Listening in Elk Habitat

Morning mist hung low in the sky as a dozen elk ran across a clearing. A similarly sized herd of Museum members held our breath and grinned at our good luck. It was luck 3 billion years in the making.

All morning we’d been listening intently. The Museum has been hosting this annual Sounds of the Elk field trip since long before I arrived on the scene. First it was Laine Stowell who used his bulky radio telemetry equipment to locate collared cow elk and lead us down the logging roads to get close to a herd. He’d pause occasionally to use the receiver dangling around his neck, then he’d mew like a cow or bugle like a bull. Some years a haunting, high-pitched trumpet would echo through the woods in reply. In many years, silence.

Laine Stowell Bugling for Elk in 2014

Silence was a historical fact, too. Elk were extirpated from Wisconsin in the 1880s due to unregulated hunting and a rapid decline in habitat. In 1995, twenty-five elk were released into the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest near Clam Lake. Ninety-one more elk arrived in the Clam Lake Elk Range from Kentucky in March 2017 and 2019. Additionally, sixty-three elk were released in Jackson County in 2015 and 2016 to establish the Black River Elk Range, also using elk from southeastern Kentucky. The new elk continue to improve the genetic diversity and expand the size of the herd. A hunting season was initialed in 2018 and revenue from hunters funds almost the entire project. The DNR now estimates that the population has surpassed 500 animals, with about 350 in the Clam Lake Zone!

Laine, who led the reintroduction, retired a few years ago, and Joshua Spiegel is the current Wisconsin DNR Wildlife Biologist who leads us in search of elk. On this morning, in between Josh’s calls, we heard no elk reply. The morning was very warm, he explained, reducing rutting activity. Fifty-eight degrees at dawn doesn’t feel like fall to an elk. But the woods weren’t silent.

Josh Spiegel led this year's elk bugling adventure.

A red squirrel scolded incessantly, as they do. Blue jays shouted their name. Spring peepers piped up sporadically in a phenomenon called “fall echo,” where they are triggered by day length that reminds them of their spring breeding season. The hollow croaks of ravens drifted musically over the forest. Breathy half-songs came from the treetops, too, like someone whistling through their teeth. “Confusing fall warblers” (a technical term) are on the move south, and must have been gleaning bugs from the foliage for breakfast. And, as we walked, I picked up on the characteristic melancholy-sounding swee notes of a flock of goldfinches that earned them a Latin name tristis, which means sad. But we didn’t hear any elk.

Even when we saw our first elk, I couldn’t hear her. With the old tracking equipment, Laine might have heard the beeping of her bright orange collar through the receiver, but Josh’s GPS makes no sound. We’d walked into a second location—a long strip of open grassland bordered by forest—and spotted a couple of cow elk off in the brush. She looked right at us. So much for the element of surprise! As she put her head down and walked off, though, I didn’t hear any leaves rustling. There was no twig snap. The 500 pound animal just vanished.

We've been spotted!

It’s fitting that we should be listening in this particular wide swath cleared through the forest, since at one point submarines were listening to sounds originating here.

The clearing is on the old ELF line. This U.S. Navy project used extremely low frequency (ELF) radio waves to communicate with deeply submerged submarines throughout the world. The transmitter operated from 1989 to 2004, and consisted of two 14-mile transmission line antennas in the shape of a cross, with the transmitter station at their intersection. The lines were removed in 2008. Its legacy is that some of the clearing that was once mowed for maintenance is now kept open for wildlife habitat. The elk like the freedom of movement and tender new growth that the cut area provides. It is one of the main reasons that this area was chosen for the elk reintroduction in 1995.

And the bedrock here was one of the main reasons that this area was chosen for the ELF. As I confirmed with my Flyover Country app, the bedrock under Clam Lake is mapped as 3.2 to 3.6 billion-year-old gneiss from the original Superior Continent (learn about it in our current exhibit!). The rock is buried by glacial sediments here. That’s why our Geology of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula field trip visited an outcrop of basically the same stuff near Republic, Michigan—which is where a second ELF transmitter was located. This is no coincidence! These rocks of the Laurentian Shield possess qualities that channeled the ELF currents deeper into the ground, increasing signal efficiency.

Looking up from the bedrock map on my phone, I saw the perked ears of a cow elk peeking up over the hill, visible because of the mowing still done to maintain the open, grassy concept of the ELF line. Josh motioned for all of us to creep forward. Two cows watched us. Then, they jogged across the ELF line to the right, and more elk appeared. Now I could hear them. Hooves pounded and brush rustled as ten females ran and milled and crossed the clearing. A stately bull brought up the end of the line, and he paused as if to let us admire him before trotting across on the heels of a cow.

