The Plebe Spews

early on friday afternoon my plane will touch down, i will gather my orange duffel bag, then step outside to smell the sulfur of the oceans' low tide. a silver crv will pull up to the curb and i will open the back door and hug my son.

we have already agreed that: "hugs and kisses and tickles are okay, but that i have to stop when the tickling becomes too much"...meaning "when i'm going to pee in my pants...."

we have also agreed that i wil make blueberry pancakes, pizza, and home-fried potatoes whenever asked and that i will turn the fan on when using the bathroom.

on monday, his mother and i will celebrate his 7th birthday with him and we will forget about our angst and anger, and revel in a son who is special in more ways than are countable.

i have missed my son. for 4 days, i will miss him no more.

last year at this time, i was skiing atop groomed trails, had an insatiable wood stove, and was beginning to realize that life without television was possible.

things are different this year. there is no snow, my wood stove is optional, and i am not awakened nightly by the sound of a 6 year-old scurrying to the bathroom.. oh, there's one other difference: this year there are lots of owls.

if last year's ability to ski from my front door to a manicured trail represented one lifelong dream, this year's ability to court boreal owls in my back yard represents another. i guess i'm pretty lucky. now, i'm also worried.

i know the snow and cold are coming. i also know that as bountiful as the small mammal "crop" might have been in my woods, perched above the lake, the bounty is being depleted. first, the saw-whets moved through, then the grays, now the boreals. i loathe the thought of another die-off, but know that i can do nothing about it.

i accept my powerlessness...and curse it.

i live in a seasonal state of confusion. i want it to snow. i don't want it to snow. i want the arctic to slap me senseless. i don't want to fire up the wood stove. i want lots of owls. i don't want to watch them die.

for the next few months, every trip to grand marais will become circuitous. i will ride the asphalt one way and the hard-pan dirt and gravel on my return. my journey there will be fast, without interruption. my journey back will be slow and observant. that's what owls do to me.

yesterday, tucked along my favorite "roads less-traveled," i found the three great grays i have been watching for several weeks now. in some regards, their presence could be construed as encouraging...they appear "comfortable" with their forest patches and temporarily at least, have no reason to move. then again, the ground now is open and revealing and prey have no place to hide. snow will change everything.

because of owls, i have learned about life. owls have taught me patience and compassion and introspection and planning and determination and love and happiness and tolerance and communication and insight and reason and negotiation and respect. and because of what they have done for me, sometimes, i have to come to their defense.

unless you have been wedged beneath a moss-covered rock, you know the commotion of the irruption is on in the birding world. here it is november, and already the year is being labeled as "the best owling year ever…," and "spectacular" and "breathtaking." and perhaps it is all of those things, unless you are an owl.

unfortunately, i have witnessed first hand the disruptive behaviors of some birders and because of them, i am concerned. i am concerned that owls in the sax-zim bog will be pursued and disturbed and chased and displaced and teased with bait and that birding etiquette by some, will take a vacation.

obviously, my relationship with owls has personal overtones. at the same time, i don't expect others to take the same approach. but, i do expect that etiquette and decorum - all of which are defined by the mou - are important field trip components as the irruption, and winter, progress.

when i arrived at school this morning, the kids were waiting. they stood in the lunchroom along two crooked lines and with the drop of a hand, sang happy birthday.

i was unprepared.

for a month the pedantic, endless loop tape playing in my cerebellum has strongly suggested that endearment has not, nor will not, have any function in my immediate future. i sought confirmation and found it easily……: my son is elsewhere and my best friend went dark and my mom is selling our house and my attorney sucks yet keeps sending me bills and my car is broken and the owls have stopped flying and the landowner below me is subdividing to invite urban rubes into the north woods and my solar panels don't work well when the sun doesn't shine and i should be skiing and only two more days until i can move without blaze orange and why does my ex-wife open my mail and send it to me a year later and is there anything i can do to stop the train i am on?

but then it came to me......

when i arrived at school this morning, the kids were waiting.

i am a lucky man.

for two days, the ground grew soft. fog moved over oberg and crept low to the land like a stalking cat. the feeding frenzy on the suet cakes subsided. my wood stove gave up its embers.

i didn't venture near my nets because i had that "feeling"...the one i get when i know my trapping efforts will be to no avail. perhaps it is my sixth sense. perhaps apathy. it is hard to tell sometimes.

but then tonight, the winds blew from the north and stars again dotted the sky and i got the bug. i wanted to set up my nets. i wanted to again contemplate life and smell the forest floor in its ephemeral, sickly sweet moment of rejuvenation. i wanted one more night with an exhaling earth before her breaths were halted by the icy handshake of winter.

