First Grade Spiders

A small group of first graders nearly vibrated with excitement as they gathered in a circle on the carpet at the front of their room. They remembered me from last school year, when I’d brought tubs full of nature stuff to their kindergarten classroom. For those first Museum Mobile visits, we focused on exploring nature using our five senses. We smelled a sprig of white cedar, listened to acorns rattle in a cup, felt the smooth bone of a deer antler, and looked at the orange teeth on a beaver skull. We left taste for snack time.

Now, as first graders, I explained, we get to practice those skills again…by using our eyes to make observations about spiders! I was heartened by the wave of enthusiasm – not fear – that rippled through the group. No matter what grade Mr. Brinker is teaching at the Drummond Elementary School, I can count on his students to be curious and enthusiastic.

Holding up one of the several spider specimens encased in a little puck of acrylic, I assured the first graders that they were “real but dead.” We also discussed how the spider couldn’t hurt the student, nor could the student hurt the spider in this clever display. These are some of my favorite specimens at the Museum. Lois Nestel, our founding naturalist, did a wonderful job of preserving the fragile beings in a very accessible way. Now, a few decades later, they are still allowing kids to get a closer look!

I handed one spider to each kid, and then started a rhythm of looking, then passing the specimens around the circle. “This one’s shiny!” “Look at how long the legs are!” This one is so tiny!” Their exclamations showed that they were thinking critically. Once all the specimens were back in the tub, I asked for students to share their observations formally, after raising their hands. “Some were really small!” “Some were really big!” “They all had eight legs!” “They all had two body sections,” were the replies.

“Ok,” I summarized, “so we noticed that even though there were different shapes, sizes, and colors of spiders, they all had a few things in common. Now we’ll dress up one of your friends to look like a spider!”

I chose Levi, a particularly enthusiastic student sitting next to me to be the volunteer. First, we put a black tunic over his head. “This is the spider’s cephalothorax,” I explained. “It’s a combination of a head and thorax.” “I’ve never heard that, say that again?” asked Mr. Brinker, peeking out from around his computer screen. One of the reasons I love teaching in his classroom is that Mr. Brinker loves learning new facts and vocabulary just as much (or even more!) than the students. He sets a great example!

Then I tied a piece of black fabric around Levi’s waist to be the spider’s abdomen. Two points at the bottom represented spinnerets for sending out silk. “Spiders have just two body sections,” I reviewed. “Insects have three body parts!” blurted another student, so excited to share knowledge that they answered my next question before I’d even asked.

Then I started adding legs to the costume. The kids laughed when I pulled each gangly, homemade limb out of the bag. Another Museum Mobile educator had made the legs from black pantyhose and foam cylinders. They were jointed and floppy, and when I started attaching them to a strip of Velcro hidden under Levi’s arms, the class erupted in laughter. Through their merriment we were able to count six legs as I attached them, three on each side. “Where are the last two legs?” I asked. And Levi kicked out his toes to show that his own legs were counted in the total of eight.

More giggles erupted when I pulled out the googly eyes and started attaching them to Velcro at the top of the cephalothorax tunic. “All the spiders in Wisconsin have eight eyes, but a few around the world have just six, or four or two or none,” I explained. And then I attached two pointy fangs (made out of black foam) to the top of Levi’s shoulders. I waited until that round of giggles died down to explain that the science word for these is chelicerae. Mr. Brinker perked up again at this fun new word. As I dismantled the spider costume, we reviewed all those things that spiders have in common.

With the time we had left, we talked about how spiders are different, too. First, I laid out photos of different habitats – a pond, a leaf, a flower, and two kinds of webs. Then we matched a spider species to each one – a fishing spider, a jumping spider, a crab spider, an orb-weaver, and a funnel-web spider.

Spiders are amazing. Orb-weaver spiders spin these wonderful webs. Photo by Emily Stone.

I visited Mrs. Ramsey’s first grade class, too, and presented essentially the same lesson. In her class, though, there was one little girl who confided that both she and her mom were scared of spiders. She bravely pushed through, though, and by the end of class she was asking “Where can I learn more about spiders?” Mrs. Ramsey was ready, telling the kids they’d have a unit on spiders in science class soon.

Crab spiders don’t build elaborate webs, instead, they match the color of a white or yellow flower and then wait in ambush for an insect to land. Photo by Emily Stone.

By the end of those two lessons, I was giddy with the kids’ contagious enthusiasm, impressed by the teachers’ ability to inspire and direct curious minds, and optimistic about this community where the children love nothing more than to learn about nature. I can’t wait to visit them again in Winter and Spring!

A jumping spider with two huge eyes! Photo by Emily Stone.

