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Walking Where Bears Tread

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Come walk with me in the peak Autumn beauty of the Northwoods. To say that I love this time of year is an understatement. Most everyone can appreciate the colorful falling leaves—it reveals the ‘true self’ of a tree when its leaves are no longer producing chlorophyll. Their true colors are revealed, and there is something simple and shimmering about that. But many people dread the coming cold and snow and how the days are short on sunshine and light. I have learned to appreciate the gray clouds of a Winter’s day and how the light has shifted from peeking into the north windows of the house to the full, long gaze through the southern windows. It’s a warm gift from the tilt of the Earth. Receive it with an open heart. And the invigorating cold and the beautiful snow…but I’m getting ahead of myself!

Before our trip to Mille Lacs Kathio State Park a couple weeks ago, I checked the website for alerts and notices, and at the top of the list was this: “The bears are active! Please practice bear safety and plan accordingly.” Good to know. The DNR has a couple of dedicated pages to bear safety—what to do, what not to do, and reassurance that bears (like so many wild animals) are not ‘out to get you.’ So we were well aware that we were walking into bear territory as we packed our snacks, but we soon had Fall’s colorful changes in our eyes and on our minds. The perennials—ferns, grasses, and flowers—go through their own color transformations that add interest to the forest floor. The greens of mosses and ‘evergreen’ plants are the rich outliers in the Autumn palette.

I loved how some little creature had tucked an acorn into the thick moss that was growing up a rough-barked Pine!

An amber wetland with spikes of dead trees was surrounded with the rust and red glory of Oak trees. A water trail through the cattails made by a beaver connected him to the forest trees.

The woods were quiet except for our rustling through the fallen leaves.

Then I recognized and remembered a Grandfather Pine ahead of us on the trail. Old darkened claw marks from a bear had scarred the tree from year’s past with beads of hardened sap like amber rings on the claw print. And on the other side of the tree, there were much newer claw marks with whitened, sugary sap dripping from them. (Not so new that the sap was still wet!) Mad respect for claws that can do that to an old tree.

The backpack camp site where we were hoping to eat our snacks was occupied with tenters—lucky them to be camping on that beautiful place overlooking the lake! So we curved back through the glorious Maple trees towards a bog, one of dozens in the 10,000-acre park.

The bog was ethereal as the sun lit up the golden Tamarack trees. They weren’t quite in their full glory, as some were still tinged with green, but there is hardly anything more beautiful than a stand of golden-yellow Tamaracks before they drop their deciduous needles!

Bogs are fascinating ecosystems! Peat moss looks like a solid substrate from which all the trees and plants grow, but with only one step into the bog from the forest floor, my boot sank into the water just under the surface. That’s why only certain trees will grow there, those adapted to wet feet and acidic environments. So even while the colorful Oak seedlings germinated in the mossy bog, they don’t stand a chance of maturing there.

We circled around the bog, often walking on boardwalks over the low spots. Orange mushrooms, green moss, gray lichens, and a scattering of leaves decorated the fallen logs and ground.

All I could do was peer into the bog, into its mystery. I wondered if a bear would cross a bog. What creatures live in the floating fantasyland? These places where we cannot go capture our attention and imagination.

Colorful leaves camouflaged a colorful Fly Agaric mushroom popping from the ground in its Autumn season. This one is pretty but toxic.

The trail veered away from the bog and was covered with a golden blanket of Big-toothed Aspen leaves. Old logs, like troughs, held the shimmering leaves. Drink in the beauty.

Claw marks from a smaller-than-a-bear animal were etched into a mushroom on the trail, but soon we passed another large Pine tree that had the head-high scratches from a bear.

Another sign was a torn apart rotten log where a bear had been on a quest to find ants, grubs, or rodents.

One tree gone back to the Earth, a new one to take its place.

Towards the end of the trail, there was a wetland of rushes and grasses carving out a space in the forest of Oaks and Aspens. The most beautiful part was a ring of young Paper Birch trees standing in a singing circle close to the edge of the wetland.

There is mystery and intrigue with bears and bogs. Both are natural and necessary parts of Northern Minnesota. The water-laden peat moss is an unsteady anchor for most trees, yet others have adapted their root systems to splay out in order to stand tall. The bog plants are unique in the same way—adapting to the sometimes harsh conditions in order to thrive. The bog and the bears stand apart from passers-by (usually), even as we are in their midst. We know on whose ground we tread (or tread around.)

