A Close-ish Encounter with a Fox

The curious fox after I crouched down. No, it did not obey the “Danger Thin Ice” sign.

My office sits on a manmade island in the Duluth-Superior Harbor. Its windows overlook a stretch of water that leads to the mainland. In addition to water, sky and ice, the view sometimes includes animals like coyotes, bears, groundhogs, birds (lots of waterbirds!), otters, rabbits, and foxes.

This winter, a fox has been frequenting the island. I don’t think it lives here – I don’t see its tracks that often, but maybe the island is one of its winter getaways.

The other day as I was transcribing an interview, I saw the fox pass my office window. It was headed toward the slope along ice and snow-covered water. I leapt out of my chair and grabbed my phone to take pictures. It was cold that day, in the single digits, so I remembered to take my jacket but not my gloves (can’t take pictures with gloves on).

I trotted out the office door and carefully looked around the corner toward the harbor. The fox was far out on the ice by now, but as I stepped away from my office building, it must have noticed my movements and it stopped, looking at me intently.

I took a few photos, but (as you can see) the fox was too distant for anything good. My hands were getting cold, so I put them into my jacket pockets along with my phone. I waited to see what the fox would do. It just stood, watching me.

I wished the fox would come closer. Inspired, I crouched down so that the fox couldn’t see me because of the small hill of snow that lined the slope leading down to the ice. Soon, the fox’s head popped up above the snow hill, his/her eyes still trained on me. Appealing to the fox’s curiosity worked!

I took a few more photos from that vantage. The fox was still too far away. I knew that food was the only thing that might lure it closer. I didn’t have any and don’t really like the idea of feeding wild animals, so I just stayed in my crouch, enjoying the fox’s undivided attention. Its fur was fluffy and full, its color a rich red – quite a handsome animal.

Putting my phone and hands back into my pockets was awkward at this angle so, my icy hands soon told me it was time to go back inside. Besides, I also realized the fox probably thought I was going to give it a handout. I’m sure other people must have. I didn’t want to tease it any longer, so I stood and went into the office.

When I looked out my window again, the fox had moved back onto the ice, but it was still staring intently at the office door. Maybe it thought I was going to come back out with some food. Maybe it missed me, ha ha. It waited a few minutes, walked further, stopped and stared again. This went on several more times before the fox gave up and trotted back to the mainland shore.

Despite the interruption in my work for pay, I felt like I accomplished a lot that day during a few minutes spent communing with a fox.

Pondering Peregrines

Pergrine falcon. Photo by Frank Cone on Pexels.com

One summer, not long ago, I was walking down my home street in Duluth when a pigeon came streaking above it, like the proverbial bat out of hell. A flock of pigeons lived in an old school building on the end of my street. Seeing pigeons around was not unusual, but I’d never seen one fly so fast. In another few seconds, a peregrine falcon zoomed by in pursuit.

This minidrama was a first for my quiet neighborhood, as far as I know. The birds were too far away for me to see if the pigeon was doomed, but witnessing the chase was definitely exciting.

Not long ago, peregrines were classified as an endangered species in Minnesota and the rest of the country. They were delisted federally in 1999 and in Minnesota in 2013, although they are still considered a species of special concern.

I’ve had the privilege of documenting and even helping a bit with their recovery, so seeing one fly down my street did my heart good. It all began in the spring of 1985 when I was the environmental reporter for the University of Minnesota college newspaper, “The Minnesota Daily.” A photographer and I were invited to the top of the IDS Tower (also known as the Multifoods Tower, the tallest structure in the city at that time) for a peregrine falcon media event. Staff from the university’s raptor center and biology department were going to install chicks that had hatched in a hack box that had been newly established atop the tower.

