When I moved to western Wisconsin in 1993, I thought that the cities of La Crosse, Wisconsin and Rochester, Minnesota were similar to each other. La Crosse had two universities (which Rochester did not have), and Rochester had the Mayo Clinic, but otherwise the two communities had a lot in common. 

I would not make the same comparison in 2026. Rochester has moved into the 21st Century, and La Crosse has not. In the past thirty years, Rochester has grown from 70,000 residents to over 120,000. La Crosse, over that same period of time, has had no reason to update the population numbers on its city limits signs.* La Crosse once ranked among the best small cities in America to live. Today it is listed as one of the most affordable. Affordability is another way of saying that property values have not changed much, which is another way of saying that La Crosse is stagnant.

Of course, growth and change for the sake of growth and change is not always for the best. In fact, if I was asked in which city I’d rather live, I’d take one look at the relatively undeveloped Mississippi River only a mile from my house and choose La Crosse.

Just last month, a community-minded local resident bought and promised to maintain the character of La Crosse’s 158-year old mom and pop downtown hardware store. I am not someone who thinks that every old building and every old business deserves to be saved, but this was cause for celebration. I’ve always shopped at Kroner’s Hardware for nuts, bolts, and other small repair items, but when I learned that someone was making a commitment to keep this piece of La Crosse history open, I knew I had to increase my patronage.

I am comparing the two cities in this week’s blog because two Mondays ago I went to Rochester to shop. Among several of my Asian American friends who live in La Crosse, such a trip is a monthly event. Rochester has better Asian grocery stores than La Crosse. It has better Asian restaurants (although still not entirely authentic). It also has a Costco and a Trader Joe’s, two popular chainstores that have yet to make it to my city. I would rather stay home and drop hammers on my toes than drive for an hour to go shopping, but Manyu and I are still in a honeymoon phase after her four-month trip to Taiwan and Thailand. When she asked me to join her and two of our friends on a trip to Rochester, I agreed to go.

I have to admit that I like Trader Joe’s. I’ve been inside one only three times, but every time I’ve found the staff to be unusually friendly and cheerful. Manyu and our friend Shu each bought a big stack of Trader Joe’s reusable canvas grocery bags. Manyu is from Taiwan, Shu is from Mainland China, and Trader Joe’s bags are now a popular fashion accessory throughout Asia. The bags will make excellent gifts the next time either one of them returns home to visit family. I didn’t buy any canvas bags, but I did get a bunch of bananas. When I went to pay for them, I was charged by the banana rather than by the pound. They sold for twenty-nine cents apiece, and I could not remember the last time I purchased anything that cost less than a dollar. It was probably the last time I bought a nut and a bolt at Kroner’s. 

The highlight of our trip was a stop at a trendy shoe store. Even though the store carried the largest selection of Birkenstocks I’ve ever seen, I didn’t buy anything. I did, however, step onto a futuristic-looking computerized machine that analyzes feet. The machine did not tell me anything that I didn’t already know (size 8.5 US, size 42 European, width EE, healthy arches), but it confirmed that all of the shoes that I’ve worn for the past fifty years have been the right size.

• In fairness to La Crosse, the city is bordered on three sides by the river, the bluffs, and the city of Onalaska, so it cannot expand in those directions, That, however, is almost irrelevant, as the demand for growth is minimal.

I went to our local No Kings Rally on Saturday. It was the first time I attended an anti-Trump protest. As much as I support the good intentions of the people who have been involved all along, as much as I appreciate that there have been a few thousand La Crosse residents braving the cold this past winter to express their frustrations, I had no desire to join them.

Saturday morning, however, a couple of friends who I consider apolitical called to ask whether I would be at the rally. As indifferent to politics as these friends usually are, something in them has broken, and they felt the need to be there. Manyu and I decided to go to the rally, not so much to support the cause as support our friends.

I have attended dozens of protest rallies in my lifetime: antiwar protests on the University of Wisconsin campus in the early 1970s and occasional environmental protests ever since. The rally on Saturday felt different from the others in one important way. In the 70s, nearly all of the people at the protests were college students. At the various environmental protests I’ve attended, I would describe most of the participants as “little old ladies in tennis shoes.” In other words, the participants at both the antiwar and the environmental events were outliers within society. They were a politically active minority who did not necessarily represent the priorities of the majority of citizens.

In spite of what spokespeople for the White House are claiming, the people at Saturday’s rally were exactly the opposite. They were mainstream Americans. They felt like my neighbors. They were my neighbors, as I stopped and talked to several people who live on my street.