Autumn is a glorious time—perhaps to fill our hearts with goodness and appreciation in order for us to traverse our more difficult Winter. Life is like that—we have goodness-filled glorious moments to sustain us through our hard times. Through it all, we are walking the trail of our Life’s journey towards our true self. We begin to see our own true colors and those of the people around us. And there is always a place, a part, a piece of us that seems like a place we cannot go, a place we fear to go. It nags at us, consciously or unconsciously, and intrigues us in some wistful way. That’s where we need to go—it’s an invitation and a map. There may be bears and bogs that frighten us and deter us, but our true self is brave. Our hearts are open to receive it. Drink in the Beauty of it.

Thank you, readers! I am grateful for all of you who have joined me on this glorious Autumn walk. This post marks my 500th post of North Star Nature! I began this venture almost ten years ago (March of 2014) to share Nature’s beauty and wisdom, never dreaming I’d write 500 posts and share over 7500 photographs! A special thank you to those of you who have been with me from the beginning. If you love the great outdoors, be sure to like and share North Star Nature!

Discipline of an Explorer

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We’ve all done it. We have walked the paths of those who came before us. Few of us are ‘novel’ explorers—we are more like ‘re-explorers.’ What seems new to us may very well have been the experience of our relatives, of our ancestors, and surely of those who lived in the generations before us. In no way does that deprive us of the immense learning experience and spiritual well-being of re-exploring, but it adds a depth of meaning to the steps we take.

So it was with our third hike at Savanna Portage State Park. After our first night of sleep at the park, we planned to get up early, eat a ‘hearty breakfast,’ and hike the 5.3 mile loop of the Continental Divide Trail. One of the qualities of an explorer, according to exploreratlarge.org, is discipline. When it comes to an early morning routine, there is hardly one more disciplined than Chris. My own discipline gets dragged along behind his due to his steadfastness, his determination, and thankfully, his humor. Even though the dripping rain, that had chased us into the cabin for supper the night before, had continued with faint-heartedness through the night, Chris was up before the first glimpses of daylight. The Coleman stove whooshed and banged metal on metal as he prepared coffee and readied the ingredients for breakfast. The late-nighters who tented nearby may have been annoyed by the early bird, but we were coming precariously close to ‘burning daylight’ in Chris’ mind. After our hearty breakfast sandwich and fruit, we packed the backpack with water and snacks, slipped down the hill, and began our morning hike.

Everything was dewy and wet—thank goodness for waterproof boots—and the sun shone horizontal through the trees. The early morning birds sang songs of delight as we began to ascend the ridge that divided the water flow. On one side, the water would flow east into the St. Louis River, the Great Lakes, and the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean. On the other side, the water would flow west to Big Sandy Lake, to the Mississippi River and down to the Gulf of Mexico.

This height of land was an obstacle for the people who traveled the ‘water highways’ before roads scarred the earth. For thousands of years, by the Native Americans, by explorers, and by fur traders, a trail connected those two water highways, a trail now known as Savanna Portage. We walked a portion of the old trail that was packed by millions of historic footsteps.

We wondered what ‘dragons’ they had seen and slayed in those six miles between rivers.

We would return to a portion of the Savanna Portage trail on the last leg of our hike, but we continued north on the Continental Divide trail to an overlook of Wolf Lake and the Tamarack Lowlands. On the way, we would occasionally see wolf tracks in the sandy soil.

From the overlook, a trail continued north for a couple of miles to a remote camping site—the trail was named Jacobson Trail. The last leg of our hike was on Anderson Road Trail. After the Native Americans and fur traders, there was obviously a Scandinavian presence in this place. Were any of them my ancestors? A settlement of some kind was close, as the south heading trail was named Old Schoolhouse Trail. We passed a stump with a story, some Red-berried Elder, and an odd sinking ‘dead space’ in the forest where trees had fallen into it and few other plants grew.