Hack boxes are large wooden boxes with a nest inside them. Young birds of prey grown from eggs that were either captive bred or taken from wild nests are placed inside the boxes a couple of weeks before they fledge (start trying to fly). In the meantime, the birds are closely looked after and provided food without too much human contact. In a few days, the box is opened, and the birds can start stretching their wings, so to speak. They are still fed until they are self-sufficient.

Why was it a good idea to introduce falcons into the middle of the city? Well, Minneapolis contained plenty of food for the falcons (pigeons), the skyscraper mimicked their preferred habitat (steep cliffs), natural enemies were scarce, and it was an easy place for researchers to access.

I remember the excitement when one of the researchers (Pat Redig) took a squawking, fluffy baby falcon out of a carrier to put into the box. As he did, he described the plight of the birds and the concept behind hacking. Photographers clicked away and reporters scribbled in their notebooks. We were able to wander around atop the building and look over the impressive edge, 51 stories high – a memorable experience in itself.

A pre-event story I wrote about that news conference ended up being 40 newspaper column inches long. This was longer than usual. My editor (Doug Iverson) asked me to justify why he should give me such a large space. I don’t remember what I said (probably something like, “because peregrine falcons are cool!”), but it must have worked because he didn’t cut its length. The post-event story I wrote made page 1 of the newspaper, which was a big deal to this cub reporter.

The next time peregrines came into my life was a couple years later when I was a summer volunteer for the Forest Service on the LaCroix Ranger District in Cook, Minnesota. My boss (Steve Hoecker), was a falconer and he was involved in the recovery effort. A hack box was being constructed on one of the iron ore mine pits nearby in Virginia, MN. Like the IDS Tower, the mine featured steep cliffs that peregrines prefer.

My memory of this experience is hazier than the IDS Tower event, but I think I helped Steve scramble box construction materials down the steep banks of the mine. I took photos and covered the story for the local newspaper.

The next time I saw a falcon, it was in the wild. I was hiking on Isle Royale, a national park island in Lake Superior in the early 1990s with a group from an Audubon Society camp, when a peregrine shot across and above the trail in front of us, like a kamikaze jet. The island features some steep cliffs as does the Canadian shore not far away where the falcons could nest. I remember thinking that maybe all the work being done to restore the falcons was beginning to pay off.

After that, my last experience with a falcon (before seeing the one on my street) was in downtown Rochester, Minnesota. It happened during the winter of 2009 when I was working at Mayo Clinic in public affairs. I lived within walking distance of my office. As I trudged along on cold winter days and evenings, a strange call of a bird echoed loudly against the clinic building walls. The call was familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place it. And what kind of bird would still be in Minnesota in February, for goodness sakes?

It took me a few months, but I finally figured out that the obnoxious bird call that accompanied my walking commutes was a falcon. They had been hacked atop one of the clinic buildings. I think I was even able to attend some sort of celebration event about the project at Mayo that year.

If you’d like more information about the history of peregrine recovery in Minnesota, a good article can be found here.

So, it seems like peregrines have been following me around ever since my first encounter with them in downtown Minneapolis. Or have I been following them around? Maybe we’ve been following each other. In any event, their recovery is a good news story in a world beset by so many environmental problems.

The Top 5 Meanders of 2021

Thank you, dear readers, for meandering around with me again this past year. Although our travels and musings were not as far-flung as in the past, we tried to make the best of things despite Covid. We narrowly escaped being infected just recently and hope you have remained healthy.

Here are the five top posts from this year, along with news about an exciting project I have in the works.

But first – a couple more numbers: views almost doubled again this year, with 47,600. My blog has about 700 followers.

An image of one of my favorite commercials, courtesy of Progressive Insurance.

The #1 new post this year was “A Keen Grasp of the Obvious.” I wrote it in homage to the Progressive Insurance commercials that feature Dr. Rick,” a pseudo-therapist who tries to ensure his customers (patients) don’t turn into their parents once they become homeowners (a.k.a. parentomorphosis). The commercials earlier this year reminded me of a saying one of my high school friends used to espouse. Several more commercials in the series have aired since then, and I still like them all! Other people must like them too, if they are finding my blog. If I had a second chance at a career, I’d like to work at whatever agency produced these ads.

