Fencerows: Shelter in the Eye of the Storm
By John Luthens
Monday dawned grey and chilly outside and endlessly monotonous inside. Tuesday started out the same. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon that the storm clouds of labor parted. Wednesday offered potential. There might just be an eye-blink in the storm before the clouds closed back and buried me again in pounding torrents of work.
I checked the radar on my work computer. A band of red and purple was slashing down through northern Wisconsin. For the uninitiated, this was potentially the swirling colors of a troubling forecast, but I’m a trout fisherman, not a meteorologist. I had my own issues. There was a certain spot nagging in the back of my mind
I had one day. I wasn’t lugging around waders in the back of my truck for nothing. The misty clouds outside began to give up a gentle drizzle. I left the strange colors swirling on the computer screen and headed north for the eye of the storm.
A hemlock forest tosses in the eye of a storm in Oconto County
It was late when I skidded through cold rain and into the heart of the Nicolet National Forest in Oconto County. I squished through frost boils and up a gravel road to the small cabin beneath an awning of hemlocks. The dogs set up a racket, and two old friends came out to see who in their right mind would be out and about on such a night.
“Ah, might have known you’d be rolling through here sooner or later. Have you eaten yet? We’ve got more venison steaks in the freezer than we know what to do with. The frying pan is still greased up. Weather’s calling for rain, snow and high winds. Guess that won’t stop you. Let’s start a fire in the hearth and get the maps out.”
It seems like I’ve known Sheri and Tom forever. No matter how many times I trudge in unannounced, it always seems they are expecting me. Without their hospitality, I would have slept in my truck on many a night. They are in harmony with the call of the outdoors. They know what it means when you simply have to get away.
Morning came in the eye of the storm. Thunder rolled in the distance and sleet pounded the windowpane as I made my way from the cabin and into a dreamscape of dripping hemlocks. Lakes were slated in honeycombed ice and creeks overflowed their banks. The boundary line between rain and snow was blurred.
A stormy flood of water on the Oconto River’s south branch.
There was swampland and northern forest and rain. All thoughts of work and civilized life disappeared as I geared up on the banks of the Oconto River’s south branch. The rain turned to snowflakes as big as golf balls. Then it switched back to rain. Early trout season doesn’t recognize weather boundaries.
The Oconto River is a place of sheltered hemlocks. The water is stained dark and is home to the wary brown trout. In summer, the ripples and runs can be waded from midstream. Now, the river was bursting at its seams. The wind picked up through the pines as the rain passed. There were no sounds to be heard except the roaring of the water and the roaring of the wind.
I waded into the flood until the water lapped at my wader tops. I missed a strike as my streamer fly was swept from the rushing currents and beneath a fallen log. I was barely 10 yards from the bank. I was nervous, that’s what I told myself when I missed the fish. The wind came stronger and a hemlock branch tore loose and splashed into the water behind me. I backtracked carefully onto overhung bank and moved on.
I rested from the wind and rain below a sheltered ridge of maples. Sap ran down the trees in a frothy stream. I dipped my finger in the foam. It didn’t taste like syrup. It tasted like tree bark. It was still better than eating lunch in the break room at work. I laughed and went back to the river.
I managed to land one fish. I weighted my fly down with split shot and stepped carefully along a submerged log. The brown was resting in the back current below. It was only 10 inches but surprisingly fat around the middle. It was all I could do to release the fish without falling off my log perch. I felt as wet and cold as the trout. I called it a successful day.
Watery sap foams down the base of a tree trunk.
Walking back through the hemlocks, five deer stepped out of a low draw. They couldn’t smell or hear in the high wind. They may have run me over, but a large branch snapped off a tree and cracked like a shotgun blast. The deer fled and I nearly jumped out of my waders. I re-evaluated and called it a very successful day.
I spent a final night in my friend’s cabin. We ate more venison and discussed the world’s politics by the fire. Those politics seemed far removed. Snow sparkled on the hemlocks and the stars were bright above as I lit out at an unholy hour for the pile of work that waited. I’d ventured into the eye of the storm for a single day, but I knew it was more than enough to see me through.
John Luthens is a freelance writer from Grafton, Wisconsin. His first novel, Taconite Creek, is available on Amazon or at www.cablepublishing.com or by contacting the author at Luthens@hotmail.com