Snow, snow and more snow.  Things are white in Eagle River.

I think we have close to two feet of snow cover, maybe a bit more. And each day more falls.  It’s mostly fluffy stuff.

I took a picture from our bedroom window on Christmas Eve morning.  . It was an interesting view.  The trees trees appeared like green ghosts in the fog of heavy snow.

Saturday, Eric, Wendy and I went snow shoeing.  Eric drove his one-week old new Subaru to test out it’s all wheel drive.  I think he got a little more than he bargained for as the national forest roads hadn’t been plowed for some time and there had to be 10 – 12 inches of snow on the roads.  He was able to get though it as long as we kept moving but when we pulled over to check out a place to snow shoe, we got stuck in a drift.  A little push from his manly powerhouse of a father and a little feathering of the accelertor by Eric and we were on our way again.

We were able to get to a spot where we snow shoed into my favorite spot on the Deerskin – the location that serves as our canoe put-in for the six mile downstream trip  to our house.  The river is frozen over but the view is still inspiring.

It was not an easy trail to break because of the deep snow.  We only hiked a mile but it seemed like a lot more on the way in.  Hiking out, the trail we made hiking in made the return trip much much easier and now that the trail is set, Judi and I should be able to repeat the treck fairly easily, even as more snow builds up.

A combination of snow, rain, and wind over the past few days has denuded most of the Vilas County deciduous trees.  The only leaves still dangling are found on the oaks and a few small aspen.

I was walking the dog through 3 inches of slushy snow yesterday when sunlight temporarily peaked between the overcast and highlighted a few spots of fall color.  When the predominant color of the forest is brown, green and a some pre-winter white, those few spots of red and gold easily capture your attention.

Back in the early 1940’s, a group of hunters from Rhinelander purchased a remote forty acre plot bordering an upstream portion of the Deerskin River. They built a small hunting cabin and put up a small bridge over the Deerskin to provide automobile access to their property and cabin.

Fast forward four decades.  The forty acre parcel not in a national forest when purchased in the 40’s, was now completely surrounded by the Nicolet.  The access bridge was slowly disintegrating and un-drivable. The cabin was now owned by a magazine editor from Chicago, who apparently didn’t mind the lack of power, the lack of running water, the lack of an indoor toilet nor the fact that the only access to the cabin was on foot over a rickety old bridge.

Experience today:  The bridge is gone – removed as required by the forest service.  The 1940’s cabin is gone, replaced with an attractive log cabin built in 2005.  The property still lacks electrical power but the new owner, a foot doctor from central Wisconsin, sued and won right-of-way access over five miles of public lands.  He cut in a two-track dirt road.

The cabin sits on a fantastic piece of property, isolated from human intervention by a five mile buffer of national forest on all sides. He gets some electrical power from a small solar panel and backup generator. The outhouse has been replaced by a septic system.

When I fish the Deerskin, I often wade downstream about a mile from where the old bridge used to be.  If it’s an evening adventure, it is often close to dark by the time I’ve waded to my downstream limit. Wading back up the river not only makes my aging body complain but, with the deep holes and submerged timber hidden in shadow, wading is considerably more hazardous.  Fortunately, there is a shortcut via the doctor’s forty back to my starting point.  Transecting a grassy marsh, then a thick swath of forest, the path’s origin is almost indiscernible from the river unless you know precisely where it is.  I learned of it’s location from an old-timer local fisherman who new the original Rhinelander owners.

Before I considered using the hidden path, I waded across the river and hiked up to the cabin to ask trespass permission. Fortunately the current owner was present.  He was not particularly excited to see me however. I learned that because of an unfortunate experience with rogue hunter vandalism, the new owner was understandably anti-trespass.  After hunching over a bit and tilting slightly to suggest a possible foot related malady, my pleadings of age related frailty convinced the good doctor that an exception to his anti-trespass rules, warranted an exception in my case.

Since my first encounter with the owner I have snow shoed across the frozen Deerskin in January and taken pictures of his cabin covered in a winter blanket.  I sent him the picture and gave him some of the wild rice we harvest. I think he really warmed up to me after that.  A couple days ago, after an unusually early snow, I donned my waders and crossed the frigid Deerskin to grab another shot of his cabin. I took a pictures of the trail and the river looking upstream from the old bridge location. It took about an hour of wading and hiking to get to the photo location.  I’m hoping the doc likes the final result and continues to consider me a worthy trespasser. I hope it doesn’t suddenly occur to him that someone who can wade, hike and snowshoe to his remote cabin might not be quite as frail as he appears.

