The Morning Comics

What do you do with a drunken sailor?

The Tall Ships came to Duluth today and paraded into the harbor through the Lift Bridge. We tracked their progress from the shore of Lake Superior.

With ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,

Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed;

Some lying fast at anchor in the road,

Some veering up and down, one knew not why.

William Wordsworth

With sloping masts and dipping prow,

As who pursued with yell and blow

Still treads the shadow of his foe

And forward bends his head,

The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,

And southward aye we fled.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner

"It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests—and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. ....Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires." Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

After the Sea-Ship—after the whistling winds;
After the white-gray sails, taut to their spars and ropes,
Below, a myriad, myriad waves, hastening, lifting up their necks,
Tending in ceaseless flow toward the track of the ship Walt Whitman

Mt. Oberg to Cascade River

The Superior Hiking Trail meanders up the North Shore of Lake Superior, paralleling Highway 61 but inland over the peaks and valleys that comprise what is known as the Sawtooth Range because the schizophrenic elevation. You are constantly walking either uphill or downhill, with a few ridges thrown in for good measure.

We started Monday morning at the Mt. Oberg parking lot, where we ran into a few day hikers out for a nice walk on the mountain loop. Not us. We were headed 25 miles north to Cascade River. The other hikers warned us that the bugs were pretty bad, but knowing Minnesota we were prepared with Off Deep Woods.

Here we are still clean and fresh.

The first half of the hike took us to the Lutsen ski area and the Poplar River. Another spot rife with day hikers, most not knowing where they were going. Some with only half a bottle of water between them. It was a hot, humid, sticky day so water was key.

We ate lunch on the Poplar, after traversing a quick 7 miles in 3 1/2 hours, and also pumped water out of the river to supply the second half of the hike. I have contracted giardia before only using iodine to purify our water so I insist that Turner bring the water filter.

The trail to Lake Agnes, our destination for the night, had a couple nice views like this.

But often the hiking was through this.

However, the trail was constantly cutting through raspberry groves. I say groves because the bushes were almost chest high and dripping with ripe berries. We didn't stop to pick much because of the heat and the bugs, but they were nice snacks every now and then if you reached out a hand while you were hiking.

We also saw plenty of fungi, like this one.

And lots of wolf poop (to my dismay), some moose tracks, and red squirrels galore just to taunt Bella.

Luckily, Bella found enough spots for a quick cool down and drink because she wasn't getting any of our hard-earned filtered water.

I probably will never camp on Lake Agnes again. After finding a "renegade" campsite, meaning the regulation sites were already taken, we went down to the lake to pump more water, swim, and have dinner. This "lake," though large, was little more than a beaver pond. It was shallow and filled with organic matter giving the water a very muddy look. We did little more than rinse off the bug spray.

This is the lake at 6:30 in the morning on the second day.

The weather forecast for Tuesday called for thunderstorms, hail, and high winds. This is why we were up and hiking by 6:30am. We wanted to make it to Cascade River, and the shuttle back to our car, before the bad weather hit. Storms on the North Shore can be vicious. The area just west, in the Boundary Waters, suffered a severe blowdown in 1999, damaging 400,00 acres of forest. The trail to Lookout Mountain worked its way through quite a bit of blowdown.

I kept thinking that the bases of the ripped-up trees, now horizontal to the ground, would make excellent hiding places for the wolves. The darkening sky and silent wind lent our journey a somewhat ominous tone.

But after hiking 11 miles in 5 hours we made it to the Cascade River by lunchtime. The hike was kind of a march, since we stopped infrequently and just walked on through the heat and brambles.

Luckily, the waters of the Cascade were cool and refreshing. We hopped in, despite some onlookers, and washed off the days' grime.

After freshening up and eating the rest of our food, we sat on the shore of Lake Superior to wait for the shuttle. The lake and sky melded into one horizon of stormy grey. We could tell that the weather could turn at any minute, but it didn't thankfully.

We waited about an hour for the shuttle-that-never-came.

It was supposed to arrive at 1:17 at the Cascade wayside. Well, by 1:45 it had not come, so we asked a couple of tourists for a ride back up Highway 61 to our car. (We found out later after calling the shuttle organization that it only drives the route Friday-Sunday. And there we were on Tuesday, waiting for Godot.)

