The Other Side of the Ocean

It’s such a nice idea – to be able to escape for a few minutes to a secret corner. It has to be lush of course. And hidden. A misfit in a brutal environment of urban concrete.





I had such a place in Warsaw: behind the park, a shaded alley with small homes. So unlike the apartment blocks in the city center! I don’t think many people knew about it. And of course, I kept the place to myself. I went there “to escape,” because adolescent girls often think they need to “escape” whatever uncomfortable realty is nipping at them.


And when you're past the angst of growing up? It's still there: the desire for a spot of heaven. Close to home.

It's a challenge to find such a place. I’m surrounded by the essentials: grocery stores, bookstores, movie houses, pubs, sushi bars – great, but that’s a different kind of escape. What’s my secret destination when I want to exhale after a tortured day of reading heavy, heavy cases?

This.





Hidden. Yet, just a few minutes stroll from my front door.





Lush now, in midsummer.





A garden. All it needs is a stone wall and a secret gate.

Eh, let’s not be greedy.

And we know all too well that, no matter how simple we want a day to be, how uncomplicated and straightforward, it’s really not up to us, is it?

I gave it a good effort, I think. Straightforward things: I scrubbed the condo clean. That’s a Sunday ritual. All dust and lime deposits removed. Done.

Then what? Typically, this will be a moonlighting day, but I’m not on a regular schedule yet. And so it turned into a biking day.





We pedaled over to our favorite café to make sure my photos were hanging straight. They were. And then? Well, I lost myself in a series of phone calls, each building on the previous one. And I thought – how much influence do we really have in the life of another? In the course of a lifetime – maybe. In the course of a day – not much.

And so the day dripped on.

At Ed’s farmette, I fought off mosquitoes and surveyed the fate of the various flowers I’d planted in better bug-less days.

I admired the work of the farmers in the plots next to his.





When the light began to fade (ever so slowly), I said – let’s go home.

The clouds were funny tonight. On the bike ride home, it's almost as if they were trying to make a statement. But what?

A commenter wrote that you tend to get more work done when there is more work to do.

Yes, you're right about that.


Saturday: up at 6 for an hour of reading (news, blogs, the usual morning fare). Down to the gym for the next hour. I try to read a book while on the machines, but I’m distracted by the Today show on TV – the story is about moonlighting. Not surprisingly, a growing number of workers are looking for that second job. Suddenly I am immensely grateful that I found one in a place that is so incredibly unobjectionable.

By 8, I shake a groggy Ed and we go to the Westside Community Farmers Market. Quickly. Efficiently.





















Grilled foods tonight. Good. Got them now. And fruits for breakfast. Shopping done.





A shower, with time for the hair to dry. And time for the most important morning ritual – breakfast on my small condo terrace. This part calls for a leisurely mindset. It’s no good otherwise. An espresso on the run just hasn’t the power to coax me into a proper mood.

By 9:30, I’m dressed and ready to head out for work.





We open the place up, the manager and I. And we talk. About her move here when the store opened, about life, families, the sales approach, the product.

Strands of conversation, cut short when the door opens and a customer comes in. It’s a beautiful day outside and so there aren’t many here, shopping, but there are some. The undecided ones. The young girls who have absolutely no intention of buying anything. The ones who know what they want because they once had it and they sure would love to have it again (even if the memory is a little fuzzy about the what and when of the purchase).

The sun moves across the floor and I am so glad that the place has windows where you can see that. None of this sequestered mall stuff so that when you go out you notice with shock that the day has changed and you have not witnessed the moment of transformation.

And then I am done. For now. And I think how mellow this is – this morning at…. my place of additional work. How lucky that it should be this way.

I walk back slowly. On another day I would rush. Maybe. I would still have energy to write. Maybe. There it is – cautious optimism!

I call Ed. I’m done! We walk over to Border’s where I sip a coffee and look at Maile Meloy’s wonderful new book of short stories. Ed buys it for me. As a present.

Back home, I heat up the grill and get the market veggies out. The Tour de France is on. I think about someday hiking the Pyrenees. Maybe. Someday.

I’ve only told a handful about the exact nature of my additional (week-end) employment. Their reactions have been, I suppose, in character. My mother, struggling to maintain tact within her usual frank approach to family and life in general, asked – but, didn’t they think you’re too old for this job? Don’t they want to place out front someone who looks, well, you know, better? Not that you don’t look well. For your age. (I assured her that the company maintained nondiscriminatory practices.)

Ed’s reaction has been a continued preoccupation with melting metals, or whatever else he may be reading at the moment:





When I nudge him to take note of this significant change, he remains unfazed -- Oh, pick you up after work then?

