Winding Our Way Toward Winter

The forest of fall colors visible from my favorite rocky knob were past peak, but yellow, green, and orange aspen leaves still glowed among the gray twigs of the maples. Temperatures were sinking in tandem with the sun, so I didn’t tarry too long on this after-work hike. A flash of movement on the narrow trail snapped me out of my thoughts and brought me up short.

The garter snake must have been using the last rays of sun to warm themselves in the middle of the trail. Being ectothermic and using the environment instead of their metabolism to regulate their temperature means that snakes need less than one tenth of the food required by a mammal of a similar size. It’s very efficient, except when the warmest surfaces are traversed by humans.

My eyes barely registered the snake’s dart to safety and still my brain knew exactly what was going on. Once we were both frozen in place, it took me several moments to spot the parallel ribbons of black and pale green in the dry leaves on the edge of the trail. Their red, forked tongue darted out to gather chemicals from the breeze. Head up, their long, muscular body tensed and then began moving forward, the back half of their body tracing the same sinuous path that their front half pioneered. Where would they go?

I was mesmerized by the effortlessness of their movement back across the rough dirt path. It brought back physical memories of roller skating as a kid and the challenge of propelling myself forward using only subtle pressure on the insides and then the outsides of my wheels. Even as the snake climbed a small slope of bedrock, I could see how slight curves of their body found purchase on slight irregularities on the rock and conspired with the scales on their belly to enable forward movement. This technique is called serpentine motion, and is the most common way for garter snakes to move.

On especially slippery surfaces, garter snakes might attempt a sidewinding motion, but it’s not as coordinated as when a desert snake loops around to avoid touching hot sand. In confined spaces, where S-curves are limited, garter snakes may expand forward, hook their scales on some small notch, and then pull the rest of their body along in a motion resembling an accordion.

Nosing between two rocks, the snake seemed to be searching for something. But no, that wasn’t the place. They swung around and moved along the base of the rock until reaching a long crack. Tongue flickering in apparent recognition, they lifted their head up toward a wide place in the crevice, nosed in, and began disappearing into the dark. Their stripes flowed forward as if the rock was slurping them up like a long, wet spaghetti noodle.

And then the snake was gone.

Using the flashlight on my phone, I peered into the crevice. A smooth tunnel of soil vanished into the earth. What lay beneath? This outcrop of rock had been a jumbled flow of ‘A‘ā lava just 1.1 billion years ago during the Mid-Continent Rift. Over its life of being buried and excavated, the rock had become both more smooth and more fractured. Although the volcanic heat was long gone, the warmth of the summer sun would be stored in the bedrock. As long as the snake could wiggle their way below the frost line where the temperature would remain above freezing, this would be a good place to spend the winter.

Large numbers of garter snakes often gather in crevices like this one, or burrows or basements, to snuggle in and share body heat throughout the winter. In their hibernacula, these cold-blooded beings enter brumation, which is a slowing of their metabolism, breathing, and heart rate that is similar to hibernation.

Thinking back, I can remember seeing a garter snake in this exact spot at least one other time. And I’m pretty sure that the front of a hiking group saw them several more times while I was at the back helping people down the steep slope from the overlook. It would make sense, since good hibernacula are used year after year.

Tummy rumbling, I sped up on my way back to the car. The snake’s belly was likely even emptier than mine, since they make a point to stop eating well before brumation. It’s best if all of their frog snacks or toad tidbits are digested and absorbed before their systems shut down, or else the food will decay instead of digest and make them ill. Perhaps they had been sunning themselves in the trail in order speed the processing of their final fall meal.

No sun remained now, as both the day and the season darkened toward the coming winter.

Emily’s award-winning third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, 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 Fall Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Woodland Walks with Lois Nestel

“Autumn has trailed light fingers across the byways and in the wake of that cool touch, the leaves flush or blanch and sink earthward in a silent swoon…The passing of days is swift and soon the glory will fade to the dun shades that precede winter’s snow.”    – Lois Nestel, Wayside Wanderings.

