Kale: Servant or Master? (or friend)

Ten years ago the Cable Community Farm broke ground through a daunting thatch of quack grass in its location just north of Cable on Perry Lake Road. This decade has been filled with hours of backbreaking work, friendly conversations between gardeners, and untold pounds of delicious, organically grown produce. This is our final summer at the original site. We look forward to finding a new home and creating a new garden with all that we've learned. For now, I'm enjoying my relatively weed-free plot and the jungle of veggies just starting to ripen. My garden and I have finally gotten to a place where I don’t feel like kale is either servant or master…we are old friends who support each other's health and happiness. It’s nice to look back and see how far we’ve come. This article is republished from 2013.

Hot sun beat down on my neck as I crouched in the dirt, pulling thin blades of quack grass from out between my kale plants. Weed by weed, I slowly reached the end of the row, stood up, and stretched my back. A quick survey showed that my work was not even close to being done. My plot at the brand-new Cable Community Farm had only recently been sheep pasture, and even after three rounds of tillage, quack grass roots still ran deep.

The kale looked relaxed and happy, though, in its spacious row. For a second, I felt a twinge of resentment. Why does kale get to just sit there and grow, doing the only thing it really wants to do, while I have to toil away, tilling the soil, planting the seeds, watering the garden, and weeding away any competitors? By offering up its tasty, nutritious leaves, the kale has seduced me into catering to its every whim.

“…the garden suddenly appeared before me in a whole new light, the manifold delights it offered to the eye and nose and tongue no longer quite so innocent or passive. All these plants, which I’d always regarded as the objects of my desire, were also, I realized, subjects, acting on me, getting me to do things for them they couldn’t do for themselves,” Michael Pollan wrote in his excellent book, The Botany of Desire.

When I first picked up this book off a friend’s coffee table and read the introduction, it completely changed the way I think about domesticated plants. Although I love to eat kale and almost every other fruit and vegetable, I have always had more respect, more reverence for native plants. If you think about it, though, everything in our gardens started in the wild somewhere, once upon a time.

Pollan flips our perception of plants upside down, and asks us to think about domestication “as something plants have done to us—a clever strategy for advancing their own interests.” Their own interest, as with every living thing, is to make more copies of themselves, to reproduce.

So, just as plants use nectar to trick bees into transporting their pollen, plants bribed us with sweet fruits, crunchy leaves, nutritious seeds, and beautiful flowers. In return, we chose the seeds of their genetic kin to be collected, sold, and replanted year after year. We bring them to a good habitat, protect them from pests, reduce their competition with other plants, and make sure their every need is met.

The tastiest, most prolific varieties (think Brandywine tomatoes, Provider bush beans, or my Winterbor kale…what’s your favorite?) are first developed through selective breeding, and then replanted over and over again. In the meantime, the quack grass and other weeds are tilled under, pulled out, and repeatedly beaten back. Says Pollan, “our desires are simply more grist for evolution’s mills, no different from a change in the weather: a peril for some species, an opportunity for others.”

When I write about nature, I usually choose to just write about wild things out in the woods. But, as Pollan observes, “Nature is not only to be found ‘out there’; it is also ‘in here,’ in the apple and the potato, in the garden and the kitchen…” My relationship with nature does not stop at the edge of my garden. In fact, by planting, nurturing, and eating these other living beings, I develop an even more intimate connection with nature, and weave myself more fully into the “reciprocal web of life that is Earth.”

Yes, kale and other vegetables have persuaded me to pamper them, and to pay others to make sure they reproduce every year, but I also receive benefits, just like the bee on the rose bush. Instead of a hive full of honey, I will survive winter with a freezer full of kale!

My 30x30-foot garden plot grows more than kale! From left to right you’ll see potatoes, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, green beans, broccoli with kale in the background, more broccoli, cauliflower, and zucchini. Yum! 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. Our new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

To Mary Oliver

The golden evening sun and calm water were too delicious to miss. Decked out in full bug jacket and long pants, I hauled my old yellow kayak through the patch of soggy earth and a gauntlet of tiny vampires toward the lake. My head buzzed with thoughts of the day, plans for tomorrow, and the wings of those diminutive Dementors. How are there still so many?

