Lichens and Kipukas in Hawaii

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Whenever I visit the smooth, gray rocks on the North Shore of Lake Superior, I find myself crouching low to examine the colorful patchwork of lichens who have made their home in such a seemingly perilous place. I never expected to do the same thing on Hawaii!

Lichens on basalt with Lake Superior in the background. Photo by Emily Stone.

The basalt bedrock in the Northwoods hardened from lava that poured out of the Mid-Continent Rift 1.1 billion years ago. (If you want to learn more about the rift, visit our Northwoods Rocks exhibit!) While making plans to visit Hawaii last month, I knew that I’d be seeing much younger basalt, especially on the Big Island, where Kilauea erupted as recently as December 2022. What I didn’t expect was such an abundance of lichens that the rocks looked fuzzy!

Aptly named “the lava-colonizing lichen,” this pioneering organism is among the first to grow on basalt rocks after they cool from volcanic eruptions. Photo by Emily Stone.

Anytime I talk about lichens, I brag about how the symbiotic partnership between fungus and algae allows them to live where neither partner could survive alone, to colonize bare rock, and even to survive in outer space. The fungus provides a structure, and an anchor. The algae do photosynthesis and make food for them both out of sun, water, and air. Sometimes instead of algae, the partner is a cyanobacteria, who can do photosynthesis AND fix nitrogen out of the air. Plus, lichens are wind-dispersed, and as I wrote last week, wind is one of the main agents that brings new life to the Hawaiian Islands.

The first lichens I noticed weren’t growing on rocks, though, they were clinging to the trunks and branches of trees. The fuzzy, pale green strings were so dense they made the trees look like stuffed animals who had been loved and washed within an inch of their lives.

Fuzzy trees!

The trees were on a kīpuka, a vegetated hill in a sea of younger lava flows. Volcanoes erupted and formed the Hawaiian Islands. Over time forests grew, but the eruptions kept coming. Tongues of lava meandered across the flanks of the volcanoes, creating islands of older forest within a brand new landscape.

This view from a kīpuka on Mauna Kea in Hawaii highlights the age of the pale green lichen-covered forest in the foreground, with a background of newer lava flows. Photo by Emily Stone.

Kīpukas are essential reservoirs of biodiversity in Hawaii. Not only do they provide the source populations for revegetating fresh lava flows after volcanoes erupt, their isolation helps to protect them from invasive species. One kīpuka in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is home to more native tree species per acre than any other forest in the park (and probably on the whole island). The diversity of lichens is far greater. Because they are sometimes hard to find and difficult to identify, the true number of lichen species in Hawaii may be impossible to ever measure, but it is likely more than 800 species, with at least 30 percent of those only existing in Hawaii.

Here you can see the forested kipuka in the background, with newer lava rocks in the foreground. Photo by Emily Stone.

While lichens make up a good part of the lushness and biodiversity in mature kīpukas, they are also key to helping life start over from scratch on the surrounding lava. On our way to explore a kīpuka along the Kaulana Manu Nature Trail, we passed by areas of younger lava rocks that weren’t yet covered in forest. They were, however, fuzzy with lichen! (see photo above)

The first species to arrive on freshly cooled lava flows is Stereocaulon vulcani, the lava-colonizing lichen. Fragments of lichen thalli (leaves) from other areas may break off and blow in, or the fungal partner within the lichen may produce dust-like spores that sail around the globe in the upper atmosphere. They especially thrive on the rugged a’a’ lava flows, where abundant surface area breaks down to release nutrients, and little holes left from gas bubbles collect rainwater.

These lichens can fix nitrogen—an essential ingredient for plant growth—while also breaking down rocks, building up soil, holding onto moisture, and providing cozy spots for other seeds and spores to germinate. The lichens shelter insects, which attract lizards and birds, the birds bring more seeds, and eventually a forest grows. The forest contains many more niches than the bare rock, so more and more species of lichens become established there, until they are carpeting the trees like the first ones I saw.

Lichens grow relatively quickly in the rainy areas of the islands. The ones I saw on the trees were sparkling with droplets swept out of thick clouds, which benefits the rest of the forest, too. They also enjoy the mild climate. Even though (according to one researcher,) at high elevations lichens experience “summer every day and winter every night,” I’m pretty sure that’s more conducive to growth than the Northwoods’ schedule of “winter for 6 months of the year.”

This looks just like our Usnea, or Old Man's Beard Lichen!

On the wave-washed, basalt shores of Lake Superior, it’s the bright orange Elegant Sunburst Lichen who first colonizes the rocks. Constant wave action prevents much more from growing there, for now. But if wave disturbance ever ceases, more and more lichens will move in there, too, building up soil and setting the stage for forests to grow. From afar, Hawaii seems really different from the Northwoods. Upon closer examination, I found all sorts of natural connections.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Winter/Spring Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Riding the Wind to Hawaii

From out of a vast, dark sea, a small area of lights appeared below. The landing went smoothly. As my parents and I descended the stairs onto the tarmac, steamy air made us regret our long pants and sleeves. With almost magical speed, we’d just arrived on the most isolated populated landmass in the world: Hawaii. As different as this tropical paradise is from the Northwoods, I still found plenty of natural connections.