I’d been avoiding the No Kings Rallies in La Crosse because the events were no more than people standing on a busy corner waving signs. I now feel stupid, because I’ve come to realize that standing on the corner and waving signs is exactly what the rallies ought to be. There was no one grandstanding with megaphones or microphones. There were no self-appointed leaders telling everyone else what to do. In a recent New York Times op-ed column, Thomas Friedman quoted a Minneapolis resident who was commenting on the city’s ICE OUT efforts. The man said, “There were hundreds of leaders of this movement, and I don’t know a single one of their names.”* I don’t think that any of the people carrying signs on Saturday consider themselves leaders, but the same sentiment applies. There had to have been organizers for the event, but no one stood out.

I did not expect the No Kings Rally to provide me with new hope – and it did not. For the past year I’ve known that things have been bad and will continue to be bad. I’ve simultaneously believed that this too will pass. Nothing about Saturday moved the needle. Still I’m glad that I went.

* Friedman, T. (March 15, 2026.) Why Minnesota Matters More Than Iran for America’s Future. New York Times. Found at: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/15/opinion/columnists/minneapolis-ice-trump-neighbor.html.

In last week’s blog, I told two stories about breaking through winter ice. This week I want to stay with the same topic. The following describes two other times I went through the ice, plus one time I worried I might go through, but then did not. 

Story No. 1
When I was growing up, the best natural area within an easy bicycle ride of home was a narrow stretch of public land along a waterway called Baird’s Creek. Even as a teenager, I went down to the creek several times a year, and one winter day Lisa, my high school girlfriend, and I went there for a walk. The main trail crossed the creek in a number of places. Had it been summer, we would have waded through those spots without a second thought. In the wintertime, we had to trust the ice, even though we could hear water gurgling directly below the frozen crust.

At our first crossing, we considered our options and decided that Lisa should go first. She was forty pounds lighter than I was, so it made sense for her to cross before I ruined the integrity of the ice by putting a big hole in it.

We had assessed the situation correctly. Lisa crossed without incident, but I broke through up to my waist. Before I could pull myself out of the cold water, a ten-year old kid ran down one river bank at full speed, glided effortlessly across the ice not two feet in front of me, and then bounded up the opposite bank as if the creek hadn’t been there at all. I felt like Wile E. Coyote after one of its plans had gone awry.

Story No. 2
On a trip across the state to visit family, my mom asked Manyu and me to join her for a walk. The weather was unusually warm for late winter, so I suggested that we do more than walk around the neighborhood. Instead we drove up to Potawatomi State Park, a large nature preserve on the bay of Green Bay about thirty miles north of my mom’s house.

Part of our short hike took us to water’s edge. I thought I was walking on snow-covered sand, but Manyu was certain that I’d ventured out onto the ice. She ordered me to get back to shore. My response was unnecessarily harsh. “I’m not even on the water,” I barked back. “I’m standing on the beach.” 

Of course, the words were barely out of my mouth when I broke through the ice. The water was shallow, not even up to my knees, but it didn’t matter. I would have been just as upset had the water been up to my chest. I don’t like being told what to do when I am in the outdoors, and I especially don’t like it when the other person is right. Manyu has come to expect casual carelessness from me when I am in a natural setting, but to her credit she does not throw it back in my face. That may be because she doesn’t know about the other dumb things I do when she isn’t around.

Story No. 3
For a reason that I cannot remember, Clare and I found ourselves on Brice Prairie north of the city. My daughter was about seven or eight years old at the time. We drove past one of my favorite ice fishing spots on Lake Onalaska, so I asked if we could stop for a few minutes to see if anyone was catching fish. As it turned out, no one was on the ice, but I could see evidence of recent fishing a hundred feet offshore. Clare and I walked out to the most heavily fished spot, and I stuck my hand down an open hole to check the thickness of the ice. To my surprise, it was no more than three inches thick.

I immediately told Clare, “Let’s head back, but I want you to walk twenty feet away from me.”

She did as I requested, then asked me why.

“The ice is a little bit thin here,” I said. “We should be fine, but if I break through the ice, I don’t want you standing right next to me.”

We started for shore, and Clare calmly asked, “What should I do when you fall in?”

I hadn’t told Clare what to do if the ice beneath me gave way, but she had thought to ask. One of the great joys of my life has been witnessing the gears turn in my little girl’s head.

                                    *        *        *

This is enough about ice. Spring is here, and most of the waterways in La Crosse are ice-free. Time to get out the canoe.

My icy shortcut was working well until, a quarter mile from shore, I came upon an unusually large expansion crack. I saw no open water, but one side of the crack was noticeably higher than the other. It ran in both directions for as far as I could see, so my only options were to cross over the obstacle or retrace my steps. I did not want to turn around, so I clumsily stepped up one side of the crack and down the other. Just as I thought I had made it over without incident, my boots broke through the snowy crust and immediately filled with water. I assumed I was falling into a patch of open water covered by snow, so I threw my upper torso forward and spread out my arms. Survival instinct was telling me that a dispersion of my body weight was the right thing to do. 

