Author Archives: cmkraack

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About cmkraack

Award winning writer of fiction and nonfiction. Founding board member of Write On, Door County. Must write or that restless feeling that all is not right starts. Love my family and friends and dog. Maybe not in that order every day. Worry about global children's food insecurity, overly powerful men and corporation. Grateful.

Let’s Talk Turkey

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Spending last week with a ten-year-old and a three-year-old, daytime conversations focused on important topics like glitter glue, building Lego structures with or without directions, how many cookies equal too many, and the dangerous wild turkeys wandering nearby.

One night we strapped on headlamps to walk in the meadow, away from houses, turned off the lights to look at a sky ablaze with stars. The granddaughters, bright eyes plastered upward, were thrilled until remembering it was December and cold.

Star gazing in the meadow is the kind of memory shared in social media posts, but we talked about the wild turkeys longer. Burning off energy with the younger child, her father saw many turkeys roosting in trees along our driveway. Since a neighbor told me that the turkey brood pecking through our neighborhood slept in our trees at night, I had been reading about them. Mostly about self-protection. Our smallish dog has been rushed more than once by a mom turkey protecting her poult. When he made it to the house before me, she turned attention my way. Nothing stopped her approach. We’ve been captive in our house as turkeys peck through the garden.

Mom turkeys can sit on their eggs for a month and have not one hatch. About 20% of eggs will hatch with only 25% of those surviving their first months. Clearly not cute, poults, or baby turkeys if you prefer, are fragile and a snack for many predators. Turkey poults require loafing and roosting sites. Got to like a youngster that requires loafing territory, or fancy word for shelter, during their food search. 

Turkeys spend their day on ground pecking for edibles and their nights roosting in trees. Our garden and grassy areas provide easy shopping for mom turkeys. We are annoyances in their family protection effort. Woodlands provide some shelter while the poults are too young to fly up to the roosting zone.

Thanks to tended gardens, grass and woods, our local turkey population expands. Mom and the recent four poults joined a multi-generational wintering flock of about two dozen spending each night. They prefer multi-story stands with mature trees. I’ve read that up to a hundred turkeys might roost near each other. 

This potential does not thrill me. Even our current community leave enough excrement on the driveway or in easement near the trees. As a popular toddler book says, everybody poops. In the human neighborhood, poop is not cute. The turkeys don’t care.

Wet Feet and Warm Heart

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To people living in the lake-effect snow areas, Tuesday night’s seven and three-quarters inches of white stuff that landed in Door County is insignificant. Except the weather professionals predicted a dusting. Opening the door at six in the morning to send an old, thirteen-inch-tall dog with arthritis in his hind quarters required intervention by an owner still in cotton knit pajamas and slippers.

The flip side of this story is that one of the most intensely awesome sunrises distracted attention from noting the snow depth. Bare tree branches etched black lines against nature’s red, orange, yellow, saffron into beauty that could not be painted, photographed, described. Walking along the back windows of the house behind the small dog, my eyes never slipped below the horizon. 

Sunrise colors seem shorter as the solstice approaches. By the time boots were located and a snow-covered dog rescued, the sky had turned a warm pink then faded into regular daylight. Winter weather arrived surprising me with the gifts of sunrise, snow in the trees, wet pants and bare feet discovering small cold puddles where the furry one shook.

In a time of deep emotions ranging from the continued happy surprises of family to dread of the immediate political future, from satisfaction in completing a complex writing project to sadness about a relative’s illness, it is easy to not notice what is simple and beautiful. Life’s gifts and losses cannot be tabulated. A stranger’s smile might change an icky morning into a better day. 

May your holidays bring calm, happiness, and the beauty of a winter’s day even when your feet are cold or wet.

Navigating Life’s Turbulence: Lessons from a Country Walk

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Candidate signs and Halloween decorations needed clearing November 7th along the country road where I walked. My feet moved slower than my thoughts of how to accept election results. 

Five hundred feet ahead, at least a dozen large, wild, turkeys covered the road as well as both shoulders. They can be mean in a standoff. Future concerns fell to immediate safety. Should I turn around, my clap hands, swing a fallen branch to clear a path? Yelling and singing haven’t worked in the past. My walk was over.

