Swimming with Elephants Publications would like to introduce our February 2017 Featured Writer: Jim Landwehr.
Jim Landwehr enjoys writing creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry. His first book, Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir was published by eLectio Publishing. He also has two published poetry collections, Reciting from Memory and Written Life. His non-fiction has been published in Main Street Rag, Prairie Rose Publications and others. His poetry has been featured in Torrid Literature Journal, Wisconsin People and Ideas Magazine, Off the Coast Poetry Journal, and many others.
He is currently working on a book-length memoir about the house he grew up in with his 5 siblings in a single-parent family. He is also seeking publication for a poetry series titled “On a Road” about a trip from Minnesota to California in the 1980’s. He enjoys fishing, kayaking, biking and camping with his kids. Jim lives and works in Waukesha as a Geographic Information Systems Analyst. For more on his work, visit: http://www.jimlandwehr.com
The three poems included in this short preview are from his “On a Road” poetry series. Also, included in his preview is an except from his first book, Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir. Like many authors, Landwehr seeks to share his works to promote his upcoming publication of poems and his memoir.
We are thrilled to have Jim Landwehr as our February Featured Writer of 2017 and hope that you enjoy his work just as much as we have.
From On a Road poem series
Overview:
In March of 1984, two friends and I rented a car and drove nonstop from St. Paul, Minnesota to Los Angeles California, a forty hour drive, one way. We were all in our early twenties and it was the first big trip for all of us. The three of us worked together on the catalog dock at Montgomery Wards at the time and I was attending the University of Minnesota in my junior year.
The trip had elements of Jack Kerouac’s classic, On the Road, and being a big fan of the beat generation, I decided to make a three poem series out of the trip. I chose to build in some references from Kerouac’s original work including changing my friends’ names to match the characters in On the Road and supplementing each poem with an original quote from the book.
This three poem series was eventually published as part of a larger poetry collection of mine titled, Reciting from Memory. When I mentioned making the series into a larger work, a colleague of mine encouraged to follow through on it. It came together as a series of 20 poems that document the essence of the trip. My hope is to publish the entire work as a chapbook sometime in 2017.
Setting Pace – The first entry from the On a Road poem series
Sitting at the bar in southwest Minneapolis
the boys and I realize we’re starting the trip
out with recklessness and wonton disregard for schedule
as we sip our beers, talk and contemplate
the estimated forty hour trip we have in front of us.
Dean raises his glass and declares, “to California, boys!”
Sal and I echo back “to California”
and take long draws from our
watered down American pilsners.
We’re just three twenty-somethings
with highly uncertain futures doing what we do best at
this point in our lives; drinking, hanging out and
living in the immediate because, if nothing, else
we’ve got each other, these drinks and dreams
of palm trees, the pacific ocean and So Cal girls
on this grey day in March and
I guess that will have to do for now.
At the moment, everything is alright by me
as the beer squelches the uncertainty of the road ahead
and the jukebox plays Def Leppard’s
counsel to the lost boys of minnesota
“All right
I got somethin’ to say
Yeah, it’s better to burn out
Yeah, than fade away…”*
“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
*Lyrics courtesy of Def Leppard, “Rock of Ages” from the album Pyromania
Hellywood – an entry from the On a Road poem series
On our way to see a bit of Hollywood
what the big attraction is
driving down some six lane holocaust
through miles of calighetto in our chevy
– it just goes on and on, the blight –
rundown buildings, trash in the gutter
barred windows, last ditch cars
with junkyard fenders
duct-taped plastic windows
boarded up buildings, razor wire
and gates on every door
for godssake even the
sorry looking palm trees long for
the suburbs to try and get out of
this shithole. California is its own kind of
gecko changing colors without warning
and laying motionless in the hot sun.
It seems we’ve got to go through
hell to get to Hollywood.
“LA is a jungle.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Breakfast in a Box – an entry from the On a Road poem series
Somehow we ended up at a Jack in the Box
a dumpy hut-like fast food joint
which, frankly, none of us had heard of
prior to this alcohol fogged trip to the coast
but they serve breakfast so here we are.
The place isn’t open yet
so we’re loitering in the parking lot
in what would look quite convincingly
like a stolen Pontiac Trans Am
-no, really officer, it’s our friend’s car;
disregard those beers in Sal’s pockets-
It might be a tough sell job.
The three of us followed a road map
to get us back here to Redondo Beach
after a little shuteye in a suburban
subdivision overnight. What a night!
When the place finally opens
we order some chow to quell our hangovers
while Dean finds a payphone and
makes a call to Damion back in the valley
“Hey, what’s up man?
Yeah, your car’s fine – we slept in it.
But somehow we ended up at a Jack in the Box.”
“Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.”
From Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir
Overview:
This book came to be after I joined a writing workshop several years ago. I began writing humorous stories about trips I’d taken to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness over the past 30 years. Over time, the number of stories grew and eventually the book developed into a three part memoir that crosses three generations, my father’s, mine and that of my children. It was published in 2014 and was my first book.
