Still unseasonably cold here in Northern Wisconsin. The new day brought more of the same low-lying clouds, laden with moisture. Their ferocity however had lessened and had become instead a heavy mist. After peeking my head out of the lodge window, I packed up my things quickly to get on the road and perhaps beat the rain. On the way out I left a note for the kind lady who had helped me to find the innkeeper the night before. She heard me on her cabin steps and said goodbye as I peddled out the drive.
Mist is much more pleasant than rain, but just as effective in getting all of me wet. Made good time to Boulder Junction, and then hopped on a bike trail which took me all the way to Manitowish Waters. While on the trail I passed a large group of perhaps eight or ten cyclists, all riding in a line. I said hello to each one as I moved up their ranks, and when I got to the man in a recumbent bicycle at the front, I asked what the occasion was. He said they were a Lutheran church group riding 250 miles to raise money to aid world hunger. I thought that was pretty cool and as I biked ahead they began to sing, the man in the front leading it all. Their songs made me want to sing, and as I was thinking about my destination for the day, Butternut, I made up a song about butternut, sort of in a rockabilly style:
"I like butter tween my fingers, butter tween my toes, sometimes I take a stick of butter and rub it on my clothes
Oh I'm a Butternut, yes they call me butternut.
I'm the biggest butter freak to ever take a leak in Butternut.
Butternuts like me we don't come for free, I charge 50 cents a lick, but it sho is a kick.
Cause I'm a Butternut, yes they call me Butternut. I'm the biggest butter freak to ever take a leak in butternut.
Way up in Wisconsin in the land of the Lakes, there is a little town that is my namesake. The people up there, they're really outtasight. They like to lay on the floor and roll in butter all night. Yes, that's in butternut. They some butternuts. But I'm the biggest freak to ever take a leak in butternut.
(Butter solo)
I was rolling down Main Street in my butter-mobile looking for the loo and maybe a meal. They gave me two sticks of butter on a butter-cream base, and I was in seventh heaven after I squeezed the lemon. Oh butternut, yes, in butternut. I'm the biggest butter freak (pop pop), to ever take a leak (pa dop pop) ( suspenseful break) .... in butternut (band outro: parapapapa pop a duwah...)"
I thought it was pretty darn good, and I sang it to myself until it drove me a little crazy.
Luck came my way as I came into Mercer, the "Loon Capitol of Wisconsin," and the clouds finally broke and I saw my first blue sky in six days. A tremendous feeling. With the sun out, I really started flying, and was making great time on windy roads through some very wild country. Just about the biggest swamp/marsh you could ever imagine. Smack dab in the middle of it is a large pond they call the Turtle-Flambeau Flowage (couldn't be a lake with this much marsh, so it's a flowage).
I like to read historical plaques as I bike, because I'm going slow enough to stop and read them and it gives me an idea of where I'm going. This particular road, County Road J, runs along what was once the Ridden Line, a railroad track put in around the turn of the century to access the timberlands of Northern Wisconsin. It operated until 1938 when the last of the trees were cut down and everyone left, leaving the region economically deprived. Funny how there's no mention in those historical plaques about anything to do with the flaws of the white man's natural resource rampage... However, it's signs like those that remind me that no road, nor any place, is without a story, even if no one is left to tell it.
Feeling sore and full; a satisfying combination.
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