Two elk watch us from the old ELF line.

Now that the spell was broken, we talked excitedly about what we’d just seen. We no longer needed to listen intently for the elk. And no one is listening to the ELF, either. But we still feel the impact of that 3 billion-year-old rock.

This 3+ billion year old bedrock facilitated the placement of ELF lines near Clam Lake, WI and Republic MI. The clearings for the ELF lines facilitated reintroduction of the elk.
That's 3 billion years of habitat development!

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.

Turtles All the Way Down

In the misty afternoon I decided it was time to get out for a walk. With raindrops still sparkling on everything, I slipped my little macro camera into my pocket, just in case some beauty caught my eye, and headed up the gravel road.

A bright spot gleamed, and I peered into the damp forest. White baneberry berries floated at knee-height in the gloom. Each of the six pearly berries had a dark spot in the center where the flower had attached, and the effect was like disembodied eyes looking back at me. Spooky! For good reason, they are also known as Doll’s Eyes.

The spooky vibe continued when two cars came creeping down the road toward me, much slower than the usual locals. The windows rolled down… ”Emily?” a voice came from the depths. And then I got a good look at the faces. My mushroom people! Who else would be driving slowly down a gravel road just days before the Annual Northwoods Foray put on by the Wisconsin Mycological Society but a bunch of the board members scouting locations? There was a seat open in the back, so naturally, I hopped into the car with them.

It was great to catch up with the crew as I guided them to the trailhead they were thinking of but couldn't quite remember how to get to. The mist thickened as we set off, but it didn’t deter anyone. Mushroom people like dampness just as much as the fungi they seek, and these folks were rehydrating after being in hot, dry weather farther south.

Out on the bog boardwalk at the Forest Lodge Nature Trail, I pointed folks toward a little patch of spoon-leaf sundew off a corner of the observation deck. These carnivorous plants catch insects in the sticky “dew” drops held at the tips of little hairs, and then digest them with enzyme-rich “dew.”

I was taught that these plants don’t need mycorrhizal relationships with fungi on their roots, because they could harvest nitrogen and phosphorus from insects. New DNA sequencing techniques have confirmed that they do indeed have a relationship with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, who penetrate their roots. The fungi probably gain sugars from the plant, and the plant might get nitrogen from the fungi.

As we were walking back on the boardwalk, some unusual brown patterns against the green of the Sphagnum caught my eye. Looking closer, I found some wrinkly, fuzzy, brown fungi. Later I’d discover these to be in the genusThelephora, sometimes called Common Fiber Vase because of the narrow base and wide top, the spiraling cluster of layers, and the fuzzy edges. These fungi partner with pine trees – or maybe the spruce in this boggy forest – but unlike the arbuscular fungi who infiltrate the roots of a sundew, these ectomycorrhizal fungi form a web around cells in the tree root in order to trade nutrients.

From gazing out through the forest, to scanning the patch of fungi, I now picked up a single mushroom and looked even closer. A bright spot gleamed, and I peered into the damp brown layers. The small white grub had six legs and several rows of tiny black spots down its back. iNaturalist called it a Twenty-spotted Lady Beetle larva, and I’m not one to argue.

These insects are in Psyllobora, the genus of “fungus-eating lady beetles.” Most lady beetles are carnivores who eat other insects, and especially aphids, so this vegetarian option was news to me. Both the larvae and the adults eat powdery mildew, the white film that is the bane of many gardeners. Maybe they also eat the Fiber Vase? Or maybe a powdery mildew was growing on the brown surface beyond the reach of my eyes.

As I photographed the white larva, I noticed that an orange spot on their back had legs! A mite! When I asked a friend for an ID, he suggested that it might be a phoretic mite. Phoretic isn’t a species, but a lifestyle in which one critter hitchhikes on another but doesn’t parasitize them. This larva wasn’t going anywhere fast, but the beetle it will eventually become will fly away home.

Feeling squinty, I lifted my head to let my eyes rest on the soft greens and browns of the forest again. The tender light on the glistening surfaces made it feel like a fairyland. As my mind wandered around all of the living beings hidden in that scene, the phrase “turtles all the way down” popped into my head.