As it turned out, I hadn’t broken through the main ice at all. Lake water had seeped through the expansion crack and created a shallow pool of water on top of the ice. A thin layer of new ice had formed on the surface of this pool, and it was this ice that I had broken through. I hadn’t fallen into Lake Mendota so much as fallen into a pool of water on top of Lake Mendota. After dropping knee-deep into a slushy mix of snow and water, my boots again found firm footing. Unfortunately, because I’d intentionally dove face-first into the cold, wet slurry, the front half of my body was wet. As soon I realized that I wasn’t going to die out on the lake, I picked myself up and ran home before hypothermia and frostbite could set in.

The Lake Mendota fiasco, however, is not my most vivid memory of breaking through ice. That recollection would go to the Wolf River Oxbow Incident. I was only ten years old. My uncle Bob and my cousin Tom had invited my dad and me to join them for a day of fishing on an oxbow of the Wolf River. It was late winter, and the ice right along shore had already melted. The ice out in the middle was still solid, but the challenge was getting out to it. One resourceful fisherman had hauled out a long 2” x 10” plank to span the open water, and we were able to use this makeshift bridge to reach good ice.

After a day of fishing, the four of us returned to the 2” x 10” to cross back over to land. For some reason, I had dawdled, so by the time I reached the plank, Tom was already on shore, Uncle Bob was in the process of crossing, and my dad was waiting for his turn. When I walked up to stand alongside my dad, our combined weight was too much for the ice to bear, and we both broke through. My dad went in up to his waist, I up to my chest. It was not until years later that Tom told me that his dad had ordered him not laugh in our faces, so he had ducked behind a tree so we couldn’t see him.

                                   *        *        *

This morning I was worried that I might not have anything to put into this week’s blog. NOT going ice fishing does not make for much of a story. However, just thinking about ice fishing reminded me of the various mishaps I’ve encountered on the ice. I came up with more anecdotes than fit into a single blog, so I will save a few for next week.

With the recent warm weather, my ice fishing window has closed for the year. Supposedly two inches of ice safely supports an adult male, but I won’t go out unless there is at least six. 

I do not keep careful count, but I think that I’ve gone through the ice six times in my life. Only once did I think that I was in danger, and even that turned out to be a false alarm. It happened when I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin. During my junior year, I lived in a rundown house two miles from campus. One winter evening, tired and hungry after a night class, I decided that the quickest way home would be to cut across the ice on Lake Mendota. My usual land route curved around a corner of the lake, so I figured it would take less time if I eliminated the curve.

My icy shortcut was working well until, a quarter mile from shore, I came upon an unusually large expansion crack. I saw no open water, but one side of the crack was noticeably higher than the other. It ran in both directions for as far as I could see, so my only options were to cross over the obstacle or retrace my steps. I did not want to turn around, so I clumsily stepped up one side of the crack and down the other. Just as I thought I had made it over without incident, my boots broke through the snowy crust and immediately filled with water. I assumed I was falling into a patch of open water covered by snow, so I threw my upper torso forward and spread out my arms. Survival instinct was telling me that a dispersion of my body weight was the right thing to do. 

As it turned out, I hadn’t broken through the main ice at all. Lake water had seeped through the expansion crack and created a shallow pool of water on top of the ice. A thin layer of new ice had formed on the surface of this pool, and it was this ice that I had broken through. I hadn’t fallen into Lake Mendota so much as fallen into a pool of water on top of Lake Mendota. After dropping knee-deep into a slushy mix of snow and water, my boots again found firm footing. Unfortunately, because I’d intentionally dove face-first into the cold, wet slurry, the front half of my body was wet. As soon I realized that I wasn’t going to die out on the lake, I picked myself up and ran home before hypothermia and frostbite could set in.

The Lake Mendota fiasco, however, is not my most vivid memory of breaking through ice. That recollection would go to the Wolf River Oxbow Incident. I was only ten years old. My uncle Bob and my cousin Tom had invited my dad and me to join them for a day of fishing on an oxbow of the Wolf River. It was late winter, and the ice right along shore had already melted. The ice out in the middle was still solid, but the challenge was getting out to it. One resourceful fisherman had hauled out a long 2” x 10” plank to span the open water, and we were able to use this makeshift bridge to reach good ice.

After a day of fishing, the four of us returned to the 2” x 10” to cross back over to land. For some reason, I had dawdled, so by the time I reached the plank, Tom was already on shore, Uncle Bob was in the process of crossing, and my dad was waiting for his turn. When I walked up to stand alongside my dad, our combined weight was too much for the ice to bear, and we both broke through. My dad went in up to his waist, I up to my chest. It was not until years later that Tom told me that his dad had ordered him not laugh in our faces, so he had ducked behind a tree so we couldn’t see him.