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Grand Canyon Connections

The sweet, descending notes of a Canyon Wren cascaded down the sandstone cliff and reached my ears above the rumble of a 30-horsepower motor on the back of our raft. In the days leading up to this rafting trip down the Colorado River, I’d been hoping to hear that sound. I’d come to love the song of the Canyon Wren when I was an intern in Southeast Utah almost 20 years ago.

A Canyon Wren sings above our raft. Photo by Emily Stone.

Little else felt familiar as the sandstone cliffs and dusty shale slopes of the Grand Canyon rose above the 19 of us on that raft. I knew just one person on the trip. Colleen Miniuk is a professional photographer I’d become friends with during Outdoor Writers Association of America conferences. This was one of the many photography workshops she hosts each year, and two years ago she’d convinced me to add this “Grand Canyon Rafting Photo Retreat” to my bucket list. But she was at the back of the raft with the guides, and I sat at the very front with strangers in a strange landscape.

As we slid down the muddy river from our launch at Lee’s Ferry, flocks of little yellow birds swirled among the willows. Who were they? I’d left my binoculars behind due to restrictions on the amount of gear we could bring, and my camera with the big zoom was packed away in a dry bag. A small flock of ducks spooked at our passage and cruised down the river in a tight, wedge-like formation. Who were they?

And then a familiar statuesque form along the shore spread their huge gray wings, crooked their long neck into an S, and vanished into the immensity of the canyon’s shadows. For that instant, I felt at home. I’ve been watching Great Blue Herons disappear around river bends all of my life. During my years as a seasonal naturalist, living and working in Utah, Maine, Minnesota, California, Vermont, and Alaska, I spotted herons stalking through all the possible iterations of shallow waters with fish. They are adaptable and increasing in number.

“GBH!” exclaimed the rafter next to me, as he referenced the movie The Big Year and birders’ shorthand name for the heron. Mike, I reminded myself of his name and decided he might be a friend.

Our first campsite nestled into the mouth of Tanner Wash on a pile of rocks and sand. I set up my cot a little away from the group. Another participant, Larry, intercepted me on my way back to the dining area. “There’s a beautiful patch of flowers with lots of moths right over there,” he told me, and offered to show me the way. Somehow, in just a few hours, he’d figured out that I’m interested in bugs and flowers.

Various species of evening primrose flowers grow beautifully in both the Grand Canyon and the Northwoods. Photo by Emily Stone.

I immediately recognized the four-petaled yellow flowers with prominent cross-shaped stigmas in their centers as one of the many species of evening primrose. Their cousins, Common Evening Primrose, had been blooming along roadsides in Wisconsin when I’d left for this trip. As dusk fell, I tried to photograph the White-lined Sphinx moths and big black carpenter bees who were buzzing among the flowers. The bees were a western species, but the moths are almost as widespread as the Great Blue Heron.

Bats also emerged in the twilight; their tiny forms silhouetted against the darkening blue of the sky. I hadn’t seen that many bats since before White-nose Syndrome devastated our bats back home. Bats fluttered by during morning hikes up shaded side canyons, too, and I even snapped a photo of one roosting on a sandstone wall. Using iNaturalist, I identified them as a Canyon Bat, the smallest bat species in the United States.

(I think you can see all of my iNaturalist observations from the trip by clicking this link.)

Over several nights of listening, I eventually realized that the tiny sounds I heard coming from the sky were bits of the bats’ echolocation calls that dipped into the range of human hearing. Regularly spaced chirps were their “search phase” calls helping them to navigate and locate prey, while the faster “feeding buzz” indicated when a bat was closing in on a moth and needed higher resolution information. We explained these calls years ago in the Museum’s Nature’s Superheroes exhibit, but I’d never heard them in the wild, without a device to shift the frequency.

Colleen Miniuk is a professional photographer, but here she takes goofy photos of the raft as we load back up after a side hike. Photo by Emily Stone.

Floating down the river, exploring the side canyons, relaxing around camp, I was always on the lookout for both the novel and the familiar. A giant insect I’d never seen before but knew immediately to be a Tarantula-hawk Wasp caught my attention just as easily as the glossy black feathers of a Common Raven. Josh and J.P., our river guides, did a great job of explaining the big picture geology, pausing the raft at Bighorn Sheep, and telling the human history of the canyon, too. Colleen, of course, helped us make great photos.

Thisbe's Tarantula-hawk Wasp. Photo by Emily Stone.

Common Ravens are common to both the Northwoods and the Grand Canyon. This one Is perched on a ledge of Tapeats Sandstone. Photo by Emily Stone.

After a few days of pointing out something I’d noticed, or explaining the basics of a geological feature, I found more questions coming my way from the other participants. With each teachable moment, I felt more connected to both the canyon and my fellow rafters. I wasn’t surprised at the way this unfolded, and probably, neither are you. Long ago, as I was soaring across the country from one naturalist adventure to the next with the Great Blue Herons, I decided that my vocation would always be to teach people about nature in a beautiful place. As it turns out…that’s my vacation, too!

