Venizia: a few snapshots

Ornate, ornament, excentric ornamentality: San Marco, pictured at the left, just before sunset. The pink of the streetlamps, the rose of the setting sun's lingering late afternoon light on the Church & adjoining buildings. Already, this luxurious sight seems far. For Doug Stirling & I headed off to Venizia for a long weekend this past weekend, & now what I have left are great photos, better memories & some fabulous souvenirs (in all the sense of that word). For here, I thought I would share a few of my pics from our explorations of the gorgeous island and waters... Perhaps to bring a little ornamentality to your pre-holidays, or invite dreams of future treks to this island of mysteries.

First off, heading out into the night for a Venetian specialty--their local cocktail called a "Spritz" (I found a lovely NYT article about its exportation to elsewhere--read about it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/dining/06spritz.html . As the author explains, the Spritz--which ends up being orange or red--is campari (red) or aperol (orange, and what Doug & I are drinking in the pictures above) + white wine & selzer water. The place we were frequenting also adds some ice, a slice of orange and a large olive on a stick. The olive is peculiar with the sweet, but I dug it. Wish I could stop off for a SPRITZ after work tomorrow!!!!

We rode the boat-bus up and down the Grande Canale from our Hotel near Ferrovia to the Piazza San Marco & many other stops. We also walked it many a time--but the boat was in and of itself a little adventure where we took tons of gorgeous photos of gondoliers...

There is perhaps no tourist-track path in Venizia without its mask shop or mask maker. Of course, most are run of the mill, with their charm for us banal tourists, but there are some spectacular handmade mask shops which I am sure really shine round Carnivale time. For us, it was just a time to admire & consider masks as Christmas gifts...
One of my favorite things was to look into the brightly lit shops after dark. To see regular people & tourists buying breads and cheeses & many other wonderful tasty items. Here are a few shots spying into shops! Of course, this is also because Doug & I were often found giving into our sweet tooth! And who wouldn't? With finely chocolate-layered nougat, pastriies, & many other sweets--from chocolates to almond & amaretto goodies--to tempt us. Here are just a few images of those--note the Christmas cakes are out! And the candied chestnuts, too. In the last of these 3 pics of sweets, see the mini cannoli--this was my favorite! Just a little, not too much! Sunsets are nothing but spectacular when you are by the sea. And to combine sea & the Venetian architcture was like an opera set ondulating between cloud and waves. So, to end, a closing day, then a little moon over Venizia. It is likely there right now. And of course night fog & dark bridges through winding streets as someone else wends their way home to their hotel room--& I return to my work!

Jennifer K Dick’s forthcoming publications & upcoming events

FORTHCOMING publications & upcoming events!
(pre-orders always welcome by the presses & magazines that support our work!)

POETRY:
I) Book :
Circuits (Corrupt Press, Paris) forthcoming in January/February 2012. http://corruptpress.net/ (you can subscribe to their newsletter & get info on this as it appears, as well as be notified of other books & chapbooks--like Michelle Noteboom's!)

II) DUSIE Kollectiv 5 chapbook Tracery ONLINE:
Tracery, my 2011 chapbook with handmade covers, hand stitched, with color images inside it, is now visible online with the Dusie Kollectiv site: http://www.dusie.org/issue12.html Just click the image and then find my name on the right & click it to view the pdf. SO SO many others to read, tooo--it has been a beautiful experience being part of Dusie's Kollectiv!

III) Art poetry chapbook:
with visual artist and bookmaker Kate Van Houten (Estepa Editions, January 2012). This will be Kate and my second book together, as Retina/Rétine has sold out!

III) Poems in the forthcoming issue of The Denver Quarterly :
“Three poems from Anywhere Apparently” (by Amanda Deutch and Jennifer K Dick), including:
“I Suppose it is a Symphony of Metal, Urban and Maladroit” (AD),
“Nothing more to do but whine” (JKD)
and
“Neither the consort nor king called her Eurydice on the rock pricking up an ear” (JKD).

