On Monday, I walked the entire route. It was one of those perfect days to hike … the first 60-degree day of spring, sun aloft in a blue sky, birds and beasts moving about. I had to get out there and explore. Winter was a killer out here, and if you didn’t have to hunt for your food (and I didn’t), the need to go outside to wade through three-foot snow drifts was not high on the chart.The easier route around the lake trails is counter-clockwise. It’s easier because you have fewer steep grades to ascend. Some hikers say the ascents and descents even out when looked at from a go-this-way no-go-that-way argument, but I’ve hiked (and ridden motorcycles) enough at ACL that I can visualize every one of those hills. I’m right, they’re wrong.

I packed my backpack with an extra windbreaker, gloves, and a wool hate (you never know what the weather is going to do); an apple, granola bar, pumpkin seeds for lunch; and 1.5 liters of water in my trusted thirst bladder that has the hose thingy with a nipple-like end that can stick out the back of the pack for easy hydration. Beats stopping to wrench a bottle from your pack.

Back in the day, let’s say 25 years ago, wood bridges spanned each of the feeder stream found around the lake. Not anymore. The bridges required too much maintenance, and so stones mounded over culverts replaced the bridges. All except for one stream, found at the north bay. Here the stream is a good 18 feet wide. The stream is shallow at the crossing, especially during the summer. A rock path spans the stream for an easy, if semi-acrobatic walk from bank to bank. In springtime, the water is about eight inches deep. My boots come up about six inches around the ankles, and they are waterproof.

I looked into the stream like a skier observes the mogul field he (or in some cases, she) is about to tackle like a mad Beserker. There looked to be about eight or ten rocks just beneath the water line that I could negotiate. The alternative was a round-about trek that would have sent me through thickets and shit, and why do that when there’s adventure to be had. I rolled up my pant legs, stepped out onto the first rock, with my arms out to the side like a tight-rope walker. My trusted boot tread got good traction; I stepped to the next rock, still okay. The water crested just below the rim of my boot. I stepped onto the third rock, and here things turned wet. The third rock shifted and my boot plunged below the water. “Fuck this!” I yelled. (Yes, I spoke to the wind). I did a Walter Payton high-step to the opposite bank (sort of… I wouldn’t want video to surface on how I actually looked).

The water had seeped down into my boots, but not as bad as I had feared. In about a hundred yards I was wet to the toes, but not sloshing in the boot. I would go on. I would persevere!

I figured, from past experience hiking around the lake with Dracula (my dog, not Transylvania’s most valuable export), that the hike would take four hours. My plan was to rest at the 2 or 2.5 hour mark — about halfway. My designated stop was a picnick table at a beach in the President’s Bay cove. I reached that just as the 2.5 hour mark struck. Instead of the beach, I sat on a bench installed in the honor of some dead Apple Canyonites, atop the ridge of a great big silt pond that overlooks the bay. A nice spot for resting, sure, but would you honor your dead grandmother or whomever with a bench at the edge of a dredging pond?

Here was my rest. I needed the rest. My legs hurt, I was just under 2/3 of the way home. My water would hold out fine. I decided to take 25 minutes, and perhaps dry my socks a bit in the sun and warm wind. I yanked my feet from the wet boots, pulled off the socks, wrung out a tablespoon-ful of moisture, and set them of the seat edge. There they swung in the breeze.

So I ate my lunch (after using a HandyWipe to de-soil my hands) and rested in the sun. The sun had only gotten warmer, but the breeze cooled the air, which had made the hike pleasant. When summertime comes I’ll consume nearly all the water in the hydro-bladder on an around-the-lake hike. Today it was a just a day of putting miles on the boots.

Speaking of which, when I put on the now-damp-but-no-longer-wet socks, my feet felt comfortable in the boots. On I went.

I spooked lots of deer on this hike; there are so many deer at ACL now, they just do what they want and hardly spook when humans are about. They’ve gotten used to us. I spotted many hawks along the way, too; one swooped from his high-limb perch for a kill of a small rodent. I saw no snakes, but stepped over millions of downs twigs and branches that constantly played with my imagination.

