Stockholm WI, VRBO Guest Book

 2/18/22

    This morning I had here the most incredible event, it was singular, remarkable, miraculous.

    I was having my tea at the small table in the kitchen whilst watching a small furry bunny scratching. for food under the bird feeder when, suddenly and explosively. the little fellow was gone! But not before I could identify the author of his rapid and unexpected exit.

    Glacies Serpentis!!! I was astonished but, clearly, I could make the identification in the instant through myriad details including the angularity of the jaws and the prominent "Black Diamond" marking on the flared hood of the beast. An incontrovertible insignia of this specie.

    Amazing to witness this incredible creature so far form its (Previously to today) accepted habitat.

    "Snow Snakes," as the 18th century voyageurs, in the far north, named them, are rarely witnessed south of Hudson Bay.

    And given the fact that they are top predators, they are extremely rare. Too many of them in any one place quickly exhausts the supply of furry little bunnies etc.

    They can be up to a meter in length and are nearly completely white, save for the black diamond visible with the occipital flare as mentioned above. Thus are difficult to see, especially with overhead limb shadows on the snows.

    So what explains its materialization here in the valley of the Mississippi?

    The last documented U.S. sighting of a specimen was in1891 near Watersmeet, Upper Peninsula of Michigan. (A sighting I might add, by a bonafide observer. Also, in the 19th century several credible reports were logged by surveyors and copper prospectors on the Keweenaw Peninsula.

    From the aforementioned Watersmeet it is not a great distance to the headwaters of the Chippewa River, and not far distant from this farm is that river's confluence with Mississippi.

    Glacies Serpentis are powerful swimmers. Legion must be the number of unfortunate mother hen ducks whose anguish was felt when looking back at her followers had witnessed the seeming vaporization one of the tiny fuzzy ducklings.

    So it is not out of the question to think that one of those noble creatures could descend the Chippewa and, likewise, ascend the Mississippi, and, hence the Bogus Creek here in back of this place.

    Interestingly they are impossible to maintain in captivity. Artificial snow (i.e. Man-made, manufactured snow,) does not sustain the creature. Notwithstanding the fact that it is a big hassle to keep all those tiny furry bunnies on hand in miniature cages.

    I sat the rest of the day at the end of that little table but, apparently, this morning's was the last of the little bunnies.

    Still, I possess the ultimate honor of making my credentialed report am anxious to make that report to my fellow colleagues upon my return to The Institute.

    I am going to tell old Barney in #330 to put this in his pipe and smoke it, the way he goes on about hunting elephants in South America and all that tripe about the Elephant Graveyard down there he discovered and so forth.

    And Marv, too, in #355 blowing all the time about designing that blasted doohickey for time travels! What good is it if it only transports a fellow back no more than 33 seconds? 

    Needs work Marty.

    Eat your heart out now that I have Glacies Serpentis to report.

 

BLUE HERON LODGING LOG

Lancaster, WI

9/15/21 2330

 

I had the most incredible, no, singular experience in my 66 years of life last night. It was on the dock, by the slip, on the beach.

But first I must say, the accommodations here have been generous and fine. Our family has relished the deck, the view and our time together.

The location here affords the curious mind with opportunities for discovery, for instance the Driftless Center just upstream and the Effigy Mounds National Monument downstream witch bring me back to last night.

I was restless, not falling to sleep as per usual. A waxing gibbous moon was approaching the bluff here behind. I took the opportunity to shuffle sown to the river.

There I sat. The silence was near deafening. The stars above infinite. I reflected upon those of us who came before.

The waters were still – it was if the entire valley had paused – as if it were about to take a breath   - to inhale – inspire.

I, too, paused – it was a divisional moment. Proceeding forward with the next breath, the next sound, the next sensation, would be separated, aloof, to all those that proceeded.

Then the next tick, the next swing of the pendulum, the serene, somnolent surface of the mighty river began to ripple, to riffle, to be disturbed. The was no atmospheric explanation for this phenomenon - the air, the temperature, the barometric influences, and perhaps, time itself, were suspended just then.

As I watched, the river, excited then, began to fibrillate – to convulse and to slowly bulge as if it were buckling under submarine forces extreme.

A majestic form. primitive in aspect, but yet modern in hydrodynamic design, arose. A long neck extending, almond eye to the side – clearly not a hunter then - and an immense zeppelin body emerging with water rivuleting off, cascading, effervescing about the huge creature’s flanks.  It towered there above me, glistening, its enormity bejeweled in the last filaments of the moon as it sank behind the bluff.

Then slowly, with majestical grace, it reentered the waters, a long bifurcated tail the last of it to be seen as it again enveloped itself below the dark, and strangely, once more undisturbed surface.

I sat there in silence. Eventually a puff of breeze disturbed the air, caressed the river.

Naturally I kept this incident to myself lest my lunacy be confirmed.

However, I feel now compelled to report it. Earlier today, at a visit to the Effigy Mounds National Monument, while viewing from the deck of the wooded overlook on the Pickerel Loop, I looked down and, to my astonishment, saw depicted there, in perfect form, scale, and proportion, a mound in the exact image of the creature I witnessed here last night.

Hurriedly I sought the guide for explanation and read there the following:
               “Spirit Fish Mounds like the one you see before here are thought to be fanciful depictions of a mystical, mythological nature representing a spiritual entity. The form surely was of significance to the early residents of the valley for mounds of this exact style, shape and whimsy are rendered in numerous sites along the Mississippi…” etc.

Fanciful? Mystical? Whimsy? Don’t be deceived by our own quaint notions of reality.