Sunsets and chestnuts

Through no wishful thinking or design on our part, others’ plight transformed into our delight as the red sun slipped toward the shores of Lake Superior. I walked the 30 feet from our camper door to where the water danced on the shoreline rocks of Chequamegon Bay, my camera in hand. I was not the only one. Half a dozen folks were being pulled to the lakeshore on this early evening in mid September, pulled by the show across the water on the western horizon.

The sun was settling down and taking on a complexion of orange and red, the color more intense as the horizon neared, belying the sun’s soft manner and silent slide at this moment. Filtered through smoky haze we could not easily see or smell, the pretty hue of the sunset was nevertheless the result of wildfires ravaging the West, nearly 2,000 miles away.

How could this be, this peaceful, pretty byproduct of the fiery destruction so far away? I felt guilty. “Did you get a winner?” a woman asked as I clicked through the images on my camera. Perhaps, but that sunset told a tale of tragedy. Nobody wins. The sun slipped away. 

Night came and so did the stars. Upon arrival at the campground I had taken a reading on directions, using my phone. I noted North, but now at night I wanted the stars to reaffirm it, for if I ever have to choose, I will take the stars over my phone. From the same spot I stood in the afternoon, I found Polaris, the North Star, with pointer help from the Big Dipper. Technology and the heavens were in perfect accord. Lights of a harbor town flickered across the bay; campfires flickered around us.  

The water was choppy the next afternoon as the wind picked up. The brisk breeze was from the west—no doubt carrying more smoke our way. My wife and I took the walking trail lined with trees and bushes that hugged the shoreline and hindered the wind. I turned my attention to the vegetation along the path. Soon I had a collection of plants and flowers in my mind and on my camera, including bur marigolds in yellow, touch-me-nots in orange, crown vetch in whitish pink, and milkweed, still holding green pods this far north.

From one small tree I picked its round fruit, the hull olive-colored and spiky. Later I split the hull open to uncover two dark brown, shiny nuts inside. The tree was a horse-chestnut, according to the resources I called upon. A new discovery for me. 

We returned to the campsite and began cooking outside. Another clear evening on Lake Superior, another sunset across the big water. Later, around the campfire, I stared into the flickering glow, thankful for flames that provide reflection, not destruction. 

An apple away

Five apples. That’s all I could count as I circled the tree, tucked away out of sight just off the trail in this woodland beyond the city’s edge. Low brush scratched my legs as I stumbled beneath the branches, my gaze upward. The apples were rather large, their species unknown to me. Now there’s only three.

I knew this tree was here, having taken photos last winter of its neglected apples, too high for deer to reach, brown and frozen apples wearing caps of new snow. Now in the heart of apple season there was only a handful of apples on the old scraggly tree, probably past its life’s prime of production.

I first saw this tree years ago while running through the woodland. The autumn discovery of an apple tree far away from buildings and roads always stirs my imagination. The red jewels of September are right there in front of me, but the tree’s history is not as easy to see.

Was I standing where a farmstead once thrived a century or more ago? Was the apple tree in the backyard, or perhaps in the woodlot just beyond where I found what looked like the remannts of a building’s foundation? If I poke further off the trail, will I find more signs of a farm’s crumbled past?

I imagine the tree was once harvested by someone who lived here or nearby. Harvested on pretty autumn days, the promise of apple pie in the pickers’ hands. Did the farmers come here with gunny sacks, or was an apron simply folded up for a makeshift bag?

Now the tree bears fruit with no idea for whom. Perhaps deer and bear, and birds, along with the occasional woodland hiker who passes by. I couldn’t resist. The two largest and most red of the five apples were within arm’s reach. I snapped one off the twig, and the other tumbled to the ground. One for me, one for the deer.

I imagined the deer finding the treat later that day, like a child discovering a shiny penny on the sidewalk. I walked away, clutching my red prize in my hand, having added another small piece in the history of an old apple tree gently living out its life in near obscurity.

Striders on the water

From the brushy river bank on this warm September afternoon, I stare into the pool of stagnant water that the sluggish river has bypassed. The more I stare the more I see aquatic life on and above the water, including the gangly-legged insects that catch my attention. They look like giant mosquitos moving on top of the water, though they are not much longer than half an inch.

They are water striders, though the name doesn’t exactly fit what they are doing, for there is no striding happening here if striding means taking long steps. No, the water strider is gliding, scooting, skimming, skating or any other similar words that could describe its rapid propulsions across the water’s surface.

Nature has provided the water strider with short front legs to grab and hold prey. But wait, there are four more legs, much longer legs. The middle two legs push the insect forward, while the two hind legs provide steering.