Two deer bounded out from woods on one side of the road, gracefully crossed the asphalt, and entered deeper tree growth in beautiful synchrony. The turkeys scurried behind the white tails. Here, then gone. The walk cleared.

 “Awesome” I said out loud at the display of natural beauty. Unattractive turkeys had been swept into a brief glimpse of something amazingly natural on another day of unpleasant election rhetoric and deep discord.

Decades ago, St. Mary’s in Luxemburg, WI began my Christian orientation. Small towns, filled with relatives, made it easier to accept a set of beliefs and traditions. What I still carry is a careful relationship with God. Call it spirituality or faith, old-fashioned or unnecessary, I value the foundation. At the turkey and deer moment, I followed the spoken word with a silent “Thank you, God” for a reminder of good possibilities.

In November, regardless of voting on the winning or losing side, many people remain thankful for family, friends, freedom to have a public opinion. I dread how politics and powerful men with money will affect the quality of life. 

Fear feels like too powerful a word at a time when caution is critical. Fear was two years ago when I had major surgery to save my life. I knew what I feared that day. I could balance fear and hope. Today I can’t name what to fear beyond unpleasant changes. Fear and dread appear in definitions of each word, but fear has a more expansive description. 

I’d love to be one of those deer easily running through the woods. I can accept moving closer to the speed of the wild turkeys shuffling through fallen leaves or awkwardly flying up to their nightly roost. During the day I will keep looking for ways to move the threatening turkeys out of the way of my walk and yours.

Two years of thankfulness. More to come.

Spiders, Jeans and Apples

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Daylight now plays secondary to darkness. Not the awesome state of Dec. 21, but the gradual nibbling away of four minutes a day of sunlight. That doesn’t sound like a big bite of time until added up and you’re twenty-eight minutes behind the game in taking a walk, taking pictures of the last of summer’s flowers or merely reading without a lamp. 

Temperatures are also supposed to be heading to lower numbers. The boys will wear shorts until their friends pull out sweats or long jeans. It’s all relative. In March sixty degrees suggests that a sweater can stay in the car or at home. In October someone will pull out a jacket and hat, maybe even gloves, when leaving for work. Spiders find their way into the house, spinning webs where no one wants to see a creepy critter hanging. The hummingbirds are gone, but the geese increase in number, pooping everywhere and honking at ungodly hours.

Since the pandemic, things have changed. Or maybe it’s my age. Instead of planning a fall and winter wardrobe, I found new black pants, a pair of jeans, a new sweater, and comfortable shoes. A writer’s life is simple without office mates remembering that you’ve worn the same long black turtleneck for a few years. 

Open the windows for cool sleeping. Bake apple crisp or apple pie or apple cake. Celebrate the passing of mosquitos when walking the old dog. If it wasn’t for November 5, this could be the best time of the year.

Work is Work

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This past week I drove a loved family member to cancer radiation treatments, a first for me. One round of appointments was completed which, with agreement of the patient, was celebrated. Staff wearing silly headbands clapped as the patient rang a large bell. Lots of hugs and high fives were exchanged as music chosen by the patient played. Some folks danced. I took pictures for my relative’s wall. 

Thankfully the media carried Kamala Harris and Tim Walz sharing smiles and high hopes in their political campaign because a lot of people need to see other people enjoying their labors, even twenty seconds of joy. I wouldn’t want their jobs unless something truly despicable was the alternative. I would love to spread some of their positive energy across all whose work is unseen or unknown. Work is work.

This Labor Day weekend I wish I could embrace every person who works where the emotions and decisions are so immense. For those who hug, shake hands, wear sparkly hair baubles, bring cold water, sit in the quiet of difficult times, may you also find comfort. For people carrying hard news to virtual strangers or closing the doors of valued places, know that emotions projected by the impacted are not personal. It is hard to be on either side of that work.

For the caregivers, the news bearers, everyone working to keep family alive, building tall buildings, fixing tires, mopping, cooking, gathering eggs whatever honest labor you do, thanks. Even the writers. We’re in this together. Happy Labor Day.