Heavily forested, sparsely populated and sparingly transected by asphalt roadways, the upper peninsula of Michigan has the look and feel of Northern Wisconsin in the 1950’s and ‘60’s.  But what draws me to visit the UP so often are the ribbons of trout streams exploding over the entire region like the varicose veins on the legs of my dear deceased ninety year old grandmother.

This week our friends Tom and Sandy, who never seem to tire of joining us in exploring the trout havens of the U.P, motored north with us to re-investigate a U.P. trout stream Tom and I previously determined held potential for a summer fishing excursion.

Tom and I only fly fish so we require relatively smooth, wade-able river bottoms and room to make long back casts in areas unencumbered by thick fly snagging brush. This trip we scouted a section of Jumbo Creek that transected an area of meadows.  The stream here is narrow but offers plenty of casting room and doesn’t seem to hide holes deeper than our waders.  Whether it holds decent trout is yet to be determined.

To keep my memory of this section fresh for next year’s fishing season, I photographed it.  Mid November isn’t the most picturesque time of the year but if the grasses surrounding the river here were of the 24 carat variety, their golden hue would suggest a lottery’s fortune in today’s precious metals market.

Normally I wouldn’t think of Mid-November as a picnic opportunity but this day was unusually bright and warm so the girls (our wives – not actual girls in the ‘guy’ sense) joined Tom and me for lunch on a outdoor picnic table at Agate Falls. A tumultuous roar of water runs through a long shallow canyon until it drops over a precipitous ledge creating ‘Agate Falls.”  I’ve photographed the falls many times but this day I recorded a long slash of the water that rushes over a shallow bed of granite until it reaches the top of the falls. The roar is remarkable. The sheen and spit of white water in open sunlight is dramatic.

There is good fishing in the flat water at the base of the falls – I once met a very young man who climbed up from down there with a creel holding some good sized rainbow and brown trout. The guide books very pointedly explains that the terrain descending to the pools below the falls is extremely treacherous and should be avoided. I’ve been told that by locals that people have been seriously injured trying to climb down to fish the lower pools.  It could be these comments were made to discourage me from encroaching on the commentator’s hot spot – especially since starkly graphic depictions of the descent were given in the presence of my wife who now has visions of me tumbling hundreds of feet to a smashing death on the granite slabs below.  I must admit that my brain is permanently burned with the image of that boy’s creel full of long, fat trout so I’m somewhat tempted to forget age and act with the invincibility of foolish youth to attack the steep trail to this fishing nirvana.

Tom and I will try to get through the long Wisconsin the winter by contemplating our U.P. fishing expeditions next summer.  We probably won’t attempt the Agate Falls pools but you’ll definitely find us on one of the other streams we’ve explored.

This story has been ‘G’ rated and is suitable for all most ages.

Monday our daytime temperature hit 60.  It is highly unlikely that we will again see thermometer digits as high as these prior to May 2010. By mutual consent, it was agreed that this would be a good day for Judi and me to take an upstream canoe paddle.

As we launched from our little dock, it was noticed by two of the three canoe passengers that the water level seemed a bit low.  Except for his water bowl, our dog doesn’t give a hoot about water levels. .

We normally paddle about a mile or two up river and turn back.  Once we’ve passed my next door neighbor’s home two minutes upstream, there is no human interference with our river’s landscape other than a small hunting cabin a mile further upstream. The river’s landscape is never boring and frequent canoe outings upriver allow Judi and me to observe small changes to the river’s biotic habitat that might go unnoticed with less regular upriver sojourns.

By this day, most of the winter-wimpy seasonal birds that frequent our river like the Belted Kingfishers, the Ospreys, and the Sand Pipers have joined the area’s equally winter-wimpy gray haired seasonal humans and flown off to condominiums located in warmer climates.  We spotted one exception, a lazy or mentally dull Great Blue Heron who obviously didn’t get the memo that winter is approaching and it’s time get out of town. Of course it’s possible he forgot to reserve his condo-nest before they were all spoken for or maybe he’s one of those obnoxious birds that none of his summer neighbors want living in their winter condo projects. I guess it will remain one of nature’s unsolvable mysteries.

