As promised, I’m posting the essay by my grandfather, Francis C. Zuiker, about the Wisconsin campsite that we called the Raven’s Roost. I can’t say that I remembered the origin story of the site, although I’m sure my father has told me his version through the years. I found this essay in a pile of typewritten Zuiker Chronicles newsletters that I’ve collected from my father, aunts, uncles, and cousins through the years. This particular essay, which my grandfather wrote (under his pen name Frank the Beachcomber) probably around 1984 (when the family gathered for a jamboree and I think an aunt’s 25th anniversary), tells how the family came to own that piece of land and to name it. What’s amazing to me is that it also answers a set of questions I’ve been grappling with over the last few years. Why won’t my 83-year-old father retire, settle down, relax? Even today dad is sending me photos of himself hacking at the bush below the house on St. Croix! This essay, though, shows that he had a formational experience alongside his own father and brothers. That drive to clear a space is ingrained in him. The crows have spoken.
There was no way of explaining that situation. It was spontaneous, and eventually proved to change the lives of all of us forever. There I was, my four young sons grouped around me on the edge of a jungle of stumps on the Pine Creek Flowage, when Terry came out with it. “Why can’t we have a place up here for ourselves?” His voice was more of a wish than a conviction.
For a sleeping car mechanic, with six young boys to feed, it was total fantasy, but my mind never was very realistic, so I had a ready answer for him. “You kids all work at the ball games. You get your pay every day. We’ll just drop a quarter in a coffee can every day and soon we’ll have enough to buy a lot up here.” It probably was the wrong thing to say. In a split second the rest of the kids jumped on the idea and it started a life-long family project that never ended.
In reality we had a rare work situation not enjoyed by many families. Early in life by trick of fate I had the opportunity to go to work in concessions at Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park, Soldiers Field and the Chicago Stadium. The pay was commission and on a daily basis and as an added bonus it meant free passage to all the major sports events in Chicago every day. It meant speed, weariness, cash and a waiting job for each of my sons as soon as they were sixteen years old. Of course half of their pay went to mother for our existence. Half of what was left had to go into a savings account for them, and they could spend the other half any way they pleased.
It was amazing how the quarters added up. Within two years, and by the time we had located a wooded knell over the Wisconsin Flowage, we had enough quarters to pay cash for it.
Chasing a fantasy can be exciting, but as we stopped along a dirt road and stared at the mass of brambles, pines, birches, and oak that was our lot, stark reality overcame us. In the middle of the wall of brush down toward the lake, giant white pines thrust their crowns above the timber shining like lighthouses on a wild sea. They served as our guides, as, armed with machetes, we hacked a trail downhill toward water. Owning a piece of land when you were a teenager might have been prestigious, but the four boys working around me were for the most part silent and I couldn’t help notice that the sight of the lake was going to be a welcome thrill.
When we finally did see the bay, I for one had mixed emotions. It was filled with logs, lily pads, and cattails. For a long time we just stood and stared at it, watching the ebb of ripples as big fish broke water and I could almost feel the limitless expectations of future finish, future fishing running through them.
“Well. We made it!” I encouraged Joe and Larry, Denny and John. “Now all we need is a name for our place.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Names began to fly fast, until the call of a distant crow set the tone. “That’s it,” I commanded. “The way you kids are yelling you’d think a thousand crows had landed here. We might as well call it the RAVEN’S ROOST.”
It was one thing having a name. It was another turning this raw, undeveloped forest, and timber-choked bay into something livable. None of us really thought it would ever develop a character of its own and grow along with our ever-increasing family. Yet for just a moment, the lot, my sons, and I seemed to fuse together, all bent on some unpredictable goal for the future.
It was apparent that for the moment a path through the brush for our car and gear was far more urgent. Necessity proved to be the mother of finality. A place for our tent became a reality, and a fireplace began to take shape and we already had plans for a well.
The impossible problems were too gigantic for us to comprehend, so we tackled the small ones, and the big ones faded into obscurity.
Some of the big ones were a little tricky. The stones under our tent turned out to be rocks as big as bushel baskets, so we dug and lifted them out with six-inch saplings and used the rocks for foundations for our growing fireplace. Trees, we discovered, can be as obstinate as some people. In clearing our campsite we found that power lines had been strung straight through the Raven’s Roost, and notching a tree, on a hill doesn’t exactly mean the tree will fall where you want it to. With the aid of ropes and sheer will-power and a few prayers, we guided a few determined birches away from that destruction-taunting power line.
Our water supply proved to be no problem, because our coffee can was now filling up with quarters briskly, with the addition of two new sons, who had reached sixteen years.
A border fence for the Raven’s Roost was foremost in the minds of all of us from the beginning, and the hundreds of foot-long pine saplings filling the lot gave us plenty of material to work with. By the time our pump was gushing forth crystal-clear icy water, we had set up young pines all along the downhill trail to the water, and completely around the lot. Each year from then on, I watched the kids and the pines grow into stalwart beautiful creatures into stalwart beautiful characters.
Within a few years the clearing beneath the tall two tall trees have been expanded to include three more tent sites nestled on the sloping hill where the sparkling river could be seen winding through the islands, and forest in the distance. What had even a more mystic impression over me was the cragly crowns of the two giant pines looming high over our campsites. It was obvious that being the highest point within miles also had been the benefactor of lightning bolts on many an occasion. Now, for about twenty feet of the uppermost portions, bark had been burnt away, leaving the the tree scarred and stripped. I began to get the impression that the Raven’s Roost had a darker side to its character also.
The two-week annual visit left no room for fear or speculation. The shoreline itself was another challenge to our growing family. It had been choked with logs and vegetation from the start and offered a formidable obstacle to fishing or even navigation. A brilliant mind had once said, “You can do anything you want, as long you take the first step.” Armed with bow saws and axes, ropes and hatchets, we jumped into the bay and started hauling logs up out of the water high enough so we could man-handle them.
Hauling is not exactly the right word. The ends of the trees and logs did peek out above the water, but we learned early that there was a lot of timber below the water line. Hacking an eight or ten foot piece of timber from a log standing upright in the lake can be a test of physical effort. Success did have its good side. Every salvaged log became another link in our growing wharf, which eventually became insurance against erosion.
Time really flies on wings when accompanied by work you enjoy. The Raven’s Roost and my sons matured with our efforts. The wharf grew solid and was the foray point for many a battle with bass and pike and even a stray muskie. It was the training ground for a team of fly fishermen of varying ages. Meanwhile the fireplace kept growing with each rock without a home, and every time a lightning storm rolled down the river, our two giant pines scattered a few more diadems from their crowns. Yet nothing ever remains completely still. All along the trail, from the dirt road to the bay, and completely around the Raven’s Roost, the young pines kept reaching for the sky.
There was a Silver wedding held on the roost a few years ago—not ours. We’re reaching for Gold. A lot of the newcomers there were from a new generation. They were the squealing kind, and their dads now put folding money into the kitty. Every day we could hear the call of the crows along the river and I had the feeling that there were a lot more of them around too now. In a way they seemed to be calling to us every time we rolled into the Roost, and they left the impression with all of us that the coffee can full of quarters had done quite a job.
© Anton Zuiker