To subscribe to DQ or order a copy: http://www.denverquarterly.com/
and subscriptions at: http://www.denverquarterly.com/subscriptions.cfm


ARTICLES / CRITICAL WRITINGS (in English & French):
I) Regular column in Tears in the Fence:
Forthcoming later this month in issue 54: Of tradition and experiment VI: A reading of She, A Blueprint by Michelle Naka-Pierce with images by Sue Hammond West (BlazeVOX Books, 2011, isbn 978-1-60964-060-6) in Tears in The Fence, issue N° 54, fall 2011. http://llpp.ms11.net/tears.html for ordering and subscription info. To keep up on all things TITF, join the TITF group on FB at: http://www.facebook.com/groups/2307588990/?ref=ts

Published in issue 53: Of tradition and experiment V: one independent small press, “Futurepoem books”, keeps redefining the reading experience. Published in Tears in The Fence, issue N° 53, spring 2011, issn 0266 5816. The photo at the left is of Hannah Silva from her blog post which reviews this particular issue of TITF. To read her blog post, go to: http://hannahsilva.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/tears-in-the-fence/ To order: contact David Caddy via http://llpp.ms11.net/tears.html

II) For DRUNKEN BOAT
Three book reviews in Drunken Boat issue 15, forthcoming online in Dec 2011 or January 2012: http://www.drunkenboat.com/
1) The Pros and Cons of Against Expression: An Anthology of Conceptual Writing by Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith (Northwestern UP, Evanston, IL, 2011, isbn #978-0-8101—2711-1) This is a really really really LONG review!

2) A review of Laura Mullen’s Dark Archive (University of California Press, New California Poetry Series 2011, ISBN 978-0-520-26886-9)

3) A review of Josie Foo and Leah Stein’s A Lily Lilies (Nightboat books, 2011 isbn 978-0-9844598-5-8)

+ I will be posting on Drunken Boat’s site—watch for my “what I am reading” post which goes up Dec 2nd at the latest! http://www.drunkenboat.com/ to read the current post on what Yerra Sugerman is reading!

Forthcoming: joint dialogue in Drunken Boat issue 16 (out in summer 2012):
Jonathan Regier and Jennifer K Dick discuss Ronaldo V. Wilson's POEMS OF THE BLACK OBJECT (Futurepoem Books, 2009)

III) Under Consideration:
French article (acte du colloque) under submission, thus awaiting reply:
La revue de Pierre Albert-Birot : SIC prend l’extrême pointe de l’avant-garde pendant la première guerre mondiale

EVENTS: Upcoming events:
I) DUTCH POETRY FESTIVAL
I will be reading from my work as part of the Dutch Poetry Festival, January 26, 2012 in Utrecht, Holland! Keep your eyes out for more information about this on my blog, but also via the festival sites on:
http://www.gedichtendag.com/
http://www.huisvandepoezie.nl/
http://www.centraalmuseum.nl/

EDITING & ORGANIZING Work:
I) Editorial work:
We are still reading work for VERSAL Magazine 10, and hope that if you have some poetry, prose or artwork seeking publication you will consider us for your work! See: for guidelines and to order a copy of fabulous Versal 9: http://www.wordsinhere.com/versal.html

II) JURY pour une résidance d'écrivain:d'artiste à la KUNSTHALLE:
We are also reading for the residency for a FRENCH writer that will be with la Kunsthalle in Mulhouse and UHA with the SUAC. We seek a writer interested in the intersections between text & image. For further information on how to apply, see: http://kunsthallemulhouse.com/documents/RESIDENCE-UNIVERSITAIRE-Appel-a-candidature.pdf Date limite de candidature: le 12 déc 2012 pour une résidance qui aura lieu en mars et mai 2012!

III) COLLOQUE Station 2 Station:
If you are around Mulhouse or Dijon, décembre 1-2 2011: please join us for our conference STATION to STATION! http://station2stationcolloquenomade.blogspot.com/ for the programme and info on reserving your billet! This is Didier Girard’s baby, but Frederique Tudoire-Surlapierre and I are the co-organizers.

IV) Ecrire l’art continues in 2012 with, next up:
Virginie Poitrasson à la Kunsthalle, Mulhouse du 15 au 19 février 2012
Pour plus, voir la Kunsthalle: http://www.kunsthallemulhouse.fr/

V) Ivy Writers Paris plans on getting back on track with:
A January 2012 event featuring Alice Notley. Keep your eye on our blog for further info: http://ivywritersparis.blogspot.com/
And please join our new Facebook group!: http://www.facebook.com/groups/101898279922603/
To see a little post from our recent IVY Writers Paris reading with VERSAL Magazine & Lars Palm as a guest with Poets-Live series, esp to admire some pics, click this link to the: VERSAL BLOG POST about the event.