We turned again to the east on Anderson Road Trail, the last leg of our triangle loop. The Savanna Portage trail ran alongside Anderson Road and at times merged with it. There were many huge Pines along the path, likely hundreds of years old. One ancient tree had tipped over, pulling up a section of earth, roots, and vegetation that must have stood twelve feet high! It was such an unusual sight to see! And the fallen tree had branches as big as old trees and spanned and sprawled through the forest and across the trail with its impressive now-horizontal height. How many travelers had this old great-grandfather tree seen in its day?

After we passed a small Tamarack bog, the last part of the trail was through a Pine forest. The wind whispered and softly whooshed through the tops of the trees. The undergrowth changed in the Pine forest that had been thinned by loggers—young Oaks and Maples grew along with the ruby-fruited Wild Rose.

At a certain point, another instrument of music joined the whispering Pines—the louder, more jubilant fluttering of the Aspen trees. We were nearing the end of our three-hour hike and still going strong with our hearty breakfast and the invigorating experience of exploring.

A couple hours later, we drove to Wolf Lake to see it from water level. It was a beautiful, wild-looking lake encircled with wispy Tamarack trees in the lowland bog. Wild Celery grew in the shallow water by the boat dock, its flat leaves floating on the surface of the water, green against blue.

But when I turned towards the sun, the floating leaves turned silver and glittered in the silver water. A shining transformation in the wild Wolf Lake. Not far from the shore, I found the silvery leaves and flowers of Pearly Everlastings—priceless treasures of our journey of exploration.

During the fur trading years, Savanna Portage was divided into ‘pauses’ in order to transport the heavy freight of furs and trading goods (not to mention the large canoes that carried it all) over the ridge from one river to the next. The men would carry 160–180 pounds of cargo at a dog trot to the first pause, unload it, stop for a smoke (according to the signage!), then trot back for another load. When everything was transported to the first pause, they would begin again to the second one. Savanna Portage had 13 pauses (so basically a half mile per pause.) It takes discipline and persistence to portage canoes and gear, and in their case, freight. As Chris and I traveled the high ridge, the Tamarack lowlands, the Pine forests, and the old Savanna Portage trail, we walked with the ghosts of Native Americans, fur traders, and explorers. We carried the discipline that had been passed down to us from our relatives. We persisted mile after mile with the encouraging music of the forest. And we discovered treasures that Mother Nature so generously offers to us all.

On a Quest for the Elusive Pitcher Plant

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Two years ago for my birthday we hiked at Mille Lacs Kathio State Park where I discovered the intriguing deep red flower of the Purple Pitcher Plant. But it was in the middle of a bog, unreachable, unattainable, elusive. So I was never able to see the actual plant—the ‘pitcher’ part, the insect-eating, carnivorous, cartoonishly-scary part of the plant. So a few days after my birthday, when I knew the Pitcher Plants would be blooming, we got up early in the morning and headed north to Lake Bemidji State Park. The boggy land between and among Lakes Bemidji, Big Bass, Timber, and Big Bog has been protected as a park since 1923. The bogs are a result of water-filled depressions formed by the receding glaciers that over the years has filled with partially decayed plant material or peat. Bogs contain decayed sphagnum peat moss which can hold water like a sponge and is used to enrich garden soil. The bog environment is cold, acidic, and low in oxygen, a rather challenging ecosystem for plants to thrive. So they have adapted by becoming efficient in the use of light, moisture, and nutrients. Many have evergreen leaves to extend the growing season, some have thick, fleshy leaves to store moisture, and many have showy flowers to attract pollinating insects, then produce huge numbers of seeds. We found our way to Bog Walk Trail, prepared for mosquito attacks, and walked through the upland woods to the bog boardwalk.

Bunchberry Dogwoods are a low-growing groundcover, a northern Dogwood with the iconic showy white flowers. A cluster of bright red berries forms after flowering.

Soon I spotted the elusive Purple Pitcher Plant flower among the Horsetails, its heavy head bent over, its stem buried in the abundant vegetation of the bog! I strained to see the base of the flower, the ‘pitcher,’ but could not see it.

My attention was drawn to a single purple flower on a smooth stem, a Dragon’s Mouth Orchid! This beautiful flower will produce up to a million seeds! That is mind bog-gling!

I did not have to walk far before I saw more Pitcher Plant flowers on their sturdy, curving stems, and this time I was just able to find the green-mouthed ‘pitcher’ at their base.