                                   *        *        *

This morning I was worried that I might not have anything to put into this week’s blog. NOT going ice fishing does not make for much of a story. However, just thinking about ice fishing reminded me of the various mishaps I’ve encountered on the ice. I came up with more anecdotes than fit into a single blog, so I will save a few for next week.

Mural in the lounge outside the Union’s Rathskeller

Clare called me on the phone and immediately asked, “Dad, are you still at home?”

“No,” I replied, “I’m at the Union.” Clare knows that, for me, there is only one union, and it is Memorial Union on the University of Wisconsin campus. There was no reason for me to be more specific when I told her where I was.

“Oh,” she said, “we missed the nine o’clock bus.”

After four months in Asia, Manyu was finally coming home. Clare and Clare’s boyfriend, Chase, had joined her in Taiwan for the last part of her trip, and now all three of them were coming back to the States on the same flight. The plan was for them to fly into O’Hare and then take the 9pm bus to Madison. They’d arrived at the airport with what should have been enough time to catch the bus, but then got hung up in customs. Fortunately the nine o’clock bus to Madison is not the last one of the day, and they’d just get in later than they’d hoped. Manyu thinks that I hate flying. I don’t. I hate airports.

Clare and Chase live in Madison, and their apartment, even when pulling suitcases and carrying duffels, is within walking distance of the bus stop. I was supposed to drive to Madison, meet them at the bus stop, visit with Clare and Chase long enough to hear about the highlights of their trip, and then return to La Crosse that night. Now that they had to catch a later bus and not get to Madison until after one in the morning, I’d be in no condition to drive for two and a half hours. Manyu and I’d be crashing on the living room floor of Clare’s apartment, which was something I’d never done before.

                                          *       *       *

Manyu and I made it to La Crosse the following day, and this morning I am writing this blog from my normal writing spot at home. Last night Manyu slept in her own bed for the first time since November. It was a restless sleep as she is very much jet lagged.

Now she and I enter our annual honeymoon phase. For about a month after Manyu’s return, I will ignore her annoying quirks, and for almost the same amount of time, she will ignore mine. Already she’s pointed out that my definition of a clean house differs from hers, but over the years that criticism has become more of a joke than a point of contention. Today I expect her to clean the kitchen and, if she has the time and the energy, the bathrooms.

Manyu’s honeymoon is not only with me, but also with the city of La Crosse. For an unspecified period of time, she will enjoy, even relish, the peacefulness of a small city and the fact that everything we need is within a ten-minute drive. Eventually the peace and quiet will lead to boredom, and then we will get back to our ongoing discussion about moving to Asia. Until then, I live in the moment.

My water heater, my phone, and my car broke down on consecutive days. My otherwise quiet February suddenly filled with small tasks in need of my attention. Over the past week, the water heater’s been replaced, my phone’s been repaired, and I am still waiting to hear from Pete, my mechanic, about the car.

With my car in the shop, I rode my bicycle to the volunteer job I have at the nature center. It might be the first time I’ve ever ridden a bike in the winter. The roads were free of snow and ice, but the sidewalks were spotty. It wasn’t until I came upon a poorly cleared stretch along Losey Boulevard that I realized I was wearing a balaclava and a hood, but no helmet. 

My days of small annoyances have me thinking about whether life is easier or more difficult with age. Until my mid-forties, simultaneous leaks to the water heater in my house and the radiator in my car would have left me wondering where the money was coming from. Now in my seventies, I have the money, but barely the energy to deal with disruptions to my routine. My conclusion is that retirement has as many rough patches as a wintry sidewalk. For every pension check that magically shows up in my bank account, there is an aching back from shoveling snow. For every day without obligations, there is the realization that even the most carefree day will not include red wine, hot sauce, or any efforts to stand up quickly. The cost of a car repair does not worry me, but I was bothered when I got home after dropping off my car and realizing that I’d left my house key on the key chain with my ignition key. I have a spare house key hidden away, but I shouldn’t have made such a basic mistake.

There are two ways to look at all of this. One comes from my friend Shu, who is an expert on the Chinese zodiac. She said, “This is just a taste of things to come. You are a horse in the Year of the Horse, so be ready for a rough twelve months. It’s also a Fire Year, and fire intensifies everything. Horse and fire come together only once every sixty years, and this is the year.” The other way is from Pete, my mechanic. He told me, “You might be the luckiest guy in the world. Your radiator should have blown when you were in the middle of nowhere on your vacation up north. Instead it held together until you got home.”

A month ago I brought two guitars in for repairs. The repair guy asked if I’d just pulled them out of a closet after years of collecting dust.

“Yeah,” I said. “My wife is from Taiwan, and she is spending four months in Asia. I thought it would be a good time to start playing again.”

“Does your wife leave for four months every year?” the man asked.

“Yeah, every winter,” I said.

The man immediately replied, “Sweet.”

