Gearing Up for Green Up

On Tuesday, I joined some neighbors and friends to help unload trees for the Gunflint Green Up weekend. We met up at the Seagull Guard Station and waited for the truck to arrive and for the work to begin. It wasn't long before a large roll-off trailer opened up to reveal this view of tree seedlings. Thousands of little red pines, waiting to be unloaded, and soon to be planted into our neck of the woods.

We got to work, forming a line of workers, similar to a bucket brigade. While two fellows unloaded, we passed them down the line, and then they were placed on to the ground in a shady area.

Somewhere along the way of their journey from nursery to the Gunflint Trail, they encountered snow. That added a fair amount of weight to each styrofoam flat. Since we had temps near fifty today, I'm hoping that it melted the snow off of them, and warmed them up a bit for Saturday's planting.

Tomorrow I am going to town to pick up our own batch of trees, courtesy of Hedstrom's Lumber company. Next week, we'll be planting in our backyard, then chasing the deer away so they do not eat the tender little trees. I think that the deer consider them to be like baby lettuces, a feast just waiting for them. We try to make up for the deer activity by countering with sheer numbers. I don't know who is ahead, but we'll keep on trying.

Woodpeckers Everywhere!

Wood peckers are in abundance lately. While out feeding the donkeys one morning, Greg saw a pileated woodpecker up near the pasture. When I stepped out on the back porch, I saw one fly overhead, and then heard it call to another. Greg also saw a downy, one of the smallest woodpeckers, working on the wood of the bell tower. This little guy joins the big red-headed woodpecker that came home with us from Montana a few years ago. That large one lives year-round on the side of the tower. The fellow who makes him and all of his relatives has a woodshop in the small town of Ryegate . Greg read about this man in a book about the things one finds on the back roads, and he wanted to stop by to buy a woodpecker from him. His name is Earl, and his woodpecker cutouts are fairly distinct. After purchasing our first one, we traveled on and began to notice that several other folks had done the same. Those red-headed cutouts were spotted on homes, barns and fences within several miles of this small town.

On subsequent trips out west, we’ve stopped and purchased two other woodpeckers from Earl. These, too, have migrated back to Minnesota with us, and have found new homes. When Greg saw the downy woodpecker on the bell tower, he knew that Earl’s bird wouldn’t mind sharing the territory.

Another bird of the same family that I watch for each year is the yellow-bellied sapsucker. Just saying that name out loud is fun! For several years, one of these little guys would make his way back to Heston’s Lodge, and would start to peck on an old piece of plywood that was nailed to a tree. That plywood served as the back board for a thermometer that eventually broke and fell off the tree. The board remained, and that yellow-bellied sapsucker loved to tackle it as a personal project each spring. I would first notice it by the sound it makes when pecking….It starts off with a regular cadence, but then peters out with an irregular pattern. For that reason, it is easy for my mind to recognize it, even when I am not actively listening for it. Sometime in the last year, the board finally got pulled off of the tree. I think that I heard the bird the other day, but I have yet to see it. I guess we should have left that board in place for a while longer. If for no other reason, it served the purpose of letting me spot my annual sapsucker.

If At First You Don't Succeed....

...try and try again to have spring come. I've lost count as to which attempt at spring we are on. One friend on Saturday night said that he was trying to adjust to his third winter in six months. This one really does seem endless, but in true Minnesota fashion, we can always find someplace that had it worse. When I talked to Paul on Saturday, he said that they had received between six and twelve inches in western Minnesota. Makes our dusting look great. I think the most challenging part was to see it snowing so often over the weekend. The ground melted most of it through the day, but it was getting difficult to remain cheerful while seeing so many flakes in the air.

We did have some honest-to-goodness seasonal weather a week ago, enough so to prompt us to take a picnic up to the end of the trail. The snow didn't let us drive the full campground loop, but we were able to walk into a site and enjoy our favorite picnic foods. We will be there this coming weekend, too, as this is the area that we have been assigned for planting trees during the Gunflint Green-Up. Greg has been planting trees since I first met him, and our kids have grown up knowing that each year, they will have a quota of trees to plant on our property. It's been very satisfying to see these trees grow up. We look forward to planting in the forest, this time around, and then to watching these trees in years to come.

This is a shot of the river from April of 2007, when Greg and I went up there. I still had a walking cast on my foot, so I didn't do much hiking around. The water level was down last year, so Greg was able to do a lot of rock-hopping on the river.

And finally, a view from April of 2006.

The Smoldering Trestle

Well, here it is eleven months later, and the Ham Lake Fire is still burning. Just a small part, but it will become worrisome if it isn't out by summer. There is an old railroad trestle that the Pigeon River Lumber Company built by laying logs across a ravine, just northeast of Bridal Falls. It was perhaps 200 feet long and 15 to 20 feet high. Just solid logs. They spread gravel on it to fill the gaps, then laid ties and tracks. Most of the track was later pulled up, maybe to be used again, or maybe just scrapped. I don't know, but I remember hiking there as a kid, and seeing some pieces of track near the south end. The trestle has served mostly as a snowmobile trail in recent years.

Then, last May, it caught fire. Smoldered, mostly. And it smolders still. Parts of it will jump into flame now and again. We visited it several times this winter and it was fun to see the plumes of steam and smoke amongst all the snow. Even the gravel was hot. The U. S. Forest Service finally decided they would blow it up to get at the hot spots. It seemed to help some, but it's still not out.

Recently, our neighbor John and I took our ski-doos down to check out how it looked all blown up. It looks mostly the same. But there were some exposed areas of burning log that perfectly resembled small ovens. Two days later, with these ovens in mind, Barb and I rode back to the trestle with a pack of bratwurst.

When we arrived, the sky was full of ravens and eagles. There was a kill just to the west, and the birds were pretty intent on cleaning it up. Two of the eagles chased each other, chirping and whooshing by. Every so often, the lower one would flip onto its back, talons extended. Then they would seperate and come back together. Eventually, they tired of this and lit on trees to contemplate their meal, or maybe just to rest.

We hiked across the trestle. After carving some forked sticks, we roasted up several brats until they blistered, then stood around the smoking trestle enjoying our lunch. Because of this stubborn remnant, the Ham Lake Fire is the longest burning wildfire in Minnesota's history.