Swamp Tales

Missing the little moments

2007-01-21T15:53:00.000-08:00

There were days out on the marsh that were grand and days that were dreadful. I am finding that I really miss those little unexpected moments.
One time I was lying on the ground underneath my cat, greasing it. A cute little field mouse ran over next to me, stopped, stood on his hind legs checking me out, then ran over about a foot away to watch me. I said something to it and it took off. Only to reappear a minute or so later and do the same- stand on its hind legs and look at me, then run over to the other spot and watch me. That time I kept quiet.

Ants in my...

2006-12-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

Occasionally the cats would break down and require a part that needed to be ordered before it could be fixed.

One time a cat sat for a good month before they got the part. After they fixed it, the foreman told me to run get it and move it down by the other cats.

The seat was torn on the back. Porcupines? They love to chew.
I looked at it, saw nothing and started driving it. All of a sudden, I was overcome by stinging bites and itching.

Blankity blank ants! All over me! In my pants, up my shirt, all over my back. At least a hundred of them, probably more.

I was driving on hard ground so I was going completely slow. I stood up and started doing a wiggle dance swatting at myself and jiggling all over smacking ants. The guys could see me from where they were, but had no idea what was up.

I stayed on the cat till I got there to explain. They sprayed it with bug spray. Whoever drove it next had no problems.

I must have looked pretty humorous. My ant dance was brought up every once in a while.

The Thanksgiving Gift

2006-11-21T16:57:00.000-08:00

Years ago I was a young single mother with very little money and I was having a particularly low funding time. We had food. But we were eating alot of macaroni and cheese and hotdogs because they were cheap. I was on the local sheriff edepartment's car-kill deer list. When a deer was hit by a car, if the driver didn't want it and it didn't look too bad (mangled) the sherrif's department would call the next person on the list and ask them if they wanted to come and get it. I'd already turned down two deer, because both were in the middle of the night and I would've had to wake my kids up and take them with me. Weeks went by and it was looking like I'd blown my opportunity to get a free deer from the sheriff's department.
In mid November, my brothers asked me if I was going to go deer hunting with them. I declined, saying I was on the car-kill list, so I'd get one that way, even though I really didn't believe it then. The truth was, I just couldn't afford the expense of going hunting just then. I also couldn't afford to take off from work.
The day before Thanksgiving I was visiting at a friend's house. I had one of my sons with me. It started to snow lightly and I thought we'd better get headed home. Almost home we came upon a freshly killed deer lying beside the road. It was super fresh because there were broken plastic pieces from a signal light cover laying beside the deer, on top of the snow! Yippee!
This was before I had a cell phone, so we hurried home to call the sheriff's department to ask them if the driver had called to ask for the deer. (The driver of the car that hits the deer gets the first opportunity to claim it.) No, they hadn't called to ask for it. They told me to bring it on over and they would tag it for me.
It was a nice doe, approximately 180 lbs. Yes, a REALLY nice doe. It had been clipped in the head, so none of the meat was damaged at all! A winters worth of meat for my small family! Yippee!! Yahoo! Yeehah! We were very excited.
My son and I tried to lift it onto the tailgate of my truck. To no avail. It was too heavy and he was too young. He didn't have his man-strength yet. We hefted and pushed and lifted and braced ourselves and grunted and tried everything we could think of to pick that doe up. It was just too heavy.
I contemplated running home to call and say please, please, PLEASE can I gut it first? to the deputy at the sheriff's department. You're NOT supposed to. It has to be tagged first. I thought they would tell me no. And I was also afraid that after all the work I'd already put into lifting, and all the plans and joy I had about the bounty, would be for naught if some guy came along and just grabbed it and threw it in his truck and took it home. So I wouldn't leave it to go ask. Even though it would have been much lighter. We kept trying. My son said he wished he were older (so that he'd be stronger).
I decided, maybe I could coax it into the passenger side front door, (yes, I AM a redneck!!) because it wasn't so high off the ground as the tailgate was. We had already expended our energy in frustration and we couldn't lift in through the door either. We stopped to take a break. I really wanted it. I considered it a gift from the Universe. And I didn't want to walk away. But we had tried everything physically possible and our muscles were hurting we'd try so hard. So I had to accept that we could NOT get it and we were going to have to give up.
I prayed silently. I said, Ok, you gave me this beautiful deer that will feed my family and make things so good for us, but we can't get it. If this is my deer and you want me to take it, please send somebody to help.
I decided to give it one last whirl. I tied an old speaker wire around its neck and I stood on the passenger seat of my truck and reefed on it for all I was worth while my son pushed from the ground. We couldn't quite get it in. It was dead weight and it was damn heavy. But while I was otherwise distracted, the first vehicle we'd seen in over an hour came and pulled in behind us!
Three big strapping healthy-looking fine young men hopped out. I got down from the seat and went around to talk to them. They stopped because they thought I was lifting a person in! I explained how I'd called the sheriff's department and they were going to tag it for me, but my son and I couldn't lift it, if they could just help me..
"You want it in the back?" one of them asked me. Yes!
Two of those fine young men swung that deer right into the back of my truck like it was a bag of feed, just as nice as pie! I was SO thankful!! I offered them money, they wouldn't take it. My son and I started heading for the county seat to get it tagged. We were victorious! We weren't even a minute down the road when my son said, "I prayed for someone to help us, and then they came." I said, "Me too."
WOW!!!!
He didn't know I'd been praying. I'd been smoking a cigarrette and silently asking for help. I didn't know he'd been praying. How amazing that we'd both just gotten around to asking for help, and then it came. It was miraculous.
I spent the next day, Thanksgiving, cutting up and packaging the wonderful deer.

One time I got lost while hunting

2006-11-20T17:33:00.000-08:00

Actually, I got lost SEVERAL times while hunting during deer gun season. I either found my way or figured out how I went wrong. Sometimes I had to walk until I found a road and walk along the road until I figured out where I was. But once when I was 17 and a senior in high school, I got so lost and confused, I didn't even recognize where I was. None of the landmarks looked familiar. I knew I was within a few miles of my dad, my uncles and my brothers, but I just couldn't figure it out. I kinda roamed around, listening for beeping (which they did but I never heard), trying to recognize where I was was in relation to where I'd started out.
I was in no danger. I was hunting in central Wisconsin. The weather was mild, mid 30s. I had a shotgun, plenty of ammo, a good sharp knife, matches, snacks. I knew I'd walked the wrong direction, but I wasn't sure which direction was the right one. I had a compass. But walking the direction I thought I should be walking, made things look even more unfamiliar. If you get lost, you're supposed to stay put. But I didn't want to do that.
I wasn't scared of being lost. I wasn't worried about anyone being mad at me for being lost. I wasn't afraid of bears (it was years before I saw bigfoot too), I could make a fire. I could handle being in the woods alone. What I was the MOST afraid of was-- I did NOT want my name on the news -- gone missing while hunting/ lost in the woods -- or anything like that. Another boy in a neighboring town had just been lost a few days before. He was fine. But his name and photo was blazed all over the news and I didn't want THAT to be my 15 minutes of fame, if I were to ever have one!
I was still HOPING that I'd still come out to the vehicle, or that I'd hear somebody holler or beep the horn for me. After hours of this, keeping my composure, walking, stopping and listening, it was getting dark. Damn! I was going to have to just pick a spot and stop and make a fire and stay there. I'd had some anxiety, but no real stress. Now, I was getting a bit stressed. Oh no, they're going to have to report me missing. The authorities are going to have to come and look for me. My name will be on the news. Everyone at school is going to know I got LOST and couldn't find my way out. HOW EMBARRASSING!!!
It was already past dusk. I had just enough time to get my fire together. I decided to build it right in the middle of the logging road I'd been wallking on so I could be seen if someone came. I was gathering my brush and wood. I had plenty of little stuff and there was lots of wood laying around. It was then I heard someone walking down the road. YIPPEE!!! I can ask that hunter for directions and I don't have to make a fire and be on the news!!
I said, "Excuse me," and --
It was my dad!!
Zippity-Do-Dah!!
Of course, in my relief of him saying "THERE you are.." I started crying. I had not been upset the whole time (except for the potential embarrassment) and I was so disgusted with myself that relief made me cry, but I was still happy to be found. Somehow, I had crossed a road or inexplicably gone under it and no wonder things looked wrong, I was on the opposite side of the highway from where I was supposed to be. I still don't know how I crossed the highway without seeing it AT ALL. But that sure explained why everything looked so wrong to me.

Ghosts???

2006-10-28T09:05:00.001-07:00

In honor of the season, I decided to tell my ghost stories. They're not all that spectacular, but this is what I've seen.

