Once you see them

There is a principle I have noticed in the natural world. There is a lot we don't see or notice until it's named, pointed out to us, or, most of all, until we learn the trick of seeing it. Then it's everywhere. Then it's readily available for our notice.

Because of an interest in Monarch Butterflies, spurred by my library's grow and release display in the kid's room, I took the short amount of attention it required to get clear on which plant, exactly, is the milkweed they love. As soon as I knew the plant it turned out milkweed is everywhere. It's like a weed, because, I guess, it's a weed. I have found, to my surprise, that our yard is swimming in it. It used to be part of our unkempt collection of wildly overgrown weeds, but now I know. Those aren't weeds. That's our native butterfly habitat. In a blink of knowledge we go from neighborhood lawn menaces to the best citizens on the block.

Up at our lake house I have had a not dissimilar experience of discovery with agates. After endless, fruitless searching through the millions of small stones on the shore of Lake Superior I started rooting around in the cold tide line being churned up by the waves. There I found my first agate, and knowing what and how I was looking for, I found more, although none of them yet, I admit, so fancy and wonderful as the ones they sell for two dollars in an antique store in Grand Marais.

Wonderfully this revelation happened a third time when we were hiking in the woods a couple miles from here. I was admiring the mushrooms and the dense fairy copses. I was marveling at the beautiful deep creek-bed cutting down in the red stone, the gnarled roots of pines, and the subtly strange sounds of birds, when suddenly it occurred to me that I was seeing a lot of small trees that looked peculiar. The tree trunks were the right color, brown, but, oddly, they seemed furry. I looked up and the strange shaped branch above me moved against, rather than with, the wind.

These weren't trees, these were moose legs. That big branch was a moose antler! I wasn't walking through a forest of trees so much as I was walking through a forest of mooses.

Up until a couple days ago I would have been fairly convinced that pretty much all the moose were gone from up here in the Minnesota Northwoods, but now that I've got their silhouette down I can tell you, it's pretty much all mooses all the time. You just have to know how to see them.

Fly Away Home with mooses

Fly Away Home is a beloved movie in my house. If you haven't seen it, now would be the time to do so, before you read this and find the entire plot crudely outlined. In the movie Jeff Daniels plays a Canadian inventor/artist with a penchant for ultralight planes. When his ex wife dies in a car accident in New Zealand it turns out he'd better learn how to be a father fast because his heartbroken, barely known anymore to him, daughter, played by a young Anna Paquin, is now his full responsibility.

In Fly Away Home, this pre-teen Anna Paquin starts to find the beginning thread of healing when she finds and spontaneously adopts a clutch of orphaned geese.

I adore this lovely movie. I think it is very nearly a perfect movie. I would make only one small, tiny really, change to it. I think instead of finding baby geese, Anna Paquin should rescue baby mooses.

A mother moose, dying of global warming related causes, like parasites who no longer die off due to warm winters, dies under the stress of local fracking and the complications of giving birth to moose triplets. Anna Paquin finds the triplets and gives the baby mooses all the chocolate milk from her lunch causing them to think of her as their mom. She hides the moose in her dad's barn/studio. There are some antics with her acquiring dozens of gallons of chocolate milk. But because, after a week or two, the three mooses are frisky and each the size of a white-tailed deer, she is found out.

However, as this is the first interest Anna has shown in anything since coming to Canada, she is allowed to keep the moose, who now follow her everywhere while she bugles.

A game warden, who at first seems helpful, finds out about the mooses and says people aren't allowed to have pet mooses in Canada, which shows how bad things have gotten in Canada with the fracking and conservative government. Then he pulls out a small pocket saw and tries to cut off one of the moose's antlers, either to hang up in his weekend cabin or maybe because captive moose in Canada aren't allowed to grow antlers because they can easily put someone's eye out.

