Immersion

The Transparent Waters Of A Wisconsin Trout Stream
An Adventure From: Monday, August 24, 2020

Breathless is the air.  Stagnant.  I can feel the heat inside and out and yet throughout today I have been totally immersed within the nature surrounding me.  For several hours this morning I was fortunate to have waded a Wisconsin trout stream and it’s cool, clear waters.  And for several of those hours I actually managed to wear a long sleeve shirt.  It’s a shirt from a small country store that’s nestled in the valley and community I grew up in, beside the white cedar swamps of a blue river trout stream further Up North and on the Eastern side of Lake Michigan.  It’s a connection.

Now I sit in my camp chair with a book in my hand beneath towering white pines, their needles without a quiver in the unwavering heat.  It’s what remains of a once planted grove.  Yet beneath their lofty branches is the thick brush of maples, oaks, and wild, young, white pines now taller than me.  The first time that I came to these woods beside this creek, the sapling conifers were only knee high.  How magnificently these trees are able to leach the nutrients necessary to grow from this sandy, acidic soil.  While finishing chapters from Sigurd Olson’s book, Listening Point, a doe stuck her head out of the thicket and into an overgrown lane.  Although she could not smell me, she watched me stock still for several minutes; only the occasional twitch of her tail and ears gave her away, a reaction to the flies.  Once she deemed me as non threatening, she turned and disappeared, immersing herself into the wall of plant life.

It was at this time that I pulled out my journal; the paper and pen my means of capturing moments.  Although today’s cloud cover is thin, a few light sprinkles have occasionally spit down, and I pulled my chair under the open hatch of my Jeep.  Earlier, following a packed lunch that I had brought along in a cooler, I had opened the back of the Jeep and lowered the windows before taking a short nap.  Even in the thick air I was able to close my eyes long enough to take the edge of sleepiness off and revive my senses.  The culminating activity, before I put my waders and boots back on, will be to swim and immerse myself within the creek.  Its spring fed waters will cool and cleanse me enough to have one more go at the stream’s wary trout before nightfall.

Today, in addition to immersing with the air and water, is the immersion of time spent without restraints for one last summer day.  While it’s been a difficult last couple of months for associating with people and building relationships throughout social distancing, I have honestly got to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed every second of the summer.  It’s the first time in decades that I haven’t had to take a class, or lead a camp, or prepare lessons.  After teaching through this past spring and it’s remote e-Learning, I put every aspect of that experience in a box and crammed it towards the back of the top shelf in my brain.  It felt good.  It was refreshing!  In its place I ran, I worked outside and inside of our home, I spent time with my family, and I read several books.  I immersed myself into other things for once.

And with that immersion I am now ready.  Ready for what exactly, I’m not quite sure.  Teaching school will look much different than what I’ve grown accustomed to for the last three plus decades.  And while the unknown can be scary, beginning tomorrow it will be time for me to take that box full of school experiences back down from that top shelf in my brain and begin to sift and sort through it to see what I can use.  I’ve literally left it up there for as long as I possibly could, and it felt great.

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, and perhaps it does.  Whatever I do, I strive to do it well; it’s how I’m designed I suppose.  And so as a light breeze begins to stir out of the west and the sun finds a small seam to shine down through the thin layer of clouds, after this summer I’ll be ready to teach again and find the energy to make a difference.  But before I do, I still have this afternoon to finish strong with some unfinished business.  It’s time to go jump in the creek and immerse myself in the refreshing waters of the creek!

See you along The Way...

An Early Morning Sunrise After A Two Hour Drive North

Sandhill Cranes In The Early Morning Fog

In The Middle Of Nowhere, A Pipe With Fresh
Spring Water That I Drank From...

A Beautifully Colored 14" Brown Trout

With The Hatch Open I Took A Nap In The Back Of The Jeep!

Despite The Heat I Was Able To Sit, Read, And Journal

A Lane Through The White Pine Grove

Click The Video To Watch My Immersion In The Creek

It was Refreshing!