it didn't matter if i caught any boreals, or any owls for that matter. my plastic chair at the end of the little foot path above the emergent wetland is where daylight is derided and dismissed. it is where i am comforted and validated. it is where i turn wise and insightful. it is where night becomes my companion.

even under the light of the half-moon, i saw the owls approach. one perched on a net trammel then flew two feet over my head. i felt the rush of displaced air and flinched in nocturnal reflex. another found the same trammel but its exit was halted by nylon.

such a beautiful owl. a first year female whose fate has likely been sealed by genetics and biology and its new environment. her keel was pronounced, like the edge of a table. her bites were not as persistent and her talons not as piercing as those who came before her. i banded her, then walked to the cedars along a well-traveled path. she paused on my palm, flew to a concealed branch, then moved towards the place where owls go when they have no place to go.

i wish i knew where that place was, but then again, if i did, the plastic chair at the end of the little foot path wouldn't mean as much to me.

ever since i eliminated the soft food from sam and moose's culinary repertoire, things have begun to disappear. i know moose is innocent - he likes science diet; sometimes meowing near the bucket, waiting for dad to dip the bowl for a refill. sam though, has displaced his frustration on the usual victims: spider plants, shoe laces, phone cords.

a couple of days ago, i left the top open on a box of paintballs. i thought nothing of it. shortly thereafter, i heard the container tip and the rapid percussion of 1/2" paintballs bouncing on the floor like juggling balls after i've had too many home brews. there was sam, chewing away. he liked those paintballs.

the next day, while cleaning the litter box, i found lime green streaks in a component of waste material, recently "dismissed" by mr. sam. looking closer, i found several "segments" connected by a rubber band. the topper though, was the 1995 roosevelt dime that appeared to have taken a tumultuous ride through sam's digestive system.

the worst thing is is that i'm broke. i needed that dime.

since then, i don't leave things laying around that might prove to be a temptation for the apparently insatiable sam. moose looks at him chewing things and shakes his head and curls up on the blanket. he dreams of red-backed voles and catnip plants. sam browses.

one might suggest that i have a thing for feces or the digestive process thereof, and to some extent, they (you) may be right. i've long considered it fascinating, as a biologist of course, that distinctive food stuffs can be pulped into amorphous, processed products. well, all except corn.

for sam though, his processed products also tell a story. they tell me what he's been eating and why, sometimes, he acts as though his system is experiencing technical difficulties. i could go on and on about this, but i have to run to the store and i hear sam scratching in the litter box again.

i'm going to see if he can make change for a dollar.

how did he know?

how did he know that i needed to hear from him; that i needed to partake in a half-hour of silly banter and stories? how did he know that for the last two weeks, life has been performing a speed bag workout on my testicles and that one of my part time jobs has metamorphosed into a no-time job?

he's only 6. he's 1500 miles from me. yet he knew.

nikky's phone call was what i desperately needed. i didn't need another invoice from an apathetic attorney. i didn't need another notice that my library books were overdue. i didn't need to smell the rancid feta cheese that is wiggling in my fridge. no. i just needed to hear from my son.

he called and his message was clear: this is about nikky, not about his father.

how did he know?

part two of my visit to auroraland was everything part one was not. there were no "ooohhs or ahhhhhs", just the feeling that what was going on in the sky last night was bigger than what had occurred on sunday. it was a powerful event....far more powerful than the lights of lutsen.

framed by my nets, i lay on the ground waiting for owls to move, but was unconcerned if they didn't. a couple of hundred hours trapping will do that to a guy. when the aurora overtook fading daylight, my insignificance on my land, on this planet, in the universe, was delivered with the indelible mark of a celestial sharpie. i am carbon and water. nothing more, nothing less.

for 3 hours, i didn't hear the buck snorting or the barred owl calling or the marten moving through the alder and canary grass. it would appear that for a brief moment in this magical journey, life came to a standstill and all creatures great and small achieved a new level of perspective. i know i did.

when you live in the north woods, nights like this are inevitable. when they occur, you absorb them and take pictures and tell neighbors and stare skyward until your neck aches. after hours have passed, you dread the appearance of daybreak. you know it will happen again; just not soon enough.

at sunset on november 7th 2004, the lime-green and red ribbons appeared. they moved like hot knives through the celestial plate of butter and those who looked to the heavens were lost in thought and place.

my brother called and said "look outside." i said "duh."

he lives in the cities near i-35, whose metered entrance ramps feed the metro monstrosity. there, house sparrows have names. halogen is a mood. a moose is a cuddly stuffed animal that sits on his daughters' bed. the night sky is a childhood memory. he called <I>me</I> to tell me about <I>my</I> northern lights. imagine.