So after Jeff Daniels throws out the evil game warden they decide they should teach the moose, who are normally non migratory animals, to migrate. They can get the mooses to go south in Summer to Minnesota where everyone will be happy to see them cause all our moose died, and we miss them, and then they can go back to Canada in Winter where all their parasites can die in the necessary bitter cold and make life difficult for evil game wardens who will have to sweep up all the dead parasites.

Now in this slightly improved version of the movie Jeff Daniels is not an ultralight plane enthusiast, rather he's a tractor enthusiast. So they dress up a tractor like a moose and try to get the young mooslings to follow it. But the moose won't follow Jeff Daniels so young Anna Paquin has to go too on an adventure of a lifetime on a tractor, while bugling.

And then my wife and I, sitting in our vacation home over Lake Superior, see five mooses working their way down our shoreline. One of the mooses looks like Jeff Daniels and one like Anna Paquin, and I am so excited to finally see mooses on our shoreline that I tell you all about it in my blog. But you think I'm just being silly, and you don't believe me at all.

But then later you see the move Fly Away Home (With Mooses), and you are very, very sorry you ever doubted me. 

A blog year in review

Although we are now safely ensconced in 2015, I wanted to take one last look back at the blog year that was, noting the major highlights and acknowledging the year gone by. It was an exciting year, and there is much to reflect on, but I have chosen to restrict myself to choosing the top five highlights from the year of blogging. And so...

The Top 5 Highlights From the Blog Year 2014

1. March 13, 2014. 

I am alerted to the fact that my blog is very popular with musical legend Bob Dylan when he sends me the following email:

Reading your interesting blog. Am wondering what kind of pen you use. Do you use blue ink? Do you think I should switch to blue ink when jotting lyric ideas?  -Bob

Several thousand very similarly toned emails, comments, and audio mix tapes follow.

2. June 3, 2014. 

Clerkmanifesto wins the Pulitzer Prize for blogging. I know I should have mentioned this when it happened and that it's kind of a big deal, but I just didn't want everyone to make a big fuss.



3. July 19, 2014. 

The controversial post where I reveal that the last 200 posts were a dream sequence, mirroring the plot of Finnegans Wake. Yes, I lost  several subscribers, but I made a few James Joyce scholars very happy! All I really ever wanted was to make James Joyce scholars happy.



4. September 21, 2014. 

The moose incident. I can laugh about it now, though on nights of the full moon I still find myself needing to spend a few hours in some kind of simulated bog environment. 



5. December 28, 2014. 

My goal of World Peace is achieved! Mission accomplished! Go clerkmanifesto!

Huh, really? Libya? Sudan? Are you sure?

Well, I'll look into it, but I'm pretty sure you're mistaken.

What we were really looking for

Let us take a little trip into the great Boreal Forest. Here and there I have been reading things about this Boreal Forest, but only in passing, so I am not clear on what it is. But I'm pretty sure it extends from the end of our balcony, overlooking Lake Superior, all the way, uninterrupted, to just shy of the North Pole. If I decide at dusk not to look at our roaring fire, or at the hazy sunset glowing lake, I can look into a dense wall of trees, mostly pines. There is that one white birch just outside the forest, but that's like a marker for the beginning of the Boreal Forest. If I could see forever I could count all the pines in this single forest that runs from us to the top of the world. I could tell you the exact number of trees, but you could not understand it. No, I could not understand it either. The number is too big. They say there is one tree for every wave that ever rolled across Lake Superior's surface. They say there is one tree for every time anyone has thought of a forest. We have no idea what these numbers are. They are too large. I max out at the comprehension of numbers somewhere in the upper eighties. You may do far better than I, but believe me, you cannot handle these trees. 

So let's step into these woods. Only in summer, only if the mosquitoes are lying low, only for an hour, only if there aren't too many people, only if there is no rain, only if the trail is good, only if it is not too hot, and only by day.

We will take it exactly as it comes.

We are in the forest now. Forget the number of trees. Forget the North Pole. Forget the rain that is not raining. Forget the mosquitoes that are not biting. Forget the night. Forget the winter.