I watch the water striders scoot forward a few inches on the water’s surface, which in turn is only a few inches above the tannish, silty backwater bottom. The insect suddenly stops and skates in a different direction. A thin membrane created by water surface tension, combined with delicate hairs on the strider’s feet, keep this insect atop the water.

Some striders race toward ripples, which at first baffled me until I later learned that the ripples can either be the sign of prey in distress—an easy meal—or a female strider ready to mate. I stand motionless, drawn to the striders’ movements as much as the striders are drawn to the ripples. Meal or mate.

Later, I was puzzled why my photos of the water striders showed six blobs below each leg. The slightly oblong shadow spots were many times larger that the strider’s six feet. Then, Annie Dillard in “Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek” solved the mystery for me. Wrote Dillard, “I watch the water striders skate over the top of the water, and I watch the six dots of shade—made by their feet dimpling the water’s surface—slide dreamily over the bottom silt.”

The dots are dimples. All day long the water strider dimples the water. Taking life in stride on the river’s edge.

Trails to new nugget

There’s plenty of comfort in knowing where you’re going in life, short term, long term, figuratively and literally. But in my summer of intensified camping I’ve had to look beyond the comfort of my two or three favorite campgrounds.

Not that I want to, for my favorite spots are where it’s easy to pull in or back in the fifth-wheel camper, where the windows and chairs face the lake, and where I get a clear view of the stars and planets at night while at the same time it doesn’t feel like a bear is ready to join my wife and me at the campfire.

So when my brother-in-law said he had made reservations at Nugget Lake County Park in Pierce County in western Wisconsin, and would we want to get a site there also for the last weekend in August, well, I didn’t know if I wanted to. It’s not on my “favorites” list, never mind that it had never even been given the chance to make the list.

But I was forced, no, that word’s too strong, persuaded to pick up the phone. We got Site 32, right across from my brother-in-law and his wife in Site 33. So we were headed somewhere different—translate out of my comfort zone—among the fields, hills and creeks between Plum City and Ellsworth, about 10 miles from the Mighty Miss.

In the days leading up to the Nugget Lake trip I eased my apprehension by making light of our destination, calling it Nutsy Lake and recalling scenes from vacation movies where everything can and will be wrong and go wrong. Boy, was I wrong.

This isn’t a travelogue blog, but I can tell you that I’ve added Nugget Lake County Park to my favorites list. The back-in wasn’t as hard as I thought—my brother-in-law trucker made me do it myself because I “need the practice”—the sites are large and wooded just enough to provide some privacy, and there are clean bathrooms/showers and a park staff patrolling and helping.

But what sold me were the miles of trails cut into the woods and meadows all through the park, neatly-mown 6-foot wide grassy paths right up my trail running alley. Foot bridges cross over Rock Elm Creek, and one outing took us to Blue Rock, a massive rock of dolostone that is part of the Rock Elk Disturbance. That wall of jagged rock, which has both underview and overview areas, was formed by a “cataclysmic explosive event,” in other words, a massive meteor impact, say the geologists.

To think of the shock wave that formed this 470 million years ago and then see a group of kids playing beneath it in Rock Elm Creek catching crawdads as their mother and dog watched in the afternoon sun was truly bringing the past and present together in this special geological spot.

We were also surrounded by the yellow hues of goldenrod and Jerusalem artichoke, the purples of blooming Canadian thistle and the orange of touch-me-nots in the wetlands. As I gazed on the sprawling, rising meadow in front of me, I thought of how a few weeks earlier I was not excited to touch this Nugget Lake campground just because it wasn’t on my comfort list. It is now. Like the Blue Rock, this spot had an impact on me. A new nugget.

The hum of August

The bird takes a break from feeding and darts straight for a tiny branch, no thicker than your little finger, about 15 feet away from and higher than the glass of nectar. The short bare branch was left behind from when I trimmed the small maple. Little did I know it would be the bird’s staging and resting perch.

The bird is only 3 inches long, so to see it perched in a rather sizable tree is almost comical. If I had not seen it fly from the feeder to the branch it would be hard to pick out. Its beak is proportionately too long for its body but just right for probing nectar from the sweet tubes of bee balm—by nature—or the hanging red feeder—by human.

When the ruby-throated hummingbird returns to the feeder, I watch in awe and ask aloud: Little bird, are you really going to fly to Mexico next month? There’s no answer, just a chipping call as the tiny diner gets excited when another hummer invades its air space. Then there’s a whir of wings, at 80 beats per seconds, as the birds nearly tangle and then jet away.