While hunting
One time I was deer hunting with my dad and brothers. I was standing along a riverbank by a great big pine tree and my brothers were hunting up and down river from me while my dad made a drive, which entailed him walking slowly and quietly through the woods to see if he "kicked up" anything to us.

Dad had been gone for about an hour and a half and I was expecting him at any time now. I was looking towards the direction he would be coming from because sometimes deer are really quiet and you don't hear them coming.
I suddenly saw a white misty clearly defined figure with a head, shoulders and shape, just like a man, about 30 feet from me, like it was looking at me, though it had no discernable features. No arms or legs. Just a head, shoulders and man shape. I said, "Okay.." like I usually do when I see something strange. It was white, shimmery, but more solid than transparent. But I could see the branches of the trees behind it.It was there for over a minute, maybe two, not changing or moving. I was wondering if it were a refraction of light of some sort, or breath of some sort or optical illusion of some sort when the figure suddenly stepped (with now clearly discernable legs) behind (or into) a real skinny tree, about one-third the width of the figure. I think the fact that it dissappeared behind or into a tree freaked me out much more than seeing it in the first place.
I was apprehensive, but I did not feel any sort of threat coming from it. But I wasn't about to turn my back on it either. It wasn't scary. But it was perplexing.
A few minutes later, I heard my dad coming slowly through the woods but not directly towards it. My brothers and I walked over to meet my dad when he made it to the river bank. I told them about what I had seen. My dad and my youngest brother were far more skeptical people than my other brother. But dad and my youngest brother took me at face value. My other brother, who's seen strange stuff himself, shook his head and said, "Well, I've heard EVERY hunting story NOW!" and kept shaking his head at me all day. Go figure!

Haunted treament facility
I worked in a treatment facility for troubled teens. It was an old Indian school where members of the Ho Chunk nation were forced to go and live away from their families and learn English and were beaten for speaking their own language. Elders who attend this school told me these stories about their own youth.
When I worked there it had been a home for troubled teens for many years. There was a main building and several more recently built units and houses that had been remodeled into units. I heard ghost stories right after I first started. Stories about cold drafts and things moving and what not. I didn't have any of those problems. I'd already worked in a haunted restaurant (see previous post) and I felt NOTHING, so I wasn't worried.

One night I was pulling a night shift. I had to check the girls every 15 minutes, but other than that there was nothing for me to do until it was time to get them up and make breakfast for them. I was sitting on the couch in front of big windows watching tv and waiting for my next check when in the big glass windows I saw a little girl with blond hair walk out of the bathroom, DIRECTLY behind me and walk into the kitchen. I JUMPED up and looked behind me -- NOTHING!! I looked back into the reflection on the windows just to see her in the center of the kitchen as far as the reflection would show. I walked out there, nothing. I checked all the doors. Locked. She had appeared completely solid. All the girls in that unit were 12 to 18 and sound asleep. Every one was in their beds. They were all in rooms down the hallway to the right of the living room. No one could have gotten past me. This little girl had been about seven. Weird as hell. I KNEW I had seen a ghost.

I didn't tell anyone at work about it. I did tell an elderly Ho Chunk woman I knew. She told me it sounded just like the daughter of the people who ran the Indian school. BUT, she was alive and well and an old lady now. And although the unit I was in had been that family's house, they didn't have indoor plumbing back in those days. Where I had seen her used to be the kitchen area and where the kitchen was now, used to be the outside. So maybe it WASN'T a ghost, but some sort of energy imprint or something.

I saw one other person that wasn't there while I worked there. I was in a different unit, one of the more modern ones. It was nearly 9 a.m. and my shift was about to be over. The kids had already been escorted off to school by another aide. I was just finishing up my paperwork, when I saw, clearly and solidly, a young boy duck into a bedroom belonging to a boy that looked just like him. I thought it was the boy I knew. I called his name and went in to ask him what he was doing there. All students had to be escorted whenever they went anywhere. I was calling to him when I walked in to find the room empty. He wasn't in the closet, under the bed, anywhere. I did wonder if it was another ghost. I called over to the school and talked to the aide that had escorted the kids to school. He said, no, that boy was sitting right there, he could see him right now. Why? I said, oh nothing, must have been my imagination. He said, "Oh. yeah. I've had one of those too."

I worked there a little while after that but had no further experiences and saw nothing else. Other people continued to have strange experiences like feeling they were sat on and getting blasted with cold drafts.

On working in a haunted restaurant

2006-10-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

When I was young, I worked in a restaurant that was haunted. The very first night that I worked there, we were just getting things organized to open the next day. The cook, who had worked for the previous owner, and I were putting items away in the kitchen. We put some big glass jars of mayonaise up on a shelf and put huge plastic jugs of crisco oil in front of it. The owner called us out to a booth for a short meeting on our gameplan for the following day. A few minutes into the meeting - SMASH!!!! - coming from the kitchen. The cook looked at me and said dryly, "That would be the mayonaise." We all got up to go look. All the jugs of crisco were lined up on the shelf in a row, just as we had placed them. But there on the floor was one of the jars of mayonaise that had somehow JUMPED out from behind the plastic jugs. I was Dumbfounded. Perplexed. Confused. Confounded. Mystified. on HOW that could POSSIBLY have happened???

I just couldn't understand it. It was improbable, no, impossible, for the crisco to have slid to the side to let the mayo slide by and then move back into position. No ONE else was around. There was no back door.

The cook and I stayed in the kitchen to clean it up. He then told told me that "all sorts of strange things happen around here." He wouldn't come right out and say the place was haunted. I guess he wanted us to figure it out for ourselves.

All sorts of strange things DID happen around there. I would be working alone in the kitchen, chopping lettuce for instance. I would lay my knife down, take two steps to grab a collander and return to find my knife GONE, no where to be found. I'd look all over, only to find it either right where I left it, or someplace I had not been near. It wasn't just knives, it was any object. It didn't happen every night. Sometimes it would happen once or twice a night, or numerous times. There wasn't any pattern that I was aware of.

Waitresses quit on a regular basis. Some claim to have been pinched by something unseen. One quit because she was hanging up a broom and something whispered loudly in her ear. Another quit because of a whistle in her ear and a pinch in the bottom on the same night.

The basement was really creepy. It was a very old building. It was dark with boarded up doorways and all sorts of lathe with wide gaps and cold drafts. There was a paneled office and a white, bright flourescent lighted "paper room" where we kept styrofoam and paper products. The office did not bother me that I remember. But I HATED that paper room with a FEAR so deep that I DREADED having to go there. I felt completely threatened every time I had to go there. The other girls either hated the basement altogether, or the dark scary places. But I hated that paper room. I'd reach in with great trepedation and flick on the light, step back and look to see where in there I had to go, then I would run and get the item, flicking the light off on the way by. If I missed the light switch, I'd have to gather my courage to reach back in there and flick it off. I was not intimidated by the dark creepy spots but there was something scary as hell in that brightly well-lit room that terrified me. No one else seemed to have any problem at all with that room. They were creeped out by the older parts of the basement.

Whenever we were putting stuff away in storage or down in the office talking to the manager, we'd hear the main door open and heavy boot thumps or high heels walk in the front door. We'd hurry upstairs to find no one there. It happened time and time and time again. It finally occured to us that where we were hearing it was impossible, because there were booths there and because the floor was carpeted. No one could have walked across the floor like we thought we'd heard. We surmised there must be a hallway upstairs in the apartments that we were hearing, until someone pointed out that they each had their own entrance. No hallway up there.

The cook and the manager got really mad at everyone talking about ghosts. The cook quit saying he wasn't working with a bunch of superstious women. I became the cook then. The manager told everyone not to talk about the experiences to me because I had to close every night. I'd known about it since that very first night! And every one of the waitresses that quit came and said goodbye to me and told me WHY they were quitting! We had a great boss, she was a really sweet lady, but they just couldn't handle the weird stuff that happened.

I kept thinking there MUST be some explanation. I did believe in ghostly stuff, but I thought all the pinching, whispering and whistling the waitresses were experiencing could have been fear making their minds run wild. I'd seen the mayonaise jar shattered on the floor. I'd reached up and touched the shelf to see if it had been wet. I'd had knives and spatulas and all sorts of utensils moved on me when I was alone, I heard the boot sometimes, high heels sometimes on the floor, but nothing ever whistled, whispered at or pinched ME, so I wasn't that scared, EXCEPT for the paper room, which I COULDN'T explain and no one else was concerned about.

After the cook quit, I wondered if something had happened to HIM that scared him. He was WELL aware of the activities BEFORE we were. And when he was calling us superstitious, he was angry (scared?) and didn't even finish his shift, and no one had said anything TO him that night he quit.

Then we had a hellacious summer storm. Tornadoes in the area. The power in the whole town went out. We were closing up and cleaning up by lantern light. I let all the waitresses go home. It was just me finishing up. My manager called and told me there was a tornado between me and my home and I should just stay THERE and sleep on the cot in the office. That would be the cot in the office DIRECTLY across the basement from the paper room!

