A Book Finished

I just finished a book titled Black Hills by Dan Simmons.This book is a fiction novel based on historical fact. This type is out of my normal element.It intrigued me because in the start of the book, General Custer is killed at Little Big Horn, to have an Indian boy of 11 years old, named Paha Sapa, "count coup" on him. Custers spirit invades Paha Sapa, who's name mean Black Hills. The book works through Paha Sapa's life, jumping back and forth through his childhood and adulthood. As you work through the book, it refers to a lot of Lakota belief and at times become hard to follow or understand. You also learn along the way that Paha Sapa,can see events of someone lives if he touches them skin to skin. During his "spiritual testing" he has vision from the Six Grandfathers,Indian gods I presume, where he sees Mount Rushmore come to life. The Presidents end up destroying everything. As Paha Sapa grows older, he feels the need to blow up Mount Rushmore.

 As I said earlier, at times this book became confusing. I didn't understand what the chapters with Custer and his wife had to do with anything other than being a filler I guess. At one point Paha Sapa goes to New York,to visit Custers widow. The author decides to explain the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, again not sure what this had to do with the story.
 As many times I almost put this book on the shelf, curiosity kept me reading. At points, it was very good. I enjoyed learning how Rushmore was made. I could relate to all the tragedy in Paha Sapa's life and of course I enjoyed some of the history. I have never been so mixed about a book before.

Whatever to Blog about

Very soon,I will be writing another deer hunting story, but not right now. Instead I kind of want to blog about my life with Crohn's. When I had round one with this disease, I was in my 20's. Young, stressed out with a whole lot going on a that point. I has lost 30-35lbsand looked and felt terrible. I was taking three different meds, that weren't helping. On January 16,2000 I had a bowel resection.
10 years later, I knew something wasn't right with my gut and got checked out. Sure enough, Crohn's has reared its ugly head. I am back on Imuran but that is all right now. I have to get my blood tested every so often to make sure my blood count is good.I also take Iron so I don't become anemic.
  My whole point of this particular blog is to stress diet.I found that 25 or more grams of fiber help me out tremendously. Not to get all detailed, it slows me down a lot. I feel less pain in the colon area, and there have been times where I forgot I had a disease to deal with.This is not a cure or a solution. I still have to make good decision on what I need to eat. I my situation, fiber is the best thing ever.I also need a lot of protein.I'm not sure why I'm not feeling terrible or lost weight. My plan is not too. So, I try to eat better,drink a lot of water and keep a exercise routine, which Jake also likes to participate in. Oh ya,and I always make sure I'm near a bathroom.

Doing Something Different

I am going to try something different in the way of sharing stories of deer hunting, when I was a teen,or other events from my youth. These stories are as I remember them,dates and time may be general in some instances. I'll will start with this one:
                                                        15,November,1988
 Opening day of the gun hunt season. At this point I was 14 or 15. The morning did not produce anything but a cold body. If I remember correctly, Dad and I headed to the big swamp. We made our trek back home and discussed strategy for the evening hunt. Dad decided to put me on the old fence row, this is the boarder of Grandpas property, and the next property. He had said that the deer love to travel this fence row, really there wasn't much of a fence row left. Anyway, it was a plan.
 3:45pm rolls around and we head off to our spots on our 40. Dad takes me to the spot and I climb and get up in the tree.Dad headed off to one of his favorite spots, the "S" shaped tree. The top of this tree was shaped like and S, thus the name.
 So,I'm in my spot,wind was blowing West to East,SW to SE, heavy snow, not blizzard but darn close. It was uneventful sitting for the most part. As I am scanning, I heard a cough. I knew it was getting late and Dad would be here soon to get heading home. Time was about 5:00pm. So a few minutes go by and I'm scanning left, as I scan back right I look down, turned my head left and quickly looked back right. There was a nice, large 9 point.     He was darn near under me on my right, I was facing West, he came in from the North. I am sitting on a branch at this point, I pull up my rifle only to find the glove on my hand made my finger to large to pull the trigger. I take the glove off and set it on my lap. The buck was moving very slow, unaware of what was going on above him. Remember the wind was blowing hard, killing any sound. So, with the glove on my lap, I pull up to shoot again, now the branches are in the way because the angle changed. So I stand up, and there goes the glove down the tree.
 The buck looked up, he knew he heard something odd. The wind had muffled the scrapping down the tree otherwise he would've been gone. I was standing, pulled up and BANG. I saw the blood splatter from behind his front leg,his leg gave and headed east. I took one shot at his rear for good measure.
 I got down in a hurray and checked for splattered blood, it was all over the tags. I went back up the tree and waited for Dad. About 5:20pm, here he comes.
  "Was that you shooting," he asked.
  "Yep," I replied
 "Where'd he go,"
  "Between that tree and that tree," I pointed.
   Dad wanted me to stay there,he went to go look. He's gone not two minutes. "Brian dang it,this is a Doe" he says
"Bull crap that was a buck I saw antlers," I replied. So I got down to look. There stands Dad with that nice, old 9 pointer.
 He was more excited than I was. He asked me if I wanted to gut it. I kindly insisted that he could do it. He was more than happy to take care of it. Now it was to late to drag it back,so we would come back the next morning to bring it home.
 So this is the story of my first buck and one proud Dad.

Deer Camp

Finally where it belongs

Trail needs opened up

Much better

Its been a little while since I've had any posts. No excuses I guess,just things get busy. Recently, I finally had a chance to get up to the U.P with my cousin Jim, 2 of my boys and his boy. The basic task was to get a wood stove back out to the camp. This is something that has hindered us for a while. Fortunately I was able to borrow a quad from someone at work and we had a trailer. This was a tremendous help, because of the terrain. With the stove newly installed, we are that much closer to making it usable once again. On the way back to camp we had to clean up the trail. This took a lot of work. Alders are hard to cut and they just never stop. Now there is a lot of story to go with this trip and believe me,it wasn't as easy as it may appears to be. I know one thing is for sure my Dad and Grandpa were looking down laughing there butts off, while we were trying to accomplish this. You never know,maybe I'll have to change the blog to Stories from the Mid Forty Hilton. That almost sounds like a good idea.

The Ole Ball Game

Baseball is a game that is played from 5years old all the way up and through adulthood. Take away the business end, big contracts,player ego, and steroids. Take way all the scandals through baseball history.These are the things that the game of baseball aren't.

These things are what baseball is supposed to be: It is cotton candy, a bag of shelled peanuts,score cards,

kids with their baseball gloves waiting for a foul ball. Baseball is listening to the game on the radio with someone like Ernie Harwell drawing the game in your mind,                       

it is the applause when Nolan Ryan throws a no hitter, it is when Ted Williams hit .400 for season, it is seeing Babe Ruth run the bases after one of his many home runs. You know what really makes Baseball? Its the kids in little league getting up at 8am on Saturday to play t-ball, machine pitch, kid pitch, all the way up. The grass has dew, the sun is coming up starting to dry the infield, coaches are marking the diamond, parents are setting out their chairs with a cup of coffee,teams are warming up getting ready to play a game America loves.Then the Umpire calls "Play Ball".  Then for the next 1hour and half, the kids play their hearts out between the lines. That's the moment everyone is ready for.
 This is Baseball.