La Kunsthalle - Ecrire L'Art

ECRIRE L'ART: A READING EVENT WITH JERÔME MAUCHE SHARING NEW WORK IN PROGRESS WRITTEN AFTER THE ART SHOW BY BENOÎT MAIRE:

le 6 nov à 15h à la KUNSTHALLE, 16 rue de la fonderie, Mulhouse

I am THRILLED to let you know about the first of 3 short residencies entitled ECRIRE L'ART that I have helped organized this year thanks to, with and at the gorgeous contemporary art space La Kunsthalle of Mulhouse.

We are bringing authors to Mulhouse to write & perform!

The first mini-residency is underway right now, with Jérôme Mauche (pictured above and to the right at tonight's lovely Kunstapéro--visiting the Benoït Maire show and already scribbling some notes).

You are ALL INVITED this SUNDAY to the finale! As the press release announcement explains it:

WRITING ART:
This new series of invitations is part of the Kunsthalle’s project to explore mediation. All season long, it will unite writers and exhibitions.

In the form of four day long “mini-residencies”, a contemporary author will be invited to immerse themselves in the universe of the exhibition being presented by the Kunsthalle and to write after or about the works shown. Dialogues, creations, collaborations, visual and sound poetry, texts and linguistic expressions will allow us to visit, see, conceive of and re-experience the works brought to life in the visiting author’s specific language. The residency will close with a public reading-performance in the exhibition space.

The first author, invited to write after Benoît Maire’s art, will be Jérôme Mauche.

Born in 1965, Jérôme Mauche lives in Paris and teaches at à l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts of Lyon. He is the author of over a dozen books. He also directs the poetry collection Les grands soirs for Les petits matins publishers and organizes the reading series Poésie Plate-forme at the Fondation d'entreprise Ricard in Paris. For more:

RDV: WRITING ART (ECRIRE L’ART)Sunday the 6th of November at 3pm
Reading performance by JérômeMauche
Free entry

AT : La Kunsthalle
Upstairs at the right upon entering La Fonderie
16 rue de la Fonderie

http://www.kunsthallemulhouse.com/

Écrire l’art 2011-2012
Ce nouveau cycle d’invitations inédites s’inscrit dans le projet de recherche de la Kunsthalle autour de la médiation. Il réunit tout au long de la saison des écrivains et des expositions. Sous la forme de « mini-résidences » de quatre jours, un auteur contemporain s’immergera dans l’univers d’une exposition présentée à la Kunsthalle et composera autour des œuvres exposées. Dialogues, créations, collaborations, poésies visuelles et sonores, textes et expressions permettront de visiter, voir, concevoir et revoir les œuvres à travers le langage spécifique de l’écrivain. Une lecture-performance publique sera proposée dans l’espace d’exposition à l’issu de leur résidence.

Le premier écrivain invité à composer autour de l’œuvre de Benoît Maire est Jérôme Mauche.

Né en 1965, Jérôme Mauche vit à Paris et enseigne à l’École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Lyon. Il est l’auteur d’une douzaine de livres. Il dirige la collection Les grands soirs aux éditions Les petits matins et organise un cycle de rencontres Poésie Plate-forme à la Fondation d'entreprise Ricard à Paris.

RDV : ECRIRE L’ART

Dimanche 6 novembre à 15h
Lecture Performance

de Jérôme Mauche
Entrée Libre

AT : La Kunsthalle
Upstairs at the right upon entering La Fonderie

16 rue de la Fonderie

NOTE for your agendas!:

The second invitée for ECRIRE L'ART will be Virginie Poitrasson from the 15-19Feb 2012. She is an author, most recently of Demi Valeurs (published with l'attente) and translator from English into French (most recently she co-translated with Eric Suchère Michael Palmer's First Figure into French as Première figure, chez Corti editions, 2011).

Station to Station: LE PROGRAMME is UP!

As Didier, Frederique and I move towards the exciting events in early Dec, the Station to Station blog will become more and more dynamic. For now, I have just gotten up a version of our programme for your reading pleasure!