With nearly constant travel and busyness during these last two months, I feel a bit untethered and adrift. The autumn woods are golden, and chickadees call cheerfully from their newly re-formed winter flocks, but it’s difficult to get my attention to rest on any one subject. In times like these, I find it’s helpful to turn to a wise friend and elder for guidance. And so, I’ve pulled together a few of Lois Nestle’s essays from the Museum’s archives. Lois was the Museum’s founding Naturalist and Director. In these, she captures both my mood and the antidote. Take a deep breath of the crisp fall air and enjoy!

“Winds of change are sweeping across the land, wiping out the last vestiges of the summer past and ushering in the bleak kinsman, winter. Angrily the winds have torn away the last dry leaves, battered the heavy-needled pines and contemptuously knocked aside trees too weak to withstand the onslaught. In their wake, soon now, will come the cold and snow and we, who have not fled, begin settling into the routine winter brings.

“Perhaps it is because garden time is over and I haven’t found a suitable substitute. Perhaps it is because the season has not yet become full-fledged but balances on an emotional teeter-totter, even as I. Perhaps a lot of things—the fact remains that I am impatient—impatient with the shortening days and my seeming inability to function efficiently in artificial light, impatient that tasks undone forever seem to multiply instead of lessening.

“The weather is a handy scapegoat. One day soon the sun will shine, this mood will pass and some new enthusiasm will have me reaching for the moon again.

“As we walk through field and woodland these lovely autumn days, we perform an important, though unintentional service, that of helping to disburse a variety of seeds. Who has not come home with socks, jacket, or pants matted with innumerable small seeds or spent an hour picking, pulling, or cutting burrs from the fur of a favorite pet?

“Many, many are the plants who see to the distribution and continuation of their kind by letting their seeds literally hook a ride on whatever available creature that passes. Hooks they have, which so easily catch on fur or clothing that one is unaware of touching anything. Once attached they are tenacious, defying removal by all but the most tedious effort.

Milkweed seeds prepare to be borne on the winds of autumn by silken parachutes.
Photo by Emily Stone.

“A plant is a stationary object and as such must use whatever resources are possible to maintain and regenerate itself. These resources run the gamut of inventiveness. Some, like dandelions, milkweed, and thistles have their seeds borne on the wind by silken parachutes. Some rely on edible fruits whose seeds are dropped far and wide through discarding, in feces or, as in the case of nuts and acorns, their being cached by ambitious rodents and birds. Some are explosive, their seed capsules opening with a violent and audible pop, shooting showers of seeds in all directions. Some are in shaker pods while others glide and twirl on vagrant breezes. All are ingenious devices to accomplish a necessary end. The bird-carried seed may go the farthest, but the hitch-hiking burr gets the vote for sheer tenacity.

“One of the last really summery days we spent a lovely afternoon, my dear friend and I. It had been far too long since we had walked and talked and enjoyed the out-of-doors in our own special way. We shared the scenery and gathered treasures here and there. Nature spread her bounty along road and trail sides and of its wealth we gratefully partook.

A walk with a dear friend in the autumn woods is a chance to “seize the bright and gentle moments to treasure now and again in memory…” Photo by Emily Stone.

“Elderberries hung their purple heads for us to gather. Wild hops festooned the trees and shrubs and yielded papery strobiles to eager hands. In the woodlands there were mushrooms to collect and amid the tangles of greenbrier and wild clematis there were, for sampling, the sweetness of black haws and the fire red, acid fruits of high bush cranberries. We dug hog peanuts for the bean sized, crunchy nuts they bore and gathered cattails for their down.

“Reviving memories of other woodland walks, we created new ones to see us through the busy to days come. It’s autumn now and there is much to do before the snow and cold arrives. Almost as quickly as the clouds cover the harvest moon, the days fly by. We must seize the bright and gentle moments to treasure now and again in memory. All the beauty, all the plentitude awaits us, yet—too often—we are too busy to know or care.”

I’ll be heading outside soon to seize some bright and gentle moments that will see me through the busy days to come. I hope you will, too!

Emily’s award-winning third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, 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 Fall Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Fall Food and Wild Fellowship in the Boundary Waters

When my friend Deb and I launched my canoe on Gunflint Lake in Northeastern Minnesota, the gentle tailwind that pushed us north toward the narrows could not have been more different than the gusty first day of the Museum’s Boundary Waters trip in early September. I had spent a week in the front country catching up on emails and packing another round of food. Then I headed back into the Wilderness.