I laughed when the guy said it, and I have recounted the conversation with friends, but a more accurate one-word description of Manyu’s annual trips to Asia would be “Bittersweet.” Manyu and I both value our time apart, but we also regret that we sometimes miss events when we’d like to be together. Last week, for example, Manyu called from Thailand to wish me both a happy Chinese New Year and a happy anniversary. For the first time that I can remember, although I doubt it is actually the case, our wedding anniversary fell within the three days of the Chinese New Year. Manyu celebrated our anniversary with a holiday feast alongside friends and family (including our daughter), while I fried up a hamburger and made American fries with the grease. (I do not mention my meal to garner sympathy. I seldom have greasy food when Manyu is home, and I thought my dinner was delicious.)

This year might be our last winter apart, and I don’t know how I feel about it. Manyu has always made an annual excursion back to Asia, and for the first quarter century of our marriage, I joined her midway through her trip. When I taught full-time at the university, I couldn’t travel for extended periods of time, but I could get away for a few weeks between semesters. Once I retired, we both assumed that I’d have nothing but free time, but the opposite actually occurred. Jack, our dog, got old, and neither of us wanted to put him in anyone else’s care. For the past five years, I haven’t gone to Asia at all. Now, with Jack’s recent death, my obligations in La Crosse have been reduced to almost zero, and I will start traveling again.

This, however, is a bit worrisome. I exaggerate only slightly when I say that Manyu and I have enjoyed thirty-three years of marriage in part because we do spend time apart. I miss my wife when she is gone, and I think that she misses me, but neither of us has ever felt lonely. Manyu has her family, and I have my writing, my fishing, and my solitude. I liked living alone in my twenties and thirties, and I like living alone for blocks of time now.

If I join Manyu when she takes her next trip, it will probably be for six months, not just four. Because I am married to a Taiwanese citizen, I can apply for Taiwanese residency after living there continuously for six months.* Residency has its benefits, not the least being national health insurance.

All in all, I look forward to heading back to Asia. Since retirement, I have carved out a near-perfect life here in La Crosse, but I also feel like I have one more adventure left in me. An extended visit to Asia, combined with the possibility that Manyu and I may decide to live there permanently, might provide that opportunity.

* Officially my application will be a renewal. I taught in Taiwan for two years in the early 1990s and again from 2008 to 2009. Both times I was classified as a resident.

I have friends who have spent sizable chunks of this winter in either Florida, Palm Springs, Mexico, Spain, or the Galapagos. My wife is presently in Thailand. I, on the other hand, am writing this blog from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Two thoughts come to mind as I compare my travels to those of my friends and family. One, most of them must think that I am foolish to have gone to the UP in February. Two, just about everyone I know has both the time and the money to escape the cold temps of Wisconsin for up to a month. Even my daughter, limited time-wise by a full-time job, is using two weeks of vacation to join Manyu in Asia for Chinese New Year.

I know why I am here, even if others don’t. First of all, I wasn’t expecting to go anywhere this winter. My plan was to stay home with an old dog who was in no condition to travel or to be boarded. When Jack died three weeks ago, plans changed, and my sister’s cabin was an easy last minute option. Secondly, my sister and her husband invite me to use their cabin in the UP nearly every time I see them, but I’ve never taken them up on their offers in the wintertime. They know that I value solitude, and they have repeatedly told me that their lake, while busy in the summertime, is all but abandoned in the winter. They even mentioned that the only two permanent residents on the lake are no longer there (one moved away, and the other one died), so if I went this winter, I’d probably have a 100-acre lake to myself. Thirdly, my writing has been a struggle lately, and I hoped a change of venue might jumpstart my prose.

Most of my waking hours at the cabin have been spent writing in front of the wood stove, but every day I ice fish a little bit and go for a hike across the lake. There is only about six inches of snow atop the windswept ice, deep enough that I wish I had snowshoes, but not so deep that it forces me to turn around. Lifting my feet higher than the snowpack does, however, generate enough body heat that I have to unzip my coat and take off my mittens. I was expecting to be cold on this trip, not overheated.

As it turns out, I’m not entirely alone. My brother-in-law Paul has joined me at the cabin, but we are intentionally giving each other space. He goes to a nearby ski hill all day, and I stay within walking distance of the cabin. We have evening meals together, and one time he came with me when I went fishing. The only intrusion on my solitude, which now may be impossible to avoid, is the drone of airplanes. Even my backcountry trips in Canada’s Lake of the Woods have aircraft noise, and it is the same in the UP. On my walks across the lake, I hear the crunch of my boots breaking through the snow, the wind through the trees, an occasional crow, and small prop airplanes.* Still there are no people other than Paul and no traffic noise, so I am content.

I do not yet know if this trip has helped my writing. While at the cabin, I have finished a chapter that should have been done three weeks ago, and I started something new. I also wrote this blog. The real test will be whether I write well once I return home.