We paddled about one-half mile up river all the while lamenting how this summer’s drought had definitely affected water levels. Our progress was suddenly halted by a Beaver darn spanning the river.  We hadn’t seen any Beaver darns on the lower section of our river in the past six years so this was quite a surprise. We figure it had been constructed in just the last two weeks.

If we had been better acquainted with this particular beaver and his friends, we would have recommended them as contractor replacements for the construction company doing road repair on Hwy 45.  That contractor has been working on one small bridge all summer. Each time we’ve found ourselves lined up waiting for the flag person to wave us through that stretch; we’ve seen three or four guys in hard hats standing in a tight group talking about something. We saw one actually doing any work!  While I’d like to think they’re discussing an important engineering decision, from their expressions it seems more likely these boys were discussing the blond in the convertible stopped ahead of us, some big musky that got away or, and this is most likely, they were betting on how long they can keep the traffic tied up before the first horn honks. From what I’ve seen, I’m reasonable certain that Deerskin Beaver Construction Associates would have completed the hwy 45 bridge project in less than a month. My guide books assure me that beaver don’t gamble and, as they’d be working at night (they’re nocturnal contractors), traffic tie-ups would have been minimal.  I’d take this bet though – the Beaver crew would have easily come in under budget.

Judi and I have always found Beaver to be fascinating animals and let it be said that Judi and I are very sympathetic to the great injustices done to Beavers during the 1700’s when felted beaver hats were all the rage. However, when the flow of the river in front of our home is threatened we feel a need to take corrective action. The darn DNR pointed out that while they are against darning up any river and, in fact, spearheaded the removal of an old logging darn on the Deerskin seven years ago, they had no jurisdiction over this particular darn Beaver darn. Thus rejected by the darn DNR, I persuaded my logger neighbor to join me in a darn removal project. We canoed up to the darn Tuesday.

The Beaver darn seemed small enough that two strapping men – well actually one strapping logger plus another somewhat un-strapped retiree – should have easily been able to remove the Beaver darn in no time at all. Much to our surprise we learned that no time at all would turn out to be all too darn much time and all too darn much work.  My personal educational takeaway from this darn project was that my darn hip boots are two inches too darn short and that trying to climb back into a canoe with at least two gallons of cold water in each boot is not very easy for the physically un-strapped.

The darn Beaver darn was constructed mostly sub-surface; the few inches showing above the water hiding at least three feet of submerged construction.  And these contractors really know how to entwine their sticks. It was like dismantling a giant Chinese puzzle box cemented together with mud. While we never saw the darn Beaver who built this darn, I had this strange feeling that as we worked, we were being watched by tight group of three or four animals betting on how long it would take before we started honking our complaints.

A tall oak tree next to our house died.  I’m not sure what killed it but we do have some invasive species killing oaks all over the place up here.  Judi thought it might have been brought in with a shipment of flat screen TVs from China but I say it was a shipment of squash from South American. Nothing good every came from eating squash.

The tree, about 10 inches in diameter at the base, was at least 50 feet tall.  I normally let dead trees come down on their own because they offer good insect hunting for wood peckers.  But this tree had to come down.  It was only five feet from our house and any strong winds could have brought it or some of its branches, crashing down on the house.

I’m not a logger but my logger neighbor said it would be an easy drop – make a couple of chainsaw cuts and push it over.  Oh sure, I should push over a fifty foot tree! For that kind of leverage, I’d have to add at least fifty pounds of bulk to my frame. That won’t happen until Thanksgiving and that tree really needed to go now.

The tree was positioned such that I could drop it into an open area in front of the house. My bird feeders were located behind the tree; a tall tree was only two feet to one side and the house just five feet to the other.  The tree could only safely fall in one direction. The key word here is ‘safely.”

My last experience with taking down a tree didn’t go so well.  It was a big birch.  I tied a long rope to the tree and looped it round another tree down hill to act as a pulley.  I put Judi and two friends on the tag end of the rope up hill figuring they’d get pulley type leverage and help direct the tree’s fall.  As I made my cuts I didn’t hear the screams over the chain saw’s buzz.  Finally a loud whistle caught my attention; I looked up and dove out of the way just as the tree crashed in the exact opposite of the intended direction and right where I had just been standing.  Judi and our friends had an “Oh crap that was close!” look on their faces while I sported an “I need fresh underwear” expression.   A couple weeks ago when I told Judi I planned to take down the dead oak next to our house, she didn’t say much but I did notice she moved my life insurance file to the front of the file cabinet.

