Trail Time

A strange thing happened a few weeks ago here on the Gunflint Trail. While Lars was working outside, he heard a loon call and came to alert me, since he knows I am interested in all things bird-ish. I opened the window to the somewhat chilly weather. It was so startling to hear that sound in November. The lake was still open and it was warm for that late in the season (though not warm enough to have windows open), but we hadn’t heard loons in weeks and I had assumed they had all flown south. That last loon called a long wailing cry a few times, sounding so lonely without an answering call from a mate. Days later I was still thinking about it, so I called the fisheries office to find out what the options are if a loon gets stuck here after the rest have migrated. The officer told me that sometimes the bird itself has an issue that keeps it from leaving. Often the best option is to leave the bird alone. But a person can always call the DNR wildlife officers and get guidance. The closest wildlife rehabilitation center is in Duluth, just so you know that going in. 

After that last loon call and after Thanksgiving, the snow really started falling. And it fell and fell and fell some more. So last week I decided the time was ripe for breaking out my new snowshoes to start snow-walking again. To me, snowshoeing is right up there with canoeing for a favorite sport. I’m a little rusty — I didn’t snowshoe much last year. And I’ve had a body part replaced this year so I’m going slow and getting my strength back. But oh! What fun it was! It was sunny in that beautiful way it gets when it is really cold out. As my dog and I left the cabin, we spotted weasel footprints leading to a small hole tucked under the woodshed. Alongside and running all over were even tinier prints. Were they mice? Voles? Moles? I remembered a story a neighbor told me: he was out ice-fishing with his buddies and they saw a star-nosed mole running around on the ice. As they watched, a raven flew down and took it away. Ursa caught a mole in the winter one time; she dove into the snow like a hunting fox and surfaced with it in her mouth then quickly dropped it back in the deep fluffy snow. I have read that moles have a strong musky smell to them and most mammals don’t care for them. I have never tried them, but this mammal certainly doesn’t care to even try.

 As Ursa and I headed up the hill, I saw more weasel tracks — they must have gone on for 300 feet or more straight down the road — which had about a 6 inches of snow on it. It must have been easier going down the road, and I supposed the snowbanks on each side looked like mountains to a small animal. The view was amazing as we topped the far hill, looking out over the freshly fallen snow, the open black lake with maybe some ice forming and puffy clouds in a blue-gray sky, the golden summer grasses sticking up from the snow, the blue hills in the distance. It was a fun jaunt and walking back home I decided to climb up a steep hill to my cabin instead of going the long way around. We had a minus sixteen degree windchill that day so I was swaddled up well — not too much so I wouldn’t overheat, and not so little that I’d get too cold in the killer wind. 

 As I ascended that steep little hill, I stepped off the trail and into the deep snow on one side under the snow-covered jack pines. You know how you fall in snow? It always seems like it happens in slow-motion. So I toppled over gently then struggled to stand up. I was basically wallowing in twelve inches of soft snow when my hood came down over my face. That day I had decided to wear my very cute fox hat with ears and those darling little fox ears kept me from pulling the hood back off my face. Then I slowly rolled into a jack pine bough that was bent to the ground by the weight of the snow and got a fresh load of the white stuff dumped on me. That’s when I started giggling, which helped not one bit. I kept thinking if someone were to visit at that point and saw me, they might wonder at my sanity or sobriety, or both. And every time I thought about that, I laughed even harder, just gasping for breath. I finally made it up to the cabin, of course, though not very elegantly and laughing all the way.

 Here in our snowy wonderland, the moon came out for a few nights when it was at its fullest. Nothing, I say nothing, beats a full moon on a snowy winter night. Everything glistens, the snow sparkles, and the moon was so bright it made the night sky look deep blue. It was magical and mysterious and heartbreakingly beautiful and I couldn’t stop staring at it.

 We have a really good base of snow now, even with the melting that occurred with a few days of above-freezing temperatures. The lodges on the Trail are grooming their ski trails at Gunflint Lodge and Gunflint Pines, and also at Golden Eagle and Bearskin Lodges. The snowmobile club has removed the downed trees from the newly-groomed snowmobiles trails. If snowshoeing, skiing or snowmobiling aren’t your sports, there’s always a horse-drawn sleigh ride at Gunflint Lodge. If skating is your thing, I don’t think this is your year. I have not heard of any wild ice this season up the Trail. The lakes are not all totally frozen yet, so be cautious on the bigger lakes — look out for slush and thin ice. On rivers, where there is a current, the moving water freezes in unpredictable ways and there might be thin patches that appear no different than the surrounding ice. The lake I live on is nearly covered with snow but with large leads of dark water showing on the far shore. Be careful, have fun, and enjoy to the utmost whatever your preferred winter sport and holiday. Have a wonderful mid-winter!

–  Marcia Roepke

We finally have significant snowfall on the Gunflint Trial, which is very welcome after last year’s nearly brown winter. The first snow came a couple weeks ago. The big snowflakes floated down from the sky in a gentle diagonal flight patterns. The smallest change of air movement made the snowflakes pause, swirl, and then fall upward in the most delightful way. That snow didn’t stick around and I admit I got a little moody about it. I hate winter without snow.

The second snow came shortly after and decided to stay. The third wave of snow hasn’t stopped for over a week. Twelve inches have fallen, though it looks like less on the ground. The snow flurries come and go and never really stop for long. Our world is a snow globe that you don’t need to shake. The wind is doing that job now, whipping up every loose bit of snow until the sun — when you see it at all —  glows like the moon through the low gray swiftly moving clouds.

As wave after wave of flurries pass, occasionally the sky clears for a moment and the open water of the lake reflects back a deep steelly blue. Then from the west, another snow squall approaches, veiling the far shore of the lake with a white shroud. The surface of the lake takes on a forbidding hue, like a gray northern sea.

When I was out wandering last week, I discovered a red elderberry bush with plump purple buds. I love plants that bud in the winter — it’s so hopeful. And the fact that anything can create that color is a minor miracle. Elderberries are a food source for many animals and birds, and the elderflowers are important to pollinators. Parts of the plant are poisonous to humans, so do your research and use caution. The red elderberry shrub can be identified in the winter by its warty-looking marks on the bark. Those are called lenticels. If you cut a branch, it reveals a spongy brown center called pith. That’s spelled P I T H. The older woodier branches from lower on the shrub are hollow and can be used to make flutes. One Ojibwe name for elderberry is Bibigwemin. When you say “Bibigwe migizi,” it means a bald eagle makes fluting sounds.

It is exhilarating, to be sure, to be out and about in this wild winter weather but it’s like camping — one of those things that are hard but simple. Preparation is key. I’ve spent many years accumulating clothing — especially boots — for most weather conditions. That’s why it looks like there are eight people living here instead of two, but man, we are ready! Getting dressed to go outside in the winter can tax one’s patience — add 20 minutes to each outing in order to put on your gear. From toes to top here it is, my usual gear for a day of 9 degrees above that feels like 14 below due to wind chill:

socks

boots

overboots

leggings

insulated pants

shirt

wool sweater or fleece top and maybe a quilted vest

anorak with fur-lined hood

heat reflective thin gloves with leather choppers (mittens) or thick mittens with windproof outer mittens

a hat or two…

And you’re set, but inevitably, nature calls just as you are sliding the second mitten on before you open the door to go out. Weigh your options carefully.

A walk in the winter can give rise to existential questions if you are not careful: Why is life a struggle? Is struggle good for humans? Do the animals struggle? Some of them that are popularly considered stupid have brilliant winter strategies; I have in mind the ruffed grouse and the beautiful snow homes they make under the drifts.

Other birds make winter life look easy. But maybe birds have a Jedi mindset and, like ants, there exists only Do or Not Do. The snow buntings don’t let us in on their struggle, if that is truly their reality. They are such happy-making birds. I went on a memorable walk with a snow bunting once; we kept a companionable but proper distance between us. Birds have formal manners, or at least strict rules on social interactions. Sometimes the snow buntings travel in great numbers. One day I was driving down the Trail when buntings flew up from the road in such a dense flock that my smartish car, overthinking the situation, put its brakes on. By itself. The snow buntings come and go in our part of the world, according to secret information they have about the weather. I wish they would stay put longer. They are such lovely birds.

We have our year-round resident birds to keep us company when the snow buntings are out on a mission: chickadees, nuthatches, gray and blue jays, redpolls, hairy and downy woodpeckers. It’s a thrill to see the Crossbills and Grosbeaks, especially that tropically colored bird, the evening grosbeak. The junco population waxes and wanes year by year. And the ravens…the ravens are alway with us, calling out to warn other beings of our presence, playing in the air, sailing through the sky, delivering our prayers to heaven.

— Marcia Roepke on the Gunflint Trail

It’s a quiet day on the Gunflint Trail. The clouds are sitting low in the sky. The lake barely has a ripple on it and there’s a thin sheet of ice in the sheltered bays. The ice remains all day now in the areas where the sun will not shine until sometime after December 21, when our spot on the earth tilts back from the cold void of dark space toward the warmth of our sun. It’s not a popular time for visitors to our neck of the woods, but if you’re made a certain way (as I am) this gray season can be full of rich and sometimes strange beauty. Some of that you will have to hunt for but some beauty will find you and surprise you every time if you’re open to it. How do I know this? Because I am surprised every day that I walk in the Northwoods. A walk alone in a quiet forest can bring beauty, surprises and amazing solace to an uneasy soul.

I was asked several times this fall — from those who live south of us — “are all the colors gone?” Each time I had to laugh inside, because of course not all the colors are gone. Yes, the red and yellow leaves have fallen. Last week’s giant wind took care of almost all of the late hangers-on. But look, right over there are the varied greens of the mosses, the polypody and the small balsams that grow like weeds looking like tiny perfect Christmas trees. The golds and russets of the dead ferns are particularly lovely, especially on an overcast day, when they glow in the dark woods. Even now, after frost has visited several times, a tiny orange mushroom will appear, glowing like a sun in a faraway galaxy. From a distance, the thin dark reddish twigs on the ends of the birch trees form a kind of lavender haze, as do the alders. Some tamaracks are still holding onto their yellow needles. By a favorite river, the combination of golden grasses, deep dark waters, and white birches against the dark green spruces create a subtle symphony of tones.

And we know this will change. Winter approacheth, for one thing. The forest is always changing and yet remains the same. It is both surprising and predictable. When Lars and I built our cabin, someone asked if we really needed insurance, because of it ever burnt down, we wouldn’t want to live here, right? Because all the trees would be burnt, too, right? Until that moment, I had never thought of it, but, yes, I decided, I would still want to live here. Because the forest will come back after it burns. Regrowth will happen and, in fact, I can help it happen more quickly by thoughtful planting. Where I live on the Trail was hit hard by the 1999 blowdown and I can sit at my table and still see the effects of the Ham Lake fire in the not-too-far distance. Evidence of former destruction is everywhere, like the blackened tree I found up the cliff behind our place that had most likely been hit by lightening.

What I love about the boreal woods doesn’t depend on a certain tree being here or a certain color being there. Although I would cry real tears if that gorgeous white pine that grows between me and the lake were to topple over. There’s a permanence in the middle of this ever-changing biome. It’s special here. Is it the water? Is it the rocks? Could it be because of geology?

Maybe the trees know something we don’t. There is a big white pine —  I walk by it nearly every day — when it was small, it grabbed onto a big hunk of the iron-rich rock that is found around here. Fast forward fifty years or so when the wind blew that tree over and it fell, hard, and it gripped onto that rock and now, twenty-five years later, that tree is still holding on. Like I hold onto the woods, and the lakes; the hills and the pines; the birches and the hazels; the moose, the wolf and the bear. The beaver and the otter; the raven and the eagle; the fish and the fox. I’ll never let go.

— Marcia Roepke

What glorious weather on the Gunflint Trail right now. Clear cerulean skies reflect into the lakes as a steely cobalt blue. The bright yellow leaves on the birch trees and aspen are fast diminishing in number. Every breeze sends the dry leaves swirling around before landing on the forest floor. Even with temperatures below freezing, there are still green leaves on the willows, raspberries and bunchberries. Of course the tamaracks have started turning color, but still retain their yellow needles.

Our summer extravaganza of migrating birds is done. Just the winter stalwarts remain: chickadees, juncos, blue jays, ravens, nuthatches and woodpeckers; of course, the hawks and the owls as well. Most are quiet now. But there’s a local family of ravens that are quite vocal each evening as the sun sets, which is about eleven minutes after 6. We haven’t heard a loon in a week.

Two days ago I drove my car through snow flurries, which waxed and waned as I puttered down the Trail. We’ve been blessed with a little rain recently — in some areas over an inch! — but I see none forecast for the week ahead.

An inch of rain makes a big difference to a forest, and to the people who love the forest and lakes of the Gunflint Trail, both residents and visitors. An inch of rain lessens the chance of a stray spark starting a wildfire that catches quickly, spreads rapidly and turns so powerful that it strains our firefighting ability to contain it. Three to five inches would ease our worry — and it would bring us back from the high forest fire danger zone where we are now.

Because of the wildfire danger conditions, the Superior National Forest has issued an Emergency Forest Order restricting the igniting, building, maintaining, attending, or using a fire or campfire, including charcoal grills and barbeques, and coal and woodburning stoves within the Superior National Forest. That order includes the Gunflint Trail as well as the Boundary Waters and campgrounds within the Forest boundaries.

Gas, propane and alcohol cook stoves are allowed throughout the Superior National Forest, including the BWCA and are a safer option than campfires. Stoves or grills fueled by charcoal, or any type of wood are not allowed. These restrictions will continue until further notice.

In light of this very present danger, it boggles my mind that over the past few weeks I’ve heard reports of hot coals dumped in the woods — and not only that, there were several instances of campfire ashes that were left hot when people exited campgrounds. One ember from a small fire could start a blaze that could burn thousands of acres and possibly destroy cabins, homes and businesses, never mind the habitat destruction for all kinds of wildlife.

I wonder what it would take to convince people what a big hairy deal this is. I don’t understand how anyone who knows and loves the north woods wouldn’t bother to put their campfire out all the way. It has become so dry here that some crews canceled work days because one spark from heavy machinery or a chainsaw could start a conflagration.

It strains belief that anyone who camps is ignorant of how to put out fires but maybe it is willful arrogance that makes people presume they are above the law. It’s hard to believe that there are some who just don’t grasp the scope of the possible consequences. And whatever our differences are, we can all agree on this one thing: an uncontrolled forest fire is bad.

If it is ignorance, that’s an easy problem to solve, so here we go, straight from the the US Forest Service:

How to drown a campfire:

1. Drown the campfire with water.

2. Mix the ashes and embers with soil. Scrape all partially-burned sticks and logs to make sure all the hot embers are off them. Stir the embers after they are covered with water and make sure that everything is wet.

3. Add water and stir coals until they are cold to the touch.

Remember this for future use, because in Superior Forest right now and for the foreseeable future, no campfires are allowed for dispersed, remote, backpacking, or backcountry camping. Campfires are allowed only in an established fire ring associated with a home, campground, or resort.

If the problem is not ignorance, but arrogance, I don’t have a solution for that. But think about this: 90% of wildfires are caused by humans. Don’t be that human.

— Marcia Roepke

The weather is getting chillier here on the Gunflint Trail now that the last blast of summer heat is behind us. Daylight hours are shrinking. On a cool gray silent day, the yellow and bronze of the birch and aspen glow in a soft light that casts no deep shadows. The moose maples and pin cherries answer with orange, red and deep maroon. Along a ridge, a swath of green reveals the birches that are still holding on to summer’s favorite color. One yellow leaf falls through the forest canopy, making a small noise every time it hits a twig or a branch: Tick, tick, tick until it comes to rest on the forest floor.

A pair of black ravens flies across the lake — north to south — playing in the air, spinning, turning, talking the whole way. Among their astonishing range of vocalizations I hear a new one that sounds like a chimpanzee; it makes me giggle as I stand alone on the shore by the vast still water.

                                                Across the lake — looking west to east — the far hills look closer than usual. There’s a haze in the air, but it’s not smoke, thank God. It’s so dry across the whole northern part of this state. There’s a campfire ban in the Boundary Waters now and Lars and I will not be building any campfires either until we get some rain. There is not any precipitation in the near forecast.

 The water level of the lake is very low. The grass that was growing in the water now lies on its side, matted and gray with old dried mud. There’s a very faint marine odor on this sandy bar that once was underwater — nothing as pungent as the smell of the clam flats by the seashore, but it’s there. I wonder if eons ago when there was a vast lake here — part of the ancient Lake Agassi — was the water fresh or salty?

A merlin calls again and again, Kree! Kree! Kree! I spot it fluttering above the tree line by a marsh and then it perches on the very tip of a spruce tree, facing upwind, like a weathervane. I wait and I watch. After a while it flies across the marsh to a craggy jack pine, where it perches briefly then heads to another pine, then it flies out of sight. A blue jay screams.

The bears are ravenous now in their hyperphagia stage; this is the season they’re eating to store up fat for their winter’s hibernation. And it’s rutting season for the moose — the bulls are wandering around looking to mate and to challenge the other males. One sauntered in front of me last week — it was black and huge and it must have been old because the rack of antlers was very generous. He walked slowly and deliberately and looked at me with not a shred of interest (I kept my distance — you don’t want to challenge a moose, believe me!) The loons are still here. Their lonely sounds rise up from the lake, making the world a little less silent and a lot more gorgeous.

This boreal landscape is so rich with beauty — those of us who have given our hearts to this place luxuriate in it. And don’t we all carry a piece with us wherever we go? And when we return, doesn’t it rise up in us and say “We’re back! We’re here! At last — together again!”

— Marcia Roepke

It’s been sunny and warm on the Gunflint Trail this September. Though the leaves of the birch trees and aspen are turning yellow and fluttering down in the breeze; though the mountain ash trees are full of bright red berries, and there are hardly any mosquitoes around, it’s not fall yet. In my mind I’m ready to say good bye to another summer but this summer just won’t quit. And I’m always up for more summer shenanigans.

The best part of summer is the stuff we did when we were kids and the young person who is still alive inside me still ends each summer wishing for:

More canoeing

More swimming

More camping

More fishing

More campfires

This has been perfect weather for abandoning the haven of our screen porch and sitting outside in the evenings, and we’ve been delighted to see bats doing their gymnastic moves, flying in the twilit sky. We’ve haven’t seen many bats in a long time and frankly, I’ve been worried about them.

I’ve had a few close encounters with bats, the most memorable one being when Lars and I moved some timbers from Hovland to the Gunflint Trail in order to start building our cabin. The large pine timbers had been cribbed up to let air circulate freely around them so they would stay dry and season well without rotting until Lars could make the tenons and mortises in them. As we lifted each (very heavy) timber, I noticed wet leaves falling off and landing on the ground. Then one of the leaves grew feet and started crawling away. It was a bat that I had mistaken for a leaf. It was so creepy and cool! The cribbed up timbers had made a perfect shelter for them until we disturbed them. They crawled away and then flew off. This was daytime so we’d been disturbing their sleep.

Bats are nocturnal and catch insects like moths, beetles and mosquitoes while in flight. I had always imagined them catching their food in their mouths, but no — I recently learned that they catch insects in their cupped tail membranes as they fly around, then they transfer the insects to their mouths while they’re flying. It’s just such a wild idea but wilder still is their use of sonar to locate the insects.

It seems we used to see a lot more bats than we do now, and there might be a reason for that. A disease called White-nose Syndrome has killed a lot of bats in North America in the last decade. In Minnesota, the Small Brown Bat population has been most affected, with up to 90% losses in winter hibernation caves, called hibernacula. Another species, the Big Brown Bat, is the most common species in the state and is reported as being stable. The Northern Long-Eared Bat was listed as endangered in 2022. Minnesota’s bats are very small — the smallest one weighs as much as a nickel (the Tri-colored Bat) and the largest weighs slightly over one ounce.

Less bats can mean more pests damaging trees and crops and more biting of the humans, so it was with great pleasure that I read this week that there has been a possible breakthrough in the treatment of White-nose Syndrome. I’ve included a link to the story.. You can find it on WTIP’s web site, at the end of Trail Time. In these days of habitat destruction, global warming and species loss, I promise to pass along any good news story I find.

Good news gives me hope, just like walking in the woods or paddling on a lake lifts my spirits. As I age, I walk slower and I can’t swim for hours like I once did, but I have the same joy of being in the natural world as I did when I was young. It’s the realest thing around. It’s not virtual. It doesn’t take place on a small screen in my hands. My whole being is surrounded and buoyed up by nature. Every sense is alive and filled with the experience. It feels like I have a place there, filling a human-shaped hole in the forest. Or maybe the woods fill a forest-shaped hole in me.

— Marcia Roepke

To read about new research in fighting White-nose Syndrome in bats:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/science/bats-white-nose-syndrome.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Lk4.ZEYP.ki413eADmSrg&smid=url-share

To learn about Bat week (October 24-31):

https://batweek.org/

I think August might be my favorite summer month on the Gunflint Trail. The bug count is down, the loons sing day and night and the evenings are so beautifully cool. As I walk through the tall grass, I delight in the grasshoppers flinging themselves ahead of me, making their clickity-clackity music. The goldenrod and asters — a match made in heaven — are in full glory. The petals from the roses are long gone but the rose hips are plump and brilliant red on the stems; the fireweed shows a few inches of blossoms remaining — so summer is not yet done! There is still time for canoeing, camping and swimming and fishing and hiking — and campfires and s’mores!

The smoke has lessened from Canadian wildfires. One evening the hazy atmosphere muted the view of the far shore, turning it a dusky blue in that golden hour of the day, making it look like Shenandoah.

I was sitting on the dock one afternoon for a few hours, just observing the water and sky in a quiet way. Silence reigned, save for the songs of multiple little birds high in the trees by the shore. I could hear their bright little voices and hear their wings fluttering around. From their song, I was certain they were kinglets, but I couldn’t see them through the thick foliage.

