Xmas Bird Count 2007

December has been a snowy month and the temperature has stayed below freezing the whole half month. Perhaps that accounts for the poor birding that was had by all in the area... as well as the snow and wind that was prevalent on the Sunday the 16th of the count. There were a lot of the regular chickadee, nuthatch and woodpecker occupants at the feeding station but when Muir and i went down to the Pilgrim river in the snowstorm, we only saw a lone bald eagle and a couple of chickadees. The eagle was flying with regular wing beats along the Pilgrim River course and was then gone. Nothing else was moving as we snowshoed a round-about course through gullies and woods. Noticed that Aholas have added a new plywood enclosed deer stand to their farm complete with a Cabela's timed feeder that meters out a bit of corn each day as bait. I wondered if the fat spike buck that I've seen eating apples by the garden goes there to feed.
After our snowshoe cruise Lynn, Muir and I drove over to Nara Nature Trails and snowshoed down the boardwalks and across the ice a couple of times and out to Princess point and around the sewage plant and then back to the car without seeing anything living nor even tracks... except at Pilgrim Terrace there was a man and his dog out for a walk.

Lynn bundled against the elements at the entrance to the nara Trails boardwalk that goes down along the Pilgrim River and sloughs at it's outlet into Portage Lake.

Lynn, Don and Dixie out at Princess Point. Dixie gamely accompanied us on the whole jaunt with a badly split toe nail for her efforts. Her arthritis seems to be better this year and she has put on a bit more weight to help insulate her from the cold. Her favorite spot this time of year is by the wood heater.

Muir, talking to his girlfriend with his cell phone; on the trail of the elusive rare bird, that have become more common (witness the Northern Cardinals that we were too far north for until recently) in these days of global warming.

New Boots

Bought me a pair of cowhide boots, to be prepared for winter walks. The shoemaker praised them because they were made a year ago. I feel like an armed man now. The man who has bought his boots feels like him who has got in his winter’s wood. There they stand beside me in the chamber, expectant, dreaming of far woods and wood-paths, of frost-bound or slushy roads, of being bound with skate-traps and clogged with ice-dust. H.D. Thoreau, Journal, Dec.3, 1856

I also got a new pair of boots - mukluks to fit the environment that I like to be in. Though not indigenous to the north woods hereabout, with their rubber soles they do quite nicely on those days when the temperature rises to thaw. .I have always felt good in a pair of soft soled boots in the winter time. I got my dad's Maine hunting shoes, a soft soled rubber bottom leather topped boot when I was in junior high school, that I would wear in the woods and on my paper route that I walked in the winter. They were (and still are) made in Maine by LL Bean and are very serviceable for wet fall conditions and in winter, if it isn't too cold.
When I went to Alaska I started wearing Nunamiut - made kamiks, made of caribou hide, with the fur turned in (caribou bull neck hide) for the sole and the upper portion of the boot from the caribou leg with the fur turned out. Light and very warm; not to be used above zero Fahrenheit or else the moisture woild degrade the skin and it would rip. Many spinoffs to the Inuit "mukluk" have been devised, also native tanned moccasins - all originals and later models are light and warm due to their flexibility. Denny Akeya, a St Lawrence Island Siberian Yupic told me that he quit being able to wear their sealskin mukluks, though he wished that he could, because as he became an adult, his weight on his feet didn't give him enough support with mukluks. Fortunately I never had that problem.
Lynn would make smoke tanned moose hide bottom and unbleached canvas top mukluks and moccasins when we lived in Eagle. They looked a bit like the Steger mukluks that are in the picture. I bought this pair last year in the Steger Store in Ely, during a sale that they were having. The advantage with these mukluks is that they have commercially tanned moose hide that , though less porous and insulating than smoke tanned, is more durable and the rubber bottoms are grippy and not affected by wet conditions. With a wool felt liner, they are warm, flexible (which keeps the foot warm and comfortably circulating) and with good traction.
A friend of mine who I guided dog team trips with, Scott N. once, in a late season trip, got his Steger mukluks thoroughly soaked for 3 days in rain. The mukluks were none the worse for wear and his feet did O K too. By the end of that trip we were mushing on bare ground!

I still have my old Steger's that I got while I was living in Eagle. Though worn, they are still serviceable. They have a shorter canvas top which is handy and serviceable.I have to keep sole saver coating, a rubber cement-like substance brushed on them after letting a dog sled trip client with cold feet use them one below zero morning. I told her to keep them away from the camp fire, but she forgot and melted the rubber bottom and ever after they have been sticky unless the sole saver is applied to them. I got Lynn a pair like my old ones for winter treks and camps. Much warmer, lighter and less "clunky than Sorel pak boots.

Each year, since i lived in Anaktuvuk Pass, I feel much like Thoreau when it is time to get out the winter moccasins or mukluks. That sense of excitement to be wearing true boots of the north, Native designed and adapted for the northland.
I now have a pair of 3 season "wrap-around top" moccasins from Steger Co. that I've used for snowshoe use as well as using when the conditions are dry. On my feet the soft soles feel right.

