Toasted

We have a heat index warming today that the index may reach 110 today. That's less than great news for this gal who'd prefer to have summer highs between 65 and 70 degrees, especially since I'm already feeling a little toasted.

There's no reason to subject you to photos of my sunburn, but I can assure you that despite quite liberal sunscreen application on Wednesday, there are certain strips of skin -- my forearms and a patch above my back waistline -- that are lovely shades of painful fluorescent. Nothing I can do now but keep the aloe vera close at hand. The burns' sting seem to have diminished significantly overnight and I'm hoping that means I'll feel a little more with it today. It always amazes me just how much a day in the full sun can take out of you. Mix a full day of sun with a sense of being overwhelmed by laundry, articles, and various other obligations and Wednesday evening was one cranky, emotional mess.

Still, the pre-toasted part of the day was pretty darn nice. Andy and I headed down the lake for a day's paddle. I think the high temp was somewhere in the low 70s: no absurdly high heat indexes here! At least not yet . . .

We found our first loon chicks of the year, just as we were turning the corner into the Boundary Waters.

Twins!

Another feathered friend followed us for a while once we reached the far end of the lake and started heading up the river that connects the lake we live on to the next lake.

This little duck (she didn't even have full wings yet) stayed close by the entire time we were on the river, even when we made a lengthy stop halfway upstream to do some catch and release fishing. There were a ton of hungry bass hanging out in the river, just waiting to grab our night crawlers.

After the fish had several bites of yummy worm and we'd had a bite of lunch ourselves (not of yummy worm), we headed on to the next lake. Why both portaging when you can just press on upstream through the river?

The sunburn no doubt happened on our return trip to the cabin. Turns out SPF 45 just doesn't hold for six hours and several miles of paddling. As the French would say: "Eh bien." Something tells me that as the temperature soars these next few days, I'll soon be wishing I was back in the river, feeling the cool current tug and swirl around my ankles.

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Nature is Not Always Nice

When you live in the woods, it grows easy to assume the wild animals are part of our extended family. Just take Al the pine marten for example. He (or she, for all I know) was nothing more than a nuisance who spent the winter days getting into the bird seed, garbage, and compost. Despite his mostly destructive nature, we gave him a name, imposed a personality on him, and acted like he was a friend. Although we never (intentionally) feed him, our relationship with him smacked of faux familiarity, pretending he was the wildest of pets.

When you live in a place where your path commonly crosses with that of bears, moose, foxes, and other critters it's easy to forget that we're the ones tangled in their webs of existence, not the other way around. We're the ones imposing on their world and we're meant to be casual observers.  

The first week of May, a nesting platform for loons was set up in the bay outside of work. A week ago Thursday, a loon climbed up on nest and stayed. Within the first two days, it became clear a loon couple had laid two eggs in the nest.  "Hot damn," we thought. "We're going to have a loon chick sometime during the last week of Jue." 

But on Sunday, as I sat at my desk, I heard a terrible scream. At first I thought the loon was bothered by the moose I'd just seen swimming in the bay, but there was something about the heart-wrenching nature of the scream that made me think the loon was in true trouble. When I made it out on to the porch to get a view of the nest, I saw an eagle sitting in a gnarly jack pine about twenty feet from the nest. In the distance, another eagle soared in the sky. The loon, probably driven off the nest by the pesky black flies, was swimming near the nest, calling out in distress.

The eagle in the tree swooped down towards the nest and the loon raised up on its back quarters to protest until the eagle returned to his perch. But the second time the eagle swooped down, he seemed to catch something in his talon which fell in a spray into the lake.

I hoped I hadn't seen what I suspected I had, but yesterday morning when I arrived at work and saw no loon on the nest I knew it was true; the eagle had destroyed both of the loons' eggs.

Although the loons no longer had eggs to incubate, they visited the nest a couple times yesterday. They swam around the nest, climbing on top of the floating platform and softly cooing in some sort of heartbreaking loon conversation. It's early in the season and loons will likely use the nest to lay another egg. But it's still no fun to watch and it's easy to feel angry at the eagle who didn't even get a tasty snack out of his raid.

It all goes to show that we can't assume wild animals live some Disney-fied cartoon existence. Every animal is fighting hard for its survival. It's not all wildflowers and butterflies and happy little fawns with Bambi eyes. The critters of the forest play by a whole different rulebook than us humans, one that can horrify us and that can be difficult to justify. But, whether we like it or not, it's a dog-eat-dog (or eagle-eat-loon egg) world out there and nature is not always nice and we're in no position to interfere with the laws of Mother Nature.

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Wordless Wednesday: Baby Loon Grows Up

We've been having fun watching the little loon in the bay grow up. If only we could insure he heads off to a nice clean Gulf of Mexico this fall!

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Like Fishing, Like Life

I’ve heard it said that there are two great metaphors for life: a river and a garden. Last night I decided there might be a third great metaphor for life: fishing.

