Boundary Waters Beauty

Growing up, my dad used to call me his “mud and water daughter.” It was a fitting title, since I spent most of the summer mixing various concoctions of mud pies under the playhouse and squirting things with the hose. As an adult, though, I am more of a “bedrock and water daughter,” and I thrive in the places where waves lap on crystalline shores.

Several times over the past 15 years working at the Museum, I have shared my love of such places by taking a small group of Museum members to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northeastern Minnesota, which just happens to be my favorite place on Earth. I’m not alone in my opinion. The Boundary Waters is the most visited wilderness in the United States, with more than 250,000 annual visitors.

Why do we love it so much? Many have waxed poetic about its beauty. On those trips we slipped through a meandering river lined with golden stands of wild rice, watched a sunrise through the swirling fog from a pink granite knob, and ran out from under the tarp to marvel at a rainbow that began and ended right in our bay. We paddled under towering cliffs of well-worn stone, painted by eons of dripping water and softened by an intricate crust of lichens. We marveled at the endless variety of clouds in the sky, and became mesmerized by their glimmering reflections in the silky medium that supported our thin-walled canoes.

The Boundary Waters is beautiful, but that’s only part of it. What really keeps people coming back, I believe, is the way this place helps us to challenge ourselves. When you cut out the excess, the superfluous, and the mess, and fit everything necessary for a week or two of life into a single, green pack, life becomes simple. There is an incredible sense of freedom in this knowledge of self-sufficiency. This freedom feels all the more sweet when it comes with manageable challenges and a means to test our mettle.

Both the challenge and the teamwork of paddling and portaging forge connections on a trip to the Boundary Waters. Photo by Emily Stone.

Portaging the canoe over steep and muddy trails is not easy. Paddling into a fierce headwind fatigues both the arms and the will. Living with our mistakes (a forgotten food item, too much heavy gear, a wet sleeping bag), can hurt our pride as much as our bodies. Our sense of accomplishment at the end of a long day isn’t due to our conquering the wilderness, it’s because we conquered ourselves. And, a hot meal and the wail of a loon at moonrise don’t hurt.

This place would be nothing without clean water. It seems obvious, but it bears repeating. Not only is the water our highway, but clean, drinkable water is our lifeblood. To dip a potful right out of the lake and be able to simply filter, treat, or boil it to make it safe is amazing. You can’t do that everywhere. I wouldn’t do that from the river I grew up with.

While observing the people who’ve joined me on the trips, I am always reminded that water doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. Ed found his peace in fishing, and paddled out into a flurry of whitecaps to test his skill. We ate well from his efforts. JoAnn slipped reverently into the water each afternoon for a graceful swim along the shore. She found joy in this glassy cradle. Others preferred just to admire the sparkling view, or relax to the serene lapping of waves. I love drinking the wilderness waters, as Mary Oliver says, “flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt, the feet of ducks.”

A quarter of a million people visit the Boundary Waters each year to paddle, fish, swim, drink, and test themselves in the presence of beauty. What would we do without this vast reservoir of personal challenges and clean water? But a proposed sulfide-ore copper mine on the edge of the wilderness—one that would certainly pollute an entire watershed of currently pristine waters—is being fought over at both the state and federal levels. With this threat looming, I’m even more grateful for each day I get to spend with the clean lakes of Boundary Waters.

This September we’ll be exploring the beautiful Kelso River during another trip to the Boundary Waters. Photo by Emily Stone

I’m also grateful for yet another chance to connect Museum members with my favorite place on Earth this September during a four-day Natural History Paddle in the Boundary Waters. We’ll learn the unique skills that are necessary to travel in this beautiful place, make our home at a cozy campsite, swim in the warmth of a sunny afternoon, paddle through a slow and winding river to a magical bog with a mysterious rock, and enjoy the peace that comes from a few days connected to nature instead of the internet. Find more information at cablemuseum.org.

Water reflects not only clouds and trees and cliffs, but all the infinite variations of mind and spirit we bring to it.

– Sigurd Olson

Author’s Note: Portions of this article are reprinted from 2016.

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. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Looking Into the Lives of Dragonflies

Upon spotting the green dragonfly resting close enough for me to capture, I knew I had to try. With my kayak nestled into the grassy bank of the Namekagon River, I snapped a few photos of my target and began to reach my hand out slowly. But when my fingers gently grasped the dragonfly, I was horrified to find that it was squishy rather than the typical hard feeling of an exoskeleton. My hand shot back to my side in an instant, repulsed. My first thought was that the dragonfly was dead and waterlogged.

