Musky and Eagles Boulder Junction, Wisconsin Day 69 - August 10, 2002 (continued)  Back   |   Next

After a pine grove siesta in a Boulder Junction Park I examine my bike. Grease my chain, check my brakes, and I wipe it clean of grime. This town has the only bike shop for miles and I think it prudent to make sure my bike is ready for another long stretch of road. And guess what? The rear wheel needs to be trued once again. I'm off to the bike shop to get my rear wheel trued (so that the wheel does not continually rub the rear breaks and keep slowing me down). As I peddle onwards another cyclist approaches me from behind. She asks me where I'm from and where I'm going. She tells me about this weekend's Musky Jamboree. Sounds like a real hoot, but I have to get my wheel trued and then I'll be moving on. We talk as we ride into town. I ask her more about the Musky Jamboree. It is a good old time. They give you "the Taste of Musky," and they have live music, and a flea market, and there is an arts and crafts fest. Good times, but I'm on my way to Minneapolis. And then I realize that I'm ignoring the call to adventure. Boulder Junction: The Musky Capital of the World! Heather Shadur invites me to stay the weekend at her family's "compound." The very word she uses to describe her family's vacation getaway home evokes images of guns and militia flags. Compound? She tells me about her family's summerhouse on White Beach Lake. It used to be a resort until her father bought the property so that his family would always have a woodland haven to escape from the Chicago daily grind. Now her sister, Jen and her husband and children, as well as her grandparents were in town for the weekend. And I would be welcome to set up camp in their yard and use their place as base of operations to explore the Northwoods of Wisconsin. I accept her invitation on condition that she shows me her favorite cycling routes. Matt on a Northwoods Trail As I write this her white cat, Lucy, leaps into my lap and looks into my journal. "Lucy's watching what I write," I say. "Be careful," Heather says, "she's a spy." Before we came back to the compound, Heather phoned her sister, Jennifer Rubin, and told her that she is "bringing a biker home." When she tells me this I can only imagine her poor sister at the other end of the line, going crazy with images of tattoos, leather, and body piercings grinding through her head. Apparently this is normal for Heather and the family is not surprised when I walk into the cabin and meet them, including their grandfather Milton and his wife Eleanor. Cycling the Northwoods of Wisconsin with Heather Shadur I can easily see how this land, the Wisconsin Northwoods, calls to this family, calling them back every year, calling them away from the golden arches, gas stations, strip malls, and sprawl of Chicagoland. Here the land is alive with a primal vibrance that no city park could ever hope to recreate, where old trees sway in the breeze, and lakes and rivers ripple and flow, and clouds march across the sky, and all nature is without perceptible beginning or end. Before dinner, the sisters take Jake, Spencer (Jen's sons) and I on a boat ride across the lake where we land upon a secluded beach. As we lounge in the sun warmed shallows the kids frolic and we talk. We see a lone loon chilling out, basking in the lake before the sun and occasionally diving in search of dinner. Jen and Heather tell me about an eagle they saw yesterday. The eagle was taking her fledgling out for flying lessons. I listen but I am not as excited about it as they are. I have never seen an eagle and it is all too abstract for me (as an East Coast suburbanite) to picture. Besides, I had read recently that eagles usually come out only at dawn or dusk. Looking up at the sky as they tell me about they eagle all I see is blue sky. Building sandcastles sounds more practical than eagle seeking. The last sandcastle I had built was a sorcerer's citadel. I was in UNITAS, a Marine Special Operations unit on its way to South America. We were bivouacking on the Isle of Thorns near Puerto Rico. It was forlorn beach lagoon and we had time to kill before returning to the USS Whidbey Island. Marines dove into the Caribbean and I built a sandcastle. My good friend, Henry Lazarus Posadas, the Cuban scam artist and self-proclaimed, "pimp-mackdaddy of 1st platoon" trampled over my work like a Godzilla sized Speedy Gonzalez. I had gotten up and- "Hey, Matt! Look! It's the eagle!" Somebody says. The eagle comes in from the east, swooping down on an invisible slide from afar, black at first, to me no more indistinguishable than any other large bird. But perhaps it is the majestic and grim purpose of its glide, more meaningful than any mere crow or buzzard's haphazard circle, shriek, and windhike that intrigue my eyes. I watch closely. The black shadow becomes more real. As it comes closer we see its white, regal, Captain Picard baldhead and white tail. We wonder if it is going to come closer--and then it glides over and beyond us--with a flicker of silver fish scales flapping in its talons--before flying past, onwards to the west over the tree line, and then it is gone--and we are left amazed and somebody says, "They usually don't ever come that close." We stare at a patch of woods where the eagle has disappeared hoping it will favor us with another flyby. On this first night of meeting the Shadurs, we feast at the Waldheim Room at Hintz's North Star Lodge, once the Wisconsin retreat of lumber and railroad barons of the late 1890s. Later that night I fall asleep beneath the stars as an owl hoots into the Northwoods night.