The Coyote Speaks on Door County Times

Posted on 02. Dec, 2008 by in Daily Dose of Door

The annual Deer Hunt in Wisconsin ended this past Sunday. By all indications (state-wide), not great but okay. Fewer hunters. Fewer deer taken. A blood sport – and not everyone’s cup of tea. Including me, when I first set down in the rural of this place, going on forty years ago. But I have come to understand it better in time. If not honor it. Despite all that ‘kill’ implies. Not to mention how questionable it might be to take the life of an animal so beautiful.

But I’m in the hunt here for other things. Nowadays, given the preciousness of open land, given the huge appetite some nourish for development – and then, overdevelopment. Given the constant chipping away of the rural landscape, month after month, year after year… the cropping up of yet another/more McMansions (NO TRESPASSING), bearing down upon my humble shack.

Given all that, I have come to see the blaze-oranged hunter as the guardian of open land and all that once-was. When there is no free pasture and woods left to hunt—you have opted for Sanitized Suburbia, Gated Community, Paved Driveways, All Light – All Night Sodium Vapor Yard Lamps, and DON’T TREAD ON MY McMANSION LAND. (Deer included–stay away from my four-car garage)

Good nature writing brings all this back to mind. It’s just one of the things which can male a local newspaper sing. Something the Advocate lost when they lost Roy Lukes – where he belongs: in a legitimate local newspaper. One of the things I go searching for when I get my hands on any local newspaper, from anywhere in Wisconsin.

Thanks to my partner, my good woman here in Door County, who once lived in Barron County, we receive her local newspaper once a week: The Chronotype out of Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Among its many enjoyable sections, one of the first things I turn to when the paper arrives, is the “Outdoors” page. And on that page, two items command my immediate attention: “Journal” and “Almanac Notes”, neither of them signed. I don’t have a clue who writes these two pieces every week, but I love reading them. Given the responsibilities of a local paper to its readers—I would say something like either of these two columns should be required reading – and writing–everywhere in rural America. (Even the New York Times prints a thoughtful nature essay on its editorial page at least once a month.) 

This article is the latest in the Blei at Large & Company section of Norbert Blei’s Door County Times…

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