I watched the wind move over the water, ruffling the surface as it moved in gusts and gentle swirls across the surface of the lake. I looked for little fish in the shallows and was rewarded by sighting a few treading water below me. When I stared into the water, it felt like they were staring back. I wonder what fish think of humans?

Whenever I’m on the water, I expect to see a kingfisher, and hear their loud chatter (they are almost always present at the water’s edge) but they had  business elsewhere that afternoon. I noticed what I thought were mosquitoes flying in a strange way right in front of me — going up and down, up and down — then I realized they were mayflies! A hatch was starting at my feet; but this was a tiny hatch compared to others I have witnessed. A gentle breeze blew them away, but a while later another small batch started dancing in front of me. They are such interesting creatures, living 99% of their lives as nymphs in the water. They are diaphanous, and their tail filaments and delicate wings can make you believe in fairies. The females fly through a swarm of males for mating, then they return to the water to lay eggs and die. Mayflies are a very important food source for fish and they require pristine water since they are very sensitive to pollutants. How fortunate we are to have this abundance of clean water here!

I have witnessed big mayfly hatches before — one was on John Lake up the Arrowhead Trail. We canoed through the cloud of insects and it was as if there was a reverse rainstorm. The surface of the water looked like raindrops were hitting it, but it was the mayflies coming up from the water that pockmarked the surface of the lake.

Last night I heard two loons calling from the lake. I couldn’t see them through the trees that cover the north slope down to the lake. But then I heard the distinctive sound of water-dancing followed by the loons’ low hoots to each other, their quiet contact sounds, just staying in touch with each other.

How lush the forest is up here on the Trail. When I look out from my porch, I can see 12 species of trees: Birch, Aspen, White Pine, Jack Pine, Balsam Fir, Spruce, Cedar, Willow (at least two kinds), Hazel, Chokecherry, Black Cherry, Canada plum.

Such a lush growth of trees makes me feel so glad that we got to the tail end of summer without experiencing a serious wildfire threat. The local danger level posted at Fire Hall #1 has stayed at Moderate nearly all summer; at the Seagull Guard Station further up the Trail, it has been posted as Low. Of course, the threat of wildfire will never end, as long as forests are forests and people are people. Most wildfires in our part of the world are caused by humans. And yet there is still the ignorant among us who like to shoot off fireworks in the forest, as we witnessed again this past July. It’s stunningly stupid. All of us who love the woods must educate visitors of the importance of protecting the forest.

Our own piece of the northern forest is just a small part of the Boreal Woods that circumnavigate the entire globe. It is as important to the planet as the mayflies are to the fish. For example, the spring runoff from the boreal forest feeds the algae of the oceans with nutrients; the algae in turn feed the plankton that feeds the krill that feeds the whales; the blue-green algae alone sends almost half the earth’s oxygen into the atmosphere. I could go on and on about the Boreal Forest, it is so magnificent and magnanimous — plentiful and generous. It can never be replaced if it is destroyed. May we all learn to treasure this precious resource and never cease advocating for its survival.

— Marcia Roepke

It’s a quiet time of summer on the Gunflint Trail — quiet, that is, except for human noises like construction and motorboats and loud bass music. The birds have quieted down; I think they are no longer raising babies or defending territory or seeking mates. I watch them busily catching flies, eating caterpillars and bugs, filling up and growing stronger for their upcoming long migratory flights. Happily, they still announce each morning’s sunrise. And there is at least one white-throated sparrow that likes to give out a call or two deep at night. It always makes me smile.

We enjoyed a prolonged spring this year — the singing seemed to last longer than usual and I wondered if many birds were raising two broods, since we had such excellent conditions this spring and early summer. I heard reports of two clutches of loon eggs on a couple of the lakes in the area. The veeries dominated the soundtrack here this season, with a very strong solo performance by the chestnut-sided warbler. One serenaded us from a chokecherry tree right beside our screen porch multiple times a day. It seems like the screen makes it harder for the birds to see us because we can be quite close and they don’t react. The red-eyed vireos also had starring roles in the symphony this year. The barred owl, due to reasons known only to him, decided to sit this year’s summer concert out. We heard his distinctive “who cooks for you?” in early spring, but not lately.

Sometimes the bird song becomes mere background noise to me, but there are a couple of birds that transport me to another plane whenever I hear them — a loon singing in the evening, echoing off the hills as darkness falls. And a thrush, singing in the deep woods, the song floating over the water as we paddle slowly by in a canoe. The thrush’s ascending song has such an haunting ethereal quality — it feels like it’s not totally from this earth. Upon hearing the sound, my mind instantly plays back images and feelings from Boundary Waters camping trips — quiet bays, tall trees, dark woods, very few humans and a sense of deep mystery. It feels like I’m listening in to something eternal and precious. It lasts just a moment, oh, but what a moment.

Right now the trees and shrubs are in their fulsome abundance of new green growth and berries and the hazelnuts are full grown. Soon they’ll disappear into the stomachs of hungry birds and animals. On our road, under a fruiting pin cherry tree, a little bear left a calling card. There were pin cherries scattered all over the ground, but it didn’t appear that the bear ate many raspberries right next to the tree. I wish I could enjoy a raspberry without feeling the compulsion to get a bucket and pick as many as I can. I don’t often follow that compulsion, but I feel guilty walking by an abundance of unpicked fruit. I imagine my frugal New England ancestors rolling in their graves as I stubbornly resist the ancient urge to pick, to glean, to harvest, to prepare for winter. Inevitably, with the help of Lars, I grudgingly give in, start picking and make a raspberry pie.

The red osier dogwood has small white berries now, but we don’t eat those, although I have read that they are edible. They are hardier than the soft fruits of the chokecherry and other berry trees and shrubs, and last well into the winter. Both songbirds and game birds eat the fruit and bear, beaver, rabbits, squirrels and small rodents eat the berries and the leaves. Moose browse the twigs and foliage. Many native Americans use red osier dogwood. The inner bark is scraped and smoked with a tobacco mixture for sacred pipe ceremonies. Infusions of the bark are traditionally used by Chippewa for medicinal purposes and to make dyes. The inner bark is used for tanning or drying animal hides. The branches can be woven into baskets.

On many of the dogwood leaves I noticed what looked like yellow and black caterpillars curled into circles. They are not caterpillars — they are sawfly larva. I assumed I should pick them off and destroy them — I thought they were pests and would damage the plant — but I read that adult sawflies are important pollinators and the larva are eaten by many birds and animals. I love investigating the life of a simple plant and learning of its value in this ecosystem. The boreal forest around us is a precious resource and the more I learn about it the more prone I am to live and let live with all my neighbors: plants, insects, animals and humans.

— Marcia Roepke

This summer the moose are abundant on the Gunflint Trail. A mild winter and plenty of rain have resulted in lush habitat for our favorite ungulate. We’ve seen a lot of moose crossing the Trail, or suddenly running out of the woods or just standing in the middle of the road — and we’ve had some heart-stopping encounters where we had to brake fast to avoid hitting one. This frequently happens at dusk, and we drive slowly and watchfully especially at that time of day. It is really fun to see moose from the comfort of a car, but to my mind the very best way to see one is from a canoe.

On my very first canoe trip to the Boundary Waters and the Quetico, I sat in the bow, paddle in hand and watched in awe as a big bull moose stood in the water just in front of a beaver dam. He dipped his head then raised it with his mouth full of water plants; every time he lifted his head, it seemed like a gallon of water poured out of his huge branching antlers. He was relaxed and stood there peacefully as the canoes waited for him to move on. We didn’t hurry him. We were in no danger since we kept a respectful distance.

Early in our camping career, Lars introduced me to night paddling in the canoe. I was less thrilled with it than he, since I usually sat in the bow, with Lars safe in the stern seat. We’d leave a small lantern on at our campsite and venture out into the dark. We only did this on lakes we knew very well. Hitting a rock dead on is never a good experience, but hitting one at night is another thing altogether. Once we were paddling on Snipe Lake at night, and as we floated quietly down a narrow channel, a great commotion exploded to our right. A moose was splashing, climbing out of the water. We had surprised it and we sat there (me trembling a little) as its hooves thundered away up into the woods.

On another Boundary Waters trip, Lars and I were paddling toward a portage when we saw a moose cow and calf standing on the shore.  They were so well camouflaged that we were quite close by the time we saw them. We obviously got too near because Mama moose made a grunt and took one step toward us. We got the message and started back paddling fast to make everyone feel better.

Lars and I have spent a lot of time together in a canoe. Paddling a canoe is one of the best kinds of couples therapy. One of my very favorite dates is a double solo, when we are in separate canoes and set challenges for the other, like paddle your canoe in a spin of 360 degrees. Or go close to shore and pick up a beaver stick without tipping over. Or paddle under a fallen tree and do the limbo. We’ve had a lot of fun and seen a lot of moose from a canoe.

In truth, I think the best way to see most things is from a canoe, especially if a person is filled with confusion, doubt or anxiety; or if there is any internal disquiet. The repetitive motion and constantly changing view in a canoe imparts both solace and energy to the paddler. The very nature of paddling a canoe reforms problems to their proper size, and resets the brain and heart on a more even keel.

Leave your phone on the shore. Get out on the water in a canoe. Steal away from the cares of the world and the news. Let the peace of the natural world soak in. Don’t forget to have fun. And you might even see a moose.

Happy paddling!

~  Marcia

Last week the Gunflint Trail was hit by straight line winds or a small tornado — I’ll let the experts debate about that. What there’s no debate about is the fact that the wind caused many acres of downed trees in the Gunflint Trail area and in the Boundary Waters and made life difficult and dangerous for many people. I’m going to tell you just one story about one of the places that were affected by the storm. There are other places and other stories, all about the people of the Gunflint Trail, my neighbors, answering every call to search, to rescue, and to help in whatever way they could.

Around 5 pm on Tuesday, June 18, the lake was calm at Loon Lake Lodge. At the west end of the bay, a couple in a canoe were fishing. Closer to the main lodge, bright green Adirondack chairs sat on the wooden docks of each log guest cabin. Blue and red canoes were in a line by the shore and the bright yellow lily pad floating island was moored to the big dock, as was a fishing boat and a pontoon. Andrea Hofeldt, who owns the lodge with her husband Derek, was in the main lodge, minding the gift shop and the front desk while Derek and their three boys, Dax, Otis and Niles, were cooking a special dinner up the hill in their log home.

The fishing duo got off the water when it started to rain. Just seconds after they got back to the lodge, the heavy wood Adirondack chairs started flipping into the water from the force of a sudden wind. The wind had come out of nowhere, pushing grown trees so that they were lying on their sides. By now it was raining, hard.

Inside the main lodge, the wind caused the skylight glass to blow out. Rain started pouring in from the ceiling onto the gift shop merchandise below. Andrea rushed to move books and gifts, then ran to the laundry room and kitchen to grab every towel and bowl to mop up or contain the water. That’s when the windows flew open on the other side of the lodge, and rain started blowing in on that side.

As Andrea hurriedly closed and latched the windows looking onto the lake, she saw a waterspout hovering above the water, and like a small tornado, it whipped the floating island up into the air. The big piece of foam stayed attached to the dock, but maybe it would have been better if it had got away — tethered, it smashed into the canopy of the pontoon over and over again, destroying the metal struts and the canopy. Three canoes lifted ten feet into the air and started twirling around. One canoe got lodged under the main dock. Another crashed into the boat house and the third canoe smashed into a nearby telephone pole. The long floating wooden dock is attached to a very heavy crib dock filled with boulders, and that was moved six inches by the force of the wind. And the rain still poured down.

Then the power went out. Guests left their cabins and started arriving at the main lodge building asking if Andrea had noticed the power was out. Um, yes, she had and then the guests started helping mop up puddles from the rain inside the lodge.

Up the hill at their house, Derek and the kids were right in the middle of putting batter on chicken when the lights went out. No power means no water, and there were four sets of sticky hands to wash. With that taken care of, and with the boys down at the main lodge, Derek grabbed his chainsaw, got in his truck and headed down Loon Lake Road to clear the fallen trees. From what he could see, he expected to clear maybe two or three trees. He cleared nineteen downed trees in about half a mile. Some of the affected trees were old growth pines and ancient cedars; if you love the woods, this part is especially heartbreaking. Derek was aware that a neighbor of his needed access for medical reasons, so he cleared the road as best and as quickly as he could, cutting the trees just at the edge of the road and leaving the rest for later. Lodge guests helped remove the brush as Derek kept his chainsaw going. Some of the biggest downed trees were at the Crab Lake Trailhead. Further on, a privately-owned cabin and car had been struck by falling trees. The rain was still pouring and now the lightning and thunder began.

Andrea was getting nervous about Derek being gone so long, so a guest offered to drive his car to look for him, but came back when he saw what he thought were electrical lines down on the road. By now most of the guests were in the main lodge seeking safety and comfort. It was a frightening storm. Candles and flashlights illuminated the big main room, but the children, both resident and guest, found enough darkened corners to play hide-and-seek, wonderfully oblivious to the danger outside. Derek safely returned to the lodge.

All the cabins at the lodge were without power, so Andrea and Derek started regularly supplying the guest cabins with “provisions” meaning flashlights, candles, drinking water, and five-gallon buckets of water to flush the toilets.

The next day, Wednesday, Arrowhead power company showed up to fix the power line and erect new utility poles — four poles had snapped due to the extreme wind. So there was a ton of traffic and big, big trucks on the usually quiet Loon Lake Road. Every chainsaw in the area was roaring. The whole community came out to help, guests as well as residents. At one point Derek called all the kids into the lodge and announced, “Free ice cream sandwiches for everybody!” Then, after looking into the freezer, he quickly slammed the door on the melting mess inside, “No ice cream sandwiches today!”

A lot of refrigerated food ended up in the dumpster, not just the chocolate chip cookie ice-cream sandwiches. When the lodge ran out of ice, Andrea called Shari Baker at Gunflint Pines over on Gunflint Lake. Shari supplied ice and made her laundry facilities available (think of all those towels used for cleanup plus all the guest bedding). “I want to be here for you,” Shari said. Electricity was restored Wednesday night, on Juneteenth, a federal holiday, after 28 hours without power.

But before the electricity came back on, a man showed up to ask if someone could help him tow his stuck mini van out of a muddy ditch on the snowmobile trail. His clothes were covered in mud. He had been stuck for four days and had given up trying to extricate himself. Derek and he got into Derek’s truck and went to scope out the circumstances, and see if the truck could even drive to the minivan. The snowmobile trail is not built for ordinary traffic, but for snowmobiles and dogsleds. On snow. In the winter.  On a day when Derek had a pretty full plate, he towed the mini-van back to the Gunflint Trail and wished the stranger well.

Thursday was a quieter day until another man walked into the lodge and asked if Andrea had seen two teenage boys. They had been hiking to Bridal Falls with two adults but had separated from the group on the way back and were presumed lost. One of the adults was driving up and down the road, looking and calling for them. Andrea called 911 and a search-and-rescue began about 3 pm. A float plane landed on the water for the search and rescue and a big food truck showed up to supply the lodge with food to fill the freezers now the power was back on. Michael Valentini of the Gunflint Volunteer Fire Department showed up to help with the rescue, and assured Andrea that this storm was nothing compared to the blowdown of 1999. “This was like the blink of an eye,” he said. This was the second search and rescue in two days for the Gunflint Volunteer Fire Department.

About 5:30 pm Thursday, as Andrea was preparing to welcome new guests, the news came over the emergency radio that the teenagers had been found. They had made the excellent decision to go back to Bridal Falls and wait there for help. Smart kids! The incredibly relieved reunited family returned to Loon Lake Lodge. Andrea had promised them chocolate chip cookie ice-cream sandwiches to celebrate. She had made them fresh that day with the new food supplies.

— Marcia Roepke

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

It is getting near the time when it will be ice out on all the lakes of the Gunflint Trail. Some lakes are already wide open — the deeper ones are still locked in but the ice is spongy and falling apart. Today it is sunny and very still. It’s the warmest and quietest that it’s been for a while in this new early spring. The wind blew and blew for days — it roared at times, a bass note sounding like kettle drums under the constant rushing of the wind through the pines. Boom!

A different kind of booming is coming from the woods lately: the grouse are drumming again, with that sound that is like your own heartbeat but speeding up to a frenzied crescendo.

Lars and I have been gazing at the sky a lot. It is such great theater. Last week two Trumpeter swans flew over, heading toward Gunflint Lake. One evening, a cold fog poured down out of the woods, filling up the basin of the lake from west to east, obliterating the far shore, mist curling up to the sky.

Our lake still has ice on it. A lead opened up this week where there had been a foot-high ridge of ice for the last few months of winter. In the rosy dawn today, the waterlogged ice was dull and blue, but that narrow expanse of water between ice sheets reflected the color of the pink sky: a shiny river of pink in a field of blue.

We’re seeing lots of moose tracks and signs of their browsing. I had fun one morning following those big tracks — where I lost them, I could see the willow stems showing green where tree moose had bitten off the tips. Lars found a young slender birch tree that had been broken and pulled over so the moose could reach the tender buds. There is one mountain ash tree that I’ve watched for over ten years. That bush tries so hard to grow but every spring it gets nearly all its new buds nipped off. The base of the beleaguered tree is growing fatter each year, but it hasn’t gained any height, topping off at about four feet, only to get nipped down again the next spring.

A pine marten appeared outside our window as we had lunch one day. She peeped her head over a small hill, eying the bird feeder, and climbed up a birch tree. It looked like she was scoping out the best way to get to the feeder. She looked up at the branches above, then checked out the line the feeder is hanging from. In one athletic and graceful swoop, she jumped to the ground, bounced up, grabbed the edge of the bird feeder with her front paws, then swung up like a gymnast, perfectly balanced on the feeder. She poked her nose where the seeds should be, and finding none, looked around, spotted something, rocketed to a nearby boulder wall, then headed up the hill with something small and gray in her mouth. It took me much longer to tell you about it than it took her to do it. She was like some expert wilderness parkour racer. It was so amazing to watch. Although she was a beautiful mover, the animal looked a bit bedraggled. She looked hungry to me — the fur was wet and untidy. But it is an awkward time of year for animal pelts and coats, with the winter coat shedding off and new spring coats growing in. The moose sure have an awkward time of it and will look pretty shaggy with bare patches for a while.

Last night I stayed out late on the porch, bundled up in a long winter coat — it got down to 18 degrees later. The robins were singing their evening aria to the sun setting in sherbet-colored western skies while dark clouds grew in the north. The barred owl began calling from the other side of the lake — where he was the sun had already set, yet we were on the same lake. I looked up in time to see a bald eagle rising from the lake, fish in claws! Ripples showed where it had struck — in one small hole in the ice. Black and white and majestic against the dark blue of the late spring ice, the bird rose as its wings pushed and pushed against the air.

The moose munching its way through the woods, the pine marten arrowing in on its prey, the eagle grabbing a fish dinner. While the grouse drums out a rhythm, everything is speeding up to summer’s quickened pace.

The sun is shining and the snow is melting fast here on the Gunflint Trail. It was raining earlier today — a good rain, and more is pouring down right now — and there’s thunder! Oh it’s a good show tonight.

There was mud under my feet and water running through the culverts this afternoon and the robins were singing. What do you think? Is it Spring now? Are we there yet? It’s rare to have a prolonged spring here in the north. Usually it’s a fast transition from winter to bug season. What I’ve observed is that spring comes many times to the northlands. I would count this as our second spring. First spring came and went a few weeks ago and was followed by a three-day storm leaving us with two feet of snow. So this second spring might be brief — and we may get a third and a fourth spring —  but when the sun is shining, wow, it is glorious and the sky is wearing a very different blue than it does in winter.

Even before I went searching for signs of spring today, a robin woke us with its loud dawn song. It was in the woods out of sight but very much in hearing. I was reading about the robins’ vocalizations and their musical song is territorial; the dawn song is a more animated, excited version. That song has been described as “cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up.” It’s a string of ten or so whistle-like tones, with the notes going up and down in pitch and a pause before the robin sings again, letting the world know that this is their patch of earth, their tree, maybe their nest eventually. Their “cuck” and “tut” calls are contact notes used when they communicate with each other. The high-pitched call “Seee” or “peeek” lets us know there is a predator, nearby, like a hawk. They also make a “chirrr” that sounds like a whinny or chuckle.

While the robin makes itself known, there’s a sign of spring that takes some searching to find. It is the blossom of the beaked hazelnut shrub. I spotted a few in a sunny spot along our road. It’s always a high point of the season for me to see the hazel in flower. The bloom is a tiny thing, less than an 1/8” long but its color is one of the most flamboyant colors in the woods — a spray of beautiful deep magenta threads peek out from a tiny brown bud. Those threads aren’t petals, they are called styles; They are a tube-like structure that holds up the stigma and leads down to the ovary — these are female flowers. The male flowers — catkins — grow on the same branch. The hazelnuts will form and be ready to harvest in August or September. By the time I see they are ready, they are usually gone two seconds later. The squirrels and chipmunks snatch them up very quickly. The nuts are very nutritious — bears, blue jays, and woodpeckers eat them too. The catkins are an important winter food for grouse and the twigs are grazed by rabbits and moose.

As I wandered today, I saw green emerging from under the snow even on the north slopes. The lichens, mosses and the ferns known as Polypody amaze me every year with their ability to stay green throughout the freezing months buried under snow.

I also spotted snow melting in small depressions in the woods, creating areas known as vernal pools. These seasonal wetlands, also called ephemeral pools, are important breeding grounds for wood frogs, boreal chorus frogs and salamanders. The salamanders that occur in our region are the red-backed and the blue-spotted salamander. I have never seen a salamander in the north woods but I sure would love to!  The pools are dry most of the year, so they don’t have fish in them, fish that would eat eggs and larva.

Vernal pools are also an important foraging habitat for many reptiles, mammals and birds. I plan on keeping my eye on these particular pools to see if frogs and salamanders grow in them. In later spring, your ears can tell you where to look for these pools; listen for wood frogs calling and follow their song to the pool. Although you might have to stop and start a few times, because in my experience, as soon as the frogs hear you, they stop singing. But be patient and then move a little closer and maybe you can find this spring treasure — this magical treasure which appears and then disappears, much like spring itself.