Beside the Steger "Expedition" mukluks is one of my ski boots that are seeing a lot of use with the beautiful snows that we are now having.

Thanksgiving 2007 and Beyond

Some are saying that it has been 10 years since we've had the start of a winter like we're having. In my northern perspective, I couldn't be more delighted.

Thanksgiving was a long distance car trip over to Grand Marais, MN to spend it with Kate and Matt at Kate's cabin out by the shores of Lake Superior, a couple of miles from the village of Grand Marais. Lynn and I took off out of Houghton early on Thanksgiving day, bringing the cooked turkey and many of the fixings. We arrived in the early afternoon with Kate and Matt waiting for us. Matt was looking very urban in his wool and cashmere pea jacket, just arrived from Minneapolis. We were, beyond dinner bringing Kate a convection oven and our futon so that she would have a couch and bed for other guests who may visit her. Her little cabin was cozy for the dinner with the 3 of us and her boyfriend Nathaniel, who came for dinner in spite of having a bad cold.
The next day Muir called from Duluth and said that he was coming up to Grand Marais to visit with his girlfriend Katelyn and go hiking on the North Country Trail. We had a nice visit and evening with all of us together. In the early afternoon Muir and Katelyn left and went to a section of the trail for camping and hiking. We had a fun time getting to know Kate's village a bit better and having a fun time doing a bit of shopping (something I ordinarily dislike) with a purchase of a sale dutch oven and a couple of books. Ordered out pizzas from "Sven and Ole's " and made trout chowder.
We drove Matt in to Duluth for his bus ride back to U of M in the Twin Cities. Walked the trails at Gooseberry Falls on the way. We also went up to the Miller Hill mall to buy him some needed clothes at special discounted holiday prices... ain't consumerism wonderful?
We had left our dog Gabe back in Houghton in a cold kennel that a friend had. He is much more capable of living outdoors than Dixie, Muir's short haired Staffordshire terrier. Dixie couldn't really be left in an unheated place and in order to put them in a commercial kennel, dogs need to have a kennel cough shot, which Dixie doesn't have. So she came along with us.She actually did very well on the trip.
It was great to see Kate's living and work environment, to have Thanksgiving in her little cabin and with all 5 of us together it was very special.

Within a couple of days of getting back to the U P we started to get snow and that has been the story now for weeks! As a skier friend of mine said recently: "This winter is like they all used to be."

Lynn, Kate and Dixie along Lake Superior. We were out for a walk after a Thanksgiving feast.

Matt, Muir and Kate at Kate's cabin above Lake Superior, about 3 miles out of Grand Marais, Minnesota. Thanksgiving, 2007.

Wild Apples

"The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander through old orchards of great extent, now all gone to decay, all of native fruit which for the most part went to the cider-mill. But since the temperance reform and the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples, such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I fear that he who walks over these hills a century hence will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples. Ah, poor man! there are many pleasures which he will be debarred from. "
H.D. Thoreau, Journal Nov. 16, 1850

The era of wild apples is still going strong here in the UP of Michigan. There are by far more wild apples than cultivated in our area. A favorite pastime for us is to sample the apples from the once-cultivated trees as well as the innumerable volunteer apple trees hereabout
Favored fall activities are gathering bushels of the choice hand picked fruit for apple sauce, cider and pies.
Early summer apples, spicy and some bitter like crab apples. Gnarled, twisted, contorted trees producing sweet fruit. Some hard and bitter fruit mellowing and becoming juicy and sweet given frost and aging. A whole world of heritage apples in the woods, hedgerows and lanes of the Upper Peninsula...

The large electric powered apple press
that produces 5 gallons of juice each time it squeezes

Fields of November

The title "Fields Of November" is taken from a Norman Blake song and album of that title. My old FM disc jockey and music aficionado friend Michael Curtis sent me the album on cassette tape when I was living at Anaktuvuk Pass in 1976. Michael could never have realized how much those carefully boxed up tapes meant to me during the long and cold winters there in that high arctic mountain pass, where the sun went down, not to return for months. I would come back from teaching the Nunamiut students, feed my dogs by headlamp light and then go into my little cabin and cook dinner while listening to the tunes from another world.
I remember going for a walk,as Principal of the new school on St. Lawrence Island, looking at the lowland tundra with a wind blown striation of snow crust with Blake's song going around in my head. That tundra landscape would begin to look like a Midwestern landscape, especially if I scrunched up my eyes as I walked. Music can be magic!

Lynn and our eldest son's dog, Dixie in our upper field, out for a walk to try some of the late apples still on trees in the hedge rows and woods. This was a superlative year for apples at our place, in spite of the drought. Apples this year were extra sweet and made cider so sweet that we would dilute it with water.

