Comments...

...are few but for my friend Tom.  We are brothers though.  I mean this more for my own...some thoughts lately that aren't really formulated enough for a single post.  First, I am most humbled for the fact that anyone is reading this...second, I'm grateful you do.  I really mean that...

I've been hunting hard getting out almost every day.  It is an addiction I suppose...walking up that hill is invigorating and the sitting in a tree stand is meditative.  The cold wind is not cold if you like it and I like it.  To put your face into a strong cold wind and just feel it is a good thing...like remembering something painful that must be remembered.  It really doesn't hurt...its just a feeling.  I've had great views from that treestand already.  Bucks and does right under me...some not knowing I'm there.  Some busting me with a snort and a wheeze.  I love it all...so peaceful but with a sense of reality of the kill.  Something already discussed but it really is never easy after...it does become spriitual for days.  So far I've only been tempted by a pair of 2 1/2 year old 8 pointers...one wide and short tined and the other the opposite, tall and narrow.  Both typical of the whitetail genes in this valley.  Almost two distinctly different genetics...the first was the wide 8 and I never noticed it until it was right under me.  It came from behind and quietly...by the time I heard it, it was too close to move for my bow.  It took a right turn and I waited to look but when I did it hadn't moved far and busted me.  It must have been a comical sight from a distance that would make a great picture.  The old cat and mouse game.  But, not clear which is which.   That wider than the ears 8 pointer wasn't sure what I was but walked away in the other direction slowly...all behind the large tree I was in.  Ten minutes later I still couldn't find it so I slowly stood up and there it busted me for sure about 40 yards away.  I never really had a shot but I don't think I would have taken it...yet. 

The second 2 1/2 year old 8 point came up the same trail behind me and I didn't hear it until it was in the same place as the first an hour earlier.  Only I didn't move and it went to the left just 5 yards away from the tree I was in offering a good quartering away shot.  It never saw me and I never reached for my  bow.  The G3 was broke on the right side and it would be a great buck someday.  Besides, either of those bucks would be great for my sons.  We hope to get out this weekend and give it a try.  The last few days have been empty but enjoyable.  It is probably the best thing for my health both mental and physical and each time I take that walk up that hill I enjoy it as if its the last time I do.  Like fishing for trout, it is my gauge for being truly alive...

Then, there is this writing...I enjoy it as long as I don't read it.  My streaming consciousness style is fine for short work like here but serious writing is so difficult for me that I have tried to write the same book for the last 25 years.  I know it but can't write it.  The longhanded versions here are helping and I am focused on writing it again.  I appreciate any indulgence being accepted for what it is.  A learning experience of my own as I write much of this.  And, hopefully helpful in telling a story that really needs to be told.

Another thing I might approach...the music and a spirituality.  Music has come back to me in a big way...I suppose a spirituality goes with it.  But, both have brought me joy.  I'm comfortable with the music but my mother raised me to be a preacher...I didn't find this out until I was fourteen.  Too late then and my apologies if any of this gives offense.  My religion is my fathers...and wish it on no one else.  My father was this way and it goes back to his German birth and I suppose his fathers...quiet but strong was his belief.  He could swear as if a prayer...never using vulgar language but would quietly say jesus christ or god damn in a way that never sounded wrong.  Just a beseachment.  Some of that tone may be in myself and believe me I mean no arrogance.  But, my mother was the opposite and expected more of me.  Some of that had to stick, too.  While I welcome all word and support, I will watch my own preaching.  And, leave it in the music...

...it will be good for my karma, too.  In the woods it seems that karma is science.  Scent control and stand position or time of day and just having the right attitude to sit out on cold days and not see anything and not let it get to you.  To have a fresh attitude each day...today can always be the day.  Oops...there I go preaching again.  I did catch it though and in pennance offer some photos of this falls bow hunting.  My religion for now...

Traditions...

...should get their due also.  We've seen the transition from the stream to the field here.  Plenty of views from the treestand for my two youngest sons and I...already a success with the nice 8 point buck taken by a nephew last week bowhunting.  We usually only take two or three deer a year.  The venison was great as usual...my family has a taste for it over beef.  Lean and not herded into slaughter yards...it is adrenalin free.  Something I've learned to appreciate...a clean kill.