Realizing I had only a sense of what it meant, I looked up the phrase. It is an expression of the problem of infinite regress. For example (according to Wikipedia) “a belief is justified because it is based on another belief that is justified. But this other belief is itself in need of one more justified belief for itself to be justified and so on.” The reference to turtles is based on the story of the Earth being built on Turtle’s back. When asked what the turtle is standing on, the answer is “turtles all the way down.”

Here in this forest, the sequence isn’t all turtles. It’s spruce trees and raindrops and fungi and ladybugs and mites and weird friends and all the senses we have to perceive them. Throughout the entire universe, it’s relationships and connections all the way down.

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.

Microscopic Minerals by Kali Sipp

Guest writer Kali Sipp is from Wild Rose, Wisconsin, and recently graduated with a degree in geoscience from Northland College in Ashland, WI. Kali’s senior project included taking photomicrographs of slices of rocks in the geo lab. Those photos grace the hallways of the Museum, and they write about them here. Kali was a Summer Naturalist/Geology Intern at the Cable Natural History Museum.

Kali Sipp spent countless hours at this microscope setup last semester making images of minerals in thin slices of rocks. Their work is currently displayed at the Cable Natural History Museum. Photo by Emily Stone.

It was 7 o’clock at night at the Northland College Geology Lab, and for the past four hours, I had been peering down a microscope, absorbing the stunning images of a rock cut so thinly that light leaked through it. The microscope I had been using magnified the tiny sample hundreds of times, revealing hidden intricacies between grains mere tenths of a millimeter in size. Each view was a tiny stained-glass window. However, magnification alone was not what made this mineral thin section so colorful and vibrant.

Light, normally chaotic, is forced to be orderly as it passes through a slotted filter called a polarizer. The light then goes through the crystals of the sample, where the light changes speed and direction within their matrices before exiting back out and through a second polarizer, perpendicular to the first. The result seen is an image of crystals on the slide, now dyed in new colors that changed when you spun the thin section around.

Even when viewed with the naked eye, this sample of gabbro has visible crystals. When sliced thin and placed under a microscope with supplemental light, it is stunning! Photomicrograph by Kali Sipp.

It was a feast for the eyes. But this polarized light microscopy was not just a light show, it was a method for study. Individual quartz crystals that would otherwise appear as a clear mass in plain light suddenly sprung out in a rainbow of colors. Other minerals produced only a small array of colors. Some, like garnet, turned completely black under the polarized light. Using polarized light would prove useful for this particular sample.

It was a rock I found in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: a mere curiosity when I collected it as a greenhorn geologist. I wanted to know more about it. The garnets in it were evidence of drastic changes in its lifetime, as garnets only form under high heat and pressure, ultimately altering the original structure and composition of the rock. So, it begged the question: what was this rock before its transformation?

I set out on a study with my professor, Tom Fitz, to find out. Our hikes across the Northwoods to find other outcrops of its kind yielded nothing. But we did not give up hope. Instead, we sent our sample away to get a thin section cut out of this rock to study it much more closely. The result was marvelous.

When I spun the microscope’s turntable, biotite crystals shimmered with a brown hue. They were accompanied by quartz grains that raved in different colors. Hornblende and feldspar also flashed with each turn of the slide. Chlorite stubbornly remained green, even under polarization; while in contrast the garnets turned opaque under the polarized light, only to become transparent in comparison to the hematite that sat next to it unchanged when the polarizer was removed.

All of these minerals were vexing, as they were not what we were expecting to find in the sample. So, for several weeks, I pored over studies published by other scientists about the geology of the U.P. of Michigan to see if anyone else had documented a rock similar to mine. The online search yielded nothing for a while, but then, a breakthrough!

One study described the geochemical makeup of a rock they had collected, very similar to mine in both location and chemistry. But it was the thin section photographs the study provided that would cause me to declare I had found a probable match. The photomicrographs displayed rocks that could have been a sibling to mine! Together with the geochemistry, it was enough to convince me I had figured out what my rock was: a metadiabase sill—fancy talk for a rock that cooled from magma in between two other layers of rock, then was metamorphosed by heat and pressure.

Thin section photomicrograph of a garnet. Photomicrograph by Kali Sipp.

I could not have figured out what my rock was without the microscope. It was a tool that transformed my way of thinking and looking. Now, everywhere I go, I see rocks and wonder what they would look like under the scrutinizing gaze of the microscope. What minerals lay hidden? What structures or other hidden features are sequestered away from prying eyes, waiting to be revealed?

The more I learn, the more I want to explore the unseen world that surrounds us.

Want to learn and see more? Watch these two videos on the Museum's YouTube channel!

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.

