Timothy Birdnow

Good morning Aviary readers!

I've been gone a few days and there is an explanation for that - a good one. I was on vacation - the first vacation I've had in a long, long time.

My older brother has become increasingly concerned about keeping us together as a family, as our parents are now dead and with the passing of my father in January the draw that brings everyone together was gone. And we are getting older and certainly my health is a bit dicey, so he's been wanting us to get together on a vacation. His plan was a bit more grandiose; he wanted to do southern Florida.

But I begged off; I think that long, long drive (we would be driving) was going to be too hard on me. I proposed an alternate idea; we meet in the middle (he lives in Kentucky) at a place I spent many happy days at in southern Illinois.

My dear wife and I discovered this region long, long ago, just as they were getting it up and going. At the time a third winery had just opened up and I read about it in a pamphlet I found at a rest stop in Illinois one time. We started going there regularly after that and watched it grow into a major tourist destination. There are now something like twelve wineries on the Shawnee Hills wine trail, although sadly a couple have closed and my very favorite one is going out of business.

Cathy passed away in December and I was sad I probably wouldn't get back there - no point going by myself and who else would I go with? Well...

My brother and his significant other agreed to join me for one last fling in the Shawnee Hills. It was good because it was a relatively short drive for both of us. Two and a half hours for me, four hours for him.

Sadly my other brother was unable to attend. The point of this was for all of us to be together.

Anyway I was proud of myself; I feared breaking down on this trip with nostalgia and memories of my wife but didn't do it. Partly it was the dynamic; my brother Eric was in high form, a stream of endless jokes and barbs and we had a wonderful time! Lisa gives as good as she gets too and I laughed pretty much nonstop the whole trip.

It was tough that and I was still hobbling with a cane because of a bad foot (I had had minor surgery on my foot and it was still healing) plus back problems and so I was teetering along. And my brother booked our cabin at Giant City Lodge, a great state park with cabins and a wonderful country restaurant in a lodge setting, but the cabin he booked required a pretty "healthy" hike down a steep grade.

The walking down wasn't too bad but the walking up was, uh, challenging for a guy with a bad back and bum foot. It was wearing on my brother and his gal but it was just brutal on me. There was a hand-rail though which was helpful. And Lisa would stay back with me and help me go.

It made me feel like an old man but as I AM an old man, or near enough, I suppose I better get used to it.

We got the lodge to send a woman down with a golf cart when we left, so we didn't have to carry all our stuff down. But it was brutal going any way you slice it. We left our coolers in the cars and brought just one six pack cooler.

Lisa had taken to walking for exercise so we made her go back to the cars when we needed anything. Poor girl; she was a real trooper. Up, down, up, down. I suspect she was the only one of the three of us who lost weight rather than gained it on this trip!

At any rate the trip was a great success, even if we didn't get to do everything I hoped. We never made it to Bald Knob Cross, for instance. That is also called the Cross of Peace. It's a hundred and fifty foot tall crucifix, ivory white, that sits atop the second tallest mountain in Illinois and, since the top is treeless (hence the name) it is visible for miles around. They light it at night too. Magnificent sight if you are out at night!

Also, since I was hobbled we never did any of the natural stuff like the Little Grand Canyon (a deep canyon where the Big Muddy River cut through) or any of the local lakes. Shoot; I would have liked to rent canoes for the river but there wasn't enough time.

But it was a fine trip. We ate our heads off at the restaurant there. Big, meaty portions of everything, from the unlimited fried chicken dinner (their specialty) to their catfish and bison and they even had prime rib (which I had one day). Breakfast was naturally quite hearty, like a Cracker Barrel repast.

And we drank a LOT of wine, hitting several of the wineries a day. In the early days the wines of the region were just mediocre, but now that the vines have matured the wines have improved a lot.

We mostly had dry or semi-dry whites, as it was hot and Eric and Lisa preferred them. We did have red at Hickory Ridge, my favorite winery in the area (and the most isolated; they just created a winery in the middle of the deep forest, cut it right out, and it was always the most rustic. Oh, and it specialized in dry reds. Those reds aged beautifully too. I bought a few bottles and one of their bottles of port as well and plan on drinking them on occasions that would have involved my wife Cathy - such as our anniversary, or Christmas, or her next birthday. Sadly this winery is going out of business since the owners are retiring and they live on the property. They are leasing out their vineyard for the grapes.)

A few more points; the first day we left the lodge and my brother put the GPS system on. It got stuck in an infinite loop and led us around in circles for about an hour. Crazy thing! It's very easy to get lost around there; it's very deep woods, not quite mountainous but close, and the roads all look alike. Plus the wineries aren't very close together and the trail isn't well marked with signage. Much of the trip was spent driving. I kept nagging them that first day to get going and they didn't understand why I was so eager to hit the wineries. By the time we got to the first one it was getting a bit late; it took that long to get there. I knew it would since we had to get our feet wet with this back-country driving.

It got easier the longer we stayed.

And I got lost on my way out, and wound up well north of where I wanted to be. I had no GPS and at one point was thinking "where the HELL am I" but I have an excellent sense of direction (normally) and I found a road and just turned on it and it was U.S. 51, the very road I wanted. I had no further trouble after that.

Another interesting tidbit; I was chatting with the wine pour guy at Alto Vineyards and he said all the wineries have been hurting because of the legalization of marijuana. Apparently the college kids don't drink anymore - they sit in their dorms and smoke weed until they brains rot rather than go down to the wineries and pay fifteen, twenty, twenty five bucks for a bottle of wine. This dovetails with what I've learned from craft brewers around the St. Lous area, who tell me that they too have lost the younger generation to the Devil's Lettuce. Young people aren't drinking much anymore - they've  been told by their teachers and society alcohol is evil, so they went to the "good stuff", which is now cheaper and now legal in most places. So the alcohol industry is suffering and importers of pot are getting rich. This directly affects the Mom and Pop wineries, which started life as someone's fondest dream and ends in bankruptcy because the kids are too stoned to waste time and money on the labor of love that is wine. 

The Shawnee Hills wine trail is just a few miles south of Carbondale, home to Southern Illinois University. It's also just about fifteen, twenty miles northeast of Southeast Missouri University in Cape Girardeau. That's why so large a wine industry could thrive in so rural and backwoods an area. 

Anyway it was a wonderful trip and I felt like my old self (rather than just old). It was so merry too; I thought about Cathy (in fact I probably talked about her far too much but I needed to do it) but didn't cry at all. I am really grateful to Eric and Lisa for this - it was just what I needed.

It's too bad my other brother couldn't make it. He needed it too, but he's got a class to teach and those college kids aren't going to learn it by osmosis.

So I apologize for not being here this week. But even the best of us need a vacation from time to time, and it was long overdue.

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