I told her, NO, I'll go home. She tried to tallk me into staying there. NO WAY!! was I staying THERE. So I went out to my car. Trees down everywhere. Power lines and mattresses in the streets. It NEVER occured to me to go back inside. Nope! I drove home in high winds and on FUMES because I was going to put gas in after work, but with no power, no gas. I got within a few miles of home and had to turn around and go 10 more miles out of my way because the trees in the road were too big to drive over. But I made it okay.

Now, many things happened at that restaurant. Many waitresses came and went. It's been over 20 years and I've forgotten details and stories by now. But this I haven't forgotten because I can relive it at will.

I was helping the waitresses clean up one night. I grabbed a big plastic tub and started to clear out the salads from the salad bar. We were closed, but there were a few customers finishing up. I had my tub full, grabbed it with both hands and backed up -- into a huge solid SOMETHING -- that felt like a big man. It wasn't like a post, it had give to it, just like I'd backed up into a big lumberjack or something. I stepped forward and turned to apologize to NO ONE and NOTHING, because only NO ONE and NOTHING was there! No person, no post, nothing! It really rattled me. I was completely startled.

I had two skittish anyway waitresses working with me. So I didn't tell them. But with the adrenaline rush I had -- I power-cleaned full throttle and we got outta there FAST.
That event changed the way I viewed the place. I realized that all those waitresses that quit -- had REASON to!

The managers husband started having health problems and we didn't work there much longer after that since she had to sell the place. I wasn't unhappy about having to find another job. It became a food co op after that. I always wondered about the place. But I've never gone back there to ask!

Viruses on our hotdogs!!????

2006-10-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

This just completely horrifies me...

In August, the Food and Drug Administration(FDA) ammended the food additive regulations to provide for the "safe" use of a bacteriophage preparation to be sprayed on ready-to-eat meat and poultry products as an antimicrobial agent against Listeria monocytogenes. This action is in response to a petition filed by Intralytix, Inc.

It doesn't have to be listed on the label. This is a combination of a couple different live viruses that supposedly only attack the Listeria bacteria. But if you were eating a food that was coated with live viruses, wouldn't YOU want to know about it???

For more information check out the organic consumers website.

Addresses of the articles are:

http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_1801.cfm

or

http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_2400.cfm

or

http://www.fda.gov/OHRMS/DOCKETS/98fr/cf0559.pdf

Isn't it bad enough that mad f-ing scientists are splicing jellyfish genes into our fruits and vegetables that now they have to start coating our foods with live little nasties like this??

Rocks

2006-10-01T14:31:00.000-07:00

One of the really great things about working out at the marsh was that the equipment, tractors, loaders, trucks and cats worked up the hard ground on the landing so that cool rocks were uncovered and I could find them. I am a rock freak from WAY back, my entire 44 years. So I found many cool ones out there. I found agates, jaspers and a whole lot of -'I don't know what they are, but they're cool's.
The marshes were formed when the last glaciers receded. So many of the rocks are already naturally polished by the weight of the ice and the motion of the water. Being so passionate about rocks, I really should know more about petrology. But I find I often get lost in the technical terms.
Many times at lunch break, instead of relaxing, I would be walking around picking up rocks, checking them out and filling my pockets with them. Many of my rocks look quite ordinary, but if it felt like they wanted to go with me, I would take them home. Sometimes I would find a really pretty one, and think I was going to take it, but had such a strong feeling that it didn't really want to go, that I would put it back down.
Now, surely there is some mental disorder with anthropomorhic associations with rocks and stones, but I am blissfully unaware of it. I like rocks because they are pretty, interesting, cool, or because they "feel" good to me.

Electric blue snake

2006-09-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

When we were moving from one marsh to another, we had to hook the boats and drag them with the tractor over to an open area where they could be picked up by the tines on a tractor or an end loader and loaded onto the trucks. As it happens, we often had several boats that had their chains buried underneath them. We saved those boats for last by taking the easiest ones first. Two men or strong boys could pick up the front of the boats, reach under and grab the chain and get it out from underneath. Then we would use the tractor to stack one boat on top of another and haul them to the staging area two at a time.
Once when we were moving from one marsh to another, it was just me and the foreman moving the last of the boats. He was on the tractor that day. When he was gone hauling a couple boats down to the trucks, I was up in the woods using a crowbar and a block trying to fish the chain out from under them so he could just grab and go.
I was quite successful in my misson. However, there were two that were too heavy for me to trick up onto the block. One of those was upside down and wouldn't budge. So when he got back, he shut off the tractor and got down to help me. The first one of those, he just picked up the front by himself and I grabbed the chain. The second one, we had to pick up one side and flip over to right it. He hung onto the chain as we flipped it so it wouldn't be buried again. As soon as we stood it up on end, I saw the most AMAZING electric "dragonfly" blue snake, about six inches long. So vibrant and spectacular I immediately shouted for him to look. He saw it, but it was not nearly so amazing and spectacular. He is color blind. All he saw was a snake. It promptly slithered off into the tall grass. After we dropped the boat down, I looked for the snake, but it was long gone.
I have asked several people about it. Most suggested it was a blue racer. But all the pictures I have found of those are just regular blue or a blueish black colors. No spectacular, vibrant, nearly flourescent blue snakes anywhere to be found.

my only joke

2006-09-25T19:01:00.000-07:00

Did ya hear about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac?

I guess he stayed up all night wondering if there was a dog...