They’ll be back. The hummingbirds are feeding heavy now, building up fat reserves on a body that normally weighs 3 grams. That’s, well, almost nothing. That’s the weight of three paper clips. Hold three paper clips in your hand. You’re holding the weight of a hummingbird.

So feed they must to store enough body fat for the 1,800-mile trip to Mexico, a trip demanding 500 nonstop miles over the Gulf of Mexico. That is, unless the bird spots an offshore oil rig or fishing boat during the 20-hour gulf flight. It has been known to stop for a rest on such structures or vessels.

Averaging 30 miles per hour, while flying daytime only and taking feeding breaks, it’s a long trip no matter how much whir is in your wings. The hummingbird at my feeder isn’t thinking about miles right now. It’s living by instinct. Time to feed, fatten up and fly away.

Gold in that thistle

The goldfinch pecked at the rose-purple flowerhead of a bull thistle, its bloom burst into fluffy down spotted with brown seeds. What appeared foreboding to me was the lifeblood of the goldfinch, providing food and nest material for our latest-nesting songbird.

The finch picked through the down, extracting the seeds. By its bright yellow body I knew it was a male, and that it was feeding, for only the duller olive-colored female gathers thistle down to line its nest. At my approach, the goldfinch fluttered away, landing on a nearby blooming Jerusalem artichoke with just enough weight to bend the tall sunflower slightly.

This was a scene with mid August written all over it. The bull thistle blooming along with the Jerusalem artichoke, and the goldfinch finally nesting. It’s the bird that waits for the thistle to mature.

The goldfinch is content to sit out late spring and early summer, when a myriad of songbirds are nesting, some nesting twice before the goldfinch determines the thistles are ripe for down and seeds. These are the tickets of the goldfinch’s survival as nature spaces out the goods of nesting. This is why those wanting to attract goldfinches will allow some thistles on their property and hang thistle seed bags in the winter.

Though the goldfinch’s nest is made of strands of weeds and vine, it is lined with the soft downy filaments of thistles, a paradox of nature—sharp thistle tines and soft thistle down.

The male goldfinch I saw was not only feeding itself but also no doubt collecting seeds to take back to its mate incubating eggs or the chicks already hatched and ready to leave the nest. I once happened upon a family of goldfinches in late August, observing the adults feeding thistle seeds to their fledged young.

After hatching the chicks are ready to fledge in a couple of weeks, ready to join and add to the slender of autumn. Thanks to the bull thistle, there will be more yellow among the sunflowers and goldenrods.

The squirrel files

One day the squirrels didn’t come. Not at daybreak, not at noon, not in the afternoon. I was surprised by my concern. I had grown more fond of the four young squirrels than I realized.

They had made our front yard part of their playground earlier this summer. It is also their dining area, as they did all sorts of acrobatics and contortions to hang on the bird seed feeder, then take a nibble at the grape jelly dish before they went to the bird bath for a drink. And then they played, chasing and jumping and tumbling, no different than puppies and kittens.

The whole show amazed and amused me, a welcome diversion in the summer of losing the second of our two little dogs. Squirrels don’t replace dogs, but they had become a welcome daily sight. And after years of trying to keep squirrels off the bird feeders, I struck a deal with the bushytails. They provide entertainment, I provide sunflower seeds. (In truth, I simply surrendered, tired of the battle.)

In my new Zen approach, the squirrels’ acrobatics and comedy are rewarded. The birds still come, so what’s the big problem, besides a bit more strain on the seed budget? To watch squirrels hang perfectly upside down from the feeder by their toes as they nibble seeds, then do a pull-up to get more seed, drops my jaw. The least I can do is support the arts.

Oh, the little squirrels test me sometimes, taking to chewing on the deck boards, even with a layer of deck stain on the treated lumber. I’ve never figured that out, but the squirrels appear to suffer no ill effects. They will also take 6-inch long strips of lilac bark, running through the yard with the strands hanging out from both sides of their mouth. Is it for fun, like a dog’s ball? Or, perhaps for their nest?

Some summer days, in the heat of the afternoon, they take turns lazing on a low horizontal branch of the small maple tree near the feeder. It’s a prime spot, and there are spats at times over who gets to rest there. A piece of unspilt firewood I happened to place near the tree one day has become their springboard to the branch. When I moved it, my wife questioned why, saying the squirrels liked it. You see, she’s softened on the critters too. I put it back.

So, what of the day they didn’t come? Well, after supper, while doing dishes with the bird feeder right outside the kitchen window, I suddenly saw the squirrels dashing across the street, bent on our yard. In an instant they were on the feeder, chasing each other around the bottom of the pole, leaping on and off the chunk of maple. Where they had spent the day, who knows? Perhaps the Twin Cities.