Boundary Waters Dreamin’
(An excerpt from Dirty Shirt: a boundary waters memoir, by eLectio Publishing)
Our trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) of northern Minnesota, for the four of us high school friends was, truthfully, a considerable downgrade. The original plan was to drive out west to California after graduation. When you’re eighteen, you take your newly ordained adulthood as a chance to assert your independence. What better way to do that than to drive two thousand miles with your friends? Since none of us owned a car, nor had the money or means to get much further west than South Dakota, we “right-sized” our dreams into a five day canoe trip. The California Dreamin’ was good while it lasted.
The BWCA is a million-plus acres of relatively untouched wilderness extending from northern Minnesota to the Canadian border. It consists of more than a thousand lakes strung together by crystal clear rivers and man-made portages cut through the dense forest. No motorized vehicles are allowed into the area, so all travel must be done on foot or in canoes. The natural beauty, abundant wildlife and deafening quiet of the deep wilderness, make the area attractive to any outdoor purist.
Disregard the fact that, after five days in this natural beauty, I wanted nothing more than to leave it. Leave it and seek such niceties as running water, hot showers, and the female form. Being in the woods, while good for the soul, is hard on the body. There’s something about wilderness living that assures me the Industrial Revolution was a good thing.
There were four of us high school buddies altogether; Pete, Doug, myself and Pat, who I still consider a “best friend” today. We did most of our organizing at a planning meeting in the basement of Pat’s house. Doug brought a map and the route was planned, paddling distances charted, schedules set; all things that seemed like rational, logical thoughts at the time. However, we were oblivious to the fact that, in the BWCA, the schedule is always the first thing to go. As wilderness rookies, we had to give the appearance of actually having a plan by charting out where we would eat, sleep and fish. In reality, by the time we set up our tent on the first night, we were already behind schedule. We quickly realized that the only time that matters in the woods is, how long until dark? For the most part, when it gets dark, everything stops.
Because most of us were eighteen and were relying entirely on our own means for transportation, there was relatively little parental input into the planning process. My guess is they were just relieved that we shed the California trip for something more local and attainable. The travel plan we crafted using our collective teenage brain trust, was to start out by train from St. Paul to Duluth, Minnesota. From there, we would catch the Greyhound bus to Grand Marais a hundred miles northeast. We would then rely on hitchhiking sixty miles up the Gunflint Trail to the outfitters at our “starting point.” Sounds like a slam dunk, doesn’t it? Yes sir, no possible holes in that itinerary. Rock solid.
***
Much of what makes or breaks a camping trip is determined by the quality and selection of equipment. This was our first foray into the woods without parents or other family involved. We packed what we thought would work best, given our experience and substandard budget. None of us knew any better, nor had the means to do anything about it if we did. Besides, it was just a canoe trip, how hard could it be? We would quickly learn how unforgiving the water and woods were to ungainly equipment and poor planning.
During the planning meeting, the subject of tents was brought up.
“I’ve got a couple of two man tents. One is brand new and the other is pretty beat. I think the zipper may even be broken. It’s down in my basement somewhere. You’re welcome to use it, but there are no guarantees on it,” I said.
After a few shrugs, no one else offered anything better, so we decided to make it work. When you’re a pie-eyed high school grad, you can make anything work. Needless to say, I was happy I made the investment in the new Eureka a few weeks before. My brother Tom always said that you cannot underestimate the value of a good tent, and I certainly knew which tent of the two I was sleeping in.
The rest of the equipment we took with us all bordered on substandard, designed more for car-camping than canoeing and portaging. Of course there was the “essential” Coleman lantern. It sounded good on paper; providing light for playing cards, warding off black bear, sending SOS signals to aircraft overhead, and the like. Unfortunately, we neglected to factor in the possibility of broken-mantles. Mantles are small sacks or pouches made of cloth. They tie to the gas outlets on a lantern and when they burn they turn to ash, serving as the ignition point for the lantern. They work fine as long as the ashen mantles are not bumped or broken. If they are broken, what you have on your hands amounts to a low-grade civilian flamethrower. They can be fun if you’re sporting an asbestos flannel shirt and a welder’s helmet, but otherwise, pretty useless in the woods.
After discovering the broken mantles, there were many moments when heaving the useless device into the woods seemed like the most prudent thing to do; a kind of a deep woods Molotov cocktail for the city boys. Instead, the item became our boat anchor. Not in the literal sense, but rather it was the item which, when rendered inoperable, suddenly becomes dead weight that must be lugged around for the duration of the trip. Every trip has one.
Another poorly chosen article for a couple of us on the trip were large, cumbersome, cotton-filled sleeping bags. Why mess with goose down when you could lug what amounted to a seven pound cotton sponge on your back? They were bulky and heavy when dry; when wet, they quickly doubled in weight. Ounce for ounce, they were undoubtedly the most burdensome items on the trip.
Perhaps the most definitive of all bad equipment choices was the drab green, army-issued folding military shovel. Unlike the cotton “sleeping bag sponges” and the “lantern flambeau,” which had functional purposes behind being packed, this item’s utility escapes me even to this day. Lord, what were we thinking? It turns out foxholes aren’t really necessary on most campouts. Trenches, not so much, either. If a US/Canadian war were to break out, though, we were set.