My parents! Larry and Margaret Stone. It was raining in the rainforest on the Big Island when we arrived. After three days of rain, we flew to Maui, where it was windy. 

Several years ago we visited another remote island—Isle Royale in Lake Superior. While Isle Royale is much smaller and closer to the mainland, our trip to Hawaii was less strenuous and uncomfortable than the ferry ride across an angry, wave-tossed Lake Superior. Neither place is easy to visit. On that trip, I found myself asking everyone—human, plant, animal, and fungus— “How did you get here?” Now, on Hawaii, that question emerged again.

In preparation for the trip, I’d purchased a book titled Wind, Wings, and Waves: A Hawaii Nature Guide by Rick Soehren. Those are the means by which life began to inhabit the freshly cooled lava of these remote volcanic islands about 70 million years ago.

Our stay on Maui quickly highlighted the importance of wind to these unprotected islands. The Maalaea Harbor on Maui, where we launched for both a whale watch and snorkel tour, is one of the windiest harbors in the world. High surf warnings dominated my weather app for our entire stay, due to powerful gusts from the north. We stood in awe at huge waves crashing on the shore. Might that wind still bring new arrivals to the islands?

Big waves looking toward West Maui near the beginning of the Road to Hana.
Photo by Emily Stone.  

Being small and lightweight is key for wind dispersal, and the tiny spores of ferns are ideal. There are 200+ species of ferns on the Hawaiian Islands, but while the first ones blew in, many more evolved right there, and now occur nowhere else in the world. One of those 125 endemic species is ‘Ama’u, a beautiful fern that reminds me of our local cinnamon fern in the way that they grow in a beautiful vase-shaped cluster, and color their young fronds in a cinnamon shade to act as sunscreen. They are tough, and often stand as lonely pioneers on fresh, black lava flows.

‘Ama’u ferns on Hawaii can start growing on bare lava flows. They protect their young fronds with red pigment that acts like sunscreen. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Photo by Emily Stone.

Growing near the ‘Ama’u ferns are often ‘Ohi’a trees. Actually, it seemed like ‘Ohi’a trees were growing near everything! They were everywhere in Hawaii. A member of the Myrtle family, they and their cousins are some of the most widespread flowering plants in the Pacific. Lightweight seeds are easily dispersed on the wind, and despite their small size, they can survive below freezing temperatures and at least 30 days submerged in saltwater. The ‘Ohi’a lehua on Hawaii have evolved into new species, and occur nowhere else in the world.

Ohi’a trees join ‘Ama’u ferns in sprouting on rocks left by recent volcanic eruptions. The seeds and spores of each blew to Hawaii on strong winds, and still use wind to carry them to these fresh habitats. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Photo by Emily Stone

We spotted them on recent lava flows, often sprouting in cracks like you’d see a jack pine on much older lava on Isle Royale. In poor soil, Ohi’a stay shrubby. As their leaves add to the soil, and other plants move in, eventually the Ohi’a grow to full size trees and are an important component of forests.

'Ohi'a lehua shrub on a pretty recent lava flow. 

Even though we didn’t visit during their season of peak blooming, most of the Ohi’a trees we spotted had at least a few flowers gracing the ends of their twigs. A mass of red stamens makes them look fuzzy. And hiding among those flowers, sipping nectar, are two red birds who match the flowers perfectly! The ‘I’iwi and 'Apapane are two types of Hawaiian Honeycreepers, a group reminiscent of the Galápagos finches. Their ancestors arrived on wings (probably with the help of big storm winds!), but I’ll write more about them later.

Can you spot the bird in the red 'Ohi'a lehua flower? :-)

On Isle Royale, wind also brought ferns, as well as trees like aspen and birch, and 32 species of orchids with their dust-like seeds. Despite the fact that orchids are adapted for wind dispersal, Hawaii was not so lucky. There are only three native orchids on Hawaii. Several more have escaped from gardens.

Bamboo Orchid, native to Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Thailand, Vietnam, the Ryukyu Islands, Malaysia, Singapore, China to Indonesia, the Philippines and New Guinea...but not Hawaii. The native orchids are super rare. Photo by Emily Stone. 

One group of critters you may not think of riding the wind to new places are spiders. They release little strands of silk, which first rise due to the Earth’s electrical fields and then catch the wind, and balloon away! Over 100 spiders are native to Hawaii. We peeked under hundreds of leaves to spot a famous “Hawaiian happy-face spider” with a cheesy red grin on their abdomen, but only ended up spotting several fog-dappled spider webs.

Spiders found their way to Hawaii more easily than most other animals. Spider silk acts like a balloon to help them catch a ride on the wind. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Photo by Emily Stone. P.S. There were SO MANY lichens in Hawaii! That might be another article...

These webs remind us of how everything is connected. Even the most remote islands in the world are linked by the transporters of wind, wings, waves, and ecological processes like evolution. One benefit of travel is that through finding those connections it helps us appreciate our own home.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Iron and Life

The old road angled steeply up the hillside. Thick drifts of autumn leaves concealed loose rocks and little ravines. Saplings and brush crowded in from the sides, threatening to scratch cheeks already rosy from the cold. After several minutes of tough hiking, the road leveled out, and big concrete structures loomed among the trees.