We’re nearing the end of March and up here on the Gunflint Trail, I’m looking out my window at more than 15” of snow and it’s still coming down. This is day three of our March Lion snowstorm. Lars has been snowblowing with the tractor for a few hours today. With the snow still falling, I think I’ll have to dig my snowshoes out again before I stray off the path. I was out stomping through the snow earlier; it’s a darn good cardio workout without the snowshoes. I had put mine away for the season, but so much deep beautiful snow deserves a good tromp through the woods.

It’s hard to believe that two weeks ago Lars and I were having our morning coffee outside, sitting in the sun, entranced by the chickadees. I got a little sunburn that day. Well, who knows, that could happen in two weeks again. Or three. But it will happen. We can count on that.

A snowstorm like this can really mess up people’s plans if they have to go anywhere, but it’s a boon to the woods, waters and wildlife as we transition to spring. This snowfall means a lot in terms of rainfall. It brings relief — the worry about a dry spring is lessened now. And maybe because of this snow, we won’t have to cut a hole through the ice on the lake to pump water to our wildfire abatement sprinklers. That is a real thing and exactly what we would need to do if the lakes are still frozen and the woods are bone dry.

They say that ten inches of snow equals one inch of water, but that is highly dependent on the water content of the snow. This particular snow is not heavy with water, but neither is it the light fluffy kind.

I have it from an expert that this is particularly good snow to plow. “It’s a dream!” said my plowman. This weather is a boon to the people who plow, since many of them depend on it as a seasonal source of income. Up to now, there had only been two times the plow had to go down our road. That’s two times this winter. That’s really unusual. In fact it’s weird, but I have used that word too much to describe this winter, so I am putting it to rest.

The people who plow our roads and drives are some of the unsung heroes of the Trail. I am imagining how we can celebrate them. I was thinking about how in England there’s a Ploughman’s lunch on the menu at many of the country pubs. They mean the kind of plowing of the earth. A Ploughman’s lunch there is usually made up of a hunk of cheese, good crusty bread, butter, and pickles or relish. It also sometimes has chutney or fruit, pickled onions, sliced ham, pork pie, maybe a boiled egg, or even some pâté. Yum.

But plowman is a bit of a misnomer, since quite a few women plow as well. Let’s call it the plower’s lunch. Or, even better: The People of the Plow luncheon special. I plan on serving that venerable meal to my plower as soon as I can, accompanied by a nice dark ale. You can count on that. You know who you are.

Speaking of food, most of the restaurants on the Gunflint Trail will  be closed for the season after March 31 and will reopen in April or May.

Gunflint Lodge keeps its restaurant, Justine’s, open year round. I gave them a call to see if they might start up the sleigh rides again now that we have snow, and they said they might, depending on weather conditions. I know I’m tempted to take a sleigh ride. I’d love to see those two gorgeous Clydesdale horses out in this snow. If that appeals to you, make sure to call to check before you make the drive.

A sleigh ride and a plower’s lunch. Now that’s a plan for a good snowy winter’s day.

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

If you didn’t know any better, you might think that it is spring on the Gunflint Trail. The snow — what little there is — is melting fast in the sun, forming icy slicks wherever footsteps or tires have gone before; in the woods, the sun hits the trees, stumps and rocks, widening the melted circles around them, islands in the snow. It feels like late March four weeks early.

Not too long ago, solid ice coated the branches and limbs of the trees so they clacked as they swayed in the wind and the broken ice fell crashing in the woods. Now the sound of melting, of dripping and snow slumping off roofs interrupts the serene quiet of the late winter woods.

I am not complaining; far from it. I love the fact that I can get dressed to go outside in 5 minutes instead of 20; that if I guess the weather wrong in terms of my choice of gear, it won’t be immediately dangerous. Is it the New Englander in me that doesn’t totally enjoy this weather? That distrusts it? “I know you’re pleasant now, my inner voice says to Mother Nature, but what have you got in store for us?”

I have a feeling we are going to get mountains of snow in March and April. And I hope we do, for the sake of the woods. I don’t like the idea of a dry spring and the May 5th, 2007 Ham Lake fire is the reason. I wasn’t here then when the Gunflint Trail was evacuated, but I watched from a distance and I heard the stories up close from residents and firefighters. I was here for the pre-evacuation of 2021 with the John Eck fire and the closing of the Boundary Waters. It was in the spring of that year that we had installed our sprinkler system. I remember a time that summer when we ran the sprinklers every night, emptying many propane tanks in the process.

But I am getting ahead of myself. It is springlike today, we do have some snow and some sun and now is the time for moose shed hunting, when the fallen antlers contrast with the white winter landscape. I have found exactly none, yet I persevere. I did get some advice from an old woodsman, that if I find an antler, I should circle around it in a pattern looking for the second one, since moose do not like walking with one antler — it makes them out of balance — so they try to get rid of the second one soon after the first has fallen.

I search for sheds every year — Lars thinks I’m a bit nuts about it, but I love being in the woods and I really love being in the woods with a purpose. Last week I was in Wisconsin, listening in as a friend met with the permit guy and a logger to talk about a project in her woods. Another friend came by and said to me, “Isn’t it a great day to stand around in the woods?!” I agreed. I love to stand around in the woods.

When you have a purpose, though, it changes the outlook and the perception of things — it’s like the difference between hiking and hunting. You can enjoy the woods either way, of course, but when you’re hunting, you can feel everything sharpen — sight, hearing — and you walk more carefully.

And there are good reasons for additional care on the Gunflint Trail if you have a pet. Lately there have been many nearby wolf sightings, more than has been usual for the last few years, at least by my reckoning. Their tracks are all around the cabin, almost daily there are fresh ones; and in the woods and on the shoulders of the roads where there is fresh snow. Two big dogs were killed — one for sure by wolves — on the Gunflint Trail this winter, so my caution is heightened when I’m out walking with Ursa, my dog. We both scan the woods, check the ridges, stop and listen. The funny things is, the wolves could be around us all the time; I wouldn’t know. Their coloring helps them disappear into the woods easily.

But Ursa knows when they’re around and her hackles rise when we encounter fresh tracks; she freaks out big time when she sees one and makes strange noises that she saves for the occasion. I know she can hear them howling when I cannot. How does one live when a wolf is on your doorstep?

Carefully, if you have a pet. Wolves and humans (and moose and ravens and fox and bear) have been living nearby one another on the same planet for millennia, so as a species we do know how. Within the last 100 years the wolf plan has swung wildly between extermination and conservation. And it is still swinging. I walk as carefully into this topic as I do in the woods.

The care that Lars and I take is this: we stop feeding the birds, especially suet cakes. We leave zero food or trash outside. We have our dog on a leash after dark; we don’t let her go out alone. My heart just hurts when I think about the dog owners who lost their dear pets this year. Really, it could happen to any of us. If you live up here, you have to come to terms with the fact that your pet might get et and live accordingly. It is one of many risks we weighed when we decided to live here. Living in this beautiful place doesn’t mean you won’t taste tears ever again.

A stranger to our area asked me recently if she could pet a wolf. Did I think she could try? I was speechless, breathless, for a moment and then I explained that wolves are wild animals, hence unpredictable. Though it’s almost unheard of for a wolf to attack a human, it’s not outside the realm of possibility and did she want to be the one to add to the statistics? And if she were to get friendly with a wolf and the next human who came along had destruction on their mind, she could be putting that animal at risk. For the sake of the animal, I said, don’t befriend it. It is better for them to be afraid of humans, or at least leery.

There are wolves here. There have always been wolves here and I hope that there will be wolves here forever.

Land of Slush

This has been such a weird winter season on the Gunflint Trail. We’ve had very little snow — our road has be plowed only twice all season. It has rained on and off for the last two days and now the sun is shining on the melting expanse of our lake. The blueish-gray slush extends in patches from shore to shore, with low drifts of white marking the deeper snow and the darker gray and deeper blue denoting pools of water on top of the ice. If the sun keeps shining until the cold temperatures arrive, which they will, this Land of Lakes will have turned into the Land of Slush and then transform into the Land of Ice. The upside is that maybe there will be good skating conditions again.

The downside of no snow lands on those who depend on a good snowfall to make their living, like lodge owners, lodge workers, and those who plow the many private roads on the Trail. With no snow comes no skiing, no snowshoeing, no snowmobiling, no ice-fishing and no plowing.

The lodges on the Trail have done a great job coming up with alternative activities, like a lodge-to-lodge scavenger hunt and a lodge-to-lodge luau party. Bearskin Lodge has been harvesting snow and then distributing it where it was needed on their ski trails.

The lodges’ tough break can be measured in real dollar losses. The heartbreak of those people who come alive when they ski, snowmobile, fish and snowshoe is immeasurable. For those of us who live on the Trail, this winter is one of unparalleled pleasant weather with an undercurrent feeling of loss for those normally dependable gorgeous winter days and the dismay we feel for our neighbors’ loss in income. It is a disturbing feeling.

Hiking is the best solid option, if you’re like us and live to be outside no matter the weather. Don’t venture out, though, without micro-spikes on your boots! Best to bring a hiking or ski pole too, to help get you out of icy tricky situations. There are many great hiking trails up and down the Trail.

I remember another February like this, about 20 years ago when Lars and I and a friend were heading out on a winter camping trip. All our gear was packed, we had food and a camping stove and our pulks lashed to the top of the truck, ready to go. Lars and I had been on three or four winter camping trips together by then, and we were ready for more. This time, we rented a cabin near the entry point for the night before our trip was to begin. We arrived after dark, already imagining the trek into the Boundary Waters the next morning and dreamed that night of smooth trails and starry nights camping on the lake. We were stoked! The next morning we woke up to the worst sound a winter camper can hear: raindrops on the roof and the drip drip drip of melting snow and ice all around the cabin. We had been so excited to introduce this friend to the joys of winter camping. We were so disappointed as we looked out at the gray rainy mess outside. We headed back to our own cabin and I remember spending the weekend reading a John Grisham novel. Not a bad way to spend a rainy winter weekend, but a poor second compared to the trip we had planned.

What makes for an easy winter for one creature makes for a hard winter for another. The weather affects the animals and birds of the boreal forest too, of course. The snowpack is so minimal that I wonder if the mice, voles and shrews have a hard time just staying alive even with the mild temperatures. Those smaller mammals depend on the subnivean zone — the area between the snow and the ground, to keep them warm and to search for food in relative safety. That zone is minimal to non-existent this winter. Most of these little animals don’t hibernate, but use various winter coping strategies, like the shrew, which shrinks itself in preparation for cold weather — even its brain and skull gets smaller, by about 20-30 per cent, so it won’t need as much energy to survive the winter.

I imagine that birds make out the best in a winter like this: they’re not losing the calories that they would if it were twenty below zero and food is still relatively easy to find with the meager snowpack. But there is the fact that, like the small mammals, they can’t always hide from their predators, especially the silent hunter, the owl.

Even with a deep snowpack, an owl can find its prey using its extraordinary hearing ability. Owls’ faces are formed in a kind of dish shape, which acts like an antenna. A barred owl’s right ear is higher than its left ear. Hearing from two different angles helps owls pinpoint the location of prey.

February marks the beginning of the mating season for some owls. During the coldest months of the year, owls are nesting and mating. They choose nests — they don’t build their own — usually an abandoned cavity originally made by a Northern Flicker or Pileated Woodpecker. Once the right nest is selected, and a successful mating achieved, the eggs are laid. If all goes well, they will hatch 28 to 33 days later. Their young will arrive just in time for the spring arrival of bird and rodent babies and then their hunting lessons begin, with owl parents demonstrating their hunting techniques and bringing live prey to the babies.

We mostly hear Barred Owls this time of year on the Trail. I’ve heard saw-whet owls mainly in the warmer months and I spent a wonderful night in a camper near Duluth listening to two Great Horned Owls calling to one another for hours. The most mysterious owl up here, the Boreal Owl, remains elusive to my efforts to hear or spot one. One early spring night, I thought I heard a Boreal Owl, and went out at dusk, following the sound to a cleared area near some tall pines. What I saw there in the gloaming was no owl, but a winnowing woodcock, flying high into the air above the pines then spiraling back to earth making its eerie mating sound with its wing feathers. The calls of the two birds are somewhat alike, and believe me experiencing the woodcock’s flight (and later finding one on its nest) was a true thrill, but I hope for the day it’s really the tiny Boreal Owl that I find at the end of my search.

~  Marcia Roepke

January is a bit quieter than normal on the Trail. We usually have two sled dog races this month, but the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon was canceled, and the Gunflint Mail Run Sled Dog Race was postponed until February 10. There hasn’t been much snowmobiling either, because of so very little snow up here. But there’s still plenty of winter fun to be had. The walking has been great. The skating has been out of this world fantastic and the folks at Hungry Jack, Poplar Haus and White Pine all cleared skating trails on their lakes. Bearskin Lodge has 16-20 K of groomed trails now, and Golden Eagle Lodge has over 25 K of groomed trails, some for your good skis and some for your bad skis (due to the rocks). A Central Gunflint Trail Nordic Ski Pass is required at Bearskin and Golden Eagle. It’s available at either lodge, and good for both.

 The cold and snow have transformed our woods and lakes once again. This morning long blue shadows stretched across the snowy surface of the lake, reaching west, away from the sun rising behind a steep hill to the east. That hill and its cliff mark a peninsula between two bays of the lake. At the highest point of the hill, a crooked tree once stood. We named it the Dr. Suess Tree for its resemblance to the fantastic flora that came from the author’s imaginative mind.

 Since we moved to the Gunflint Trail, we have named various landmarks around us so we could talk about the landscape and understand one another. There’s The Cut, a former logging skid road made after the big blowdown of the late 1990s in order to haul the big fallen white pines up the steep hill. The former road is now filled with willows that have grown tall reaching for the sun. Their lower branches, which get no sunlight, are bare of leaves. I now call it the Willow Walk and it makes a lovely path that the willows arc over. In the winter, the snow load bows the slender trees down and makes a perfect secret place for snowshoe hare and grouse. In the spring the animal droppings are thick on the ground under the willows. At the top of the willow walk is The Big Ant Mound, which I keep tabs on in the summer to see if bears are moving through. Some years it gets decimated. Last summer it remained undisturbed. Some other places I’ve named are the Aspen Loop and my favorite: the One-Acre Wood, named in homage to Winnie-the-Pooh’s home forest: the 100-Acre Wood.

 I think this impulse to name places isn’t solely due to claiming ownership but also springs from a desire to belong to a place, and to name the things around us so we can build our stories. The names of these places help form my own mental map of the land I call home.

 Animals and birds also form mental maps, and I wonder if each remembered place is a picture or some impulse in their minds. Maybe the places on their mental maps are generalized, like, “lots-of-berries” or “water here in dry times” or “seeds stored here.”

 We know that birds from the Corvid family, like ravens, gray and blue jays can keep track of over a thousand different places where they have stored food for the winter. Chickadees belong to another family of birds, but they also make mental maps of their stored food. And, in fact, the chickadee has another marvelous winter survival adaptation: their brains grow larger in late summer and early fall in preparation for winter, so they can stuff more memory in their little heads. Bird biologists have surmised that old neurons are replaced by new neurons in the hippocampus, the brain’s area for memory. Chickadees also can slow their metabolism down and go into a hypothermic state to save energy. And, like other birds, they puff up their feathers to trap body heat in the cold.

 Blue Jays, like squirrels, bury nuts in the ground to store them, so they form their own mental maps as well. And there’s a bonus: whatever they don’t eat will grow, with the right conditions, which means after a fire, or a blowdown, or logging, Blue Jays help re-forest the landscape. Blue Jays are credited with helping oaks and other tree species migrate north and east after the last Ice Age.

 Since the cold temperatures came last week, we haven’t seen many blue jays or other birds, just mainly chickadees, ravens and nuthatches. Oh, yeah, and the gray jays, which fly around the cabin and stare in at the windows at us, waiting to see if we will feed them on demand. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t, but intermittent reinforcement is the strongest, so they come by almost every day. It’s so funny when I move from room to room in the cabin and the birds change their perches so they can keep an eye on me. “Well,” they seem to saying, “how’s about some grub?”

 I’ve seen many snowshoe hares this winter, which is unusual for me, but the ones I’ve seen making great arcing leaps over the snow have not been completely white, but still had gray on their ears and feet. I love seeing them at that stage. Their fur is so beautiful. I’ve also seen pine martens a few times, bounding after — what? — maybe those beautiful hares. And so winter survival goes; each animal using every strategy it can to make it to spring.

— Marcia Roepke

This new year blew in a bit of snow on the Gunflint Trail this week. Big fat flakes floated down and settled, creating one of those ridiculously picturesque sparkly landscapes. The recent snow was followed by lower temperatures and sunny skies. The days will seem longer now — our daylight will increase about 40 minutes from now until Feb 1. We really haven’t experienced very cold weather yet this winter. January and February are our coldest months. I’m happy to see the snow and cold finally arrive, like old and sometimes grumpy friends. You’re pleased to see them, and you know you will be tested.

 Winter is so much more enjoyable — and bearable — with snow to play in, whether you ski, snowshoe, snowmobile or dogsled. And the last two weeks has seen a lot of skating parties. Lars joined a family last week who skated from Round Lake, hiked over the portage to Tuscarora for some lake trout fishing. It was a 12-mile trip and there were some sore muscles the next day, but if you go by the pictures and smiles they brought back, it was a very successful adventure. Maybe next year I can join them.

Skating the lakes off the Trail is rarely an option, but this year, the snow held off and the cold finally came which made for a week or so of really good wild ice skating. After a recent birthday skating party, some neighbors built a bonfire on Poplar Lake. The wind was steady. I was really happy I was wearing my anorak with a fur ruff around the hood. It makes for a perfectly comfortable micro-climate right around my face. The group of friends and neighbors around the fire watched an animal cross the lake, resulting in a typical Trail conversation that goes like this: “Is that a fox?” “No, it’s a wolf.” “No way —that’s just a dog!” “That is totally a wolf!” etc. After a birthday toast around the roaring fire, we heard a big CCRACK! in the ice. Conversation ceased as everyone took one big step away from the fire in unison. Then the party began once more and we all starting inching back toward the warmth.

 Winter sports plus bonfire get-togethers are wonderful ways to enjoy winter. They are part of our winter survival strategies, along with enjoying the comforts of home on a dark day, with candles, warm food, and embracing the quietness.

 We know how bears deal with winter. They hibernate, first fattening up so they can last six months or more without eating. Their metabolism slows and not only do they give birth, they nurture their young while hibernating. Scientists are studying bears to try to figure out how humans can survive long space travel.

 I’ve been reading about winter survival strategies for many northern animals. Beavers stay awake and active all winter. They store food under the ice by their lodges in the form of green aspen or birch branches. There are usually up to five beavers in their warm lodges during winter, and sometimes muskrats and other small mammals live in there too. But beavers have a special skill — the females disengage their internal clock from a 24-hour day and change their rhythm to a 26- or 28-hour day. It is believed that this happens to be more in sync with their estrous cycle. Look for large bubbles in the ice around a lodge where there’s clear ice. They might by the trapped air bubbles caused when the beaver swims below, staying busy maintaining lodges all winter long.

 Meadow voles use an entirely different strategy to prepare for winter. She neither hibernates nor stores food, but loses weight at summer’s end to go into winter leaner. She’ll need less food that way and spend less time outside her underground nest looking for food. She will also share her nest — and her warmth — with other voles in the winter, the only time anyone is allowed in besides her babies.

 For me, the dog sled races held on the Trail break up the winter beautifully, but this year we have had one race cancel — the Beargrease — and one rescheduled — the Gunflint Mail Run — now moved to February 10. The Dog Days of Winter dog sled races will be held in March, on a date to be announced. Whatever the race, it’s inspirational to see the enthusiasm these dogs bring to their work and the dedication the mushers show to their animals. For me, nothing beats watching the dogs run almost silently through the dark woods at night. Hope to see you there.

 — Marcia Roepke

I believe the snow is here to stay for a while on the Gunflint Trail. It’s not very much snow but it both covered the ground and relieved the suspense about when it was coming. It was kind of weird to have it be so cold and have no snow. It reminded me of the land of Narnia from the book The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. During the reign of the White Witch there was winter with no Christmas in Narnia. Cold with no snow seemed almost as dreary here on the Trail.

Our earlier snowfall had disappeared by Thanksgiving. There were a couple of much-welcome sunny days before our national Turkey feast and Lars and I were able to help some friends and neighbors put up a new yurt. It was a very interesting and satisfying process seeing this ancient building technique. Nearby we have other neighbors building a very sophisticated and high-tech new home. It’s so cool to live in place where you can find both in the same neighborhood: the ancient and the new. Weaving between them are our other neighbors: the animals and birds of the Trail.

“Our place is lousy with foxes,” I was told by one of our most revered Gunflint Wise Women. And foxes aren’t the only animal that had a good summer. this year. I saw a pine marten dashing across the trail and up a tree and a vole zipped across the road looking like a wind-up toy. An all-white snowshoe hare leapt over the dark ground, frantic for safety, but finding none on the dark snowless road. I thought: “too soon, little hare,” but three days later the snow came.

It was a good year for grouse, too, apparently. They can be found up and down the Gunflint Trail in new growth and deciduous stands and they are a choice meal for many predators, including humans. We regularly see grouse on the paths, on the road shoulder or displaying right in the middle of the road. You can hear them clucking quietly in the woods and see them sitting rather absurdly in birch trees. At my friend Renee’s, we saw three grouse perched in a birch tree, silhouetted against an evening sky, pecking at the seeds at the ends of slender branches. One flapped up into the air and then flew straight at my head. I wondered later, was that a game of grouse instead of chicken? Though I did see it coming my way, I didn’t flinch, half-hoping it would fly into my head. What was I thinking? Was I tired of my thoughts that day? Did I think a grouse-skull collision would change my thoughts/make a good story/give me yet another scar/be thrilling? Yes, I believe that in a quiet way I am a thrill-seeker. I just wanted to see how close it would get before it veered off. As it turned out, it was pretty close. No new scar after all. And a little thrill. Some of my quiet thrills come from encounters with that which is wild.

