A.K. Thompson, Dirt Church, The Cold is Keeping Me

from Adventure Sports Outdoors January 2018

MDC REPORTS MORE THAN 7,700 DEER HARVESTED DURING ANTLERLESS PORTION

As I sit here and write, the first terrible cold snap of the season is upon northern Illinois. The air bites at my face if I venture outdoors, and the wind, however slight, makes the temperature feel at least 15 or 20 degrees colder. I have found myself mourning the loss of my southern Illinois winters. South you can expect a snow event, and then expect it to have all been melted away by the afternoon. Of course, I had to contend with my fair share of mud in that case, but I will take mud over ice any day. I am not certain how I will handle this thing called Winter. The only winter I’ve known in the past years is the winter that Jon Snow must endure on Game of Thrones…so, as you can imagine, I am anticipating the worst. Having been in a bad car accident in my early 20’s as a result from hitting black ice, my vision of winter driving conditions sparks the absolute pinnacle of anxiety in my body. When your life sort of flashes before your eyes, you do everything you can to avoid that happening again. A four-wheel drive vehicle really helped in that regard, but now I drive a tiny little nothing Toyota Corolla. Most folks are probably happy about owning a new car, but I cannot stand it. It is too small and I just do not like it. It says nothing about who I am as a person, and right now I feel like a phony because I uprooted by entire southern life, moved back north and I cannot for the life of me, understand why, except that I make more money now, but Jesus Christ, that’s not what life and happiness is all about. So, yeah, I hate winter and I hate my car.

As the cold tendrils of the small months reach out to consume me, I am forced to reflect on the past several months. My summer and fall disappeared without my knowing. I have not been present in my

life, only in my job that I love. I do not feel connected to the earth. I feel lost, like I’ve been pushed way, way off course and have no means for correction. I fear I have made a grave mistake. If only….if only! I think that. If only this great job were in southern Illinois! Oh, who am I kidding, if only never works. Instead, one must sit, content with things, or THE COLD IS suffer in silence, which is what I have pretty much been doing. I feel like my body is now this walking creature, just trudging down a KEEPING ME path that eventually ends in retirement, then death. My body breathes and eats and drinks wine and pets the dogs, but it is not here. It By A.K. Thompson is somewhere else, far off, my beating heart in some cavernous darkness where I cannot hear it, I cannot see it, I cannot feel it. The Spirituality of place cannot find me here. Very often I catch myself praying that I find some sort of happiness similar to the happiness I felt in southern Illinois. Perhaps happiness is not the correct word, rather contentedness. I was always so relaxed and comfortable in my rented little 19th Century farmhouse, with my struggling bank account, on the quiet hill-top road I called home. I have felt no semblance of home here in the North. It feels dry and dusty, not humid and moist. The smell of the decay of so many leaves each fall, the swirling of so many bugs – the heat off a metal roof, I miss that. Here in the North the leaves are blown to shreds by the winds. It is

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not a friendly landscape that greets me now – it is a stranger who seems to remember me, and gives me the side-eye because my motives in returning are unclear.

This approaching winter, thundering toward me like the winds that push my house around is an enemy I must contend with -- it reminds me of what I have lost and what sits now in its place. I am fighting for myself right now. I have to find myself again, up here. I left her up here, tears still wet from the divorce. I left a lot of mistakes and heartache behind, and I thought that is where it would remain, yet I have returned to it, and it keeps me empty.

For now.

A.K. Thompson is curator of The Dillon Home Museum in Sterling, IL, a fiction writer and teacher who makes her home in northern Illinoisan. She holds a Master’s Degree in Writing and Consciousness from the New College of California, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University. She has served as an Assistant Editor for the Crab Orchard Review. Her work has appeared in STORY Magazine, Surreal South -- An Anthology of Short Fiction and Poetry, The Smoking Poet, and The Chiron Review among others. Friend Dirt Church on Facebook! Email A.K.: akdirtchurch@gmail.com

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WHAT DEER EAT IN THE WINTER

By Patrick Durkin

IF YOU KNOW WHAT DEER ARE GOING TO BE EATING IN THE MIDDLE OF WINTER, YOU’LL KNOW WHERE TO SET UP FOR A LATE-SEASON HUNT.

When scavenging for food in food plots or agricultural fields, whitetail deer prefer to eat corn, soybeans or cowpeas lying on the ground or atop the snow. They do not like to pluck food from standing stalks. In fact, they’ll walk past row after row of standing crops and scavenge for hours on harvested fields.

To ensure deer shift their feeding locations to reduce disease risks, landowners can knock down a few rows of crops every few days with an ATV or truck.

Hunters who maintain food plots often debate whether corn, soybeans or brassicas work best for late-season forage. Corn is likely the least beneficial for deer and hunting as a food-plot offering, partly because it’s so common in farm country. Try planting varieties of all three, staggering their planting time, variety and locations to disperse feeding activity and increase the time window in which late-season deer visit these sites. What about forest or big-woods deer? Even with a low metabolism and an inactive lifestyle that comes later in winter, the whitetail’s basic energy needs often exceed the fuel it extracts from woody browse such as the twigs and buds of ash, hemlock, aspen, maple, hazelwood and red osier dogwood.

The only woody browse that can sustain deer through 100 days in a deeryard is white cedar, but whitetails require 3- to 6-pound quantities daily, a major undertaking in heavily browsed deeryards.

Another favorite item on the winter menu of forest deer is “Old Man’s Beard,” a gray arboreal lichen resembling Spanish moss. These lichens grow on dead or dying spruce and balsam trees. If you find deer tracks converging on a long-dead tree that toppled recently, look for lichen “beards” on branches beyond the deer’s reach. Lichens are part algae and part fungus and are rich in nutrition, especially the “micronutrients” that apparently help deer survive harsh winters.

Remember, too, that deer like to bed as close as possible to food sources to reduce energy demands, which increase the farther they walk. Therefore, scout for dense bedding cover near food. Whether it’s bigwoods cedar bottoms or a woodland thicket brimming with prickly ash, grape vines and blackberry stalks, the densest cover usually holds late-season deer. Deer retreat to these thick sanctuaries to avoid human activity and/or to escape energy-robbing wind chills.

Featured photo: John Hafner Photography • www.grandviewoutdoors.com