#2: “A Review of the Lungplus Device.” This gadget is distributed by a Duluth-area woman. It’s a mouth-worn humidity and heat exchanger you can use while cross-country skiing to make your lungs happier. Yes, it works, and yes, it makes you look like a dork. But it’s worth it to have happy lungs.

#3: “Letting go of the Past.” The elevatorized Baby Butler was a combination highchair, play table, and bed for young children that was manufactured in the 1950s and 60s. I survived being placed in the contraption as a baby and in this post, describe the process of letting go of it.

#4: “A Time for Photography: Madeline Island.” This was about a life-changing photography class I took at the Madeline Island School for the Arts on a small island in Lake Superior. It features some of my favorite photos from the trip. Because I took the class for work, and I work for a public university funded by taxpayers, the photos are available for reuse. BUT, just a reminder that photos appearing in my blog that have my signature on them are ones I took on my own time with my own equipment and are not for reuse without permission.

#5: “The Path of Totality.” One of my short stories based on the 2017 eclipse was printed in a local literary journal. This post is about how I developed the story idea and what I hope to do with the collection of which it is a part. I’m still looking for an agent for this collection, hint, hint. Although I’m not having much luck with that.

Since you’ve read down this far, I have news to impart. During a bout of insomnia in the wee hours of the morning about a month ago, I got the idea to create a northern Minnesota memoir collection of the “best” stories from my blog over these past eight years. I thought “Meander North” would make a good title. I’d arrange the stories by season, plus add a couple of other miscellaneous chapters.

I developed a book proposal and sent it out to a couple of well-known Minnesota publishing houses. I heard back from one, and they want to publish it! EEEEEeeeee!

In 2022, I’ll be polishing up a bunch of these posts and they’ll be coming out in a book. I must say, I’m pretty darn excited for the new year. It’s about time one of those crazy insomnia ideas paid off.

Changes!

After 9 years of free blogging, I finally filled up my Word Press account space. I needed to make a decision to either stop blogging or keep doing it, but pay for an upgrade. I decided to pay. So, I will continue my blog, and you’ll get to read it without the ads. Yay!

I have at least two posts in mind before the year ends, so stay tuned. More to come.

Evolution of a Sunset

I was supposed to be helping Russ cook supper, but the sunset over our cabin lake was too distracting. At first, I thought it couldn’t possibly get any better. I ran outside to the shore with my camera and started clicking away.

Feeling neglectful of my supper duties, I went back inside to help with the chicken recipe, which involved at least 20 cloves of garlic and wine. Then I made the mistake of looking out the window. The sunset was growing even more brilliant. I grabbed my camera and ran to the lake again.

The orange was intensifying. The purple clouds near the horizon were separating into a zebra-stripe pattern. I clicked away some more. Then I remembered we were supposed to cook veggies with our chicken, so I traipsed back inside.

After taking care of the veggies, my gaze drifted back to the window. Doh! Now the zebra stripes were growing and the clouds were turning pink. You guessed it. Russ just laughed when he lost me to the outdoors yet again.

Since Russ was handling most of the cooking by this point, I had time to enjoy the view without my camera viewfinder in front of my eyes. I felt grateful and priviledged to be in this place at this time, thankful that we own this little slice of shoreline.

Inspired to lofty thoughts by the sunset, I wondered how anyone can really “own” land. It’s such a strange concept, but we’ve made an art out of real estate and all its intricacies. Owning land is as artificial a thing as owning water, or air, space, or stars. We may think we own it. We may have paperwork that says so. But it’s really just a figment of our imagination.

Kind of like owning a sunset.

BUT, if you’d like to own a print of this sunset, I can help with that. 🙂 I’m offering several versions of these images in the “Water” section of my photography website. Just let me know which one you want and how you want it, and I’ll send you a price quote.