Marsh Goddessing

2006-09-17T09:41:00.000-07:00

Out at the marsh, a typical day would consist of getting to the marsh early and checking over the cats. We would crawl underneath and grease them, check the oil and fuel and make sure we had everything we needed, such as pulling hooks, chains, tools, etc.
I loved to be the first one out on the marsh in the morning and the last one to leave the marsh at the end of the day. If we weren't too far from shore, we would usually go in for lunch. Sometimes I would stay right out there and eat my lunch all alone on my cat in the middle of the marsh. When the dragonflies were particularly active on a body of water, I would sit there and just watch them. They would fly around me and land on me. It was magical.
Because I could feel how solid the mat was beneath me, I got very, very good at pulling out boats that got stuck. The other cat drivers would just unhook a stuck one and let it sit. If we could, we would let it dry for a few days, which made it hundreds of pounds lighter, then go pull it out. But sometimes we HAD to move it right then.
Spinning up the marsh with a cat was bad, bad, bad. The Department of Natural Resources and county foresters were very involved in over-seeing our operation. Wetlands protection, you know. We used vegetable based greases and had to be diligent about any potential spills. A leaking cat had to be grounded immediately until repaired. If we tore a whole in the moss mat, it would not be healed in our lifetime. It's a very slow growing environment. So we had to be extremely careful. We always saw scars that other mossers had made. We found it very frustrating. So the foreman taught me right away how to pull those boats out without spinning up the marsh.
If someone else got a boat stuck, they would holler for me on the radio to go get it. When we were working in really wet conditions, sometimes there would be 10 or 15 that had been drying for a few days and I would dedicate the day to pulling them all out. I loved that.
I never cared if I got dirty.
I would drive my cat over and back up as close as I thought I could safely get. Then I would grab my trusty chain, hop down and either walk or wade over to the chain on the boat, hook it to my bigger chain, hop back on the cat, put it in a low gear and pull slowly forward. Most of the time, I was able to snatch it right out. But that's because I would choose the best angle to grab it from. If I did start to slip a bit, I would backup, unhook and try another angle. If it seemed too soft, I would use a longer chain, just to sneak it forward a little, so I could use my shorter chain again.
Occasionally, we needed to get two cats hooked up a boat just to break the suction. And twice, we had to pull an empty boat over and manually move half the moss onto the empty boat with pitchforks to lighten it up enough to move. But we didn't make them too heavy after that.
I really liked the boat hauling gig. It suited me. I was working with the crew, but I also worked alone a lot.
Unfortunately, employees came and went. We went through a lot of young men that had no idea this was WORK when they signed up. So we lost a couple cat drivers at once, and the foreman needed me to drive next to the machine.
I HATED that job. It was stressful. My neck would get sore always looking one way. I had to be responsible for the safety of the two men on the boat behind my cat, while I drove within feet or inches of the harvesting machine, matching my speed with the machine, careful not to jerk my boat riders into the marsh or into harm's way. I had to keep track of the two people riding boat, the machine operator, my cat, the harvest machine, watch for stumps in front of the machine, watch out for critters, holes in the marsh, bees, monitor the radio in case somebody was hollering to me, look forward at where I was going and backwards at my riders. I really hated it. Weeks and weeks of a sore neck and a bad attitude, while the lazyiest guy on the crew got my gravy job of boat hauling. I was mad. But they needed me, so I took one for the team. Someplace in there, I insisted the foreman take over. He told me no, it was too stressful. Arrrgghhh!!! That excuse didn't work for me!
But after doing it for several weeks, one day I realized my neck didn't hurt anymore and I realized I WAS good at it. And then I had that pride of having conquered my misery and actually getting very good at it. The boat riders preferred me because I was smoother. Sometimes the other excellent driver and I both worked out on the marsh. Then the boat riders got really spoiled. So when a less experienced driver drove again, they really suffered, getting jerked, sometimes right into the marsh.
Someplace early into my job there, while I was still boat hauling, one of our guys quit. I ended up with his radio. Because I had the only radio out there, the foreman, who was often up on the landing, would call me and have me go tell the guys what to do. Once I started driving next to the machine, suddenly, I was in charge while the foreman was gone.
That was cool with my core team who came back year after year. I didn't have to boss them around. We were a team. Ww did what we had to do to get the job done safely. And I never once considered myself in charge of them. MostlyI just kept things moving and made sure breaks were the proper amount of time. Sometimes I had to get after the youngsters to keep them working. I called it straw bossing or being the company girl. It was mostly glorified babysitting then. I hated that too. Some of the younger ones must have had a problem with the only woman being in charge of them or someting. They had attitude and defiance occasionally. Once when it was just me and four just-past teenagers, I had a complete mutiny. The foreman was out on sick leave and they knew he wouldn't be back for days, possibly weeks. They didn't want to work. I had to stand up on the tracks of my cat and scream at the top of my lungs that this was WORK and they were being PAID to work, not F-off. One ended up quitting that day. It was too bad, he was the best worker of the bunch of them. But management and the foreman backed me up that I had done the right thing. I tried convincing him not to quit, but he had other irons in the fire anyway and is still doing the job he left us for.
A few years later, there was one young guy who was worthless from day one. I said he would not work out. He was lazy and did not listen. He refused to do things properly and I felt his defiance was a safety issue. So a few weeks after he started, I'd had it. I stopped everything. We shut off all equipment and I told him that either he could do the job safely, or he was free to walk in to shore and explain to the foreman why he wasn't cooperating.
He started yelling at me. I got so mad I wanted to come down off that cat and thrash him. I have never been so mad at a co-worker or anyone else, ever. Before I had a chance to do that, my buddy got down off his machine and told this kid to do what I said, right now. The next thing I knew, they were dukeing it out in the marsh. I hollered on the radio for the foreman to come out right now and get this kid. In the kids defense, he held his own against the bigger stronger more mature co-worker. They broke it up just as the foreman arrived. He calmly got the story, then fired the kid. I felt bad about that too. We could have spared ourselves all of it, if they had just taken my word that he wasn't going to work out. The kid was so negative about the work, he dampened the spirits of the entire crew. After he was gone, we returned to our camaraderie and great teamwork. I was really glad I hadn't come down off my cat to thrash him. He would have pounded me.
I suppose it sounds like I loose my temper a lot. That's not so. It's just that in working outside in nature like that, you develop a certain intensity. It's like the survival instinct stays on lukewarm because things can happen so fast. You have to be and stay completely 100% in the NOW to deal with things that come up.
We drove the cats on the marsh, but we also had to drive them through the woods hauling the boats in to where they could be unloaded with a tractors' tines into a pile. Sometimes the landing roads were less than ideal and we had to drive over roots and sometimes trees and stumps. You had to be very careful so as not to "throw a track" while doing so. Sometimes they went back on easy, by just going the opposite direction. If you had a boat behind you, you had to have another cat or a tractor move the boat out from behind you so you could back up. If the tracks were thrown bad, it could take hours and hours to take then apart and put them back together.
One day my usual cat went down with a mechanical problem. So I had to drive this one that had a scoop seat. The cat worked okay, but I didn't like the seat. Nothing to brace against if you hit a bump. So, I was driving that cat. The tracks were a little wider and I hadn't taken that into consideration as I backed down the landing road to hook another boat and bring it in to park it where the tractor could grab it. I was backing over this stumpy area where I had taken my usual cat probably a hundred or more times over the past week. As I entered the tricky area, where a big hump was on the left and then quickly on the right, because of the wider track, it didn't line up just right and I clipped the bank and then the whole cat dropped about three feet and I was bucked HARD and nearly thrown right into my own tracks where I would have driven over myself on hard ground and been completely crushed. Because I was in the NOW, I was able to hang onto those handles and throw my clutch in. But I was right on the pivot point, so I was in the air in the front and the back of the cat. I let the clutch out slowly and backed up to where it was level, shut the cat off, smoked a cigarette and shook for several minutes. I was completely alone because the guys were on the marsh and up on the landing. Stupid, stupid girl, nearly eaten by a cat.
I knew immediately that I hadn't taken the wider track into consideration. I was so grateful that I'd been focused on what I was doing and was able to stay in the saddle so to speak. So after my smoke, I resumed my boat hauling. The very next pass, I adjusted my approach and it was smooth. About a half hour later, I was looking back, making a continous, smooth approach over the stumpy area, when I looked forward to see my foreman wallking down the trail from where I had just come, to see me smoothly manuervering the problem area, with a big smile on his face and a thumbs up. I was SO glad he wasn't coming to check on me to find my lifeless carcass laying there. And I was equally grateful he hadn't been there to see my bucking bronco stunt because he would have pulled me off that cat and clipped my wings right then and there. I never even mentioned it to any of my crew.
Wider tracks came into play another time.
The guys made an approach for me to haul boats between these two birch trees. I drove my usual cat through there no problem. They had measured it and said all the cats would fit. I had a few inches on either side of the tracks. But I was good. So I didn't even clip the trees, like a few other guys did. Because I was good at it, I was left alone to do the run. There was a cat on the marsh side of that road, so I grabbed a boat with that cat and proceeded to drive through. It didn't look like it would fit. So I called on the radio and said I didn't think that cat would make it. The foreman told me they measured it, it would fit. So, I sarted through, sudden stop. Both tracks were wedged up tight on both sides. Yup, I figured. I was ticked because I didn't want to have to cut down either one of those beautiful trees. But, we were able to hook the tractor to one of the trees and pull just a little to release the tension on that side and I was able to wiggle the cat out without cutting the tree down. We made a different landing road after that. It turned out that cat still had the older, wider cleats on and no one had remembered that.
One time when I was in charge, we dropped the fancy harvest machine into a pre-existing hole on the marsh that we had not seen because it was covered with moss. I knew right away that we needed the foreman because I could tell it was NOT going to come out easy. The guys wanted to try because the foreman was gone, way across the marsh at the landing we had just left a few days before, moving the rest of the equipment over to our new one. We tried, but it was sinking deeper. I was pretty rattled. We were working in a pretty wet marsh. I had no idea of the water depth, but it was a pretty wet marsh. We tried everything we could, including hooking two cats to the machine with chains. But I could not drive both cats, so we had tension problems between the two chains, snapping first one, then another chain in the process. We couldn't reach the foreman by radio, he was too far away. It turns out, he heard me, but I couldn't hear his response, which had been just to leave it. We decided we had to leave it. I was worried about the machine sinking more overnight. So I hooked it with a chain to my cat and left it sit there like that. The next day, we hooked it to two cats again, and with two drivers who could coordinate with each other, we pulled it right out, just as nice as pie.
The name Marsh Goddess came from my boyfreind who had to listen constantly to my mossing adventures and how much I loved that job. He started calling me that right away. Not long after that, I told my foreman about it. There was a guy out there who's name was similar, well, not that similar, but with equipment running it was hard to discern who the foreman was calling on the radio. So the foreman after trying to raise me on the radio, to no avail, said "Marsh Goddess," which I heard clearly. The name stuck.
I left that job to pursue a full-time job that I really do like. But it's not nearly so adventurous or rewarding as mossing. But hey, NO deer flies!

Swamp Tales

2006-09-17T08:44:00.000-07:00

I call this blog Swamp Tales because while I worked out in the marshes, everyone always asked me, "How are things in the swamp?" I kept telling everyone, it's not really a swamp. A swamp is a wetland dominated by trees. Trees do grow in the marshes, but usually on ground above the water table. The ones that grow on the marsh are mostly stunted.
We worked in the Central Wisconsin marshlands. As the glaciers receded, meltwater was left to form Glacial Lake Wisconsin. Over time, the low-lying areas became marshes. The marshes look more like a grassy plain. The predominant plant is sphagnum moss, also known as peat moss. Decomposition is slow in the acidic environment. The moss forms a mat on the water, growing on the backs of previous generations of the plants. The thickness of that mat varies a great deal.
Sphagnum moss, because it can hold up to 20 times its weight in water, is used as a soil amendment. People who grow orchids particularly like it.
Many plants grow in the marshes as well. Pitcher plant, sundew, various beautiful orchids, marsh mallows, St. Johnswort, really too many to list. Tamarak and spruce seem to be the predominant trees.
Working and driving equipment on a mat of plant material over a mostly unknown depth of water, was also dangerous. We always had to be concious of that.
I could have called this blog marsh tales, but I chose swamp tales because everyone always asked me, "How are things in the swamp?"
I think of a swamp as a murky, sometimes dirty, messy place that is also magical and beautiful and filled with wonder. And that pretty much sums up my entire life.