When I made it past the dam, up that hill and around to the golf course, I saw the end was reachable, even if my hips were now aching, and my step was a little less sure on the uneaven ground. The last hill up to the house, I wanted to run, but I got three steps and felt my knees wanting to give out. I figured that was a sign to not run.

Sitting in the sun, getting my wind back, taking my pulse, feeling the ache of my muscles as a badge of honor, I so wanted a nice cold Heineken. But I’m on this weight loss diet and decided the extra calories were not worth the celebration. Instead, I took a long, hot shower and moaned and groaned the rest of the day.

I figure if I walked the lake route every other week, I’ll be in good shape to pick up the pace and beat my three-hour twenty-five minute time.

There is no hunting on Apple Canyon property, but there is just over the farmers’ fence. The deer know this. They’ve figured out how to stay alive over the years since Open Season had taken so many of their ancestors (don’t worry, I’m not going to get all mushy over deer kills). The problem is, there are just too many deer around.

I see eight deer out the deck-side windows right now. I think there’s two families. When I take trail hikes, I come across at least four or six deer just one hill over either way the trail leads. Across the lake, other herds exist, too. That’s just too many deer.

The herd really needs to be culled, for the benefit of the population. If something isn’t done, won’t they overpopulate, contract and transfer deadly diseases, perhaps even begin to form societies, and so turn into vindictive assholes, just like humans? I don’t know for sure, but I think there’s precedence here.

At the moment, though, all I’m thinking is, “Venison steaks tonight on the barbee!” I wonder if a BB gun pellet will pierce their hides. I can always go Rambo on them, hide beneath the leaves in the woods, awaiting one of them — a fawn — to pass and then run that baby through with one of my mom’s chef knives.

Luck for them I just had pasta for lunch, and have defrosted chicken breasts for dinner.

Out in nature, Spring’s arrival touches all the senses. The once knee-deep snow is now to just inches, with many brown patches and green stains of grass; animals are about today, first the birds—flying squawking swooping calling reporting pecking colorful lively (red-tail hawks are dive bombing the brush for fresh meat … can you taste that rodent?), then squirrels scurrying through the brush and into the trees, and the deer travel in gangs (with established pecking orders, I’ve noticed).

All are hungry, and while the bounty of Spring is not yet shown to humans, Earth’s creatures are doing just fine. There’s a smell to this not-quite-calendar Spring. It’s fresh, buoyant, the earth is undernose now. The sun warms the skin; I stood outside on the deck, feeling sunrays pull at the hairs on my arms (I doubt if Floridians can stand 35 degrees in t-shirt and sweat pants, but it feels damned skippy to me).

Later, to fill out the senses that I allude to, I’m going to go lick tree bark. I’ll get back to you on that.

I sound like some weather dot com. The snow has been the news in ACL these last few months, so the thaw is good news then, finally. I’m certainly not the news out here: all I do is sit on my ass, reading & writing. Sometimes I sit on my ass on the exercise bicycle. I’ve tried to read while spinning, and it’s sort of doable, but then one day I got really interested on this scene in a novel I’m reading, so I stopped spinning and sat in the saddle for like ten minutes. Finally I realized I could be sitting in a more comfortable chair. I guess I didn’t lose weight that day.

I’ve yet a few days to get in some XC skiing, so I think I’ll take that chance tomorrow and hit the trails. The lake looks might frozen yet — there hasn’t been a day above freezing, really, for two weeks — but March isn’t the time to die. Not this year, anyway.

The coming spring has drawn out the deer. Four of them wonder the property as I write these words. The fuckers are prolly starving after so much snow that has covered their traditional meager over-the-winter diet. Matter of fact, they do look a lot thinner than they had in December. Scrawny or not, if I had a bow & arrow, I’d like to skewer one and roast it over an open pit fire.

That is the headline for ACL Winter ‘08. Thus far, Apple Canyon has had five 6+ inch snowfalls since December ‘07; and three 8+ inch snowfalls. Plenty of 2-4 inch snowfalls in between, too. This is how winter should be.

I love it, dudes & dudettes!!!