From 1922 to 1924, the Pioneer Mining Company operated an open pit iron mine on Mt. Whittlesey near Mellen, Wisconsin, although pit doesn’t seem quite accurate. There’s no big hole, the hillside merely looks a bit sliced off. Mining and quarrying, along with fur trapping, logging, and attempts at farming have sculpted the landscape of the Northwoods since the late 1800s. But that history is influenced by far older events.

Continuing past the concrete ruins, my friend and I followed the scar of the old road to the top of a cliff. Smooth, dark rock peeked out from beneath dry leaves and grass. Kneeling for a better look, we found stripes of red, black, and gray with smooth, waxy, and sparkling surfaces. Crustose lichens had found toeholds in each tiny crack, so the surface was also decorated with little blobs in shades of brown, white, and yellow.

These lichens may be much younger than the outcrop, but the rock itself is no stranger to photosynthesizing friends. In fact, iron formations like this one record a major milestone in the history of life on Earth. Back in the day, and by that, I mean 1.9 billion years ago, the atmosphere was filled with carbon dioxide and methane, and the first inklings of life had only just begun. Volcanic activity in the early oceans, and erosion off the few continents, enriched the water with iron and silica.

As algae and cyanobacteria began turning water and carbon dioxide into sugar using energy from sunlight, they also emitted oxygen into the ocean where they lived. The oxygen reacted easily with the dissolved iron and silica, causing them to precipitate out of the water into the minerals hematite, magnetite, and jaspilite. Those minerals accumulated on the bottom of a shallow sea who sloshed between the shores of two early continents. Over time, the mineral mud hardened into stone. This stone. I pressed my hand to rock.

The minerals didn’t precipitate homogeneously, though, and built the rock in a series of bands with different colors, textures, and thickness. Seasonal fluctuations in algae growth may have contributed to some of the variation. The rise and fall of landforms on the early continents, and the weathering and erosion of different rocks, may also have altered the chemicals that fed into the sea. An even wilder source of the variation is that the early life hadn’t evolved with oxygen, and if ever the dissolved iron didn’t immediately clean up the oxygen they pumped into the water, the algae would have poisoned themselves, causing population fluctuations.

Banded iron formation is made up of layers of different minerals, mostly various combinations of iron, silica, and oxygen. Some of the layers are made of magnetite, and so a magnet sticks to the rock outcrop. Photo by Emily Stone.

I’m not a good enough geologist to tell you what conditions led to which bands, but I could see that some dark gray bands were smooth while others were rough and sparkling. And a few layers were a whimsical mash of red and gray polka dots in a darker matrix. The red dots were iron-stained quartz, sometimes called jasper or jaspilite. Geologists call this texture “granular iron formation,” and in this case, it represents sands broken out of slightly older iron formations that rolled back and forth in shallow waves before solidifying again.

Tiny red polka dots represent sand-sized pieces of iron formation that were rolled in waves before solidifying back into rock called granular iron formation. Photo by Emily Stone.

A billion years after precipitation stopped and the layers became rocks, intense tectonic activity in this region (the Mid-Continent Rift!) upended everything. Iron formations are sedimentary rocks, and therefore form in horizonal beds, flattened by the force of gravity. The action of the rift caused the center of Lake Superior to drop and the edges to curve upward like the pages of a book bent in a U. Rocks that once covered the bottom of a shallow sea now form narrow ridges at the surface and then dip steeply underground.

My friend and I descended the irregular, stair-like face of the cliff, vacillating between admiring the rock, the colorful lichens who clung in cracks, and the lush green mosses who soaked up trickles of water. Knowing the history beneath me, I was impressed by the sheer mass of iron that the early algae and cyanobacteria caused to precipitate out of the seawater. While there are a few iron formations older than this one, and some younger ones, too, iron formations of this age are notably abundant, especially in Minnesota and Michigan.

One of the final, amazing chapters in this saga is that the algae and cyanobacteria eventually evolved enzymes that allowed them to live with oxygen. No longer at risk of poisoning themselves with the element, they proliferated wildly, their oxygen waste sweeping most of the iron and silica out of the ocean water for good. Then excess oxygen, no longer tied up with iron, escaped into the air, and began creating the atmosphere we enjoy today.

My friend and I breathed deeply, grateful for the oxygen, the beautiful rocks, and the scientists whose research uncovers the Earth’s stories.

Author’s Note: You may have noticed that I refer to the sea, rocks, lichens and mosses as “who.” This is a deliberate choice in using a “grammar of animacy” and recognizing that not just humans possess the quality of life. I find that using this language causes a positive shift in the way I think about the more-than-human world. For more on this topic, I highly recommend an essay called “Speaking of Nature” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, available easily through an internet search.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Birch Polypore

The rocky trail led up and over and around tree roots and boulders, and we hiked steadily to stay warm. As we navigated the stairs of a birch tree’s roots, my friend pointed out a pale grayish fungus poking out from the trunk like a small, fat Frisbee. “Birch polypore,” I offered reflexively, not needing to think at all about the name of this common and easily recognized species. Not having been on very many hikes with me, they were startled by this casual identification, and burst out in surprised laughter. This made me chuckle, and soon we were both giggling down the trail.