You know, you make sure you have everything ready, you hope everything works, and then you head off, knowing that anytime, your motor may fail, forcing you to paddle back to shore. Once you’re out on the water, you throw in your line, bob around a bit, and wait for something to come to you. Maybe not a metaphor for the most proactive of lives, but a slice of life, nonetheless.

We weren’t the most patient fishermen last night. We caught a lot more snags than we caught fish (okay, so there wasn’t even a nibble), which was fine by me. After a busy and sticky hot day at work, I was happy just to be floating about in a boat, enjoying the light breeze and the cooler evening temperatures.

After the relaxing time in the middle of the lake, we came back home, where I made popcorn over the stove and managed to get a potholder on fire. Nothing like starting off days off with a bang. The popcorn was really good though, and the flaming potholder was immediately flung into a basin of dishwater.

Today’s my first day off in eight days (I realize that since I work increasingly as a freelancer, days off are a highly arbitrary concept) and while that fact doesn’t exactly signal “the end of the world,” I’m looking forward to not spending the next two days at work, per se. There are blueberries to pick, a commentary or two to write, some fishing, and a baby loon in the bay to watch grow up.

It’s heating up to be another scorcher outside. Better add swimming to the agenda.

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Baby Animal Photos and a Mighty Storm

It wasn’t exactly the most extreme weather we’ve ever seen in these parts, nor did we experience any of the tornados the rest of the state got yesterday, but last night we had a ton of lightning and got more than an inch of rain in just one hour. I’m hopeful that this means our humid spell has snapped. Now if we could have a stretch of 75 degree days with sunshine, the squash plants would be ever so grateful. . . .

Our loon family has moved on to another corner of the lake, but we sure got a kick out of this little guy who hung around most of Wednesday.

The parents weren’t too bad looking either.

The outdoor world is teeming with babies right now and if you’re opposed to heart-wrenching stories about baby bunnies, don’t read Tuscarora Lodge's blog. On my walk home from work yesterday, I found a newly hatched turtle nest along the side of the road. I hope all these little turtles made it safely to the pond right next to the road.

Andy reports that this year’s Mid-Trail fox kits have arrived in fluffy glory to mug for passersby on the side of the road. There are few things in life as cute as a line of baby foxes gamely watching you drive past. You get the distinct feeling that if they were human kids, they’d be making the signal for you to honk.

This fledgling flicker paused for a while on top of a birch tree at work. I’m so used to seeing flickers in flight that it took me a minute to determine what exactly it was!

No Bruno pictures. Of course I only run into large wildlife on the days I forget my camera at work.

I’m taking the day off and heading into town to work on another project. We’ve also reached the point with the grocery supply where we always seem to be missing some crucial ingredient to whatever I think I might want for supper, so it’s off the grocery store again, among other errands. One of the biggest problems is that we keep running out of bread. For some reason I’m convinced I’ll have time to bake, but other than little sweet after supper treats, the baking (especially yeast) just isn’t happening.

I’d be happy to stay home and tend to the garden and finish up Olive Kitteridge but since there’s a paycheck to deposit (and coincidentally, bills to pay) it’s jiggetty to town with me. Maybe I’ll see the baby foxes!

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Welcome Back

Minnesota’s state bird, the common loon, doesn’t winter in the state. Instead, in the middle of November, loons head down to the Gulf of Mexico, where they stay into April. Sometimes they head home to find the Minnesota lakes pretty well iced over, but this year with our early spring, they came home to open waters.

When I was thirteen, my family went on a Civils Rights Tour (until I started college, I assume all families had themed vacations) down through Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. When we were in Biloxi, MS, we had a chance to head out into the Gulf on a fishing boat. As we were nearing the harbor at the end of the cruise, one of the other tourists pointed at a large grey bird swimming alongside the boat. “What’s that?” the person asked the captain. My brother and I both rolled our eyes. For crissakes. Couldn’t they see it was a loon?!

But when loons are in the South, they loose their distinctive tuxedo of feathers that they don all summer long, nor do they sing while in the Gulf. In essence, loons become recluses in the winter and as a result, people in the South aren't nearly as enamored by these solid boned divers as we are up here. So we’re really glad to have our loons back in northern waters. They just narrowly escaped being victims of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill.

Of course, there are plenty of birds and other marine wildlife who will be affected by this massive environmental disaster. It makes me sick to think that this oil spill is worse than Exxon Valdex. I wish there was something tangible I could do to help with the Gulf disaster, but it seems like the best thing we can do is reduce our dependency on oil, foreign or not.

I’m also glad to be back in the Northwoods. I had a wonderful time in New York City and it sounds as though the NYPD and other city officials did an excellent job defusing the amateur bomb in Times Square and managing the situation last night. But I’m okay with having been removed from that drama by a good 1000 miles. We feel pretty safe up here in the middle of the Continent. But with lots and lots of wind this weekend, and not too much rain, everyone’s worried about potential wildfire.

The seedlings are just starting to plant from their sunny spot on the kitchen table. This morning, three cosmos seedlings were stretching out in the light of day. Andy’s been putting lots of time into revamping the garden beds outside. With a bit of luck, the kitchen table will be overflowing with seedlings to plant in those beds in no time.

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