Author: Steve Hill

A few pictures of a Wisconsin jewel

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The Ice Age Trail is one of our state’s finest assets, and to support it, I took part in the annual Hike-a-Thon presented by the Portage and Waupaca County chapters the Ice Age Trail Association.

I also wrote about it for the Portage County Gazette, an article that the paper chose to put behind a paywall as it moves toward its internet pay model.  Because of what may have been a boneheaded error on my part, my original version got corrupted and I had to reconstruct the entire piece from memory — and in a hurry.   I think it still came out well, but before too long I may publish the text of the two pieces side by side as a means of analyzing, for my students, the writing process a little more.

In any event, I’ve posted some extra pictures of my Saturday walk right here.  I hope they inspire you to visit and support the trail either in Central Wisconsin or in some other part of our great state.

 

Rain may fall, but Mead keeps rising above

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I recently made my second trip over to the George Mead Wildlife Area, choosing to visit parts of this place I already know a little bit over exploring a new outdoor site.  It worked out well.  Here’s my Portage County Gazette column about my walk, with a few extra pictures thrown in below.

Honestly, it’s a pretty good place

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Sometimes ideas go well together when only one of them might stand on its own.

I had a column idea about a line I wrote that wasn’t quite truthful, but not really inaccurate, either.  The idea was probably a little too abstract to stand on its own, but after visiting with Jim Buchholz and Megan Espe at the Schmeeckle Reserve about the Ron Zimmerman Prairie dedication, I realized there was a common thread between my column idea and the prairie: the value of mindfulness in nature, something Ron’s career was all about.

So here’s a link to the column, along with a couple of extra pictures of the prairie added below.

Introducing Les Rob Peeples

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Les Rob Peeples asks: Parks — who needs ’em?

So I have a new buddy who wrote me a letter at the Gazette.  (And you can read the whole thing here, although the paywall is apparently coming soon.)

Lester Robert Peeples, who goes by Les Rob to his friends, seems a little too crazy to believe. Funny, though — a lot of folks who write letters are that way.  They come off as caricatures, but we’ve got a caricature running for president and a lot of people ready to vote that way, so we can probably forgive ourselves for being confused about the line between reality and bad dreams.

Les Rob appears to be even more reactionary and libertarian than some of our more pronounced public wackos.  He clearly needs to brush up on his geography and his college football.  Still, I’ve got a feeling he may surprise some people — assuming that he is real, or at least that we hear from him again.

 

And now for a return from blogging vacation

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[Update and disclaimer: it seems the Gazette is finally headed toward a pay wall, and it wasn’t my intent to trick people into buying a subscription; however, I’d already published the post, so rather than take it down, I’ve just added this note and will figure out what happens with my columns next, as we haven’t discussed it. But for the time being, it looks like this was a test and a few of my future columns will still be completely accessible.]

Along about April, I just got a bit worn out and stopped posting for a while.  Some of that probably had to do with the stuff I was posting.

I’ve mostly sworn off the political commentary, and I’ll be focusing a whole lot more on all the fun stuff I get to do from now on.  Some of the other will slip in here and there, as you’ll see if you’re intrepid enough to read my Sept. 8 Gazette column.  It’s about what happens when you let work get to you and how a good bike or boat ride helps cure it all.

And there are a couple of extra photos, just for fun.  Great to be out on the water with my son, Sam, and my friend, former student, and editor Nate Enwald — because he doesn’t like me to call him “boss.”