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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Bugling at Dawn

Author’s Note: Portions of the article are reprinted from 2016. Laine Stowell has since retired, but his counterpart, elk biologist Joshua Spiegel will be leading a Sounds of the Elk program for the Museum on Friday, September 20. Find out more at cablemuseum.org or by calling 715-798-3890!

The sky was just beginning to lighten into grays and pinks as we gathered at the Clam Lake to meet Laine Stowell, elk biologist with the Wisconsin DNR. Slowly rolling down Highway 77 in our car caravan, we barely noticed as dawn broke.

Our first stop was just behind the storage facility at the end of a paved road with several small homes. Riding in the truck with Laine, I’d been privy to the steady beeping that signaled a cow with a radio collar was nearby. Driving with his left hand, his right hand gripped the pole of the big receiver antenna punched through his roof and spun it slowly. As the antenna pointed in the direction of the cow’s VHF collar, the beeping grew louder. She was close, he said, between the side road and the highway.

Elk thrive in younger forests with lots of forage, which is why the open habitat of the ELF line suits them well. Photo by Emily Stone

In 2013, I wrote about how the presence of elk in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest made it feel wild. On that morning we had hiked a mile or so into the woods on a dirt road. Today’s urban adventure didn’t convey the same mystique.

Parking at the end of the lane, we all tiptoed out of our vehicles and gently pushed the doors closed, minimizing sound however possible. Gathering around Laine, we listened as he put the small cow call to his lips, and squealed out several expressive notes. When that failed to elicit a response, he continued with the longer bull bugling device. The long, flexible tube was covered in camouflage, with shiny black pieces at both ends. Putting his lips to the mouthpiece, Laine let out a high-pitched wail. Hopefully, another bull would hear the bugle and take up the challenge.

We stood expectantly: ears open, breathing controlled, arms wrapped against the morning chill. We admired the beauty of the morning light and dappling of fall colors. Silence. The elk were close, but not cooperative.

Elk were extirpated from Wisconsin in the 1800s due to over hunting and a rapid decline in habitat. In 1995, twenty five elk were released into the National Forest near Clam Lake. In 2016 and the DNR estimated the population to be 160-170 animals. Now, in 2024, there are more than 500 elk in Wisconsin, and the DNR manages a limited elk hunting season.

Piling back into our vehicles, we caravanned to a couple more sites, each deeper into the woods than the last. Laine had woken up early to scout the area, and had located several cow-calf groups in the vicinity. During the rut—which starts around August 25 and can last into the middle of winter—where you find cows, you also find bulls. They were there…we could hear the beeps from their radio collars…but none made a peep in response to Laine’s calling.

As the Sun rose higher, we bumped still deeper into the forest. A long, narrow clearing appeared and we pulled off to the side. This was the ELF line, and its grassy clearing is one of the main reasons that this area was chosen for the elk reintroduction in 1995. The ELF was a U.S. Navy project that used extremely low frequency (ELF) radio waves to communicate with deeply submerged submarines. 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.

The lone bull tending this group of almost a dozen cow elk was last to cross the open area near Clam Lake. Photo by Emily Stone.

We walked several yards uphill, away from the cars and the valley of the Torch River. By now the group was getting a bit restless; still hopeful, but also resigned to the fact we might not hear any elk.

Laine made another cow call, and almost immediately the haunting bugle of a bull echoed in the distance. Did you hear it? We looked around the group in excitement. Not everyone had heard. Laine called again. The distant elk bugled again, and then, after a second’s pause, another bugle sounded closer, and from a slightly different direction. We pointed in the direction of the sounds and grinned.

At least one of the bulls was pretty close, and in the opposite direction we’d been walking. Back down past the vehicles we ambled in the ELF clearing, and stopped on a knoll above the river. Laine and the two bulls called back and forth several more times. We even saw a flash of warm tan hair through the trees, likely feeding on the other side of the river.

Standing there in land cleared by the military, admiring the cast of sunlight and listening to the uninhibited sound of animals going about their essential business of mating, I was struck by the contrast of wild and human-contrived. The elk were extirpated because of humans. They returned because of humans. We found them by using very high frequency (VHF) radio collars in an area cleared for extremely low frequency (ELF) communication—both manmade. And yet, the elk paid almost no attention to us. Their instincts, their drive to mate and survive, are the same as ever.