I want to say (and I do say it) – no, you will not. I will no longer have time for what you do so well (which is a moment-based existence that adds on bits of life incrementally – sort of like a domino chain: you can’t tell what the next piece will be, except that it will somehow relate to the previous one).

Ed is very adept at blocking the subtle differences between the schedule of a person with two jobs and a person with no job at all (he retired early).

I am mostly surprised, however, at my own reaction to this slight twist to my life henceforth. It seems like a major admission of failure. And this is something so new to me, that I almost cannot continue the conversation with myself about what comes next. It’s too distressing. Upbeat people are not good at acting out distressing turns in the road.

Of course, the failure that I now suddenly recognize, as vividly as I recognize that my right hip is lower than my left (once I was told of this, I see it so plainly, even though for years this had completely escaped my notice) – is the failure of fitting in what I thought for so many decades I was slated to do: the writing of the goddamn book that we all probably think we have within us, except that I thought it especially strongly.

Perhaps more perceptive souls saw this coming. It could be argued that I have had plenty of months to do well by my ambitious leanings. People who want to finish manuscripts don’t cross oceans the minute school’s out. They don’t kayak down the Wisconsin River just because the weatherman notes the absence of thundershowers in the forecast. They don’t wait for the writer's shack to be finished because, really it may not be the next domino piece, or the one after, and even though Virginia Woolf insisted on a better writing environment for herself, she could afford to be fussy: she was already an accomplished person before she said (or rather Nicole Kidman said, but I imagine she got it right) -- I need to return to London.

On the upside, I still wake up each day making up sentences in my head. My groggy senses haven’t caught up with the suddenly distressingly real possibility that I may never get them on paper. In the gray light of the pre-morning sky, I am still working on my unfinished manuscript.

In a touching NYT essay about her mother who slowly is losing her memory to Alzheimer’s, Elizabeth Kadetsky notes how forgetfulness does allow you to dissociate from history, all history, painful and pleasant, so that you come to appreciate only the moment, nothing that came before it, nothing that would perhaps disturb the pleasure of experiencing whatever touches you now.

I am, as everyone else is, attached to memory. If I do not have a daughter at my side, I at least have the recollection of our most recent conversation, and of our time together, and of her (their) entire childhood.

On the other hand, if I were not burdened by the memory of yesterday’s coldness, I would believe, just based on what I am experiencing at the moment, that we are having a pleasant as pie summer season.


I bike to campus today and urge Ed to bike with me. Being more “in the moment” than perhaps anyone I know, he agrees. Why not…

And it is a lovely little ride.





The lake is pretty, yes, totally pretty (forgetting the ice that covers it for so many winter months... long winter months), sailboats and other floating devices bounce around in playful summer winds (and children bounce with them…)





…(and some bounce too much so that the boat topples over…)





…really, it is quite a perfect little day.


Bascom Hill is empty now. Mostly empty. In any case, there are no Badger red sweatshirts on this warm (enough) day. The only red on the hill is the red of the old brick Science Hall. Oh, and of the young woman, turning ever so slightly pink. In her red bikini.





I take Ed down to the food huts on Library Mall. This is my stomping ground, not his, I know my way around: I know that lattes are on sale on Thursdays at the bookstore, for instance. I know all that. But he, too, has memories here. Distant ones, but memories nonetheless. The juice guy is an old buddy, and the fruit vendor was in his housing coop.





I say to Ed – and I come down here nearly every day, no matter how cold… But he’s not listening. He sees the burrito stand. At the moment, he wants nothing more than a double burrito. With hot sauce.


We bike back the long way – via the Southwest path. And this is the way I bike when I meet a friend on Monroe Street or have dinner on Chapman. Ed’s grinning. Really? It’s pretty here in the summer, he tells me.

A friend of mine wrote that her mother, who winters in Florida and spends the summer in the Michigan family home, is considering cutting out early and returning to Florida in a couple of weeks. The cold Midwestern summer is dragging her down.

I’m with her on that one. There’s something terribly wrong about a July that offers up both a high of only 65, at the same time that it thrusts upon us the usual swarms of mosquitoes and over-air conditioned interiors. Life is brutal this year in the Midwest.

It is not surprising, therefore, that I stayed at my home desk (response to commenter question: the writer’s shed is taking the path of all great cathedrals of Europe: it is turning into a multi-stage project, with each phase taking years and epochs to complete).

Here are some more depressing notes:

I cooked broccoli soup for supper. How “winter” is that!

My movement was of the indoor kind – in the gym.

I skipped the Wednesday market around the corner. Too cold. Never mind that vendors were equally cold, and for a significant number of morning hours.

