Tales From Coloma

Tired, exhausted, and slightly irritable from traveling, I am back home from a weekend at my family's 50-acre plot of hunting land, otherwise known as Coloma. Forgive me if my writing is a bit crappy this time--I'm a bit sleepy and this blog is going to be a long one. Let's start from the beginning...

Saturday: I woke up at 7 am, which, for a Saturday, was a little early for my liking. After packing up the truck, my dad and I began the two-and-a-half-hour trek to the northwoods of Wisconsin, reasonably isolated from the hoopla of South Milwaukee. We ate at the Iron Skillet for breakfast on the way, which is what it is--good, greasy country food (my bowels would thank me later). As soon as we arrived at our base camp, or trailer, we unpacked and took the usual hike around the ATV trail. Things are so much more peaceful outside the city. It's away from the real world, and so real world problems are easily put away to be worried about later. Not that I hate the city, but it's a necessary and healthy thing to get away from it from time to time. Anyway, I later thought it would be a good idea to check on my ground blind, which was my single most important project to work on. Since the blind was a log structure, and logs settle, the logs of my ground blind, you guessed it, settled. I now had to crouch down quite a bit to fit inside. And since it would be nearly impossible to raise the roof, I did the only thing I could do, which was to dig down. To dig down a foot and a half. That was a process that took all of two days.

One of the things I failed to realize was that extensive digging results in shoulder pain and blisters, so I had that cross to bear. The rest of my day involved that type of manual labor, which is somehow strangely relaxing, mentally speaking.

Sunday: The morning started off with spontaneous excitement. As I stepped outside to take a morning leak, I was interrupted by the gobbling of turkeys. So I held my bladder and ran to my dad, ready to hunt. We donned our camouflage hunting gear and made our way to the pop-up ground blind next to the field. Now, hunting seems contradictary to my leftist ideals, but I find it (if done respectfully and responsibly) to be a natural way to connect with the outdoors. During the hunt, we spotted a coyotte (a rare sight) and a few hens, but shot nothing. Even spotting some wildlife, though, was more than worth it. Ready to work again, I spent the rest of the afternoon digging in my ground blind and lining sticks along the sand walls to prevent erosion. The work was tedious as hell, but it became finished and I can once again stand upright inside the blind. It's a bit spotty in this picture, but there it is--a beautiful log structure two years in the making.

Satisfied to have finished my project, I had a delicious steak for dinner with my dad and we unwinded with a bonfire on a crisp, starry night.

Monday: Probably the most uneventful day, I spent a lot of time reading and relaxing. After everything was packed, we headed out, deciding to stop by my parents' future retirement property on the way home. Taking a walk around the perimiter, we chatted with two different sets of neighbors for what seemed like hours. I hate small talk and I'm also terrible at it, so I found myself trying methodically to jingle my keys, except I had none so all I could do was dig in my pockets. Another thing about small talk is that the other person always keeps talking after you say, "Well, I should get going now". At times, the only way to escape small talk is to walk away slowly while saying goodbye, and that's what we eventually had to do. So we went back in the truck and took the scenic route home, which took us past some wetlands and a nice, green wind farm. And now I sit here, exhausted but revived, ready to put up with some hoopla.