Pastor's Blog

The Gulls

On the first truly cold and blustery day this winter, the gulls were swimming together in a huge flotilla near the railroad bridge over the Fox River.  Of all places to be on that day: bobbing in a river exposed to blasts of wind ripping spray off whitecaps.  How could that be the warmest and driest place a gull could think of on the first miserable day of winter?  Maybe gulls don’t think.  Maybe gulls don't need to be warm and dry.  Maybe they're warm, even if they're not dry.  Maybe they don’t get wet.  Maybe it was unsafe to fly.  There wasn’t a discernable source of warm water spewing out of the paper mill.  But maybe that was it.  I couldn't find any information about gulls that would explain this strange sight.

Between Oakwood Avenue and Brenner Place in Allouez is a small forest.  The backyards of homes on Brenner and Oakwood run into this forest which climbs the hill rising from Brenner.  Though I long to explore it, I have never been in this forest.  I think I can see a trailhead at the end of Brenner, but the owner of the home lets two nasty sounding dogs run loose in the yard.  If I had grown up near that forest, I would have gone wandering in it.  Now, as an adult, I worry about who owns the forest and who owns the trailhead and whether some suspicious homeowner would call the police.  And I wouldn’t blame someone for calling the police for seeing a strange man lurking in the woods behind their home.  If I could settle the question of who owns that forest, I might even approach the owner for permission to enter it.