DOOR WAY (The People in the Landscape)

Tim Weborg: Final Notes on a Fisherman’s Life.

That time pf the year, the season between seasons, from late October to first snow, the cold, wet, steel-like time occasionally embraced by fog, a time no tourist will ever know the disoriented depths of unless he’s lived a life here, year after year, with no thought of getting out…On such a morning I am reminded of someone closing the door, and I await the sound of the latch…Once on such a morning I arose in the early darkness, drank black coffee, packed a small lunch and found my way towards the harbor in Gills Rock where I knew fisherman Tim Weborg would be preparing his boat for the day’s run…to see him in his setting…to see what his life was like…to see how a native, from a family of fishermen, fit into the scheme of things.

DOOR STEPS (A Journal: The Days, the Seasons)

April 9 Night Music

Night rain, night wind, the darkest of spring music, the deadliest of nights. Blue-black trees bending, branches crazed. Where do the birds hide? The earth tosses. The wind's voice uncurls the bark of white birch trees, berates fence posts in a whine through barbed wire, sends stones clacking upon themselves, snaps branches in mid-heaven, strumming others in their descent and muffled drum fall, flows steadily, high-pitched across the fields, fragmenting itself through the woods in a chorus of voices, rattling my midnight window transformed to feathery drumbeats, water washing the windowpane.

DOOR TO DOOR

“In this final volume of his great Door County tri­logy, Blei extends his chronicle of the natural and inner landscapes to geographies far removed from his Wisconsin home. Friends in Illinois and Sante Fe join artists and residents of Door County in a series of stunning portraits almost without parallel in modern literature for their depth and candor. Drawings, paintings, poems, artifacts of all kinds created by both the writer and his subjects make the book a performance of itself. Outer and inner landscapes merge, as the door of the writer, open­ing onto the world of others, becomes a door to the writer's inner self. Pieces like “St. Pat-the End of the Rainbow,” “Lost in Elburn,” and “A Death in the Village” will surely become classics of twentieth century American literature.” –from the cover notes

MEDITATIONS ON A SMALL LAKE
New Expanded Edition

THE DEATH OF A COUNTRY ROAD

It was the kind of road one came upon unexpect­edly, and because there was a quietness to it, a beauty, a mystery, you followed it wherever it led.

Dirt roads of this sort seldom lead to anywhere special. Their direction, for the most part, is an inner route, a self-exploratory tour guided by nature and the season.

Distance does not matter. Ten footsteps could lead you past wildflowers, under the sheltering, sway­ing branches of old trees, into a personal landscape you were quite unfamiliar with, but welcomed.

But a dirt road can die too, just as an animal, a plant, a tree.

And the more this county seems to come to life with buildings and people, the more it seems to die.

Click here for a Meditations PDF brochure.

CHRONICLES OF A RURAL JOURNALIST IN AMERICA

The News That’s Fit to Print

This is a book about small town journalism, small town life.

A true enough story in the way it unfolds. In the way a writer interprets what he observes. What is fiction if not another form of truth?

Where are the times chronicled these days without fabrication?…

So… let me entertain you. With news from Rural America. Small town stories from DOOR COUNTY, USA-as many a bumper sticker in these parts proudly proclaims.

If “Nobody Knows the Troubles You’ve Seen, You Sure don’t Live in a Small Town.” (Not so proudly proclaimed, but true enough.)

WINTER BOOK

Winter Mind

One must have a mind of winter. . . .
For the listener, who listens to the snow.
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
-Wallace Stevens, “The Snowman”

I'm not finished with winter yet. And winter is not finished with me.

If I put everything down in words I want to say, there would still be more secrets under the snow.

These are a young man's fears and an old man's love. Or the opposite.

I am neither young nor old. Winter beckons.

To make note of things-all a writer really does. To find a way in and a way out, making changes with each step. Scribbles, ramblings, seeds in a pod. Dry leaves rattling on bare branches in a fierce autumn wind. Note.

I should step back and revise all I have written so far. I should vaguely consider what lies ahead. But I am out of time. What lies ahead is always the next word.

There is a cold rain falling today. With a sky full of November. I can barely wait for what comes next. My mind is laden with winter.

It has been said that a writer possesses a mere handful of themes to which he returns and refashions time and time again. Winter is one of mine. The clarity of ice. The perfection of snow. The silence of transformation.

I love the time before the coming snow. Months away, days away, moments away. As radiant as the coming of spring may be with all its wonder of leaf/ flower, thunder, warmth, and water. As regenerative the heat of summer months of mindless joy. As thoughtful the autumn color, the falling light. Winter is where the gods lie in pastures of white beseeching a hand to hold, to take into the deep.

Here, take mine.