Ding Dong Creek
By John Luthens
On a blustery September morning, north of Clam Falls, Wisconsin and south of nowhere in the year of our Lord 2012 – I waded into the swirling magic of Ding Dong Creek and severed my connection to the modern world. My friends and family swear that it has turned me into a crazed hermit, but I’ve been stoically living off the grid ever since.
I didn’t set out to walk away from my cellular existence on purpose. It was an accident waiting to happen. Ding Dong Creek was a rumored trout hole in the furthest reaches of the Chequamegon forest that turned out to be tinier than a drainage ditch. I was forced to turn the map upside down and backwards just to crack the puzzle of choked logging lanes that guarded access to it. Matter of fact, the only big things Ding Dong Creek seemed to have going for it was the majestic bugling of transplanted elk in the distance and monstrous, ankle-twisting hillocks which were grown up like ski moguls along the banks.
Step after stumbling step, I fished into the afternoon along the wretched trickle. My trout tally remained at a solid zero. No rises, no sign of a brook trout or brown, or even a chub for that matter. I ducked fruitlessly through an endless forest of tamarack branches and chokecherry vines and sweated my way up and down more of the snarly hillocks than I cared to count.
Making matters worse, I went ass over teakettle into a maze of muskrat runways and splintered my landing net and punctured my waders when I plunged into a beaver playground of chewed spears and hidden channels. Ding Dong Creek had dialed me up long distance for a last fling before the trout season ended, and I’d lustfully picked up on the first ring, but there was seemingly nothing on the other end of the line except uncharted wild for miles in every direction.
The stillness of the Chequamegon turned deafening. The elk quit bugling and the autumn wind died down. It was as if I’d penetrated my way into the heart of a soundproof cathedral. Even the tallest branches along the red-pine ridge tops stopped their whispering, and the twisted reflection of their needles in the waters of Ding Dong Creek shone as quiet as a busted doorbell.
I found myself grabbing wildly for the security blanket of my phone in my fishing vest, hoping for a spot of reception and a familiar voice, or at the very least a rousing game of solitaire to break the silence. Patting myself down in panic, I cried out like a schoolgirl who has just had her heart broken. The pocket where I’d stowed my crutch to the outside world was torn wide open and hanging in shreds.
Through a raw trick of nature, the pocket where I kept my flies was still neatly buttoned and unscathed. Ding Dong Creek wasn’t concerned about my arsenal of fish killers. For all I know, there was never a fish in it. Ding Dong Creek wanted my cell phone. And Ding Dong Creek had snared it by underhanded force.
Nobody knew where, exactly, I was. Hell, without the GPS on my phone – I wasn’t even certain where I was. One false step back across the matted landmines and muskrat moats and I would be lying in a busted heap until a lost hunter happened across my cellular-free bones, which would likely be picked clean by a pack of marauding timber wolves or a lumbering black bear looking for a bedtime snack before hibernating for the winter.
Torn waders slopped and thumped in slow rhythm, waterlogged and heavier with every muskrat hole and tangled step back along the banks of Ding Dong Creek. My fingers flinched uncontrollably as if they were texting imaginary friends on an imaginary phone. I held conversations with monsters in the forest. I finally gave in. I began to reflect on the frantic ways that had brought me to this crossroad in life.
There comes a point in every adventurer’s life where they need to step gently to avoid spilling their marbles down the slippery banks of no return. Although I managed to climb out of Ding Dong Creek and back into civilization before dark, my marble collection did not.
I couldn’t help noticing every cell within my field of vision after I returned. People driving with phones in hand, people eating at restaurants with phones in hand. I shadowed my kids around the house and wondered aloud if their own devices weren’t glued to their eyeballs. They told me point blank to get back on track, get down to the mall, and get another phone before they called the authorities to tell them that their father had returned raving out of the wilderness and was becoming a menace to society.
I couldn’t do it. Ding Dong Creek had done more than steal my phone. It had broken something inside of me. I know how crazy it sounds, but something wild snarled out of the water that day and tore me from the hectic current of life where cell phones float like life rafts. Ding Dong Creek grabbed me by the earlobes like a child in need of a timeout and washed me back to the days when I still swung mano a mano against the curveballs of life.
I have a landline that I can still dial up without batting an eye. I have no problem using computers daily. Heck, there’s nothing I love better than plopping my butt into my easy chair and watching the football games in high-definition splendor on Sunday, so it isn’t like I’ve gone complete bonkers and leaped off the technological bridge. It’s just that it’s been seven years since I wandered into the black magic waters of Ding Dong Creek, and I’ve found that my everyday existence has turned a bit more adventurous because of it.
Silent reaches of dark pines, wild hills and menacing water: guess there are some things hidden out there that just defy explanation. Someday I might go back go back to Ding Dong Creek and call out for answers, and maybe I’ll even discover the skeletal remains of an old cellular phone. But not today. Living like an unconnected hermit seems to suit me just fine.
John Luthens is a freelance writer and photographer 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