On a gorgeous, late September day, Deb and I slipped in nine miles before lunch, and were thrilled to find a quiet campsite in James Bay. Or so we thought. It was far enough away from the Saganaga Corridor that the rumble of motorboats barely reached us and the neighboring campsite stayed unoccupied, but the sunny hillside soon became a hive of activity. It started when a streak of movement materialized into the racing stripes of a least chipmunk coming to investigate our lunch on the slab of pale pink Saganaga Granite.

A chipmunk investigates my bag of gorp at our campsite on James Bay in Saganaga Lake. Photo by Deb Gens.

The mini-bear darted close, then scurried off, posing motionless for brief moments to survey the area for danger. From the top of a lichen-covered rock, they sounded their characteristic clucking alarm call, tail hiccupping with each repetition. Even though they sniffed hard at my little baggie of trail mix, I made sure the chipmunk never got a single peanut. Cute though they are, feeding wildlife at campsites is a recipe for problems.

They seemed to be finding their own food just fine anyway. Pulling long blades of grass through tiny paws, they nibbled on the seedheads. Scrambling acrobatically up a birch sapling, they grabbed catkins from the most slender of twig tips. And, upon hearing a rustle in an overgrown area behind the fire grate, we discovered a chipmunk feasting on the tiny red fruits of a hawthorn bush. As we watched, what we thought was a single chipmunk morphed into three individuals scurrying busily around the campsite.

Chipmunks are usually solitary, so this furry flurry likely included Mom and two almost-independent offspring. Starting in October, chipmunks head underground and go through cycles when their body temperature drops from 94 degrees to the ambient temperature of their burrow—around 40 degrees. During these periods of hibernation, their heartbeat slows from their normal rate (which is up to 350 beats per hyper, stress-filled minute) down to 4 beats per minute. Every few days throughout the winter, the chipmunks will warm up, wake up, and feed on food they stored during this glorious fall weather.

Later, as Deb and I shared a pot of chili for supper, a rustle in the bush behind the fire grate gave away the position of a ruffed grouse. The Ham Lake Fire burned over our route in 2007, and the regenerating forests of aspen, birch, and other sun-loving shrubs are perfect habitat for these beautiful birds.

Precariously positioned on the flexible stems, she stretched her neck to rip at the scarlet rose hips like a cat playing with a Christmas tree. When she hopped down, we lost sight of her, until she reappeared in the same hawthorn bush where the chipmunks had been earlier. On an excursion into the woods, I was entertained by another grouse ripping leaves from the quaking aspen trees overhead. These are all typical fall foods for “wood hens,” before they transition to the buds on aspen and birch trees out of necessity and their gizzards and digestive tracts grow to accommodate the tough, bulky, winter food.

Fall isn’t just about feeding. During our first evening on Clove Lake, Deb had been startled by the black neck ruff and fanned tail of a male grouse in full display while a female watched from a nearby fir tree. This time of year, as the young disperse, the established males will drum and display to make sure that no “young buck” usurps their breeding territory and associated drumming log before next spring.

This handsome fella entertained us for several minutes on our first night. 

With our bear-resistant food canister closed up and squares of chocolate eaten, Deb and I chatted in the setting sun. When we fell into a contented silence, a family of beavers on the far side of the lake took up the thread of conversation with their adorable grunts. We’d paddled past several active beaver lodges on our trip, each with a good supply of willow and aspen twigs stashed out front in their “beaver freezer.” All winter long, the parents, this year’s kits, and any surviving siblings from the previous year will have access to the twigs from under the ice, and will tote snacks up into the lodge’s feeding platform for family dinners.

This beaver lodge on the Granite River has a “beaver freezer” full of aspen and willow twigs. Over the winter, beavers will bring sticks into their lodge and nibble at the nutritious cambium. 

The chipmunks, grouse, and beavers have the right idea, I think. Fall is the perfect season for enjoying good food and fellowship whether you’re at a campsite with friends, in a lodge made of sticks, or at your community’s harvest dinner. What friends are you going to celebrate the season with next?

Emily’s award-winning third book, Natural Connections3: A Web Endlessly Woven, 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 Fall Calendar is open for registration! The Museum’s new exhibit, The Wetland Way is now open! Discover how life thrives at the intersection of soil and water, and why we must care for these special places as they care for us. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.