Grouse Hollow Journal for May 14, 2015 by Greg Koelker

Whitney dives into the underbrush after a morel.

It takes a good eye to see these.

Mark and Whitney check out some of the morels they found.

Some fabulous fungi and our morel hunting mutt, Scout.

Gregg and Pearl Sikora with thie 6 pounds of morels found on Mother's Day.

If you fill it, they will come. We found that out again last week, when on a hunch, Ellen decided to fill the hummingbird feeders. We hadn't seen any hummers yet, but within hours of hanging out the red and yellow nectar jars, we had action. So far there have only been two little green buzzers there, but this morning (Sunday) I saw my first ruby throated hummer. I also saw a bluebird on the feeder.

We have had some morel action this last week. I found a pound or so while I was turkey hunting last Wednesday and Ellen found maybe twice that many on two trips. She fried up a small pan of the fabulous fungi while I grilled marinated venison chops with asparagus for supper one evening.

We were over at the Flying Horse Stables on Saturday afternoon for lunch with the Swensons and our mountain kids, Mark and Whitney who were here for a few days to celebrate Mother's Day and the 34^th anniversary of my 29^th birthday. Whitney's mom, Dawn put out a bowl of the best chicken salad I think I have ever had, and El fried up some morels in a pan that had earlier been used for breakfast sausage. She added some minced garlic, butter, and oliver oil. They also had a birthday party for me that evening too. We had a cocktail hour and then Whitney's dad, Randy, grilled pork tenderloins; Dawn put out her special baked beans, and there was more of her great chicken salad. We also had Mama Koelker's famous birthday cookie (in my honor of course) and her famous rhubarb crisp along with some glorious guacamole too. Mark and his brother-in-law Zach built a bonfire with lots of friends attending. It don't git no better!

On Mother's Day El went to church and I started writing this. I stopped to get the paper and let Scout out. I realized that I also had to clean out some rain gutters before it rained again, so I did that. Then I put a pan of bacon on the grill. I made El my special egg McGreg with cheddar cheese, a nuked egg, and bacon inside a whole wheat bagel. El and Scout went to get some lilacs up on the hill. Later, Mark came over and he and I went looking for my girls. We met her and Scout on the ridge road, El said to us, “Guess what I saw walking on the Grouse Hollow path.” I guessed a turkey (as this is still my turkey season) but she said, “No, a ruffed grouse!” She also dug a a handful of morels from her jacket pocket. She had marked some mushroom trees, so she and Scout took Mark for a mushroom hunt.

The turkeys have toyed with me all fourth season. Gobbling but not coming in to my calls. Still, the hunts have been fun. The woods are exploding into color, mostly shades of green, but there are yellow shooting stars, wild lavender lilacs, curled red leaves on the trunks of some small trees, even some oak leaves are reddish right now; there are blue bells, red and gold columbine, many small white flowers and more. We'll be picking goose berries this week too I think. The song birds are a chorus of wrens and finches and blackbirds and doves and robins with crows and blue jays adding to the cacophony. So far I haven't found any ticks on me. I have one more season to try for a turkey dinner.

Until next time, get out. Life is good, but I am angry. I grew up loving trains. I loved seeing smoke belching locomotives and the sleek Empire Builder and the variety of freight cars. I had two granddads, a number of uncles, and lots of friends who worked and/or still work on the railroad; I had Lionel electric trains all over our basement; I read train books occasionally and enjoy the occasional Agatha Christie mystery on a train; I have lived near a railroad my entire life, and I still find some comfort in the rumble of a train at night, but the BNSF on my “list” now. I think it is going too far with its new policy of enforcing no trespassing on their tracks. Apparently, somewhere around the middle of the last decade, a change was quietly made to railroad trespass laws making it a crime to cross the tracks except at designated crossings. It had been okay to just cross them before that. No big deal you say? Well, I beg to differ. Hundreds of miles of the Mississippi River and thousands of acres of public land will no longer be accessible to the public if this craziness continues. Ice fishermen, waterfowl hunters, trappers, summer fishermen, bird watchers, morel hunters, and such will not be able to access these public wild places that they have always had access to. Places like Shady Maple, areas of Lake Onalaska, Ronkoski Slough, and De Soto Bay will be harder if not impossible to access. BNSF has even hired a cop to oversee enforcement. Say what? When did they become a governmental entity that can write tickets? I realize that some 65 deaths have occurred along the Wisconsin tracks in the last decade - 12 along the Mississippi River from Buffalo to Crawford County. An article in the La Crosse Tribune said those were classified as, “running or walking, a quarter were lying on the track, and the other quarter were driving.” Not one of the railroad dead had a fishing pole or a shotgun or a bag of traps. For outdoors types, this has not been a safety issue. BNSF is important and powerful but they still have to be a good citizen; I fear they are not right now. I hear that representative Lee Nerison says he is looking into it. I also contacted Ron Kind, Tammy Baldwin, Ron Johnson, Jen Schilling, and Warren Buffet (who owns BNSF I hear and you may get a message through to him at this email: berkshire@berkshirehathaway.com) asking them to do something about this. I urge you to do that as well.