The River voyages of the hungry mind

If I Was Washington

Permission granted to use Townes Van Zandt's If I Was Washington. It says it all (I think).

Dead Fish & A New Day

29 June

This morning I push my boat away from Stockholm landing and let the wind take it. A night crawler on it's 3-hooked harness drags along behind, but the chance of catching a fish is remote, at best. I lay on my back on my little deck...

Sustained only by a thin gruel of moonlight
And the knowledge that all was perfection outside my prison of skin.

I am reading McGrath when a seagull catches my attention. I turn the boat to see that it is with a large fish.

The eyes are gone, and the entrails, and color. It smells.

7 July

As I motor upriver, I am aware of a large serpentine weed mass running down the middle of the lake. I cross over and troll near the buoy off Point Au Sable.

Real men. Cloudless, determined men. Perfect boats.

I am a fisherman without much hope. Drifting with the current I drag a small minnow along the bottom. As I approach the serpentine mass in the middle I am surprised to find it is not a mass of weeds at all, but instead a mass of the empty hulls of mayfly nymphs and dead adults: a massive funeral procession making it's way down the river. I had come three or four miles along it's route and it continued, unbroken, the whole way. Sometimes fifty yards across, and sometimes less, but no number could describe how many mayflies there were.

I become aware of herds of carp tipping up their bodies at the surface so that their down-turned mouths could collect the dead.

(I had selected a cut of Junior Wells for this, but it made me nervous so I used Ode to Toothless Joe by Mark Krurnowski off a royalty free music site.)

At noon I dragged a large sucker minnow on a Prescott Spinner off the mouth of Pine Creek thinking there may be some rogue Northern Pike out there. I had caught a Northern Pike on this rig last fall, and this was my way, I guess, of trying to get back into the game. I was reading Thoreau:

Go thou my incense upward from this hearth,
And ask the Gods to pardon this clear flame.

I felt an odd weight on my line and checked to find the minnow was gone. I still had two, so I hooked another and cast him in. Again, an odd weight. Not a fish, I thought, not a Northern Pike. They leave no doubt about a strike. This time when I checked the minnow was still hooked, and I could see he had been cut. So there had been a fish!

I had some idea of where this had occurred, and I began trolling back and forth. Again the odd weight. This time I lowered the tip of my rod and waited a few seconds before pulling back on the rod to set the hook. This time there was a fish. It was not the obvious tug on a Northern Pike, but instead the steady pull of a walleye. I remember the pulls of the different fish of my youth. I couldn't believe it. I hooked the third and last sucker minnow, and as I trolled across again, another fish.

Later the photographs showed the fish to be Sauger. Finally, a seventh species of fish.

A new day. A perfect boat.

Ricci Map & Back on the River

Ricci Map

The month of May was spent engraving a large block (14 x 25 inches) of a section of the Matteo Ricci world map for the Associates of the James Ford Bell Library. It was a grueling 30 days of hard labor, but interesting--both the map itself and the technical problems involved. The size of the block was pushing limits. Too big for my press, it was printed at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. The image was transferred onto the block using a heat transfer method developed by Carl Montford of Seattle. Here is a video of clearing wood from between characters. Note the red background, a suggestion from Carl that was helpful.

Back on the River

16 June 2010. 1 pm - 9:30 pm. North wind 5-10 diminishing and switching toward the east.

Three pelicans flying down river suddenly swoop and land in the path of a distant boat. The first pelicans of the year. Soon they are air borne again, crossing the river toward Point Au Sable, and turning up river toward the shallow bay above the Rush River. Even heavy-breasted pelicans impress when they turn their wings to descend, the seemingly simple shift of planes for such a clean and swift decent.

While traveling by car along the lake I had become interested in a stretch of shoreline between a scenic overlook and the rest area at the base of Bay City Hill. The overlook is atop a high cliff, and the rest area a place of short stops for travelers passing through. Looking for solitude, I thought I might find an obscure beach to comb somewhere between the two.