I watched the Tour de France because the race was along the Mediterranean and I was jealous. Of the Tour de France. That's beyond insane.



I have a photo for you – it is of a robin. I post pics of robins in March to remind myself (and you) that spring is about to happen. Let me not post it. Too sad to resurrect themes from March.

Oh, such a beautiful moon there, somewhere behind the clouds! Full moon, the one over a river, moon river, river made beautiful by the moon. Time to chase it once again.

And I don’t mean time to leave, time to go anywhere at all. Quite the contrary – time to stay put and puff up the reserves a bit. Time to moonlight.

I applied for week-end and evening work and today I was called back with an offer. In the days of a tough economy, of furloughs and pay cuts, I am grateful that the place I chose to put down my application said – start anytime.

Although I don’t hide here that I am a law prof, neither do I write about my work at the university. So much do I avoid it that I sometimes think Ocean makes me look like I do not have a job (if you write about a glorious moment on the lake and that becomes the post for the day, doesn’t it seem as if that’s all there was to that day?).

With my moonlighting, I decided to take the opposite approach. I will not mention the place of work (at least for now), but I wont be so reluctant to mention my hours there. (Within limits: I mean to keep my bread well buttered.)

I’ll say this: I chose a place that sells something I like.

I’ll be the little dog there – the new hire, the lowest rung on the ladder.





And that’s a good thing. Every once in a while, it’s useful to take some of the loftiness out of your own environment. To scrub a few floors that are not your own.

So, sweet moon, thank you for this offer of work. So long as I have the energy to do it all, I’ll try to do it all.

Ed has “stuff to do” in Lake Mills today. If you’re not a Wisconsin reader, then you probably don’t know Lake Mills: about 20 miles east of Madison, it’s a sweet little Victorian town (or at least parts of it can be called that), clustered expansively around a small but quite beautiful lake.

I have “stuff to do” as well, but my stuff is highly transportable. You want to bike over with me? – he asks. Oh, so much…

That’s how I find myself doing “stuff” (for me – reading cases) on a bench on the village green of Lake Mills, as Ed does his “stuff” (playing tennis with his buddies) a small distance away.


Let me put in a plug for the Glacial Drumlin State Trail from Madison (or, more accurately, from its eastern out post – Cottage Grove) to Lake Mills (and beyond), especially for those who love bucolic scenery, a flat ride, and limestone pebbles under their tires.










I have to say, with a beautiful, mostly sunny sky, it is a heavenly spin. The reward is, in part, in the destination. The lake is the real spirit here– choppy and wavy today due to the wind, but serene nonetheless.










I had wanted to take my “stuff” to a café, but nothing resembling a café is open and so I pick a bench on the green facing this important storefront.





Every once in a while, I look up to do some significant people watching. My Styrofoam cup of bad coffee from an eatery on Main Street is perhaps not a highlight, but everything else is so supremely pleasant that I do not mind.





Toward evening, the men finish their game and Ed and I bike home.

You could not have a better day of summer stuff.

My big walk for the day? Around the block. On this most beautiful summer afternoon!

Eh, others are taking it easy as well.











At least I left my computer behind. This time.

The morning river fog lifts. A few clouds drift in. The sand is warm, the tent is warm. Even the river bathing routine today is not unpleasant. The sand island is like a stage, but there is no one watching as I scrub my scalp with a combination of soap, water and whatever else the river bed throws in. (True, at night we had visitors – we see fresh deer tracks come up from the river and then retreat back again. But now, there are only birds and most are hiding in trees across the water.)

A summer shadow on the beach is like a Matisse sketch of a person with strong limbs. Or at least made stronger this year by so much carrying, climbing and rowing. Bird tracks cross the sand (and the shadow) in all directions.





We head out for a day of nonstop paddling. The Mississippi is still almost 20 miles away and after that, we have to navigate the great American river to get to the take out landing.

It’s a warm day. The thermometer would probably show 70s, but it feels warmer than that. Initially, there is plenty of sun and we’re careful to avoid burning. I study Ed in his former girlfriend’s father’s shirt and an old hat he found on the roadside. From one angle he looks to me like a Sicilian padrone – a good soul, kind to animals and dragonflies…





From another, he is Huck Finn with years added (though not to his soul – Ed is so very much a Huck, at least if we read Huck to be the compassionate adventure-seeking runaway, the kid who would like the river more than what town life had to offer).





And here we are, still on the Wisconsin River, still watching turtles plop and herons take flight…










And, maybe because it’s America’s holiday, we get treated to a return of the bald headed eagle…






As for people? No, not really. We pass only the occasional Alumacraft Jon boat with two, maybe three fishing men and women (everyone in these parts uses the Alumacraft).