If one was walking the boardwalk even at a stroll, there are many plants and flowers that would be missed. This is a place that compels a person to look closely, to stop and peer into the green wonderland of this soft world. Twinflowers rise from a single stem, then a pair of pink, bell-shaped flowers opens above the creeping evergreen leaves. These tiny flowers (1/3″ to 1/2″) are fragrant for their diminutive size (almond scented), are part of the Honeysuckle family, and have the lovely Latin name of Linnaea borealis!

At the Mille Lacs Kathio bog, I was enthralled with the clumps of Tussock Cottongrass. At Lake Bemidji bog, a different species—Slender Cottongrass—grows. It is smaller, droopier, but no less stunning!

Large-leaved Showy Lady’s Slippers (Minnesota’s State Flower) were in the bud stage, just about to bloom. Another of the Orchid family species, the Stemless Lady’s Slipper or Moccasin Flower, was in full pink bloom.

Starflower, a type of Primrose, and Labrador Tea, a type of Heath, were abundant in the bog. Most of the Labrador Teas were past bloom, but we found some in shadier spots that were open and seemingly desirable to some insects. (Speaking of insects, we were amazingly not bothered by mosquitoes!)

I saw more and more of the nodding Purple Pitcher Plant flowers as we walked the boardwalk trail. Even when they were close to the trail and in relatively open vegetation, the Pitcher Plants were well-camouflaged. The ‘pitcher’ is a very specialized leaf in the shape of a cylinder. It is an engineering marvel with a ‘wing’ structure down the front to strengthen it when it is full of rainwater. The lip is densely covered with stiff downward-angled hairs that help glide the insects into the enzyme-rich rainwater where it drowns and is ‘digested’ so the nutrients can be used by the plant. The red-purple veining and nectar attract the insects to their demise.

We saw more bright Moccasin Flowers, a few other Dragon’s Mouth Orchids, and some Wild Lily of the Valley. The forest part of the bog was occupied by Tamarack (Larch) and Black Spruce trees who like wet feet and acidic conditions.

The Pitcher Plant flowers are in and of themselves a work of art. Their thick, waxy petals can be in all states of opening—from tight buds to open, expanded umbrellas. After the petals fall the seed capsule remains on the long stem into Fall.

The mossy floor of the bog is suspended above water and is the substrate from which the plants grow. The trees grow horizontal roots to help them stand in the wet conditions. Marsh Marigolds, with their veined round leaves, were at the end of their blooming season; we saw a few of the rich golden flowers.

As we got closer to Big Bog Lake, we began to see some cattails growing with the bog plants. Wild Calla Lilies, with their beautiful heart-shaped leaves, grew in the outlet of the lake.

Wild Blueberries were bountiful in the bog and were setting fruit.

Smaller even than the Twinflowers are the Bog Cranberry flowers (1/4″) with pinkish-white petals that curl back away from the stamens and pistil. They have viney evergreen leaves and produce a small, red fruit. Now look even more closely—at the bottom center of the photo below the small Cranberry flowers is another carnivorous plant of the bog—Round-leaved Sundew. The round, reddish tinged leaves have sticky hairs that trap and enfold insects that are digested for nutrients for the tiny plant.

The bog is a fascinating ecosystem with beautiful and interesting plants. The elusive Purple Pitcher Plants ended up being plentiful in the Bemidji bog! Their pitcher leaves turn more colorful with the sun and the progression of the season. They are a perfect example of evolutionary adaptability that all the plants of the bog display.

From my first encounter with the alluring Purple Pitcher Plant flower, I became kind of obsessed with them. I had heard of carnivorous plants, but did not realize they were right here in the wilds of Minnesota! And while they were elusive in the bogs I had visited, I was hardly a bog aficionada (well, I do have the enthusiasm and appreciation.) I had the desire to see more and learn more (a quest) and was happy to get up early to go to a place we had never been before. There are many desires in our lives that seem unreachable, unattainable, or elusive. How can we find these hard-to-catch yearnings? Being in the right place at the right time is more than just a cliché—some of our longings absolutely need to be timed correctly and situated in the right place—or the pursuit will be unreachable. It also helps to have the right people who are willing and able to walk beside us, be patient and encouraging, and who possess a kind heart and sense of humor. I’m grateful my bog boardwalking partner is all of that. Most every one of us have a bountiful life teeming with beauty, diversity, and goodness. Stop for a moment or two and peer into the wonderland that is your life on this amazing, great green Earth.