Seeing Rabbits

Last winter, a rabbit lived in our backyard, sheltering under our neighbor’s shed. We’d awaken in the morning, shuffle downstairs and take a look out our window on the landing where we could see the back yard. More often than not, there she crouched, a brown cottontail, nibbling what grass wasn’t already covered by snow.

Since both of our dogs died, we’ve been petless. We saw this rabbit so much, it just seemed natural to start becoming a little attached. I began leaving her offerings of dried orchard grass, remnants of our deceased guinea pig. I also initiated a naming contest for the bunny on Facebook. My friend June won with the moniker of “Tater Tot.” It fit – the shape and coloring were approximately right.

Tator Tot survived the winter and this spring we noticed several Tiny Tots scampering around the backyard – her children, no doubt. They didn’t seem to be doing any damage to my hostas, just hiding under them instead of eating them, so we welcomed these new additions to the yard.

I suspect that Tator Tot eventually left our yard for the forest at the end of our road. We sometimes saw a rabbit fitting her description during our woods walks. Her Tiny Tots hung around for several weeks and then seemed to disappear. I hope they, too, found their way to the forest. But they could have easily been eaten by a neighborhood cat or a fox.

I rather miss these foster pets. They were easy to take care of. No fuss, no muss.

I recently read Linda LeGarde Grover’s book “Gichigami Hearts.” LeGarde is a former neighbor of mine – we grew up in on the same street on the other side of Duluth. Her book offers a Native American perspective of our old neighborhood. In one chapter, “Rabbits Watching Over Onigamiising,” she describes how seeing rabbits reminds her of the Native spiritual being, Nanaboozhoo. Now, if you’ve read my book, “Eye of the Wolf,” you know that Nanaboozhoo is a trickster– part rabbit, part human. He embodies the best and the worst of humans and the supernatural.

Tator Tot

LeGarde’s backyard bunnies savored her tulips, necessitating a change the next spring to planting marigolds, which she says the “rabbits nibbled on, but not much.” LeGarde writes that planting different flowers rather than trying to eradicate the bunnies was a good compromise. “We are all here to live our lives . . . We know from traditional teachings that all animals are important to the earth, that no animal is ranked higher or lower than any other in the eyes of the Creator, and that all have a contribution to make.”

She recounted a conversation she had with a friend about seeing rabbits on clear nights in the moonlight in winter, sitting with their legs folded under them like a cat – like they were waiting for something. LeGarde’s friend told her, “When we see them like that at night it is because the rabbits are watching over us, over a sleeping world and our dreams.”

Here in the north, we have two kinds of rabbits: cottontails like Tator Tot and snowshoe hares, which are larger and turn white in winter. Rabbits in the moonlight reminded me of one of my favorite chapters in northland author Sigurd Olson’s book, “The Singing Wilderness,” about the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It’s the chapter called “Moon Madness,” where he recounts seeing hares on his moonlight walks.

“If, when the moon is bright, you station yourself near a good rabbit swamp and stay quiet, you may see it, but you will need patience and endurance, for the night must be cold and still. Soon they begin to emerge, ghostly shadows with no spot of color except the black of their eyes. Down the converging trails they come, running and chasing one another up and down the runways, cavorting crazily in the light.”

Olson concluded that moonlight “made animals and men forget for a little while they seriousness of living; that there were moments when life could be good and play the natural outlet for energy.”

It’s comforting to think of rabbits or hares cavorting crazily in the darkness or quietly keeping watch. I never saw Tator Tot or the Tiny Tots at night because I was, well, sleeping. Perhaps I never saw them because the magic they worked was so effective.

When I emerged from my office building in Superior yesterday evening, I was thinking about all this. As I walked, who scampered across the parking lot pavement not ten feet from me? A big fluffy cottontail. She looked suspiciously like Tator Tot.

