Introducing John Luthens
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| OWO columnist John Luthens |
Remember that back-to-school essay the teacher always assigned?
It seemed straightforward enough. Something along the lines of five hundred words describing what you did over summer vacation.
The problem wasn’t the essay itself. It wasn’t too difficult chopping together a loosely based theme of, “I hung around with my friends doing stuff.” Five hundred words was nothing, especially if you used as many word fillers, like “a”, “the”, and “but”, as the English language would tolerate.
The problem was that writing the essay always paled in comparison to the actual experiences. Summer was over, and it was fast becoming a distant glow like the summer sun dropping below the horizon. Gone were the endless days at the beach or swimming pool, where your skin slowly turned a darker shade of brown with each revolution of the cosmic spheres. It was only yesterday when you were running through fields and forest, or park to park, exploring what the summer days were serving up, inventing games in the neighborhood or simply fishing in a pond for the monsters you knew must lurk below but were never able to catch.
It seemed so endless back then. I could just step out the back door, and I’d be gone, with long days stretching from dawn till dark. How could it have gone so fast-and how do you tell it in five hundred words? I always bit off more than I could chew in the summer. So when it came time for that first homework assignment in the fall, I panicked. I couldn’t tell it like it was. I settled for a loose summary of, “Hanging around with my friends and doing stuff.”
I’m older and wiser now-older at least. Summers still hold the allure for me. Through these columns, I’ll try to make up for all the suspect essays I religiously turned in every first week of school so many years ago. You can come with. You can copy off my paper if you’d like, but I’ll warn you that I’m that kid who would probably jump off a bridge into the swimming hole just because so-and-so jumped off. I’d just jump from higher up. Maybe I’d better tell you a little about myself first.
I grew up in Barron County, attending school all the way to my graduation from good old Barron High School. It was a fine town to grow up in: one of those small places that you couldn’t wait to get out of after high school (truthfully, there were a lot of locals in town who couldn’t wait for me to get out either) but then, after life has tossed you around for a while, you find there are fine nostalgic memories of growing up there, and it seems like the perfect place to raise your own family.
The local Barron paper ran a story about a bear sighted roaming the streets a couple of weeks ago. Interestingly enough, the school name and mascot is the bears. The city police think the bear is targeting bird feeders. Also interestingly enough, there is now a McDonald’s restaurant in my old home town. It wasn’t there when I was growing up, and I never saw a bear in town-I had to drive all the way to Rice Lake for fast food. What did the City Fathers think was going to happen when they started cooking hamburgers and fries in the middle of Barron?
I shot my first grouse on the wing in Barron County. I scared it into flight with a shout, from underneath a bright red sumac bush, not more than a half mile from my house. It was my first act of sportsmanship, as far as I can recall, because I easily could have ground-swatted it.
I missed my first buck in Barron County, and my second, and my third. It didn’t matter-I was pulled in by the thrill of the sport.
I started trout fishing on the area streams-taught to do it by my father. I’ve since branched out all over the state with my trout rods in tow. I’ve fished famous streams, and I’ve fished days in feeder creeks that might not have ever had a fish in them.
I love fly fishing, but I’m not a purist. I’ll fish for anything. I’ll spend weeks at a time arching majestic casts over a sprawling river, then turn around and dunk a night crawler without batting an eye. Beauty is as beauty does. I’m especially partial to the lowly bluegill.
My home waters are on the south shore streams of Lake Superior. I spent summers there growing up, staying in a small cabin near the Bois Brule River. There is another cabin there now, on the fringes of the Brule River State Forest, and only a back road or two from the sprawling Chequamegon wilderness. I’ll sometimes refer to it as “My Cabin,” although technically it’s my Mom’s, being that she lives there and makes the payments. No matter-I think I’m always welcome-and anyway, I know where she hides the key.
I work in Oshkosh, a stones throw from the shores of Lake Winnebago. I love to prowl the shores, sometimes my friends will even allow me in their boats. As one of my friends puts it, “Lake Winnebago is a dang fish factory.” He’s also the same guy who hushes me up when we find a willing school of perch from his boat. He looks suspiciously over his shoulder at any other fishermen in the area, and gives me the glare that my parents used to use when I started acting up in church.
I make my home in Grafton. The traveling sometimes becomes a little convoluted. I’m partial to sleeping in a tent when night finds me, but the back of my truck has been known to work out just fine too. I somehow manage to navigate back and forth, over and through the state, and still maintain my job, not to mention a respectable amount of civility at home.
I believe in Global Positioning Satellites, because I’ve seen them flying through a starlit sky from my sleeping bag in the back of my truck. For me, a compass and a map usually amount to the same thing as G.P.S., except I get lost more often, which is half the fun anyway.
Politically, I stand for anything that will get me out of mowing the lawn in the summer when the fish are biting. I also take a hard line against raking the leaves on a crisp fall day when there’s fresh buck scrapes on the alders. I’ll endorse anyone who takes me to their secret spot, or shares what color lure the walleyes are hitting on.
If I had to adopt one motto to live by, I would choose a quote from outdoor writer and fly-fisherman Robert Traver, from his famous litany, “Testament of a Fisherman”:
“I fish…not because I regard fishing as being so terribly important but because I suspect that so many of the concerns of men are equally unimportant-and not nearly so much fun.”
I could go on, but that quote pretty much says it all. I guess five-hundred word essays are overrated. The sun is shining out the back door. Summer is here. It looks promising. I’m just going to step outside for a moment. I’ll probably be back before dark.