Good catch today? Nah. Three nibbles. But we’re having such fun.

And we are too. More relaxed now, even as I’m paddling nonstop – dip one end, dip the other. My vest is loosely on a shoulder (for an idle moment of sinful pleasure… well, not too sinful: my inflatable is one hell of a steady tub and the current here is laboriously slow), my feet are dangling in the water. Ed asks for a song and I oblige with some Simon and Garfunkel. Life on the river can be very slow and beautiful.





The sand bars still trap us occasionally, but Ed can heave his way out with his powerful arms. Mine can’t reach that low. Nor are they nearly as strong. (For instance – I count that he paddles once for my four strokes and still he is faster.) I climb out, pushing the boat to deeper waters, picking up the current again.

And finally, we come to the last road bridge over the Wisconsin. High up, spanning the river. A tribute to the automobile traffic that roars across it.





…while the railcars stand to the side, waiting for their moment. With a half hope that they, too, are part of our American way of life.






And three miles later, we are on the Mississippi.

They say that approaching the joining of the two rivers is a grand event. I’m expecting a choking moment of accomplishment, with a twinge of wonder at the splendidness of it all.

I get, instead, a slap in the face. Or, rather, on the side, with waves. One after another. Rolling from the river to the shore.

We are on the first day of a long holiday week-end and America has taken to the river. We’re not talking paddles and canoes. We’re talking power boats. And picnics and cold cases of beer. And children jumping into the water and young adults pushing the bikini line way low and older adults too, having that I don’t care, I’m here to have fun attitude that makes this indeed one big party scene.





The Mississippi, festooned with Americans celebrating freedom in a big way.





I find the land celebrations to be loud, but rather endearing. The power boats are another matter. Let me put it mildly: I don’t much care for the motor boats, nor their effect on the river.

Noise, there’s the motor noise. Echoing across the waters, it is tenfold louder than what you hear on the highway.

Then there are the waves. Ed and I are fighting to keep our boats on course. We are mere smudges of dirt on this speed track. There are times when I am sure they are coming straight at us, even as we hug the shore line.





It is a dreadful way to experience the Mississippi.

(Lest you think it's all on the Wisconsin side -- no indeed. Iowa has its own contingency lined up on the shore.)





I shout out to Ed – why don’t they just go down the river once and come back when the trip’s over? Why this back and forth stuff?

Why indeed. Because it’s fun to race crazily between point A and B and back again. And to be faster than your buddy in the other boat. (I’m guessing here; it all seems a bit insane to me.)

Once we are a couple of miles away from the initial batch of boat fiends, we experience, briefly, a true Mississippi moment: a tug is pushing barges – two across and five deep. The front ones are empty, Ed tells me. See how they rise above the water?





We watch, mesmerized by the enormousness of this transport method. The barges command the river. All else (even the power boats) falls by the wayside.


And now, finally, we pull up to the county park beach. The car is there, waiting for the boats, for us. Ed folds up my inflatable as I watch the beach scene. Unlike the river noise, I find this more intimate and welcoming. Groups of young men, groups of children, banding together to have fun on this warm holiday afternoon.





If I want to think back fondly to the Mississippi, I’ll bring up these images – of families unloading the cooler, of friends cooling off in her waters, soda (or beer) in hand, of children dashing in to get the sand off.










I’m grinning as we head back east. Happy Fourth of July week-end indeed.



As we approach our starting point, where we left the other car, we pause at Culver’s. What’s your special today? Mint explosion. Hmmm. Like a fireworks of mint. No, forget that. We’ll share a vanilla. Small please.





And so on the Fourth of July we are not on the Wisconsin, and not even on the Mississippi. We’re back home, in Madison – doing what one does here on this day: going to my local and very endearing Westside Community Market…













…Picking up vegetables and flowers (yes, lovely flowers this week!) with notes of red and white and purple – will you settle for purple?









We’ll throw charcoal on the new grill out on the balcony (cheapest one on the market!) and roast and toast and maybe, if I haven’t fallen asleep by then, I’ll go out on the roof and watch the fireworks all around town.

You and I know that there are only two types out there: those who love to camp and those who will have none of it (okay, with some reluctant go-alongs thrown into the camping bunch). Which type am I?

I don't know. In Poland, I camped a lot – mostly on long kayak trips, with heavy cotton tents that allowed bugs in, never with family, always with friends. We didn’t have motels or even much of a hotel culture. If you wanted to get away from home with people your own age, you camped.