After weeks of procrastination, I finally got the courage to take down my dead oak.  I got a ladder, wrapped a rope high up around the tree, and then stretched it seventy feet and around another tree out front. I made a trucker’s hitch in the rope and pulled the tag end through making a rope pulley.  I put as much tension on the rope as my pre-Thanksgiving body-mass could manage and tied it off. I figured the tension would direct the fall of the oak. Then I got the chain saw.

Because I was a little nervous, I managed to flood the chain saw. Three times!  This may have been fate telling me to scrap the whole ‘cutting down a tree thing’ but I persisted, got the saw going, and went at the tree. I made my cuts and tree began to topple – in the right direction.  “Eureka!” I shouted.  You probably wonder, “Who shouts, Eureka at a tree?!”  Well Eureka looks much better in print then what I really shouted.

My Eureka turned to “Oh Darn!” (poetic license again) when the dead oak hung up in the neighboring tree after tilting a mere three feet. I ran to the front of the house and started pulling on the rope to free the tree.  I looked up and saw Judi’s face in the window with that, “What has he gotten into now?” expression I’ve seen so often.  I yanked and yanked on that rope but the stupid tree just hung there.  I don’t know if there are smart trees and stupid trees but if there are, let me confirm that this one was really, really, really stupid.

Judi came out, reviewed my predicament and calmly said, “Look at that, your dead oak is hung up on a little twig. Let me help you.”  She gave a light tug on the rope and the tree came free, slamming to the ground in front of us. It was one of those typical male / female moments.  I do the 99% of hard work freeing it up, then Judi steps in and does the last 1% with that “What’s the big deal, this isn’t so hard.” look.

I’ve proven again that I’m no logger. I suggested to Judi that maybe next time I’ll hire a real logger. Of course you realize that I won’t really hire a logger but it seems to make Judi feel better when I say stuff like that. I see she moved my life insurance policy to the back of the file cabinet again.

The past three days have played havoc with the area’s fall color. We’ve had various combinations of strong winds, snow, rain and sub freezing temperatures right during the time our color is supposed to be at it’s peak. As a result, I now see more fall color littering the lawn than ornamenting the trees.

Saturday I was making my weekly dump run when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a brilliant orange blaze at the end of a long old road. To my tired old eyes, the darker trees bordering the old road produced a tunnel-like effect focusing my attention on the glowing tree. Before the wind ripped the color from the branches I grabbed my camera. I wish the picture I took had matched my initial visual impressions.

Sunday afternoon Judi and I decided to hike the Three Lakes trail – a bike/hike/cross country ski path that meanders from Eagle River to Three lakes for eight and one-half miles.  The temperature hovered around 35 degrees and the wind was brisk but as we were offered our first glimpse of sun in over a week, we felt almost obligated to get out and experience the quickly fading color.

The Three lakes trail is well designed and maintained and is a great place to take a relaxing hike or bike trip.  The slopes are gentle and the path doesn’t challenge your footing. After twenty minutes of hiking we decided to make our goal the bridge over Mud Creek. We weren’t exactly sure how far out that was but figured it was certainly less than the half way point.  Sometimes initial easy going tempts a person or persons to set more extensive hiking goals than the family dog anticipates.  Judi and I discussed that very thing with our dog on our return trip as we ascended the last ‘gentle slope’ now described by someone in our hiking party as “a blankity-blank steep hill.”  (I wish the dog wouldn’t use that kind of language.)

This morning some white flakey stuff began tumbling from the sky along with the leaves.  My canoe looks a bit cocooned with it’s new white covering but we’re hoping to get it on the water at least one more time before we’d have to break ice.

Dick

My fishing buddy Tom and his wife, Sandy, tripped to the Upper Peninsula with Judi and me Wednesday in search of prime trout water.

Late this summer, Tom and I had fished a section of Cooks Run, a blue ribbon trout stream, but found the section we fished too deep to safely wade and the banks too brushy to effectively cast a fly.  We managed to wade up stream some way that day but on the wade back, Tom flooded his waders in an unexpectedly deep hole.  I averted my eyes as he wrung out his pants and underwear. He has nice legs.