Dip. Dip. Dip. Strong (desperate) paddle strokes took me out into the light breeze. One by one the mosquitos fell back, until finally I could unzip the head net and see properly. I paddled across open water toward a ring of green surrounding a rocky island.

Nosing into the wet thicket, I became transfixed by the way my bright yellow kayak parted the green polka dots of water lily leaves, then the narrow weave of the floating bur-reed, then the spikes of the rushes. Ramrod straight and austere, those gave way to a whimsical patch of upside-down heart-leaves and fuzzy clusters of purple monkey-faced flowers belonging to pickerelweed.

Pickerelweed

Watching my plastic prow poke through the striking palate of shapes and colors, a line from the poem “Moles” by my favorite poet, Mary Oliver, popped, unbidden, into my head. “Pushing and shoving / with their stubborn muzzles against / the whole earth, / finding it / delicious.”

I inhaled the perfume of basswood flowers on the breeze, and the sweet smell of algae picked up in the wind, and the fresh fragrance of cool evening air tumbling out of the woods. Delicious, yes!

And then my phone buzzed. Why did I even have it on? But the text was from a friend who’s been making me smile, so I tapped on the screen. It wasn’t a long message, just a note to correct a typo in an earlier text. “That should have said I love how you quote Mary Oliver! Not…I love how you Mary Oliver!”

I chuckled—my brain’s own autocorrect had skipped right over the phone’s autocorrect fail. So often, even when someone’s words come out in a funny order, we still know exactly what they mean. But now I re-read the original typo and felt a little fizz of joy. Leaving out a single word had essentially turned Mary Oliver into a verb. I mulled this over. What would it mean “to mary oliver”?

If you’ve read any of her poetry, you know that she was an ecologist poet who wrote with joy and empathy about the natural world. She’s shaped my views on death and beauty more than I can comprehend, and little phrases from her poems overlay my days like the script on artsy greeting cards.

Thinking of her while picking my way around the slippery rocks of the island, I stuck my nose into a patch of hot pink swamp milkweed flowers to inhale their heady scent. “Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective,” wrote Mary Oliver. That seems like a good start to the definition of our new verb.

Swamp milkweed

Backpaddling out of the thicket, I became enamored with the bur-reed leaves. The cells in the dead leaves had hollowed out to create long strips of stained glass. While photographing those held up to the Sun, I noticed some funny bumps on a live leaf, each with two long tails like the bunny ears on my first TV. When I picked up that leaf, I found that they each extended a long oval capsule into the water on the underside. Often, when you are mary-olivering, “if you notice anything, / it leads you to notice / more / and more.” (If you know who these eggs belong to, please tell me!)

Mystery eggs on a floating bur-reed leaf (held upside down).

As I paddled on through the shallow bays of Lake Namakagon, the ghostly shapes of aquatic plants appeared and disappeared beneath me. To get a better look, I dipped my waterproof camera beneath the surface and blindly took photos in the water. I’d have to enjoy them later, after dark, on my computer screen. “I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.” Wrote Mary Oliver, and although I’m pretty sure she wasn’t talking about uploading photos, I think it counts. (Check out my Reel!)

Finally I made it to a patch of white water lilies just starting to bloom. In a scene straight from her poem “The Ponds,” a muskrat swam past. I dipped my camera below the surface and snapped away, then brought it up and peered at the screen. The lily was luminous. Light from above filtered through the white petals. Specks of algae surrounded it like fairy dust.

white water lily

But the flower wasn’t perfect. Algae and tiny eggs had clung to its surfaces and the odd detritus of a productive lake mucked up the water. Nearby, the water lily’s leaves were full of holes chewed by beetles. They aren’t just art, they are habitat. Still, they were worthy of mary-olivering. “I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing— / that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum / of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.”

I mary-olivered all evening. I plan to mary-oliver every day. “Tell me, what is it you plan to do / with your one wild and precious life?”

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 new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Learning from Banded Loons

With a dozen sets of eyes scanning the water, it took us almost no time at all to spot the family of loons. A little cheer went up from the pontoon boat when we finally got a clear look at the fuzzy chick paddling around behind their parents. Since this was the first Loon Pontoon Tour on Lake Owen of 2023, the chick was as much a surprise to me as to the participants on this Museum program.