Birch Polypore

That laughter was good medicine, and fitting that it came from a mushroom with so many uses. Birch polypore, or Fomitopsis betulina is a bracket fungus who grows on birch trees around North America, the British Isles, Europe, and Asia. This fungi’s big moment of fame came with the discovery of Otzi the Iceman, a 5,300-year-old man frozen in the Italian Alps. Otiz was carrying two small lumps of birch polypore on a goat-skin thong around his neck.

Initially, some researchers put forth the idea that the fungus contains a laxative compound that Otzi was using to treat whipworms in his gut. While this sounds logical and interesting, and spread quickly throughout the internet, other scientists found no cultural or experimental evidence that chemicals in the fungus have that particular effect.

There are far more reliable reports in traditional medicine, especially in Europe, of birch polypore being used as an antimicrobial, anticancer, and anti-inflammatory agent. In Canada, a paper on Traditional Dene Medicine based on collaborative research with Indigenous knowledge holders, reports that the fungus was boiled into tea that could heal internal bleeding, ease heart pain, and more.

Traditional medicine, like those examples, is based on Indigenous science. While Western science uses short-term experiments that generally test one thing at a time, Indigenous science is practiced using trial and error over centuries, and is integrated into daily living. The knowledge gained through Indigenous science is valid and valuable. It can lose significance when taken out of its cultural context, though, such as by anthropologists without the full picture or a game of telephone on the internet.

While Indigenous science doesn’t need to be vetted by Western science to be valid, it often spurs research questions that lead to that outcome. In the case of birch polypore, pharmacological studies provide evidence for antiviral, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, neuroprotective, and immune tonic properties in the tea, and especially in an alcohol extraction of the fungus. Of course, none of those experiments contain the cultural context of how to treat a patient with this medicine.

Birch polypores aren’t just used for internal medicine. Slices of the fungi have been used as band-aids with built in styptic properties by people in Great Britain. Recently, this versatile fungus has proved useful for sharpening razors, polishing Swiss watches, soaking up sweat in hat bands, and by entomologists for mounting insects.

The pores on the underside of Birch Polypore are part of what make it so useful for soaking up sweat or stopping bleeding. 

Insects who haven’t been killed and mounted yet, mites, and even white-tailed deer, also rely on birch polypore as a source of food. Fungi are high in protein. The first time birch polypore caught my attention, it was because a deer had taken a nibble out of one right at my eye level in the Museum’s Wayside Wanderings Natural Play Area.

The fungus is an active player in the food web as well. Birch polypore may infect a wound in a birch tree and then just hang out for years, held at bay by the tree’s immune system, until the tree is weakened by other factors. Then the fungus begins to spread and eventually contributes to killing the tree.

As a brown rot fungi, birch polypore breaks down cellulose in the tree cells and turns it to sugar, but leaves the dark, woody lignin behind. According to Tim Adam’s PhD thesis, published the year I was born, wood being decomposed by birch polypore smells like green apples. Naturally I had to see for myself, so I set out on another hike, this time with a small folding saw in my pocket. Slicing a notch out of a birch trunk riddled with young polypores, I sniffed deeply. While the scent was a bit sour, I don’t believe I agree with Tim. Still, he spurred curiosity that got me outside on a sunny day.

From laughter, to curiosity, to other forms of internal medicine, birch polypore is a common fungus with a lot to offer.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Orion, An Old Friend

The dark road curved beneath my headlights, and then straightened into a long trough between the trees. An old friend lay resting there, just above the pointed tips of spruce and fir.

Museum Member Vivianne Hanke sketched this image of the constellation of Orion to illustrate a chapter in my first book!

Orion has been my favorite winter constellation for many years. Sometimes subtitled “The Hunter,” it seems apt that Orion is lying on his side these days, perhaps resting up from early mornings of deer hunting. Traditionally, of course, his quarry was more mythical—chasing the beautiful seven sisters of Pleiades, doing battle with Taurus the Bull, fighting a scorpion sent to tame his ego, or hunting the constellation Lepus the Hare.

In Australia and New Zealand, Orion appears upside down, and his distinctive belt and sword are imagined instead as a cooking pot. Perfect for the end of hunting season! Closer to home, some in the Ojibwe culture call this constellation Biboonkeonini, the Winter Maker, as his presence in the night sky heralds winter. Indeed, he can be seen from November to February each year.

Of the four stars that form the rectangular shape of Orion’s body, Betelgeuse is my favorite. This reddish colored star forms Orion’s right shoulder. The red color is not an optical illusion, and it is not due to rusty iron, as is the color on Mars. Betelgeuse is a type of star called a red supergiant, and it gives off most of its light in the near-infrared wavelength, which we cannot see. It is at the opposite end of the spectrum from ultra-violet (UV) light, which is also invisible to humans. Only a small portion (13%) of Betelgeuse’s light is visible to our eyes. But we have built surrogate “eyes”—instruments that can “see” these wavelengths and translate them into beautiful images in the visible spectrum of colors.

Betelgeuse is one of the largest stars ever discovered, and it would be the brightest star in the sky—if we could see that infrared light. Instead, we only observe it as roughly the tenth-brightest star, and its brightness fluctuates.