* Even designated wilderness has occasional airplane noise. The standards established by the original 1964 Wilderness Act do not ban aircraft from wilderness areas. Instead they prohibit planes from taking off and landing, and any aircraft flying directly over a designated wilderness area must maintain an altitude of at least 2,000 feet above ground level.

Usually there is a guitar resting on a guitar stand adjacent the fireplace at the nature center where I volunteer. Last week the stand was there, but the guitar was gone. When Cindy, the head naturalist, walked past the front desk, I asked her where it was.

“Someone snapped off one of the tuning pegs,” she said. “and we have to decide if it’s worth fixing. No one ever plays it. Why? Do you play?”

“I used to play camp songs when I worked at a residential environmental ed program in California,” I replied. “Even then I did not play much, because half of the naturalists on staff were better musicians than I was. Two of them even play professionally now. Anita is with a folk band in the San Juan Islands, and Larry is part of an environmental song group in northern California.”

“The Banana Slug String Band?” Cindy asked.

“Yeah! How do you know about them?”

“I use their songs sometimes,” she said. “Bats eat bugs, they don’t eat people. Bats eat bugs, they don’t fly in your hair.”

I was surprised that Cindy knew of Larry’s band and its songs. She has worked as a naturalist on the East Coast and in the Midwest, and I thought that the Banana Slug String Band never got out of northern California. Obviously I was wrong.

When I got home that evening I went through my old emails to see if I still had an email address for Larry. I found one, but it was over a decade old. Still I tried it.

The address was active, and Larry wrote back the next day with a brief two-sentence update. He lives in Santa Cruz, which is less than an hour from our old camp in La Honda. The Slug Band continues to perform, and he is also part of a folk rock band called Painted Mandolin.

The short correspondence with Larry got me to reminiscing about my years at SMOE (San Mateo Outdoor Education). Even though he and I worked side by side for two years in the early 1980s, my fondest memory about our time together has nothing to do with camp. It is about a cross-country trip we took after SMOE shut down for the summer.* Larry was originally from Michigan and I was from Wisconsin, so he and I drove east together to see our parents.

What I remember most about the trip is that neither of us had money for gas. Our plan was to stop in Reno along the way and play blackjack until we’d won enough money to continue on. When we arrived at the casino, he and I sat at different tables in hopes that one of them was hot. I’d barely exchanged my money for chips when Larry ran up to me and exclaimed, “Stop playing! Stop playing! I have the money. Let’s go.”

I know this story to be true, but it is still a hard one for me to believe. I do not doubt that Larry and I had no money. Our naturalist jobs, after all, paid $125 a week, so we were often broke. The incomprehensible part is that Larry and I both thought that gambling our way across the country was a good idea. If we had a backup plan, I do not remember what it was.

I don’t have much desire to return to the carefree recklessness of my youth, but I’d like to think that I’ve retained some sense of adventure and a confidence that things usually work out. Looking back on my SMOE days also reminded me that Larry always sang Dylan’s Forever Young to the kids on their last night in camp. The kids may have been too young to fully grasp its meaning, but I wasn’t. The last line of the first verse is, “May you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung; and may you stay forever young.”

*  SMOE is a school program run by San Mateo County School District in northern California. Sixth graders stayed with us for week of nature study. SMOE’s season goes from September to May.

Last month there were days when I shoveled windblown snow in subzero temperatures. Meanwhile Manyu was picking fresh mangoes for breakfast from her sister’s small orchard in Thailand. On January 23, the temperature difference between our two locales was 110°F (-20 versus +90). I appreciate the wonder of it all, even if I’m the one on the wrong end of the temperature gradient.

Remarkably it wasn’t me who complained about the cold. Manyu called me on the phone one evening to say, “It gets down to sixty degrees at night, and Niensheng’s* house has no heat. I didn’t pack clothes for this.” While careful not to dismiss her discomfort, I did cautiously point out that 1) her sister’s sweaters and jackets, if the sister even owns any, would fit her and 2) I hadn’t enjoyed sixty-degree temperatures since Halloween.**

January 23 was the coldest day in La Crosse since 2019. I would have hunkered down for the entire day, except I’d already committed to sitting at the front desk of our local nature center. I live eight blocks from the center and realized that if I used my car to get there, I’d spend more time starting the car than driving it. In the few minutes it would take me to warm the engine, I could be halfway to the center on foot. I concluded that the best thing to do was to dress appropriately and walk. 

Walking turned out to be the right decision. The peaceful stroll through quiet neighborhoods became the highlight of my day. I could hear the din of traffic on Losey Boulevard two blocks away, but the residential side streets themselves were empty. No moving cars, no dog walkers, no one out for a morning jog. It was just me and the juncos.

The sky that day was cloudless, and the morning sun had just cleared the bluff. The crusty snow sparkled. Given the choice between -20° with blue skies and +10° with gray skies, I’ll take the colder temperatures every time. I can dress for cold, but not for dreariness.