I love the grouse. I get insensibly irritated whenever I hear someone say a grouse is stupid. Do the humans not know that a grouse can do what they can’t? Survive outside all winter, eating buds, twigs, catkins and ferns. Diving into a drift of deep snow and letting a snow cave be built around you. Imagine, roosting in the snow, your cave a quiet dimly-lit space where you can patiently digest a few twigs and then silently deposit a tidy pile of pellets. And think your grousy thoughts.

Years ago, on Lars and my first date, we were winter camping in the Boundary Waters with 10 other people or so and a dog sled team. We had nightly snowshoe walks on the lake, sometimes with aurora arcing above us and shooting pillars of light into the sky. On a walk one night the snow was whipping around us, wiping out both the starry sky and our footprints. I walked steadily on, using ski poles for balance against the gusting wind. Down went the pole, and BOOM! up flew a grouse. It was spectacular in a heart-stopping kind of way.

And the thing about grouses in the spring: the drumming. The drumming that the grouse makes by beating his wings against the air. Oh the drumming that makes our hearts beat faster in a summer kind of rhythm: time to mate, time to nurture, time to fly and live!

On a Trail Time walk with fifth graders from Sawtooth Elementary School one May, we were talking birds in general and grouse in specific. The students were 10 or 11 years old and some were already hunters; they knew where the grouses’ favorite drumming logs were and where they nested. I told them that though I have tried for years to sneak up on one successfully, I had never seen a ruffed grouse drumming. When I said that, they whipped their heads around and stared at me like I’d said I’d never seen a car. I didn’t tell them that I had once witnessed a spruce grouse drumming. That would have spoiled the moment. Like these kids, I had been a child of the woods. We know the value of a grouse, even beyond dinner. We know we can learn a lot from a grouse, like we can from all the animals and birds of our boreal forest. They are our teachers and miraculous pinpoints of wonder. It sometimes can feel like all the beauty of nature resides in one sparrow, if you look at that sparrow as a gift, with gratitude toward the giver.

As local poet and friend Ritalee Walters wrote in her “Grouse Poem”

From the grouse I learned

death is always close

and it’s silly to pretend you can hide from it

even for a little while

From the grouse I learned

it’s never silly to trust and love

tires and guns will crush you eventually

Keep your soft gaze untroubled

listening to your own music

Getting to a low branch

is still flying.

— Marcia Roepke

Ooh la la and la di dah! The unusual sunny and warm weather on the Gunflint Trail this November just makes us giddy. It was 50 yesterday and today was full of sun. It’s been heavenly for the human mammals so I imagine it was nice for the other animals too.

I had the luxury of spending some time by the North Brule River yesterday. The blue sky reflected deeper blue in the calm water; downriver the water trilled over the stones, making beautiful water music. There’s something about moving water that excites me. It makes me want to know all the stories of the animals living near and those just passing through. There’s not much snow on the ground — most of it has melted, except in shady spots —  so I couldn’t read the stories told by animal tracks in the snow. I just kept my eyes open to see who showed up and I looked for other signs of animal activity as well. Foxes are everywhere up and down the Trail. You can see their sign by the side of the road in their scat. And of course the signs of the beaver family abound.

The beavers near the Trail have built some new dams this summer and revived some formerly vacated lodges. They are engineers and are improving (from their perspective) the land to their advantage. Of course, what a beaver thinks is improvement can be a huge pain in the neck for humans. Their thoughts are not our thoughts and they continually try to fix what we build. Over time, I saw a culvert get dammed up by beavers, then opened up by humans over and over again. I was trying to look at it from the beavers’ viewpoint and I imagined them saying, “Hey! People! I keep closing up that hole under the road (the culvert) and you keep opening it. You do not make very good dams. We are just trying to help!” Beavers have the ability to change the landscape and are crucially important to maintaining a healthy environment. This is finally being recognized elsewhere. Beavers have recently been reintroduced in England after 400 years of extinction. Here on the Trail, we luxuriate in them. This keystone species is good for the natural landscape. They create wetlands and small ponds that support many other species. Their dams filter water and decrease the effects of flooding downstream by decreasing the water flow. Another benefit is the captured carbon, since the dams hold back silt, which locks up carbon and encourages new plant growth. The dams also shelter fish — they can hide behind the debris — and many invertebrates, which are a food source for freshwater animals.

As much as I love beavers, I did not love it when my dog carried a beaver leg home last week. I thought she had picked it up from a wolf kill, but I found out that a neighbor had put it in a tree to feed the gray jays. That is a very rustic way to decorate your yard. I have a friend who lives further up the North Shore who puts a deer carcass in his front yard for the chickadees every year —  in front of his big living room window. I have another friend who is known to nail fish to trees for the benefit of pine martens. I think caring for neighbors runs so deep up here, be they hairless or not.

The neighbors on the Gunflint Trail are truly a breed apart. There are so many people taking care of one another, sharing food, hosting community parties and activities and helping each other out. Even if they don’t like you much, they’ll help you! It’s the code of the Gunflint Trail.

Before Lars and I moved up here full time, a friend asked, “But where do you GO in the winter?!” My enthusiastic response was, “On snowshoes you can go pretty much wherever you want.” She looked at me, puzzled, and said, “but there’s no Starbucks!” Another time I was nursing a cocktail at Poplar Haus and a visitor asked me if I lived here. “Yes,” I said, “I do.” She then asked me what I did up here. “Anything I want,” was my answer.

Every day I try to do something I need to do, something I want to do, something for somebody else and I also build in what I call Staring Time, which you could think of as Seeing Time, or Being Time; it is just some time to be still or move quietly though the woods, noticing what is happening all around in this beautifully rich world of ours.

— Marcia Roepke

Snow came last week to the Gunflint Trail. It fell off and on for a few days, sometimes mixed with rain and sleet. The first snow that stayed happened at the close of day. Night comes so quickly this time of year. The big fat snowflakes fell slowly as the sky darkened all around us. It was windless and quiet and utterly picturesque. It’s moments like this that make me think, “This. This is the reason I love winter.” As winter approaches, I’ve had many other moments like that. The weather forecast has been predicting gloomy gray days but each day has had its own beauty and the sun has peeked out, sometimes in a golden dawn or a rosy sunset; or sometimes in a full blown blue sky. Now, there’s a moment! Walking through an aspen grove, the slender trees newly leafless and almost as white as the birches, I lift my face to the sun that beamed out of a cobalt sky; a raven dark as ink flies over, and wow… white trees, blue sky, black raven. And I think again, “This.” This beauty makes all the struggle of winter worth it. And here’s a secret: It’s only going to get more beautiful as the winter deepens, as the ground turns hard as stone, and as the snow accumulates.

Once we’re ready for winter, we feel like we can relax for a while. Summer is so busy — it’s stays light at this latitude for 16 to 17 hours a day at the summer solstice. I’m convinced that all that sunlight fuels a mad sort of energy. We have about nine hours of daylight currently, meaning long hours of darkness, so my celestial orb of choice has been the moon. Now it is in its waning phase. Moon viewing was spectacular this past week. One morning I was up early enough to see the moon set as the sun rose behind me. This is the time for moose to rut, for foxes to morph into their fluffy winter coats and for black bears to hibernate.

 Black bears in northeastern Minnesota hibernate from sometime in late September and October to late March or April. The period before hibernation is known as hyperphagia, which is a time of non-stop eating and drinking for bears so they fatten up. Some will return to their old dens to hibernate, but some don’t. They’ll make a new one under a fallen tree or under a cavity formed by boulders. I was talking to Peg Robertson, who recently retired as a wildlife biologist for the Superior National Forest in Tofte. She told me that bears have different personalities, but all of them follow their noses when looking for food. They have an even keener sense of smell than dogs do. They make mental maps of food sources, and return to places where they’ve had success. This is one reason it is SO important not to let bears get garbage or bird seed or dog food from cabins. The bears will return. Heck, they’re made to return!

 Black bears have a summer home range but in early fall, during their ravenous eating phase or hyperphagia, they roam more broadly. This year’s new cubs stay with mama bear. They will hibernate with her. Papa bears are basically loners except for the summer mating season from May to July. They den alone. While hibernating, bears will not eat, drink, urinate or defecate. They do this without losing much muscle mass or strength. Everything slows: their metabolic rate is reduced to 25%; they breathe every 15-45 seconds; their heart rate drops. If there has been a successful mating, and the mama bear has gained enough weight to support a pregnancy, the fertilized eggs implant in the uterus during November. The tiny cubs are born in January, nearly hairless and totally blind and weighing less than 8 ounces. The mother bear rouses when they are born, feeds them and responds to their cries and comfort sounds (cubs hum when they are happily feeding). A mother bear may lose a third of her weight — mainly from fat reserves. Papa bear just sleeps.

 I wonder if bears know how big they’re getting during that eating phase. Do bears have a self-image?

One fall day, I was driving slowly down a dirt road. Sitting just off the road, barely screened from view by green-leafed saplings, sat a black bear. He was hiding, though not very successfully; his face was hidden behind the tree but he bulged out hugely on both sides of the trunk. I sat there quietly in the car, watching him as he peeked from behind the tree, first one side, then the other; each time ducking back behind the tree, hiding his eyes, reminding me of a toddler playing peek-a-boo. That bear had almost certainly fattened up enough for his long sleep in the deep dark winter. Soon it would be time to hide for real in his new cozy den until spring.

— Marcia Roepke

Winter cometh. We don’t know when, but we know it’s approaching. The trees and plants know it. The animals know it. The birds that can’t abide winter have flown (are flying right now) far, far away. The animals and birds that remain are preparing themselves for winter, as are we, the two-legged.

The lists for preparing for winter are long — my friend Des tapes her list on the inside of her back door, so whenever she goes out, she can see what to do next and (hopefully) cross out completed tasks (or add new ones  [eek!]). There’s firewood to stack, motors to prepare for winter storage and motors to prep for winter use. One of the more enjoyable tasks on our fall list is towing our floating dock to a small bay where it will be sheltered from damage caused by winter’s wind and shifting ice.

We were starting to think we’d waited too long this year to move the dock — we look for a sunny day with little to no wind — and then yesterday came and conditions were perfect for moving the dock.

Lars and headed down to the lake with the tools for the job — removing the ramp from the dock usually gives us little to no trouble, but yesterday didn’t work out quite like that. Trouble mushroomed out of each simple step; the dock wasn’t floating due to the low water level which made the pins jam, the dog took off after a squirrel and I nearly lost the blue canoe. The wet line slipped out of my fingers as I was maneuvering the boat. In my mind I saw the possible consequences in a flash: I would have to get very wet to go after the canoe OR quickly throw myself across the dock and grab the receding line. So throw myself I did, and caught the rope with two inches to spare. I felt quite proud that the old girl can still move that fast! Of course, if I hadn’t dropped the line in the first place, no heroics would have been necessary, but sometimes there are bumpy roads on the path to glory. Anyway, we were victorious if somewhat damp after our dog Ursa shook off her swim all over us. Several times.

The lake was like glass and once we were out of the shade and into the sun it was shirtsleeve weather. We warmed up and dried off easily. Fish were rising all around us. The water was the clearest I’d ever seen it — we could see all the way down. I stared at sunlight moving across the underwater boulders as we steadily paddled, paddled to the bay. It is so easy to get into kind of meditative trance with steady paddling, sunny skies and the hush of a quiet fall day. After tying up the dock, we floated in that little bay for a while. We watched a light show as bands of reflected sunlight moved across an ancient cedar tree. We checked out the beaver lodge that had been abandoned a couple years ago. We can still see the entrance hole above the water, so I don’t think beavers are living there now, but there were a few fresh branches under the water in front of the lodge, like beavers do for their winter meals. It’s one of the tasks on Mr and Mrs Beaver’s fall list.

Just last week we saw loons swimming and fishing and kingfishers darting low over the water. I didn’t see any loons yesterday, and I haven’t heard them for a while. Maybe they’ve gone south. The barred owl that had been steadily serenading us for most of the summer has also gone quiet. I’ve not heard or seen the neighborhood ospreys, although I understand they fly south once the lakes ice up.

As we turned to head home, we saw the gorgeous glow of backlit birches now dressed in their autumn gold. The sinking sun lit the shore up until the whole hillside was glowing. I’ve rarely seen it so beautiful.

Golden birches, dark green firs and spruce, stately pines and a solid blue sky, sunlight on water, tree and stone: the beautiful miracle of a fall day in the stillness of the north woods.

That brief time of peaceful paddling helped us escape for a time the world’s worries, both our irritating local battles and ferocious distant wars. I hope everyone can find a few moments of silence and solace in the beauty of our boreal forest to strengthen us for the challenges ahead.

— Marcia Roepke

What a beautiful time to be on the Gunflint Trail! The woods are rich with summer’s growth letting loose and letting go — yellow leaves from birch and aspen drift down and line the forest floor with gold hues. Pincherry, bush honeysuckle and mountain ash leaves exhibit myriad colors all on one plant — from maroon to lime green to a warm gold in a gorgeous mix of rich autumn tones. Moss, plump from recent rainfall and glowing emerald in the low-angled sunlight, forms soft inviting mounds over rock and earth. After a dark and drizzly morning today, the sun is shining, and the maple trees are blazing in the warm sun — their colors blare out like visual trumpet sounds surrounded by the cooler saner tones of pine, balsam and spruce. The wind is fickle today, blowing in gusts, tugging leaves off the bushes and trees and making them whirl and dance in the air. Then the wind stills, and gold falls to earth. We are blessed by the richness of nature.

 The glory of autumn colors tells us the trees are preparing for cold. It’s the time of year when deciduous trees withdraw their contact with the leaves; a barrier layer of cells forms at the stem/tree connection. The absence of chlorophyll lets all the other colors shine in each leaf. The trapped sugar in a leaf produces compounds (different amounts for different species) that combine to form the warm tones of autumn. The leaves are now free to fall and to fly. The same is true for the tamarack needles.

 The slender, silicone-like needles of the tamarack have already started turning yellow and some trees have already lost most of their needles, depending on exposure to wind and rain. Unlike the needles of the evergreen conifers, the deciduous tamarack’s aren’t hardy. They are widely spaced so they can capture more energy in the summer and their absence in winter means the tree will suffer less damage by heavy wet snowfalls.

 Leaves and needles aren’t the only thing turning orange and yellow in the fall. I came across an unfamiliar caterpillar a few days ago while hiking a forest path. It was plump and about three inches long; soft orange with a stripe of blue sandwiched between black running down its back. A row of black spots, each above a leg, dotted both sides. In the front, its comically round head had two black spots, like little cartoon eyes. I tried to identify the cute many-legged creature using moth and butterfly books in my nature library — no success. I resorted to a google image search. Surprise! It wasn’t a caterpillar at all but a sawfly larva, Cimbex Luteus, maybe. The clue to identification lay in the number of legs. A caterpillar has 2-5 pairs of prolegs on the abdomen, while a sawfly larva has 6 or more. My little specimen had eight. As sawfly larvae mature, they turn yellow. The orange one I spotted was quite young; maybe it emerged that day. They feed on alder and willows. The adult sawflies are easily confused with wasps, especially the males, which are yellower than the reddish females. Their antennae are clubbed at the end. Most sawflies eat only one species or closely related species.

 The willow is one of the unsung heroes of our forest and a particular favorite of mine. In Minnesota there are over 20 species of willow. Willow is a keystone species for supporting caterpillars, which feed many animals and birds. Best-selling entomologist Doug Tallamy said in a recent interview on Northern Gardener that willows support 359 species of caterpillars.

 I learned that creepy crawlers like larvae and caterpillars are more efficient than any other animal at converting plant energy to food. When they are eating, they are changing plant amino acids to proteins. Larvae and caterpillars are crucial food sources for birds and other animals like turtles, foxes, voles, mice and even bears. A researcher found that one female bear ate 16,000 to 22,000 tent caterpillars per day, or 20-22 pounds! The hard casing of the tent caterpillar is indigestible in a bear’s stomach, so it was easy to count the spoils after the bear was done with them. I think you get the picture as to what the researcher’s work entailed. It might have been easy to do, and as much as I love nature, I don’t want that job. But I’m so glad someone was willing to do it, if only to make clear how important caterpillars and larvae are to the very foundations of the forest we call home.

 — Marcia Roepke

It’s a damp quiet day on the GunflintTrail. We’re approaching the end of busy summer and the beginning of the quiet of autumn. The weather has cooled off a bit, though it will warm up again next week when we might see the sun again. You can almost feel the season turn: Many of the songbirds are quiet now — mating and raising babies are now behind them, and new bird species are passing through on their annual migration south. The high ringing call of the cedar waxwings surrounds me as I write this. I saw them earlier flying in a group, wheeling and playing in the air, high above the birches and balsams that slope down to the lake. I have read that they share their food, sitting alongside one another and passing berries down the line. I would love to see that sometime.

There was a steady gentle mist falling yesterday evening; this morning the woods were still damp and the sound of the wind just loud enough to mask my noise as I walked through the woods. I flushed three grouse out of some Mountain Ash trees where the birds had been gobbling up the plentiful bright orange berries. Boom! Boom! Boom! One right after the other, they burst into the air not ten feet from me and then disappeared into the thick foliage.

I passed a big ant mound that is ravaged every year by bears eating the ants and ant eggs. So far, it has not been touched this year. Likewise the nearby chokecherry trees bending under their load of ripe dark fruit. Usually the berries are eaten by bears, birds, squirrels and chipmunks by this time. I wonder if the ants and chokecherries remain untouched because food is so abundant this year. If so, it’ll be a good winter for the bears.

As I emerged from the woods, I walked through a drift of wildflowers:

Pearly Everlasting with its creamy-colored tight little blossoms that can last in a dried arrangement for quite a long time. They don’t wilt or fade. Purple Asters and yellow Goldenrod are fully in bloom and make a rich palette with the greens and golds of late summer grasses.

If you’re a reader, you’ve probably heard of Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, and Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses. Both are beautifully written books about her unique approach to nature, observation and writing. She combines western science with indigenous knowledge. When she was young and went to college, she explained to her advisor that she wanted to study botany because she “wanted to learn about why asters and goldenrod [look] so beautiful together.” In response, her advisor told her that “that is not science.” In her writing, scientific knowledge doesn’t replace beauty and beauty does not exclude data. In my own experience, beauty and knowledge and my own personal sensory witness of the flora and fauna, the woods and water of our boreal forest are all one. I highly recommend her books.

As this sunny glorious summer winds down, I find myself grasping at my favorite summer things, wanting to cram the summertime fun in before it’s too late. That sounds greedy and there is never enjoyment to be found in indulging in greed. It would be better to take the advice of Robin Wall Kimmerer, and act like moss.

In an interview with the CBC, she said, “Mosses have this ability, rather than demanding a lot from the world, they’re very creative in using what they have, rather than reaching for what they don’t have. When there are limits, the mosses say, “Let’s be quiet for a while. Abundance, openness, water, will return. We’ll wait this out.”

To act like moss, we give more than we take, we’re patient when resources are scarce, and we find creative ways to use what we have, which is sound advice for any season.

— Marcia Roepke

Every visitor to the Gunflint Trail wants to see a moose. I get it. They are magnificent animals and beautiful in their ungainly way. Those same ungainly features make them uniquely adapted to the water and woods environment in which they live. Their longer front legs help them jump over fallen trees, and they can run 35 mph on those long gangly legs. I know from experience that they can disappear completely and silently into the woods in just a few seconds. Moose have poor vision — they are nearsighted — but their keen hearing (those big ears!) and sense of smell (that big nose!) warn them of potential danger. They can close their nostrils to feed underwater, eating mostly water shield, yellow pond lily and pondweed. On land their summer diet is willow, aspen, maples, white birch, beaked hazelnut, pin cherry and in winter, balsam fir.

Moose are excellent swimmers, and can moose-paddle through the water for miles. One guest at Loon Lake Lodge posted a video last week of a mama moose and baby swimming right toward them as they stood on the wooded shore. The humans had to make some noise so the cow would not climb onto the shore right by them and be startled. The cow and calf swam away after hearing them. On my very first trip to the Quetico over 3o years ago, I sat quietly in my canoe as a bull moose stood downstream from a beaver dam, submerging his head to find aquatic plants to eat, then raising it while gallons of water poured out of his impressive pair of antlers.

A big adult bull moose can average 6 feet tall at the shoulder and can weigh upwards of 1,000 pounds. Cows are smaller. Males use their antlers to thrash brush, threaten and fight for mates, and to root plants from the pond floor. Both bulls and cows use their legs to kick attacking predators, mainly wolves and bears. Their kick can be lethal.

Usually moose move away if humans come too close, but they can become aggressive, so remember to watch them from a distance. Moose are bigger and faster than any person and give little warning before attacking a perceived threat.

I had the absolute joy of being with a friend when she finally saw her first moose this summer. Farmer Ann had been coming to the Boundary Waters for 40 years and had never seen a moose. I took her on a canoe paddle to what I think of as a sure-fire lake for moose-viewing, but we struck out. Wouldn’t you know it, when we were driving to dinner that night we pulled over near a moose pond for a while to watch a cow feed voraciously. I know there was a calf nearby. That pair had many, many pictures posted of them this summer. One lucky person made a video of the calf feeding. It butted its mom’s udders just like a bovine calf does before suckling.

Sometimes a moose doesn’t look like a moose right away. Moose have fooled me a couple times by looking like people. From a distance, the slender profile of a yearling moose trotting down a road almost looks like a human riding a bicycle. The rhythm of a moose walking  —  the legs rising and falling  —  mimic the steady pumping of bike pedals.