he couldn't believe i saw them before he; that somehow, living in the woods, i had better reception…more channels on my outdoor "dish". sorry steve, but it's true. of course, it helps if every once in a while, you step outside and look around and absorb your environment, rather than have it absorb you.

thank you tofte.

i have achieved equilibrium with my cats. now, when the bedroom door is shut, sam and moose know that bringing a mouse up from the basement and spreading viscera on my pillow ain't gonna happen. at the same time, when sam shits in the tupperware on my computer desk, that means he wants me to clean the litter box.

last night after watching " ali g indahouse", i stuck my head outside and found calm. that wasn't supposed to happen. it was supposed to be windy and unsettled. why, even the national weather service said so and they're always right. right?

as tired as i was and given the funk of the previous two days, i was less than enthused about the prospect of banding. no, i'd rather have dreamed about owls than dealt with them. but, you can well imagine what this obsessive/compulsive, future wal-mart greeter did for the next 4 hours.

i fought off sleep and put on an extra layer of fleece and walked atop a frozen earth for the first time in months. then i moved to the sound of rustling and owls alighting on spruce branches, then into my nets. i extracted owls from flimsy nylon and banded and released, never letting the owl know that its talons really did hurt and that yes, the blood on my data sheet was mine. it was busy. not saw-whet busy, but boreal busy.

fourteen boreals tickled the twine and who would have thought? tonight's forecast is for 10-20 mph winds but i know better than that. the flags hang limp and it is quiet. it's time for owls, regardless if the weather service says it isn't.

on tuesday, several hours after leaving the cherubs at birch grove, i felt the first hints of intestinal strife. it played out like an nhl game...lots of "clutching and grabbing", with grabbing eventually triumphing over clutching. in the rematch however, clutching would win over its demoralized, humiliated, and subservient opponent.

when night fell, i questioned my netting capabilities. i feared that being 60 meters away from my "facilities" would toll the death knell for clean fleece.

the down-side was that i didn't want to miss any boreal owl trapping opportunities. the up-side was that if i didn't make it inside, i could revel in the newfound warmth for 20 minutes, or so.

i made it through the next 3 hours without any embarrassment, but by the time i laid my head on the pillow, i was wracked with cramps and a headache that brought me back to my whimsical, crown royal days. i didn't sleep. i couldn't. i could drive though.

when sunrise poked it's acne-stained head over the eastern horizon i knew, resolutely, that i shouldn't have eaten that piece of luncheon meat that was laying in the fridge at school. it's packaging said "hey willy, you frigging dummy….try some of this." packaging and pop-up ads. what a fool i am.

by the time the rabid wolverines were done scratching their scent stations in my lower colon, i was ready to surrender. i toughed it out last night because, well….there are boreal owls and well…you know about me and boreals.

so i trapped and slept and the hockey game ended and i could function in a manner befitting the journey that has brought me to the cusp of old-fartedness. and when i was at school this morning, i got the kids their milk and there, on the top shelf of the fridge, was that luncheon meat. it called my name. i swear.

about the fourth time the cialis pop-up window appeared, i thought, "hmmm….maybe this is what they mean by targeted marketing….i might have to try some of this stuff….." i had no idea what it was or what it was for, but then, such is life when one is a slave to the power of suggestion.

then my computer started showing funny icons and the cialis ad slowly drifted into a pop-up that didn't pop-down and key strokes meant nothing and my ram fell like a rock into the abyss of a virus that was replicating in my computer like nutria in march in a louisiana wetland. truly, this was the end of modern civilization.

the funny thing about it was that this "problem" occurred within a window of opportunity i had created; that being the deletion of one antivirus program in favor of another. the virus obviously knew it could fester and procreate in my hard drive and the makers of cialis, obviously thought i was a good match for their product. They were wrong. really wrong. really, really wrong.

after countless hours on a toll free number and innumerable cold boots and tweaks, i appear to be internet literate again. it feels good. i want joe frazier.

following a week of meteorological crap, and approximately 20 minutes of sunlight last thursday, a front pushed through and brought some much-needed november rawness with it. last year at this time, i left tracks on the snow. this year, i need duck boots. the owls have slowed to a trickle, but that doesn't preclude me from sitting in a chair in the darkness with a mind that drifts to things that beget drifting.

i guess it shouldn’t matter because i have already fulfilled item number 24 on my "life list": "catch boreal owls in my backyard." it's right below number 25: "get locked overnight in the summit brewery" and right above number 23: "bitchslap dick cheney." last year at this time, number 23 was number 47.

i'll keep at the owls until i have irrefutable proof that there is no more reward for patience, not that there ever is a reward for patience. but i'll keep at it because like that persistent virus, i too sense a window of opportunity.

oh goody….here comes another pop-up window.