Fishing in the Clouds

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We had a wonderful western weekend over Memorial Day, and I’m anxious to share that…, but my mind wouldn’t let me skip over a couple other places we visited in May. Nature changes in leaps and bounds during May, so three weeks ago already seems and looks like months have passed. On our anniversary, we hiked with fishing pole in hand and picnic lunch in backpack to spend a whole day in the forest. Fishing is a pastime I don’t share with Chris—it seems to be one of those things that takes a measure of skill, a modicum of knowledge, and a whole lot of luck. I’m glad he fishes—he was coming back from a northern fishing trip with his Dad when we met in a one-in-a-million moment all those years ago. Fishing seems to be an enterprise in hope, and for that reason, I like the idea of it. What I captured with my camera when he was fishing that day illustrates ‘hope’ even more—he was fishing in the clouds!

What kind of pie-in-the-sky idea is that?! Exactly—it doesn’t make sense.

He throws a line into a place he cannot see. He ‘tries’ a lure or bait that might attract a certain fish. He waits. Cast, wait, repeat. The desire is there, but the outcome is unknown.

Meanwhile, I’m finding other things to look at on the mounded peninsula—flowers and new leaves on trees, fallen branches and logs that eventually disappear into soil, a tree bowing to kiss the water-clouds.

The outcome was no bites, no fish, and some weedy line—a perfectly ‘normal’ outcome from the bank of a never-before-fished-lake. But for a fisherman who likes to fish and who usually practices catch-and-release, the endeavor was not a bust. The point was to fish, not to catch. So we munched our snack of cheese and crackers as we gazed at the water-clouds, knowing full well that a cast into the unknown would happen again. We hiked on through the greening forest, amazed how the sunlight was already having trouble reaching the ground through the new green canopy.

The design marvel of emerging plants is enough to make anyone believe in ‘fishing in the clouds.’ From a packed spike of green pushing up through the Spring soil unfurls a Jack-in-the-Pulpit! What a simple, intricate, inconspicuous miracle.

There was a beautiful Tamarack bog where brilliant yellow Marsh Marigolds bloomed in profusion, and the Tamarack (or Larch trees) pushed out bundles of soft, new needles.

Along the marsh-gully, we saw an old car with tires and engine sunk into the mud. It had been there a very long time. Nature was working to re-claim it—in the mud, by the fallen trees, and by the new trees growing around and through it. We wondered how it got there, what its story was in relation to the pristine forest around it.

What was bare trunks and dried leaf litter just weeks ago was now green, growing, and dappled by sunlight.

Fishing begins with a cast, a toss into the unknown. The outcome is beyond our control. How many eggs don’t make a bird? How many baby birds don’t make it to adulthood?

Why does one tree die and slough off its bark while another is ‘stitched up’ with a wound-healing, zig-zag scar?

With Nature, the ‘tries’ are abundant. Millions of acorns fall to the ground and sprout by a miraculous, shell-splitting force. Maple seedlings cover an embankment. Dormant perennials emerge after every harsh winter and push away the old in order to grow, develop, and reproduce.

Mother Nature casts, waits, repeats. Thank goodness she does. We believe in the cycle of seasons; we depend on it. She reaches for the sky with all her abundance—she is full of hope. Yet Nature is also full of destruction and decay—many launches end in death: few seedlings will grow into a mature tree. Only a number of fish eggs will grow into an adult fish. Nature teaches us that we can’t just skip over the not-so-good parts to only embrace the beauty. We can’t skip over the waiting, the boredom, the loneliness, or the pain to get to the good stuff, to what we want. But we can keep on casting into the cloudy unknown—again and again and again. Our desires become a fling of fate; the outcome is unknown. Perhaps we will reel in a fish or a job or a mate. Nature’s odds have produced an amazing, abundant, beautiful world. Keep fishing in the clouds!