Not interested in a squishy, dead dragonfly, my attention drifted and I let myself be absorbed by the scenic setting of the Namekagon River. It wasn’t until my eyes meandered back over to the dragonfly that I realized they had moved! Rather than being lower on the blade of grass, they were now several inches higher.

My curiosity piqued, I inched my kayak closer. That’s when I spotted the brown, empty shell of the nymph’s exoskeleton. Beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together, I realized the dragonfly that I had tried to capture was a freshly emerged adult who had just burst out of their final molt!

A teneral boreal snaketail dragonfly, freshly emerged.

Using a dragonfly guide book, I keyed in on the bright green coloration, and club-shaped abdomen, identifying the dragonfly as a boreal snaketail. These dragonflies are found near cold northern streams and rivers, and males can be spotted flying up and down the water, patrolling their territory.

The boreal snaketail’s aquatic life started when an egg was deposited into the Namekagon River by a female dragonfly tapping her abdomen on the top of the water as she flew by. The snaketail’s egg sinks through the water, and settles into the riverbed. Days later, a small nymph hatched out of the egg. Most of their life was spent as a nymph, swimming through the water looking for their next meal. In general, dragonfly nymphs are voracious predators, eating zooplankton, aquatic invertebrates, and even small fish!

A key part of a dragonfly nymph’s success as a tiny-but-mighty aquatic predator is their extendable hinged jaw, or labium. Think of it as an extra arm that shoots out to snatch prey before bringing it to their mouth. If that’s not cool enough, the labium is hydraulically powered! To propel their deadly grabber, a nymph draws in water through their body and compresses their abdomen, creating pressure that pushes out their labium in a matter of milliseconds, snatching prey as they swim by.

The nymph's ravenous appetite fuels their growth. This causes them to molt multiple times–shedding their exoskeleton as they grow bigger and bigger, much like a kid who keeps outgrowing their clothes. Depending on the species, a dragonfly nymph undergoes between five to fourteen molts before finally emerging as an adult. When they are ready to begin their transformation, the nymph makes their way to the edge of the water, scouting for a place to emerge. Once they have found a suitable location, they’ll sit in shallow water for several days, poking their head above the water as their body changes inside their exoskeleton, slowly shifting to breathing air.

Emergence–the act of a nymph transitioning into an adult dragonfly–begins as the nymph grabs vegetation and hauls themself above the water. Once in position, they hook into their perch with their forelegs, and begin to transform. The skin behind their head splits first, letting their thorax push through. As the crack travels farther down their back, the head, wings, legs, and part of the abdomen are pushed out. Now only attached to their old exoskeleton by their abdomen, they take a break, waiting for their new body parts to harden. Grabbing their old exoskeleton, they pull their abdomen free, and shed their final connection to their life as a nymph.

An emerging boreal snaketail dragonfly and its exuvia. 

These newly emerged adult dragonflies are called tenerals, and are very susceptible to predation. Their wings are shiny and new, but lack fully developed wing muscles, hindering their ability to escape predators. Birds are the main predator of ternal dragonflies, but even rainfall or strong winds pose a threat to their still-hardening exoskeleton. Regardless, they take off in a weak flight, eating as many insects as they can. It takes roughly a week for them to gain their adult colors, strong flight abilities, and a fully hardened exoskeleton. Once they are a full adult, they are incredible aerial predators who catch their prey 95% of the time!

Not wanting to disturb the teneral boreal snaketail dragonfly more than I already had, I continued down the river. My mind was swimming with excitement around witnessing the boreal snaketail’s emergence. I was privy to an intimate part of an animal's life, and I could not be more grateful for this moment.

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Treasures of the Big Bay Lagoon

The calm waters of Lake Superior glimmered in midday sunshine, and dozens of families enjoyed the sandy beach of Big Bay Town Park on Madeline Island. I hiked past them all, my steps echoing slightly on the boardwalk that winds through pine forest behind the beach.

When a little path diverted from the boardwalk and disappeared into the alder thicket on the inland side, I followed it through the brush. Threading my way through the alders, and then stepping carefully through drifts of dry grasses, I gained a view of the Big Bay lagoon. Brightly colored canoes carried families past waterlilies into the calm, protected water. I scanned the low mat of grasses and shrubs between me and them. Nope, I didn’t see what I was looking for.

This beautiful juxtaposition of clear, cold water in Lake Superior, the long sandy strip, and the dark waters of the lagoon, tell a geologic tale. First, the Mid-Continent Rift started to tear North America apart roughly 1.1 billion years ago. Immense amounts of magma erupted through cracks created by the rift, then cooled into lava flows many miles thick. Now unsupported, the crust subsided, creating a huge basin.

