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.