We hope that you will join us in listening to these fabulous speakers and performers! To order your 10e ticket to ride the a/r conference TGV, see the right hand column of the blog where Marine LaFumat's email is noted. She is our UHASNCF billet queen--and she awaits your confirmed reservations!

For all the delectable details: Voici notre blog avec le programme. /: Here is our conference blog with the programme
http://station2stationcolloquenomade.blogspot.com/ Direct link for the programme: Lien direct pour le programme: http://station2stationcolloquenomade.blogspot.com/2011/10/programme-station-to-station-les-1-et-2.html I will begin posting presenters abstracts this weekend, so check back! Merci de partager ce lien avec vos collègues et vos amis! // thank you for sharing this link with friend and colleagues who may be interested in coming to join in on the events and discussions!

40s mini review 1: VIRAL SUITE by Mari-Lou Rowley

Viral Suite by Mari-Lou Rowley, Anvil Press, Vancouver, 2004

100 pages of cerebral-corporeal poetry are divided here into 5 subsections entitled Boreal Surreal, HomeoPathoLogic, Elucidata, InArticulations and Infiltration/ Transformation. Already in these titles the playful and articulate use of language and Rowley’s attention to capitalization are apparent. Each subsection includes a series of poems which explore in singular formal experiments the intricate interweavings of nature, body, scientific study/naming, life and the proximity of death.

The question of knowing becomes embodied and articulated in naming, delineating, knowledge and sensual contact and coupling with the other or the natural landscape in this book. For example, in Sex in Space Time—part of the Elucidata series where each moderately short lined free verse poem explores or elucidates a principle of physics or biology after which the author comments on the actual scientific property in an explanatory endnote—Einstein’s general theory of relativity is explored/critiqued in a universe of physical couplings. Rowley asks the reader to:

Consider the curve of space

the swell of a breast, the concave

bowl of belly pooling droplets of sweat.

It’s as simple as this, Einstein said

think of gravity as geometry, not

a force to be reckoned with.

A body freely falling […] (p47)

In the end, Rowley concludes:

Sex, gravity, quantum theory

are merely the play of

matter and energy, radiating

waves of photons dancing here and there

..........the pull and swell of bodies

.........in motion. (p48)

As elsewhere, the poem ends in a place where change is still taking place, things are happening, in part because of the rhythmic tidal swell of her language. Most often in this collection things are happening to bodies. Sometimes the body is awaiting its own demise or ravishment, as in these final lines from Cantharsis in the HomeoPathoLogic section: “Spread-eagled on the mossy floor/under a phalanx of trees/she waits” (p 25). Here the “she” is either waiting for the beetle powder she has presumably ingested to cause “pericarditis /death” (p 25) or for the powder’s side-effects, “frenzy, rage,” and her “inflamed genitals” (p24), to lure the man with the “budding pecs, the taunting cupola/ of crotch” (p24) to come couple with her.

In this deftly written book, Rowley’s sensual poems are at times less overtly sexualized and yet the poems are constantly imbibed with the intimacy of physicality in their precision of detail, their tantalizing word choices. As another Canadian poet, Lisa Pasold, would put it, these poems have amazing mouth feel. Reading, especially aloud, we taste Rowley’s delectable and at times complex Latinate vocabulary and these poems seduce us, lure us dangerously close to love or to an awareness that will transform us forever. Consumed in reading, we risk our own consumption by the world which surrounds us and which Rowley’s poems remind us is eternally awaiting to reabsorb us into its elements. For example, in “III” an untitled right and left-justified dense prose poem from the first section of the book Boreal Surreal, Rowley describes the intense attraction to a set of berries in the wild which are “not recommended for eating” as we learn at the end of the poem. Yet, like the poem itself, the narrative “She” “puts them into her mouth and begins to chew.” (p13) The berries are at once appealing and repulsive, absorbing thought—the warning in their bitterness, perhaps an old instinctive alarm signal, is ignored as the “she” of the poem tastes them. But the confrontation with an evident predator causes the surprisingly life-saving reaction of spitting out the berries. As Rowley describes this tasting of the forbidden fruit:

They form a dryish pulp, inhibiting mastication. The fruit absorbs her concentration. She doesn’t hear the other footsteps, contrived, stalking. The bitter fruity odour hypnotic. She feels a low growl emerging from deep below her larynx. Primal guttural vibrations of dorsoventral membrane. She turns to the sound of dead branches snapping. Spews out the bitter pulp. Its dark blood drips from her mouth. (p 13)

