Saturday, March 25, 2006

By-bye, doe; bye-bye, Buck When I was a kid, my uncle Bob showed me how to find a spring by following a watercress-filled trickle upstream to its source. He knew where find the sweetest water and always carried a collapsable aluminum cup in his trout vest. These little springs were sometimes surrounded by stones, but often they just bubbled out of a sandy pool tucked into a wooded hillside overgrown with mountain laurel. When we fished Pennsylvania mountain streams with names like Laurel Run and Mosquito Run, we always drank out of those springs. I also would occasionally drink from a trout stream itself, but the widespread presence of giardia and the occasional gruesome discovery put an end to that habit for good. After spending the better part of two hours this afternoon trying to snag a leftover Wisconsin turkey permit (and succeeding) and then another hour trying to walk a friend through the process (and failing - his browser kept getting Javascript errors), I had to get out for some fresh air. Fresh air and a chance at a steelhead or two. I hit a local stream that gets a fair amount of pressure, and worked a half-mile stretch where I have never run into another angler. Today there were a few boot tracks, but I was alone late this afternoon. Never saw a fish, however, so I'm not sure if they are just not up yet or if the boot tracks picked them off. What I did find, however, was a big dead doe, right on the bank. Her hide had been peeled back and her ribs were picked bare, but her vitals were visible between the ribs, sort of like the plastic Invisible Man/Woman models that were popular some years back. She didn't smell at all, and she looked fairly fresh, but there was no way of knowing whether she had died recently or whether she had been frozen there for most of the winter. The first thought I had was "Here's a good reminder of why I don't drink from streams any more." The last time I drank from a trout stream was back in the early 70s. I had been fishing Fish Creek in Bayfield County on a hot May afternoon and was so thirsty, I started looking for a spring. After walking along a hillside for several hundred yards without finding so muich as a trickle, I thought I'd take a chance and drink from the creek. I didn't have any water-purifying tablets, so I just leaned over a riffle in a nice rocky stretch and sucked in about a pint of cold creek. My thirst quenched, I continued on upstream. About a quarter mile above my makeshift bubbler, I crossed a trickle of a tributary and followed it uphill for a few yards until I came to a very dead deer smack in the middle of the trickle. The critter had fallen across the outlet of what might have been a very sweet spring, and every drop of water that reached the creek had flowed under, over or through the rotting carcass. Unlike the deer I found today, this one announced its presence with the unmistakable odor of death. I held my nose and staggered back to the creek, wondering how soon whatever I had caught from that deer-goo-infested water would hit me. To my relief and surprise, I never got sick. Since that day, I have found numerous dead critters - mostly deer - in water I am no longer tempted to drink. **** On another note, hats off to country-music icon Buck Owens, who died today in Bakersfield, California. Buck gave me my first taste of country music on the old "Hee Haw" show, which I watched religiously as a kid. I've often thought that a lot of country songs were written around one good line or image. Buck's songs still have some of the best lines in country music ("I've got the hungries for your love and I'm waiting in your welfare line."), right up there with Hank Senior, Tom T. Hall and Lyle Lovett, in my book. Here's a link to an obit. We'll miss you, Buck. Later... 9:37:31 PM    comment []

What a friend we have in cheeses Every outdoorsman who's every packed a lunch has carried cheese into the woods or onto his favorite lake. Wisconsinites know that the Badger State produces some of the world's best cheeses, but now the world knows that, too. Cheese lovers should take note that Wisconsin cheeses garnered 17 gold medals in the 2006 World Championship Cheese Contest held in Madison, Wisconsin this week. The overall world champion cheese, chosen from a record-breaking 1,795 cheese and butter entries from 19 countries, was a 200-pound wheel of nutty Emmentaler Switzerland Premier Cru from Switzerland. California cheeses won no gold medals. Zero. Nada. So much for the Left Coast taking over the title of America's Dairyland. Come sniff our dairy air, you pretenders! You can read the story of one Monroe, Wisconsin family that won 3 gold medals at this link. Lest you think that there's something smellier than limburger in a cheese contest judged in Wisconsin that awards 17 gold medals to Wisconsin cheeses, you should know that this annual event is judged fairly by cheese connoisseurs from around the world. (After all, they did award the top prize to a Swiss emmentaler and not a Wisconsin cheddar.) Coincidentally, Shivani started making cheese today, using raw milk and a kit she bought online. Her first attempt is a gouda, but it will be at least a month and probably more like two before we know if it's a success. She's been making naturally fermented pickles for several years now, so it was just a matter of time before she branched out and tried cheese. BTW, she also makes some great natural soaps, shampoos and other personal-care products. There's a link on her Life Energies website to her soap site. Check it out. Later... 8:51:33 PM    comment []