In that time, before land plants had evolved, rain fell on bare rocks and braided streams carried sediments into the basin. Over 4,000 feet of sand accumulated, and over time was cemented by quartz and iron oxide precipitated by water seeping through the sand. Fast forward millions of years, and a series of glaciers scraped through the area, carving softer rocks out of the Lake Superior basin, and leaving behind more resistant areas of sandstone that became the Apostle Islands.

The northeast-trending shape of Madeline Island tracks the direction of ice flow. And for some reason, the glaciers were able to carve a little deeper into the northeast-facing pocket we now call Big Bay. When the ice melted away from the area about 15,000 years ago, water levels dropped in stages, and the waves of Lake Superior carried sand across the entrance to Big Bay. The resulting bay mouth bar closed off the back half of the bay to the waters of Lake Superior, and vegetation began to accumulate in the calm water. Eventually, shoreline currents built another bay mouth bar, with the lagoon trapped between the two.

Satellite imagery of Madeline Island with Big Bay Lagoon circled.

This long history resulted in a variety of unique habitats for tourists as well as plants. Some brave souls swam in the chilly waters of Lake Superior, while groups of kids chose to play in the warm waters of the lagoon just a few feet away. Sea kayakers can explore the sandstone cliffs of the island when the winds are right, but many families prefer the quiet waters of the lagoon for paddling.

A diversity of plants find their own niches here, too. Beach grasses face the lake and anchor sand against the wind. A red pine forest carpeted with wintergreen, bearberry, and other drought-tolerant vegetation inhabits the sand spit. And in the stagnant lagoon where decomposition has slowed and organic matter has accumulated over time, a floating mat of Sphagnum moss and sedges holds numerous treasures in a type of wetland called a fen. Treasures I was hunting!

On about my third try, when I pushed through the alders and looked out over the grassy mat, I found what I was looking for: a cluster of odd-looking flowers poking up above the grass. On stalks over a foot tall, there were deep-red, five-lobed umbrellas, each with five delicate petals drooping underneath. Like periscopes, they peek above the wispy blades of sedges. Like marking flags, they indicate something special hides below.

Wading through the sedges, water seeping into my sandals from the sponge-like mat of Sphagnum moss, I found the cup-shaped leaves of pitcher plants clustered around the base of each flower. These carnivorous plants trap insects in their leaf pools and host a little community of beings to help digest those insects. This provides nitrogen and phosphorus nutrients that are in short supply in the peat soils.

Pink caught my eye next, and I admired a large patch of rose pogonia orchids. On each, a few light pink petals surrounded a fringed lower petal with hot pink stripes and yellow anthers. Instead of eating insects, orchids in bogs get nutrients from fungi attached to their roots.

Sunny yellow flowers beckoned then, and I balanced on a rotting log to get closer. These horned bladderwort flowers look harmless enough, but in the wet soil their roots have set little traps to catch tiny aquatic macroinvertebrates who supplement their diet of sunshine.

Lining the same log was a row of sundew rosettes—their tiny spoon-shaped leaves prickling with hairs, each tipped with a shining drop of dew. On several leaves, tiny gnats lay trapped in the sweet, sticky droplets while dew filled with enzymes released their nutrients for the plant to absorb.

I snapped photos happily, then checked the time. Gazing wistfully across the expanse of the lagoon I still hadn’t explored, I turned back anyway. At the Madeline Island Museum, I quickly added local photos to my slideshow for the Madeline Island Wilderness Preserve Speaker Series. With a crowd gathered, the title of my talk flashed up on the screen: “Treasures of the Secret Fen.” I couldn’t wait to tell them about the delights I’d found just a few miles away and a million years in the making.

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. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Hunting For Elk

I didn’t expect to find myself hiking across a golf course on my day off. The moment we stepped into the sugar maple forest on the far side of the green the temperature dropped, the air smelled sweeter, and we felt a little bit safer from stray golf balls. An ovenbird called from the shadows, his two-note song increasing in intensity as he defended his territory. Teacher, TEAcher, TEA-CHER!

The cool shade of the sugar maple forest was lovely as volunteers waited with Stacey for Josh's signal.

Stacey Petrus, wildlife biologist with the Wisconsin DNR, scanned the surrounding ridgeline through the scattered trunks, looking for any signs of Josh Spiegel while the rest of the group caught up. Josh, who is the Sawyer County and northern elk biologist for the DNR, had headed up the hill several minutes before us, following the Very High Frequency (VHF) signal from the GPS collar of a cow elk.