With the help of powerful telescopes, astrophysicists have seen hotspots and other features on the surface of Betelgeuse. One astronomer characterized Betelgeuse as “an enormous seething restless cauldron of belching plasma.” In 2019, the star blew a huge chunk of its mass into space, and the dust cloud that ensued shaded us from its light. Betelgeuse dimmed by 60%, and then brightened again less than a year later as the dust cleared.

From NASA: “This four-panel illustration shows how the southern region of the rapidly evolving, bright, red supergiant star Betelgeuse suddenly become fainter for several months during late 2019 and early 2020. In the first two panels, a bright, hot blob of plasma is ejected from the emergence of a huge convection cell on the star's surface. In panel three, the outflowing, expelled gas rapidly expands outward. It cools to form an enormous cloud of obscuring dust grains. The final panel reveals the huge dust cloud blocking the light (as seen from Earth) from a quarter of the star's surface.” Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Wheatley (STScI)

Something that violent can hardly last very long. At about 10 million years old, Betelgeuse is thought to be near the end of its life. It will likely explode into a supernova within the next 100,000 years, and maybe even within tens of years. When it does, it will be visible even in the day, brighter than the moon, and to an outside observer would outshine the entire Milky Way Galaxy.

I was never an astronaut-aspiring space kid, but I did become enthralled with stars once I learned that they, like us, are born and die. Stars arise from clouds of dust, where gravity brings the particles together. Mass builds and gravity increases until hydrogen atoms smashing into each other combine to form helium. Nuclear fusion begins, light shines, and a star is born.

As the star ages and becomes a red giant, helium fuses into carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, magnesium, and eventually iron. But where does the rest of the periodic table come in? Those elements can’t be created during a star’s life. They are conceived during its death.

The heat and energy involved in a large star’s death—in a supernova—are enough to synthesize many more elements, which are all hurled into space to form a supernova remnant, also called a nebula. Nebulas are the birthplaces of stars, and also of planets like Earth. The atoms who coalesced to form the Earth now cycle endlessly through her rocks, her air, her water, and her life. We literally are made of stardust.

Betelgeuse has already used up its supply of hydrogen for nuclear fusion. This means heavier elements are fusing together, and the star’s core is compressed into a hot, dense, ball, while other outer layers have expanded into the huge red mass we see today. Stars like this are rare—we only know of 200 in our galaxy—because they do not live very long.

While I admire the superlative nature of stars like Betelgeuse, I often think about how wonderful our own star is. Our Sun is just the right size, just the right distance, just the right age, and just the right brightness to make life on Earth possible.

This time of year, when gray clouds can hang low for many days in a row, a splash of sunlight on my face feels like wonderful gift. I am even grateful for when the Sun sets early. Crystalline stars and shimmering Northern Lights appear closer in these long winter nights. This time of year, Orion is really a perfect friend. He keeps me company on dark lonely drives, sparkles handsomely above my doorstep, and after hanging out with him, I can still get to bed early!

This world provides us with much to be thankful for.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

A Lingering Loon

Gray skies bled into gray water as I snaked down the eastern shore of Lake Namakagon on County Highway D. After a hike with a friend, I’d decided to take the long way home. My dad used to tell us that drives like this were “shortcuts” although what he really meant is that they were the scenic route. He was usually looking for hawks on fence posts in the fields of Iowa. I spotted something quite different.

Out in the middle of Sugar Bay, a small shape interrupted the glimmering ripples. Even in the poor light at a fair distance from a moving car, I could tell that this was a loon by their distinctive silhouette. After a few seconds of indecision I swung into a gravel road and “flipped a Louie” which is what my family calls Uies or U-turns. Pulling safely off the road, I dug my new Natural Connections camera (thank you donors!) out of my backpack and zoomed in.

The loon’s gray-brown back, full white throat, and pale cheeks confirmed them as a juvenile, a young of this year. While this loon is on the late end of migration, I wasn’t worried for their safety. Juvenile loons have been navigating their fall migrations alone for millennia. The general schedule I’ve been told is that bachelor loons (without chicks for whatever reason) migrate in August, mother loons head out in September, the dad’s leave in October, and the juveniles fly south in November.

Here's a clearer image of a juvenile loon on a sunny day in a previous late October.
Photo by Emily Stone.

That’s just a general schedule, though, and individual loons are likely all over the calendar, as well as the map. That also doesn’t account for loons from Canada making pit stops here along their way. Early ice formation will shoo them south faster, and warm autumns like this one don’t give them any reason to hurry.

The ultimate destination for loons is saltwater that doesn’t freeze. Their main habitat requirements are plenty of fish to eat and clear water to hunt in. Southern inland lakes tend to have warm, shallow, murky water, and alligators (!), so the ocean provides a better option. There, loons face the challenge of transitioning from freshwater to saltwater. They’ve adapted by excreting salt out of glands in their skull between their eyes. The glands drip almost constantly during the winter…sort of like how my nose adapts to winter, too…

After making the big journey and coping with salt, loons gain access to a seafood feast. Wintering loons eat flounder, crabs, lobster, shrimp, gulf menhaden, bay anchovies, silversides, and more. The ocean bounty gives loons enough energy to molt and regrow all of their feathers, which carry them back north in the spring.