(To watch the video you may need to change the "view version"

at the bottom of the page)

The End Of The Day & Summer

Centered On Northwoods Simplicity

        I’ve been here a million times before; under the needled boughs, alongside the lake, and upon the pine duff.  That is the landscape.  It’s a cabin setting that doesn’t require the manicured lawn and it’s combination of fertilizers and pesticides meant to beautify the extremities but destroy the water and its inhabitants.  Instead it’s simplistic and all natural; moss, lichen, and the plants that grow under the branches of the Northwood trees.  It’s the pieces to the puzzle that fit.

        Although it was the first time on this plot of land, the familiarity came from deep within.  It was authentic and resonated throughout my soul.  Having been born and raised in the Northwoods, its secret allure and branded trademark shape my heart, my character, and is the core of who I am as those who know me well will attest to.  I share excerpts of that spirit with family and friends.

        Several weeks ago, together with my wife Cindy and daughter Jodi, we found such a place to stay.  It was about as last minute as possible,  just short of showing up on some random person’s doorstep.  In the midst of social distancing and wanting to do something together with the girls after five months of being here at home, I spent almost three days searching, calling, and emailing various resorts trying to find openings or availability.  What we found was a blessing  in disguise, but God didn’t seem to work too hard to hide it.  Nestled between Tomahawk and Hazelhurst in the small community of Harshaw, Wisconsin, we found ourselves the proud recipients of a week’s stay at Jung’s Birch Lake Cottages.  Nicer hosts you’ll be hard pressed to find!  Don and Betty Jung were gracious, accommodating, and easy to talk to and share stories with as they showed us the cottage.

        We quickly melded with the cabin and its sacred frontage.  Spending time on the lake allowed us to take a deep breath, shrug off the last of the harried pressures of what we have endured over the last half of the year, and put a capstone on the close knit time we’ve spent together throughout this pandemic ordeal.  

        While our activities were varied and numerous, they centered on simplicity with the result being relaxation.  We enjoyed things such as cooking, running and hiking the Bearskin Trail, fishing, and taking a couple of evening drives.  We explored the waters by kayak and canoe, journaled, took pictures, and watched absolutely no T.V.  While we did watch two classic old movies, we also read at least 2 to 3 books apiece, and found a great little place to get ice cream cones (twice).  We went swimming off the dock, sat in our hammocks, and helped rebuild the cabin’s land-dock.  We enjoyed campfires, cool evenings as the fans drew the fresh air indoors, and listened to the sounds of the lake.  We looked for wildlife and saw numerous deer each and every day, along with mallards, mergansers, eagles and loons at close range, huge fishing spiders, bear scat, hummingbirds, chipmunks, painted turtles, and the black, gray, and rowdy little red squirrels.  We launched into space on the swing, watched sunrises and sunsets, and reunited with the many trees, plants, and flowers so familiar to my Northland upbringing.

        Life “Up North” was exactly that; life breathed into us while Up North.  Without a doubt the time that the three of us spent in Jung’s “Tranquility Cottage” was a culminating activity that helped bring our summer slowly to a close.  The whisper of silence permeated us the week-long.  While it was tranquil, it was also full of simplicity; simplicity centered within the sacred Northwoods.

See you along The Way…

“This was a time for silence, for being in pace with ancient rhythms and timelessness, the breathing of the lake, the slow growth of living things.”

Sigurd F. Olson (The Listening Point)

CHECK IT OUT!

TWO GREAT VIDEOS

AND A FEW SELECTED PICTURES...

Cottage Life Video:

Wildlife & Nature In Warshaw, Wisconsin Video:

Pictures:

A Rookie In Tight Quarters!

