomers to experience entertainment done old school. This means live acts highlighting music, theatre and storytelling. The spontaneity and freewheeling style of the variety show provides an ever-changing, organic entertainment experience. There are no rehearsals. Each show develops a rhythm of its own. Sometimes the performers come in with similar ideas about tone or content.  They plan love songs for the February show or scary stories for the October show. The January show can be a toss-up. The show this month had a somber feel with 40 mph hour arctic wind gusts whistling by the windows. The Pearl sign outside the window creaked back and forth.  There were songs of regret, there were wistful stories, there were challenging stories. And then there were some laughs.  There was variety.

Front entrance to the Grand Hotel on Pearl Street.

Tara Jacquette opened the show on piano.

Ryan Hartkopf singing originals followed by a Dylan song...one of my husband's favorites.

Halie Becker performing Neil Labute's Medea Redux.

Eddie Allen, singer-songwriter, muse of the Driftless Area.

TerryVisger, founding member of La Crosse Storytelling Festival and an Old School regular.

Mike doing "The News from La Crosse Wisconsin"....local news done Garrison Keillor-style.

A warm and cozy bar,  a place to connect with old friends and meet new ones and a parade of artistic talent on the stage in front of you. For more information about the show go to http://oldschoolvarietyshow.com/ or Like them on Facebook.

Sold out!!

A Winter Playground on the Marsh

We marched onto the ice, fanning out in every direction.  Large bluffs loomed over us on one side as we looked out onto one large white expanse of ice. A train rumbled by and a few people walked along the marsh trail.  The dogs ran and ran and ran. There was an eagle's nest high up on a tree. My husband dropped down for a snow angel.  The kids played hide and seek in the dried cattail grass. 1,077 acres of natural wetland. The summer and spring are great for hiking and biking. In the winter, the marsh turns into an ice-rink and an all-ages playground. It is one of La Crosse's best-kept wintertime secrets.

Winter Landscape This is like a place we used to know, but stranger and filled with the cold imagination of a frozen four o'clock daylight eaten by clouds, blackened like slate horizons. In this coulee, there is a sensual bond with earth, wilderness, and solitude in the starkness of snow, the randomness of woods. Allow the moment as daylight is swallowed in a meandering , thawing river, the connective life blood carrying us along with hope that winter is not static but a gradual metamorphosis of our longings. Silence evaporates in the dusk of a March thaw: exacting harmony as a hawk circles a tree. --Gayle M. King, St. Paul, MN  And we came back later in the day with our ice skates.

                     Skating

And in the frosty season, when the sun
Was set, and visible for many a mile
The cottage windows through the twilight blazed,
I heeded not their summons. Clear and loud
The village clock tolled six; I wheeled about
Proud and exulting, like an untired horse
That cares not for his home. All shod with steel
We hissed along the polisshed ice in games
Confederate, imitative of the chase
And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn,
The pack loud bellowing, and the hunted hare.
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle. With the din,
Meanwhile, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag
Tinkled like iron; while the distant hills
Into the tumult sent an alien sound
Of melancholy, not unnoticed, while the stars,
Eastward, were sparkling clear, and in the west
The orange sky of evening died away.

Not seldom from the uproar I retired
Into a silent bay, or sportively
Glanced sideway, leaving the tumultuous throng,
To cut across the shadow of a star
That gleamed upon the ice. And oftentimes
When we had given our bodies to the wind,
And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still
The rapid line of motion, then at once
Have I, reclining back upon my heels,

Stopped short — yet still the solitary cliffs

Wheeled by me, even as if the earth had rolled
With visible motion her diurnal round.
Behind me did they stretch in solemn train,
Feebler and feebler, and I stood and watched
Till all was tranquil as a dreamless sleep.

--William Wordsworth

And a week later just the two of us.

And when we left with numb fingers and red noses, I said a quiet thank you to the nature gods  and the Eco Park for helping maintain this beautiful, natural wetland in our town.