Like so many women I know (and a not a small number of men), I’ve always had issues with living in the wild. The bugs, yes that, the animals that like your food, the absence of easy cleaning options, the weather vicissitudes – at the end of the day they can crush your spirit.

But here I am, the fourth night under a tent on yet another island on the Wisconsin River.

Am I a go-along? Well, I do like to see the joy in Ed’s face as we set camp. But I’d by lying if I didn’t admit that there are hugely wonderful moments for me as well. When do they come about?

When you can pitch tents randomly, on sandy banks of a river island, any island. Any shore, for that matter.

When the weather is perfect – not too hot, not too cold. With no chance of storms.

When you don’t have to hang up your food to keep it away from bears.

When you have a fantastic (and cheap, Ed would add!) REI tent that has four huge mesh screens to keep the bugs out and the views there, at the turn of your head.

Perhaps those are the obvious. Let me add some special ones: when you wake up in the morning and you look outside to see a misty dawn…





…And you know you don’t have to get up yet. You doze on and off to the music of birds. Sometimes the loud squawk of the crane, the chirp of a swallow or something completely unknown. It’s quiet out there. The morning is cool, but your bag is warm. The breeze travels from one corner of the tent to the next. The rain flap is up – no rain in sight. You look out and watch the morning progress.

















So, now you know about our last morning on the Wisconsin River. And all mornings were like that. Camping-wise, this trip scored on the upper end of the continuum of pleasurable outdoor living experiences.

But the day leading up to this: day four of our river life -- was it a good one? Yes, I’d say so. Sure, my river bath that starts the morning was cold and the water was, well, colorful. But it was at this most splendid island (see previous post). Who could complain.





And the paddle downstream continues to be bucolic and beautiful. The clouds help keep us cool (it would be so sweaty hot without them!).
















Our paddling stretch on this day is in two parts – fifteen miles down to Boscobel, navigating sandbanks and fallen timbers, passing the occasional fishing boat… having a good morning? Yep. How many? Twenty five so far. What kind? (The list is so long that I lose track. I do hear river bass and blue gill and walleye and a half dozen others.)





But mostly, the river is empty. Okay, not really empty. We see numerous cranes and when we get closer to the fallen timber that lines the shore, we hear the constant plop of turtles retreating into the water.










On a railway track I watch three raccoons mess with each other and toward the late afternoon, I watch a deer trot away from the river as we approach. But these are the only disturbances. The shore is a place of tranquility. Rarely do I see evidence that we, humans, have trotted through this landscape as well.






Boscobel is our stop for the day. We leave our boats at the landing and hike into town for food, water and WiFi.

Boscobel is closer in my mind to a town than a village. The demographics are town-like – a little over 3,000. But more importantly, Boscobel has a spirit to it. It’s opening up rather than putting up shutters on empty storefronts. (And it can’t be for the success of its logo: The Wild Turkey Hunting Capital of Wisconsin.)

I shouldn’t be surprised that we find an espresso café on the main street. No, it doesn’t define a boom mentality, I know that, but it does tell me that the town aspires to reach a broader client base. And there appears to be a thriving canoe rental business. And (I'm told this many times) a Chinese Restaurant. And a well tended museum at the old depot.





After 4 days of instant coffee (yes, there you have another downside to camping), I cannot resist an espresso. We settle in with our computers and chat to the owner’s husband. Open just two weeks. So far so good, he tells us.





There are a number of bars that offer food (if you noted the offerings at Bob’s in an earlier post, you will have recognized the menu of every single bar we’ve come across, plus minus an item or two), but we pick a coffee shop/diner type place for a meal – the Vale Inn.





Homemade pies and homemade soups, says the menu. But I want substance and so I have a quarter roasted chicken dinner (lookin’ awfully fried to me, but hey, it’s what’s underneath the skin that counts and the meat is quite moist and tasty), with the largest portion of fries this side of the Mississippi and choice of salad (iceberg, cole slaw or jell-o), $6 for the lot. Good deal. (But good greif, who forgot to tell our small town bars and diners that vegetables are super cool?)





It’s early evening and we have to hustle along. We have more than a third of the river before us and we want to end the paddling on the next day (Friday).

The sky is clearing. That’s good, in theory. I’ve noted here times of being wet and cold. But sun on the water is a tricky story. Especially if you’re heading west and the sun is heading in the same direction. We squint and try to pick out spots with a strong current. And we try to do it quickly, with a strong push to add another 8 or 9 miles to our day.















The light is fading now. It’s after 8 and we haven’t found a good spot to land. Spoiled, yes, after last night on the most perfect island. But, too, the sand islands are less frequent. Some of the islands here are densely wooded and marshy at the edges (though cranes appear to love this stuff).










