Sunday morning. Back to my routine life.   Just yesterday I was in Eagle River Wisconsin, the north woods.  It is a country inhabited by wild life as much as by people.  Over the 6 hour drive north past Milwaukee and Madison the flat expanses of cultivated fields gave way to aspen and spruce forests.  Small towns, modest but attractive well-kept homes, and many pickup trucks caught my interest.  Our lives adapt to the proximity of wildness.  I’d much rather have a 4 wheel drive pickup than a Toyota Matrix on a snowy country road.

We traveled to Eagle River to bid farewell to Kurt, my wife’s uncle.  Kurt was non-conventional.  He and Clara began life together both working for a bank in Chicago.  Kurt’s dream as a young man was to live close to the woods, to  a lake, and to keep horses.  He walked away from the bank job, the salary, the security, the stress –and started over on the 80 some acres by a lake outside of Eagle River.  Kurt had purchased the land along with his parents.

Now Kurt has passed.  We pulled into the drive way and for the first time in many years, he did not rise to greet us with a big smile, wearing his cavalry campaign hat, wearing a holstered colt 45.  Yes, Kurt was eccentric,–he never failed to urge me to join the National Rifle Association.  We both found

guns fascinating.  Kurt had a basement workshop where he would reload his own ammo.  He knew what he was doing.  He idolized actors in the old cowboy movies, and he would tell stories about Tom Mix, the King of the Cowboys.

Kurt owned a number of horses, each of which he dearly loved.  Zeppie was the last horse, living in the barn just a short walk from the house.  Whenever Kurt would speak of his horses,  his eyes would light up with kindness.  His affection for them could be heard in his voice.  In the last few months Kurt fought a crippling disability in his legs to climb the incline to the barn, in order to clean out the stall where Zeppie stayed, and to supply enough hay for the day.  He loved that horse.

Kurt was eccentric by any definition.  Perhaps to live as you feel that you must in the North Woods demands a inner resolve, an angle of

view not shared by the majority.  Kurt enjoyed watching professional wrestling on TV.  He watched a lot of Fox News.  We barely touched on politics when we were guests in Kurt’s home.  We had enough in common and politics was not that important.

Kurt has passed on.  He loved his wife Clara, his son David, and David’s wife Shari.  He loved Ben, his grandson, and Ben’s wife Ashley to the end.  He also loved Zeppie who has retired to another pasture.  He loved us.

Kurt has left his mark on those lives and many more that I will never know.  He was kind to the land and to the animals, those who lived in his barn, his house, as well as the fox, bear, and squirrels that lived around him.  Kurt Mohrman will live on in the lives of those that he loved.