The kind folks dropped us off at the base of Onion River Road, which meant that we had to walk 2 miles, uphill, in steadily warmer and more humid weather. And this just after getting clean and fresh in the river.

I was not a happy camper. Points like this get termed "death marches." All I could think about were Gatorade, Snickers, a cheeseburger, and a shower.

In the end, I got all those things and the memories of a lovely hike.

Final Sale!

It's time again for 30% off final sale at J. Crew. Go now.

This was one of my purchases. Well, I got the other shoe too obviously.

OMG

Snooki in the NYTimes

Why is this news? Why does it merit an article in the Sunday Magazine? As a representative of the cultural zeitgeist, what does this say about us? We are just as whorish as Snooki in her cleavage-bearing dresses and classless demeanor in our fascination with the vomit-inducing vomiting and sex-capading on The Jersey Shore. Are we more pluralistic in our embrace of this cultural icon? Is Snooki the great class equalizer?

I doubt it. It's like watching a train wreck or car accident. We know we should look away and better ourselves with something more sustaining, but we can't.

I've never even seen the show.

A Blueberry Kinda Summer

I made a pie today. From wild blueberries. I will remember this as the blueberry summer. Blue teeth, blue tongues. If summer had a shade, this one would be blue. Not the sad kind of blue, but the burst-in-your-mouth, fresh-off-the-bush, tastes-like-heaven kind.

This blog is called "Pheed" for a reason you know.

The Moods of Lake Superior

The lake is fickle.

She changes her mood on a whim.

Her color is never the same.

Agate Picking

My family has gone to pick agates on the beach where Knife River empties into Lake Superior since I can remember coming to Minnesota.

Lake Superior agates are quite different from the standard agate because of the rich iron ore in the bedrock. The iron contributes the rusty tint to the agates, which are the rocks in the pictures below that are opaque and striated.

The Sweetest Thing

Time Being

I reconsidered the phrase, "for the time being," the other day. Instead of assuming the regular definition of the cliche, I thought, what is a time being?

A time being, a zeit-sein, is not a being-in-time. It is not Heidegger's Dasein who realizes his ultimate goal in his historicization, his temporality. A time-being is temporality embodied. In embodying time, the time-being identifies with birth and death. The time-being realizes his Being in birth, but most haunts the Dasein in death.

God's separation of light from dark, of birth from death, conceived the time-being. Thus, it is the progeny of a movement towards categorization.

This lack of stasis prompts the invocation of the time-being. At this moment, for the time being, the world acts according to our desires. However, the fragility of time negates any confidence in the time-being. It is always fleeing, always threatening, always moving us towards death.

But also life.

Father Time is figured as both a New Year's baby and the gaunt old man with Death's sickle. Death gives way for birth as we perpetually move from light to dark and back again.

We all have a time-being. Perhaps it is like the daemon in ancient Greek religion. A benevolent spirit that accompanies us in our mortal life and induces eudaemonia (happiness) instead of thanatos (death). It's always over our shoulder, over the next hill, around the next bend, already here and still to come.

If only I had a television...

Mad Men starts this Sunday, July 29 at 10/9pm on AMC. Be there with a martini.

Photo courtesy of amctv.com

Blueberry Moon

We spent two days on Crane Lake in northern Minnesota, just south of the Canada and bordering the Voyageurs National Park, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and Quetico Provincial Park. My aunt and uncle took us by boat to Sandpoint and Namakan Lakes to explore islands and beaches. One of our stops was Burnt Island, and it was covered in blueberry bushes. They dropped from the branches like grapes. We picked 5 quarts of wild blueberries in a couple hours.

The sky and water at this time of the day were an ominous shade of grey, the grey of the rocks that jutted out into the turbulent water.

At other times during the trip, the weather was pristine and then a dark storm cloud would roll in and change our lunchtime plans.

Bella had a marvelous time, chasing after the ball, flying through the air off the dock. Hannah, her cousin, couldn't keep up with our lab's enthusiasm and energy.

She positively launches through the air, probably twenty feet or more at times, to retrieve the ball or stick.

Although we did not catch any fish from the boat, Turner casted a line off the dock at the cabin and caught some small-mouth bass and walleye.

The evening fell bringing wandering loons, dark clouds, and a purple sunset.

Photos by Turner and Sara from the Jarvinen cabin on Crane Lake.