The beach I found was surrounded by weeds. All the better, I thought, a difficult approach from the water as well. Soon I became aware of two groups of shore fishermen, one up river, and one down. Pairs of fishermen in boats trolled by with regularity, voicing their position on the lake, and in the bigger picture. Fishing is a social sport.

A point of dense young willows separated two dank beaches. Just off the point the trunk of a great tree had snagged, wrested loose of it's territory by recent heavy rains. Where roots swelled from the trunk a large turtle sat, timing his slide into the water with my rate of approach. He slid with a swiftness not unlike the pelican's decent.

I moored my boat to the roots and threw in two lines: one baited with foul smelling catfish bait, and the other an Canadian night crawler that I doubt had ever crawled in the night. For an hour I watched the two lines lay limp on the water until the sun was low and it was time to move toward home.

It is interesting how often I see other fishermen landing fish. I may be developing into the worst fisherman in the history of the Mississippi River. Maybe that is the point.

At Pine Creek trolling toward the Rush
sun burns the birdless bodies of clouds.
Trains rumble longer than themselves.
Imagine either end along a lake of tears:
fore and hindsight reverberating in one direction.

On the surface of the water land and sky roll and break,
pursuit and retreat at the same time.
Abstraction is not random.
It is determined.
As I am here.

April

I remember swimming lessons, shivering at the edge of the pool for hours, afraid of the water. That is what printing is like.

Printing pelicans was delayed for a month by syrup season. The sap ran for only a week, but we managed 10 gallons of syrup. A supply of Archie's Pure Maple Syrup labels were printed and die-cut on the Heidelberg. The label features a 3-color wood engraving of the demented cardinal. 12 ounce bottles will soon be available for sale on this website's store page.

Another delay has been the discovery in Photoshop of color sampling. Individual colors in a photograph can be identified and translated into the real world of metal and wood via the Pantone Matching System, the color system used in printing.

Color sampling in Photoshop.

As a result, I discovered that the gray in the pelican feathers was more green than blue.

Finally, after two days of make-ready and cutting touch ups, the first press run of the pelicans is underway. I am running 250 sheets to get 100 books, and an edition of a possible 150 prints.

Printing three impressions of gray to the Count Basie Trio's Song of the Islands, compliments of Will Powers.

Open Water

Shorthead Redhorse key block

The past month was spent engraving scales of the Shorthead Redhorse. The block has been proofed, and I now have 3 fish blocks cut. Though a few ice houses remain on the lake, and I saw a pickup truck out there yesterday, winter is obviously releasing it's grip. Open water is evident in places along the shoreline. Our maple trees have been tapped, and the first drops of sap are in the pail.

I have spent some time writing, mostly relating fishing experiences on the river last fall to those of my youth. Cheryl Miller and I have met with her friends in the National Fish and Wildlife Service and the Minnesota DNR. We also spent a morning looking at books with Patrick Coleman at the Minnesota Historical Society, and an afternoon with turtle expert John Moriarty, Natural Recourses Specialist for Ramsey County.

Father Louis Hennepin's creatures of the Upper Mississippi circa 1683. Note the pelican.

1,000 sheets of Zerkal paper have arrived from Germany. It is time to dust off the press and print some pelicans.

January

Dead of Winter • Engraving in the Glow of a Computer Screen

22 pairs of mussel shells collected and photographs of 6 fish caught.

8 January, 2010 • Dead of Winter

I am getting down to the hard business of sifting through specimens, deciding what goes into the first installment of the book, and hammering out rough physical details: page size, paper, contents, cadence, fold-outs,  etc.

The initial cutting and proofing of the pelican blocks is completed. At least two of them will require reduction cutting while printing: the block is printed in one color, then cut further and printed again, with a second color. This process cannibalizes the block making it impossible to reprint it. I plan to sell prints of some images as I go along, and I'm working out how many sheets will be needed, both for the separate prints and for the book itself. I must make the best possible use of the very expensive vintage English Tovil handmade paper bought for the project last year, and I plan to use at least two other papers in the book: Zerkal 7625, a German mould made paper that I use a lot, and Wookey Hole, a vintage English mould-made. I have decided to print the images on Zerkal, and 1,000 sheets have been ordered. I have 800 sheets of the Tovil, and 500 of the Wookey Hole, on which to print the text.

