I take pleasure

There's a crevice in my oak desk that catches my pencil when I draw. Rubbed with graphite it makes a long, tidy row.










I take pleasure in orderly crop rows, lines of young peas arching lyrically over a hill, tasseled corn tops like sentinels prepared for march. These patterns are marked deeply in me. They’re the aesthetic of my first 22 years.

Home was south-central Minnesota. At 19 I spent three months employed by the agricultural superhero of the Midwest. The Jolly Green Giant handed me a set of keys to a pick-up truck and a map of colossal proportions. I was sent out to collect writhing, fluttering specimens from a patchwork of fields that blanket the lower third of the state.

My job title was Pest Control Technician. On less aggrandizing terms, I was a lowly bug collector. I hunted corn borers, stink bugs and cutworms, then plucked them from their homes on the underside of cornstalks and pea shoots. With the glass jar beside me in the passenger seat, I rattled back over gravel roads, through sleepy townships and back to headquarters in Le Seuer, MN.

Bark-eaters

Before we left Seattle Stef gave us guidebook to the Adirondack Park. It made good reading during all the long hours in the moving truck. We learned that Adirondack takes its name from the Iroquois word ha-de-ron-dah which translates as bark-eater. It was an insult; a name for the Algonquins who lived in the region where the Iroquois travelled to hunt, fish and gather plants. So, our new local wilderness area was named after a late prehistoric slam. But you've got to give those Algonquins some credit; they were resourceful.

Today we took our first hike in the park. We started out in Wanakena and walked the flat path (a former railroad bed) to High Rock. We picnic-ed on the river and saw five canoes during our short lunch break. To our dismay, the wild blueberries we'd read about had already been found by some other resourceful hikers.