The researchers were already familiar with this elk, Cow 448. In the hungry days of winter, they’d lured her and 14 others into an oversized horse corral with some tasty alfalfa and grain mix. Once the elk where chemically immobilized, the DNR were able to utilize a large animal ultrasound and confirm that she was about halfway through a pregnancy that began last September. Then they waited.

If an elk calf can make it through their first year, they have a 92 percent chance of surviving each year after that. The DNR is in year two of a three-year effort to understand the survival rates and mortality factors of that first perilous year. Do the young do better where there’s been a recent timber harvest or other disturbance? How important is it for the maternity habitat to have a view? Is there a habitat type that increases the risk of predation by bears or wolves? To answer these and other questions, they attempt to locate and deploy a GPS collar on 25 calves as soon as possible each spring.

During the Friday night before Father’s Day, Cow 448 recorded a tight cluster of points after a substantial movement away from other elk—a clear indication that she had given birth. A postpartum cow will move the newborn calf away from the location of the birth bed—an area of high scent and disturbance—and then stay relatively close while she feeds and rests. The first task was for Josh to bump the cow a little farther away from the probable location of her calf so that we could search for the young one safely.

Josh (right) shows the GPS data to Adrian, Randy, and Stacey.

When he gave the all-clear, we moved up to the hilltop. Josh anchored one end of the search line on the spot where he’d located the cow. We lined up beside him, spacing ourselves to cover the most ground while also being able to see under every bush. Stacey positioned herself on the far end of the line. Their GPS units would help us keep track of the area we’d already covered. Then we began to walk.

Josh, Adrian, and Randy in the search line.

The hilltop had been selectively harvested a few years prior to regenerate oak trees, so we parted thick clumps of saplings and stepped over the brittle piles of sticks that had once been the tops of trees. The flat-topped clusters of maple-leaved viburnum flowers shone white in the dappled shade. Raspberry canes tangled our feet. We peered beneath the boughs of young balsam fir and focused our attention so as not to miss the dingy brown of an earnestly hiding calf. Thunder rumbled in the distance, adding to the suspense.

We’d gone 100 yards when Josh called a halt. We reformed the line on his other side and walked back in the same direction we’d just come, covering new ground. I was pushing aside a thicket of paper birch saplings when a murmur went through the line. Adrian Wydeven, a retired Wisconsin DNR wolf biologist, was pointing silently at a spot in a patch of young raspberries about 10 feet in front of him. Success! Josh directed us to form a circle around the calf.

Adrian, Randy, and Stacey circling the calf.

Elk this young rely on remaining motionless for safety, Josh explained. Just in case, we were all wearing bright orange nitrile gloves. That way, if the calf bolted, we could gently guide them back to the ground while not leaving behind a scent that might attract a bear.

The calf remained curled in his bed. Stacey deftly slipped a soft blindfold over the little brown face to keep the calf calm. She checked the sex, then rolled the calf into a net bag and hooked that to a scale. At 37.8 pounds, the little guy was above the long-term average birth weight of 35 pounds. Next came the GPS collar encased in a bright red scrunchie to reduce discomfort and protect the elastic belting that will expand with the calf as he grows.

Stacey and Cynthia collar the calf. 

Josh gently opened the calf’s lips and measured the amount of tooth showing above his gums. This technique provides an estimate of age and confirmed that he had been born on Friday night. Finally, Stacey took a small sample for DNA testing then attached an ear tag. All this took under 15 minutes.

Josh Spiegel measures an elk calf’s teeth to determine his age while Stacey Petrus readies a DNA sample.
Photo by Emily Stone.

We all moved away quietly while Josh replaced the blindfold with a handful of grass and made sure the little guy would sit tight until his mom returned in a few hours. Elk have a very durable bond, and researchers have found little evidence that our brief disruption of their mother-child relationship will result in abandonment or other negative impacts.

When Josh caught up to the crew, he told us about a calf they’d searched for earlier that morning—and the bear who had found them first. It’s no accident that elk calves and deer fawns are all born at about the same time. Predators may eat many tender meals, but they can’t eat them all, and some will survive. The data we just had a hand in collecting will help us to understand more.

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. Natural Connections 3 is in the works—and needs illustrators from the community! Find out more at: https://www.cablemuseum.org/books/

For more than 50 years, the Cable Natural History Museum has served to connect you to the Northwoods. Our Summer Calendar is open for registration! Visit our new exhibit, “Becoming the Northwoods: Akiing (A Special Place). Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.