I wish I could say they all are clean...there have been a couple deer I've had to track long ways including one for over 6 miles...a december buck I caught up to after 24 hours from first shooting it.  I'm proud of the tracking but not so much the shot.  I had a new mathews zmax hanging in the archery shop I hit a 1000 lb cow with my car in front of.  Seven of them walked in front of me in the rain and I had no where to go.  I only hit it at a few miles an hour but it was enough to roll the cow over my hood and roof.  The windscreen fell on the back of both hands sending me to the hospital for a half dozen stitches in each of them.  When I finally got my new bow I had to sight it in with a weak wrist and two months later in December I was holding my hand differently with a stronger wrist.  My bow shot differently in December.  After 6 miles I caught up with that buck as it was trying to lay flat on a trail parallel to the one I was on.  It looked dead but its eyes were wide open.  I put an arrow through it again...the first was in its flanks and I had watched it pull the arrow out with its teeth just before dark the previous afternoon.  I felt bad all night and was glad we were able to jump it as it bed down the next day and pick up its trail.  The blood trail is sacred to a hunter...we jumped that deer several times but couldn't get a shot.  When I put that second arrow through it I picked it up and it had no blood on it but I knew it was a passthrough when I examined it.  It got up and crashed down the hill with heavy legs...Josh thought I missed it but I showed him the arrow.  We followed the dark leaves to a hill overlooking a small feeder creek to one of my favorite trout streams.  It took us a while but a large blood spot on the side of a tree showed us where to look.  The buck was sitting upright on its butt with its front legs extended forward against the side of the bank of the little feeder.  I looked at Josh and said, "do you think its dead?"  He said, 'yeah.'  I said, "I don't trust that deer," and nocked the same arrow I had just put through it.  Just as I said that the deer turned and looked at us...I put that arrow through its heart pinning it against the bank.  I'm only glad we were able to fill our obligation as hunters that day...and the two Wisconsin Buck and Bear book bucks were double lung shots.  It makes those trophies even better.

Deer hunting is religion in Wisconsin...home of the world record whitetail for over 70 years and more record book bucks than any other US state.  Our bow season is long and gun season runs the weekend before thanksgiving through that week.  Sometimes longer...a great time for family and friends.  Thanksgiving dinner in the driftless usually includes some morning deer hunting.  A tradition...one that goes back to subsistance living.  When we needed the deer and the elk to survive.  At one time there were more elk in the midwest than out west...my stream was named for the elk herd found here in 1850.  And elk antlers have been found in the banks of it after spring floods.  Elk creek...land of the elk.

A University of Wisconsin researcher spent some time with the Innuit native Americans in Alaska and studied their traditions for his book on Wisconsin deer hunting traditions.  He found the same traditions there as here...and no other place.  Wisconsins deer hunting traditions stand alone in the lower 48...religion meet tradition.  In deed, land is sacred to the deer hunter as is that blood trail.  Sustenance may be different than the Innuit but still venison is a delicacy of corn fed and free ranging livestock.  But, much smarter...one tradition I was reminded of today when I saw an old friend at the store and he was off to his woods to hunt an 18 pt buck he had trail cam photos of.  Just finding a buck of that caliber is difficult enough but to pattern one and take it is the ultimate tradition of the hunter.

Thanksgiving week is almost a party of free passes from school for kids if they just want to hunt and early morning breakfasts and coffee.  Sometimes it is the only time family is together.  Tall tails of the past and dreams of future stories are what holds it together...the tradition of story telling.  Long held in all civilizations it is at its peak during deer season...some might call it something else.  But, there is nothing wrong with that either.  I always enjoy a good story...enhanced or not.  I'm a story teller myself...like the many thanksgiving does I have shot.  A tradition of taking does for venison makes a thanksgiving doe as much a trophy as any buck.  And a feeling of fullness besides just that turkey dinner.  Family, friends, and religion.  And watching the Packers on Sunday.  Which I am doing right now...

This I was there...

...stuff is turning into work.  But, I can't seem to help myself...Its fun to remember the good times and people.  In doing some research this morning I found several blogs and websites wanting to know about the Iola rock fest outside of Stevens Point.  I was there...

...in fact I as in the first 10 people there.  Not the first 10 concert attendees...the first 10 people standing around in a field wondering if we found the right place.  Ten...I counted.  It was surreal from the start...My best friend Malcolm Knight and I drove up in his 1960 black triumph tr3.  Thats a two seat sports car...we must have looked good driving up the interstate from Madison with the top down.  Two not too long haired 20 year olds looking for adventure...and work.  We were hired by another best friend Pauly Cuccia to build the stage and help get this thing off the ground.  He somehow knew Ken Adamany the promoter...Ken is legend still.  Bringing Hendrix to Madison and starting his career with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs.  He still is associated with Cheap Tricks success or was..

