Trail Time – Summertime on the Gunflint Trail
Summertime on the Gunflint Trail is lush and green and beautiful and buggy. The water level of the lakes is high and we’ve received quite a bit of rainfall in the last 30 days: over 4-1/2 inches. We’ve had a handful of gorgeous high pressure days with fresh breezes, blue skies and puffy clouds building in the distance, beyond the hills into Canada. You know the kind of days I’m taking about: those days when everything has a special fizz, when energy and positivity run high. When you feel like you can hike forever, paddle your canoe forever or swing in the hammock all day with equal pleasure. Those are the days of the best daydreams.
With summer weather comes far more social events on the Trail. Last week we had Gunflint Cleanup Day followed by the annual shrimp boil at the Seagull Lake Community Center. The latter raises funds for the Gunflint Volunteer Fire Department and is a way that our firefighters show their appreciation to the community.
I was on Team Lars for Gunflint Cleanup Day. Every team got tee shirts and garbage bags and then we patrolled the roadside in sections, cleaning up trash, bottles and cans, a top off a grill and a perfectly good waterproof map bag in addition to other various oddities. All fifty-seven miles of the Trail were de-trashed by residents and summer visitors. After the roadside work, many of us met at Schaap Community Center at Firehall #1 by Poplar Lake. Lunch was served, prizes were given and all of us there learned a lot about trash and recycling and got some ideas on how to reduce our household trash. The event was organized and led by Andrea Hofeldt of Loon Lake Lodge. I hope you can join us next year in this effort to keep the Gunflint Trail beautiful and green.
The uptick in summer residents on the Trail isn’t isolated to humans. We’ve seen many species of birds that we haven’t seen for a year, chief among them the chestnut-sided warbler who perches in a flowering chokecherry tree right beside our screen porch each day and tells us again and again that he’s “pleased-pleased-pleased-to-meetcha!”
The males in breeding plumage are gorgeous in white, black, yellow and chestnut. It seems amazing to me that so much singing, in volume and frequency, emerges from that tiny body.
Before the chokecherry blossomed, we had the first year of blooms from a Canadian Plum tree planted 10 years ago. It took its fragrant part in the flowering succession that surrounds us in summer. The Hazel, the willows, the pin cherries, the moose maple all take their turn. And the strawberry, bunchberry, and wild ash blossoms offer their nectar to the bumblebees, mason bees, moths and hummingbirds. They rotate through the nectar-filled plants, the warblers, gnatcatchers, and other birds following them to feast on the bugs.
Not far from our cabin a pair of Pileated woodpeckers flew daily from a birch tree high on the hill to another birch down near the lake. It looked like they were pecking for food and delivering it to a nest. Back and forth they went, many times a day, calling to one another with their loud strangely tropical calls.
For a few weeks, we witnessed large vees of geese flying over two or three times a day. To me, the faraway honks always sound like a small crowd of talkative people and then the noise resolves itself into the familiar sounds as the geese wing their way northward.
There have been many sightings of moose this summer, cows, calves and bull moose with velveted antlers. There is a cow moose that I have seen crossing the Trail multiple times. I wonder if that moose I keep seeing has a calf secreted away in the nearby woods. A moose mother will leave her calf in a safe place while she goes to find food, much like a doe will leave a fawn. A moose calf depends on the cow’s milk for the first few months, so it doesn’t browse plants. I remember one particular baby moose years ago on a canoe trip to the Boundary Waters. One misty morning, as we paddled our canoe through a narrow inlet, Lars whispered to me from the stern, “Nine o’clock.” I looked over my left shoulder to see a tidy little brownish gray package of baby moose all folded up, lying in some soft green grass near the water. The baby didn’t look at us or move — just stayed very very still as we floated past.
Drivers be aware! Moose can move really quickly and appear in front of your car suddenly. If see a moose as you’re driving down the Trail, please be cautious, slow down, and if you pull off the road, make sure that both lanes of cars can pass you safely; Stay at a distance from all wild animals and do not try to touch them, for yours and the animal’s sake.
I was gone for a while this spring, tending to Business Elsewhere. While I was gone, new signs were posted on three rivers that cross the Gunflint Trail. The Devil Track River sign now also has the historical Ojibwe name of Manidoo-bimaadagaakowinii-ziibi, [manadoo bimada gakowni zeebay] which translates to “spirits going along on the ice.”
The original name of North Brule River (Giiwedin-wiisaakode-ziibi) and South Brule River (Zhaawani-wiisaakode-ziibi) [wee sakoday zeebay] translates from Ojibwe to French to English and means “burnt wood.” What a great addition to remind us all that we are on ceded native territory and that this area has a much longer and deeper human and cultural story than our history books teach us.
When I returned to the Trail, I experienced that reawakening of that part of me that is in love with the Northland. If you’re new to the Gunflint Trail or the Boundary Waters and you grow to love it, know this: You will leave a part of your heart here and you will also carry a part of the spirit of this beautiful land with you wherever you go. And that sweet part, the portion you leave behind, will be here for you when you come back, to welcome you to this place where your Northern heart beats. We who live here, no matter our differences, all share this same love of place, this home for the heart, the wild boreal soul of the north.
It is in this spirit that I want the families and friends of the two campers who lost their lives in the Boundary Waters, and the camper who died in the Quetico, to know that we grieve your loss.
~ Marcia Roepke
