This Year on Water

"Spring, it seems, is undeniably in residence. Even though the vernal equinox has not yet taken place. Even though I've not I've not yet planted my peas, the ritual with which I traditionally mark the beginning of my spring gardening." – Karl Klaus, My Vegetable Love





July 4

It's been said before on snappy taglines for local commercials that when you live along the Upper Mississippi River Valley, well, summer on the river, summer not. Growing up in the La Crosse, WI, area, driving past blue or brown patches of water all the time, you know there's some truth to that saying, as boat upon boat always seem to be bobbing along the usually choppy section of river along Riverside. This is the area where three rivers meet – the Black River, the La Crosse, and where Old Man River makes a sharp curve south. There is much turbulence here. This is the very spot where the city was essentially born, here at this patch, where it was once a prairie utilized by the Winnebago for trade, camp and their game of choice, La Crosse. All of these things of water influence you as a boy, a girl, and a student. Grandparents who lived up a ways along the river near Trempeaulea. Wonderful drives even further up in that direction over the years to Pepin in order to drop your daughter off a summer camp and, as you drive back down the contours of the main channel, you see you live along one more river town that is strung from Minneapolis down to Winona and finally La Crosse. Further south, good friends who have lived in Stoddard forever; nearby one of the holiest of river sites at Goose Island where you can easily remember twenty trips for fishing, camping, kayaking. To say you come to take it all for granted is an understatement. Sometimes it takes the most wonderful of hikes straight up the side of the Coulee bluffs near Hixon Forest, dead center in the city, to find the top on those sandstone cut outs, to see the two lines of bluff that seem to guide the Big River as far west and then south as you can see, to truly appreciate this place.

Now we live on a contributing channel of Mississippi, the Black, which is backed up just a mile down at Lake Onalaska by a spillway always flowing. We made there in fact just yesterday on a wave runner ride pulling my daughter and friend on an inner tube. The back bays and sloughs are marvelous pieces of unpredictable shorelines. High water leaves them looking something like you've seen out of the Everglades swamps in movies, big thick willows and hemlocks rising right up out of the water, normally on dry ground, so that kayakers can now pass through territory normally only seen from a passing fishing boat. The water is choppy by a moderate breeze; at least 85 degrees; but enough passing pontoon boats to stir up all the water through this stretch near French Island. Back at the condo, we've got two gorgeous marinated pork loins smoking on a Trager grill. I had butterflied them earlier, cutting them lengthwise right down to a membrane connecting them, then I filled up the center with shaved smoked gouda cheese, closing them back up and oiling them well. They sit on that smoker for only an hour in this case; some other meats and treatments asking for considerably more; but the key to pork is always keeping it as moist as possible. When we ride back through the calm bay near our own inlet, it is a jigsaw of parked boats ready to float it out for the day, large floating mats laid out for the kids, parents standing with beverages in hand enjoying a sun that is supposed to turn to heavy storm for a few hours later in the day. By the time I get up to the smoker my wife has turned the Trager down to shut off but left the pork on and it no doubt absorbs a bit more smoke and keeps nice and warm at the center where the cheese is squeezing. The surface is glistening moist not the standard char or dry you can get far too easily when grilling. When I cut it into their little one slices, I have to say to myself this is some of the most tender and slightly pink pork loin I've ever seen. It looks like food meant for a day on the water.