Looking for Nick Adams

I’m out of here tomorrow and will not be online much for the next ten days, heading into the UP (for non-Michiganders, that’s the Upper Peninsula). I’ll spend next week with a group of students helping them behave while building a house for a needy family all while swatting mosquitoes and black flies. Then, next Saturday, I’ll take off to see if I can locate Nick Adams as I join up with a few “older” friends and we float and fish the Fox and Two-hearted Rivers. Hemingway’s inspiration for his classic short-story, “The Big Two-Hearted River,” came from a fishing expedition he and some friends took to the Fox River shortly after the Great War. It’s supposed to be a great trout stream. Last summer, I paddled the lower portion of the “Two-hearted,” but didn’t do any fishing. This summer, we’ll spend two days on the river, paddling the entire stretch that can be navigated. Supposedly, Hemingway liked the name "Two-Hearted" better than "Fox," hence the name of the story. But some suggest that the reason was because he wanted to "hide" a favorite trout stream, but that's probably not the case since for all we know, Hemingway only fished the Fox once.

I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to get online. I may get a chance to post next week, but once I head to the river, the computer will stay packed up and I’ll be limited to my notebook and a pen. I'll check back in with everyone when I get back home. Stay cool!

Nevada Jack, reporting on the absurd: Of course, Sage could forego actual canoeing and fishing, avoiding sunburns, sore muscles and unpleasant encounters with bugs, by staying at home and going on a virtual canoe trip catching virtual fish with only a risk of encountering a not so virtual case of carpal tunnel syndrome. Did you catch this story on virtual hunting? Some people have just too much time on their hands or too large of wallets (or too much credit). Now, on an entrepreneurial level, maybe a good way to recycle old computer screens is to use them in the mounting of the head of these animals that have been tracked down and killed over the internet. Instead of having an antelope head mounted on a wall, you could have it coming out of a computer screen. Can you imagine that sitting on a living room table? Surely it would become a conversation piece. However, I'll forgo any profits that I might have made and hope other states join Louisiana in outlawing internet hunting.