Those feathers carry important information, too. As loon researcher Walter Piper recently wrote on his Loon Project blog, once feathers are grown, they don’t continue to be living tissue. Just like our fingernails, they stop receiving a blood supply and become a time capsule. Inside the feathers are stable isotopes, or as Piper explained, “different versions of a chemical element with different masses.” By studying the stable isotopes of the feathers and matching them to the stable isotopes of various loon wintering locations, we can identify the place where the feather was grown. When scientists capture a loon in Wisconsin in July, studying a tiny clip of a feather can reveal where that loon spent their winter.

Early studies of loon migration using satellite transmitters suggested that many of our loons head to the west coast of Florida. Further information provided by recoveries and sightings of banded loons expanded that map quite a bit. We now have records of banded loons from Wisconsin and Minnesota wintering all along the west and east coasts of Florida, up through Georgia and the Carolinas, and even up into the Northeast, but that data is mostly based on luck.

Loon migration patterns from the Loon Project blog.

This new avenue of stable isotope analysis opens up a way for scientists to capture a loon on their breeding territory up here and figure out where they spent last winter without having to track them on migration. Why does that matter? Well, I for one, love talking to snowbirds about their winter adventures in warm places. But more importantly, this information may help scientists understand how challenges loons face over the winter may be impacting their ability to return north, or their breeding success once they get here.

Out on Sugar Bay, the feathers of that juvenile loon contain information from here, or maybe from Canada, wherever the kid molted out of their baby fuzz and into their first round of sleek feathers. After three or four years gaining strength and maturity on the ocean, this loon will molt into their striking black-and-white breeding plumage for the first time—feathers filled with the signature of saltwater—and fly home.

I wonder if they’ll take a “shortcut” or flip any Louies along the way!

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

November is a Sigh with Lois Nestel

“November is a sigh; a sigh of weariness after the tumult of summer, a sigh of resignation over projects yet undone, a sigh of regret for hopes unfulfilled. It is a sigh of frustration that no matter how we try, the world seems to be sinking deeper into the morass, and a sigh of sadness that neither we nor those around us seem to live up to our expectations.” So wrote Lois Nestel, the Museum’s founding director and naturalist, over three decades ago. It is a gray sentiment, to match the gray clouds and gray trees of this time of year. I feel it, too. With little daylight left after work, it’s hard to want to get out for a walk. When I do, the air is damp and chilled, and the landscape dreary.

Lucky for us, Lois had the fortitude to continue past her sigh and philosophize about a different perspective we could take.

She wrote, “Nature also sighs, but in a gentler mood. It is the sigh of relaxation as hibernating creatures slip into their long sleep. It is the gusty sigh of pines yielding to the cold north wind and the almost silent sigh of leaves and grasses settling closer to the bosom of the earth beneath the gentle pressure of the snow.

“We are in limbo. It is an in-between time when looking forward appears as pointless as looking back. The short gray days and long black nights are conducive to dark thoughts…yet, why?

“The badge of hope is pinned to every twig as tightly furled buds encase next summer’s glory. The cocoon, hung high in the tree, is a symbol of faith in a warmer, bright day. Courage and cheer are exemplified in the sprightly chickadee, who finds joy in just being alive. Patience marks the bed of seed and spore. So, why the gloom of human spirit?

“Perhaps we have strayed too far from our beginnings. The wall of human thought and intellect that should have raised us to the heights of glory has instead separated us from the beauty of simplicity and faith. We demand, we demand. We have set ourselves upon a throne, despotic rulers of all we survey. Man is such a small cog in this complex world. Biologists have found an average of 1356 living creatures in the top inch of a square foot of forest soil; and did you know that the average size of all living animals, including man, is about that of a housefly? Yet we are so big in our own eyes!

“A proper perspective is what we need, and perhaps a closer bond with nature could teach us. That lesson learned, how good it would be if our sighs of dissatisfaction could become sighs of contentment and peace.”

Lois must have been caught in this mood for several weeks, for a later essay of hers reflects these same themes of renewal and humans’ removal from it. Just as Lois saw hope in the form of a tree bud, she sees hope in demise of a rabbit, which might in fact provide nourishment for a future tree bud.

She wrote, “The first snow of the season blanketed the ground and reflected back the moonlight with unaccustomed brightness. Looking out, I thought the world seemed empty of life, silent and pristine. The illusion was soon shattered as from somewhere in the shadows of the trees came the piercing, quavering cry of a rabbit, rising to a shriek and then ending abruptly.

“My first thought was, “Oh, the poor thing—what a pity.” I believed it to be the work of a resident great horned owl, and I pictured the silent swoop, the clutch of talons and the great, tearing beak. Then, lying back, I mulled over the subject.

“The death was but a link in the chain and sad only for the rabbit. For the owl, as prime predator, it was cause for fierce pleasure and satisfaction, a sustaining of life. Lesser creatures would glean crumbs from his table, bits of flesh and bone to be gnawed by mice and shrews, to be picked by birds; nests would be lined in spring with scattered hair. Remnants of body wastes and liquids would sink into the earth to nourish next year’s blade or twig which in turn would nourish, perhaps, another rabbit in the passage of time.

