Trail Time – First Hints of Spring
The first hints of spring are unfolding on the Gunflint Trail. The temperatures have been at perfect maple syruping weather — above freezing during the day, below freezing at night. The lakes I’ve seen from the Trail and the lakes I’ve visited off the Trail are still covered with thick ice. The bigger lakes resound with the thunderous sounds of moving ice, the late winter song of the lakes.
If you’re standing on the ice, it sounds like maybe the earth is ending but there is no visual display — just the moans, groans, thunder booms, grinding and huge cracking noises and the sounds that are like whale songs. It is a weird sensation, standing on the sheet of ice and hearing — not just hearing, but also feeling — the otherworldly sounds of the ice plates shifting, pinging, telling us of movement and change.
Those subterranean noises, or more accurately, subaqueous, made my knees go a little weak as I walked on Seagull Lake. I had to give my knees a little pep talk full of reason, logic and rational thinking to keep them working as I walked around a little island with my dog. Clearwater was also very noisy last week, and Loon Lake has been just roaring at times, and at others, the subtler sounds of the ice are like the upwelling noise that precedes a particularly large belch.
Each day, at some point, it sounds like a giant in big boots is stomping along the shore edge, breaking up the ice. We thought the ice must be piling up on the shore — but nope — all that action was happening below the surface.
The rivers have begun to open up. Cross River is tumbling along, flowing freely toward its outlet at Gunflint Lake. The sound of running water is one of the many things that delight me each spring, the season that turns me into a bit of an idiot. I roam around the woods, giddy when I see the simple signs of a melting world: “Oh, look! A puddle!” “Mud! I remember mud!” “Pussywillows! pussywillows…” Lars and I spent a couple hours in the sun one morning, extending our coffee hour by watching the chickadees, tempting them toward us with sunflower seeds. We saw our first moth of the season that day. I would have missed it — I was busy staring at lichen on a rock — but the moth flitted right in front of my face. It was a Compton’s Tortoiseshell, orange and black, one of the two types of moths that overwinter as adults here.
It’s that time of year for noticing every sign of the new season. To slow down our seeing and our minds — to experience nature at closer to its own pace. To leave the world of the bigs for while —with their wars, politics, climate worries — and enter the land of the smalls is a guaranteed boom to the soul. It is a mini-break, a psychic rest of sorts. It can be very renewing to go small, to shift focus from the macrocosmic beauty of the boreal forest to the microcosmic richness of each square inch. One could do worse than start with the tiny quiet world of lichens and mosses. Slow down, stay still, and start seeing.
Recently I’ve begun going on daily lichen walks and the north-facing cliffs near my home are a favorite spot. The walls of ancient rock are nearly covered by a rich deep green vertical garden. Each square foot is composed of many different kinds of lichen and mosses. Lichens can grow on trees and rotting wood on the forest floor, in sun and shade, and on soil in addition to rocks. All they require is water and sunlight. They get all the moisture they need from the air, in the form of dew or rainfall. When it’s dry, the lichen stops growing until it gets moisture again. There is at least one type of lichen that only grows where rain run downs a tree trunk.
Lichens are actually made of two plants: a partnership or community of fungus and algae, with the fungus providing the structure, and the algae making the necessary food via photosynthesis. They are a little miracle to me, feeding my soul and giving my eyes what they want most this time of year: the color green. Green in all its shades; lime green, chalky pale green, golden green, deep rich mossy green, and green almost as dark as black.
I have a good friend, Karen who is a naturalist by training and career, who gave me a lichen terrarium that she had made of different types of lichen, soil, sand and rocks. It is utterly enchanting, like a tiny forest in a glass, kept alive by mistings of water. As Karen said, it’s a wee bit of magic forest floor for our enjoyment and to remind us to look for the little things. Not all the views are in the distance. She said she wanted a bumper sticker: Start Seeing Lichens. Indeed. And I want another bumper sticker that says: Start Seeing.
— Marcia Roepke