Two Sides of the Same Lake

A few blocks down a gravel road near our cabin in northern Minnesota sits a tiny lake, easily seen from the road. It’s so small that a football player with a good arm could throw the ball from one end to the other.

On a bright fall day a few weeks ago, I stopped to admire this lake. While the lake our cabin sits on was rocked with waves, this lake was calm in the shelter of trees. Only one cabin hunkers along its shores. Those folks own the land all around it, so it’s likely no other dwellings will appear in the future. Although small, the lake is deep – up to thirty feet – making it a favorite of local anglers. I almost always see wildlife when I visit: mink, muskrats, turtles, osprey.

I had my camera along and snapped several images in sequence, pointing to opposite sides of the lake. I was amazed by how such a small lake could look so different on either side. Below are two of my favorite images from that outing. They got me thinking about how people can be multi-faceted, too.

Ghost Birches

Tranquil Tamaracks

Lawn Mower Races: Cutting-Edge Excitement

The grand marshal of the Thunder Valley Lawn Mower Races, Maine. Image credit: Mark Haskell, Courier-Gazette

Apologies for the bad pun in the title, but I wanted to let you know that you truly haven’t lived until you’ve witnessed this phenomenon. Lawn mower races happen all across America, from Idaho to Maine. I received my first taste in late summer when I meandered into Cotton, a small town in northern Minnesota.

Grown men (and in other places, women) clamber aboard riding lawn mowers that they have modified for racing. In Cotton, the circular racing track was an actual lawn situated behind what used to be the town’s high school but is now a community center.

The races are a cultural highlight of the season. Families gather to sit on the grass or on haybales to watch the festivities. Kids eat cotton candy. Some folks even back their jacked-up pickup trucks along the track. Sitting in folding lawn chairs in the cargo bed, they have a prime, elevated view.

Engines rev. The starting gun cracks, and they’re off! The machines tilt as they round the corners, wheels lifting off the ground. The drivers likewise tilt, leaning into the movement. Around and around they buzz, neck and neck. After a few turns around the track, one man’s mower putters out and he pulls into the center, defeated.

Cotton, MN, lawn mower racers lean into the turn.

According to the U.S. Lawn Mower Racing Association, this quirky form of racing began in the early 1970s – touted as a perfect way to use a machine that many people already have, and to let off steam. It became official when the makers of a fuel stabilizer came up with the idea of using a lawn mower race to promote their product on April Fools’ Day in 1992.

I had no idea this pastime had been around for so long! There’s even such a thing as lawn mower ice racing in winter.

With a wave of a checkered flag, the race ends. The crowd applauds. The winners strut over to claim their prizes and pose for the local newspaper photographer.

In Cotton, racers competed in two events, “modified” and “stock.” I felt culturally enriched for having watched these events. But it all seemed like such a waste. You see, the racing mowers don’t have their blades engaged. All that noise and hype, and in the end, the grass on the track is just as long as before. 🙂

Outer Island Lighthouse and the Research Project that Wasn’t

Outer Island Lighthouse in 2012.

Last month, I meandered out to the most remote spot in Wisconsin: Outer Island in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Lake Superior. Now, the folks on Washington Island off the Door County Peninsula in Lake Michigan might argue that they live in the state’s most remote spot. I guess it’s all in how you define “remote.”

The Milwaukee Journal gives Outer Island this distinction. However, the rest of the internet says it’s Washington Island.

To check on which place is really the remotest, I consulted with the Wisconsin State Cartographer’s Office. Jim Lacey, associate state cartographer, said he has not tried to define such a spot in the state yet. Is it defined as the farthest outpost of civilization that a person can easily reach, or is it the place farthest from any roads and the hardest to reach?

We went back and forth a couple of times about a worthy definition. Lacey agreed that it wasn’t very hard to get to Washington Island – all a person needed to do is pay for a ferry, drive their car onto it, and they’re set.