Shells from 3 Pink Heelsplitters (Potamils alatus) illustrate (I think) the aging process.

All specimens will be printed actual size. The 6 fish are fairly straight forward, though the Northern Pike will require separate printings and the splicing together of two parts as it's length exceeds the maximum printing length of the press, about 23 inches. The 45 mussel specimens also present challenges. I am finding, I think, significant variation in individuals within a species, reflecting to some extent changes in the shell as an individual ages. I believe I have representatives of about ten different species, but having gone through the cleaned and recorded specimens, I find 22 individuals of interest for one reason or another. Of course all conclusions that I am making at this point are pretty speculative. I hope to meet an expert soon, possibly Mike Davis of the Minnesota DNR, or Professor Cummings of Illinois, co-author of the field guide which I have been using (Field Guide to Freshwater Mussels of the Midwest, Illinois Natural History Survey, 1992).

16 January, 2010 • Engraving in the Glow of a Computer Screen

Joining sections of an end grain wood block.

I found the Coreon used for the pelican plates difficult to work with and hard on tools. It does hold a fine line more easily than maple, and has less of a tendency to chip out while clearing than does Resingrave (used for the Ink on the Elbow panorama [click it]). I find working with plastic, however, unpleasant. I have a good supply of end grain maple rounds, and I will go back to wood for the rest of the project. It is a lot of work taking rough sawn half rounds of maple (from the colophon tree in Sylvæ), and making them into smooth and stable type high blocks. The larger the image, the more difficult it becomes to make a flat and stable block, which is essential to fine printing. Given the size of the fish specimens, I am using small strips of wood and glue to join the chunks of maple, a method of joinery typical of end grain wood engraving blocks from the 19th century.

A central problem in the illustration of mussels is presenting views of both the inside and outside of the shells. I am thinking of backing up the inside and outside views of a shell recto-verso: the inside is viewed on one side of a page, and the page is turned to find the outside of the shell printed directly on the back side of the inside view. This will require twice as many mussel images. It is becoming clear that 3 pelicans, 6 fish, and 12 mussels are plenty to deal with this first year.

Sheepshead in Progress.

Sheepshead (Aplodinotus grunniens), is underway. I am engraving in front of the computer, something I have never done before. The photograph is easily manipulated (zooming in, brightening, flipping the image, etc.). I google the species as I work. I am finding interesting articles in scientific journals, but full articles, it seems, can only be viewed for a price. Fair enough.

December

Never Say Never • Nuclear Warming • A Fractured Bi-valve

Pelican key block ready for proofing. Image size: 10 x 17 inches.

Never Say Never

People often ask how long it takes to engrave an image. There is a luxury in not keeping track, and I normally don't, but I have photographed progress in cutting the key block of the pelicans every couple of days, and can report that it has taken 90 hours engraving time to bring the block to the proofing stage. The block is Corian counter top material. This is my first time using Corian, the material of choice for engraver Abigail Rohrer, who does beautiful work. The material holds detail well, but is a bit difficult to clear. It does offer superior stability over wood, which makes for a much easier time on the press, especially with a block as large as this.

Key block proofed in gray, with black reduction cut and color ideas penciled in.

The plan is to print, every two years or so, by hand with ink on beautiful paper, a record of my journey in book form . I also plan to issue editioned prints of some of the images along the way. The pelicans will be the first of the individual images available. Look for it in the spring. The edition size, and price, are yet to be determined.

Fishing the spillway of lock-and-dam number 3, at the head of my territory (pool number 4).

17 December, 2009 • Nuclear Warming

A strong storm system swept through last week, and the lake froze suddenly. I drove to the Prairie Island Nuclear plant in search of open water and found it, along with a flock of mergansers, a few straggling swans, and a two determined fishermen.

Prairie Island nuclear power plant.