Porcupine chasing

2006-09-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

Once there was a particulary bothersome porcupine. This particular porkie liked to chew on the hoses of the cats. It would also chew on the seats. Our gloves. Anything. After the second time the guys had to replace the hoses on one of the cats, they started plotting the death of the critter. (In the old days, mossers and loggers used to kill porcupines for such behavior. I said, oh please don't kill it. They told me they wouldn't, but I saw the look they exchanged. The look that said, when I wasn't there, they would. I knew his days were numbered. I dedicated myself to finding a porcupine deterrent. I tried several things, including pepper. Nothing worked. There was still critter sign around the cats and tractors.
One day, I and Randolph got to the marsh first. I saw the big porcupine get off the track of one of the cats and lumber towards the woods. I went running down the incline towards the marsh where the cats were parked. The porkie was moving faster now and I realized I wasn't going to get close. Hollering, I reached down to grab a stick to throw at it, got ahold of one of those bent over but not broken ones and as I picked it up full of fury, I smacked myself right square in the forehead. I then reached down and grabbed a chunk of root that wasn't attached to anything and threw it towards the porcupine. I walked back up the hill with a red welt on my forehead to Randolph, who hadn't seen the porcupine and had no idea why I thundered down the hill hollering, to smack myself in the face with a stick.
We had no further incidents with that porcupine.

Hazards

2006-09-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

There were many dangers working out on the marsh. When you work outside, things can happen fast.

We had a guy that was allergic to bees. We got stung when we'd we would accidently pull hives up from under the moss. Ground bees apparantly love building nests in the drier marshes. He had to be rushed to the hospital twice. After that, he moved on to another job. We had another guy who got swarmed by ants when the mossing machine pulled up a colony and dropped in right into his arms. He also had to be rushed to the hospital.

A big solid tree tipped over once and smashed onto a truck where three men had just been loading the moss. One was still up there and heard the crack. He'd cut trees all his life and knew what was coming and jumped clear. That big solid tree was hollow on the inside almost a third of the way up. Crazy. We'd used its shade many times during our lunch breaks, never suspecting the danger.

We were always aware that we were standing on a mass of decomposing plants, suspended over an unknown amount of water. In some areas, the water was only a few inches deep. In others, it was many feet deep.
One time I was standing out there, handpulling with my trusty mossing hook, when my left leg dropped through to just below the thigh. It happened extremely fast. My co-worker gave me support while I wiggled out. My other footing was still solid, but it was a trick getting out. I couldn't touch bottom with the one that fell through. We stopped pulling in that spot and moved over aways.
On that same marsh, several days and at least a half-mile away, a 17-year-old co-worker stepped off the boat and dissappeared up to his neck. By the time I thought, "What the.." he had grabbed the edge of the boat and sprung up out of the water, back onto the boat, saying, he couldn't touch bottom. I was so very glad that it had been him. He was fast, with awesome reflexes. I had just been on the boat not long before that. I expect I would have dropped like a rock. There would have been none of that leaping outta the water like Flipper.
We immediately stopped mossing there. We couldn't see the hole he'd stepped into because the top of the marsh was covered in about 6 inches of water. We also marked the spot with a big stake and a red warning bandana. I pointed it out to the county forester when he came, so he could make note of the location.

Working ontop of water like that, we watched for lightning like mice watch for hawks. As soon as we saw lightning, we'd head for shore. One of our guys had been struck before, twice, though not at that job. He could tell a storm was coming before the clouds even told so.
I and another guy were standing in the small trees next to shore during a thunderstorm. usually, there would be vehicles to sit in. But this day, everyone was gone with the trucks trying to get a big truck unstuck from the forest road (that happened a lot too). We were standing there, wearing rain coats, getting soaked anyway, when lightning struck a small tree right next to us. We both went running up the hill and just then one of the guys with a truck and topper came rolling in. We hopped right into the back of his truck without a hello, how are you? at all.

I was cruising along once thinking what a cool job it was when, over the sound of the cat, I heard a big SLURP, WHOOSH sound. Having already been smacked in the head by something coming up off my track, more than once, I threw my clutch in, while I leaned just a little to the right. A tree trunk, about two and a half inches in diameter, about four feet long attached to a huge root system and hundreds of pounds of mud, moss and debris plopped onto my left track. If I had not thrown that clutch it at precisely that moment, the clump would have swatted me right off that cat and down into my track on the opposite side.
I shut my cat off and thanked the Powers That Are. I spent the next 20 minutes trying to get the trunk pried out from between the cleats on my track. I tried to push the mound off. It was so heavy I couldn't lift it. I kicked and kicked at the trunk and it wouldn't budge.
I had a radio most of the time I worked out there. But this was in the early days before I had the radio. I was right next to shore, but it would have been a very long walk back to the landing we were working out of. I knew they would be looking for me before I could walk back. I had already tried driving a little forward and a little back, then trying to push it off, to no avail.
I finally figured out to take the chain I used for pulling stuck cats out, and wrapped it to the trunk, walked over to a sturdy tree and chained it tight. Then I started my cat and backed up about two inches, ever so slowly. It pulled it right off! I was really happy. But I never forgot my near miss.

My buddy G was standing beside me on the ground once, when I was loading a cat onto a trailer. I had done this many times before. It was November and we were packing it up for the year. The trailer was wet from the cat I had just loaded before. I didn't notice, but a thin sheet of ice had formed. About half-way up the ramp, the cat slid sideways. It stopped, but was cocked at a funny angle. I had to go back down and start over. Pretty heart-thumping while I got my composure. One of the guys said he would load it for me. (My leg was jumping like a rabbit. Shaking uncontrollably. I could not make it stop. It was pretty emabarrassing.) I said no, I could handle it. I was afraid that if I didn't load it myself that I would be afraid to load. I was so proud that I had learned to do it, I didn't want to give it up. So I waited a few minutes and then just as nice as pie, rolled it down and went right back up, no problem.

G got bucked right out of his seat on a cat once. He was hauling boats in and decided to cut through some brush, hit a stump and was thrown forward onto his gas tank. He just missed going down into his track. His arm had caught on the brake and that flopped him onto the gas tank.
That was as bad as the time his cat went sideways on a trailer. It was before my time. He had been driving up the trailer forwards when it went sideways.He was already up on the bed of the trailer. It slid off the edge and one of his coworkers, thinking and acting fast, got onto his track, balancing the pivot point and prevented it from going over the edge and potentially crushing him. G later taught me to load by backing up the ramp, the cats are more stable that way, he said.

I got hurt once. I was standing on my cat track up on the landing. I had just put gas in and I was handing the empty can to somebody on the ground, when a wooden cleat broke out from under me. One leg went through the track, which scraped a little, but the one I injured was straight out when I went down landing across the track and making a terrible crack. I had bent my knee two far the wrong way. It really hurt bad. I immediately cried, which I hated to do in front of the crew. I could barely walk. I had the weekend to heal up. For three weeks I limped around on that leg. I'd been to the doctor twice. Using a cat analogy, it felt like my knee was slightly off the track.
The third week into the pain and suffering, working the whole time, I was walking down a trail when Mother Nature fixed my leg.
When you drive the cats through the woods, brush gets run over. Many times the brush is laying down but still attached by the roots. I was walking along alone on my way up to the vehicles when I tripped over one of those laid down bushes. I flew through the air towards the ground. When I got to the full extent of my trajectory, all that connected me to the ground was the toe of my mossing boot. My leg snapped again. I came down hard on my shoulder. Even as I hit the ground with a big thud, I knew my knee was fixed! I was battered and bruised but very, very grateful. It didn't even hurt after that.