The spiral staircase that leads up to the top of the tower.

Outer Island, on the other hand, is twenty-eight miles from the port of Bayfield, Wisconsin, has no ferry and no roads. To get there, a person either needs to have their own boat, spend a couple days paddling a kayak, or pay a small fortune for a water taxi. A water taxi is basically a private motorboat ride. That’s how I traveled to the island last month.

Lacey said, “To sum it up, I’m afraid I don’t have a very satisfying answer for you! I think this is one of those situations where a deceptively simple question gets very complicated, very quickly.”

But, to my way of thinking, the difficulty of access and the lack of civilized conveniences makes Outer Island the “winner” for the remote spot title.

Anyway – I had a great time camping on the island. Visiting the place again reminded me of a research project, which never quite worked at the lighthouse, in part, due to the island’s remoteness.

Nine years ago as part of my job with Wisconsin Sea Grant, I accompanied Chin Wu, a researcher from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to Outer Island. His goal was to install a webcam atop the lighthouse to track the development of rogue waves and wave patterns off the island’s coast.

Hooking the webcam up to the solar power grid on the lighthouse.

The National Park Service was cooperating with the project, so they drove our small research team out to the island for the installation. Once at the island, the park service staffer let us into the lighthouse and led us to the top of the tower.

We installed the camera and plugged it into the solar power system atop the lighthouse. Thankfully, the day was calm and warm, so hanging around outside ninety feet in the air wasn’t too scary.

I took some great photos, but they were never published because the project didn’t pan out. Why? The webcam needed a cell phone signal in order to transmit the photos. Back then, the cell phone system wasn’t powerful enough on the island for this to work.

The doomed webcam.

Even smart people need to learn things the hard way, sometimes, I guess. It just goes to show that science doesn’t always work out despite the best of intentions. But these photos are too cool to waste, so here you go. Mr. Wu has since gone onto conduct other projects in the Apostle Islands, which were much more successful, such as this WISC-Watch website, which provides tons of info about wave and wind conditions.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The Plaque We Found Inside the Wall

Many people who were not fighting for their lives during the pandemic spent their time remodeling their homes. Just do a search on “home remodeling during the pandemic” and you’ll see what I mean. People had more time, motivation, and money to remodel since they couldn’t travel.

Russ and I were no exception. We decided to remodel our kitchen, a dark brown dungeon that was probably last remodeled in the mid-1980s. We didn’t have much room to work with, so we didn’t enlarge its footprint — we simply brought it into the current century by replacing the cabinets, countertop, sink, and backsplash. We also painted a few window frames.

It looks marvelous, I must say. We went for a modern farmhouse look, and I think we succeeded. However, I’m not going to post any photos because I feel weird about having you all know what my kitchen looks like.

What I will post a photo of is something mysterious we found inside one of the kitchen walls. One of our last jobs involved removing some old Z-brick tile (the stuff that looks like white bricks) on a furnace chimney that runs through the kitchen and retiling it with stone. We hired someone to do the work for us.

When we came back home from a walk, the tile guy said he had something he wanted to show us. He’d found it in the wall surrounding the chimney. He held up a dusty yellowing wooden plaque. It featured paper with burnt edges – a technique popular in the 1970s, with a picture and prayer associated with St. Francis of Assisi.

We weren’t quite sure what to make of this find. We aren’t Catholic or particularly religious. Russ, for one, was disappointed they didn’t find a hoard of gold instead!

After cleaning the plaque and pondering on it for a while, we decided it would not go back inside the wall. But we wouldn’t throw it out, either. That would seem a shame since it’s part of the history of the house. Instead, on the back of it, we wrote in sharpie marker when and where the plaque was found along with our names. We plan to hang it up in the attic so that it will remain with the house – it will be hidden, but not too hidden.

I wonder how many others who remodeled their homes this past year found unexpected treasures in their walls?