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 … [Read More...]
Walking With Wolves at Sunrise
After our Summer Solstice bear sighting, we returned to our campsite and went to bed in the evening light. We had plans to do an early morning hike on the Sunrise Trail that followed the St. Croix River. We slept fairly well, considering our questions of whether we could sleep on the ground at our age, and with thanks to 21st century sleeping pads. I woke at about 4:30, rested and ready to go, so we got up in the mostly dark, got ready, and hit the trail. The forest was dark, though we walked without headlamps. There was just enough light to see the trail—we placed our feet by feel. It was quiet and calm, a rather magical time of day, and it felt like we were participating in the waking of a morning. We came to a small meadow, and the morning light opened up to us, and a haze of mist lifted from the grasses.
After we left the loamier soil of the woodland trail, we walked on sand, and with the light and with the sand, we noticed that we were not walking the trail alone. The wolf tracks were as fresh as those we were laying down. We wondered if he had followed the trail by night or if he had just beat us to the Sunrise Trail this morning.
We had been hoping to be close enough to the River to see the sun rising over it, but we were up on a ridge with trees between us and it. Every once in a while I could catch a glimpse of water. When the sun did rise, the undeterred shine of light made its way through the trees in spectacular fashion!
We walked for a little over an hour until we began to lag in energy and in hopes of getting close to the river. Could we make it to Sunrise Landing? I had thought so with the trail marks we had passed. We heard an awful squawking call and saw a pair of vultures fussing with one another. Then in the sight of the vultures, we stopped to look at a map and realized we weren’t even close to Sunrise Landing! So we ate our breakfast bars and drank some water with the realization that we really weren’t as great at this as we thought! Lol! We decided from then on, it wasn’t how many miles we were able to do but how many hours we were out there trying.
We turned around to go back to our campsite. The ever-optimistic, ever-reliable sun shone its encouragement on us and the forest dwellers.
When nearly back to the woods behind the campground, we saw a sign that said ‘Sunrise Landing—8 miles’ that we had missed in the dark. Well, no wonder we weren’t close! Perhaps the wolf was already there.
We cooked our breakfast over the campfire, packed up our things, found out from a neighboring camper they had just seen a bear behind their campsite, and determined that we would hike around the prairie and horse camp area before leaving the park.
The whole trail was sandy, making walking a bit harder, but at the same time, the warmth and feel of it felt therapeutic.
We saw two people walking and two people on horseback and lots more wolf tracks…
and wolf scat covered with butterflies.
Summer flowers bloomed and attracted scores of butterflies. The dry heat released scents of pine needles and sweet milkweed.
Wild turkeys and deer, along with the wolves, accompanied us on our trail, whether previously or in person.
Name some things people are afraid of and the list will probably contain ‘snakes,’ ‘wolves,’ ‘bears,’ ‘spiders,’ and ‘the dark.’ It’s much easier to put our fears upon an animal, a person, or entity. We can hold that fear away from us–-if we can hold them away from us. But rarely is the fear of a certain animal or set of persons the real fear—they are place-holders for the deeper, scarier fears that reside in our hearts. Fear of loss of control, fear of ‘what if,’ fear of aloneness, fear of irrelevance, and fear of unworthiness. So what if we just walk with it? Walk with the wolves and the bears, the spiders and snakes who were there and didn’t show up this trip. Walk with the dark, the doubts, the limitations, and the vultures. It can be hard and therapeutic at the same time. It’s easy—and fearful—to think the light is only shining on certain trees or persons or entities, but the fact remains that we all walk in the dark and we all walk in the light. Thanks be to the Sun.
The Day the Sun Stands Still
The first thing to greet us as we pulled into Wild River State Park was a most unusual sign! “Please, BRAKE FOR SNAKES.” Nobody would need to tell us to do so—we Brakes are a snake-loving family, especially our son Aaron. You could say, “Brakes for snakes” and be perfectly correct!
Chris and I were going camping on the Summer Solstice for the first time, just the two of us, in over three decades. It was an experiment. Did we remember how to do this? Could we do it? Would we want to do this again? And most importantly, could we sleep?! Since it was a Monday, the campground had plenty of available spots; we checked in, parked in our campsite, and headed out to hike after a brief rain shower.