“Left to its normal management there is no waste in nature. Part of the owl flying in the night sky and the beetle beneath dead leaves is the rabbit who ate the twig whose nutrients came from death and decay. Everything uses and is used, is changed and converted but never lost.

“I regret that human standards have removed us from the natural chain. Human civilization has come to mean constant taking, seldom returning. How long will nature tolerate us?

Lois’s perspective brings comfort in this gray season, and I resolve to take my next walk with eyes open to the life curled up inside buds, the cocoons protecting delicate moths-to-be, the chickadees indomitable cheer, and the renewal inherent in every bit of death. Hopefully you, too, will find ways to ensure that your November sighs indicate contentment and peace.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Snow Buntings and Needle Ice Foretell Winter

Tawny, dried weeds and their dusky shadows painted texture on the roadside border as I drove up Scenic 61 along Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior. Suddenly, those colors came alive in a cloud of swirling beauty. Brilliant white, sharp black, brown, and blur; the flock of snow buntings ascended, swooped as if tossed by blizzard winds, flashed their colors in unison, then fluttered back to invisibility among the weeds.

These tough little visitors from the Arctic live up to their nickname of “snowflake birds.” Snow buntings nest on tundra all around the top of the globe, and are the most northerly recorded songbird in the world.

My toes get cold just thinking about it, but feathered feet allow snow buntings to spend most of their winter strutting about on the chilly drifts. They usually feed in big, gregarious flocks that seem to roll along chaotically as the birds in the back make short, fluttering flights to the front. Occasionally, the whole group will rise and fall in a flurry of motion at the suspicion and passing of danger. Feeding flocks are entertaining to watch, since these birds don’t submit to a defined hierarchy like chickadees do, and end up bickering continuously over seeds and space.

Deep snows cover up the seed heads of short tundra plants in their breeding territory, but here in the Northwoods, snowplows expose seeds in the gravel shoulder, and windswept fields of nodding stems offer good foraging, too. I was particularly happy to read that they eat seeds of the ragweed plant, which is a major cause of seasonal allergies!

While snowshoe hares turn white for the winter, snow buntings add brown and spend the season with rusty patches on their feathers. It helps them blend in on the bare fields and among the grass stems where they feed. By April, that color has worn off to reveal pure white plumage that will match their still-snowy Arctic breeding habitat. Since snow buntings nest in deep cracks and cavities in rocks to avoid predators, their nesting sites are limited. Not going too far south and arriving early back north to claim a territory is essential.

Their breeding is carefully timed so that chicks are hungriest right when insects are most plentiful. Warm springs that shift breeding earlier produce a mismatch with their food source. Hard winters seem to keep this timing well-matched. What type of winter will this one be?

Swirling flocks led me up the North Shore, all the way to the Cascade River north of Lutsen, MN. The trailhead was empty, and it looked like we were the first ones on that section of the Superior Hiking Trail. While cool, wet weather has made a lot of trails muddy recently, the ground was rock hard under my hiking shoes. Frozen! A novel experience for this fall, when September and October both set records for higher-than-average global temperatures.

Then: Crunch! Crunch! Crunch! The trail was filled with fragile clusters of ice, pushing up through the soil. My clumsy feet had pulverized some, but in several places the ice remained beautifully sculpted into ribboned clusters a few inches high. Squatting down for a better look, I noticed soil particles, moss fragments, and grass blades frozen into the ice.

“Needle ice” seems to be the most scientific term for this phenomenon, but I’ve also heard it called frost pillars, frost castles, and ice filaments. The Swedes, Germans, and Japanese have their own words for this circumboreal art form, too.

While not confined to one region or habitat, needle ice does require a certain set of conditions in order to form. First, the soil must not yet be frozen, at least beyond the first thin crust. In contrast, the air temperature needs to be below freezing. Finally, the soil needs to have plenty of moisture, and just the right sized pores between the grains so that water can flow toward the growing ice.

What draws the liquid water toward the ice is a process known as ice segregation. Supercooled water – held in a liquid state below 32 degrees F – moves toward ice and adds on to it. When the two meet, ice grows away from the ice/water interface. As the ice crystals expand upward, growing perpendicular to the surface, they may also push soil up or away, lift small pebbles into the air, and incorporate whatever debris is nearby. This fragile structure of ice and dirt is what crumbled under my hiking shoes.

I’m not the only source of destruction, though. Once these frosted soils melt, they are loose and susceptible to erosion. If the needle ice forms on a slope, even just the action of lifting soil particles up and letting them down again will cause them to descend in the process of soil creep. This is a challenge for trail maintenance.

The icy hike was beautiful, and “snowflake birds” swirled ahead of my car all the way home. Real snowflakes chased me from behind, and soon accumulated six inches of the white stuff. Snow buntings and needle ice foretold the coming winter, and as I write this, it has arrived!

Author’s note: portions of this article are reprinted from 2015, 2016, and 2022.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Fall Colors and Caribou

Woops! If you were directed here by the Museum's e-newsletter and were expecting snow buntings and needle ice, that will come next week. In scheduling things ahead before leaving for a conference, I got things switched around in our newsletter. The blog and podcast really are about fall colors and caribou. The others will come next week! Sorry for any confusion! --Emily

On my way to work on this damp morning, I enjoyed a rainbow in the ditches. While the fall colors of the canopy are losing their luster, many of the shrubs are just hitting their peak. Yellow, orange, and even pink leaves formed bands and blobs of color. Those fall colors near the ground reminded me of autumn on the Alaskan tundra, back when I spent the summer there in 2018. Of course, that far north, autumn was in August! Please enjoy this article from the archives while I write a major grant proposal instead of a fresh article.

