Yesterday, returning from our trip to Lanesboro to celebrate Tim’s birthday, it was beautifully sunny and warm. Since we’d gotten an early start, we decided to detour to take look at Eagle Bluff Residential Environmental Learning Center (an organization we’d visited long ago when I was helping to raise money for them.) As navigator, I realized that we were on the very county highway which could take us back to Bucksnort! We’d visited last year–just a dot on the map but a trout stream of exceptional clarity and sparkle. Here’s a link to a few lines about it from 2019.

What is the allure of this tiny place? Maybe it’s just the name? Or knowing that I will be rereading Hemmingway’s collection of fiction, The Nick Adams Stories, later this fall with my Book Group? (Remember the short story, “Big Two-Hearted River,” from high school English class, perhaps?) In any case, something drew us to return to this swift-running trout stream yesterday. Tim commented that the air seemed more fresh and the colors more vivid there than in other places.

Or maybe it’s the image of the dam? The human-built addition that affects the rest natural world, creating more concentrated power for an instant, more leaps and agitations and aeration? I am wondering about the Brown Trout and their own leaping and falling, seeking and finding and resting as contemplate the human political cycles we’ve grafted onto the seasonal ones, the rise and fall of Fortune’s Wheel. Like Boethius, I keep seeking consolation in the midst of mental agitation, if not in pure philosophy than at least in poetry.

These photographs don’t do beautiful Bucksnort justice, but perhaps they offer a hint of the refreshment we found there at the conclusion of a welcome (mostly) screen-free weekend, free from most thoughts of volatile national roiling. We simply basked in the natural flow of Trout Run Creek, the green streaming of water weeds, the clouds reflecting in the double movement of sky and water.

Wishing you all moments of the deepest serenity in the fraught week ahead, knowing the ups and downs are all part of the flow. Remember to breathe!

LESLIE

On our travels to Iowa last week, Tim and I spotted on our trusty DeLorme atlas, what appeared to be a small town north of Lanesboro. With a name like Bucksnort–!!!!—how could we not seek it out.

This is what we found.

No town. No filling station. No cluster of houses. No pavement. No cell phone coverage. No traffic light, stop sign, or signage, even, except for the one below. Simply a picnic shelter (no garbage cans) at the edge of a pristine fishing spot called Trout Run Creek, a few graveled parking places, eleven damp concrete steps leading to a shallow muddy bank with the embellishment of a railing on one side fashioned from metal pipe painted glossy black, and (to our surprise), a dozen people besides us milling about but not (apparently) fishing.

As to the history of the place, we can only imagine.

Note to Readers: I am sending this week’s postcard early as a precaution.

For the past few weeks, my beloved Dell computer is showing signs of impending demise. Aaaaah! say I. This is the computer upon which I saw all three of my poetry collections to press.

Tim is wisely advising moving to an Apple laptop. I am reluctant to move even to another Dell, but do feel I can learn a new set of conventions, especially as Julia — our resident Apple expert — has offered to tutor me. So, just in case there is an unplanned break in missives from me in the near future, fear not! As soon as I learn the ropes, I will be back to my usual communications including weekly postcards. For now, fingers crossed! LESLIE