Day 2 at the marsh

2006-08-31T20:12:00.000-07:00

The morning after I survived that first rough day learning how to hand-pull sphagnum moss, I woke up to a beautiful sunshiny happy day. My muscles were sore from swinging the pulling hook all the day before in the wind and rain, but I was optimistic and I couldn't wait to see what the marsh looked like in the sunshine. It was gorgeous! It was even more beautiful that I could have imagined it would be.
The marsh was very wet. Marshes generally are, but not always. This being early spring, there was a lot of spring runoff still around and we were generally standing in three to six inches of water on top of the marsh. My borrowed-from-a-friend boots from the day before hadn't worked so well, they were the wrong size. At the end of that first day, the foreman fixed me up with a pair of right-size knee boots from a guy who didn't work out, (that happened a lot). The boots actually fit me. It was a whole different experience.
We had problems right away in the morning, just getting out to where we were hand-pulling. We learned from this mistake after this, but we were trying to work in too wet of conditions. The marsh "softens-up" when there is too much water present. The cats kept breaking through and we kept getting stuck. We had three cats on the marsh and the first two got stuck right away. I was on a boat, trying to figure out this whole balancing-on-a-big-flat-board-being-jerked-behind-a-cat thing, when the second cat got stuck. The foreman told the driver pulling me and two other co-workers to leave the cat (and us) there and come over. So he walked over to the foreman about 30 yards away and helped to get that cat out. No sooner were they out and then they were stuck again, both cats.
The foreman hollered over to me to bring the cat over and pull them out.
Excuse me, this is early morning of day 2, I have never driven a cat before. My instructor is 30 yards away and I'm not hearing real good. It's windy. Why does he think I can drive it? And, until this second, I didn't know I even WOULD be driving it.
I drove my grandpas tractors. I have plowed fields. This was quite a while ago. But he was hollering to me to get in the seat and bring it over. So I got in the seat and one of my co-workers told me the basic idea. It is very, very simple. I asked him if he wanted to go (since he knew how to drive), he said no, he didn't drive the cats, only the tractors. So I went.
My foreman motioned to me where to turn around. I pulled him out and then he told me to go pull the other guy out. I was like, 'oh,' because I thought I was driving to him and he was taking over. But, I went and pulled the other guy out. I didn't get stuck either time. The foreman told me to go hook the boat I had been on, and take the guys in. So I left to head back to the boat, went about half the distance and I see my boat-riders waving at me to turn around back toward the other cats. Both were stuck again. So I went and pulled both out again.
I was so nervous about driving the cat in the first place, that I was totally tuned in to what I was doing. That very first day I developed a "feel" for the marsh. All the time I worked there, I was never able to teach it to even one other person.
I pulled the boat in and while I was driving them in, with the other cats following me in, I was the happiest girl in the world! I already LOVED that job. It was hard work, but I really liked the adventure. Already, I had a passion for the work.
A while later, we came back out and starting hand-pulling in another area. I was working with the foreman. One of the guys hauling in a full boat got stuck. The foreman had to leave me alone to go help. He told me to pull the spot I was working on, then take a break until he got back with the cat. Everyone left and I was all alone in the middle of this huge beautiful marsh. I was right where I was supposed to be. I was so very happy that I had survived that first crappy day, or I would have never gotten to that wonderful second day.
I knew I could do this job. I was working outdoors. My crew-mates respected me because I worked along side them. I had satisfaction that I had not gotten stuck when I pulled the other cats out, while experienced drivers were dropping into holes (small ones, mind you) left and right. I was a mosser! And a sweet part of this was not being afraid out on the marsh, when I'd had such a tremendous fear of any marsh, swamp, bog from my hunting dip in the marsh years ago.
Two years prior to this, I had what I shall call a "day-dream" for lack of a better term. In it, I fell forward into a Christmas wreath lying on the ground. As I fell it widened into a round field of knee-high grass surrounded by a ring of trees. I went into it face foward, but somehow, I seemingly flipped over without noticing and landed on my feet in the field. Then it was over.
Day 2, after pulling the spot the foreman had told me to, I stopped to smoke a ciggarette. I heard the cat arrive at the landing, nearly a mile from me, and shut off. Silence. I was musing on my good fortune at having a found a job that suited me so well, when I looked all around me and realized--I was standing in a circular field of grass, surrounded by a ring of trees! Wow! I had the most intense deja-vu. I had known a little about moss, but nothing about sphagnum. I didn't see any moss in my day-dream. All I saw was the grass and the trees. But I'd been HERE all the same. I knew I was right where I was supposed to be.
We left that marsh within 48 hours. It was just too wet to work there. We moved to a different, much drier marsh. I worked on many spots on that big marsh over the years, but I was never in exactly that place again.

Bigfoot

2006-08-27T18:21:00.000-07:00

Bigfoot
I saw a bigfoot near Hayward, WI in the fall of 1982. I was driving to town along Hwy. 77 about 25 miles from town. It was very lightly snowing. I stopped for three racoons crossing the road and saw something big in my rearview mirror. It looked like bigfoot crossing the highway a few yards behind my car. I turned around to look and it still looked like bigfoot. It was huge, 7 1/2 to 8 ft tall, thick and wide. I believe it was a male. It was slightly reddish brown, like Scottish Highland cattle color, only with more highlights. It only took three steps to cross the highway from shoulder to shoulder. It did not look at me. It just strode across the highway. It did not look like anything remotely related to the ape family, it walked very straight. It was not a big guy in a ghillie suit. It looked a lot more like a wookie from Star Wars than it looked like the subject of the famous Patteron video. But it was different from both. The head was flatter somehow.
There were no houses around there. I didn't report it to any officials, although I thought about it. I was not frightened at all because it ignored me completely.
A few weeks later, my ex-boyfriend walked into the bar where I worked as white as a sheet. I asked him what was wrong. He said I wouldn't believe him. I asked, "Did you see bigfoot by chance?" He acknowledged he had. I was offended that he had disregarded my own sighting so far as to completely FORGET about it. But I totally understood why he was hesitant to talk about it openly. He had seen his on Telemark Road between Hwy. 77 and the community of Cable. He saw his RIGHT in front of his car. It stopped and looked at him and then stepped off to the side as he passed. It was night, but he said he saw it clearly and it's fur was pitch black. He had seen many bears. It was NOT a bear. I knew it wasn't the same one I had seen. Mine had not been black.

Possible bigfoot
Not many weeks after that, my friend Debbie and I were on Telemark Road heading to Cable to pick up my ex-boyfriend, who'd called and needed a ride. It was dark. In the headlights we saw a pitch black bigfoot-shaped figure leap out of a huge pine tree into a deep ditch beside the road. It had to be a 35-foot drop. I was driving and had to keep my eyes on the road, and she looked but couldn't see anything as we passed right by where we had seen it leap to. I do not know what it was. I didn't see it clearly. But it was bigfoot-shaped.

Don't know what the hell it was
The most scared I have ever been during any of my outdoor adventures happened not 100-yards from my house in 1999. I was living near Neillsville, WI. It was gun-deer season. I had to work that day, so I did not go out until afternoon. I walked down an old logging road to a small knoll along a dry creek bed and three different wooded sections. Many deer trails cut through there. When I first walked up, there had been about 10 squirrels scurrying about digging in the shallow snowcover rooting for acorns. As squirrels do, they stopped their business to see if I was a threat. As soon as I stopped to stand on the rise for a while, they went back to their squirrel business.
I stood there for about a half an hour. I saw one small doe go by. I only had a buck tag. Not long after the doe passed, I heard a heavy two-footed (sounded like a big, big man) crunch coming down along the dry creek bed. I assumed it was another hunter. He was coming somewhat slowly, but not being too quiet, so I thought some of the neighbors might be making a drive. I assumed that once he saw me standing there on the knoll in bright BLAZE orange, that he would just move along as polite, courteous hunters do. That's when I noticed that the squirrels had frozen in their places. They didn't run for the trees. They were all still and quiet as a mouse. They just crouched right down where they were. I flagged on that and thought it was really weird. They had let me get right up to them before they stopped to check me out. I could not see this other hunter, although I was thinking I should be able to soon, because he sounded like he was about 50 yards away. I could still hear him moving towards me, not directly, but at an angle. I thought for the second time how strange the squirrels were, when I heard one more crunch and snap of a twig, and it stopped moving. Now, from where I heard the last crunch, snap, I SHOULD have been able to see this other "hunter." It sounded like it came from this area about 35 yards from me and "he" should have been between me and these short pine trees.
I saw nothing and no one. I was still under the impression it was a hunter. I was angry that I was in plain sight and he stopped nearby me in the first place. I was really annoyed that I could not see him, he should have been wearing blaze orange too. What kind of idiot is skulking about in thick woods during deer gun season without blaze orange on? And I was becoming increasingly unnerved that the squirrels were so frightened that they STILL weren't moving, even though a few minutes had passed since he, it, whatever, wasn't making any noise now. I guess it was right about then I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up and I started thinking maybe it wasn't a hunter. All the years I've been in the outdoors, this was the first time that I'd ever felt threatened by something. I was carrying a single-shot 20-gauge shotgun and I was wishing I had more firepower. My eyes were darting around, trying to catch any movement. I kept nervously glancing behind me. And I started doing the 'I'm scared and I'm getting shakey' thing. Not convulsing, just nervously shaking. I was too afraid to turn my back on the last place I had heard it. I was straining for ANY sound. It was silent.
And then I smelled it. It was the most dreadful, rotten meat, putrid smell. I really started shaking then. I had my gun across my arms, ready to shoot, but knowing that if I needed to, it was going to have to be CLOSE, because I was trembling, and I knew my aim would be bad.
I knew it was not a hunter. Doe-in-heat and skunk smell cover-ups are not Chanel No. 5, but no HUMAN hunter ever smelled like this unless he was dead for some time.
I stood there so horribly frightened for another several minutes, wanting so desperately to leave and too frightened to do so. I didn't want to turn my back to it, and I certainly didn't want it to follow me home, 100 yards up the trail to where my children and I slept.
And that is when, Heenjasep, my boyfriends black lab came down the trail behind me to investigate. As soon as I saw the dog, it was resolved. I would leave because if it was a creepy hunter, I HAD to take the dog back to the house for his safety. And if it was something OTHER, then the dog would protect me. So I called the dog to me. And we left without incident.
I had trouble sleeping that night. I just couldn't shut my mind off. I was off the next day, so bright and early, to face my fear, I went right back down there and walked all around checking for tracks. There were none. My tracks and deer tracks, that was it. I cannot explain that. But my experience was and is completely real to me. I invoke the unnatural behavior of the squirrels as my only evidence. I am STILL creeped out by it and have had chills and shivers just telling the tale.
I told my friend (a different) Debi about it. She is Oneida. In her experience the bigfoots are beneficial beings. In Ho Chunk oral tradition, there is a story about an old man who was injured in the woods and suffering from dehydration. A bigfoot brought him water for three days in a rolled up leaf, until he was able to gain his strength and hobble home. This happened a few miles from where I had my creepy encounter.
I logged this experience into my bigfoot memories because of the heaviness and the two-footed walk of whatever it was. But whatever it was, I bet it eats squirrels.