We finally found the place after several attempts or we might have been the first standing in that field...I knew some of the other 10 and we wistfully looked at each new car driving into the middle of the field hoping it was someone knowing what was going on.  It wasn't...nobody seemed to know until a truck load of lumber was dropped off.  It was a week before the rock fest started...that much time to build a stage and sound system.  A couple other best friends showed up who knew more and so did Pauly.  He knew everything...but, at least between the three of them I had hope this event might happen and was not just a wild goose chase.  Actually, I needed the money...but, thats another story.

We had all really enjoyed ourselves at the Poynette fest a short time earlier.  The grateful dead headlined  but, the highlight of that was the Siegal Schwall band.  I digress...the fun of that good times made us hopeful for another.  Our youth and all...Viet Nam raged and we needed an escape from Madisons state street and its boarded up windows...and tear gas.  Goin' up the country...got to get way.  Digressing more that ride up to Iola was one of the best rides of my life...and that says something.  Free at last...it was not a good thing to be a draft age male at that time.  School or the military was the only option...unless you were wealthy enough to buy a national guard spot.  It really was that way...who you knew.  I needed the money for school in the fall...

So...at about 50 of us a big black limousine pulls into the field.  I knew that car...it was Adamanys.  I had seen it on the Madison scene often.  The top end...I was bottom of the chain.  Pauly and Russel Cook knew Ken and he informed them that it would happen and to settle in and set up camp.  That was maybe the best part of the 10 days...discovering friends as they arrived and showing them around.  We were almost big shots ourselves at first...having been there first.  And, since we were working we only had to have a tent and sleeping bag.  The free food tent for us was a chance to visit with the pretty hippy girls...ya know, we never thought of ourselves as hippies.  Never...

Over the next few days the stage slowly went up...there were so many better carpenters than me that I was mostly an odd job person.  Hanging around the stage there was always something to do and if I wanted I could simply walk away and do something else.  There really wasn't much else to do...the usual counterculture stuff, sure.  But, it really wasn't like that either...it was a matter of keeping clean, not easy, and simply surviving in an atmosphere of nobody really seemed to know what was going on.  And that stage...it was going slow.  Not like anybody was in charge and the usual too many chiefs was the problem.  It did go up though along with the scaffold for the speakers.  The sound system was a mystery to us all and we wondered what it would sound like with such a large frame.  Jeff Cook showed up...a Marantz stereo designer who was going to build the system on the spot.  I had seen Jeff around bands with the womens panties on his head...his trademark.  I wondered but his history to San Francisco and Osley was legend we all believed.  He was in charge and you could see his red hair everywhere.  With the panties...

That week before the concert was uneventful but for the wood ticks everywhere...that getting clean thing and we found a gas station in Iola with a good bathroom and a daily visit was mandatory.  Malcom was born in Scotland and both parents researchers at the UW...good stock.  We started to look forward to that daily trip...some privacy.  When did people ever lose the value of privacy...and here I am pulling my panties down.  The stage was finished...and the speakers arrived.  Jeff Cook ran around ordering parts for the boards as gossip filtered down to us in the workers area and the crowd grew to several thousand.  They seemed as bored as us working those last days before the show opened on Friday night..

Chaos began to rule with the steady influx...we were given wrist bands to pass anywhere.  Some more important than others by color and Pauly shows up with a armful.  He says to sell them out front and keep the money.  It was our pay...we did.  But, so many were just walking in that only the foolish were buying them.  More and more showed up every day and we sold them quickly.  I was given a stage pass wrist band and spent most of my time watching the stage finish.  But those speakers...we hadn't heard them yet.  It was going to be great...or so we thought.

Friday afternoon just before the show was to start the whole system was rushing to sound.  Then we heard it..;for two seconds.  As loud as I have ever heard...and then it blew.  Nothing...for hours.  A rush on a part was in order...and we believed in Jeff Cook.  With the panties on his head...later that day I was told to go park cars as the influx of people was at its peak.  At first Malcolm and I had it under control.  But as dusk came and the sound system made spurts of noise...we began to lose it.  Cars everywhere...too many to even see us and they parked where they wanted.  Flashlights in the dark did little other than to help us sell wrist bands to those in the dark who didn't know what was going on.  Although buying bands from us did get better parking.  Finally it became too hectic and we bailed on the cars.  It may have been self induced but 40 thousand people showed up that night...

