Thirty-odd minutes on the path to recovery from a really bad week.
I had a bad week. Like, a “uniquely bad across a lifetime” week. The kind of week that will probably leave an imprint forever. It sucked.
I haven’t decided on the degree to which I want to discuss the events of last few days publicly, but since I’m mentioning them opaquely here, to a small group of people who care about me, it’s important to explain what has not occurred so as to avoid creating unnecessary worry: nothing of substance has changed in my life. I have not lost a friend or family member, I have not lost Bit, I have not lost a job, I have not lost anything I love. My life is, for all practical purposes, exactly what it was a week ago.
I participated in something that doesn’t directly affect me, because the society I live in required me to do so, and now I’m learning to live with the aftereffects of that. I’m adjusting to a new knot in the tangled web that is life. That’s all.
To that end, I took a quick trip up to Black River Falls today. I tend to go there two or three times a year because it reminds me so much of my childhood in northwestern Wisconsin. The narrow roads of cold mix asphalt through forest of jack pine and scrub oak, the dirt lot Packer bar next to the airport, the “715” phone numbers painted on the windows and signs, all of that. It’s the closest place I’ve found that has the power to strip off layers of adult cruft and make me feel like a kid again, wandering for the sake of wandering with nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
I’d always wanted to time the walk from the airport to Perry Creek Recreation Area, it’d be helpful in the planning of other activities, so that’s what I chose as my diversionary task for today.
The walk took about thirty one minutes. My pedometer pegged it at 36:24, but that got me all the way to the rock rapids on Perry Creek via an indirect route and didn’t account for a couple photo stops along the way. I’m going with thirty one to reach the park at a normal pace on a normal day without interruption.
Mosquito swatting also slowed me down a little. I didn’t bring bug spray. I thought it was early enough in the season, and the weather had been dry enough recently, that mosquitos wouldn’t be a problem. That was stupid. It’s always wet enough for mosquitos when your destination is a body of water.
Black River Falls hasn’t fully greened up for the summer yet, but it is on its way. The flow of the creek is low but it has the sound I needed it to have. There were more people around than I would have preferred, but I can’t be too upset at other folks choosing to enjoy the same things I’d chosen to enjoy. I steered as clear as I could by taking a lesser traveled path along the river bank. The springtime flowers were pretty.
Perry Creek Recreation Area has a few picnic tables and stand grills and a landing for canoes and kayaks and other small boats. There are a couple miles of hiking trails along the creek. I still haven’t walked their full length, that’ll be a goal for another trip when I have an adequate reserve of bug spray. This place is never bug free.
I probably won’t be back to Black River until late summer or early fall. I like to come here once per season to watch a Packers game at R&R’s First and Last Chance across the road from the airport. It reminds me of Sunday afternoons at Amy’s Whatever Bar in Wascott, where my dad and I would stop to watch the 1980s Packers as they were manhandled by whatever team they happened to be playing that week.
Cliché as it is to say it, that was a simpler time for me, before I understood myself as part of a larger machine, inextricably linked to all of the good, bad and ugly that comes out of that machine.
I needed to feel closer to that simpler time today. I also needed a distraction. It was good.
War games
Black River Falls is under the Volk Falls military operations area. As such, it can be a little difficult to get to at certain times (it wasn’t today) and you never know what you’re going to see along the way.
Today the weather broadcast was warning aircraft to be cautious while operating around “military equipment” at the airport. Upon arrival, it appeared as though a number of missile launchers had been deployed around the ramp. This is odd. It was the first time I’d seen such a thing at a small municipal airport.
They’re fake. I’m not proud of how long it took me to figure that out.