But, our luck holds: as we round the corner, we see a diamond shaped sand bar, right in the middle of the river. It’s high enough, and its position at the bend offers wonderful views in all directions.

We pull in. The air is still and the bugs are coming out of wherever they went to rest for the past few windy days, but it hardly matters. Our tent keeps them out. Even as the occasional puff of wind refreshingly enters in, to make this yet again a beautiful camping moment.

I’ve seen the Wisconsin River referred to as the river of a thousand isles. I’ll add my own tourism promo phrase – the river that never sleeps.

We wake up and the sand bank where we landed the previous night is gone. The damn must have let some water out because this morning, we have a different river before us. Deeper, stronger looking.

I watch a man with his young boy stand and fish on a very thin strip of remaining sand.





But the weather hasn’t changed. Cloudy, very cool for the first day of July. It takes me more than a minute, more than many minutes to get going.

The river washing routine is enough to stall me for a good while. The water isn’t exactly murky, but it’s no mountain stream either. Ed pours as I pretend to get one set of grime out, to be replaced, most likely, with whatever the waters offer up this morning.

Still, I feel clean, or clean enough. Refreshed. We set out.

The wind remains a challenge. We hug the shore to minimize its force.

It’s entirely different here, just west of Lone Rock. Bluffs along a riverbank add a sense of mystery to the place. They create a certain echo, a cavernous aura that makes you want to not splash too loudly.










Not that it’s quiet here. This is swallow central – their market, their café, their territory! We look at the mud nests in the bluffs and we watch the birds fly in zigzags, with some internal anticrash radar that would make airplanes envious.





They’re not the only birds that we see on the river. Cranes (Donna's comment is correct, of course), but herons too – blue, always flying just ahead of us, as if they need to show us where to go before abandoning us. And an eagle. Stunning -- is it the bald headed? -- crossing the river just ahead and then watching our progress as we continue.

We’re better at navigating the sandbars. Most often, we find the stronger current and we avoid the sand traps. But at one point, I get stuck. And it’s my fault – I lead us exactly to where we should not go. I tell Ed to stay put – I’ll drag you out! I hurry toward him and of course, I stumble. With a big splash.



(log commemorating place of tumble)


That’s unfortunate. Getting wet on a summer day isn’t a big deal, but this is no ordinary summer day. It’s barely 60 outside. A drizzle comes and goes. Ed insists I wring at least my pants out – they’ll have a better chance of drying. For a while, I contemplate unpacking the boat and getting my spare clothes, but I don’t want to waste time.

I stand there in the middle of the river, patting myself down with a dry cloth while Ed wrings out my lower garments (how the winds are laughing...).

The man has a mighty wring in his wrist and I feel okay about continuing. By 4, we reach our next village destination – Muscoda. The good thing about this village is that it grew fairly close to the river. (The hub is up about half a mile up the road, but that’s fine by us – our legs need a stretch.)

I’m cold now that we’re out of the boat. I have no choice but to dig out dry duds. Nothing feels better than a dry outfit (following a wet one, well wrung, but still very very damp) on a cool evening.


Muscoda is one hell of a mix. Along the banks leading up to it, we see some pretty significant houses. We speculate that they may be homes of the Chicago wealthy. Stunningly gorgeous, with windows out onto the water – they’re the first riverside wealth that we’ve come across so far.

But the village itself seems to have had the fate of so many others – a sad main street, with as many shops closed as open.










Muscoda calls itself the Morel Mushroom Capital of Wisconsin which in itself is curious – it’s a delicacy that somehow doesn’t fit into the heart of this Midwestern village.

What Muscoda offers us though is a wonderful respite – the library on this day is open late and the WiFi is functional and fast. Across the street, at Ernie’s, no, excuse me, not Ernie’s, you’ve not kept pace Ms Librarian, they changed hands and now it’s Amo’s – okay, at Amo’s, we settle in for a wonderful homemakde pizza with the works. And the works include every vegetable ever thrown on a pizza. With cold beer on tap. Heaven.





Amo’s fills up over the course of the evening. And that, too is fun to watch. If you give ‘em (us) a place to hang out with good, cheap food, they’ll (we’ll) come. We need to congregate, to watch each other eat and drink. It’s better that way.

Satiated, we head back to the river. It’s 7 and I don’t mind paddling a bit longer, though I get nervous about pushing our kayaking into the evening. Sometimes, the landing spots just do not materialize when you need them. I suggest one – too weird. No growth on it. Then another island – too close to shore… you can practically hear the noises from the back yard of the house there…

Sometimes such fussiness ends in a miserable resolution. Not this time. We turn the corner and come across the most perfect island, sure to be the premier camping site of this trip, no, probably any of camping trip I’ve been on.