Cooks Run is considered one of the best small streams in the midwest, so we determined it needed further investigation.

I should point out that we had been given pointers on where to fish Cooks Run by an Eagle River local, a fishing guide from Boulder Junction, a fly shop employee in Milwaukee and a Federal Forest Svc. ranger in Michigan.  Except for the forest ranger, the information we received from these sources was highly suspect, almost purposefully misleading. In retrospect, I’m thinking that most fly fisherman would not willingly lead competing fly fishers to their best spots.  I know Tom and I wouldn’t do any different with information about our best river stretches.  And, it’s quite possible that I give off an aura of fly fishing expertise, causing the informational source to divert me from the best water for fear I will antagonize the biggest trout.

So with Judi interpreting the Ottawa forest topographic map, Tom negotiated his Suburban down some deeply rutted, narrow backwoods tracks which eventually led us to several different approaches to Cooks Run.  We spent three hours meander driving and found four great stretches for fly fishing next summer.  When we started out, I was the official map reader but somehow some of my map observations were put into serious question by the driver and it was determined that a new map reader was required.  I think the driver lost faith in my path finding skills when I told him I was absolutely positive I remembered a certain clump of trees along the track from last summer’s visit. Even though I was eventually proven correct, he wasn’t convinced. Maybe it was because earlier I’d gotten us ‘mis-directed’ a couple of times and he didn’t buy that it was because I hadn’t warmed up my navigating skills yet.

I took a couple of pictures of Cooks Run, mainly to re-enforce our track finding next summer when our expert map reader won’t be accompanying Tom and I.

This morning I went hunting for some fall color.  According to the local TV weather guy, we’re at peak color.  Maybe so, but our solid overcast isn’t highlighting much color so I certainly wouldn’t label the forest as “ablaze with color.”  The only way I can capture any flavor of our fall color under these conditions is to concentrate on small bits of color floating in the river, reflected in the water or where color is in stark contrast with dark backgrounds.

It’s the last day of trout season and I wanted to celebrate this day with an extended outing fly fishing the Deerskin.  While I usually fish in the evening, those are shorter outings due to the failing light. As it will be seven months before I can get out again, I wanted the last day to be a more complete fishing experience.

I arose at 6:45 AM and went through my normal morning routine that included a nourishing breakfast that I figured would stick with me for the several hours I expected to be on the water.

I suppose a rational person seeing ice on the deck and a thermometer reading 27 degrees, might have re-thought his fishing plans.  But this is THE LAST DAY of the trout fishing season and, as it will be seven months before I can go out again, rational thought has to be set aside in favor of idiocy.

I loaded my fishing stuff in the car, cranked up the heat and headed off to the stream. I made one stop along the way to take a picture of some fall leaves framing a frosted pine meadow but that only took a few extra minutes and I was able to be at my put-in by 8:10 AM.  I noticed as I rigged up my fly rod that my fingers seemed a little stiff from the cold air but assumed that once I got to casting they’d warm up. I was wrong.

I stepped in the water and exhaled sharply as ice water crawled up my waders.  I felt like a maraschino cherry floating in a brandy old fashioned loaded with ice.  But I assumed that once I got wading and casting I’d warm up. I was wrong.

I noticed that on occasion as I cast, my fly line made a funny scratchy noise as it sped through the line guides.  That turned out to be ice forming on the line whenever I paused for twenty seconds or longer to plan for a good cast.

After 20 minutes of wading and casting a line with ice on it, I noticed that I couldn’t feel my fingers any longer. I was wearing fingerless fishing gloves which I figured would keep my hands warm enough.  I was wrong.

My legs were moving through ice water, my fingers were so cold I couldn’t feel them and it occurred to me that if I was this cold, maybe the fish were too.  I took the water temperature and it was 39 degrees. What rational trout would come up to the surface to take a fake insect when: a. no insects were flying and b. the water was much warmer and cozier in their deep hidey-holes.

In what for me was an unusually insightful flash of rational thought, it dawned on me that if I tripped and got dunked in 39 degree water with 27 degree air temperatures and I was a half hour wade from my car, my brain might go as numb as my fingers and they’d find my body floating face down in the water with a fly rod sticking up like a maraschino cherry stem.

