Hush

Posted on February 16, 2016 by Jerry Johnson

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There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.
          – Linda K. Hogan (b. 1947), Native American poet, storyteller, writer, environmentalist
 
Hush

Hush! At dawn’s first light after a two-day, mid-February snowstorm, the winter spirits of the North Country demanded that I be still – or at least unobtrusive. And I tried to be, imitating all the other woodland creatures beginning to stir in the soft blue light under this low overcast morning sky.

But on snowshoes, bundled in too many layers of clothes, my hike through the woods on the face of our west-facing bluff was more of a trudge-and-stumble than a stride-and-glide. I doubt I was noisier than a near-sighted, lame buffalo bull, but I was probably not much quieter either. If I were charged with “disturbing the peace” of this serene hour (or perhaps more appositely “ruining the tranquility”) I would have to plead guilty.

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Disappointing rejection

Posted on February 9, 2016 by Jerry Johnson

This Valorcat on the other hand is the best idea yet! I can see one or two minor problems, however.

Disappointing rejection

I regret to report that my proposal to develop a bio-engineered apex predator to control the populations of feral hogs in Texas has been summarily rejected. I was bitterly disappointed to receive the following letter, from Michael Rainone, CEO of PCDworks, a firm that specializes in cutting-edge and innovative solutions.

Reproduced here, in full, with some minor edits, is the letter in response to what I considered a most excellent idea.

Feb. 10, 2016
Jerry Johnson
The North Country

Dear Jerry,

After painstaking investigation and analysis of your most recent entrepreneurial product development proposal –  which we have filed under the title “Valorcat: Genome Manipulation” in our “Potential Projects Pending” database –  we have decided to decline your offer to pursue this idea and return to you, herewith, all intellectual property rights which you generously offered to us.

Regarding your comment that we have not given your previous proposals serious consideration but have treated them in a “casual and cavalier manner,” I want to assure you that your suggestions, which you term “billion dollar ideas,” have been given all the consideration that they warrant. The electricity-generating donut idea was very clever in its own way, and as you remember I wrote a detailed discussion of the efficiency problems with all of the various conversions that would involve. It simply was not a viable project within the laws of physics as they now stand. Your other proposals, even less so.

This Valorcat on the other hand is the best idea yet! I can see one or two minor problems, however.

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Valorcats

Posted on February 8, 2016 by Jerry Johnson

 …our goal as scientists working in this field is not to create monsters or to induce ecological catastrophe but to restore interactions between species and preserve biodiversity.
  — from How to Clone a Mammoth – The Science of De-Extinction by Beth Shapiro (b. 1976), ecologist evolutionary biologist

Valorcats

While reading the book How to Clone a Mammoth – The Science of De-Extinction my mind was sent soaring by what I see as the unlimited possibilities of dabbling with the genomes of the animal kingdom.

The author of How to Clone a Mammoth is Beth Shapiro, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Shapiro is a recipient of a MacArthur Award, commonly known as the genius award, an honor bestowed upon “individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future” (www.macfound.org).

She is not only a genius in the field of genome research, she is also a good writer. I recommend the book. It offers a wealth of factual information about finding, recovering, and reconstructing an extinct animal’s genomes – the complete set of genes and chromosomes that comprises the genetic material in the cell of a living organism.

Although the concept of “cloning” a mammoth is intriguing, the book makes me wonder: rather than invest a lot of money and effort into laboratory projects aimed at bringing extinct species back to life, resurrecting animals that did not survive the changing environments of this ever-evolving world, would it not be more practical to create some hybrid species that never actually existed but could be genetically engineered to thrive in the North American environment of the 21st century?

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Snow trout

Posted on February 5, 2016 by Jerry Johnson

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The fish and I were both stunned and disbelieving to find ourselves connected by a line. – from The Armchair Angler by William Humphrey (1924-97), American novelist

Fish are, of course, indispensable to the angler. They give him an excuse for fishing and justify the fly rod without which he would be a mere vagrant. — from An Honest Angler by Sparse Grey Hackle (pen name of Alfred W. Miller, 1892-1983) American outdoor writer

Snow trout

The temperature was 7 degrees, and the northwest corner of the farm yard was covered by 18 inches of snow, but I was out there mid-morning fly casting. A couple times a week in the heart of this frigid winter I am practicing, as best I can, the art of casting a fly line, book tucked under my right arm, sweeping the rod forward and back through the time-honored 10-to-2 o’clock arc and feeding out 20, 30, 40 feet of fly line from the reel, dropping the false fly within a foot or so of the tree stump that is my target.

Maybe this is the summer I will actually catch a trout.

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…but a good Cigar is a Smoke

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Jerry Johnson
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Kukán Portrait of a Man Smoking a Cigar (from: commons.wikimedia.org)

 

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o’ Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear
But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o’-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you? 

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

     – from the poem The Betrothed (“You must choose between me and your cigar.”- Breach of Promise Case, circa, 1885) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

…but a good Cigar is a Smoke

Smoking cigars is a filthy, disgusting, annoying habit that points to my low-class upbringing, crude manners, and moral degradation. It announces me a chauvinist, a misanthrope, an inconsiderate, and an embarrassing relic from an uncouth and unsophisticated era. Cigars are also deteriorating my health and probably shortening my life.

I admit this is true, all of it. But the same could be said for my writing and publishing essays and stories about the blood sports, and no one is suggesting I should stop doing that.

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Rifle cleaning’s a bore

Posted on January 23, 2016 by Jerry Johnson

 

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Hoppe’s No. 9 Gun Bore Cleaner is what my father always used, and its “banana oil” odor is, to my mind, the proper ambience for a gun cleaning session.