Marsh Sighting
I didn't see it myself. Our fancy moss-pulling machine was broken down and being fixed during a hot summer afternoon in 2001, so we were hand-pulling moss on the far side of the marsh from our landing where we pulled the full boats into. This was in the Bear Bluff area. I felt like someone was watching us and I kept looking around. My co-worker asked what was up, so I told him. He said Randolf, the older guy who worked with the tractors and end loader on the landing, was probably looking with his binoculars to see how it was going. A little after that, we decided to go in for lunch. As we got close enough to see the landing, sure enough, Randolf was standing there, looking out at us with his binoculars. My co-worker, looking quite satisfied, nudged me and said, "I told ya." I felt a little stupid, but glad my intuition of being watched was working.
When we got in to shore, Randolf walked over and asked us if we'd seen anything. None of us knew what he was talking about. We said no, what did he mean? He saw a huge, tall, upright black figure standing in the woods, not far from where we were, watching us. As soon as we left, it walked over to where we had been. Randolf hurried to his truck to get his binoculars, but it was gone before he got back. He did not know what it was, "But it was NO bear," he said. I kept asking, did he think it was a bigfoot? He just laughed and said he didn't know. We couldn't find any tracks different than ours when we went back out. We were all wearing mossing boots that made our feet appear bigger anyway. He showed us where he had seen it. Funny thing to me, that's not the direction I'd been looking when I'd felt watched.

Breaking through

2006-08-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

Many years ago, I developed a very serious fear of marshes and bogs.
I was deer hunting with two guy friends 30 miles east of Hayward, Wis. a few days before Thanksgiving. It was snowing and the wind was cold. We hadn't seen anything and decided since the wind was picking up and the snow was getting heavier that we would head back home. It was about a five-mile walk.
My friends, who were more familiar with the area, suggested we could shorten that considerably by cutting across this big marsh. We would come out to the highway and it would be much easier walking the highway than by going through the woods. I was game.
Half-way across the marsh, which was covered in ice, I suddenly broke through and fell up to my breastbone in the frigid water. My right foot was supported on the branch of a submerged log, with my left arm leaning on the edge of the ice. My left leg was swinging free, I couldn't touch bottom. As soon as I broke through, I instictively held my gun up high.
My buddies, who were both thinner and lighter, stepped forward and took my 20-gauge shotgun. Even though I was in a potentially life-threatening situation, I was very proud that I had not dropped my gun or got it wet.
My friends thought that maybe together they could pull me out. I knew they could not. All that was holding me up was the tip of that branch. I could only somewhat support myself on the edge of the ice because that branch was taking my weight. All I had was a toe hold on that wonderful log that had laid there, for who knows how long, waiting to save me.
I was afraid that as soon as they tried to pull me out, my weight would combine with theirs and they would break through.
I have hunted all my life and I was fully aware that this was a life-threating situation. I was not about to risk my friends. The ice was supporting them.
I was not afraid. I KNEW I was getting out of there. If I had been meant to die, I would have already missed that precious toe hold, gone down deep and perhaps not have been able to find the opening in the ice. I had already been spared, I just had to figure out HOW to get out of there as fast as possible. And I knew I only had one shot. Once I kicked off that branch, I would not be able to find it again.
I told my friends to step back and give me some room.
I had only been in the water for about two minutes when I bounced hard on the branch, aiming for a nearby clump of grass and semi-lunged out of the water. The lip of the ice broke just a few inches more, but as I grabbed the clump of dry grass, the taller one of my friends reached over and grabbed my shirt near the shoulder and tugged hard and Tah Dah! I was out!
I was thoroughly soaked through, but I had been from the very first second I went into the water, so I was glad I had not panicked and that I had taken the time to assess my situation.
I crawled a few feet. I would have crawled even farther, but my wet clothes were sticking to the ice and I knew that the temperature had dropped more than I had previously thought. So I stood up, and the ice supported me. I took my gun and we started walking.
I was not cold. The adrenaline coursing through my veins and my rapidly pounding heart kept me plenty warm. But I was literally not out of the woods yet. We still had half the marsh to cross. I hadn't really had time to be afraid while I was in the water. I was focused on survival then. But with every step I took toward the treeline, I was wracked with the fear I would fall through again. I did bust through twice more, but the water was much shallower, below the knee on both occasions.
We made it to the highway and starting walking. The wind was coming straight at us, stinging our faces with snow. I was covered in a thin sheet of ice that was crunching and breaking as I walked. The ice was thick on my hiking boots and in the folds of my pants around my knees. My legs were so tired. That ice was damn heavy.
When we first got to the highway, I asked how far was it to our road? "Only about a mile," the eldest of my friends replied. Two miles later, I was utterly miserable. "How much farther?" I asked. "We're almost there." he answered. I knew we were not. I didn't recognize it as anywhere close. I know things look differently zipping by at 55 mph, but I knew it was still a long walk. I was tired. My legs were burning from the exertion. I wanted to stop for a few minutes and rest.
My friend, thank the good Lord for him, told me I was just a stupid girl. This is why girls should never be allowed to hunt. In fact, he was never going hunting with me again. I should just stay home and do girl stuff like baking cookies and knitting and leave the hunting to men!
I was so pissed off! I was irate! I stomped, crunch, crunch, crunch! All the way to our road. Mad as hell and pissed off to high Heaven at my FORMER fishing/hunting buddy who I completely and utterly HATED and would NEVER like again! As soon as we got to our road, he turned to me with a charming smile and said, "See. I knew you could make it."
I realized that he had saved me. He made me mad and that gave me the energy and the motivation I needed to trudge on. I completely forgave him for his comments. They were designed to motivate me.
I was very, very afraid of marshes for many years after that. I knew what could happen, and just how fast it could happen.
Looking back now, after having spent so much time on marshes and bogs, I can see that we picked thee most dangerous route across that marsh all those years ago. We were thinking to walk across the ice where it looked thicker, instead of through the snow and clumps of grass. But marshes have more water where the peat layer in thinner. So we were actually crossing the holes in the bog where the water is the deepest.

Last night's storm

2006-08-24T14:10:00.000-07:00

Severe thunderstorms went through Monroe and Jackson counties, Wisconsin last night. The storms featured 70mph winds and hail up to two and a half inches in diameter. The first hail balls that fell at my place were golf-ball sized, then dropped down to quarter, dime and pea-sized. My co-workers reported the opposite. Theirs started out small and got progressively bigger.
I just had a few branches down in my yard. Neighbors had their cars totalled by hail, numerous windows broken, trees down on their homes, garages, sheds and vehicles. The hail decimated corn crops and cranberries. Gardens were obliterated. There were unconfirmed reports of tornadoes. It is the major topic of discussion in the area.
In Tomah, a gas pump was knocked over creating a leak. Many power lines were downed. I was without power for about five hours.
A co-worker told me how frightening it was when it went from daylight to dark in a matter of moments. Another co-worker had all his rain gutters shattered by the golf-ball sized hail. Many people could not get out of their driveways due to downed trees.