One spring I was canoeing on the Swamp River off the Arrowhead Trail when I saw two animals staring at me from the riverbank. I thought, “What are donkeys doing out here?” Then it clicked: they were a pair of yearling calf moose. I felt a little foolish, but it’s a fascinating illustration about how are brains work; we use just a small percentage of our visual information to form quick decisions about what we are seeing in front of us. Sweetwater Sue on Gunflint Lake told me a story about a wolf standing on her road, completely unfazed by Sue’s presence. When she hopped on her bike and started pedaling, the wolf freaked out and sped off as fast as it could go.

One beautiful night a few months ago, I was driving home on the Trail, following a friend and a moose appeared, trotting right next to Seagull Rene’s slowly moving car. It danced her home in the beautiful moonlight.

Yes, moose are magnificent, but if you don’t see one on your first trip, there are so many other wonderful things to see: Birds, berries, beavers, lakes teeming with fish, fireflies, butterflies, sunsets, otters, fog over a lake. Not to mention the views, the tall pines, the hundreds of different kinds of willows (a fascinating tree), caterpillars, turtles, snakes and frogs. And the Loons! And the Lupines! Experience the quiet of the Northwoods, let it enter your soul where it can be a center of peace for the rest of your life. And maybe you’ll see a moose next time.

— Marcia Roepke

It’s been great weather for ducks, loons and frogs and I bless every rainy day that helps keep the Gunflint Trail area out of wildfire danger. It’s worth noting that 80% of wildfires are started by humans. Lighting causes most of the rest. So humans being careful about fires and being extra diligent about putting them all the way out helps the forest more than anything else.

It hasn’t been all rain; there’ been some beautiful sunshine too. You know the old saying: If you don’t like the weather, jut wait five minutes. That is certainly been the case this last week. It was a gray damp morning yesterday; chilly at 47 degrees. By early evening it was sunny and gorgeous and the lake was calling to me for swimming or canoeing. But the puffy white clouds scudding across the blue dome above me called louder so I sat and stared at the sky for a while before dusk — and the mosquitoes — chased me inside.

I wonder if this weather — either the earlier drought or the cool temps, or a combination —  is the cause of the leaves of some trees changing color earlier than usual. I’ve seen both moose maple and pin cherry showing early fall colors. While we chill out up here, other places in Minnesota and around the country are experiencing the hottest weather ever recorded.

It’s warm enough for the food-making of the forest to continue: hazelnuts are forming, though the harvest looks smaller than normal.  Blueberries are plentiful this year — if you know where to look. Juneberries — or Saskatoons, or Serviceberries — are big and juicy and everywhere. I know I should pick some to make a pie but I just stand there under the tree and gobble them before continuing my walk. Bears regularly break the branches of Juneberry and Chokecherry trees, bending them down until they snap so the berries are more easily reachable. The raspberries are ripe now too. My dog Ursa loves to go raspberry picking with me. She won’t take them out of your hand, preferring to pick her own, nuzzling into the bushes snout first, picking the berries delicately with her lips and happily chomping away.

Before I had a dog with me all the time, in the early years, I saw bears on the other side of the raspberry bushes. Makes sense. We predators are competitors, after all. When I would see a bear in the berry patch, I would make loud noises and move away. Usually black bears back off but once I tried to convince a bear grazing on long grass to move elsewhere and it stood on its hind legs. It was on a little hill in my backyard, so it looked especially large stretched out to full height. It didn’t charge me or act aggressively. It just seemed to me that it just wanted a better look at this noisy hairless creature (me). I finally banged two tin plates together, chanting “Bears should go elsewhere! Bears should go elsewhere!” It finally took the hint and skedaddled. Now, understand that I love bears. The reason I scare them away is because I want them to be afraid of humans. If they were not, if I encouraged them to hang around houses and people, they can so easily become nuisance bears. Nuisance bears get destroyed (killed) to protect people, pets and property. I scare bears away so they can live.

It’s not all berry-picking around here. There’s also fishing and canoeing and swimming! I like motor boats too, but one of the reasons I love canoeing is the quiet. Last week Lars and I went on a beaver lodge recon across the lake, paddling into the wind. We floated around a particular tiny island where a loon had been reported as nesting, but saw no signs of a nest. Further down the lake, we watched a pair of loons fish and dive around us, but with no baby in sight. One of my very favorite things is when a loon swims under the canoe. They are such beautiful strong creatures: those red eyes, that gorgeous black and white back, that powerful neck and long ebony beak. They are just so themselves.

Once we watched a loon float in the same spot for a strangely long time. Lars and I paddled our canoe nearer — not too close; we didn’t want to harass it — to see if it was tangled in fishing line. I figured I could call a ranger for help if that was the issue. But, nope, as we approached the loon, there was a mini explosion in the water underneath. Fish scales sparkled as they sunk in the water. Basically, the loon had vented some magical glitter poop after enjoying a large meal of fish. After relieving itself, the loon then swam off unhurriedly to see about some loon business elsewhere, while the sparkling fish scales fell slowly into the dark water below.

— Marcia Roepke

Ahhhh…. Rain on a roof, rain dripping from the trees and rain soaking the earth and making the rivers rush… isn’t that a wonderful sound? I rank it right up there with a baby laughing for good solid food both for the planet and for our spirit. At last, after two months of not much significant rainfall, we got rain on the Gunflint Trail! The fire danger has lessened and I can feel the relief all over my body from the tip of my head to my ends of my toes. Our own weather station near Loon Lake measured 2.55” in the last week and 3” for the last 31 days.

Here’s the latest news from around my neighborhood: Above Birch Lake, an Osprey flew over with a fish in its talons. A beaver walked steadily down the shoulder on the Gunflint Trail. A skittish moose yearling cantered into the woods while two cars idled, blinkers flashing to warn oncoming motorists to slow down. Further up the Trail, a white van stopped and allowed a Grouse mom and her five chicks — or grouselings? — to cross the road.

Bush honeysuckle is blooming everywhere wearing its distinctive flowers of two colors on one bush. Nodding columbine flowers line a woodland path. Meadow roses color the edges of the woods. Daisies, yellow and orange hawkweed, evening primrose and yellow salsify shine in the sun. In a sheltered shady spot, I discovered a Coralroot Orchid that I’d never seen in that area before. On a mushroom hunt up the Trail, I found little to no sign of edible fungi. More on that later.

Swallowtails, black butterflies and the tiniest orange moths slowly flap their wings huddled around puddles and damp places on paths and gravel roads, like African animals at a watering hole. Perched on a slender birch branch, a Red-breasted Grosbeak in breeding plumage added a bit of brilliant color to the north woods.

In berry news, the Juneberries are just starting to turn pink. I saw a few small green blueberries so that’s a hopeful sign! The month without much rain might have hit the raspberries the hardest — the berries are looking unusually small but if it keeps raining, we might get enough for a pie. Raspberry pie. Just hearing the words makes me happy. I found some wild strawberries in perfect ripeness. Usually I see them before they’re ripe and then they’re gone. It is really hard to beat the hungry animals to these small red flavor bombs; they are so small that a certain person I know doesn’t think they’re worth the effort. So when I find them, I don’t share them. I eat them on the spot, still warm from the sun. Well, I hog the first berries; I share the rest. The Elderberries are forming beautiful cherry red clumps. Please note that these are not edible raw unless you want severe abdominal distress. You have to pick them at just the right time and cook them because the fruit and tissue of this shrub contain cyanogenic glycosides, which is harmful to humans. And folks, if you’re a novice berry picker, be careful with any berry — get it identified and verified by a knowledgeable person.

Speaking of knowledgeable people, there are going to be programs on three Sundays in July at Chick Wauk Museum and Nature Center featuring Mike Zimmerman, Timothy Cochrane and Lonnie Dupre. Check out the calendar at gunflinthistory.org

And remember, Tuesdays are Kids’ Days at Chik Wauk every Tuesday until August 22.

I hope you can come up the Trail this year and see it at its greenest state. Right now the lovely pink and rose helicopters or samaras are starting to form on the moose maple. And in the woods I spotted a mossy pool surrounded by willows where birds stopped for a drink and a private bath. The lush moss glowed like emerald velvet. I’ll hold that image in my mind like a prayer for the woods — that there will continue to be rain and sun in just the perfect amount.

— Marcia Roepke

On the Gunflint Trail, we live in a unique and beautiful part of the world. Each season of the year dictates our work and our play. When Spring finally comes, we get busy preparing for summer: We remove the snowblower from the tractor and attach the mower; We haul our dock home from the sheltered bay where it winters; We prepare our garden beds and start planting. We help our neighbors in all sorts of ways and they help us. And here in the Superior National Forest, as elsewhere, we continue to try to make our homes and our part of the woods safer from wildfire.

We trim brush and cut and prune trees all around our cabins to reduce the risk of fire damage. We check the whole length of the sprinkler system, checking for leaks and removing clogged heads where necessary and cleaning them out; We make sure we have full propane tanks on hand for the sprinkler system. We run the system regularly to keep our area watered, increasing its chances of being a defensible green zone. And then, when enough work is done, we go canoeing, and swimming and hiking in this beautiful boreal forest.

The point I’m making is that we prepare for wildfire all the time, not only when there is a close threat. This morning we learned that there is a wildfire 10 miles west of the Gunflint Trail, called the Spice Lake fire, west of Ogishkamuncie Lake. This news is very reminiscent of summer 2021 when the John Eck fire was burning 15 miles away. Like I did then, I have kept handy my wildfire evacuation checklist and my last-minute checklist for protecting home and property. I’ve been reviewing them today in the hopes that I can keep myself from panicking and am able to prepare calmly and thoroughly. The Upper Gunflint Trail didn’t need to evacuate in 2021, though we were in pre-evacuation mode for a while, with go bags packed and ready and all the boxes checked on my lists. I have never been in a wildfire, so I don’t know how that would affect me. Being 10 miles from a forest fire is enough to get my adrenaline going.

At the same time, the woods all around us are in a glorious state of blooming and growing. I’ve seen more bunchberries, strawberries, wild roses, saskatoons and trillium than I have in 10 years. Everything looks so lush until you notice how the moss on the north slopes is getting dry and crunchy. The dirt roads are as hard as stone. Cars and trucks kick up clouds of dust as they roll past. In the woods, the top 4 to 6 inches of soil — the duff — is dry. Added to that are the uncounted balsam firs that have been affected by spruce budworm. There are dead and dying standing fir trees all over this forest, ready to catch a stray falling ember.

How do we set that threat aside and enjoy these achingly beautiful woods? We have to try because why else would we live here? I mean, what is joy if not plunging yourself headlong into something that you know will not last forever? My gamble is that beauty, imagination and the company of good neighbors can win over fear.

Yesterday I watched a hummingbird in a birch tree. It sat on the slenderest of branchlets framed by the bright green semi-translucent leaves. A slight breeze was gusting, the tree branch was swaying and lifting, dipping and swinging as the wind rocked it. The hummingbird rose and fell, swayed from side to side and rode that branch like a seaworthy sailor standing on the deck of a ship in a stormy sea, keeping his balance while all around it roils.

The hummingbird’s poise in the midst of tumult reminded me of a favorite pine tree of mine back in my childhood backyard. It wasn’t a big tree, there were way bigger white pines all around. But this one had branches perfectly placed for the small hands and feet of the five little people that regularly climbed to the top, where the trunk branched out into smaller branches, forming what we called the crow’s nest. We had an old tricycle tire midway up on a knobby pitchy stub. That served as the steering wheel of our ship. But the best ride, on our imaginary stormy seas, was way out on a long branch — the bowsprit. It was stout enough to stand on and the branches above close enough to grab and we would pump that flexible branch up and down, shouting out, “Land Ho! LAND HO,” imagining dark stormy seas. It was fun to do alone, but it was always better with company, helping you ride out the imaginary storm in a make-believe ship.

May we all safely ride out this storm — this latest wildfire threat, with balance and poise and in the company of good neighbors.

— Marcia Roepke

Memorial weekend on the Gunflint Trail had perfect weather this year: Sunshine and cloudless skies, very few bugs and cool evenings. The only downside was the very dry conditions in the woods which created high danger for wildfires. When the woods are looking green and well-watered, when it doesn’t look like drought, it can be hard to convince people that the danger is really there. But it is there, in the duff, which is the many layers of dry decaying material that make up the forest floor; and in the dead standing balsam firs that are everywhere in Superior National Forest. Fortunately, we’ve had a small amount of rain in the last few days, which has eased conditions somewhat, but the danger level for wildfire is still high.

This is a beautiful time of year when the fruit-bearing trees and shrubs are covered in blossoms. The pin cherry, or fire cherry as it is also known, is at the end of its blossoming time; the tiny white petals have mostly fallen, scattered on the ground. The Saskatoons or Juneberries are also done blooming and you can see where the fruit will form. The chokecherries are in full blossom now and in a week or so their petals will fall too and the fruit will start to grow on the pollinated stems. Bears love to eat pin cherries and chokecherries. They will tear down tree limbs to get to the fruit. Moose will tear down tree branches, too, especially young willow and birch so they can get to the tender bright green leaves. I read that the spring birch buds taste like peppermint so I tried a chewing a couple. I would say they taste vaguely minty, but not as strongly as wintergreen does.

I love trees in general, but I’ve always had favorite trees. I can think about those old childhood favorites today just like you’d remember old friends, and when I was young, I thought of trees as my friends. In all honesty, I still do. I have a favorite wild apple tree growing near my cabin, and it is a delight to me. The scent is heavenly right now. The lovely flowers and perfume and the buzzing of myriad bees, bumbles and others, surrounded me as I stood under the blooming tree today, shaking a branch, making it rain flower petals. I was rapt with joy, wondering (not for the first time) how that apple tree came to be planted there. Did someone throw an apple core out of a car window? Maybe a bear picked up the apple, finished it off, and wandered off to the woods where it deposited the seed and everything else a seed needs to grow: moisture and fertilizer. I think bears are perfect seed and fertilizer depositors. I wonder how much of the woods are planted by bears. Bears, bees and trees swirled in my mind today. After all, the bears wouldn’t have any berries to eat if it weren’t for the bees. Another confession: Bumblebees are another favorite of mine.

Minnesota has 24 different species of bumblebees, though not all live up here in the boreal forest. Bumblebees are native to North America, unlike honeybees, though bumblebees use nectar to feed their young too.  Bumblebees lead such very different lives than honeybees. They often make their homes in the ground in an abandoned mouse hole. Only the queens survive each winter. They are the first bumblebees you see in the spring, searching for pollen and nectar so that can start to lay eggs that will become the foundation of the colony. The early emerging bumblebees become workers. Later on, after the colony has grown, the queen will lay eggs that will become the male drones and new queens. The drones and new queens mate late in the summer. It is the only job of the drones to mate. Once they leave the nest, they never return. Sometimes you can find them sleeping in a flower on cool mornings. Once they mate, they die, and the newly mated queens eventually find a shelter to create their winter hibernaculum (what an awesome word!) where they will try to survive the winter alone. And thus starts the circle once more. Ain’t nature grand?!

All of you nature lovers are invited to Gunflint Green Days this weekend, where you can enjoy nature and shop! The three-day event is centered at Schaap Community Center right next to Firehall #2 on the Gunflint Trail. Today, Friday, from 8 to 5 there will be garage sales at lodges along the Trail. They’ll be selling used canoes and kayaks, boats and motors, cabin furniture, fish-themed lamps, camping gear and more. The participating Lodges are: Bearskin, Hungry Jack Outfitters, Loon Lake Lodge, Gunflint Pines, Borderland and Nor’West Lodge. Check out all the other activities for Gunflint Green Days online.

~ Marcia Roepke on the Gunflint Trail

Well, would you look at that?! Spring has finally arrived on the Gunflint Trail! If you’re not familiar with this area and you were driving up the Trail today, you might say to me, “Marcia, where is the evidence? There’s no green grass, or leaves; there’s still a bunch of snow in the woods and in the ditches and a lot of lakes still have plenty of ice on them.” I would say to you: “Look at the willows! The pussy willows are bursting open with pollen. Look more closely at that ice on the lakes, it’s getting darker every day, meaning it is water-soaked and ready to absorb the sun’s heat. It will melt. Notice that grouse displaying in the middle of the road and try not to hit it. Listen to the grouse drumming on his favorite drumming log. Hear the flickers call wildly to each other and madly fly around as if possessed. See if you can find the tiny hazel blossom that is literally blooming all around you. Get up early enough and you’ll hear a morning chorus of Winter Wrens, Yellow-rumped Warblers and White-throated sparrows. Find a quiet spot, sit still and see if you can spot a Loon, a Pied-billed Grebe, an American Merganser or maybe even a Lesser Yellowlegs. Maybe you’ll see a Golden-eye or a Ring-neck duck. Or maybe a Bufflehead or even a Widgeon. Spring is here, at first in subtle ways and then it will come out all a-bursting! And summer is right behind.

Be careful, dear visitor, when you drive up the Gunflint Trail. Danger lurks around every corner in the form of some of the most impressive potholes we’ve ever seen. Slow down when you get to where water is covering the road. STOP and put your hazard lights on if a moose or two are standing in the road. I saw a young moose trotting down the Trail in the rain, straight at an oncoming car which did not slow down until the last minute. The moose turned quickly on the slippery wet pavement and quickly went down, all four legs folding as awkwardly as a discarded beach chair. The moose scrambled back up and then ran into the woods, but that would have been a bad collision if the car had not slowed when it did. It was so close.[pause] If you are unfortunate and miss these exquisite signs of Spring, never fear. You can tell that it is spring because all the restaurants will be open. And here’s some free advice for you to avoid heartache or hunger: Call in advance to check on the schedules of each lodge and restaurant before you come up the Trail.

 Trail Center opened up last week and Poplar Haus will be open weekends starting May 12, the same as Raven Rock Grill at Skyport Lodge. If you’re looking for Big Bear Lodge, you won’t find it. It has been re-christened as White Pine Lodge. I was at White Pine Lodge for their Kentucky Derby party last Saturday. It was a terrific gathering, full of good feeling, with almost everyone, male and female, sporting fancy hats and special Derby outfits. We watched the races, and talked talked talked to neighbors and friends — some we hadn’t seen for months. I hope you can make it next year. It was a stellar event.

Another event, Gunflint Green Days is coming up June second to the fourth. It’s a fun-filled, family-friendly weekend with nature, garage sales, prizes, food, games, educational interactive booths, and a chance to GET OUTDOORS AND GET INVOLVED. There will be a celebration at Schaap Community Center at Firehall #2 on Saturday June 3 from 12 to 3 pm, following the litter pick-up which runs from 10 to 12 noon. There will be garage sales both along the Trail and at the Schaap Center. Mark your calendars and be sure to travel up the Gunflint Trail for the beauty of green-up after a long winter! 

We look forward to seeing you!

This is Marcia Roepke on the Gunflint Trail

First Spring came and went, that is, First Spring cam and went and then Second Spring visited briefly. I wonder how many springs we will have this year. The snow is still deep in the woods on the upper Gunflint Trail, and it is icy and grainy and not fun at all to walk on, even in snowshoes. At this point, winter can feel like an unwanted guest.

But spring IS coming! I went out looking for signs of Spring and I spotted tiny Hazel blossoms just starting to peep out. I think they might be our earliest and maybe tiniest spring flower. Even in full bloom, the crimson Hazel flowers measure only about one-eighth of an inch long, looking like strands of saffron. I found Aspens in protected sunny spots with huge yellow spring catkins. Some of the jack pines are showing candles of new growth. Soon we’ll see more green. Today the conifers are lightly dusted with snow.

Southern slopes are melting fast when the sun is out. Today it is 38, and so so many more shades of gray than fifty. It was 51 and sunny yesterday, hallelujah, not 16 and snowing and sleeting like last week, and not 85 like two weeks ago. That weird hot weather precipitated a fast melting and the early arrival of some bird species that were caught in the snow and sleet that followed. The wings of some migrating loons iced up and it was reported in the Wisconsin news that they were falling to earth. The phenomenon is called “Loon Fallout.” Tiny freezing particles in the upper atmosphere cover the loon’s body, making it ice-up just like on an airplane, forcing them to crash land. Loons need 1/4 mile of water to achieve liftoff. Wildlife rescue services were very busy for a few days, one organization logged 27 calls in one day.

Other species that migrated here in First Spring fared better. The early-arriving Juncoes managed to kick up enough food in the duff to sustain themselves, so we’re still seeing them around, doing that two-footed shuffle to dislodge goodies under the dead leaves. They are as entertaining to watch as a cartoon. The White-throated sparrow does the same dance, though there’s been no sighting of them here yet. I think that White-throated Sparrows announce Real Spring when they sing their distinctive song. Most often, I hear them well before I see them, their song re-wakening something in me that slumbers all winter.

I’ve seen some Yellow-shafted Northern Flickers digging in newly-thawed ground. One kept burying his head deep in the ground like an ostrich, then popped up to look around. Maybe he had found a trove of ant larva. He stayed there a long time, mining for food. But a lone Pied-billed Grebe was unluckier, and found no quarter.

The Grebe was delivered to me by concerned neighbors who spotted it wandering on the blacktop on the Trail. There was no open water of any size nearby, save for what was flowing through a culvert. After much debate, and after quickly reading about the species, we finally set free the clearly ailing Grebe. The poor little water bird died that night. I was very surprised to find the body the next morning nestled in dry grass in a protected location, a dead leaf lodged in his beak.

I prepared its body for the freezer and called the DNR to see what needed to happen. Since this bird was in good shape, I thought they might want it for display. Pied-billed Grebes, like the more familiar Loon, are a protected non-game species. They can’t be taken legally. If I had driven the live bird to Lake Superior, it might have had a chance of surviving, but some migrating birds die of starvation if they arrive before their food source is available. The little Grebe’s food was locked under ice.

I now know more about this interesting waterfowl species. At first we thought it was a baby.. But that didn’t make sense; no babies were being hatched here yet with everything still frozen as it was. Also, it was alone, so we thought that was weird. Shouldn’t it be in a flock, a drift or a gaggle? A group of Grebes is actually called a Water Dance, but the Pied-billed Grebe is mostly solitary and secretive except in breeding season.