The island is small, but it has a nice stretch of sand, up on a slight bank, out of harm’s way (not to be covered by a sudden rise in the river). It curves at the tip, creating a nice arch, just to give you a visually stunning piece to gaze at as you settle in for the night.









We take a walk in the now dry sand and watch the water brush against the edge. I tell Ed that I am reminded here of the river I grew up by in Poland, at my grandparents’ village home. I spent the first years of my life there and all the summers of my childhood too. In those times, the water was clean and we’d find shallow parts where we’d lie down and let the ripples cool us down as made their way over our small bodies.






I’d never seen a river like that until now, here in Wisconsin. The riverbanks are nearly identical here as well – green, bushy trees, sandy inclines, an occasional meadow. With swallows and herons. In Poland, we had the occasional stork. But really, cranes look awfully similar from a distance.

Beautiful day outside! – This from Ed, just a few minutes ago, as I force myself to poke out of the tent. The man who at home would never say a kind word about a day until it was over and done with tells me now it’s heaven on earth out there.

I look around. At least it’s not raining.

But then, yesterday started out dry as well. Let me think back now: cloudy. Yes, it had been a cloudy morning. We aren’t hurrying. I work, Ed takes out his burner to fix breakfast: instant coffee and cereal bars. And squashed nectarines and wine-infused bread (we had taken along a small carton of wine for supper and it leaked). Then, a quick splash of soap on exposed parts of the body (too cold for the works), then more reading time inside the warm tent.

We have no daily goal – only to make progress, loosely defined: we need to get back home at roughly the time Ed’s cat sitter thinks we’re coming back.

A little after 11, we set out.

The river is wide and beautiful.





But the sandbars are a challenge. You think you’re in a deep spot and suddenly you realize you paddled right into a hidden island of sand. Several times, we’re out in the middle of the river, tugging our kayaks to the sudden drop off where the boats can float again.


We are alone on the river this entire day. Along the banks, too, all is quiet. Green. Very very green.





The clouds are messing with us. They let out a sprinkle, just ever so slight and then they move on. Eh, we’ve been lucky. Luck will hold.


Some three hours later we approach the first bridge leading into Spring Green.





This is no river town (for one thing, it’s set a couple of miles away from it). Back in Madison, we think of it as being on the artsy side – Wisconsin’s headquarters for Frank Lloyd Wright architecture and home to the American Players Theater. We’re not especially anxious to stop there, but we need water and WiFi would be handy too. (Ed had called ahead and the library was indeed open on this day, and free WiFi was readily available, though the librarian warned us that they did not permit people to use the electrical outlets. Bizarre.)

As we come closet to the bridge (and the construction of the parallel bridge), we begin to have second thoughts about pulling up. It’s so busy up there on the road!

But, if I am out to look for America, it’s here, on highway 14.





We paddle on. By the next bridge (still into Spring Green), we see a mom and two kids and a dog, trying to have a summer day, out here on the sandbank, but the weather, cloudy and cool, just isn’t helping.





I ask a guy with a fishing rod if he knows of a boat landing further down (it’s on our river map, but the river map is very very old). Don’t know. Not from around here.

We can’t decide. Pull over and hike along the road to town, or hope that landing further down. We take a bet on the landing and paddle on. These main roads are so repulsive after the quiet of the river. The idea of walking two miles each way just doesn’t sit well.

We scoot around the sandbars and keep to the shore, looking out for a place to dock. And it’s there, just as the map had indicated – Bob’s private boat landing.

We pull up on the sandy beach. A woman is standing on the deck, smoking a cigarette. Bob’s appears to be a cottage/campground kind of place. A family run business. She’s part of the family.

Windy out there?
Yes, gusty as anything. How far is it to town from here?
Bout a mile and a half.
May we leave our boats here for a couple of hours? There’s a grocery store up the road, right? We need some supplies.
What are you looking for?
Water. Snacks. WiFi.

I say it almost comically. As if I’m wistfully recalling civilization.
Got it all here.
Really? Can we get some food? And water? And use your Internet?
Sure.

Bob’s is also a bar, with, well, Wisconsin bar food: burgers, hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, pizza.
We stay for supper.

I see you have pepperoni or sausage on your pizza and then there’s a third – deluxe. What’s deluxe?
Pepperoni and sausage together. It’s frozen. Tombstone.
And for an appetizer – there’s broccoli flowerettes?
Yep. In cheese, deep fried.

