"Tom said, “Now we’ll start our club and call it Tom Sawyer’s Club. Everyone who wants to join has got to make a promise and write his name in blood.” – Twain, Huck Finn










June 15


Finally, toward the end of the afternoon (sillily really knowing the heavy heat), I drag the single out onto the bay shore, take my shirt off (in Wisconsin sun can be a premium, take it when you can get it), and start paddling through the back bay, past the slip holding barely bobbing pontoons and out into the middle where I can the old and wonderfully familiar real house boats sagging in the corner. These are funny structures, not many of them left along the Black River here in LaCrosse, but in their own way they seem coveted, remote, yet bobbing right here in a line against the newer backdrop of condos and a new highway. If they weren't in such disrepair I think I'd be there biggest fan; as they stand now unfortunately they look like they could sink any day and in fact two months back one did. You can't help but wonder what all those household items that had accumulated over the years in the kitchen and living room looked like twelve feet down in the dark waters of the Black River! I keep paddling. Houses up there to the north with back yards that are terrific beaches, smoothened by rack, littered by the recreational resources of kayaks, beachouses and even a wonderful tree house. Huck would be proud. I push quickly through the edge of the bay to where it turns out to a larger bay which then rallies into the main channel of the Black, a tributary of the Big River. At this edge, to the south, is a remarkable shore slash island that is sometimes entirely submerged and sometimes full exposed, as it was today, green and grassy, holding up some massive shag hemlocks, all kinds of overturned trees, no doubt a hundred years old, exposing a root city all its own. When the water's right you can weave in a out of these suburban backwaters, the sound of the semi truck not at all far in the distance, but right here in front of you this most pristinely backwater channel you'll find in these parts. I park for minute at bank that is usually underwater, but right now, under full overhead sun, the bottom is exposed and friendly, showing darting minnows and timber lost from its trunk years ago. I look up and there is a yellow bird up in branch two that is so yellow it seems to suck the color from the rest of the surroundings. Everything else is vivid green now by early June and there are plenty of other little flutterers flittering about, but what is this particular bird? Many times I have my bird book with me, this would be an easy find, about a five inches, peculiarly vivid, maybe shagging the water off its wings, not sure. But I don't have my book with me. Frustrated for a few minutes, I realize that it's just fine not to identify a single thing. There are a few things I know that seem even more important than the scientific variations: I'm on the water, it is cooler right here under the shade, this backwater is an aesthetic masterpiece, ever changing, ever in flux, and that the nature right under me and now above, is going about its business, probably a lick harassed by the concept that I care about its species, family, or genus. Did I get all those right? I'll go on to sit here for a while longer under these backwater trees. I'm so damn quiet that I watch this yellow bird go through some kind of drying ritual not yet ever seen. I'm sequestered enough away from the interstate that I'm not ruined by the noise. I see that there are some things that can't be taken away from you. Like these little patches of old world paradise where the life is real not made-up, like you and I. I place a finger down into the water, only a few inches down. It hits some old rooted timber, been there before I was a crying baby. There's a lot to think about, there's nothing to think about. What we all know: it's more important than me.