Jewels of the Wilderness

Just back from leading a “Boundary Waters with a Naturalist” trip for the Museum, I’m turning over memories in my mind. Each one has a unique sparkle or hue; some edges are rough, others liquid; some are common and numerous, while others are one of a kind.

1. In the parking lot of the Holiday Station in Tofte, MN, (“Wal-Mart of the North”) my first bite of that World’s Best Donut told me I was truly Up North. Diamond dust made of cinnamon sugar coated my tongue. Memories of past visits exploded through my taste buds. No need to drive all the way to the official store Grand Marais and wait in line, here was a slice of heaven just before I turned the Museum’s van up the Sawbill Trail.

2. Drops of rain dimpled the silver lake’s surface and sunset turned it rosy. After packing up the supper dishes and making a plan for the morning, I contemplated life at the edge of Sawbill Lake. The downpour and thunder had passed while eight new friends sat under the tarp, and now all that was left of the storm was beauty and a reminder that the weather can, and does, change quickly. What would it do over the next three days?

3. Four canoes fought a morning headwind across Alton Lake, making a beeline for the lee of the far shore and the ruby red dot of a campsite on the map. Pulling up on the welcoming gravel of a shallow, stable landing, we hopped out of our canoes to look around. Log benches sat conversationally around the fire grate. Several tent pads snuggled cozily among the trees. Out in the middle of the lake, whitecaps flashed. Everyone agreed: we were home.

4. Bounding up the craggy lump of granite that anchored one side of the campsite, looking for a view, I instead spotted tiny dangling baubles of hot pink tipped by sunshine yellow. “Sunset flower” one of my friends calls this plant. Rock harlequin, Pale Corydalis, and Corydalis sempervirens are other names. A lovely lace of narrow-lobed, blue-green leaves provided a backdrop for the blossoms. What appeared delicate was surviving just fine with their toes wedged in a tiny crack, a study in contrast. At the time that rock solidified, land plants were not even a glint in Mother Earth’s eye.

5. Even a walk up the latrine trail on a Boundary Waters campsite is as good as a nature hike. “What are those shiny blue berries in the woods?” asked the first person to go exploring. I thought I knew, but took a look to confirm. The berries seemed to float ten inches off the ground in the dim shade. Upon closer inspection, slender stems anchored them to the rafts of shiny green leaves, canoe-shaped and glinting in any fleck of light that filtered through the canopy. Spreading by rhizomes, blue-bead lily, or Clintonia borealis can form big patches in the understory. Picking a big bowl of them would be so easy and satisfying, but these are NOT blueberries, and eating them will either give you an upset tummy or kill you, based on which reference you believe. I’m not offering to experiment.

6. As the only thing sticking out of my sleeping bag, I’m sure my nose was rosy red from morning cold. Hiking up the latrine trail, I noticed a matching scarlet leaf resting on a lichen-covered rock: the colors of fall.

7. Our big day-trip destination was a bedrock knob jutting out of a bog, with three cobbles arranged on its peak, and a boulder resting on top of those. By crouching down I could see all the way through to the shining waters of Kelso Lake. How did it come to be perched like that? Glaciers? Vikings? Bored and playful Civilian Conservation Corps boys? No one knows for sure. And anyway, the bog was just as fascinating.

8. Exploring around the mossy, sprucy forest on the bedrock, I happened to look low under the shrubs, and shouted in excitement. The small, white oval of a creeping snowberry was something I hadn’t seen in years. Snowberry’s miniature, trailing vines are common in cold, wet places, but I’ve never spotted its flower, and rarely the fruit. Here it was. Here were four of them. After everyone had a look, I savored one on my tongue, the delicate flavor of wintergreen and lemon and discovery.

9. Back at camp, our final night. Ben brought out a flint and steel. Sparks showered into the little nest of grass he’d made, but no flame flared. I tried it. Other’s tried it. And then Mary jumped in. Suddenly, the nest caught fire. A curl of smoke rose from the tinder, and Ben arranged it just so under the teepee of sticks he’d built in the fire grate. First it crackled, then it roared. We cheered for Mary and her contagious spark.

10. “The north country is a siren,” wrote Grace Lee Nute long ago, and now I read her words around the fire, eight faces reflecting the warmth of flame and friendship. Nute compared the lakes to strings of pearls, then added, “Those who have ever seen her in her beauty or listened to her vibrant melodies can never quite forget her nor lose the urge to return to her.”

We paddled out the next morning, each of us filled with a handful of sparkling memories and the intention to return.

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.