Some good advice for any camping trip is if you can’t eat it, wear it, sleep in it, or start a fire with it, leave it home.
Once the equipment was defined, we focused on choosing our route. We used a popular map series that existed for the area at the time. Having spent my entire career in computer mapping, I can appreciate many of the good qualities of these maps. They were simple to read, had decent cartography, and, for the most part, credible content. They also had a light film coating to them giving them a crackly feel and making them water resistant. This worked to our advantage when water from the canoe paddles would drip on them during our paddling. I can also attest that they float for short periods of time if blown overboard, but that is another story.
For all of the good qualities these maps have, I also recognize their shortcomings; small issues such as missing or incorrect portages, scale problems and, of course, the question of how up-to-date they were. To the manufacturer’s credit, however, they do have one of the most all-encompassing disclaimers I’ve ever seen, which reads:
This map is not intended for navigational use and is not represented to be correct in every respect.
Wow. A map not intended for navigation. My question then becomes, what is it supposed to be used for? Birdcage lining? Fish wrap? Fire kindling? Now, kindling was an idea we gave some thought to.
It’s a bit like publishing a cookbook and then disclaiming it by saying “Hey, this book shouldn’t be used to cook anything.” Or perhaps like the weatherman saying there’s a forty percent chance of rain. What does that really mean? The map might better be served by taking a meteorological approach by saying “You have a forty percent chance of getting lost if you use this map.” At least give me some odds to work with.
We continued our planning despite the heavily disclaimed map. Using it, we plotted a circuitous route beginning at the outfitters on Seagull Lake who would drop us off at our entry point on Gunflint Lake. From there we would head north, then west, then back south, eventually finishing at the outfitters back on Seagull Lake. The map indicated several portages that circumvented fast or impassible water using a dashed line. We knew portaging was part of the whole experience, so it did not deter us from sticking with the plan. In fact, the possibility of a little excitement was alluring to all of us. The entire route would be an ambitious, yet achievable paddle, especially for four young men in good physical condition.
The final planning details centered around meals and the food we would bring. It was unanimous that trying to make a meal plan comprised of freeze dried food would be prohibitively expensive. I pointed out that as long as we brought dried food and no meat, we would probably be okay.
“Oh, we can bring meat. My brother has brought hamburger up before,” Doug chimed in.
“How does he keep it from spoiling?” I asked.
“You just freeze it real good and pack it in ice. No problem.”
I looked at him with questioning cynicism. My brother Tom, who had been to the area on a few occasions and who I deemed the expert, always said that food requiring ice would add more bulk and weight than lugging it around would be worth. Furthermore, if you choose to bring frozen food, you should use dry ice, as it lasts longer and does not melt. I am not sure if I mentioned the dry ice idea, but I am sure my skepticism about bringing meat shone through fairly implicitly. Doug seemed sure and confident, so we agreed he would pack it and we would have hamburgers for a couple of our dinners. With the last of the details planned, we said our goodbyes and left, anxious and excited for our coming adventure.
***
While the planning was done corporately, we were all in charge of packing our own clothes, sleeping bags and other equipment. I started by setting up and airing-out the two tents in the front yard. The new Eureka was set up in less than ten minutes and was a thing of strength and beauty. Its poles stretched the nylon cream colored rain-fly taut, and the zippered screening was solid defense against mosquitoes and other bugs. On the inside, I would go so far as to say it had that new tent smell, not unlike a new car.
The second tent took a bit more to set up. The poles and joints were not as nicely engineered as the Eureka and it quickly became clear it was a cheap knock-off model. Unlike the subtle cream color of the Eureka, its bastard brother was highway cone blaze-orange and visible from a mile away. The only subtle quality about it was the protection it would provide against the bugs, given its broken zipper. It was more of the Charlie Brown variety, difficult to assemble and almost as difficult to look at.
As the evening grew late, I moved on to packing my clothes. I stuffed a couple of shirts, pants, underwear and socks into the hand-me-down frame backpack I inherited when Tom upgraded. When I went to pack what was probably my most essential piece of clothing, my heavy duty flannel shirt, I realized it was dirty.
I mentioned to my brother Tom that my favorite camping shirt was in the laundry and it was too late to try and wash it.
Now, he had been watching most of the packing process with great amusement, sprinkled with moments of disbelief, and felt compelled to offer some sage words of wisdom.
“You know, Jim, it’s always good to start a trip with a dirty shirt.”
His tone was dripping with sarcasm. It became the haunting voice of reason in my head for the rest of the trip. The actual dirty shirt was the least of my issues. It was the basic precepts behind starting a trip of such magnitude with substandard equipment and planning that haunted us in so many situations. The thing was, I knew he was right. Tom was a seasoned camper who backpacked his way across the country a few years earlier. I was determined to do this trip my way, however. I wanted to prove I could do it as well as anyone, so chose to press on and make my indelible mark in the woods.
The scars are still healing.
Swimming with Elephants Publications 