We settle for chicken sandwiches, french fries and fried cheese curds. With local beer. The room is first empty, then a few men come in for a drink, then it’s empty again. We work away on our computers and eat an early supper.

And by 6, we are on the water again. And by 6:15 it’s raining. And by 6:20, it’s really raining. By 7 we’re on the lookout for a camping spot. It’s unpredictable, here on the river: for miles, we’ll pass one great spot after another and then there will be stretches of no good landing place at all.





By 8, Ed is saying – a good half hour left of daylight.

I’m wet, the boat’s wet and still no good sandbar. How about this one? Too low. That? No place to pitch a tent.

And then, just as we spot the bridge to the village of Lone Rock in the distance, we find it: a nicely elevated sandbar. You have to count on luck, no? It’s too miserable if luck runs out.

Or is it? Some people just bypass the luck/no luck label altogether.
Great day outside! Simply great – Ed says again as he looks up toward the cool, cloudy sky.

We’re a country that believes in the automobile. I understand that. Me, I worship technology in the form of the washing machine (I’ve lived in too many places without one).

I’m less in awe of the car. America's big love affair with the automobile means (among many other things) that if you want to paddle down a river from point A to point B, you better leave a car at point B, so that you can retrieve your stuff where you put in, at Point A. There’s no speedy little train or local bus to take you there.

And so we drive down toward where the Wisconsin meets the Mississippi (our endpoint).

It’s not a heavy use road. And it is quite pretty in a cornfields and barns sort of way. And forward looking.





And there it is – the Mississippi, the river of all rivers, not at all like what you see in that quick dart of an eye as you cross the bridge to the Twin Cities or Dubuque, but here, near Prairie du Chien, it's a wide body of water flowing past vast areas of countryside, with county parks offering boat landings and strips of beach to bring families to on a warm sunny day.





It’s not a warm, sunny day, but it’s not too bad. So far, the rain has been only a threat. We leave a car at the shore and drive back east toward Prairie du Sac.

The road tracks the river, more or less. I’m surprised that there isn’t much of a river life here though. The villages are sleepy things. True, we’re coming through on a work day, but even so, each place looks like we’ve hit the siesta hour big time.

But as we approach our put in point, we join a major road that offers more of Wisconsin commerce. Including our infamous custard place – Culver’s. There’s ice cream and there’s frozen custard. If you have never tried custard, imagine it in this way: ice cream with more of everything – milk, eggs, more milk, more eggs – the glory of a dairy state, with a near butter consistency.

We stop for a cone. Smallest, please. The special of the day!





Chocolate covered strawberry. Heavenly. We share it, wondering how anyone could manage the whole thing, let alone anything larger.


By the time we reach the boat landing, it is late afternoon. We unload. We have an inflatable to assemble. (Ed: I wonder where I put the instructions… must have left them behind) We lay it out. It’s been a while... (Ed: there was a pump for this, wasn’t there?) We make do. We blow and tinker and seal it up and by 4:30, we’re ready to launch.



(the hat belongs to Ed)


A man comes over with his dog. The pooch has been playing in the river and he is full of exuberance. His mud is now my mud as he shakes and romps in and out of the boat.

He just loves boating! How far’re you goin'?
To the Mississippi.
I envy you. My wife, she wont camp more than a night.
I understand her. What is it with men?!
We don’t mind goin’ dirty.
I sure know that…
Just watch out for the sand banks. My friends, they didn’t know about the damn and they woke up to their kayak being on the next island.


We know what he’s telling us – the power plant releases water through the damn irregularly and when it does this, the water level in the river goes up by several feet. If you’re camping on a sandy bank, you may well wind up underwater in the middle of the night. We imagine the power company dudes having a good laugh. Okay – let her flow! Wonder how many innocents we’ll sweep off their beach this time! He he!

The river is deep, the river is wide, heron – lead the way!





Well, not always deep. It’s easy to hit an underwater sandbank and get stuck. Pull me out! – I shout to Ed. Get out yourself, I have my own issues.

At the shore, the herons are laughing. Or dancing. Or mating. Or all the above.






But mostly, the river is easy. True, we have a strong head wind and if we stop paddling, oftentimes we appear to be going against current, but mostly, it is a gentle ride. And a beautiful one.





By 7:30, we’re on the lookout for a camp spot. The requirements? Low to pull in, but with higher ground (in case the river level rises). We pick an island – one of the many on the river.





We haul the boats out and settle in. I’m grateful that the rain held off. And the wind has dispersed the bugs. We sit on the beach and eat our baguette with cheese and tomato. Okay, the bread is made by a Frenchman (from la Baguette!), but the cheese is Hook’s Bloomin' Idiot and the tomatoes are homegrown.