Only a week earlier I’d gone to Riverside Park and was surprised to see that the previously frozen Mississippi River had reopened. I didn’t need to go back to the park that day to know that the river was again iced in. I was sure that the only open spots would be the churning waters directly below the dams. This congregates the eagles and makes for excellent birdwatching. Right now there are probably a hundred big birds in the trees immediately downstream of Lock and Dam No. 8. Not only does the water rushing through the dam’s gates create a large patch of open water, but the shad that get washed over the dam become temporarily disoriented and are easy prey.

As I review the draft of this blog for publication, I realize that I’ve described the frigid cold largely in positive terms. I do not like the cold, but I like living in a place that sometimes gets this cold. Does that make any sense? Also I am very confused by the photo of me on that cold day. In it, the balaclava on my head appears to be a two-tone gray and beige. It is actually, as can be seen in this second photo, all one color. What did the camera see that day that I did not?

* Niensheng is Manyu’s younger sister. She lives with her French husband Yves on a two-hectare compound an hour and a half northeast of Bangkok.

** I later fact-checked La Crosse’s daily temps over the past four months and discovered that there was a day in early November when the temperature reached the low 70s.

For as old as I am, I’ve suffered very few serious gut punches. I recall five: divorce from my first wife, my dad’s death, Manyu’s sadness at her dad’s death, Clare’s depression at having her study abroad program cut short due to COVID, and now the death of our dog.

Because he had a severely enlarged spleen, probably the result of cancer, we put Jack down last week. I have no desire to describe my family’s pain right now, but I can give Jack a proper eulogy.

Jack was two years old when we got him. We were told that he was a Yorkipoo, and while he did not look exactly like the Yorkipoo photos that I googled, it was close. After several failed attempts to adopt a dog from the local Humane Society, one of the staff members told us that we shouldn’t wait even a couple of days to submit papers if we wanted a small dog. Large dogs sometimes were hard to adopt, but small dogs went quickly. Therefore, when we saw Jack and his brother Indy at the pound, we immediately put in for Jack’s brother. Indy was friendly, whereas Jack was aggressively protective of Indy when we tried to get close. The next day we were told that the gentle dog of the pair had been awarded to someone else, but we could have the other one.

Even though Jack was an adult dog when we got him, he was not housebroken, nor did he have the sense to stay in his yard. For the first couple months, I had to keep him on a leash even to let him out to pee. The first time I tried without the leash, he bolted. I had to chase him across four streets and only caught him because he stopped to poop. Fortunately the attempted escape had happened at at time when I was still young enough to run. Jack hasn’t been the only one to slow down these past few years.

My fondest memory of Jack might be the ends of our walks in the neighborhood. Once he figured out that his new home was home, I’d let him loose a block from our house. He’d tug at his leash, and then take off the moment I undid the clasp. Watching him run was witnessing the joy of freedom. Instinctively he’d make a wide turn at our driveway as he ran into our backyard. If I intentionally stayed back in the street for more than thirty seconds, he’d peek his head around the corner of our house to make sure that I was coming. Once he saw me slowly walking toward him, he’d turn around and wait at the backdoor.

Jack lived with us for sixteen years. If he really was two years old when we got him, he outlived the life expectancy of a Yorkipoo by more than two years. Millions of Americans, including most of my friends, have said goodbye to pets. Knowing that many others have endured a similar loss does not make it any easier. 

Last night I had a dream about a new Disney park called Life. One of the attractions within the park only admitted the dads, and it was called Work. Once I went in, I couldn’t get out.

Ordinarily I’d be bothered if I found myself dreaming in clichés, but this one got me thinking. Why, eight years into retirement, was I dreaming it now? Never in my life have I felt particularly trapped by a job. In one instance, while working for the Social Security Administration, I saw the potential for entrapment, so I quit after six months. Thirty-five years later, when I personally felt the growing bureaucracy of higher education start to creep in on me, I retired. I have been lucky in this regard.

Two possible reasons for the dream come to mind. One, I recently spoke with a good friend who started his own business and, while not trapped at retirement age, has obstacles to overcome before he feels like he’s leaving his professional legacy in good hands.

My friend’s situation made me look back on my own handing over of the reins. In my final job at the university, I had almost the opposite situation. In those last few years, I split time between two different divisions of the university. With both, there were competent people patiently waiting for me to leave. I’d done good work in both positions, but my energy was waning, and there were topnotch people ready to take over from where I left off.

The other possible reason for the dream is that I have felt a little bit trapped for the last two months. Not at work, but at home. Usually when Manyu leaves for Asia, there is a sense of freedom. I miss her, of course, but this is offset by having no one making demands on my time. This year has been different. With an aging and confused dog, I’ve become a caregiver. Jack deserves all of the attention I can give him, but it means that I go to the gym and otherwise stay home. I have not gone ice fishing all winter. I haven’t spent a morning in a coffee shop. I still play cards once a week, but the games always take place at my house.