Here, one death is averted, and yet another will take place, witnessed by the speaker who will discover/ uncover the body. The “she” who is being saved from the consumption of the poisonous berries by an encounter with a (presumable) bear finds 3 weeks later “his body” “consumed by the forest” (p13). Yet the transformations, life to death, predator to prey, are not so easily delineable in this poem: the “she” transforms from potentially being a person consuming a poisonous plant which can thus consume her by killing her off to being (perhaps) a growling bear who “rears up, fearless” (as Rowley writes a little farther along). Thus the “she” may be in fact an animal confronting another predator—perhaps another bear—as a human is rarely described as “rearing up” so the question of where danger lies and who is in danger are increasingly complexified by these metamorphoses.

The book itself ends with what can be read as a place where global or even universal destruction is underway—or where, alternatively, phoenix-like this destruction will link to a rebirth. The final poem Casual Mythology IV states:

Hey big boy down here we’re

waiting for the long one, bombast, outroar.

Shafts of ion spray in the face.

Cummon. Throw it.

If you’re so pop-god high-energy luminous

let’s see some major cloud-to-ground strokes,

let’s feel those electrons jump,

those discharge papers burn

Zeus-baby,

burn! (p98)

Again, the reader cannot miss the sexily witty sensual(ized) language use, suggesting ejaculation in the “shafts of ion spray in the face” or the taunting but inviting-the-lover closer calls of “big boy” “Zeus baby” “Cummon” “Throw it” and use of “let’s see” and “let’s feel”. There is a dual big bang underway, and Rowley makes us laugh at the fun and funny obviousness of that combo. In fact, the final section of the book is chock full of playful language acknowledging its own popular cultural word spins on old-time Romantic notions of mythological gods, as “pop-god high-energy luminous” or “”Zeus baby” demonstrate.

What is fantastic in this last poem is that it takes Rowley’s ethical and aesthetic explorations of the individual universe, the self as held and contained in a body subject to its own always proximate mortality and frailty potentially on the verge of being returned to an elemental pre/post being state in the molecular and physical universe to a plane where that larger molecular, elemental universe is also subject to its own re-big bang—able to be discharged, recharged, split apart like an atom. Or else we can just read this as a call for lightening, the speaker yelling up to Zeus to send on down one of his big ionizing bolts (which again have the potential to char broil the individual mortal). So perhaps the earth, perhaps the speaker, perhaps the book and poem and thus “discharge papers” will burn here if Zeus responds to the speaker’s taunting. All this awaits to be seen, post or pre book—and therefore the reader again is reading, living caught in “this minute, each moment / a closure / a closed /loop.” (p85) as Rowley states in Nietzsche’s Lullaby where that closed loop is “resilient in / returning” (p85).

I, too, enter into or become that loop, returning to reread the poems of Viral Suite where I explore the interactions and curves and circlings of Rowley’s language, delecting in its sensual-intellectual gymnastics.

Viral Suite by Mari-Lou Rowley, Anvil Press, Vancouver, 2004 ISBN I-895636-58-2 ($16 Canadian or $12 US dollars on their website http://www.anvilpress.com/Books/viral-suite)

DUSIE Kollectiv 5 hits NYC--The Zinc Bar reading, Manhattan

You say you missed us, last night? How sad for you. But no worries, because poet Deborah Poe was kind enough to supply a series of short films of the Dusiers reading at Zinc. For some, this event was the first in a series taking place over the long Boog City book festival this weekend--so do check into other events to hear those authors and publishers. For me, this was the wonderful single night of reading from both TRACERY from the Dusie Kollectiv 5 and Betwixt (Corrupt Press, Paris, 2011) with Amanda Deutch as Betwixt is part of a book we have been working on together for a little while now. To watch the YOUTUBE videos from the readings last night, here are the links:

Benson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPuNDGA_PCk

Damon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBpNuI5VeuM

Deutch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eac4OTQrGHE

Dick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yblKFaXYZko

Deutch & Dick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XGnQ4eCLIY

Klaver: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yga4rUCT9h4

Reed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvvxWweCZeA

Ruby: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsO48vgWLC8

Schaeppi 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOqiHA4I564

Schaeppi 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGMah7udK10

Zompa 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnctpzR4WzM

Zompa 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE5fTP7NSNw

Gardner: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtrkG7Rj35s

‘Almost Dashed Against the Rocks’, and ‘The Big One That Got Away’

Day eight—A last hurrah: out fishin’ on Upper Goose Lake!