We hiked along the Old Logging Trail, a paved bike/walking trail, to the Visitor Center where we had our picnic lunch, looked out over the trees to catch a glimpse of the wild St. Croix River, and learned how Vice President Walter Mondale had worked tirelessly to protect the natural resources of Minnesota and the United States, including the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968 that helped preserve this river. We left the paved trail and walked toward the River after discovering a colorful and unique Chicken of the Woods mushroom.
The trail dropped from the ridge through fern-covered hillsides and milkweed patches teeming with butterflies. There is something exquisitely beautiful about the fair pink and green ball of about-to-bloom buds of the Common Milkweed flower.
The trail turned and followed the River for over a mile and a half and would bring us back to the campground. The St. Croix River is a large river originating in northwest Wisconsin and creating the boundary for Minnesota and Wisconsin for 130 miles of the River.
King of this part of the River is an Eastern Kingbird. The genus-species name is Tyrannus tyrannus, an indication of his territorial behavior. He will harass crows, hawks, even Great Blue Herons who ‘intrude’ on his territory.
The ‘backwaters’ of the St. Croix were interesting little ecosystems of sometimes stagnant water, beaver activity, damsel and dragonflies, and pretty patches of Forget-me-nots.
We heard the distinct ‘talking’ of an eagle to its young ones. Looking up, I could barely see the nest, but then discovered who was doing the ‘talking.’ It was an old-looking eagle—pale eyes and rather disheveled feathers—who has seen many more humans than humans who have seen him.
St. Croix River was used as a means of moving logs from the northern forests to the mills during the logging era in the late 1800’s. A pile-driven dam was constructed at this site in 1890, so logs could be let through at an even pace, after they had experienced numerous, humungous log jams that halted production at the mills. The last ‘log drive’ was in 1912, and the dam was removed in 1955.
When we returned to the campground, a deer was wandering through the trees between the campsites with no cares about the people wandering through. I practically had to shoo it from the door of the outhouse when I went there…where I was greeted with a sign and warning about other visitors.
Okay—fair warning. We set up our humble campsite and settled in for the longest day of the year. As the sun disappeared behind the trees around our campsite, I decided that I wanted to get a picture of the sunset on the Summer Solstice. We drove to an observation deck that overlooked the Amador Prairie—after stopping for the deer that were crossing the road.
The prairie was full of deer looking this way and that way, running, leaping, and grazing.
The sun was still shining so brightly on the horizon that I could barely look at it, so I found other things to look at while we waited for the sun to set. The almost full moon was already high in the sky; a couple of bucks with velveted antlers roamed the edge of the woods.
The purple flowers of a tendrilled Vetchling(?) picked up the purple color in the sundrenched spears of Bluestem grass. It takes a long time for the sun to set on the longest day of the year. I was over taking pictures of deer. I lounged against the boards while looking to the west into the bright orb of sun. I joked to Chris, “Where’s that bear when you need him?!” Not two minutes later, as he looked over my shoulder, he very matter-of-factly said, “There’s a bear over there.” What?@! I turned and looked at a very dark, moving object way over by the trees.
Sure enough, there was my bear!
But it wasn’t a ‘he’ and it wasn’t just one. It was a mama bear with two little cubs bounding along with her, mostly hidden in the tall grass.
Solstice is derived from the Latin words sol meaning ‘sun’ and sistere meaning ‘to stand still.’ On this day, the North Pole is tipped directly towards the sun, making it seem like the sun is standing still.
We didn’t see any snakes that day, but we experienced the exquisitely beautiful about-to-bloom season of summer. Or are we more like the Swedes who celebrate the Solstice as midsummer, the height of the warm, sunshiny season? However it falls, the longest day does hold some magic worth noting. The magic of empty-nest experimenting with pre-children pastimes. The magic of flowers and butterflies, birds and dragonflies, wild rivers and sweeping prairies. But most of all, for me that day, the magic of seeing my first bears in the wild—just when I needed them.