If anyone had seen my erratic progress across the open tundra they might have assumed me possessed. Thankfully, rolling hills of glacial sediment hid me from the view of what little civilization hummed nearby at the Toolik Field Station. Careening from one burst of beauty to the next, I was reveling in the gorgeous rainbows that autumn (i.e. late August) had flung across the landscape. Scarlet carpets of alpine bearberry clustered around boulders. Thickets of dwarf birch sported leafy little doilies in gradients of red and orange. Willows claimed the most vibrant, glossy yellows for their own adornment, but sneakily retained all my favorite shades of green as well. Blue and purple found their homes in the berries and leaves of bog blueberry. Camera in hand, I raced to create a lasting record of my amazement.

The dwarf birches perfectly match my favorite sweater!

I aimed my camera high as well as low, since the colors at my feet spread clear out to the horizon. I’m no stranger to the magic of fall. From the river bluffs of Northeast Iowa, to the pastoral hills of Vermont, the cranberry fields of Maine, and now the red maples of Northern Wisconsin, I gravitate toward places with a kaleidoscope of seasons. Autumn on the Alaskan tundra was a whole new spectacle, though. With ground-hugging shrubs—all of them circumpolar species that grow around the top of the globe—instead of tall trees, it looked like the land itself was drenched in a rainbow swirl of melted crayon.

At my feet, wiry brown lichens clutched droplets of melted morning frost in their twig-like tips. Kneeling down to photograph them, I was soon lost in the miniature world of reflections contained in each drop. It’s not a good idea to be too enraptured by the foreground in grizzly country though, so after a bit I stood and scanned my surroundings carefully. A northern harrier floated by looking for voles. Nothing else moved.

So I moved. My purported destination for this walk was Jade Mountain, which still loomed a good distance away. As I neared the edge of the small knoll, something caught my attention in the swale. Brown. White. Skinny. A bull caribou stood with his rump patch toward me, his neck craned around to investigate, and his tree-like antlers towering above. I held my breath and snapped the shutter over and over as he stood on alert. When a sudden movement startled him into a trot, three smaller bulls followed him out of the vale and over the ridge. What a thrill!

Caribou were the official reason I’d come here, to the Toolik Field Station on the North Slope of the Brooks Range. My research partner, Tessa, had driven down to the snowshoe hare research site near Wiseman to pick me up a few days before. Since then we’d been cruising up and down the rough gravel of the Dalton Highway between Toolik and Prudhoe Bay looking for caribou.

Of the 32 caribou herds in Alaska, four of them have their calving grounds on the North Slope. Tessa and I were studying the Central Arctic Caribou Herd. Their population plummeted from a high of about 70,000 animals in 2010, to 22,000 in 2016. Hunters, hunting guides, and pilots noticed the population decline before it showed up in the wildlife manager’s data. Scott Leorna was already doing his master’s project on the caribou, so he added a citizen science component to his research to figure out how the hunters knew.

Scott worked with web developers to create a smartphone app that the public can use to record caribou observations in the study area. In order to calibrate the app and gauge the effectiveness of the public in spotting caribou along the road, he conscripted several pairs of fellow graduate students from the University Alaska Fairbanks. They and other volunteers drove through his study area at no more than 35 mph with the sole goal of seeing every caribou along the road. That 132-mile journey takes more than 6 hours.

Tessa and I saw varying numbers of caribou on each of our five sampling days, and they were mostly solo or in small groups. “Herd” is a relative term. The animals gather in full force only on their calving grounds, and drift off to other feeding areas for summer, fall, and winter. The population decline that this herd has experienced is pretty normal. Just like with snowshoe hares, when numbers get high their forage quality declines, birth rate slows, and predators increase. What’s unique about this herd is that ever since the Dalton Highway was built to access the oil resources at Prudhoe Bay, these roadside caribou have become an increasingly important resource to both resident and non-resident hunters.

Bumpy roads and tired eyes notwithstanding, it was a fine gig for a volunteer. In addition to caribou, we spotted red fox, short-eared owls, golden eagles, and muskoxen along the road. I exclaimed every few minutes about the stunning beauty of the fall colors, and, on the one sunny day, snowcapped mountains rimmed our view.

Visiting the Toolik Field Station had been on my bucket list since I first started planning my trip to Alaska. Run by the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks with support from the National Science Foundation, it is a hub for scientists (my superheroes) who are studying the Arctic. In addition to long-term datasets, labs, and equipment, the field station also provides researchers with gourmet food, rustic housing, a beautiful sauna, and high-speed WiFi.

Plus, it’s nestled along the shore of beautiful Toolik Lake, among the prettiest fall colors I’ve ever seen. Possessed? Sure I’m possessed—by an overwhelming sense of wonder at and gratitude for the experiences I’ve had.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at www.cablemuseum.org/books and at your local independent bookstore, too.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open through mid-March. Our Fall Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.