I pegged this little fuzzball with the big brown eyes at about 2 weeks old, even though they were swimming independently behind Mom and Dad and not riding on a safe, warm back. Zooming in on that cute little beak, I happened to get the tail end of an adult loon in the photo, too. Below all those snazzy black and white feathers and quicksilver waves, there were some other, more unusual colors, too: this loon was wearing leg bands!

Bird banding is an old, if not ancient, practice, but loon banding has only been possible since 1988 when researcher Dave Evers developed a way to capture and band loons on Michigan’s Seney National Wildlife Refuge. His technique revolutionized loon research by allowing identification of individual loons from afar, without recapture. Colored leg bands are how we know that loon pairs split their parenting duties roughly 50/50, and that loons can live at least 34 years.

A week later, I revisited that same loon family (the chicks grow so fast!) and got even clearer photos of the loon’s leg bands through the crystal clear water of Lake Owen. This time, I emailed the photos to researcher Walter Piper. His Loon Project blog at loonproject.org is a great resource for updates on loon behavior, ecology, population, and more. He wrote back “This looks like white over green, green over silver. If so, it is this bird, banded in 2003 as a chick on Turtle Flambeau Flowage!”

Wow! A 20-year-old loon, still producing chicks, 50+ miles from where he was hatched! I asked Piper for more information, but this wasn’t one of the hundreds of loons he’s banded. Instead, we reached out to Mike Meyer, a biologist with the Wisconsin DNR’s Science Services department, now retired. Mike confirmed that “yes this loon was banded as a chick on August 5, 2003 in a loon territory on the Turtle Flambeau Flowage we termed Beaver Creek. Beyond that we have no information, that is until your observations…which is excellent dispersal data…Always nice to hear from our past loon acquaintances...”

As it turns out, Mike has many past loon acquaintances from his 25+ years of research.

I gave Mike a call last week, hoping to hear a story of the night this particular loon, “white over green, green over silver” was captured. But as Mike began describing his summer field seasons, I quickly understood why he didn’t remember this individual loon.

Each spring, Mike and his team began monitoring loons on the 50-60 lakes in their study area to see which pairs had chicks. A fluffy little chick is too small to take a leg band, so researchers waited until the chicks were 5-6 weeks old. Then the fun really began.

Their “day” started at 10 p.m. as the 3-5 person research team arrived on the first lake just in time to use the last light to spot the loons. When it was completely dark, they piled into a small boat with a small motor, a spotlight, a musky net, and a boom box. Using the spotlight, the researchers sought out the shining white breast feathers of the loons. Then they used the boom box to play the sounds of peeping chicks and other loon calls. This brought the family close, and kept them at the surface to investigate.

You always try to capture the female first, Mike told me. “She’s the first one to get outta there, because she wants to live to reproduce another day.” That’s what the musky net is for. Then, the chick can be dipped up, and finally the male, although “circumstances make shuffle the deck,” Mike chuckled, stating a fact of fieldwork. The loons were housed in dark plastic tubs with air holes, and everyone headed to shore where the banding, measuring, and sometimes blood drawing, could take place on stable ground.

“It’s a bit of an operation,” explained Mike. He had stories of skin torn and bruised from loons’ strong, serrated beaks, and having to swim for a boat that wasn’t pulled up all the way, and even having the sheriff called on them for acting suspiciously with spotlights at 2 a.m.

With all of this, they averaged 3 lakes per night, caught 95% of the loons they attempted, and banded more than 2,000 loons. Mike’s work on mercury toxicity in loons helped establish Wisconsin’s 2010 mercury emission reduction rule for coal-burning power plants. Banded loons have contributed immensely to our knowledge of their population dynamics, migration, threats they face on their summer breeding grounds, and more. “Loons are biosentinels of lake health,” Mike told me. “If you have loons on your lake, you’re doing it right.”

I wonder if “white over green, green over silver” remembers that dark night 20 years ago when he first met Mike Meyer. Probably not. But as part of the valuable long-term research on banded loons, both Mike’s and the loon’s contributions to science will be remembered for decades to come.

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 new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Camping with the Cousins

I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into when my cousin Meggan decided that this was the summer her crew would come to the Northwoods on vacation. Born just six weeks apart, we’d spent our childhood together with a pack of 13 cousins running wild around Grandpa’s house in southern Iowa during most holidays and school breaks. Now Meggan has six kids of her own. How would I entertain them for a few days? This same crew was part of the family reunion I attended last summer, where we caught a shimmering young spider and named her Princess Entelegyne. As it turns out, I didn’t need to worry.

