Sangre de Cristo Mountain Works

Every memorial day I have the opportunity to leave our beautiful high mountain playground in the Sangre de Cristo’s and return to the north-woods of Wisconsin for a few days to help my mom open her cabin for the summer. I am always thrilled to return to the land where my deep love of the outdoors was born paddling the tannic and wild Peshtigo and Manitowish rivers. Canoe tripping for days through the boundary waters and exploring the endless Nicolet National Forest on foot and ski, one of the largest in our country comprising nearly a million acres of deciduous and coniferous forests shaped and arranged during the planets last ice age.

These woods and waters although familiar have changed as I have lived in the west for seventeen years. When I go back and explore deep into these woods in search of water that will hold the elusive and prehistoric Brook Trout (not actually a Trout but a Char), the adventures become deep, disorienting and at times thrilling for the sake of the pure adventure. I like to walk alone into the wilderness to bare my soul. With the recent reintroduction of wolves and the new return of cougars as well as the common black bear and cub this time of year in Northeastern Wisconsin, a lone traveler through these dense forests is given much to think about and little to reference. The forest floor covered in trillium, fiddle head firms and jack in the pulpit, a rare and unique member of the lily family. These woods are magical and alive.

I am on my way a hidden spring fed stream in the heart of the Nicolet forest which takes about an hour by foot bushwhacking through tick infested hardwood forest. A small speck of a stream on the map I fished here when I was younger and heading this far into the woods then seemed perfectly normal, now age, responsibility and time have made me more cautious and at points the walk seemed headlong, perhaps foolish. As I walked, the woods are alerted to my presence by squirrels and birds calling out “stranger in the woods”. I have never really considered myself a stranger in the woods as I have skied, climbed, paddle and packed in more places than I care to name. For some reason this cackling from above perhaps for the first time held a remote hint of truth and a touch of mocking, have I become a stranger in the woods, a thought that would haunt me for the day and force me to think about mandatory wilderness immersion to escape our turbo charged screen filled life. I am surprised I can focus on anything bigger than a 12-inch screen.

After walking through the forest in a balmy 87 degrees and full humidity I arrived at the secret spot where the river of my childhood pressed hard against an oxbow undercutting ancient Cedars planted during the Wisconsin glaciations. Over head the dense canopy of Oak, Maple, Ash and Cedar. The cool tannic water bubbled over the Precambrian rock on the streams bottom. Against the sand patched bottom I can see the shadow of a brook trout hanging in the current watching for any passing fair. It was like it had been right there hanging in that same spot for twenty years, maybe twenty thousand years perhaps two hundred thousand years. The rhythm’s are circadian and this place unchanged perhaps un inhabited since my last visit, I sat on a great granite boulder along the river deposited erratically like a sculpture in the middle of know where. I sit and listen.

It is in these deep and secret spots that we too can return to our own nature and our own sense of wildness. I feel small amongst the forest but in awe of the majestic artistry of this great creation that leaves one to believe that divinity is evidenced only here away from the industrialized world. Sitting I here the pounding of the palliated woodpecker, the constant screech of peeper frogs, far above a bald eagle circles and somewhere something is watching me, I can feel it, it is primal. After sitting and taking in the cacophonous sound of the forest, I set about to tying a small fly to my line to sample and view my favorite of the freshwater fish the ancient brook. After smashing the barbs of my hooks I set a light cast upon the oxbow bend. The filtered light from the canopy of the great forest creates light play on the water as my parachute Adams flickers in and out of pockets of light making its way towards the eager prey. The fly drifts over and immediately like the strike of a snake, the fish eats the fly. I gently visit with this amazing deep woods fish dark green with colorful blue, red and yellow spots with fire orange hits on its belly, no fish dresses finer in my book. I release him to the pool and in that same ancient rhythm he returns to carry on business in the oxbow now just like twenty thousand years ago.

Like the fish, I have to return to my business and own circadian rhythm. I am filled with calmness and the pure feeling of joy for having taken this moment to convene alone in nature, just for a while. Like a battery, I believe that the day-to-day grind of the technological, industrial world is a drain. This moment to stop, look and listen will hopefully fill my battery and keep the light of inspiration burning to return again and again to my place in the woods much the same way the brook trout returned to its sand spot on the long oxbow bend. I am haunted by the wilderness and at times deafened by its call.

Kent Little