With the maraschino cheery scenario emblazoned in my consciousness, I very carefully waded back to my put-in.  Because I could hardly feel my hands and fingers, it took an inordinate amount of time to get out of my waders and boots.

With an expected day of full sunshine, they say the air temperatures should moderate to the upper fifties by this afternoon so I will attempt to go out for a couple hours after dinner. I’m pretty sure the water will be warmer then too and, after all, it is the last day of the trout season.

Dick

As far as I’m concerned, nothing beats a wild blueberry pie savored on some particularly uninviting thirty-below January evening.  Wild blueberries are intensely flavorful. The grocery store blueberries are tasteless mush in comparison. Of course to make a wild blueberry pie you need to pick wild blueberries and the window of opportunity for that is fairly tight.  This past week has been the peak week of this year’s picking season.

In his infinite wisdom, “Bloar,” the Nordic god who created wild blueberries, figured they should ripen only on the hottest, sunniest days of summer.  Old “Bloar” didn’t really intend for ‘man’ to discover wild blueberries so he tried to hide them under thick, scratchy brush in secretive forest locations. To discourage ‘man’ from picking copious quantities of these intensely delicious wild morsels, “Bloar” made them teeny-tiny. Human hands were never designed to pick these itsy, bitsy blue specs and history tells us the word fumble-itus came from serious berry pickers who wanted to be able to describe their picking travails to young children in a way that wouldn’t tarnish their youthful innocence.

Old “Bloar” did allow some select wild blueberries to reach reasonable size – about the size of a healthy green pea – but that was kind of a sadistic scam because the plants which produce these giants, only grow on large ant hills. I guess the ants have worked out some symbiotic relationship with “Bloar” and his berries.

Most serious wild blueberry pickers have their hot spots, locations which they will never, ever divulge.  I have such a location. Even my spouse has only limited knowledge of this place. I have put the location in my will along with a provision that my son eat the paper upon which that paragraph is written after first committing the location to memory.

I picked in my ‘secret’ location this week. It is a semi-open swale about a 10 minute hike straight into the woods from an old logging road.  There are no markers – you have to sort of feel your way in. Judi makes me take a compass along just in case.  If I don’t come out of the woods within a reasonable amount of time, Judi understands that she can not call the DNR rescue team.  Even if I should break an ankle, she understands that I will find some way to crawl to the road, thus protecting my ‘secret’ hot spot.  If I should expire in the hot spot, Eric will be able to find my body after reading my will but he still has to eat the paragraph – that’s not negotiable – and of course he’ll have to drag me out or bury me there by himself.

It should be noted here that my hot spot has huge wild blueberries. My secret swale is really a giant ant hill about an acre in size.  The swale is littered with dead tree stumps, most of which have been torn apart by bears in search of grubs. (Bears like berries too but not nearly as much as they like grubs and ants. At least I hope so!)

Picking my swale requires a carefully thought out picking strategy. Keeping on the move is the key – don’t pick in any one location for more than 8.7 seconds.  It takes 5.2 seconds for the ants to realize that the beast stomping around on top of their home is a dumb human, not a hungry bear.  When I first picked in this secret sea of blue, I had no idea there were twenty-eight gazillion biting red ants swarming just inches beneath my feet.  I picked for 8.9 seconds before noticing my white tennis had turned red.  Then they started to shimmer and move without my help.  It didn’t take more than a few thousand ant bites for me to recognize my dilemma. I can confirm that I moved quicker than the man who discovered his wife was planning to shop for quilt fabric at the same time he planned to go trout fishing. Local legend has it that one poor unsuspecting soul, found his own ant-hill secret spot and it’s assumed he made the mistake of picking in one spot for an estimated 20 seconds.  Years later, another blueberry nirvana seeker found the same spot along with two partially eaten tennis shoes later identified by the grieving widow of the previous picker.  No one knows for sure if the original picker’s remains are still there – the new secret spot discoverer refuses to divulge the location.

Moving quickly I can pick about five cups of blueberries an hour – about one pie’s worth.  It’s a crouch and pick and move and crouch and pick and move, progression. In one really good year I picked 31 pies worth of berries.  What’s memorable about that year was that it only took me six weeks to be able to stand up straight enough to get to the table to eat the pie Judi baked for me.  This year, assuming I don’t make the mistake of picking in one place for longer than 20 seconds, I fully intend to be standing upright, eating a blueberry pie, in less than two weeks.