Ramble with Storm: Everett Ruess, WGN-AM & amur

Mulling things on my morning ramble

with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.

Well, I made 12 straight days of doing a Ramble with Storm, without missing one until yesterday.

It ended on the back side of the town pond yesterday morning when I received a cell phone call from an unknown number. It was a producer for Jonathan Brandmeier on WGN-AM wanting to talk.

I would leave my cell at home, except every now and then I want to take a quick photo of a red fox, geese or ducks.

So I hustled home, completely out of the tone, out of tune, and out of breath, with my normal rambling through the morning with the meathead. And I didn’t have time to do a Ramble with Storm on a deadline day and my head wasn’t right, to be blunt.

I could just give up, which I am not going to do. Instead, I will start the next round and see how long I can do a daily Ramble with Storm.

It’s a habit I enjoy.

Yesterday I got all discombobulated with having to run downtown for a meeting on the Chicago Marathon. While I was there, I poked my head in the Sun-Times office and cleaned out of my box of mail from the past couple months.

Albert Dickens, the office sports connection at the Sun-Times, piles my mail in this big cardboard carryall. He was about ready to send me one of my regular avalanche warnings.

One neat thing was in the pile: Finding Everett Ruess by David Roberts. Taking the Metra home, I began reading it.

You will hear more about this. Ruess is one of my fascinations in life.

He’s an 20-year-old writer/artist/dreamer who disappeared in the Southwest in the 1930s and was never found.

He has become a cult hero.

In the prologue, Roberts had this gem on page 6, which sums up part of the fascination with Ruess: “And then Everett Ruess vanished from the face of the earth.”

On a cheerier note, my fish-obsessed friend came down yesterday. He didn’t catch the fish he was chasing, but landed two big amur, 20-pounders

Again, fish I didn’t realize were in the town pond.

Life is about learning, going with the changes.