I found open water as far down stream as the Red Wing bridge. Is it possible that the plant is solely responsible for the open water, or might some other factor come into play? Current seems unlikely, as the river was frozen over beneath the Wabasha Bridge to the south, where I know the current is pretty fast.

Lake City lights on frozen Lake Pepin.

Pyganodon grandis

A Fractured Bi-valve

In 2009 I collected about fifty mussel specimens, representing a dozen different species--to get into the book, I must find both shells of an individual animal. I'm in the process of cleaning, identifying, and cataloging them. A large (18.5 cm) specimen with substantial fractures in both valves raises questions: what caused the fractures? How did the specimen come to be ten feet from the water's edge? How long had it been there? It occurs to me that most of the shells I find beach combing must have been carried by a predator. Perhaps the large mussel with the fractured valves had been carried and eaten by an eagle. Speculation is likely to become a central element in this shell game...

I am looking at photos taken of plates from Georg Wolfgang Knoor's Les Delices des Yeux et de L'Esprit, a la Representation d'une Collection Universelle des Coquilles, 1764, and J. C. Chenu's Illustrations Conchyliologiques, 1842-53, from the library of the Natural History Museum in New York, compliments of Bill Logan. Also a book borrowed recently from Robert Rulon-Miller: Captain Thomas Brown's Illustrations of the land and fresh water conchology of Great Britian and Ireland, fith figures, descriptions, and locatlities of all the species, 1845. Captain Brown's drawings were "engraved" by W. H. Lizars, who also engraved the first few images for Audubon's Birds of America in the 1820's. Though I believe the mussel engravings are in metal, the technique lends itself to wood engraving, and provides a starting point in thinking about how to approach engraving the bi-valves.

Pelicans Approaching Lift-off

Engraving of the first image for the book began on Black Friday, 2009. None of us seem to know where the term"Black Friday" has come from. Perhaps we don't watch enough television.

Drawing basic forms onto tracing parchment for transfer of image onto coreon block.

Graphite drawing transfered onto inked and waxed block surface.

At the end of the day, after four, one-hour engraving sessions.

November

The Last Waltz (on returning from Rome) • A Return to Drury Island, & the Studio

Crossing-Ponte-Sisto_Roma

20 November, 2009 • The Last Waltz

Today the boat was launched the 13th and final time in 2009. For the first time, all was still...

Cataloging mussel specimens

17 November, 2009 • A Return to Drury Island & the Studio

On returning to the river after two weeks abroad, the trees were bare, and the birds gone except for eight soaring eagles, a handful of gulls, ever distant crows, two blue jays, and one lone pelican swimming in the middle of the lake. Fred and I combed the beach of Drury Island, adding three to the mussel species to the list: Pimpleback, Black sandshell, and Wabash pigtoe.

With the boating season drawing to a close, the time has come to get on with work in the studio. While some organizing of data remains to be done, a basic outline of what I have to work with, gathered from this first abbreviated boating season, is taking shape. There will be a section on pelicans, one on mussel shells collected (aproximately a dozen species to date), and one of fish caught (six species to date).

With paper for the first book in hand, the determination of edition and page size are dependent upon the quantity and dimensions of the paper: 800 sheets of hand made Tovil, 15.5 x 20.5 inches. My initial notion of folding the parent sheet down twice, for a page size of 7.75 x 10.25, has come into question. While I appreciate the intimacy of the smaller page size (espescially as it relates to field journals), and the practicality of getting twice as many pages, I am considering folding the sheets a single time for a larger page size of 10.25 x 15.5. Closer examination of the paper reveals that it would be most comfortable folded once, given grain direction, laid lines, and watermarks. Also, the expansive nature of the landscape of the river, as well as the size of actual specimens involved, seems to call for a larger format. While it had been my hope to scale back from the immensity of scale encountered with Sylvæ, I am beginning to think that forcing the river into a smaller package is not, perhaps, the best approach. At any rate, a decision regarding page size must be made before I can begin engraving images.

Rough mock-up of opening pelican spread in larger format.