As I look back on my dream, I now wish that I had a few more details.* For the past two years, most of my dreams have been lucid dreams. This means that I know when I am dreaming and I can wake myself up if the dream is unpleasant. I was not far into my Work dream when I intentionally cut it short. Would I have learned something valuable about myself had I let it play out?

* I vaguely remember a series of turnstiles in the dream. None of the dads wanted to pass through them, but the only two options were to go through the turnstiles or stay where we were.

Years ago I either read or was told that one of the first questions people ask each other when they meet for the first time varies with which part of the United States they are from. Some people ask, “What part town are you from?” Others ask, “Who is your family?” Still others ask, “What do you do for a living?”

Recently I came across another first-encounter question, and it strikes me as more interesting and more complex than any of the questions I just mentioned. According to nature writer Robert Macfarlane, the Maori of New Zealand sometimes ask “Who are your waters?”*

This particular question caught my attention because I’ve asked a similar question of myself a dozen times over the years. Ever since I’ve moved to La Crosse thirty-two years ago, I have wondered whether, deep down inside, I am a lake person, an ocean person, or a river person. The problem is that I am fickle in this regard. I seem to change my affections depending on where I am at the time. Until I left home for college, I lived within a bicycle ride of Lake Michigan, the fourth largest freshwater lake in the world. Back then, I was a lake person. After college, I wound up in the San Francisco Bay Area and taught coastal ecology to sixth graders. I heard the sound of sea lions from one of my apartments, and I can’t count the number of times I watched sunsets over the Pacific. I fell in love with the ocean. Now, for the past thirty years, I’ve lived a stone’s throw from the east bank of the Mississippi River, and I wonder why it took me so long to realize that my waters are a river.

I am not surprised that every great body of water puts me under its spell. Still I sense that there ought to be one lake or one ocean or one river that remains special to me. I compare it to the connection I have with bears. If the Maori question had been “Who is your animal?” rather than “Who are your waters?,” I could have answered “black bear” without hesitation. I knew my spirit animal was the black bear before I knew that there was such a concept as spirit animal. I didn’t move to California and switch over to seal lions. I didn’t paddle the Mississippi River and decide that I’d been an eagle person all along. Why is it not the same for water?

Fortunately, I do not lose sleep over this quandary. How can I feel bad if I am drawn to all waters? If the alternative is to sense magic in only one water source, that’s not much of an option.**

* Macfarlane, Robert. 2025. Is a River Alive? W.W. Norton: New York, p.22.

** Loren Eiseley’s classic quote is, “If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.” Eiseley, Loren. 1959. The Immense Journey: An Imaginative Naturalist Explores the Mysteries of Man. Vintage: New York.

I recently read Ian McEwan’s new novel What We Can Know. A full week has passed since I finished the book, and I still don’t know what I think of it. At times during the reading, I was impressed with the quality of the prose and totally taken in by the storyline. At other times, I felt that the plot had lapsed into a soap opera account of a not particularly likable character’s love life, and I was tempted to quit reading.

What We Can Know is on several literary critics’ list of the top ten books for 2025. This is usually an indication that I won’t like  it. In my experience, critics tend to prefer books with complicated prose and lengthy periods of introspection. I prefer simple prose and a straightforward story. Last year the critics and I basically agreed on James by Percival Everett, but otherwise we liked very different stuff.

I was, however, drawn to What We Can Know for its unique premise. The story is about a historian from the 22nd Century in search of a long lost poem written by an early 21st Century poet. The book is not so much science fiction as an imagining of what a scholar from the 22nd Century might think about the role of the liberal arts at a time in history when humanity could have saved the planet from climate change, but did not.

The first third of the book was very good. Except for a weak attempt to sneak in a sentence that any reader of crime fiction would recognize as an important clue, the first one hundred pages were solid prose about one man’s hunt for a missing poem. Then abruptly, literally from one page to the next, the novel became a completely different book. Rather than the future, the story fell back into the present. Gone was the future, gone was the original narrator, gone was the search for the lost poem. In its place was the wife of the 21st Century poet describing her love affairs with three different men.

If not for a curiosity as to how McEwan was going to bring these two stories together, I would have stopped reading. It was good that I kept on. McEwan not only brought the stories together, but did so in a way that I did not see coming – even though he’d put down clues throughout the entire book pointing out what the inevitable end had to be. I even think that the obvious clue early in the book that had bothered me was put there to lull readers into thinking that they had the book figured out.

I remember only two other novels where I finished the book and felt totally outwitted by the author. One was Agatha Christie’s Murder of Roger Ackroyd. The other was Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent. Now I have a third.