Dragonflies

2006-08-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

I have always loved dragonflies - for all the usual reasons that dragonfly lovers do. But I especially love them since I worked out at the marsh. It wasn't all fun and games out there. Somedays the work was hard. Sometimes the weather was too cold, too rainy, too hot, too windy and all the other ways weather is. Equipment would break down. Co-workers would slack off or bitch and complain. Trees would fall over unexpectedly. Lightning was a special danger. But the WORST, most horrible condition of all was the deer fly hatch. We had horse flys too, which were much bigger and bit much harder, but there were far fewer of those. The deer fly hatch was horrible. Some marshes didn't seem to have as many. And like any other species, a variety of conditions come into play. But when the conditions were good for deer flies, it meant it was bad for us.
The main hatch lasted about two weeks. You would see and feel them before and after that, but the hatch was unbelieveably horrible when it was bad. Imagine THOUSANDS of biting flies swarming around your head, biting through your clothing in every conceivable place. I know it was literally thousands around me because I could see thousands around my co-workers. Buzzing all around you. Flying behind your glasses and biting near your eyes. Flying in your nose and mouth. Constant and unforgiveable. Agony.
I wore a big scarf over my head, which helped a little. The only place I did not get bitten was where my leather gloves and my rubber boots were. We tried EVERYTHING. All we could do was cover up in multiple layers of clothing and endure it. Now mind you, the hatch is in the heat of summer. When it's the hotest. It really sucked.
One day during the worst part of the worst hatch, it was too miserable to work with handtools. The temperature was around 98 degrees F and it was too hot to be trying to swat at flies all day. The foreman had us using the cats to haul the loaded boats back to the landing where other crew members were using equipment to unload the moss and push it into piles.
I was far out on a rather dry marsh and these cleat tracks cats go pretty slow when you're on a marsh, because you don't want to damage the marsh by spinning it up. You just want to cruise along slowly. The flies were demonic. I was miserable. I was covered in welts from the days before. I hate flies and their nation into perpetuity because of those days.
I was vehemently cursing them and worthlessly swatting at them, when I happened by a small stand of tamarak trees near the woods. Suddenly (as in Poof!) all the flies were gone. I looked up and saw 60-70 medium-sized dragonflies flying around me. There hadn't been thousands of flies just then, merely a few hundred. But to have them completely gone, was an amazement.
They came back about 20 yards later as I moved away from the tamaraks. I continued on, hooked the chain on the boat to my cat and went back right by the tamaraks. Tah! Dah! My lovely, beloved, wonderful warrior-bug friends came back out and deleted more of the hated fly hoard. They stayed with me, all around me for a few moments, caught their fill and retreated back to whence they came.
I was joyous! I was ecstatic! Yippe Kye Yeah! Hell Yeah! I had support!
The rest of that what had been a horrible day was much the same. Every time I went near there, my buddies came out and ate some flies. I was a regular dragonfly deli. After that, I noticed them everywhere, going about their daily feast, but not in the same numbers as my special spot on the far side of the marsh. Yes, I still suffered. That day and for days yet to come. I still itched. I was still hot and covered in welts. But my attitude was much better. Just about the end of that hatch, we completed our harvest on that marsh and moved to another. Only to come there right at the beginning of the hatch there. But, all things being relative, it was NOTHING like what we had just been through. Totally tolerable.
We got a new guy after we moved there, and he was dumbfounded why we didn't think the flies were all that bad. We tried to tell him what we had endured previously. But he just didn't get it.
I still hate flies and their nation into perpetuity. And I still love dragonflies. Always will...

It ain't easy being green

2006-08-21T19:37:00.000-07:00

I am so new to the internet, I have been really wondering what I got myself into with this blog. I was orginally trying to post a comment to a beloved friend whose blog I read regularly. But I had to sign in. The next thing I know, I had a blog of my own. Well, since I so thoroughly tricked myself in to starting one, I might as well use it, right?
I am so green!
I hit the wrong keys and do all kinds of weird stuff. I even posted a message to myself, but figured out how to delete it. I better see if there's a Blogging for Dummies available. I would like to thank Lori for her encouraging words.

Into the marsh

2006-08-21T06:42:00.001-07:00

I spent four seasons harvesting sphagnum moss on various moss marshes in central Wisconsin. We used modified pitch forks called "pulling hooks," to gather the moss and pack it on large flat, wooden "boats" pulled behind 6,000lb "cleat-track" cats. The company that I worked for also had a harvest machine, and I became quite good at driving the cats within inches of the harvest machine, pulling a boat and two co-workers behind me. I loved that job. I had to leave it because it was at best a sixth-month season. And the last year I worked there, the company only harvested three months. I could not wait nine months to work again. I intended to come back, but I accidently found a full-time job that pays me well and that I like. But I miss the marsh. I miss being out there everyday and being totally immersed in nature. There were beautiful dragonflies and flowers. Eagles would soar overhead and often plop down on a branch and watch to see what we chased up once the moss was pulled away. The view was gorgeous. Working in a clearing with a ring of woods around us, the clouds were spectacular.
It wasn't all dragonflies and flowers. Some days were hard, hot, fly-infested and miserable.
The very first day I worked was a trial. It was mid-April. Rainy. The wind was cold. The foreman picked me up at the office. He took one look at his his new crew member and tried not to have a look like he was sure I wasn't going to work out. He optimistically told me on the drive up to the woods and down the marsh road what an adventurous job it was and what a great crew we had. We got there and the crew was sitting in a shed waiting for him. They had all been planning on going home for the day because of conditions, but I wasn't aware of that. We went down to the edge of the marsh and I realized that we had to stand on these boats and be pulled by a cat out to where we were harvesting. Someone handed me a huge, heavy pulling hook and they told me to use it to help me balance. I just about wiped right out when the cat jerked forward, but the foreman grabbed my arm to steady me. I was really wondering what I had gotten myself into. Some 15 minutes later, we stopped and I stepped off into the marsh. The water immediately went over my boots, filling them with water. There was plenty of room because they were borrowed knee boots and way too big for me. The water was cold. I was wearing an army poncho because it was still raining. The wind kept slapping the poncho into my face. My glasses kept steaming up and the cold water was wicking right up my pants leg from my wet boots.
A few minutes into all this, I mis-stepped in the squishy marsh and splat! I fell right down on my bottom. And had trouble standing back up. The foreman had to give me a hand. It was impossible not to notice the guys giving each other looks and trying really hard not to laugh. I was horrified. I had thought I could do the work but now that I was in the thick of it, I realized what a horrible mis-judgement I had made. I focused on and dedicated myself to just making it through the day. The wind increased in the afternoon. I worked harder to keep myself warm. The pulling hook was so heavy that my arms ached. I just kept pushing through. I fell down again. But that time I was able to pull myself up. I didn't care because I was already soaked.
After hours of this, the day was done and the foreman was so enthusiastic. I was a mosser now. I was doing great. I was getting the hang of it. I just knew that I had made it through the day. We had to ride the boat back in to shore. It was much easier because there was a huge pile of moss to hang on to. But as soon as the cat did the intial jerk, I was knocked off balance and plopped right down into the pile. I knew this wasn't the usual etiquette because two guys laughed. But I was soaked to the skin anyway and it was much more comfortable than standing, so I rode in that way.
We got back to the landing and I was so grateful I had survived my horrible, cold, wet, miserable day. The foreman went on and on about how I fit right in because I was such a hard worker and working out there in conditions like that and never complaining. Then he noticed for the first time what a heavy pulling hook I had been using and was more amazed. He handed me a smaller one and told me to use that one the next day. I was thinking, well, I'm not gonna be here, but I took it and put it aside anyway.
On the way back to the office, a 40-minute drive from the marsh, the foreman was going on about how it's not usually like this and everyday will be easier than this one because this was the worst conditions that he had ever worked in in 20-plus years of mossing. It's all a piece of cake from now on? What's he saying? I thought these guys were like the post office, through rain and sleet and all that. So I didn't tell him I wasn't coming the next day. I decided to wait and see how I felt about it the next morning. When we got back to the office, he fixed me up with a pair of proper fitting boots.
The next morning I woke up to a beautiful, warm, sun-shiny day. I knew I was going into the day differently, with proper boots and a smaller, lighter, shorter pulling hook. I couldn't wait to see how it went.

Moment one.

2006-08-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

I wish I may,
I wish I might, think of something clever to write.
First moments blogging,
Thoughts a clogging,
Memory hazing,
Techno-phasing.
Dash and boulders, ship's a sinking,
Whatever, Whatever?
Was I thinking?