We are only here now, and there is only one thing for us now. Where is the moose?

There is not a single moment where we do not search for the moose. Why? We are not going to see a moose. No, this is the moose trick. A classic scheme of misdirection. We set the whole forest looking for moose, and the forest, in turn, forgets to hide itself.

No, not animals, no birds, no squirrels, no frogs, or minks, or bears, the Boreal Forest is empty today. All the animals of the Boreal Forest are on summer vacation. But keep looking for moose and there are yellow mushrooms and red mushrooms and mushrooms that look like the coral in the Great Barrier Reef. There are chasms and waterfalls and little berries you'd have to be crazy to eat. There are white trees and black trees, and holes that the world mysteriously disappears into, white flowers and leaves forever and red stone polished by water and the root of trees spelling out complicated ruminations on the edges of cliffs. My knees are weak. All these beautiful, marvelous, wonderful things with us in the Boreal Forest. All so helpful looking for moose that are not there.

And then there is one berry. Just one. I pick it. I think it might be a raspberry because it still might sort of be raspberry season. I roll the fruit in my fingers. I smell it. All the way into August it is not a raspberry, but a strawberry. I eat it.

THAT is what I was looking for. The trees may stand uncounted. The moose can relax now. We are done here.

The great moose announcement

I have gone on quite extensively about my journey to the North Shore of Lake Superior to see moose. I talked about my moose prospecting from many points of view. And all of this culminated in my promise that today, August 10, I would announce whether or not, on my week long journey, I saw an actual, real life, moose.

This is it. Today is the day I announce whether I saw a moose!

Unfortunately I don't know. You see, it is not August 10 for me. I got a little worried that right at the end of my vacation (August 10 is the last day of it) I might be a little sad. I was worried that I wouldn't want to just yet launch into all my post vacation blogging. I wondered if I could, just to be on the safe side, write about whether or not I saw a moose ahead of time.

This seemed pretty challenging. I was a little stumped. But then I had an idea.

What if I listed the basic scenarios, as I see them, for all the possible variations in answering the question of whether I saw a moose. I don't know how to make a box in a blog post, but I can, at the start of each scenario, put a ( ). Then, no matter how committed I am to doing nothing right up til it's time to go back to work, all I have to do is go into my (this) blog post and simply put an X in the correct ( ), like so: (X).

So that's what I'll do. I feel that surely one of the following scenarios will be basically accurate. The one that is will have a (X) before it.

Did I See a Moose on Vacation?

(X) No, absolutely not. Outside of postcards and moose based bric-a-brac I did not even come close to seeing an actual moose. I did see some birds, and a squirrel. There are less than 5,000 moose in Minnesota. I was never going to see a moose.

( ) No. I thought I saw something move once though, sort of off somewhere in the shrubs and trees, and there was a sound too. This could have been any of a million different things: a frog, a bird, a hobo, a space alien, the wind, a monkey, a wolf, an animate pine cone, and so on, but one of the things it also could have been, was a moose. So I could have seen a moose, but I am uncomfortable checking a "yes" box on this basis.

( ) Yes. We were driving up to the lake house. We were on the main highway. There, on the side of the road, was a moose. It looked a bit scraggly. It happened so early in the trip, and with the sighting from a car on the highway, it just wasn't as exciting as I imagined it would be. 

( ) Yes. Unless it was a dream. But it wasn't a dream! I woke in the middle of the night, and though I knew it would be bitterly cold I stepped out on the balcony of our house to take in the brilliant stars over Lake Superior. There, down just above the shoreline was a moose, nosing about. He had big antlers. He was huge. I looked at him for awhile. Then he turned and looked at me. And here's why I have this dream suspicion even though it wasn't a dream. The moose looked at me, and he winked. Then he ambled off. Well, at least he wasn't white. I would not have been able to believe it if he was a white moose.