When we were kids the first thing that my sisters and I would inquire of my Dad, upon his returning from a fishing adventure, was if he had caught anything.  He’d usually reply, “Well, I swam as fast as I could, but I couldn’t catch any.”  Our typical response to him at that point was, “Dad, you know what we mean!  Did you get any fish?”   It was a standard “Dad Joke.”

This morning, after sleeping in a bit longer than expected to make sure potential storms had moved northeast of us, I prepared my gear for fishing.  As my wife, daughter, and I are staying in a rented cabin this week, I flipped over the kayak included in the package deal.  I had already grabbed a life jacket from the hallway closet, and picked up both my pole and backpack full of lures and other helpful equipment.

I started southeast from our dock and pitched my six inch Rapala towards the shore and neighboring docks, reeling it back out over the drop-off.  I worked my way around to where I knew a twenty foot hole extended diagonally across the lake.  Once lined up, I continued casting ahead, allowing the drag of the lure to pull me slowly ahead as the paddle lay across my lap.  After reaching the opposite shore, I proceeded through a channel into a wider, enclosed bay; working lily pads as I entered.  I hadn’t gone too far before a bald eagle flew over me, and two loons serenaded me with their wailing cry.  Their sound was unique; both exciting and haunting.  

Weeds began to show as the depth shallowed, so I switched to a Scum Frog lure that my Dad had given to me.  It allows you to cast onto lily pads and over underwater vegetation without getting snagged.  My wife likens it to an all-terrain vehicle.  Still, I moved on without anything even slightly resembling a hit from a fish.

After almost two hours of being on the water, I began to exit the bay by way of the channel I had come in through; this time working the southwest bank with a #5 silver spooned Mepps spinner.  Occasionally on my cast I would remember to swirl my lure in a figure-8 pattern, or at least back and forth as much as my low profile in the kayak would allow me.  It’s a technique that many fisherman use for those trailing, lurking fish that need encouragement and a little extra time to think twice about opportunistically hitting what looks like food and the catch of their day.  

One of my casts at that time landed on the outside edge of some lily pads sandwiched between two docks.  I was about to consider making the extra patterned movement before lifting the spinner from the surface of the water when at 7 to 8 feet off my starboard bow, I finally had a hit.  It was both immediate and solid; doubling my pole.  Elation was my first thought, as I just knew this was going to be a really nice pike.  The fish dove for the bottom of the channel, wrapping my pole under the bottom side of the kayak and then surged for the lily pads, dragging me with it.

The great fish made several more runs like that before rolling at the surface, and triggering that inner voice that had kept trying to tell me that this was probably more than a pike.  On that roll the fish looked greenish-brown, with none of a pike’s horizontal yellow dashes along it’s flank.  Several times I tried to bring it alongside me as I held on with one arm and scrounged through my backpack laying in the bottom of the kayak; looking for my phone to try to take some pictures of what was going on.

This fish was big, dwarfing the silver Mepps lodged in the side of its mouth.  It slapped its tail, dove, and sprayed me when I reached for my gripper.  I had managed to fire off a few quick pictures of the fish on the surface of the lake, but I was struggling to get the gripper attached to its jaw.  It would pass so swiftly through the water that I couldn’t get it fixed on like a person might that could lift the fish’s head while standing in a boat.  At water level, the points of my treble hook, and the points of the teeth in its huge head were a bit more “up close and personal” than one might like, but I finally got the gripper hooked into its jaw on around pass number ten.  I also got thoroughly soaked in the undertaking!  I was now solidly attached to a 40 inch-ish muskellunge!

I quickly saw that the small forceps I use to extract hooks from the trout that I typically catch was dangerously akin to bear hunting with a switch.  While my right arm was being wrenched from its socket, I again dug into my backpack for my multi-tool.  The pliers on that could do the trick.  In fact, they had to do the trick.

If elation was my first thought, panic was a close second; not for the fish and the catch, but more for the release.  I was attached to what some might term a predicament.  Fortunately I was able to get the Mepps lure out of the corner of its jaw and out of the muskie using the pliers.  Unfortunately, once I did that I saw that my line came down from the tippet of my pole and through the small gap between the sides of my gripper, which of course was attached to my wrist and the muskie; the cheaper quality, smaller model of gripper at that!