14 July 2011: Dad & I woke a little later & moved a little slower on our last fishing day. One might think it would be the reverse—I certainly did. I’d figured I’d get us out onto the lake early, raring to go, desperate to take in the last hours here. Instead, I was just thrilled to take my time, to be with my dad, chat & go out onto the lake again on another sunny, warm morning with not too much wind.

When we did get into gear, we motored out towards the hump but saw someone was there & decided we’d prefer to enjoy being on our own—what has been most exciting about this week is in fact that it is like we are almost entirely alone out on these lakes & rivers.

We rarely saw other boats anywhere, & so there was a great sense of really being able to get away from the world of humans of getting closer to nature—the lake, the trees, the wonderful array of lakeshores, riverbanks, weedbeds, pines & firs climbing off the water atop sharp-angled hills or drop-off rock shorelines. Along some shores we could see so many layers of plant growth, from lichen & mosses to small brush, little trees then always & everywhere pines/firs shooting into the sky.
As if they were in the same mood as us, it was a quieter fishing day—where we either caught small or largish fish, but nothing in between.
ALMOST DASHED AGAINST THE ROCKS ON OUR LAST DAILY DOUBLE:

One of our last day highlights was our daily double—we often had a few per day in fact—but really our best & most dynamic & dangerous one is the one which netted this duo of fish pictured here (below). We had been tossing about along some shorelines & staying put, we noted, was out of the question, so we decided to cast around some islands for Northern.

We would often pull the boat up one shore of an island then let the forceful winds just rush us along the shore—dad would use the motor only as a means to hold us steadier & too slow the speed at which the winds buffeted us along. As we came up to a rocky point we both had cast out off the same side of the boat—towards shore—when suddenly we both hooked fish, & not tiny fish either.

We both needed the net & someone to perhaps to net the fish as we tried to keep our fish from getting near each other or getting our lines tied up—all this as the boat was being thrust at great speeds towards the rocky shore at this island’s point. In time, with the waves rocking us at a nice clip, half the time standing, half re-sitting down in the boat looking down at our fish, trying not to break our lines & lose them, Dad managed to get his fish close to the boat, hold it there without having his line snap, steer & alter the motor direction so as to push us away from the rocks we were dangerously close to being dashed against. All the while, he managed to not tangle his fish & line up with mine!

Then, adrift at quick speeds because of the waves & wind, we pushed off past the island heading out into open waters (which was safe) & got our fish into the boat. I took this pic above of dad holding them both up—my 23 inch walleye & his 27 inch northern. Both nice fish who had fought well.

An exciting double on many levels. Both fish were too big to be keepers, so again we let them go & they vanished quckly under the water swimming away. I wondered whether they were surprised to find they were so far from their original island, or whether fish even knew these things!

& then the dry spell—well, for us. We coast along casting into other shores of the same island we had been going round. We came to the space where the island completely blocked the wind &, since we weren't having any luck then, we just bobbed contentedly, neither of us really fishing. There we ate our sandwiches & drank our beer & marveled at our surroundings.

As we did not intend to catch more fish to eat on this, our last afternoon fishing, we tried out some new spots to see how that went, then, before heading in, we decided to return to hog hollow where we had been on our fish day out.

It was growing close to our 4pm limit (we needed to get the boat in earlier so it could be emptied & cleaned). Failing to catch much, we decided to go back for a last hurrah along the hump. There, despite a little wind (the winds had died down) we found the same backtrolling boat that had been there it seemed every time we’d passed by these past days.

We anchored just as a series of other boats seemed to be heading for this spot, too. A few newcomers had gotten into camp a day early. Since everyone knew this spot, they were all heading out here for a first fish. It was almost comic—4 boats backtrolling while we hung out anchored most of the time. I kept wondering how none of them ran into each other. I think we were looking at more boats than we had encountered all week! We could all watch others catch fish, & everyone did, but it remained a quieter afternoon than other days we had been there (which in fact explained the presence of so many fishermen in one spot, too).