( ) Yes. Out for a hike on the Superior Trail I mistakenly wandered onto an abandoned spur trail. Trying to cut back to the main trail I found the undergrowth got thicker and thicker. The mosquitoes were driving me insane, and I plowed off in the wrong direction and became completely lost. I wandered for a long time, growing thirsty and exhausted.  Finally I missed a step on a steep hill and rolled messily to the bottom. Bruised, bitten, lost, and very thirsty I heard someone coming towards me. "Thank god" I thought "Help has arrived!" But it wasn't help. It was a moose.

The last vacation speculation

I have been writing at a clip of three or four blog posts a day, but now I think I am mostly clear through my vacation. Sixteen blog posts are all lined up like little clockworks, ready at their designated time to act on the tension of their springs and circle out of their small doors to make their elaborate fanfare. "Toot, toot, toot" my blog posts will tinnily announce. And you will say "Ohhhh!" and then they will all circle back into their housing until the next day. All this means that when you read this one my vacation will nearly be over, at which point you'll probably start to hear a lot of posts that are actually about my vacation. 

Why do I always tell you about this, about these machinations of time delays and the minutiae of how a daily blog works? 

Because if there is a curtain to pull back I am the guy to do it. Pay attention to the man behind the curtain! Clerkmanifesto is the blog of disillusionment.

I have tried not to give myself too many blog assignments for my vacation. I am currently pledged to report back on whether I see a moose (expect a "no", the DNR estimated 4,350 moose lived within the state of Minnesota, which is less than the number of people who come to my library every two days or so, and I have yet to run into any of them on the shore of Lake Superior), and I am also to report on what I end up reading. This all is good because it is not homework, rather just things in the line of what I'll be doing anyway.

In that spirit I have these questions for my future self. I think they're the sort of questions I wish people would ask me when I return from vacation, but not the ones they actually ask me. So I am asking me, as one who hasn't gone on this vacation to the future me who has. Can I please have the answer to these assorted vacation questions?

1. If not moose, or if yes moose, what other northern wildlife did you see on vacation?

2. Did you take your little inflatable kayak out onto the mighty Lake Superior?

3. Did you live?

4. Did you find any bona fide Lake Superior agates?

5. Any good thunderstorms?

6. How many pieces of wood did you burn?

7. Was the water level noticeably higher than last year?

8. What was the best thing you ate?

9. What was the prettiest thing you saw?

10. How were you different up there?

11. What was most fun.

12. What was most strange.

13. What was most miraculous?

14. What did you miss from home?



As it stands I will be able to answer these to myself in a couple weeks, but for you, reading, it's just a day or two away. And I guess I'll do just that, answer these for you, just in case you wanted to know. too.

Lowering expectations

To my regret I feel that I have possibly been over-confident that I will see a moose on my upcoming moose finding expedition. The more I talked about it the more my moose sighting had the feel of destiny to me. But as soon as my sense of certainty led me to declaim that not only would I be sure of seeing a moose, but I would probably see a super rare white moose, I experienced a complete crash of faith.

I don't think I am going to see a moose. 

I have seven sad (or sometimes not really very sad) reasons. They are as follows:

The Seven Reasons I Will Not See a Moose

1. I have offended the daffy and irritable moose gods with my hubris. Alas.

2. For all my moose expedition talk what I am really mostly going to be doing on vacation is sitting in a swanky house with my wife reading novels and looking out all the windows at Lake Superior. So unless there is a Jesus moose ambling across the water, or perhaps a tiny moose dropping from the rafters and then scurrying across the pages of one of my many books, my moose viewing chances drop to nearly nil.

3. Moose like wetlands. Mosquitoes like wetlands. I dislike mosquitoes.

4.  Minnesota's moose population has dropped 69 percent since 2006. No one knows why. Maybe a mess of mysterious Minnesota moose murders?