The Grebe is just so darn cute! The adults all look like babies, since the head is big in comparison to the body. The back feathers that cover up their folded wings look like gray down, so that adds to its babyish looks. One clue that it was an adult was the dark band around the bill which appears during breeding season. It’s really a unique little bird. The beak looks more like a chicken’s and the feet are lobed, not webbed. The legs are set far back on the body like a Loon’s and it is awkward on land. Like the Loon, it’s a great swimmer and diver, but it needs a long runway on water to get into the air. It also has the ability to slowly submerge itself underwater like a submarine by compressing its feathers, which releases trapped air. That ability enables them to stay underwater longer than other species.

Dabchick and Water Witch are two of the Grebe’s nicknames. The Ojibwe word for grebe is zhingibis (szhing – i – BISS). They call it Helldiver and there’s an Ojibwe story about how the Grebe fooled the Spirit of Winter by building a big fire and making Spring come.

May it be so!

~  Marcia Roepke

Please note:  It’s illegal and generally a bad idea for the general public to handle or try to take care of wild animals on their own. Take precautions when handling wild birds who might have HPAI (highly pathogenic Avian Influenza). Use gloves and wash hands thoroughly after handling. Wild birds can be sick and not show symptoms. HPAI can cause illness and death in domestic birds if they are exposed.

If Loons or Grebes are found on land, they really do need help. Wildwoods Wildlife Rehabilitation in Duluth is the best resource to call. Call them at 218-491-3604 or go to their website at   wildwoodsrehab.org

–

It is April and it’s 75 degrees on the Gunflint Trail. You can literally watch the snow melt. We must be careful, though, not to be fooled into thinking that this is Real Spring. In honor of hobbits everywhere, I’m calling it First Spring.

(more…)

All during March the weather has swung up and down and back and forth here on the Gunflint Trail. We’ve had it all — sunny short-sleeve weather, piles of snow, strong winds, even light rain one day. Right now the sky is blue and the sun is shining. It’s about 20 degrees but the cold wind coming from the northwest makes it feel a lot colder. On a walk this morning, my forehead started to feel as though I was getting a brain freeze, like when you eat ice cream too fast. Spring is coming. Repeat after me: Spring is coming!

During the warmer temperatures, some creatures started acting like it was Real Spring, as opposed to Fake Spring or Fools’ Spring. Lars and I saw some bird species we hadn’t seen in a while flocking in the trees and singing their hearts out in the balmy weather. We saw (and heard) flocks of cedar waxwings and pine siskins and quite possibly some goldfinches. I am partial to the birds that stick around all winter; they provide so much entertainment and beauty.

But the glory of the skies for me is always our own feathered pterodactyl: the pileated woodpecker. First, let’s deal with the name: Is it Pie-lee-ay-ted or Pill-ee-ay-ted? Technically the first one is correct, but both are acceptable in the birding world. Both are acceptable to me, too.

One recent sunny day, two pileated woodpeckers flew overhead, one in hot pursuit of the other. They sped across an open area and dove into the treetops. That same day I heard their distinctive calls from all directions. On another day — a very cloudy, windless and silent day  — a Pileated Woodpecker was hammering on a big dead tree. In the silence, it was the only thing making noise besides the loud crunching of my micro-spikes on the icy surface of the road. I stopped when I heard the drumming and waited until the drumming began again. I listened and tried to guess where the woodpecker was. I repeated that pattern of stopping and listening until I was fairly certain where I could find the tree. I need to go back later with snowshoes. There’s still 2 to 3 feet of snow in the woods, but it’s shrinking.

The drumming of the pileated is regular and is used as a means of communication. Different birds hammer at different rates. When they are excavating a dead tree for a nest, the beat is slower, more measured. They rarely use the same hole twice in which to nest, and their old cavities are reused by many other animals and birds. They peck for several reasons: slow excavating blows to hollow out a nest; faster drumming to attract a mate and to defend territory.

I spotted a Northern Shrike on the very tippy-top of a spruce tree: black mask, hooked bill, long tail tipping up and down to stay upright in the wind. I’ve seem more of these this year than ever before. I was reading about shrikes and sometimes they are more prolific here when the mouse population is low in Canada and the Arctic. They are interesting creatures, the shrikes. They are predatory songbirds, eating small mammals, insects and songbirds. They don’t eat berries or seeds. They kill in the air — on the wing — and impale their victims on thorns or barbed wire or stuff them in the crook of a tree. They kill more than they can eat at one time; they save food for lean times and come back later to feed. The Northern Shrike has coloring very similar to the Gray Jay. They both are gray, black and white; both have a black mask, but the Jay has a partial black cap. The Northern Shrike’s mask doesn’t extend above its eyes. The deadly hook on the shrike’s beak, a bigger head and the distinctive white patch on the wings help with identification.

Predators are showing up all over the upper part of the Trail. There have been many sightings of wolves regularly visiting cabins on Loon, Seagull, Poplar, Tucker and others. After multiple sightings of foxes and wolves close to our cabin, we stopped feeding the birds. We see fewer songbirds since then and I was surprised to see the shrike come around. I guess we’re one of his regular stops.

Another sign of spring on the Trail is the usual list of restaurants closing temporarily. Starting on April 1: Poplar Haus, Trail Center and Hungry Jack Lodge. Raven Rock Grill at Skyport Lodge is closed until May. Big Bear Lodge will still serve pizza and beverages, but it is closed on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Gunflint Lodge’s Restaurant remains open.

~ Marcia Roepke

Yesterday was a beautiful late winter day on the Gunflint Trail — 33 degrees outside and the sun was shining; a faint breeze from the southeast pushed puffy clouds across a blue sky. Or was it an early spring day? When the sun is shining down on this winter landscape I call it spring. But today it is cloudy and gray with snowflakes falling gently — definitely winter. The angle of the sun climbs higher every day though, and as the temperature warms and the sun comes out, the cool winter palette gives way to the warmer tones of spring. The straight white trunks of the birch trees are rimmed with pale gold light. The color of the morning shadows are less Cobalt Blue and the low angle of the afternoon sunshine stripes the snow with a pale wash of Naples Yellow.

The colors of the night, on the other hand, are deepest midnight blue with bright silver pinpoints of light and shades of green, yellow and red when the aurora borealis arcs, flows and shimmers across the sky and shoots up into pillars toward heaven. We had one of the best displays I’ve ever seen — in the top four, I’d say — the last week of February. As my sky-watching Trail friend, Polymath Dave says, it was definitely a pants-on event!

According to the Ojibwe calendar (Giizisoo-Mazina’igan), March is Snowcrust Moon. The Ojibwe calendar is referred to as The Thirteen Moons and Turtle’s Back, from the time in the creation story after the great flood, when the trickster spirit Nanaboosho put a piece of the earth on Turtle’s back and created the world. There are thirteen 28-day cycles in the calendar, hence thirteen moons.

Though it is the Snowcrust Moon now, when the temperatures warm the snow is not very crusty. It’s more like April, which is either Broken Snowshoe Moon or Sugar Moon, depending on where you live. The consistency of the snow is like mashed potatoes. It is impossible to travel by foot and not pleasant at all to travel by snowshoe. But Lars and I had to do just that for far longer than we wanted last week.

Our dog, Ursa, had taken off through the deep snow into the woods, following some fresh moose tracks down a steep hillside. The snowpack was still about four feet deep then and Lars had taken Ursa for a walk before she bolted. He came back to the cabin to get me and we put on our snowshoes to follow Ursa’s track. I was thinking that she wouldn’t get far in the deep snow. She’s been stuck in it a few times this winter and once she had to be rescued in the middle of the night. (By Lars, not me. I slept soundly through the whole ordeal).

We started our search, following the moose and dog tracks down the hill, struggling through deep, thick snow that clung to snowshoes and thickets of hazel bushes that tangled up ski poles. It was some of the rottenest conditions I’ve ever been in and I was going at a snail’s pace way behind Lars (though faster, he was struggling too, I could tell by the blue air). We were in luck with the temperature and it was early in the day and no rain or snow was falling, but at the moment I didn’t feel very lucky at all. I lasted a couple hours but turned back when Lars yelled, “I don’t even know if I’m following the right trail!” I headed back to the cabin for our walkie talkies so we could split up and stay in contact.

The moose had been making lots of trails all over the place; the deep tracks crisscrossed over one another, as did Ursa’s. It was plain to see the difference between old tracks and new. The heat from the sun had been sculpting the snow on the older trails: rounding edges and smoothing surfaces. All in all, Lars spent about 5 hours combing the thick woods, until finally he strapped on his back-country skis and went along the lakeshore calling for Ursa. By this time Lars and I were communicating by walkie-talkie. I had driven the car up and down the road, looking for Ursa and I had also alerted neighbors to keep an eye out for her. About half a mile down the lake, Lars rested, thinking he ought to turn toward home. So he did, and lying down behind him in his ski tracks was Ursa. She had been in the woods and came down to the lake to find him. She was so exhausted that she had to rest many times on the walk home, encouraged by Lars coaxing her on. It took her a few days to recover. But all is well now.

I had been more concerned with Ursa catching up to a moose and getting kicked to death than with her getting stuck in the snow. I learned the deep wet snow of Broken Snowshoe Moon can be as dangerous as any moose, wolf or bear.

This is Marcia Roepke on the Gunflint Trail

To learn more about the Ojibwe calendar, go to

https://ojibwe.net/projects/months-moons/

 There’s a PDF worksheet you can download to learn about counting the moons on the turtles back.

To listen to the names of the moons in Ojibwe, go here:

https://www.nps.gov/apis/learn/historyculture/ojibwemowin-moons.htm

It’s important to hear Ojibwe as well as read it. Because of the genocide and marginalization of Native American speakers and the subsequent Indian boarding schools which banned the speaking of Ojibwe, it was an endangered language. Many dedicated people are working hard to keep it alive. If you’d like to learn Ojibwe, go to Cook County Higher Education and sign up for a class:

https://mycche.org/

We’ve had an unwelcome guest for a few weeks here at our place on the Gunflint Trail. COVID finally caught us, and we settled in to care for each other the best we could. I am so grateful we received such good medical care at Sawtooth Mountain Clinic, which made for a very different story than one that might have been told two or three years ago. Lars and I isolated. I didn’t see a human besides him for a while. Of course, it’s very easy to isolate here, and our faraway family and friends buoyed us with prayers and good humor and our close-by neighbor and good friend KC the Sunshine Gal delivered groceries and beer.

It’s amazing what you can see when you’re stuck inside for a while in a place where vast nature is just outside the door. We had a wolf visit on what I will forever call “Superwolf Sunday.” It was a large, beautiful, long-legged wolf that walked unhurriedly down our drive. Inside the cabin, our dog Ursa went ballistic. The wolf stopped about 10 feet from our door, and gazed steadily through the glass panes as Ursa exploded in sound and fury, barking and jumping like she was trying to climb through the door. She made noises I’ve never heard before, a kind of groaning and a high-pitched singing sound. Neither our movement inside the cabin nor the dog’s racket had any effect on the wolf. It just stood there, staring at us through the glass. It reacted when Lars opened the door. It turned, still not alarmed, and trotted up the hill, away from us, glancing back over its shoulder a few times. I held on to Ursa’s collar, calming and steadying her while Lars went out to do some scaring away. Although I think “scaring” isn’t the right word. It’s more like urging to move elsewhere: “move along now, nothing to see here, keep moving,” like a beat cop.

A lot of our neighbors have reported multiple wolf sightings recently. I’ve seen them before, of course, but never this close, although we have seen wolf tracks meandering through our homestead and both tracks and wolf scat nearby. It’s just part of life here. My main concern is for the safety of my dog.

And winter goes on. It’s a gorgeous and very cold day today; but that is the pattern, isn’t it? Warmer temps mean cloudiness and the cold brings us the sun and blue sky. On sunny mornings, I watch the sun rise behind a wooded palisade to the northeast. The long deep blue shadow stretches across the length of the lake at first light, then shrinks surprisingly quickly as the sun rises.

The colder temps make the snowpack firmer, which must make it easier for wolves and other animals to travel through the woods. When the snow is soft, plowed roads and groomed trails make for better travel. I know it’s great snowmobile weather right now. The trail conditions are really good. There was a thaw and rain, which hardened the surface but we’ve had at least three snowfalls on top of that. I know when it’s good snowmobiling weather when the woods resound with the noise of a lot of angry hornets. As soon as I can, I’ll be strapping on my snowshoes and taking off in the other direction, away from the noise deeper into the woods, practicing the lessons I learned from my winter camping years. Learning to live in the cold clarifies my purpose: to survive and thrive. Winter sometimes calls for counter-intuitive responses. I love how Blair Braverman wrote about this in her book: “Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North.” She lived in Norway and Alaska, learning how to drive sled dogs and work as a tour guide. She wrote:

“I was often acutely frightened—of a sharp turn in the trail, of a tricky river crossing, during storms—and I lived, too, with a deeper fear: that the winter was only starting, that I had so many minutes and hours and days of cold and risk and potential injury. But it was refreshing to be afraid of something concrete. I was no longer scared of some unknown force, of confusion; no, I was afraid of hypothermia. I was afraid of being stranded in the wilderness. I was afraid of crashing the sled… but suddenly that fear didn’t make me crazy: it made me brave.

“Of course, there was the matter of keeping warm. But after months of winter, even cold was easily solved. To live in cold, I had only to internalize its counterintuitive rules: When my body wanted to clench, I had to force it open. Swing my arms when I wanted to pull them in. Jump when I wanted to sit. Pee when I would rather stay clothed. Change into dry long underwear even when the air bit my bare limbs. Cold was the mind’s distraction and the body’s one demand.

Of course I was scared. But at least I was scared of dangers of my own choosing. At least there was joy that came with it.”

~ Marcia Roepke,on the Gunflint Trail

The cold weather moved in at the end of January and with it came crystal blue skies by day and some of the most beautiful nights of this winter. On a few windless days, the chickadees sang their two-note spring song into the bright crystalline air. For that moment, the tiny birds were the loudest thing in my neighborhood.

This year’s running of the John Beargrease Sled Dog Race Marathon was held last weekend, gliding up and down the North Shore and the Gunflint Trail. The race started in Duluth and ended in Grand Portage. Keith Aili and his team of mostly inexperienced huskies was declared the winner, with Ryan Anderson and his dogs coming in second. Musher Sarah Keefer and her team came in third. We had the pleasure of watching the number one and number two teams glide by one night.

It was the second day of the race. Lars and I and a couple of lovely neighbors walked down a path to the Gunflint Snowmobile Trail, which serves as a trail for sled dog races as well. (Our dog Ursa stayed at home; it’s a bad idea to bring your pets to a sled dog race, since they can serve as distractions and/or be viewed as prey by the sled dogs). It was cold — about 10 below and sinking toward the night’s low of 25 below — but a waxing half moon glowed silver in the darkening sky and three planets shone around it like diamonds. Later we saw Orion’s belt and the Big Dipper. But first, while we waited for the dog teams to glide by, we jogged, danced, and shadow boxed to stay warm. Standing still is of course the best guarantee of feeling the cold when it’s frigid weather. It’s best to stay moving to minimize discomfort (and isn’t that a pleasing definition of winter — a time when we maximize comfort and minimize discomfort?)

On the night of the race, with deep snow blanketing the earth, and the moon shining in the big dark dome of the sky above us, it was one of those quintessentially bright winter nights. I still recall the first winter night I saw the moon cast shadows on the snowy ground. I was young. I was entranced. Flashlights are not necessary on those nights.

The darkest nights are winter nights that are moonless with snow falling. Darkness takes on a different quality then — you can feel it, like thick wool felt that muffles sight and sound. I recall one dark winter night last year when I let my dog Ursa take me for a walk. I held onto her collar and she led me out into the dark, away from our domestic lights — she was my eyes and ears. It was a thrilling and quite possibly a stupid thing to do. I loved it.

While we humans dress for warmth, and must move to stay warm in this cold weather, under the snow there are animals living their secret lives at a much warmer temperature. I’m talking about the mysterious realm of the subnivean, where voles and other small non-hibernating mammals spend the winter. The busy little creatures make chambers and tunnels that link them to nearby food sources, like seeds. On years like this one, a thick blanket of snow insulates the ground, keeping it around 32 degrees above zero. Voles line their tiny dens with grass, where they share their warmth with neighbors. And hide from the weasels.

It’s fun to contemplate that hidden life of the creatures below as we walk over their heads, our boots squeaking on the cold dry snow. Yesterday, I nearly stepped on a vole as it raced across the path ahead of me to grab bird seed then quickly duck down a tiny hole beside my boot.

On these brilliant winter days, the moon is a quiet presence as it silently crosses the cloudless blue sky. The blue of the sky reflected in the craters of the moon make it appear translucent, like it is made out of tissue paper. The moon has many faces and in this beautiful boreal forest, we have the great good fortune to see them, thanks to our dark sky and clean air.

By “we,” I don’t mean just everyone who lives here but all of you who have been here and remember your experiences in the north woods and all of you who dream of one day visiting this special place. You may be dreaming about your next trip, or that big fish, or a favorite spot in grandpa’s cabin, or your first Boundary Waters trip. Or your last. We hold these things in our hearts and minds: the clean plentiful water; the animals and birds; the boreal woods; the dark sky; the big silence. As we waited for the dogs that cold moonlit night of the race; as we waited in the dark that’s not dark, and stared at the stars, I was filled with a feeling of wonder and deep gratitude for this beautiful place, for the silence, for the dark, for good company and stalwart dogs and mushers. And the moon.

~ Marcia Roepke on the Gunflint Trail

Winter is more than a season. Winter is a mind-set and winter is a challenge and a joy. Like us, our neighbors spend a lot of time on snow removal, and we help each other out when we get stuck in a snowbank or a ditch. It’s a fairly common occurrence, and it’s very good to know your friends are there to help. A lot of shoveling, plowing and snowplowing takes place in the dark due to the short daylight hours of a northern winter.

 January brings us more light every day. The longer hours of daylight and the mild weather make a terrific combination for enjoying outdoor sports. The trails are in good condition for snowmobiling and skiing. Slush on lakes has been a widespread problem this year, and many dog teams had to scratch from the Gunflint Trail Mail Run Dogsled Race that was held a few weeks ago. But yesterday I went snowshoeing and skiing with a fun group on a small lake and we didn’t run into any slush at all.

In addition to snowshoeing, ice fishing, skiing and snowmobiling, January is also very good weather for book reading. I have acquired a solid stack of books to spend time with this winter. I read lot of nature books, and I have two books that are at the top of the pile:

 Arboretum Borealis by Diana Beresford-Kroeger

An Immense World by Ed Yong

Both books have loads of good solid, factual information and both have a couple of qualities that I share with the authors that makes us kin, in a way. They — and I — are passionate about our beautiful earth and full of wonder for nature. Here’s a bit of beautiful writing from the Introduction to Arboretum Borealis:

 “…the land of the Boreal itself spoke to me. The feeling was that of time married to music. I heard the notes of life.”

The author, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, describes plant species from the entire circumpolar Boreal forest, saying, “Nothing on earth compares to the evergreens of the Boreal forests in managing the most efficient photosynthesis in the cold and on the leanest diet of light, or as acting as a passive ground coolant.”

The book is divided into two sections: Trees and medicinal plants. A description of each tree is given, as well as its place in the “Global Garden.” But this book goes beyond a narrow recitation of facts. For example, in the section about the Tamarack, we find a paragraph about the molecular physics of the purity of water. The Eco-function of each trees species is explained and a Bio-plan offered, which details ways in which the particular tree can be used for industrial uses and for the health of the planet. A design section rounds out each species, where suggestions are given for using the tree or a cultivar in landscape gardening. It is a most unusual book. My only complaint is that it was bound so poorly. My paperback copy is coming apart at the spine.

The second book covers a topic that has fired my brain for a few years: How do animals experience the world? It begins by asking us to imagine a great room that houses a group of animals. There is an elephant, a mouse, a robin, an owl, a bat, a rattlesnake, a spider, a mosquito, a bumblebee and a human. The author then describes each animal’s unique sensory experience, offering comparisons and differences between the species. As the author says:

 “Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness. Each is enclosed within its own sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.” He offers a wonderful German word for this sensory bubble: Umwelt. Each species has its own Umwelt, or perceptual world.

Eleven chapters in this book focus on how various creatures experience the world with their unique senses, followed by a chapter on uniting the senses and another on threatened Sensecapes, titled “Save the Quiet, Preserve the Dark,’ where he outlines how noise and light pollution threaten the survival of many species.

The quiet and the dark: two treasures we must never take for granted, up here in our beautiful boreal forest, on the Gunflint Trail.

 The author offers a German word to describe

Immense World: ”The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every animal is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.”

~  Marcia Roepke

Over the past few days, the forest steadily became rimed with frost. Every branch, twig, needle and blade was coated in an intricate layer of ice crystals. Previously invisible spider webs were made visible by the delicate ice that coated and thickened each silken strand. Early this morning I watched a frosty cloud front slowly moving toward us from the north, transforming the landscape and leaving the world glittering even more in its wake.

It’s been wonderful weather for sledding, hanging out by a fire, snowmobiling, skiing, snowshoeing and ice fishing! The lodges that have recently reopened have experienced a big surge in snowmobilers. Last week was the ice fishing opener for lake trout in the Boundary Waters. Science Sue reported that on one lake there were hardly any anglers! Her crew caught some beautiful lake trout that day.

It’s also great weather for meandering winter dog walks down plowed back roads. I had a memorable walk last week with my dog, but it wasn’t memorable because of exciting events; it was memorable due to the lack of excitement and because of the powerful silence and stillness and beauty of the day. I saw very few moose prints in the snow and I was in a place where the path is usually crisscrossed by moose trails. The snow was deep and the wind had been ferocious the week before; I think the moose were hunkering down in protected places until the snow firmed up. I did’t see any wolf prints or scat at all, and that was surprising to me, since there has usually been lot of evidence of wolf activity there in the past.