And the sound system could only muster a little of it...those giant towers of speakers could at best come up with a club sized sound.  It was fine for those in front but for way back or to the sides the music seemed just noise.  I made my way to the stage with my pass...it was the happening place to be and somehow I ended up as security for the stage.  You didn't get on stage but by me...of course I knew who not to hassle.  But, many tried to get up the stair in back of it and I was bribed and took some.  With discretion...I had it made.  Buffy St Marie showed up in Adamanys limo...somebody in the crowd showed up with some really beautiful wildflowers nicely arranged and wanted to give them to her.  I remember saying they couldn't...that was my job...to keep folks away from the stars.  I took the flowers to miss St Marie in the limo and her door opened and she smiled at me and took them.  I even got a hug...

She played as did the others...while I sat by the stairs in back of the stage and watched.  I was only 20 and it was more power than I had ever had.  I got smiles from all and was as gracious as I could be to all.  I was only 20...the late nights though...I could keep up with the best of them.  I would stumble into my tent and sleep all day for the stage at night.  I had already been there a week...and it was work.  The hygiene started to slip...for everyone there.  Saturday night had the Amboy Dukes and Ted...his performance that night made him on my list of posers forever.  His hunting traditions and skills are mute to me...phony and to use Fred Bear.  My boss shortly before this hunted with fred and owned the archery range in Madison.  Ted had nothing then or now.  His pretending to be wasted and fall into the crowd was drawing my ire as I watched and but for the beautiful topless girl in sequined pants on stage...I might have pushed him over the edge my self.  Chaos was ruling on stage and people were everywhere...it was somebody elses turn to watch the stairs.  I was watching the show...and the front of the crowd.  A melee of wasted wapituli containing everything hard under the sun was front and center.  Literally, a trash can of drink and drugs made its way around.  I only tasted it...The best part of Saturday night was the topless girl coming up to me and throwing her arms around me...she whispered in my ear, "do you want to do it?"  I looked both ways on that crowded stage and decided on the spot yes...she replied, "on stage."  I politely declined...but, thanks.  Several more of her attempts found a donor and when he slipped his pants off standing on stage in front of 50,000 people, she walked away leaving him there.  I laughed and left...for a tour through the crowd just for the pure savagery.  The stage had gotten old after Ted...

I was approached again that night by another beautiful hippy girl in the late late night or early morning as I made it to my tent in the safe area behind the stage.  We tried but a 10 day burnout was not pro active to trysts...we just watched the sunrise.  Four or five hours later I heard shots and commotion throughout the crowd.  Bikers had opened up on the crowd...after days of taking abuse from the self appointed security of the fest the crowd began to retaliate.  I had seen plenty of their abuse and had learned on stage to give them some leaway.  You learned quickly who the good guys were and who you needed to placate.  I had placated plenty of bikers while on stage but managed to stay them off.  My friend at the poker table in the previous post with the cigarette in his mouth was famous for his woodstock days and being interviewed in the movie...ran up against them when we were together and found a large knife against his throat.  He was the fastest talker I knew and was able to friend them off with biker talk.  I wish I had the chance to confront the bikers that morning...this shooting along with the Sterling hall bombing seemed to be the end of this kind of event.  There were plenty of folks trying to blame the antiwar movement on this or this on the anti war movement.  Both were just wrong.  It was the bikers.  Three people got shot but survived.

 One last point I remember...throughout the 10 days there were numerous adults who were generous and kind and offering assistance.  An event of this somewhat organized chaos couldn't happen without hidden forces and there were many.  One of the finest examples of altruism I have ever seen firsthand was the family from Stevens point.  I believe he was a professor at UW Point and was a regular from the beginning.  His advice and guidance were especially important to those that worked there.  Where to go in town or just a kind word was enough...but, his family out did themselves.  They invited all the workers to their family vacation home on a private lake.  The lake was deep and clear and all private but for a small piece owned by the college.  His large summer home and outbuildings were opened to us and he fed several hundred...not all were workers but he sure didn't mind.  That generosity stayed with me to this day.  We ate good food and used his bathrooms and went swimming out to his raft where at any one time there could be 100 people and half of those naked.  It seemed irrelevent at the time.  After 10 days...

I woke up to the shooting on sunday and we decided it was time to get out...fast.  Police were everywhere and not happy.  Somehow, Malcolm maneuvered the triumph through the cars in the parking lot to the road to Iola and its police lined streets.  Like all the hippies were going to invade the town.  They got the blame...but, our trip was uneventful and we made our way back to the highway.  The ride back was without the same feeling on the way up...optimism gave way to reality.  We had made some money but needed more.  School would start in the fall and it was money or viet nam...