The vegetable garden on the field near our house has been through many transitions over the years. One of the first garden acts that Lynn tried was the Ruth Stout Method to prepare the spot for a garden. In this method Lynn, with help from the whole family, lay down newspapers over the thick field grass, after first cutting the grass to stubble. Over the newspaper she lay grass and many broken bales of hay and straw. The layers were all wet down and then we took off for Alaska for the winter. When we returned in the spring the garden plot layers were composted down and filled with earth worms. The thick turf was composted down and easily worked and ready to plant without having to spade up the whole area in preparation for planting. I was amazed upon looking at the newspaper and straw mulch in the spring to see how the earth worms, moisture and warm soil had composted down to soil over the winter. I have since learned that the deep snow pack insulates the ground so that it hardly freezes where it is not disturbed so it is actively decomposing through most of the winter.
Having a garden in south central and then the interior of Alaska had made Lynn prefer raised beds for gardening. The raised beds had helped to get the seed beds up off the cold soil for better growing conditions. Lynn has continued down here to prefer raised beds, though permafrost is non-existent. Lynn mulches the walkways between the raised beds to control weeds and heavy mulch around all the plantings keeps down grass and weeds as well as retains moisture.
The deer, hare and other animals made gardening a bit of an extra challenge but the electric fence that we put up this year made it easier to not end up with the garden nibbled down by deer at night. The little solar powered box and battery seemed to keep them out for once!
Muir and his girlfriend Katelyn want to help plant an expansion on the garden so the area of the picture outside the fence is the expansion. It should be all ready by the spring time.

Our wood yard, where a lot of my time is put in during autumn. I am working on next winter's heating wood with a lot of help from Muir. The jumble of wood in the foreground is yellow birch and maple that Muir has taken while out grouse hunting with his friend Kyle. He cuts it off of logging sites, loads it in his truck and brings it home where I wheel barrow and dump it, making a long continuous pile that is then split with wedges, sledge hammer and maul; stacked and covered with long and narrow tarps. As Thoreau said,"Wood warms you twice, once when you cut it and a second time when you burn it." I would say that there is a lot more warming than twice with all the cutting, moving, splitting and stacking.

Fires of November

The fires of November, as viewed in our woodstove here, are often burning too hot for the variable weather conditions or else are smoldering and smoking to add just a bit of heat to the house as the thermometer hovers just above freezing.

The snow sifted down a bit last night as the temperature remains below freezing. The weatherperson claims that the weather will warm and then the snow will melt and autumn will continue...
I hear that up on the Upper Yukon that winter has been holding sway for quite some weeks now. I remember with fondness being out on the snow with dog team by this time every year and safely mushing on the River during Thanksgiving. Somehow the winter that we moved down here in the Keweenaw to is not quite as enjoyable or prolonged enough to suit me.

Heading over to Marquette and up from there to Big Bay for a retreat with Earthkeepers this afternoon. Earthkeepers appears to be morphing into a different organization with the disappearance of one of the real fund gathering organizations from the group.
The northern Shrike has made at least one appearance in the side yard each day. I haven't seen it take a bird or mouse yet in this probably fruitful area of brushy fields and gullies with small streams and mixed woods hunting ground. A large male hairy woodpecker is lording over a female hairy and other downy woodpeckers, trying to keep both suet feeders to himself. This requires him to fly from tree to tree over and over.

In the Nov.5 issue of the New Yorker there is a quite excellent article article by Raffi Khatchadourian entitled "Neptune's Navy", Paul Watson's wild crusade to save the oceans. Paul Watson has been an enigma in the conservation movement with his firebrand mode of operation in trying to save marine mammals from man's predation. Katchadourian answered many of the questions that I have had about Watson and gave me a great deal of background on this highly gifted activist and author.
Sea Shepherd, Watson's organization always rides the far edge of legality on the high seas with their blockade tactics and sometimes out-and-out destroying of opponent's ships violating the International Whaling Commission's moratorium on taking endangered whales. Sea Shepherd's crusade against bottom trawling and man's destruction of the ocean ecosystems is raising awareness though corporate and governmental shills are dead-set against him. Yes, he is a modern day pirate and no he hasn't killed anyone in his crusade. Totally in the tradition of Ed Abbey.

First Lake Effect Snow

A look out from our front door stairs this morning at the blanket of snow. The garden cart had been used to haul cord wood to the rack on the front porch and not put away the day before.

Snowed-in Yellow Mums ...

A horse chestnut tree, still not having lost all of its chlorophyl, caught by the snow. This tree, somewhat uncommon to my knowledge, is on the slope at the back of our house, nestled in among apple, willow and spruce trees. It's nuts are a favorite of squirrels.

Today we awoke late after a night of gusting winds and driving snow. A white world in gray scale background led me out of doors to shovel, take a few pictures and finish burying the new copper propane line. My oldest son Muir had split up a big pile of maple wood that was waiting to be stacked for next year, but it could wait a day more for stacking. Too much to see and do around the house.
The bird feeding station was filled with hungry birds and for the 3rd day a Northern Shrike came around, flying in and scattering the chickadees and nuthatches in panic. I haven't seen the "butcher bird" make a kill, though I did see him face down and cause a blue jay to leave his perch. The shrike was an especially austere sight today with the snow as background.