If the fish had thrashed again with a loose lure, it could have gotten ugly (-er).  I worked desperately to cut the fluorocarbon, threw the lure in the bottom of the kayak, whipped my pole out of the way, got my phone ready, grunted to lift the muskie up out of the water for at least a partial selfie with half of me and half of the fish...and then the #%@$ phone wouldn’t work!  No matter what I tried (with one hand), I couldn’t get it to take my picture as my phone had gotten wet.  “Nooooo!”  In frustration I thought to myself that this couldn’t possibly be happening now.  I wanted a picture.  I needed a picture!

I was getting nervous about getting the fish released, however, so I lowered him into the water and undid the gripper.  It was just that easy.  Suddenly all was calm.  I watched the silhouette of the fish descend into the murkiness of the water and then scoot up under a dock.  I know muskies can grow much bigger, and that in these parts, a “keeper” only starts at 40 inches, but considering I was sitting in a kayak at water level, with an average pole and gripper, it was still a respectable catch.  Most likely it was the new braided line and fluorocarbon leader I had recently put on, coupled with the knots I had learned how to tie that certainly made all of the difference.

I could see the muskie gently finning in place and his tail even came up out of the water once when he bobbed down, but after about five minutes or so the great fish disappeared back into the channel.  I felt confident that it would survive the ordeal.  I had gone from elation, to panic, to frustration with the camera, and now finally relief.

The release was not how I had pictured it, as in a perfect situation I would have wanted to hold the muskie and slowly work it back and forth before letting it swim strongly away.  Catch: A+; Release: C-/D.  I was definitely a rookie in tight quarters, but admittedly it would make for an exciting story. 

I restarted my phone as I paddled away, and of course it instantly worked again.  And once I was back at our cabin, I took the case off and dried it entirely so it was back to normal on all accounts.

Later when I told my family about my experience, Mom said that she wished she could see a whole movie of that adventure, while my sister replied that she could picture the craziness.  Dad had wondered what would happen if he ever got a hold of a big pike or muskie while in a kayak, adding, “Now I know.  Think I’ll stick to a boat or canoe at least...if I have a choice!”  My Uncle Bob wrapped it up commenting, “When you have a fish like that, anything can go wrong and always does.  It’s part of the fishing experience!”

I suppose the story of what I caught and how I caught it became the picture that only I can see inside of my head.  I’m not gonna lie that even several hours later I was still a bit jittery from the whole darn experience...but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take another shot at it given another chance.

See you along The Way...

Opportunities To Escape

I’ve escaped and gone fishing numerous times these past few months.  I vowed that I would go after being bound to completing graduate level classes for the last couple of summers and then coming off from the hecticness of E-learning this spring.  I wouldn’t say that I felt like I had earned the opportunity to be somewhere on a lake or creek.  Far from it in fact.  However, I would say that I was looking forward to calling my own shots, being surprised by something unforeseen lurking under the surface, and immersing myself into nature’s frontier.

Water draws me like a magnetic field.  When you are born and raised in a state once known as a territory, and has a motto that claims, “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you”,  then the spirit of adventure and water itself are distinctly and firmly established into the lifeblood of your soul.

I’ve been fortunate to fish in several different venues, but I’ll save some of those outings for a later blog entry and instead narrow the focus to the three recent times I’ve hit creeks for trout.  Compared to past experiences, and with a keen eye for when the fishing is on, I can honestly say that my three outings were marginal at best.  Still, an outing is an outing and being a relative optimist, each opportunity to escape held surprises that solidified the excursion as worthy of being documented and therefore remembered.

