A Botanical Field Trip

Andy and I took a botanical field trip down the lake yesterday. Last week, I'd received an inquiry at work from an individual who'd discovered a small structure while camping on the lake a few weeks back. The individual who "found" the structure (I'm sure people have been finding this at least a couple times a year for the last 70 or so years) seemed to think it might be part of a trapper's shack, while I was more inclined to think it was a root cellar left behind from a resort that closed down in the early 1950s.

After visiting the site myself, I'm still leaning towards root cellar and also maybe bear den? The entrance seemed really wide open for a structure that's mostly sunken into the side of a small hill for a good 70 years, which makes me think "somebody's been sleeping in my root cellar." The inside of the small structure (which is maybe 8x6x6 - I could stand up in it) is filled with sheet metal and other scraps - maybe an easy way to clean up the site without actually having to bring all the junk from the old resort operation down the lake to dispose?

We also found a stone retaining wall that was probably part of the resort and it seemed pretty obvious where the main lodge building would have stood. 

Another reason I wanted to visit the site was because I'd always heard about the domesticated flowers that still bloom there, decades after the last permanent residents packed up. I'd heard that tea roses bloom in the mid-summer and the person who reported the structure above also mentioned daffodils blooming. After poking around the site a bit, I wonder if he didn't confuse daffodils with dandelions. There were plenty of dandelions to be found (which are too common of a weed to indicate any sort of civilization, I think) and I also think we found the tea roses, although they were just leafing out and appeared to be covered with some sort of fungus.

In our haste to find the structure once we got to shore yesterday, Andy and I breezed right past the shrub above. Yep, that's a ginormous lilac bush - a shrub that thrives into the Northwoods but which doesn't get here unless someone plants it.

There were also domesticated lily of the valley (easy to distinguish from the "false lily of the valley" wildflower that are very common in this area) and forget-me-nots galore which may or may not have been intentionally planted. Technically a wildflower is any flower that's not intentionally planted.

As I poked around looking for botanical signs of civilization, I actually happened upon a wildflower I'd never seen before. At first I thought it was some sort of orchid, but it's actually a type of milkwort known commonly as Bird-on-the-Wing. Google failed me completely for identifying it when I got home and I actually had to use two books (shocking, I know) to figure out what it was. It's just budding out - usually it has two petals that stick out perpendicularly from the center of the flower so it looks like a bird in flight.

We also found plenty of blueberry bushes loaded with blossoms. Another good picking season ahead. :)

If you're in the woods on a still morning or evening this time of year, you get a heady whiff of something floral. Turns out that wonderful intoxicating aroma comes from the red osier dogwood blossoms. I will be sad when the dogwood blossoms start to fall - they've been making my morning runs pretty delicious.

 

Read more ...

Days Off Are Good

Here’s a newsflash for you: days off are good. Alright, not exactly rocket science, but every once in a while, it seems we all need a reminder of the fact. For whatever reason, we like to forget that recharging isn’t an option luxury, it’s a necessary component of everyday life, especially if we’re planning to hang onto our sanity for too terribly long.

Lately days off haven’t been happening around here. As a result, crankiness abounded and everything started to seem like a lot of work. So on Wednesday, after I completed the last phone interview necessary for the August batch of articles, Andy and I decided to take a hike.

Last year, the Forest Service completed a new 3-mile loop trail in the area called the Centennial Trail (last year was the Superior National Forest’s centennial) which follows an abandoned railroad bed from the 1890s and goes past several test pits of an abandoned mine from the same era. In addition, the trail offers a snapshot of the forest fire/blowdown events of the last decade. The interpretative trail is pretty much in our backyard and despite sending several inquiring visitors to our respected work places to go hike the new path, neither Andy nor I had actually hiked the entire trail.

The trail itself isn’t terribly difficult, but it’s awfully interesting. Along the way, there are 14 markers along the pathway which point out unique historical and natural history factoids about this path which goes under where a wooden rail trestle once stood and passes through a 120 year old rock cut. This is the corner of our woods that was, more than a century before, a bustling town of laborers, complete with a brothel. Now, looking at the pathway through scrubby brush, it’s hard to imagine the blind optimism that prompted prospectors to stomach the expense of building a railroad here which would remove only a single load of minerals during its entire life.

Andy peers down into one of the test pits along the trail, where mineral prospectors searched for minerals in the soil. They found iron ore . . .  just not quite as much as they found farther west in the state, on the Iron Range.

The world is filled with all sorts of stories like the story of the Paulson Mine that we learned about on the Centennial Trail on Wednesday. But often, we get so swept up in our own stories that we forget that our lives are drastically enriched, and dare I say, improved by the stories of others. Yesterday – my Monday – I felt inspired and refreshed. In this world of deadlines, lunch breaks, and salaries, we can forget, especially if we’re writers, that the most important thing we can do is keep our ears, eyes, and hearts open to new stories and experiences. If we can remember to do that, every day has the potential to feel like a day off.

Centennial Trail overlook, looking towards Gunflint Lake and showing burn from the Ham Lake Fire and blowdown from 1999.

Read more ...