A WALK IN THE WOODS AND LIFE

It's been a rough, weird spring, with health problems knocking me out and dropping me behind on everything and always trying to catch up and feeling like I'm never getting anywhere. So lately, I've been trying to keep things in balance, and that means getting outside and working in our yard, or going for walks in the woods and fields around Beloit.

As always, whatever state of turmoil I may find myself in, a walk outdoors usually relieves it. Recently I've been out hiking in the Stateline Restoration Prairie, where the June blooms are rockin', or out at the J. Norman Jensen Forest Preserve, where I keep looking for Pileated Woodpeckers, but only find beautiful Orioles or Goldfinches or Red-headed Woodpeckers etc.

One of my favorite bends in the Rock River.

 

Path into the woods.

Ruins of old fireplace, out in the woods.

Sometimes the world is so beautiful, it almost seems like I'm hallucinating.

 

Can you find the Great Blue Heron in this picture?

Can you find the muskrat in this picture? 

Keep runnin' up that hill.

Just another day in Paradise.

Otherwise, I woke up the Sunday of CAKE with more hearing problems. Not as bad as following DINK, when I went wholly deaf in my right ear, but bad enough that it got me thinking. As you surely know, I went though about a decade of very serious illness, during which time I became somewhat of a recluse. My health was not good enough to travel, except in the most emergency type situations. Finally circa 2007 or so, I finally began to feel well enough to get out on the road again. At first it was difficult, but then in 2009 I turned into a road dawg. I hit every show, festival, signing and event I could reasonably or even not-so-reasonably attend. It felt great after 10 years of solitude to get out into the world, meet people again, visit new places, etc. But I'm now beginning to feel like the energy and health I'd saved up in those ten years has dissipated again. Like it's time for me to pull back once more.

I've canceled my table at SPX 2016, my one remaining long-distance show of the year. The Jenny Zervakis Strange Growths book, which we'd hoped to debut at SPX, will now debut at CAKE 2017. I'll still attend the remaining few very-local shows left (Madison Print and Resist and Milwaukee Zine Fest, both in the fall), but otherwise I'm staying put.

Clearing my slate like this is a huge relief.  Summer is here, and I'm looking forward to spending it outdoors, or drawing my own comics, or watching the Honeymooners, digging in the yard or painting the shed. Planting some real roots.

King-Cat #76 is at the printers, and #77 is partway drawn, with all the pages allotted for. I wanna have that out before the end of the year. I wanna dig down inside myself again. I promise to bring out whatever I find there.

LOVE YOU ALL,
John P.

SINNISSIPPI DAYS

Yesterday, Stephanie and I took a walk out in the Nygren Wetland Preserve, but hung a left at the old train tracks instead of continuing around the water.  We'd never gone that way before and it'd recently occurred to me that in that direction laid the confluence of the Rock and Pecatonica Rivers.  One of the first things I did when I moved to good ol' South Beloit was purchase a map and study it for potentially interesting things.  If you're me, the confluence of two regional rivers counts as a potentially interesting thing.  Yet I had never figured out how to get there.

On our way around the open water we noted several nesting orioles, plenty of goldfinches, warblers, two swans in the water, a white egret, a lone cormorant, and the ubiquitous honking Canada Geese.  Red-winged blackbirds began their annual scold, chatting at us from the trees overhead and spreading their wings to make themselves look ferocious.

Baltimore Oriole (top) and nest.

At the turnoff, we followed a gentle old oxbow lake through prairie.  Not too much action but the blackbirds and a pile of turtles making the most of a tiny log in the lake.

Eventually we came to a stream and headed east.  This was the end of Raccoon Creek, which starts up in Wisconsin and winds its way slowly down to the Pecatonica.  Eventually, yes, we could see the river across the creek, a low floodplain between them, filled with birdsong.  Two young catbirds eyed us curiously and there were rumblings of a Pileated Woodpecker, but no sightings.  Finally the Raccoon emptied into the river, and it was just us, the prairie to our left, and the slow, muddy, sunny water to our right.

The path tightened and we were there-- a short walk through woods, dropping the bank onto a gravel bar, and there was the Rock on our left.  We could walk all the way out into the confluence on the gravel.

The Sauk and Fox people of the area called the Rock Sinnissippi, which means "rocky waters," and here one could plainly see the contrast between the muddy, murky water of the Pecatonica, and that of the clearer, gravel-bottomed Rock.

If you look closely, you can see the clear water of the Rock, on the left, merging with the muddy water of the Pecatonica, on the right.

We hung out for a bit, amid the honking geese, swallows, and robins, then headed back to the car, along the old railroad grade, and home.

All photos by SD.