Though there was little evidence of moose in the woods, a recent drive down to the end of the Trail yielded sightings of five big healthy-looking moose. I think we saw one cow and calf twice, though, but even a three-moose day is quite satisfactory. One pair ran through a big clearing after our car approached slowly. They were stepping high in that slow-motion way they have and covering a lot of ground fast. Lars said that moose are the darkest thing in the landscape. I said except for a bear. Yes, we agreed, a bear is the darkest thing you’ll see in the woods.

On another day, Lars and I saw a beautiful big fisher bound across the Trail. It was a classic profile of that beautiful brown-furred animal sailing over the snowbank with ease, ears perked, long tail flying behind. They run very differently than otters and this one was much bigger than a marten. I’m always happiest when I can get a confident ID. And I saw a grouse for the first time in weeks! With the deep snow, animals take to the roads where the traveling is easier, and birds land to peck at the gravel necessary for their digestion. There have been many flocks of Common Redpolls on the road. They are very slow to startle and fly when cars approach. I lost count of all the dead little bird bodies I saw one day on the Trail. I know that in nature no flesh is wasted, and the birds soon became another animal’s lunch, but still, let’s try to give the animals a fighting chance to survive winter. Slow down, please.

And we will all really need to slow down driving by Trail Center this week because the Gunflint Mail Run Sled Dog Race is this Saturday,  Jan 7. The parking lot there will be filled with sled dogs, sleds, teams, trucks. And the teams cross the Gunflint Trail in several places that day and into the evening. There will be volunteers at the crossings watching for car traffic, so take care.

If you’ve never been to a sled dog race, you are missing out. They are exciting and noisy and social and then after all the dog teams have left, everything quiets down for a while. One word of advice: leave your pet dogs at home and watch children closely so they don’t distract the racers. For more information about how to watch the race and where to eat, check out the website at:

https://gunflintmailrun.com

The first 12-dog team takes off at 8 am; the first 8-dog team leaves at 9 am. Teams will arrive back at Trail Center in the early afternoon for a mandatory layover and then they’ll head out again 3 or 4 hours later, depending on the size of the team.

May there be happy and safe racing to all the teams!

It was 4 below on our morning walk today, but the sun was shining and the snow was sparkling. It’s a wonderful day to be on the Gunflint Trail. Last night was the first clear sky we’ve seen in a while. The full moon illuminated the night — the shadows of the trees striped the snow. My dog Ursa and I went for a walk in the woods around and through a pretty stand of aspens. The night was so bright and the snow sparkled in the moonlight as we walked along — well, I walked; Ursa ran circles around me and dove headfirst into the snow hunting small animals. The forecast calls for warmer weather this weekend, with some sun peeking through on Friday and possible snow on Saturday.

It’s quiet on the Trail right now. Trail Center, Poplar Haus and Hungry Jack Lodge are still closed, but will reopen later this month. Big Bear Lodge is serving pizza of all kinds most weekdays until 6 and stays open later on weekends. Skyport Lodge and Raven Rock Grill were due to reopen last weekend. And as usual, Gunflint Lodge and Justine’s restaurant are open all year except for Christmas Day.

Snowmobile season has not started yet but will soon. Conditions on the lakes are iffy right now — there’s not much thick ice yet. As of today, Gunflint Lake still is open water except for a small amount of ice on the shore. Magnetic Lake has been iced over for a while; the same with Poplar and Tucker. As for some larger lakes: Loon still has big open areas of water, as does the East side of Seagull.

Dogsled season starts in January with the Gunflint Mail Run Sled dog Race, based at Trail Center Lodge. This year’s race will feature two classes, a 65-mile 8-dog race, and a 100-mile 12-dog race. The John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon will start January 29 in Duluth and ends at the Grand Portage Lodge and Casino. Conditions look good for excellent snow base this year. Dog Days of Winter at Trail Center will be held March 13. This is an especially fun event with lots of younger mushers. If you’ve never seen a sled dog race, you are really in for a treat. They are so happy-making! The dogs love their work and the excitement is infectious.

This winter feels especially lovely for some reason, quite possibly due to the easing of Covid restrictions. What an absolute joy it is to be with family and friends again! And in the spirit of the season, I offer you this old song with new lyrics. I call it “The first days of winter.” I’ll just sing the first verse and the last one. You can do the rest.

The first days of winter

On the first day of winter
the forest gave to me
A ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the second day of winter the forest gave to me
Fog over water and a
ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the third day of winter the forest gave to me
Wind through the pine trees
Fog over water and a
and a ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the fourth day of winter the forest gave to me
Ice-covered branches
Wind through the pine trees
Fog over water and a
ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the fifth day of winter the forest gave to me
Five chickadees
Ice-covered trees
Wind through the pines
Fog over lake and a
ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the sixth day of winter the forest gave to me
Rose-breasted grosbeaks
Five chickadees
Ice-covered trees
Wind through the pines
Fog over lake
and a ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the seventh day of winter the forest gave to me
Fox in the woodshed
Rose-breasted grosbeaks
Five chickadees
Ice-covered trees
Wind through the pines
Fog over lake
and a ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the eighth day of winter the forest gave to me
Two feet of snow
Fox in the woodshed
Rose-breasted grosbeaks
Five chickadees
Ice-covered trees
Wind through the pines
Fog over lake
and a ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the ninth day of winter the forest gave to me
Stars and moon a-shining
Two feet of snow
Fox in the woodshed
Rose-breasted grosbeaks
Five chickadees
Ice-covered trees
Wind through the pines
Fog over lake
and a ruffed grouse in a birch tree

On the tenth day of winter the forest gave to me
Ice on the water
Stars and moon a-shining
Two feet of snow
Fox in the woodshed
Rose-breasted grosbeaks
Five chickadees
Ice-covered trees
Wind through the pines
Fog over lake
and a ruffed grouse in a birch tree

This is Marcia Roepke, singing on the Gunflint Trail

Winter is here and it came in not like a lamb but like a lion, first with an ice storm and then with about twenty inches of snow. It snowed for days. The trees, already heavy with ice, swayed in the wind, the branches hitting each other — clacking and tinkling as ice cracked. How cozy and sweet it was in our cabin warmed by the fire glowing in the wood stove’s glass window. We were heartened, too, by the knowledge that our woodshed was filled with split and dried birch logs. We had to drive to town on one of those very snowy days. It’s about an eighty-mile round trip for us. This time the drive felt longer because we had to go so slowly due to the icy conditions and the snow falling and drifting. As we headed south, the highway plow passed us heading north, spreading sand. I was glad to see that and glad my drive home would be easier. The only wildlife I saw that day was a Snowshoe hare pin-balling back and forth across the Trail, frantically trying to jump over the snowbanks on the side of the road. Finally the hare gave a mighty leap and I saw it in perfect profile sailing over a pile of snow. The hare had begun its winter transformation to an all-white pelt, but it still had darker hair on its upper parts.

 Some animals, like the hare, use protective coloring and some plants create layers of protection against the cold. I had noticed a while ago on one of my forest walks that the mountain ash buds were covered with a sticky resin. I have recently learned why. The resin is formed to protect the buds from winter’s cold and wind. That makes sense, but what I learned next was one of those astonishing nature facts: honeybees use the resin and mix it with their saliva to make propolis, which they use to repair their hive, but also to mummify wasps and mice that sneak into their hive. They sting the unwelcome critters to death and then embalm them in propolis. So wonderfully creepy! Ancient Egyptians used honey to embalm the bodies of their dead royalty. The sarcophagi were sometimes sealed with beeswax and jars of honey were left in the tomb, given as offerings. When King Tut’s tomb was opened, they found a 2,000 year old jar of honey.

 Like the animals and plants, we need protection against winters killing cold, too. We don layers of clothing to keep ourselves from freezing. Every year I have to experiment with the rapidly changing weather and re-learn how to dress, first for 50 degrees, then 40, then 30 and on down. I get it dialed in by the end of winter, and I apply my winter camping lessons:

 Dress like an onion. That means wear layers you can add or take off as needed.

 Cotton is rotten. Damp cotton next to the skin will keep you cool, so it’s great for summer, but rotten in winter. The biggest challenge when you’re active outside in winter is staying dry.

 Your head is a chimney. Wearing a hat will keep you warm. You lose a lot of heat through the skull.

 If I plan to be out in the woods for a while, I use my pockets or a pack to carry the clothes I shed and extra mittens, gloves and a hat in case something gets wet. I find that wool liners for boots make the best shoes going to and from a hot sauna. They cling to the snow just a bit — no slipping. One year at the first snow I thought it would be so much fun to go outside at night in my new all-leather moccasins. I went up the hill no problem, my toes digging and getting good traction in the new snow. I was just tickled at my silent footsteps and so proud of my cleverness. When I turned to go down the hill toward home— boom! I landed on my keister. The smooth leather soles gave me no purchase. It only took me two more falls to realize that the only way I was getting home safely was on my hands and knees. I crawled down that hill all the way to the cabin with my ego bruised more than my backside. It certainly gave me a new perspective.

 A red fox sought shelter from the winter storm under our big woodshed last week. It had a pretty cozy spot under there and was unfazed by human or canine presence. I’m not sure if it was the same fox with an injured leg that showed up on our doorstep last week. Inside the house my dog went bonkers, of course, and the startled fox tried to run straight up our cliff, floundering in the deep snow, then backsliding, then struggling some more. It took it a long time to get over the ridge. Lars had filled and hung our bird feeders a few days before, and I’m sure the fox was attracted by the food on the ground, and maybe the congregation of birds below as well.

 The bird feeders herald a new part of the year and it makes me so happy to watch the birds that come to feed. To our delight, we’ve seen pine grosbeaks along with the usual roster of chickadees, blue and gray jays, red-breasted nuthatches, and woodpeckers. A small band of goldfinches stopped by one day and we had a chilling appearance of a northern shrike once more. Man, do the birds disappear fast when the shrike shows up!

I am so thankful for the animals and the birds who liven up winter, and for the breathtaking beauty of the boreal forest wreathed in winter snows.

~  Marcia Roepke

Up on the Gunflint Trail, we’ve had every kind of weather lately. Just a week ago it was shirt-sleeve temperatures and sunny skies. How strangely warm it was that November day as a friend and I went on a walk down a dirt road, meeting up with a couple of very friendly gray jays. I managed to fool the birds into landing on my hand by placing a tamarack cone on my palm, which they grabbed and then promptly rejected. Next time, I vowed to myself, I’ll put some birdseed in my pockets to give them some positive reinforcement for their friendly manner. Later that afternoon the warm weather started to turn cold. Big gusty winds blew high up in the sky as the temperatures fell. All around me I heard sparse raindrops hitting dry leaves, sounding like the footfalls of a slow and careful animal. I sat outside bundled up in a big wool blanket, watching the weather change. I heard a strange cry from an unfamiliar bird. The lake was like a mirror as the sun set. That night the first hard frost came. The snowfalls we’ve had since have all melted; the rain keeps up a nearly daily steady drizzle. This morning I could see what looked like fog or mist in the air, but I couldn’t see any precipitation. I turned my face to the sky and then I felt the tiny drops of moisture against my warm face.

Every day I see something new in this beautiful boreal woods. There’s always something that speaks to my heart. I wonder why nature speaks to our hearts? So many of us who love this place feel a very personal connection to the woods and water here in the North. Even if we don’t understand the why of it, isn’t a wonderful part of existence to be able to have this spontaneous inner response to our beloved northland? Near my cabin, there is a birch tree with a single yellow leaf. That little yellow leaf has hung on long after all the other leaves have fallen. I look at the little leaf and I think of the courage it takes to hang on. Then I think of stubbornness and my mind starts pondering the difference between the two — stubbornness and courage — all from gazing at a little yellow leaf.

I was sick and tired of a few things last week, so I tried my best to get lost in the woods. Of course, it was impossible to get lost where I was walking — there is a lake to the North and roads east, west and south. But I did manage to find a lovely grassy spot in the sun where I couldn’t hear construction noises. On the way to that spot, I’d been bushwhacking, but when I turned to go home, I discovered an animal path that made my journey back much easier. How wonderfully tiring it is to bash through thick woods. One must be very careful. As I hiked back, I was thinking what great company a dog is in the woods and how little help a dog would be if I were to slip and fall or turn an ankle.

This has been quite a year for grouse and nearly every day my dog flushes grouse by the cabin, in a meadow, down a road or in the woods. A couple days ago, a grouse landed in my favorite wild apple tree, then flapped to a higher perch in a birch tree, where it blended in perfectly to the coloration of the tree trunk. If I hadn’t watched it fly there, I would never have spotted it, even if I had walked right underneath.

Each week I wonder if the Loons have left yet, and then I’ve heard a solitary cry that reminds me they are still here, although they might be gone by now. They never give us a final goodbye like we get from our Trail friends who head south for the winter.

I was wondering about Loon communication, specifically: do they every misunderstand one another like humans do? For example, here’s a verbatim conversation between Lars and I as we prepared dinner one night:

“No, sweetheart, I said Venetians. Venetians — from Venice not Venusians from Venus.”

I imagined a misheard bird conversations. It might go something like this:

First loon: “Wooooo hooo! I’m in the bay!”

Second loon: “Hoot! You mean the bay down by the rock that always has a lot of fish?”

“No, the bay where the osprey nest used to be.”

“What osprey?”

“Hoot. You know, that osprey bird — looks kinda like a big seagull but somehow more elegant. I mean, nobody ever calls an osprey a garbage bird. I’m not saying seagulls are garbage birds but some people call them that.”

“Whooo? What?”

And I say, so long to our lovely loons! Have a great winter and we’ll see you in the spring.

~ Marcia Roepke

It’s a cold breezy day, but I revel in this cool fall weather with the sun playing peek-a-boo. It’s been perfect for exploring the forest around us. Lately, I’ve been walking my dog in areas of the woods I’ve never been before and it has been absolutely magical seeing huge downed trees covered in moss. The footing can be really tricky, but I go slowly and carefully, regularly stopping to stare. I think I drive my faster-walking friends crazy. On really windy days, I avoid the parts of the forest with big standing dead birches. I’d be in trouble if one of those big ones came down. My first winter here I played a game called “find the maple trees.” My goal was to identify the maple trees in the fall when they had their leaves (easy) so I could pick them out in the winter when they were leafless (hard). There are much fewer maples and more aspen and birch where I live, unlike the thick stands of maple in the woods nearer town, at the beginning of the Trail.

 The Tamaracks have been positively glowing this fall. They are a showcase tree, coming into their own glory after the maple trees have peaked. Tamaracks are such interesting trees. They are conifers but not evergreens. They have needles but are not pines. They are coniferous and deciduous. In the spring, the new growth — the young needles — have a texture like a silicone basting brush: very pliable and silky soft to touch. The needles grow in clusters of 10-20. Young tamaracks have very slender vertical trunks and grow horizontal limbs as they age. They grow very slowly and need moist, organic soil and full sun when they’re seedlings, but they can establish themselves on dry hillsides, as can be seen along the Trail. Most trees still have their golden needles right now, but their hold is tenuous and they will drop soon. They look like they are ready to go with the next big wind or rain or snowfall. When I brushed against them, the needles fell right down, reminding me of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. In the spring, tiny new cones will grow again with the needles. In my opinion they are the cutest cones in the world. The female cones look like little roses as they emerge. A few tight little brown cones hang on all winter. I love the tamarack’s knobby little stems, reminding of a gingko in the regularity of the spurs. This is a boreal tree and is known as a Larch elsewhere, and in my home state of Maine they are called Hackmatacks, which is derived from an Abenaki word meaning “wood used for snowshoes.” In Ojibwe tamaracks are called mashkiigwaatig.

A while ago I made a sound map, where I roamed around my neck of the woods and mapped what I was hearing. It’s a fun way to experience a landscape in a non-visual way. Lately, I’ve been thinking I could do a smell map of all the delicious aromas in the woods right now — alders sometimes smell spicy like cinnamon, birch can smell minty. The pines, of course, have that familiar heavenly scent. The smell is stronger in the early morning when the dew is still on the ground and at again at dusk — and strongest after a rain. The rich aroma of the loam in the forest reminds me of a fine sherry that’s been aged in a wooden cask.

  Many things are changing now. The mushrooms that were so plentiful earlier this fall have all but disappeared. I see a few black slimy remnants and also some hardy tiny fungi that are hanging on late in the season, tucked into thick beds of moss. I noticed a Mountain Ash tree that had been cleaned of all berries, most of the leaves were gone and the big buds at the end of the branches were covered in a sticky kind of sap; I don’t know to what purpose.

There have been lot of wolf sightings this past month on the Trail. There was at least one wolf hanging about — very at ease in our presence and far too friendly for comfort. A lot of yelling and waving of arms was needed to convince him that he needed to move along. He was nonchalant about the whole business. I wonder if wolves are drawn to dogs. I really don’t want my dog to be a wolf’s lunch. Or breakfast. Or dinner. Hence the yelling.

~ Marcia Roepke

The Gunflint Trail is in full glory this time of year: sunny days with cool, crisp weather and golden birch leaves falling gently to the earth; maple trees glow with red, orange, yellow and lime green hues — so many colors in one leaf, so much beauty in one tree, so many gorgeous trees! I tell you, Maple Hill has never been dressed in more splendor. Before this latest burst of sun we had a string of rainy, cold and windy days. But after that, calm sunny weather arrived. One day was so windless that I heard leaves dropping, falling through the forest, and landing with a tiny plop upon the still surface of the lake.

The bears have been leaving their colorful calling cards: large piles of barely digested mountain ash berries. I admit that I don’t understand the economy of this system. It looks like it’s berries in, then berries out. And a visiting bull moose thrashed three young birch trees and gouged the earth by our woodshed. This is the time of year when bull moose make their mark on earth and trees, advertising their best qualities and attracting mates. I have always wanted to see this behavior — at a safe distance, of course. One year I nearly got my wish:

It was fall and Lars and I were paddling our canoe on Brule Lake. I had spotted a basswood tree on an island and I wanted to harvest a stem to make a whistle. We landed, clambered out, and tied the canoe up to a tree on the shore. Pushing aside bushes and saplings, we made our way into the woods in the direction of the basswood tree. We got to a little clearing and noticed the earth had been dug up,  and the soil was damp in that one spot — an odd thing to see on a dry fall day. Then we noticed the shrubs and trees surrounding us looked like somebody had slashed at them with a dull machete. We stood there looking around and saying, “Huh! Isn’t this strange? I wonder what caused that!” Then we heard a noise — a distant sound growing closer by the second, “Thump…thump…thump, thump, thump, thump” — the sound of large hooves coming our way — fast! We turned and dodged in and out between trees, running toward the canoe and jumping over logs and boulders as fast as we could manage. The canoe was quickly unmoored and we hopped in and sped  away. At a safe distance we slowed down and turned the canoe around so we could look back at our pursuer. We never saw the bull moose that day, but we definitely heard him! And, no, I didn’t make my whistle.

Looking around our autumn forest now, I see the chokecherries have lost their leaves — pin cherries, also called fire cherries, are still hanging on; the spear shaped leaves are the most beautiful shades of reddish brownish gold morphing into yellow and olive green and the dark green dogwood leaves are changing to shades of warm maroon. I tell you, five minutes of enjoying the beauty of an autumn day can really turn one’s attitude around. In a small clearing, I sat on a big rock warmed by the sun. I was basking in the sunshine and listening to the sounds of the forest all around me. I watched my dog hunt for small animals under and around some giant boulders. She ran through a patch of fireweed, loosening the spent blossoms that had dried into shiny silky fluff. The small glittering strands rose slowly into the air, looking like tiny fairies. It is heavenly stuff — so silky between your fingers and so shiny in the sun, like fine milkweed but more delicate.

Some birds use fireweed fluff to build their nests. I know hummingbirds use lichen and spider webs and maybe they use a little fireweed fluff, too.

Fireweed is called great willow herb or wickup, and it belongs to the evening primrose family. It is one of the first plants to appear after a fire; it rapidly covers woodland areas that have been cleared by humans. Its seeds can lie dormant for many years, awaiting the warmth necessary for germination.

Fireweed blooms in an interesting way. It starts with pinkish flowers at the bottom of the stalk and the blossoms open in an orderly fashion from there up to the top of the stalk. This progresses steadily throughout the summer and they say that once the blooms reach the top of the stalk, summer is over. Fire weed attracts native bees, moths, hummingbirds and butterflies. The stems were traditionally split lengthwise to scrape out the soft pith and then the tough stem fibers were made into twine and fishnets. Moose, deer, and caribou eat the leaves, and small mammals eat the seeds.

A few years ago, I was taking a foraging class at North House Folk School and one of my classmates told me she used fireweed blossoms and rose hips to make firerose jelly. And wouldn’t that be a lovely thing: a taste of summer on a cold winter’s day?

~ Marcia Roepke

Mornings have been misty up on the Gunflint Trail recently. A few days ago, I got up at dawn and lit a candle in the darkness. I watched the fog rising above the lake, cloaking the far shore except for the tops of the tallest pines, a ghostly silhouette hovering high above the water. It looked like a dream.

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It feels like we’ve started just turning the corner from summer to fall. The blustery breezes are carrying a coolness with them, but the sun is still so warm that hikers will be shedding clothing layers before they’ve walked very far. The short term forecast calls for continued sunny weather. It’s a glorious time to be on the Trail, though the wind is certainly going to make canoeing on the bigger lakes challenging. I heard from a friend who was in the Boundary Waters this week who barely avoided a big pine that blew down in their campsite in the middle of the night last week. The wind keeps the bugs away, but it brings its own dangers.