My first escape was back in May.  I hit a creek that I fondly refer to as my “Home Creek” because I know it so well.  Although I hadn’t visited this creek in several years, I did relatively well on this trip.  The weather, albeit a little too sunny for a trout’s liking, was absolutely beautiful.  I got up a little later than usual, thankful for a chance to sleep in, but managed to be in the water by 8:00.  Of the eleven or twelve trout that I caught, all of them were brown trout.  A couple of them were 14 inches, most were about 12 inches, and a few were 10 inches.  I did lose one 16 inch trout after it launched right out of the water at me.  I almost had to use my pole as a fencing sword to defend myself; something I had to do decades ago when I accidentally walked up on a nesting goose.  When a mother goose is camouflaged on eggs with her neck stretched out flat to the ground, while you stumble along in your waders looking for an entry point into the creek, the explosion of honks, wings, and beak can surprise the heck out of you!  Once I gathered my wits, I narrowly escaped the feathered mauling by quickly backing up, and jousting in the air with my fishing pole, while trying to keep from falling over onto my butt.  My Dad was with me on that day, witnessed it all, and still laughs about the attack when the story comes up.  Anyways, I escaped the launching of the brown trout too, but also never caught and landed it.

My second escape was during the third week of June and in a favorite little creek in South-central Wisconsin.  I left home in the late afternoon when storms were predicted.  I drove undaunted and was in the water by 6:00 p.m.  The mosquitoes and deer flies drove me crazy from the beginning.  Soon after pushing through high grasses and red osier dogwood to get to the creek, I cast my lure ahead along the bank of a relatively long run.  As I began to reel, I felt that sudden, easy retrieve when a fish takes a swipe and pushes water around your lure, yet never touches a barb.  When the spinner reached my side I glanced down and saw a hog of a brown trout turn right next to my leg.  Things like that tend to stick in your head and push you onward just in case another would try the same thing.  Around the following bend, the heavens unleashed and I was instantly soaked through down into my waders.  Typically fish can start hitting in such weather, but from the look of things as I had hiked in, the area had already received some rain before I had arrived.  In spite of this, I managed to catch 14 or 15 trout; half were brookies and half were browns, and most were really small.  They were hitting softly so it was hard to react.  As the rain passed through, the temperature went down ten degrees and by the end, as darkness fell, I shook from being cold and wet.  It was time to quit and escape back to somewhere dry and warm.

Trekking like I did in the dim light, and in another squall of rain, it reminded me of silent trudges I’ve had while fishing with my cousins; when you just keep your head down and walk.  The fishing was poor to medium but somehow “fun-ish” once I was back to my Silver Jeep; my fingers wrinkled like prunes.  Sharing an experience like that sometimes makes for a better story than living it.

My last escape was the first week of July.  It was on the front side of what promised to be a long period of unusually hot, humid, and rainless weather.  I woke too early, but after watching a little TV, falling asleep for another hour, and then bouncing up, I left at 5:00 and was in the creek by 6:30.  As I drove. I stopped three different times.  Between the full moon setting and the sun rising, it was an absolutely beautiful scene.  I couldn’t pass up capturing some of it in pictures.  Temperatures started in the high 60’s that morning, but by the time I left to return home hours later, it was nudging 90 degrees.  The slight breeze was out of the East by SE, which does not bode well for fishing, but I had decided to try anyway on a hope and a prayer.  Overall I caught six small brook trout and one 13 inch brown, all in the first hour or two, but still I pressed on.  I fished that section until I had a relatively easy place to get out and start the hike back to my Jeep; baking under the sun in my waders.  Once there, and apparently as a glutton for punishment, I decided to try a lower section of the same creek.  It was a new area I hadn’t fished before, and I wanted to explore, try something new, and see if any of the “big boys” would surprise me and come out to play like they are wont to do.  Generally big browns will feed in the darkness of night, but on occasion I have seen them charge out from a bank in broad daylight as well.  The problem is that by then you’re hot, you can’t remember the last time you had actually brought a fish to your hand despite some magnificent casts, and then they strike when you least expect it.  That happened twice in that section of the creek.  The first flew out from a shallow overhang, grabbed my spinner, and then rubbed it off on some underwater grasses just as I tried setting the hook.  It was huge!  The second rose off the bottom of a pool, took two swipes, missed, and was never seen again.