5. I lack the necessary zen dispassion on the issue.

6. While moose are gangly and large, they have a deep understanding of the obscuring nature of shrubbery.

7. I will be far too absorbed in eating all the many wild blueberries I find.

11 posts to the future

I have been frenetically writing blog posts so that during my vacation, far from the Internet, my blog can still feed. My blog needs a blog post every day to live. I am not sure what would happen if I did not feed my blog. Would it weaken? Fall ill? Die? Or would it go feral and start roaming my neighborhood, etching top ten lists and pithy sayings in minute letters on the leaves of hostas, devouring lavender plants, and visiting the local library to heckle misbehaving patrons?

I don't know, but this is not the time to find out.

Currently I am eleven posts out ahead of today. This is about as far as I have ever written into the future on my blog. Not to be all boastful, but it is fortunate that my prose is a timeless jewel of eternal perfection. In a week and a half a lesser blogger's posts can become insensible, stale, even rotten. Mine (again, not to be boastful) will keep in a sealed bag for up to a month! If you wrap it carefully and place it in a freezer it will be safe to read all the way into the fall!

Usually when I get out far ahead on my blog I take a breather. I let things settle. This is because every post that has not yet gone live on my blog is sort of still alive in me. They are adjustable, reconsiderable, unfinished. Holding on to a dozen short essays that are still flopping around like fish that refuse to die is disconcerting. I lose sight of what I'm saying. I am spread thinly across too many kinds of writing; all wisdom and hubris and folly and anecdote and anger and love and just us, folks, pulling me apart at the seams. So usually I need to let it all settle out, refresh, focus.

But not now. This is a long vacation and I have more posts to take care of. As I push two or three blog posts a day into the future, as I try to get 15 or 16 blog posts out ahead, I enter an unexplored territory. Fortunately the feeling of weightlessness and confusion and anything goes is starting to appeal to me. How many times can I write about vacation plans, or moose? I don't know, but I don't think it's particularly dangerous. Indeed, there's probably only one real concern in all this, only one real peril:

As long as I don't start writing about writing my blog I should be okay. But don't worry, I don't think I'd ever let things get that out of hand.

Moose announcements

My initial suspicion was that there are only two camps here: 

1. The "Oh no, he's going to talk about moose again!" camp.

And

2. The "I can't take it! The tension is unbearable. Will he see a moose?" camp.

I soon realized, though, that there might be a few more camps, like:

3. The "What? What moose? What's he talking about?" camp.

And

4. The "I pop in on the blog occasionally and read back through the posts. I already know whether he saw a moose" camp.

To this "camp number four" I beg:

Don't tell me!!!!

I don't want to know if I saw a moose!

Hmm, though, on second thought, sure, if you can figure out a way to tell me, go ahead. 

Time travel fascinates me.

And what about:

5. The "Hmm. Interesting that you mention moose. Did you know that there are white moose? They are super rare though." camp.

And of course:

6. The "I wasn't on board with this whole, weird moose diversion, but it's starting to grow on me." camp.

Now I am under no illusion that there aren't many, many more camps. Each of you is an entire camp unto yourself.

Nevertheless today's announcement is primarily directed to camp number two and camp number six. If you don't belong to either of those camps all I can do is urge you to get in the spirit of the thing. After that all I can do is hope for the best.

Today then is an announcement of an announcement. It's an excitement building announcement!

The "Did I see a moose?" reveal will take place on Sunday, August 10.

Just, you know, so you can prepare.

But, I'm going to see a moose, probably a white one, so don't worry too much.

More moose madness

While you read this I am probably watching majestic mooses cavort in their woodland homes. There are no mosquitoes flying about, but I can see a rainbow descending into the moody mists of Lake Superior. Did I mention that the moose are majestic? Oh, and what's this? A patch of wild blueberries? Why, these are the best blueberries I've ever tasted! What's that moose nosing around at? It looks like some kind of chest. Could it be? NO! Yes! It is the lost treasure of the Voyageurs! Sacre bleu! Why, there must be 200 dollars worth of beaver pelts in there!