V-Head brought out his little snowmobile, aptly named Little Red for its scarlet bonnet. It’s an ancient Yamaha nubby-track, so when you’re riding in any kind of snow depth, you have to keep the fucker gassed to avoid getting stuck in the snow. This thing gets stuck on a trail somewheres out here, that’s where you’ll find it till spring rolls around.

It’s a bright sunny day today, a piping 2 degrees … but supposed to warm up to near freezing. The forecast is for major snow tomorrow afternoon, so we’s gots ta git the funs in wore it’n lassed. (Do you like my trailer-trash talk?) I’m working off a bit of a hangover, but there’s remedies for that affliction just behind this post.

I want to give V-Head … and Jimbo, who’s on his way out now … a taste of the small town pub scene, so I’m taking them to Pop-a-Tops at lunchtime for a Thumb Burger, beer fries, and $1.50 beers. Can’t beat that with a two-foot stick.

(more photos are to come!!)

Color combats this suddenly felt disorientation of whitewhitewhite. Today, I picked up an African Violet that grows in a small gold-painted pot, I put in against the window, and a joyous feeling crept into me when those pail violet petals burst through the snowy background. There is no wonder, my oft-historical mind thinks, that poetry grew from such beauty, contrasts of nature, metaphor for life and all it gives.

Poetry is replete with images that burst into a fertile mind – hell, even the television-addled mind – where they make emotion come to life because what comes from the page is what we all feel at some time in our lives. If you’re lucky, you get to feel every emotion on a weekly basis.

I got up, shuffled to the slider at the porch—this time my glasses stuck atop my nose—and pulled back the drapes. All I could think of was, “I wish I was a little kid, cuz then rotten school would be closed but mom & dad would be at work so I can go sledding and have a snowball fight and jump off the garage roof into a snowdrift and … shit! … maybe even die!!!!!! (or at least break my leg but that would suck cuz then I couldn’t go skiing i want to ski i want to ski iwanttoski).

So anyway, I put my contacts in, donned winter gear, complete with ski goggles and warm gloves with the little wrist thingies so I could take photos without losing my gloves in the snow … and I took a long walk-hike-trudge through the snow. I guess I could have used the XC skis, but the snow is 2-feet deep in the drifts and, as fun as that would be, funner is the effort it takes to yank my leg out of the snow from knee-deep depths. Think of Walter Payton high-stepping into the end-zone. Yeah, that would be me, more or less. Now snow shoes would be ideal…great for a good, long hike in these blizzard conditions.

The best thing about walking around in a blizzard in ACL? I know where I’m going even in white-out conditions, so likely won’t die. See, if I had died, I wouldn’t be writing these words. So save the lectures.

The white stuff is coming down steadily hard. It’s 11 a.m., and forecasts predict it will continue like this till around 3 p.m. At about 1 inch per hour (that’s 2.5 cm for all my euro-metric friends), I’m looking at another 4 inches to fill in my sledding tracks and cover the bit that I shoveled just for kicks and to give y’all perspective (do you like how I easily drop into southern-speak? Yeah, I thought you would).

BTW… yesterday I finished writing a complete draft of my novel. I’m happy.

Now if only the wine and liquor hold out — and food — till I can get to the store on Friday.

When I stand outside I hear the wind rustle the tops of trees, the finger-size branches way up high click together like pick-up-sticks dropped on asphalt.

Otherwise it’s quiet. And Ra gets ready to settle into a cool bath, his breath a bouquet of lemon, strawberry, and violet.

XC … for the unknowning numpties … is best when you have tracks to ski on. I had to make my own tracks today, so my pace was slow going out toward the numb-fuck farmers ice fishing out toward the center of the lake. I made it about a 1/3 of a mile, turned around so I could cruise on those tracks, and got up a good ski pace.

I was so refreshed when I got back to the dock that I decided to keep up the workout. So I performed a step-over and headed back out on those firm tracks. Now I was cooking!

Passing the end point from the first run, I pushed on at least twice as far, nearly to the fishing farmers. My legs and arm muscles burned! I made a long loop so that when I come out in the future I have a good track. Then I really put some hip and shoulder into the trek back.

I’m exhausted. I need brandy. More brandy.

a MARK self portrait (©2008, all rights reserved)