It was at that time that I broke down my pole and started my hike back, munching on several handfuls of blackberries as I went.  It was brutally hot by then, and I downed an entire thermos of ice water once I reached my Jeep.  All in all the experiences were a chance to get out and both wet my line as well as enjoy time on my own without any deadlines or people needing my attention.  For that matter, although the fishing wasn’t spectacular, the opportunities to escape were priceless.

See you along The Way...

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Some Pictures & Videos from the "Escapes"

Sunday, May 3rd, 2020

Monday, June 22nd, 2020

Click on the short video below to see the squall on the creek:

Sunday, July 5th, 2020

So That Was E-learning (A Documentation)

Before you once again develop that nervous twitch and run screaming crazy-like to nowhere in particular at the mere mention of E-learning, let me simply say that the main objective of this particular blog entry is to document aspects of the past three months for posterity's sake.  Once our school district saw that we would be implementing remote E-learning for the long haul, it was decided that we would expand from providing opportunities for students to completing standards for the year.  While the teaching career has always meant going above and beyond the "working hours" (I’m not sure that most of us even know what that is or means), time, energy, and life in general became amped to a much higher degree.  

Most days were spent collecting scores from Google Forms and i-Ready lessons while constantly communicating with parents and students through emails, GoGuardian, and Zoom Meetings.  It was suggested that we should hold office hours so we could “turn the constant off.”  Bwahaha (insert hysterical laugh)!  I usually would take a break at some point during the day to take time for myself, and then sit back down after dinner to work late into the evening preparing lessons for the following day.  This routine went on for weeks and months as many of you well know.  Burning stored energy, finding hope to carry on, and continuing to create connections became my quest.

To stay sane I typically started most days running at the first rays of light.  The half marathon I had signed up for in May was postponed, but the “training show” went on.  Sometimes I ran solo, but most times I ran with friends under the guise of what I like to call “lateral distancing”.  This meant that I was on one side of the trail, while friends were on the other.  We were rewarded when we completed a “virtual half marathon”; running when and where we wanted and then sending in our finish time to a website.  Running helped me to burn energy.

On occasional free nights or weekends, together with my wife and daughter, we would often load up in our vehicle to take a drive further into the country.  We’d pretend to escape while enjoying a beautiful sunset, occasional wildlife, or the rebirth of springtime; sometimes with a shake or ice cream cone in hand.  Country drives helped us have hope.

I never made it into the outdoors strictly to “get away” during this period of time.  I did, however, enter into natural surroundings to make videos for my math and science lessons.  When it came to hauling in equipment or editing the videos, it was a lot of extra work, but it also allowed me to feel as though I was talking directly to my students and teaching a lesson; albeit often alongside a moving form of water in a river or creek as opposed to being between the four walls of my classroom.  It’s how I’d like to teach in the perfect world anyways.  My outdoor lessons helped me to have a small connection to normalcy as a teacher and the natural world for my soul.

And so it was through physically burning energy, finding hope, or looking for connections that I tried to clear my head of the cluttered thoughts of what I underwent throughout the educational world of E-learning; by running, taking country drives, and creating lessons in the outdoors.  I don’t want to lose track and forget how I survived teaching during the spring of 2020.  Because of this I’ll simply document the lessons I had posted on YouTube here in this blog entry.  Perhaps I’ll use them as videos I can refer to when I’m teaching from within the school building next year, or maybe others will have their child watch them to learn about water, gravity, integers, or the surprise of classroom gerbils giving birth to three litters of babies.  True summer adventures now await!  Yes!

