You Can See The Future Through The Trees

A poem by Gary Snyder

Old Bones

Out there walking round, looking out for food,
a rootstock, a birdcall, a seed that you can crack
plucking, digging, snaring, snagging,
barely getting by,

no food out there on dusty slopes of scree—
carry some—look for some,
go for a hungry dream.
Deer bone, Dall sheep,
bones hunger home.

Out there somewhere
a shrine for the old ones,
the dust of the old bones,
old songs and tales.

What we ate—who ate what—
how we all prevailed.

from Mountains and Rivers Without End, published by Counterpoint Press, 1996.

That cabin pictured on the top of this blog has its start, because of a scene of the vast timber stands that blanketed Wisconsin in the mid-1800s. My great grandfather worked his way down from Canada to be a lumberjack in the white pine forest of northern Wisconsin. Since he was descended from Tories who crossed over to Canada during the Revolutionary War era, I'm not sure he would be classified an illegal alien in today's raging debate.

Lumber jacking led to friendships that still interact today. Swedes, Norwegians, Danes...there was a whole mix of immigrant labor clearing the land for the farms that would follow. Without calling my aunt, I don't know my great grandfather Phillips first name. He eventually built a log cabin southeast of Clear Lake in the 1860s that was still standing a few years ago when I last drove up that way. It was a small homestead farm where my Gramma grew up. Where she and my great Gramma who would stay up all night when the lambs were being born and fend off the wolves with a lantern and guns. Her dad and big brothers were up working in the woods. She once told me, after here dad and brothers returned from the logger camp, they would have to be thoroughly scrubbed and deloused before even getting close to the cabin.

It was rusty living at the turn of the century and it wasn't then "good old days." Back in the late 1970s, when my cousin and his wife brought the cabin back to life and an attempt to get back to nature, my Gramma used to say, "they can have the go old days, I'll take my stove and refrigerator." I believe the "back to nature" experiment lasted until the first baby came.

From the log house, there would be many treks to the lake that cabin overlooks. The mode of transportation would include horseback, buckboard, Model A's and T', 1954 Studebaker, Ford Fairlanes, Firebirds and dodge trucks. There were fish to catch and stores to tell around the campfire on the corner of the universe where Fox Creek flows out of Bone Lake in Polk County, Wisconsin.