A Bog Blog

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Has your mind, body, or spirit ever been stuck in a bog?  Twenty years after graduating from college I returned to that same college with a husband, three kids, and a desire to learn.  I took a molecular biology class in one of my first semesters of graduate school that amazed and inspired me with the information that had been discovered about DNA in the twenty years since I had taken science courses.  One of the most mind-bog-gling things I needed to learn was PCR or polymerase chain reaction, a laboratory technique that multiplies thousands to millions of copies of a segment of DNA or RNA.  This technique was so foreign to me that I just couldn’t wrap my head around the concept!  My mind was in a bog of old information that couldn’t process the new information because of how radically different it was.  It took months of reading, study, labs, talks with my professor, and plenty of frustration before I was finally able to grasp it.  I went on to do a special topics class with that professor using PCR and fluorescent tags, and my understanding and appreciation for the technique grew and became routine.

In our trip to Mille Lacs Kathio State Park, we hiked a short trail behind the Interpretive Center called the “Touch the Earth” trail.  We were equipped with a pamphlet that explained various trees and vegetation along the trail, most of which were very familiar to us.  And then we came to site #7—“You are entering an unusual and fragile plant community known as a bog.  There are trees in this area, so it is technically called a bog forest.”

The boardwalk was constructed because the ground surface of this area is covered with moss with a wet area below it and could easily be damaged by people walking on it—damage that would take years to regenerate.  It was like walking into another world!  A tree had fallen and exposed the layer of water underneath the shallow ‘ground’ of  sphagnum moss.

The trees in the bog forest are mainly Tamarack and Black Spruce with a number of young Birch trees.  Birch trees don’t survive long in the bog—their roots grow downward, suitable for other forest soil, but they cannot support a taller tree in the floating soil of the bog.  The wind blows them over.  Black Spruce and Tamarack trees send out many horizontal roots that keep them more stable in the bog conditions.

Black spruce have scaly bark, short needles, and small rounded cones.

Tamarack or Eastern Larch are deciduous conifers—they turn a brilliant yellow in the fall then drop their needles for the winter.  Tamarack is the Algonquian name for the tree, meaning ‘wood used for snowshoes,’ thus describing the tough and flexible characteristics of the wood.  Tamaracks are very cold tolerant, often live in boggy areas, and have dense clusters of needles on woody spurs.

Long ago the Mille Lacs area had a higher water level, and this bog was a small lake.  When water levels dropped, grass-like sedges grew in the shallow lake eventually making a mat of dead plant material where sphagnum moss grew.  This mat of sedge and moss becomes a slowly decaying peat, a cold, acidic, and oxygen-poor environment that is only compatible for certain plants.  One of the small shrubs that grows here is Labrador Tea, an evergreen Rhododendron.

Blueberries also grow in the acidic soil, along with Bog Laurel, Leatherleaf, and Pink Lady’s Slippers, all of which bloom in April and June.

The unusual, almost eerie landscape of the bog is beautiful in its uniqueness.  Moss, lichens, roots, and fallen trees create the floating ground above the tannin-stained dark water.  It’s a graveyard of sorts of slowly decaying plant material that nourishes and sustains the next generation of bog-tolerant flora.

 

Life in the bog, the mire, the quagmire…I’ve been there in mind, body, and spirit at various times in my life.  It’s when you can’t grasp a new way of thinking or doing things, try as you may.  It’s when you are so burdened with pain or fatigue that all you can do is slowly lift your feet in the next step, pulling each foot out of the muck as it tries to suck you back in, willing yourself forward as time slows to a sloth’s crawl.  It’s when your spirit feels so fragile, so exposed that normal life can easily damage it, when stalwart ideals are no longer stable and topple over in the wind of change.  It’s when your heart is broken, and you cross a bridge into another world that you never, ever wanted to go to.  And then what?!  Well, you stay there for a while.  The changing quality of time actually becomes your friend as it forces you to examine your inner ecosystem.  You start to put out horizontal roots of awareness, courage, strength, and integrity that stabilize you—you become more tough and flexible.  You begin to notice the ‘blueberries’—not only the things that sustain you, but those that are really good for you.  Eventually, with God’s grace and days, months, or years of time, your mind, body, spirit, and heart regenerate.  You realize you are no longer in the quagmire, and you can finally see the full beauty of the bog.