Hmm? Oh, what's that. Yes, yes. I must have sort of wandered. I suppose when one is nearing vacation one's mind begins to drift. My mind is out drifting just off the shore of Lake Superior. It is partly cloudy, 74 degrees. The lake is calm as I drift on my kayak. Loons bob in the water and the water is so clear that I can see far into its fathomless depths. There is something enormous down there in that translucent emerald green. Is that a shipwreck or something? No, it's moving. I think it might be a fish? But my god, that's not just any fish! I believe that is the legendary Monster Lake Trout of Grand Marais. The beast must be 30 feet long if it's an inch. I must have some fishing tackle here somewhere! I do, but, what's this? A moose is sitting on my fishing tackle! How did a moose get in my kayak?

Oh, right. Yes. I am back. Where am I? What am I doing?

Blogging?

No, no, not blogging, that's not it. I am shelving. 

But soon I will be on vacation. Or did it already happen?

Why I will see a moose

Reeling from a wilderness sea kayaking trip 14 years ago to see killer whales that mysteriously never showed up, I have been leery of pinning my hopes, in any trip, on seeing any particular sort of animal. And so, last year, when I was on a trip to the North Woods, I had no expectations. 

But then I started dreaming of mooses.

Oh sure, at first it was all just an excuse to use the word "mooses" as often as possible on my blog, and that was sustaining for awhile. But then all that pretend peering into the shrubbery started to get to me. I started to wonder "Hey, what if I actually saw a moose?" And with that the fever started a slow burn.

Last year I did not see a moose, though I did suspect that the mooses were watching me from places of concealment. "That's okay, let them acclimate." I thought. With my return to the North Woods this year they will hopefully recognize me. Perhaps they will take me for a friend. And if you'll think about your own relationships with your friends I think you will note that, even if you are hiding from your friend in the shrubbery, eventually you are inclined to pop out, brush yourself off, and say "Hey, nice to see you." 

I see no reason that a moose would differ on this account.

Am I setting myself up for disappointment?

Yes, absolutely. But I think that avoiding disappointment is dangerous, while setting oneself up for disappointment is brave, and magical, and quixotic, and very, very, very attractive to moose.

Wish me luck.

Blue Berries

Coming to the north woods I had two, mostly serious, north woods dreams. I wanted to see a moose, and I wanted to happen upon large areas full of wild blueberries, free, but for a dozen or two mosquito bites, for the picking.

The moose seemed like a long shot. Apparently three quarters of the moose up here have died of global warming. Plus, I don't think the remaining moose are especially keen on wandering up and down the shore of Lake Superior, a rather narrow strip of sort of wilderness between a well traveled two-lane highway and water everywhere. And this is where most of my moose watching time is being spent.

So, not surprisingly, the moose thing did not pan out. As far as I can determine, in six days, the closest I have come to seeing a moose was when, down by the shore one day, both my wife and I spotted a chipmunk. It was cute, sort of, but had no antlers. I did have the odd thought though, hiking along the Superior Hiking Trail today, that a moose was watching me. Whether or not this was of any use to the moose, I cannot say, but it did me no good whatsoever.

As to the blueberries, I believe the answering gods heard my call, but the connection was very bad. The only blueberries I have seen up here were in a grocery store, imported from Michigan or California. However, I have seen fantastic numbers of blue berries. They grow on a ground stalk in the woods, frequently near the trails. The are definitely not edible. Don't try. And they are not the deep blue purple black of blueberries but are instead an arresting, perfect blue. How do I describe a color? Luminous periwinkle maybe? It is one of the loveliest colors I have ever seen in nature. So, mostly O for two, but I'll take what I can get. Plus, I still have about 36 hours left here. A moose could easily wander up to this window I'm sitting at. Many of these wild ferns look like a moose would find them quite edible, and they probably just need some clearing out to reveal the rich blueberry beds below.