I think that the autumn fish frenzy has started. If so, this is an unusual year. It is unusual not because it has come early, but because I seemed to have discovered it before other fishermen have. That would be a first.

The fish frenzy is a month on the Upper Mississippi River when the panfish eat aggressively, and catching fish is easy and fun. I think it happens when water temperatures start to drop, and the fish instinctively prepare for winter. As I write this blog outside on my front porch, the temperature is in the high eighties, so I question whether the water in the river is cooling much, but that is what I’ve always thought happens.

Usually I know the fish have started biting because I see fifty or more boats on Lake Onalaska. This year, more by accident than anything else, I was out on the lake twice before the armada arrived.

Lake Onalaska is the widest part of Pool 7 on the Upper Mississippi River. Beneath its surface are the riverbeds of both the Mississippi and Black Rivers. The location of the Mississippi River riverbed is easy to see, as the Army Corps of Engineers has it marked with buoys for navigation. The Black River riverbed is less obvious, but most fishermen know it follows the lake’s eastern shoreline right along the railroad tracks. This is where boats line up when the fish are biting.

Besides being fun, fall fishing is the one time of year when I bring fish home to eat. In the dead of summer, the flesh of the fish carries a muddy taste, so I release everything I catch. In the winter, fish caught through the ice are delicious, but I have a hard time catching them. It is the autumn catch that gets filleted, bagged, and tossed into the freezer compartment of my refrigerator. Just like the fish in Pool 7, I am storing up calories for the cold days ahead.

In early September, the feeding frenzy builds gradually. If I fish once or twice a week, I notice that the fish hit more frequently and more aggressively with each outing. The end of the frenzy is just the opposite in that it stops on a dime. One day I limit out on bluegills (the legal number on panfish on the Mississippi is fifteen fish per species), and two days later I don’t get a bite. For fishermen whose sole motivation for fishing is to catch fish, going out in late October or early November is a waste of time.

I’ve always assumed that the end of the frenzy coincides with the river turning (i.e., the cold water at the bottom of the river rises to the top), but like my reasoning as to what starts the frenzy, this is a personal theory, and I have no science to back it up.

On a marginally related subject, Wendell Berry died last week. This one hurts.

Xiao Wu was one of a half dozen international college students who Manyu and I have hosted over the years. Upon his graduation from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, he moved back to China to work as a counselor in a mental health facility. After a couple years on the job, he realized that he needed an advanced degree if he wanted to continue in the field. He has since returned to Wisconsin to complete a Ph.D. program in Madison.

This summer he and his new Chinese wife Coral wanted to go home to China to visit family. They, however, had three cats and could find no one to watch them. After trying all other options, they called Manyu to ask if she would stay at their house for three weeks to care for their pets. She said, “Yes.”

As much as I like Madison, I wasn’t going to spend three weeks in someone else’s home just to empty litter boxes. Manyu went there by herself, and I agreed to join her for the last three days of her stay. I am there now.

If Xiao Wu and Coral lived near campus and the Capital, I might have considered a three-week visit. Each day I could have stepped out of the house first thing in the morning and not returned until early evening. They, however, don’t live right in Madison. They live in the southwestern suburb of Verona. Their house is fifteen miles from the heart of the city.

On the first day of my visit, Manyu and I took a long walk through Xiao Wu’s neighborhood. Afterwards she asked me whether I would be willing to live in Verona. It was a good question. Manyu and I have talked for years about moving to Madison. For a number of reasons (e.g., authentic Asian restaurants, live music, a chance for Manyu to study Korean), it is one of only a few cities we like more than La Crosse. It is also where our daughter currently lives. Housing prices in Madison proper, however, are more than we can afford, and a house in a quiet suburb might be more within our price range.

My answer to Manyu’s question was “No, I wouldn’t live in Verona.” As I mentally scrolled back through my life, I realized that I’d never lived in a suburb as an adult. As a kid, I grew up in an inner suburb, but since moving away from my parents, I have resided either in the main part of a city or out in the woods. I appreciate the appeal of suburban life (e.g., affordability, safe streets, good public schools, newer houses not in need of constant repair), but except for the quality of the schools, none of these amenities really matter to me.

More important to me is a short distance to the places I frequent. In La Crosse, thirty minutes on foot gets me just about everywhere – to the main branch of the public library, to the Y, to three different coffee shops, to the marsh, river, and bluffs, to the university where i worked before I retired. A comparable walk in Verona would get me to a strip mall and the on-ramp into the city. The commute from Verona to downtown Madison might take only twenty-five minutes, but I understand myself well enough to know that I wouldn’t drive in traffic just to get to the place where I wish I was starting from.

With only two exceptions, I’ve always lived within a thirty-minute walk to work.* This is not surprising, as proximity to my workplace has always been my first priority when looking for a place to live. The difference between walking to work and driving to work is the difference between having the commute be the best part of the work day and having it be the worst.

* Twice I did have to drive to work. In one case, I lasted three months before the commute led me to quit. In the second case, I kept the job, but moved as soon as my lease ran out.