 

Screw the bristle brush into the tip of the cleaning rod, soak it in powder solvent, and go to work like a dissident communist Chinese official ordered by the Red Guard to scrub the entryway to the Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing.

Rifle cleaning’s a bore

Heather –

Regarding your recent e-mail message requesting information about cleaning your deer rifle: I tried to write a brief, simple explanation of the procedure, but unfortunately, as you are aware, when it comes to hunting rifle lore I have a congenital obsessive-compulsive disorder that makes it impossible for me to limit myself to “brief and simple.”

Consequently, the first draft of my e-mail response quickly exceeded 2,000 words, and although my knowledge of social media communications tools is limited I realized that e-mail is perhaps not the appropriate place for publication of a monograph of this length. Therefore I have rewritten the original draft as an essay to be posted on my blog, a forum which suits my rambling and indirect writing style without, I hope, drawing any undue attention from the National Security Agency, the FBI, the BATF, or the kind but sometimes overly inquisitive folk who handle my case at the local behavioral health clinic.

So, to address the task at hand:

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Canine cabin fever

Posted on January 20, 2016 by Jerry Johnson
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I order them to sit, stay, lie down. They obey for about five minutes.

In the two weeks of sub-zero weather that followed the descent of an Arctic front upon the North Country in January, the wild antics of my French spaniels Abbey and Sasha have destroyed my cherished belief in the legendary canine-human bond and have made me wonder why I ever brought them into my life and home. The maniacs.

Canine cabin fever

Archaeologists and anthropologists report that men and dogs have been living together for at least 15,000 years and perhaps as long as 30,000 years. Those findings are based on a recent series of “dog centric” studies at prehistoric sites and the subsequent analysis of hundreds of artifacts and DNA samples taken from bones found at those sites.

In the course of that intertwining, 30 millennium, symbiotic relationship between the canine and hominid species, the wolf (Canis lupus) evolved from a wild carnivore that lived in self-reliant packs to the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) that became a camp follower of nomadic tribes of Asia; and mankind (Homo sapiens) evolved from a forest dwelling primate scavenger to a hunter who depended on his dogs for the survival of his tribe and preservation of his itinerant way of life. The dog would not have become what it is today without its long relationship with man, and man would not have developed into the curious creature he is today without his long relationship with the dog.

So you would think, by this point in our shared history, that each species would be genetically programmed to tolerate the other during a month of two of cloistered living in the “cave” while winter rages outside. But no. No. There is no symbiosis here. No mutual benefit. The dogs insist on having it all their way.

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Below zero

Posted on January 13, 2016 by Jerry Johnson

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Winter in the North Country can be bitterly cold, but it is also a season of great beauty, a source of aesthetic nourishment for the mind and soul.

Below zero

Winter in the North Country is a season of wonder and enchantment. And cold. Bitter cold.

After a gloomy December that was the warmest, wettest, and most overcast in the 150-plus years of weather records we had begun to think this would be remembered as the “winter of mud and fog,” but a Christmas week blizzard dropped 10 inches of snow on our farm, dressing the fields and woodlands in the winter clothes they are supposed to wear. Even my curmudgeon spirits were lifted.

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Coot Stews

Posted on January 2, 2016 by Jerry Johnson

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Obscurity and a competence — that is the life that is best worth living.
     – Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer and humorist

Coot Stews
Mark Twain would admire the “competent and obscure” life I have achieved. A one-trick pony, my only true competence is writing, and despite having five books in print and posting a weekly blog essay online my obscurity surpasses that of most secret agents of Britain’s MI6 intelligence service.

So it is with some reservations that I announce the publication of my latest book, Coot Stews. The third collection of essays in the Crazy Old Coot series of books, it is now available at amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Following the format of Crazy Old Coot, published in 2014, and Old Coots Never Forget, published in 2015, Coot Stews is a compilation of versions of essays posted on my Dispatches from a Northern Town blog over the course of 2016. The genres range from memoire to fictional short stories to advice on outdoor sports – plus a few curmudgeon’s rants on politics and ethics. Most are observations about life in the North Country of the Upper Midwest, and many are tales about bird dogs, bird guns, and the friendships formed over the course of 50 years of memorable hunts.

I doubt this will alter my obscurity or my competence. Coot Stews is unlikely to become a best-seller, so I’m not going to become famous and fall prey to all the vices that seem to accompany fabulous wealth. Not that I wouldn’t be willing to flirt with fame and fortune for a decade or so, but this new book will probably not shatter the glass bubble of my obscurity. Hopefully, it will bolster my credentials as a writer, and as a grumpy old curmudgeon.

The only immediate change is that my blog posts will carry a new tagline. My New Year’s wish is that readers will enjoy all of these books.

_____________________________________________________

More stories about hunting and life in the North Country are published in my three collections of essays, Crazy Old Coot, Old Coots Never Forget, and Coot Stews , and my novel, Hunting Birds. All are available in Kindle and paperback editions at Amazon.com, and in paperback edition at the North Country bookstore Dragonfly Books in Decorah, Iowa, and through IndieBound independent bookstores.

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All together

Posted on December 31, 2015 by Jerry Johnson

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No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
     – John Donne (1572-1631), English poet and cleric

The way of fortune is like the Milky Way in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.
     – Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher

All together

We are all in this together.

What an affirmative and beneficial summation of our role in life. What a positive and constructive concept for understanding the purpose of our brief moment of time on Earth, for performing our part in the pageant of mankind.

Combined with the writer Kurt Vonnegut’s simple humanistic dictum – There’s only one rule I know of… God damn it, you’ve got to be kind! – this “all of us together” precept is one that I wish would take root in my community and my country over the course of this New Year. For far too many new years in this century we have increasingly become a society that is more divisive, isolated, self-serving, combative, confrontational, and appallingly greedy.

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