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.