See you along The Way…

______________________

VIDEOS & PICTURES BELOW:

VIDEOS (Click on the # to watch)

Science ("Professor Rhines Out In The Elements"):

#1-Pectentages of H2O (@ Dry Run Creek)

#2-Graphs & Salt (One graph error I correct in #3-@ WMS's "Odonata Pond")

#3-Graph Review (@ DalSanto's Creek)

#4-All The H2O On Earth (@ Dry Run Creek in Hononegah F.P.)

#5-All Of The Fresh H2O On Earth (@ Kinnikinnick Creek)

#6-From the Book "A Drop Of Water" - Water Tension (@ DalSanto's Creek)

#7-From the Book "A Drop Of Water" - Adhesion & Capillary Attraction (@ Turtle Creek)

#8-From the Book "A Drop Of Water" - States Of Matter In A Coming Storm" (@ Rock/Pecatonica River)

#9-From the Book "A Drop Of Water" - Evaporation & Condensation (@ Sugar River)

#10-From the Book "A Drop Of Water" - Snow, Frost, And Eagles (@ Rock/Turtle River)

#11-From the Book "A Drop Of Water" - Reflection, Refraction, & Water Cycle (@ Sugar River Channel)

#12-Gravity-Inertia-Orbit (In My Willowbrook Middle School Classroom)

#13-Newton's Three Laws Of Motion (My Final Farewell) (@ Sugar River)

Math ("Mr. Rhines' Math In The Woods"):

#1-Integers (@ Dry Run Creek)
#2-Adding Same Sign Integers (@ DalSanto's Creek)
#3-Adding Different Sign Integers (@ Dry Run Creek in Hononegah F.P.)
#4-Reviewing Thre Addition Of Integers (@ Kinnikinnick Creek)
#5-Subtracting Integers (@ DalSanto's Creek)
#6-Review Subtracting Integers (In the woods up behind WMS's "Bird's Grove Prairie")
#7-Operations For Integers-Review & Application (My Final Farewell) (@ Sugar River)

Extras-

#1-Animal Husbandary (Classroom Pets @ My House)

#2-Two & A Half Week Old Gerbils (Classroom Pets @ My House)

Earth Day WMS 2020 (Presented By The Willowbrook Middle School Science Team)

PICTURES

RUNNING:

Scott & I On The Last Snow Fall Of The Year (4-17-20)

Justin, Scott, Louie, And I On Our 14 Mile Long Run
Practicing What I Coined "Lateral Distancing" While Training

After Running The Half Marathon
"BigFoot-The Social Distancing Champion's Running Challenge"
(The Last Sub-Freezing Day For The Spring-May 9th, 2020)

Finally Some Warm Weather To Run in-Following A 10 Miler in June

COUNTRY DRIVES:

 

 

LESSONS IN THE OUTDOORS:

Gerbil Litter#1 on Saturday, April 18th (6 pups : )
Apparently The Christmas Gifts From Two Students Were A Male & Female

 

At Turtle Creek

Heading Into The Rock-Pecatonica River Confluence Before A Thunderstorm

Well Earned Hot Chocolate After A Lesson

Nature Tells A Story - You Often Find Cool Things While Out & About

Litter#2 (5 Pups) Born Wednesday, May 20, 2020
I Actually Had A Parent Email Me To Explain How I Can Prevent Such Things!
Bwahahaha!  : )
There Really Is A Story & Explanation To The Whole Thing
Classroom Pets @ Home During The Pandemic...Who Knew?

Prairie Lupines

Flowers On A Hickory Tree

The End (Of E-learning) Was Near!
Hiking Through Backwaters To Video My Final Lessons In Math & Science

I Cooked A Brat & Asparagas To Celebrate The End Of My Lessons
And The Beginning Of Summer Soon To Come!

Gazing Up Through The Canopy Of An Ironwood Tree

From A (Caring) Student : )

Litter#3 (The Final One For A While)
Friday, June 19, 2020

Summer Is Here!  : )