I shouted to my wife, “The squirrels are here!” with such glee I surprised myself. Can you believe it?

Dragons and dogs in the clouds

When I was a small boy I’d lay on my back next to the barn’s silo on summer days and watch clouds pass by the silver dome. They were puffy white clouds in a blue sky, dreams in a young boy’s eyes.

My fascination with clouds would only heighten as I studied their flight and ever-changing shapes. A cloud’s formation might be an animal, say a dragon or dog, but the head and tail would grow and shrink before my eyes. And then what I thought was a dragon or dog would suddenly be all different, transformed into a bird or maybe even a state. Look, Montana is flying!

I could also stare long enough to make the clouds stand still. This would create the illusion that the silo was moving, or falling, which caught my attention real fast. I’d close my eyes to block out the fear, and then open them again to let the clouds continue on.

Where were the clouds going? How far and how fast? Would they circle the globe or dissipate over the neighbor’s hill? Would a cloud that looked like a bear to me take on the same form 10 or 100 miles away?

I looked at clouds again the other day through the eyes of an aging man. But, squinting back to my youth and child-like view of the world, I saw two dogs in the clouds. One dog was sitting looking away from me, the other stretched out and pushing a paw toward the sitting dog. The scene changed in less than a minute, and the sitting dog cloud suddenly formed a poodle’s head.

I actually saw a poodle in the sky. And I felt a little kid in my heart.

Leaves by the number

Warning: Rough estimates ahead.

Every summer I’m amazed at the height, width and fullness of our large birch tree in the back yard after its spring rebirth from winter’s bareness. It is the biggest birch I know of, though I don’t go on searches for big birch trees.

As I stare at this old, mature tree, which hides all kinds of birds and squirrel nests and has some dead spots for the pileated woodpeckers, I always ask the question with the impossible answer: How many leaves?

I finally came up with a formula to estimate the number of leaves on the mighty birch with its three trunks from which several hefty horizontal branches spread. The formula may be flawed, but I go with it.

I stepped off the widths, north to south and east to west, and they were fairly even at about 40 feet. Knowing the tallest birches in Wisconsin are 65 to 70 feet, I conservatively topped my tree out at 60 feet.

Those measurements gave me 96,000 cubic feet of space. Accounting for open spaces in the tree, I halved that to come up with 48,000 cubic feet of leaf area. Then I counted 55 leaves in one cubic foot. Multiplying 48,000 by 55 gave me about 2.6 million leaves.

Am I even close? I did some research of other folks with the same leaf question. I found one estimate of 2 million leaves on a big oak tree, so that’s close to my number. However, another leaf counter came up with 200,000 leaves on a large mature tree, so that’s not close.

One thing I am sure of is how much I, along with the birds and squirrels, enjoy this big birch, no matter how many leaves.

The queen lives

I had feared the Queen was dead, or at the least, trampled by the natives. That would be my transplanted Queen of the Prairie wildflower, and the natives would be everything from tansies to raspberry bushes to milkweed.

But after the Queen disappeared last year after a few seasons of modest reign, not to mention a season of modest rainfall, I’ve found the Queen lives! On a muggy July morning in the meadow, between the farm fields and the woods, the color pink caught my eye in midst of all the green. Could it be? Yes, the Queen of the Prairie, at least two plants, was beginning to bloom.

The balls of pink atop amber stems, with large, pointed and deeply divided leaves below, had not yet burst into flowers. They will; the Queen is a beauty in August. But I was thrilled at the sight, the transplanted prairie flower in a meadow where perhaps this North American native once bloomed a century or more ago before part of the small clearing met the steel blades of a plow.

Let’s back up to the city, where we were given a Queen of the Prairie years ago. The plant likes sun and moisture, we later learned, but the shadow of the house kept it from sunshine in the morning, and a spreading maple tree took up the shading task in the afternoon. We could give it moisture, but not sun.

So I proceeded with my plan of most things that won’t grow on our city lot: transplant it in the country. Would not a prairie plant flourish in the small meadow clearing that juts out from the field? It did, for several years, joining the other blooming wild flowers, some of which I haven’t identified. I like to think they are prairie plants, as free as wild horses, plants that are centuries old, found nowhere else for acres around.

The Queen joined the masses and bloomed, until last summer, inexplicably absent except for maybe the lack of moisture. The kingdom lived on without the Queen. And while her disappearance is the stuff of royal mystery, she has now returned to her throne, where the leaves of birches and maples wave in approval.