The wildness of managed populations is a philosophical question that isn’t resolved in my own head any more than it is decided among scientists or the public. We’ve complicated things, as usual. But still, I’m grateful for the opportunity to listen to the majestic bugle of an elk on a crisp fall morning just minutes from my 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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

On Top of the World

Author’s Note: I’m traveling quite a bit over the next month, which means I’ve been reminiscing about past trips. In 2018, I spent the entire summer in Alaska, and saw some amazing Northern Lights! We’ve also had some great displays around home lately. And Duluth astronomer Bob King just wrote a wonderful book called Magnificent Aurora that includes portions of this article. It will soon be available at https://shopatsky.com/ Enjoy! -- Emily

There was something in the quality of the light that glowed on the green slopes of Mount Fairplay, Alaska. For one, it was evening light, which is something that’s been rare in the land of the midnight sun. That, plus the clean scent of fresh pine boards in the latrine, and the fact that it wasn’t raining, made me pause and decide to spend the night at this rest area on the Taylor Highway on my first night driving homeward out of Fairbanks.

A few hours later I woke, rolled out of the sleeping platform in my station wagon, and grabbed a headlamp. A full moon was rising over Mount Fairplay. After turning off my headlamp to see the moon, my eyes adjusted and a sheet of twinkling stars emerged from the dark as well. I’d almost forgotten they existed. For the first time, it really sank in that I was on my way home. A deep breath of gratitude filled my lungs.

As the fog of sleep cleared and more stars appeared, awe began to expand in my heart. Then it exploded. Curtains of vibrant lights were moving just above the horizon. The aurora! My jaw must have dropped as I stumbled backward to lean against the car, and tears welled up as I tilted my head back for a better view. The moon hung full and bright on my east. To my west, spruce trees were silhouetted against the faint, rosy afterglow of the setting sun. And all across my southern sky, northern lights danced in curtains of green and white and pink. The curtains were woven of many wispy streaks, as if I was seeing the individual particles of solar wind blazing through our atmosphere.

The shimmering sheets swirled and then faded to a gentle fog across the stars, like the smoke that hangs in damp air when the glitter and crackle of Fourth of July fireworks have ended and cars stream away down the dark road.

Northern lights dance over spruce trees in Alaska. Photo by Emily Stone.

A little spot of light near the top of the sky appeared and intensified. I fixed a gaze of hope on the glow, and it grew before my eyes into a dancing swirl of pink and white and green that showered down all around me. I used to love ducking inside the dangling twigs of my grandpa’s weeping willow tree to find a secret world filled with soft light and magic. That willow went down in a storm years ago, but its glowing ghost now held me inside the same world of light and magic.

Magic indeed. The sky looked as if someone was blasting the Earth with a spray of fairy dust. Which in fact, was nearly true. Our Sun, though, is not some benign sprite. It is like a young wizard who does not yet know how to control his own power. The Sun’s light gives life. The sparkling shower of solar wind and radiation that he shoots at us threatens destruction. Mostly, those charged particles curve harmlessly around the force field of the Earth’s magnetosphere.

Near the poles though, where the magnetic field dips and our defenses are low, some of the solar wind rushes in. Here, the gasses in our atmosphere intercept the marauders, capture their energy, and transform it into colored light. When the solar winds are particularly strong, they can burst through the Earth’s defenses and interrupt radio communication, disrupt power stations, and damage satellites. Northern lights are not just an awesome benefit to living on Earth; they are an absolute necessity to our survival. Our Earth defends us. And the result is unspeakable beauty.

The most magical part to me is that it’s not magic at all. It’s physics, and chemistry, and nature. And we (or at least the scientists) understand what’s happening.

What a miracle that is. What an amazing gift to both have this incredible beauty surrounding us on Earth (on Earth, which we sometimes think of as rock and dirt, and politics and pollution) and to understand it. The Earth receives magic dust from the Sun that makes light dance upon the sky.

Emotions I couldn’t name welled up inside and spilled over into hot streaks of tears on my cold cheeks. The lights were dancing and streaking and changing colors like a time-lapse video of clouds streaming off a mountain peak. Moving curtains faded to smoke and came back. They quivered. Ghosts shimmered in front of the stars. A sleepy bird peeped from the spruces.

I was sleepy, too. My toes were cold, my fingers were numb, and I ached to crawl back into my warm sleeping bag just as badly as I ached to stay out here all night so as not to miss a single instant of beauty. Lights were dancing, falling, streaking, coming together and bursting apart like fireworks. When they faded a bit, sleep won out and I crawled back into my warm cocoon. I knew that more gorgeous vistas awaited me in the morning on my drive over the Top of the World Highway. More beauty awaits me every second of every day.

Emily’s award-winning second book, Natural Connections: Dreaming of an Elfin Skimmer, is available to purchase at 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. The Museum is open with our brand-new exhibit: “Anaamaagon: Under the Snow.” Our Fall Calendar is open for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.