THE BIG ONE THAT GOT AWAY: Dad caught a last northern (pictured below here) which I thought would be our last fish of the trip when I suddenly hooked one. I said “I’ve got a fish,” with a bit of surprise. “Is it a big one? You need the net?” Dad asked. I felt the fish wiggle & knew it must be small—perhaps not "bait" size, but not worth netting. “No, it’s a small one,” I said with confidence. I felt the fish’s sleight weight on my line as I reeled in, pulled it up feeling its feeble resistence, reeled again. “It’s a little one," I repeated, "it’s tiny, tiiinnny,” I kept saying, a bit giddy with my last cast catch & also just feeling playful about the smallness of the jiggling fish I was about to haul in.
Then all of a sudden I felt like I had a boulder on the other end of my line. I stood up to peer into the water as I pulled & reeled, keeping the line taught, a bit perplexed but carefully luring the fish upward so as to get it into the boat. It was no longer jiggling, but holding hard & solid. I thought perhaps I had just misjudged it. I knew the fish could not be far from the surface by this point, so I looked down into the water, squinting against the sun’s reflective glare. Just before the fish turned & took out drag—not something a tiny fish would do or even be able to do—I saw the head of AN ENORMOUS FISH near my line. “Oh!” I exclaimed changing my tune, “It’s huge! “It’s huuuge!” I was still convinced that I had a walleye, & if that was the case the form I had just seen part of turning & yanking out drag was going to be my whale.

My heart thudded & I thought, “Can I get this in? On my 8 pound line?” After all, I had broken the reel on my 15 lb line the day before, so to get this size of a fish in on this line would mean being very very careful not to engage in any sort of a tug of war with it at all—it would certainly win, snapping the line in a second.

My dad was also now standing & we were both looking towards where my pole had been arched almost into the water when the fish—both of them—came up next to the boat. I had indeed caught a small walleye, something around 12-13 inches, but the largest northern I’d seen this trip was holding onto it for dear life! The northern had my fish horizontally in its mouth &, as he surfaced, ripping at my poor little fish who I had on the hook, I basically could tug on the pole & line & thus pull them both round the front & side of the boat to look at them.

I knew the big northern was not hooked, & it did not even occur to me that dad was going to try & net it like that, so it was already pretty much too late by the time I had heard my dad say “bring it over here! Over this way!”— I realized what he wanted me to try to do, get it to his net, & turned the northern back to pull him towards my dad & then, it seemed, the massive fish saw something—the glint of the net’s metal frame? The dark shadow of one of the net’s ropy loops? Or even dad & I staring amazed down at the unexpected catch in progress? Or me, actually laughing at the ridiculousness of it? & then it was gone—& my little fish practically came flying out of the water into the air as it was released. It had huge teeth marks along its ribcage from where the northern had attacked, & as I unhooked it to let it go, I said “Well, little fish, I think I just saved you from a nasty northern death!” (it would survive—the teeth marks perhaps hurt & would maybe scar if fish scar but certainly it would heal)

Dad & I laughed & dad said “Let’s go home—I think that was a good one to end on” & I agreed. It was the fish that got away—but one we enjoyed even getting to see.
Eric met us at the beach & helped us get the boat up before he headed back to where he was spray-cleaning out other departing party’s boats. We unloaded our 2 tackle boxes, life vests, 4 poles, lake map, minnow bucket, duffle with rain gear & various other weather materials (sun block, bug spray, empty cans, etc) & tiny cooler. Dad then also brought up to the cabin his depth finder & trolling motor. The fishing was over—
As we packed up & prepared for our flight & road trip home, Dad fried up some little fish cakes—again another masterful “easy gourmet” recipe—bread & walleye fillets cubed, egg, spices, fried then eaten with a tartar sauce mixed with a couple drops of tobasco sauce for fun spiciness.

A lovely appetizer before our last dinner—which we ate outside of our cabin on the little picnic table there, accross from the bird-squirrel-chipmunk feeder (thus this pic of one of the baby squirrels--who are getting bigger by the day!). We said our farewells to some of the other campers we had come in with & who were staying on a second week & got in a few photos before another lovely sunset. Mostly packed & the cabin mostly cleaned, we had a last game of rummikub too (& dad won again! Argh!) It was then early to bed—as in the morning, we would have to rise at 4:45 for the long trip home.