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The continuing and very welcome rainfall this summer has brought forth  a Gunflint Trail just about bursting with goodness. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and Saskatoons are ripe, plentiful and ready for picking. I had a delightful day of berrying with a friend last week. Picture this: a sunny day with blue skies, the Gunflint hills spread out below us, big white puffy clouds above us, clear clean breezes, lots of blueberries, a pal to talk with and a puppy. I recommend it to everyone. It is good medicine for whatever ails you. I have not always been an eager berry picker, and it’s made life a little awkward, since I make my home in a place where berry-picking is very nearly a creed if not a religion. People take berrying very seriously on the Trail and woe to you if you give away someone’s secret spot for berries — or fish, or mushrooms, for that matter. In that sense, it’s a very Hobbit-like culture. Daily, I am growing to be more like a Hobbit.

The mosquitoes have been nearly as abundant as the berries this summer, and I have been practicing a range of techniques for killing them. You can’t always just flail away with the swatter; you need to act with finesse or there’ll be red splotches on the wall out of the reach of easy cleaning. There are many ways to kill a mosquito: one of my favorite is the one-handed snatch in midair; and there’s the swipe toward your arm or other body part (try not to mistakenly hit your glasses and nearly knock yourself out, like I did); there’s also the grab-the-son-of-a-gun with index and thumb as it perches on a wall: it’s one way to assure your cabin won’t look a crime scene at the end of the day. When I grab them by one leg, I like to watch them squirm a little before I deal the final death blow. I realize this sounds deeply weird. I was talking with a neighbor, comparing our various killing methods, and as we spoke about the differences between the behavior of early summer mosquitoes and later ones, I thought to myself, “If someone overheard us, and they had no experience of Northwoods mosquitoes, they might conclude that we are more than slightly insane.” The mosquitoes can certainly test one’s sanity as they are inhaled through mouth and nostrils. And then when they sneak up pants’ legs, shirtsleeves, neck holes and any other tiny space you might have neglected to cover, well, that’s when you wish you could magically transform into a moose in a pond and submerge yourself totally underwater or follow my dog’s lead: go swimming and then find a place to roll and wallow and thoroughly cover yourself with mud from top to tail. Stand up, shake, repeat, wag your tail and grin.

Even with all the trials that insects visit upon us humans and other mammals, there is no getting around the fact that this has been a spectacular summer weather-wise. The rich insect life means the birds have plenty to eat. And we’re seeing way more juvenile birds than last year’s dangerously dry summer. We’ve had several families with juvenile members stop by lately: the Osprey family perched on a dead snag, announcing their presence with their distinctive cries; the Ravens usually holler as they fly by, they don’t stop very often: too much to do. The Blue Jays are among the most vocal, but they don’t hang around much either. We have our neighborhood families:: the Hummingbirds and the Flickers. Both have raised young this year within sight of our cabin. I wish I could tell you how many young hummingbirds there are, but they move too fast and there are so many of them! They are our closest neighbors so we see more of them than the other bird families. Hearing them is almost as delightful as seeing them — that “vwhrrrrr!”as they speed by my head or the feeder or just whiz around the yard. They are vigilant in patrolling a chokecherry bush at the corner of my porch, buzzing and darting ferociously at the little olive-green warblers that try to perch there.

It’s been the kind of summer weather we all dream of and wish for. If I had to choose the best summer evenings, I’d put them all in a jar, shake them up, spill them onto the table, and choose the top 10. If I then selected the very best of those, it would’ve been last night. It was a perfect evening. It wasn’t too hot; it wasn’t too cold. The setting sun illuminated blue, pink and orange bands spread across the western sky. A Veery and a Raven sang counterpoint to the opening bars of Aaron Copeland’s Appalachian Spring playing softly in the background. On the lake, a dark boat moved fast over still water, cutting across the silvered reflection of the evening sky. Slowly, rainclouds mounded up and grew larger and moved closer, flashing far-off lightning on the horizon. A second boat cut across the lake, this time west to east, the vee expanding in its wake as the rainclouds neared. I sat on the screen porch as darkness and rain arrived together. Then the rain started drumming on the roof and the wind blew a fine spray of raindrops all over me through the screens. I went inside, dried off and ate a hot dog with everything on it. It was all delicious: the peace that comes with a good soaking rain, the birds, the Northern sky over the still lake, and a summer meal cooked over a fire. In these times of trouble all over the world, after we’ve each done our small part to help where we can, some days it seems that the bravest thing one can do is to appreciate the miracle of our beautiful boreal woods and water, and be grateful.

~Marcia Roepke
August 5, 2022

This summer on the Gunflint Trail has been kind of like an everything bagel: it’s been cool, rainy, hot, and humid and everything in between. And the thunderstorms have been epic. One night I was inside staring out at the darkness; at the massive flashes of lightning; at the tiny sparks of fireflies. I jumped at every boom of thunder (that was close!) and slowly relaxed as the sound of heavy rain drummed on the metal roof. This latest storm was preceded by a little heat wave and that’s been the pattern this season: a week or so of temperatures gradually getting higher then rain following after, cooling everything down. This contrasts starkly with last year’s epic dryness and threat of wildfire. Believe me when I say that we are so happy not to be running the sprinkler system every few days and not to be in pre-evacuation mode!  (more…)

Our lush summer continues on the Gunflint Trail. We have had abundant rain — with an accompanying insect population boom. That’s a big benefit to all plants, birds, animals and fish, so we humans must endure the insect swarms. It appears the black fly season has ended — or paused — but it’s still a big year for mosquitoes. It’s been so buggy that I’ve been using a head net for the first time in about 10 years. When I walked through the woods to get to the lake yesterday, I put gloves on too so I had total coverage. I felt slightly ridiculous fully suited like that, but since nobody else is around to look, who cares? And once I’m on the water, most bug issues become just one more trouble, and then, along with most of my other troubles, they disappear for a time. I can always pick them up again when I come back to shore.

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Trail Time
June 24, 2022

I am continually grateful for the lushness of this spring and summer after last summer’s drought and forest fire threat. It’s been a wonderful season for wildflower lovers like myself. First, of course, was the tiny flower of the hazel, then the elderberry bushes bloomed; and before the chokecherries blossomed the pin cherries burst forth in abundance. The pin cherries were absolutely luxurious with flowers; the trees formed mounds of delicate white blossoms rising up among the conifers, maples and birch. With such a bountiful spring, I keep asking myself, “Was there really snow here just a few weeks ago?” It’s hard to believe there was snow in the ditches along the Gunflint Trail on May 28, less than a month ago, but there was! I saw it. I’ve tried to shake off memories of winter  by soaking in the sun and swimming in the lake —  in 62 degrees water! But there’s this ritual I do every year that banishes my memories of the cold weather and rings in the fresh new spring: I head to one of my favorite trees — a wild apple — and shake the branches so the spent blossoms rain down all over and around me, the pale pink petals falling on the tall grass and raspberry bushes. I revel in the beauty of spring.

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It’s been a cold wet spring on the Gunflint Trail, interspersed with a few gorgeous sunny mornings or afternoons. One of the benefits of colder temperatures is that the gnats are less of a bother. One of the benefits of wetter weather is that wet birds stay put far longer than they do when it is sunny and dry, so I can observe them for longer periods. After a recent rain, I watched a group of wet finches in a birch tree. They were evenly spaced out around the crown of the tree, fluffing themselves up, drying off their feathers before they took wing once again. They stayed there for quite some time. One day I watched a wet hummingbird perched on a slender branch of a birch tree, sheltering under a leaf, the leaf acting like a little umbrella.

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Trail Time

Photo by Mark Luinenburg

May 27, 2022

What a joy it is to paddle this spring! I miss traveling in a canoe so much in the winter. It makes me happy to be floating on the (liquid) water once again. And it’s a good year for floating. The water level in lakes and streams is very high, though it has gone down a bit since the ice went all the way out. The waterfalls are roaring with the power of thousands of gallons of water rushing on its way to the sea. A few days ago, Lars and I visited Trail’s End campground. Standing on the banks under the tall white pines, we were awestruck by the level of noise and the sheer power of the water as it roared and foamed and crested and poured over the rocks on its way downstream. Elsewhere we clambered up and sat quietly on rocks high above the water. We saw peeled logs floating in a quiet bay — the remains of beaver dams or lodges destroyed by the high water. As the water eddied in a counter clockwise direction, the logs slowly circled the bay, almost making it into the faster current, but then getting pushed out of the mainstream and back to their same slow circular path.

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Spring has come slowly to the Gunflint Trail, but it is happening like gangbusters now! The grouse are drumming day and night and Cross River is roaring and foaming on its way to Gunflint Lake. Some of the bigger lakes like Gunflint and Loon are still mostly frozen over, although there is open water near the shore. Little Iron and Poplar still have ice on them, with leads of open water steadily growing larger. Temperatures are predicted to be in the 70s over the next few days, so the warmer weather and the rain that is forecast ought to clear most of the ice on the lakes. But, who knows? It might all be gone by tomorrow. Water levels are high, especially on Seagull, where the water is four feet higher than it was last year. Fishing opener is this Saturday, May 14. (more…)

Anybody that’s familiar with driving conditions on the Gunflint Trail knows to be on the lookout for animals year-round. This is the time of year when we all need to watch for some other big obstacles: bumps in the roadway itself. That is especially true right now. The road crew flagged the worst spots where frost heaves have corrugated the road, and there is a spectacular trough on the southbound lane by Trout Lake that is a doozy. Road repairs can happen when winter quits. Then the crew can assess what’s going on under the pavement. So, everybody, please be watchful and slow down when you see a flag.

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It has been a quiet time on the Trail lately. The weather warmed up there for a while; the sun and rain melted quite a bit of snow. I haven’t heard snowmobiles for a couple of weeks. Road restrictions have been imposed, which means there won’t be any logging trucks going up or down the Trail until the frost is out of the ground. Many lodges are closed for a spring break; the restaurants at Trail Center and Poplar Haus will reopen in mid-May. Gunflint Lodge and restaurant remain open.

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Trail Time
March 18, 2022
By Marcia Roepke

Oh my goodness, it’s been so beautiful on the Trail the last couple days. I mean, it is always beautiful, but the recent sunny weather was heavenly, especially if you remember that last month it was 46 below. Yesterday was 45 — that’s a 90 degree change in 4 weeks! It was nothing but sun all day. It was the first time I sat outside in the sun for any length of time this year. In that moment, nothing on my to do list was as important as simply reveling in the glorious weather. The sky was bluer than blue; the sunlight glimmered on the snow and on tiny ice crystals in the air. Everything was backlit in a golden glow. All was quiet except for the sweet burbly sounds of the chickadees and grosbeaks, the “yank” of the nuthatch… There was no wind. No snowmobile or chainsaw noise. A blue jay parked itself in the woods and repeated “Skip it! Skip it!” over and over. A new bird chimed in with its song from high in the balsams and aspen (A new bird is a big deal to us and we report it to one another as if a new neighbor had moved in). Ice and snow were melting off the roof with a steady drip. It felt like the earth slowed down and took a long slow breath. In and out.

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​Trail Time March 4, 2022

By Marcia Roepke

I’ve had one of my favorite hymns in the music playlist of my brain for the past few days. It’s called “In the Bleak Midwinter.” (more…)

February on the Gunflint Trail started out above zero, then plummeted down to the twenties below. It climbed up well above zero just in time for the Beargrease Sled Dog Race. The warmer weather certainly affected the trail conditions for the race last week. Warm temperature and snow “like mashed potatoes” caused 11 out of 23 mushers to scratch. It might sound counterintuitive, but it is better for the sled dogs when it is colder outside – they are less likely to overheat and the colder snow lets the sled runners glide more easily. Still, it was so much fun to watch the race. Lars was in the thick of it and got some great photographs of mushers and dogs from the Lima Grade to Grand Portage. As usual, there were crossings along the Gunflint Trail that are guarded by volunteers, where there are bonfires and company and lots of cheering for the teams. Just like for the Gunflint Mail Run race, I walked out after dark to witness the night running of a few teams. I treasure that silent time waiting for the musher’s headlamp to flicker over the trees until first the dog team, then the dogsled glide into view and then slide on by, quietly disappearing around a curve into darkness. The next sled dog race will be during the Dog Days of Winter event held at Trail Center March 13.

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It has been very cold lately with wind chills of -40 and below up here on the Gunflint Trail. We had a sweet run of sunny days during the most recent cold spell, though, and when I’m on a south-sloping path and sheltered from the north wind, I enjoy our winter world on foot and snowshoe. We mostly keep our walks short and our wood stove going this time of year, especially after dark. And the life of the forest goes on even in the coldest and darkest winter nights. We can see the evidence of longer daylight hours now that the winter solstice has passed. More sun in the mornings and later sunsets keep us attuned to the promise of spring.

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Well, we are really into winter now. We’ve had some very cold weather and lots of snow the last two weeks. When it warmed up to above zero, Lars and I and small group went on a snowshoe and ski outing in deep snow along a narrow lake. It was a sunny day, the snow was sparkling and we didn’t have to deal with too much wind or slush. I got as much energy from the beautiful day as I did from the expressions of happiness and joy from friends that were new to a winter adventure on the Gunflint Trail. It reminded me how lucky we are to be surrounded every day by the beauty of this special place.
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It’s a winter wonderland on the Gunflint Trail this week. There’s about a foot of new snow making a great base for cross-country skiing, snowmobiling or snowshoeing… and dog-sledding! Many years have passed since I first careened down a snow-covered logging road in Hovland behind a friend’s team. And I remember a wonderful time dog-sledding in the Boundary Waters on a winter camping trip years ago with a terrific group of people that included one of my best friends and my future husband, Lars. Dog-sledding is a lot of fun to do and it’s almost as fun to watch. The sled dogs are so full of energy and joy. They love to run! Next week there’s a great opportunity to watch some excellent dog sledding: The Gunflint Mail Run Dogsled Race will be held Saturday, January 8. Some good places to watch the action are at Trail Center Lodge, Big Bear Lodge or Rockwood Lodge. There’s also a spectator area at the Old Blankenburg Pit, where the twelve teams will be turning around. NOTE: It is very important that spectators do not bring their dogs to the races. And keep a tight hold on young children. Things get lively and move fast. You can find lots of information, as well as safety and etiquette tips, on the web site at gunflintmailrun.com
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We had quite a snowfall last week on the Gunflint Trail. Loon Lake had about 12-15 inches on the ground by the time the snow stopped blowing. The temperature clocked in 15 below zero the day following the storm. The gusting wind created drifts in some places and windswept bare spots in others. I usually notice deeper snow mid-trail around Poplar Lake and this storm was no different. I imagine the Laurentian Divide has something to do with the differing snowfalls along the Trail, but I have zero science about that to share today. I’ll get back to you on that topic.
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We have had all kinds of weather on the Trail these past few weeks. It’s been cold and gray (in the 20s and below), it’s been sunny and warm (in the high 30s!) and yesterday we had a very memorable snowstorm. It had started the day before with a gray sky and several loud booming sounds. Lars and I didn’t know what the noise was; each time we heard it, one of us asked the other, “Did you hear that?” I kept checking the news, figuring that if something exploded certainly it would be reported. Or, I thought, maybe it was the noise of a dump truck bringing gravel up the Trail and the boom was the sound of it bouncing around, echoing off the lake and cliffs. It was a mystery. The next day there was a pretty little snowfall in the morning and then the wind started gusting, the snow started swirling, and I heard another boom. I think it was a thunder boom, which is what thunder in a snowstorm is called. The wind was gusting up to 45 mph; it was wild weather. And in the middle of it, I saw a flock of common redpolls cavorting straight into it. I felt their joy in the wild windy snowfall and it echoed inside me. If I could fly, I would have joined them.
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As I write this I’m sitting indoors in a cozy spot looking out at the darkening sky. Snow is forecast tonight for the Gunflint Trail, and although I always think I’m ready for it, the changes that come with winter surprise me each year. I watch the skim of ice come and go on the smaller lakes and rivers as the cold weather ebbs and flows. And when the ice comes to stay, it’s accompanied by the winter song of the lakes as they groan and moan and roar and snap and make Star Wars light saber noises.

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For a few weeks we were reveling in the sunny and mild fall weather on the Gunflint Trail. The temperatures of last few days, though, have been dipping into the 30s at night; we awaken to frost most mornings. While that lovely weather held, I assumed every canoe adventure was going to be the last one. And then we’d go on yet another canoe trip and I’d think, well, this one must be our last time out. But, nope! Wrong again! It was like the end of an unfamiliar symphony when you think it’s over but it continues with more notes and on and on to the true finale. I don’t mind being mistaken about the end of canoe season — I can’t remember a time when I’ve more enjoyed being wrong.
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It’s definitely fall on the Gunflint Trail. Many aspen and birch have lost their leaves, and the weather is cool and damp. Unlike spring, with its gradual unfolding, autumn loveliness arrives quickly. Two days ago day I saw the limbs of a birch tree covered in shimmering yellow leaves, reaching toward the clear blue sky; the next morning almost all the leaves were lying on the ground, like a puddle of gold, like a slender dancer had just let her silk dress drop to her feet. The whole of last week was magical, with the warm sun sparkling on water and gauzy little fairy-like bugs floating around in the air. At first I mistook these incredibly tiny insects for gnats or ash, but I managed to catch a few – very gently, for they were so easy to squash – and looked them up online using the search term “tiny blue insects with fuzzy butts.” I got answers immediately. They were woolly aphids. It seems there are as many kinds of woolly aphids as there are trees, with at least 15 different kinds in Minnesota, and some sources said that there are probably more. The adult woolly aphid sucks tree sap and produces a waxy white covering that looks like minute downy feathers. I had never seen them before. I wonder if it was the unseasonable warm weather which brought them out. For a few days, whenever the weather warmed, you could see these little fairy bugs floating by, wafted by the breeze.
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The last two weeks of September have been absolutely lovely on the Gunflint Trail. We’ve had rain, we’ve had sun, we’ve had temperatures about ten degrees above average. Usually the shorter days and cooler temps of September make me want to slow down, but this fabulous weather has sped me up again. I can’t get enough canoeing or fishing, it’s 76 and sunny and I just might swim this afternoon. I want to be by, in or on the water all the time. With the weather so warm, it feels kind of strange to see little groupings of buntings by the road. I think of them as cooler weather birds. Juncos are back as well and yesterday we heard then saw a flock of cranes fly overhead, bugling and honking. They were flying so high, it was hard to see them. It is autumn, though it feels like August.
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I feel Fall in the air! Reminders are everywhere that summer is fading into autumn: The purple asters contrast beautifully with the goldenrod; The pin cherry leaves are red, orange and yellow – all on the same tree; the moose maple foliage gives us shades from yellow to red and those lovely winged seed pods called samaras; bronze and maroon grace the bush honeysuckle leaves. The mountain ash berries are turning red once more. Usually it’s the time of year for the hazelnut harvest, but I haven’t seen any hazelnuts since spring.
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What a difference a week makes! We’ve had some gorgeously beautiful days on the Gunflint Trail. Last Saturday’s rain, the cooler temps, sunny skies and good news from the Forest service have all combined to make this a stellar week.

Monday night we attended another community meeting at Fire hall #2, where the Forest Service, the county sheriff and the Gunflint Trail Volunteer Fire Department spoke about the fire conditions, gave advice and answered questions. The Forest Service folks announced that the risk remains at 1.5% chance of the John Ek fire reaching the Trail at this time, or, as Lars puts it, there’s a 98.5% chance it won’t get here! Of course they can make no promises – fire is unpredictable. But it feels like a blessedly welcome reprieve from last week’s danger and our anxiety level.
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Rain!
Rain has finally come to the Gunflint Trail and with it some cooler temperatures. It’s been flannel shirt weather for drinking morning coffee on the porch, looking out at the lake, listening to the loons. We’ve had several foggy mornings and the fog added to the rain and cooler temps means that the fire danger warning has been lowered to moderate. It will likely bounce back up to high or very high again unless we get more rain, but for right now, I can’t decide which gives me more relief: the rain, the cool weather or the lower fire danger. All three make for better sleeping weather and less anxiety about wildfire. The Ham Lake Fire of 2007 lives on in our psyches, even for those of us who watched from a distance. I’ve heard the stories and read the reports from the excellent collection at Chik Wauk Museum, and I have good friends that were evacuated several times from their home. I still can’t imagine what it was like to live through a fire of that magnitude. I never want to know. We all need to continue to be extremely careful with fire and follow the restrictions.
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My good friend and neighbor Dharma Dave stopped by last week. He reported that everyone on the Gunflint Trail has been talking about two things: wildfire sprinkler systems and cutting brush. With the almost constant presence of smoke from the Ontario fires, wildfire is very much on our minds. The sprinkler systems only do part of the job: creating a defensible green zone. The brush cutting makes sure the water gets where it is needed. In the absence of rain, these systems can make a huge difference.
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This morning the loons were singing a beautiful chorus of multiple voices. There’s no better sound than this for bringing to mind some of the Boundary Waters trips I’ve been on —creating in my mind a collage of images and memories of different lakes, portages and, of course, all kinds of weather and challenges.

We have our favorite canoe routes. And sometimes it’s just impossible to get permits for the first choice. But a few trips where the weather or the route were less than perfect have become some of the most vividly memorable. Today I’m thinking of one canoe trip that became what my younger daughter called “a miracle a minute” day.
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Hi. I’m Marcia Roepke and I live on the Gunflint Trail. Recently, Fred Smith ended his eleven years of reporting from the Trail and I’ll be continuing in his rather large footprints to bring you a little flavor of the Gunflint Trail wherever you might be.

I asked Fred what the biggest change was in his 22 years. He said that with the exception of the Ham Lake Fire of 2007, the biggest change was the creation of the Gunflint Trail Historical Society and the opening of Chik Wauk Museum and Nature Center in 2005. Chik Wauk is dedicated to the preservation of the cultural and natural histories of the Gunflint Trail and has a variety of exhibits and events, as well as volunteer opportunities, throughout the summer.
This summer is shaping up to be one of the lushest and greenest of recent memory. A dry spring gave way to a series of rainfalls that lowered the fire danger to moderate. Earlier this week, however, I saw that the fire danger had been set to high once again. So everyone: residents, visitors and campers need to be extremely careful with fires where and when they are allowed.
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