Well hello again. As I write this Christmas has come and gone, and Santa was very good to me. One of the gifts I got was a book, Cut and Run, by Mike Monte.

The book chronicles a good piece of the early days of Wisconsin when the northern section of the state was pretty much clear-cut to build the southern part. Chock full of pictures, this book is well worth the reading.

I look at the photos and several thoughts occur to me. The first is that these must have been Men, and I mean that with a capital M. I have done my share of logging with axe and crosscut saw, and believe me it’s a tough way to go. Never have I done it for the hours these old jacks did, let alone the day after day grind of it. Look at the pictures in this book and notice the shoulders on these guys, and imagine what it must have taken to build up this kind of muscle.

Another thought occurs to me: what would our state look like now if the lumber companies had thought to practice just a little restraint in their logging practices? I don’t suppose the average person could conceive of simply running out of trees when there always seemed to be another tract of monster virgin pine just over the next hill. These were times when a very few people were noticing that the passenger pigeon was being wiped out by hunters, that the buffalo had been all but exterminated, and wolves were being killed off at an incredible rate.

I guess getting to the end of the forest seemed as impossible as getting to the end of the rainbow. But get there they did, and they noticed it too late. If they regretted the ruin they had caused, I guess the fortunes they had made were some consolation.

A long time ago I read Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey. In it, Henry Stamper, patriarch of the logging family, talks about the changes in the industry: “Now with the technology we can cut twice as many trees in half the time, only problem is we ain’t got twice as many trees anymore. Some smartass cut’em all down while we weren’t looking.” This book was written in 1962, when clear cutting was pretty much the norm still.

When I was in third grade at St. Mary’s Catholic school in Tomahawk, Ed Nystrom and I came across a passage in the Bible. “Take care of your ass, for it bears you,” is pretty much how it read, and you can just imagine how much fun it was to read the word “ass” in the Bible.

I couldn’t tell you with any degree of certainty where exactly this line is, but after all these years it has stuck with me, and I can turn it into a rule for taking care of your car, your job, planet earth, even a donkey should you own one. Take care of these things because it makes sense to do so, because it’s the right thing to do, because your donkey will last longer if it is fed well and cared for.

Our planet needs an astonishingly small amount of care from each of us to be healthy, and it only makes sense to do what we can to help it along. A minimum of recycling, energy conservation and simple common sense changes to our daily lives can bring about some huge changes. We tend to look at industries like logging as the great polluters, and to some extent we are right, but if we all had had to change our habits and practices as much as the loggers have over the last 30 or so years, I think a lot of things would be a lot different.

A certain brother of mine, having read a few of these columns, accused me of becoming a philosopher. Now, in my family the line between philosophy and B.S. is directly correlated with the amount of social lubricant available. As we age, the times when all 10 of us get together have become more and more rare, and the occasions when we reach that stage of conviviality that allow the transition between these two have become (thankfully) even more so.

To have a philosophy like “be kind to your ass for it bears you” is nice, or the Miriam Lintereur credo, “if it’s messy eat it over the sink” works too. Either one can be universalized for a way to live a life. I figure having a philosophy is better than trying to be a philosopher, and even a poor hand-whittled philosophy is better than none at all.

Random thoughts

We have been seeing a lot less of the mourning doves this winter. I don’t know if it’s a food issue, a predator issue, or a simple population cycle issue. Where we normally have a flock of 20 or so throughout the year, our flock has gone from an average of 15 to one as of today. I heard on NPR the other day that this is a statewide thing, but wasn’t able to stay in the truck to hear exactly why it is happening.

Well, the days are getting longer, minute by minute, day by day. Hard to believe we’ve had white ground for two months. This is the time of year when I start getting a little shack-happy, and the best, only cure for me is to get out and do stuff. Snowshoe, ski, walk on a road, anything outside. The more I lay around the house the more I want to lay around the house, and the worse I feel.

Last night was a full moon, and Sharon and the dogs and I went out on Dorothy Lake for a walk and picture session. The pictures turned out a little iffy, but the walk was beautiful. Oh baby it was cold out there, but if a person can get caught up in the beauty of the place and time it’s a little easier to ignore the tingling ears and nose.

Just before Christmas I was in Brown Street Books store, ostensibly shopping but ended up jabbering with the lady behind the counter. She figures the economic downturn will result in folks doing more silent sports, simply because it’s cheaper if nothing else. I guess we can always hope, but I’m not holding my breath.

So I hope you are keeping your new year’s resolutions. I have resolved to be more handsome this year, I’ll keep you posted on the success of this project. Until then, Happy Trails.