Me and one of my "best-friend-cousins," Meggan. 

I packed my car, too, and we all headed up to the campground at Little Sand Bay on Lake Superior, hoping to avoid the thickest flocks of mosquitoes. It worked. We had time to make s’mores and tell stories around the campfire before a few biters emerged from the woods, just as we were snuggling into our tents.

The next morning, after Rosemary, age 4, had finished her oatmeal, she wandered over under a tree to build fairy houses. I was helping her poke a little cone of sticks in the ground when she discovered a caterpillar. Enchanted, she encouraged the critter to crawl on a stick so she could hold them up for a better view. My heart twisted a little, and my head churned with negative thoughts.

Rosemary, age 4, had no trouble finding spongy moth caterpillar “fairy babies” to inhabit her little twiggy fairy house. Photo by Emily Stone.

With their pretty rows of red and blue dots, and whimsical, wispy hairs, I could see why Rosemary was fascinated with this spongy moth caterpillar. She probably hadn’t noticed the defoliated trees lining Highway 13 near Bayfield, though, and she definitely didn’t know that Bayfield County is in the third (and hopefully last!) year of a spongy moth outbreak. Even though the sugar maple tree we sat under isn’t their favorite food, it is one of the 300 species the pests will consume.

Rosemary dropped this caterpillar off in the fairy house, and then went searching for more. She didn’t have to go far. They were crawling up tree trunks, car tires, and even our pantlegs. At first, because she was putting them into the fairy house, we called the caterpillars “fairies.” That felt odd, though, since fairies usually have wings. So, we switched to calling them fairy babies, a nod to the little pale-winged adult they would become. The cute name softened my grudge against them. I tamped down my worries about the outbreak, and just enjoyed the fact that the caterpillars were such an abundant source of wonder for the kids.

Catherine, age 10, let’s a “fairy baby” crawl on her fingers. Spongy moth caterpillars may be destructive, but they are also fascinating little critters. (Note: the hairs on spongy moths can sometimes irritate your skin. We seemed to have no problem with caterpillars on sticks and on our hands, but letting them crawl up the soft skin of your inner wrist might not be a great idea. I decided not to warn the kids about this to avoid unnecessary anxiety, but did keep an eye on it.)
Photo by Emily Stone.

After breakfast, we loaded up and headed to Houghton Falls. This relatively short, wide, gently sloping trail skirts the edge of an elegantly carved sandstone ravine with waterfalls on its way down Lake Superior. I had seen videos of spring snowmelt tumbling over the ledges in spectacular fashion, but now the stream was a mere trickle. I gave a little sigh of disappointment at the lack of show, and worried that the kids would be bored.

In no time they were braving a balancing log across a little pool to get a closer look. James, Meggan’s husband, went with them, and then stood with his back to the falls. I puzzled at his position, until Charlotte’s little two-year-old hand reached out from her perch in the pack on his back, fingers splayed, trying to catch each cool drip. Rosemary joined them and stood there catching drops with a look of thoughtful wonder on her face. They didn’t need a rushing waterfall to enjoy the touch of water.

On the hike back, after spending a few minutes admiring Lake Superior on a sunny, sandstone point, the kids were getting tired. There was a commotion, some accusatory tones, and a very sad Jerome. One of his siblings had swatted at an insect and injured it. Jerome was indignant. The insect hadn’t been hurting anyone! When he caught up to me, I examined the big horse fly cradled gingerly in his palm. A relative of deer flies, the females inflict a painful bite, then lap up the blood to fuel egg development. Jerome didn’t know that. He felt in his kind little 8-year-old heart that this fragile living being deserved respect and needed care.

Jerome, the Healer of Horseflies

Later, we got out the bug nets and swept the bushes around our campsite. Someone soon found a colony of pink and yellow common-candy-striped spiders with their net. There were enough that we could each have a spider “yo-yo” dangling from our finger on an invisible strand of silk. My rule with spiders (learned from Larry Weber, who wrote the book on Northwoods spiders) is that you can only hold spiders if you’re sure that YOU won’t hurt THEM, not the other way around. I knew I could trust this group.

Meggan might have brought the kids up here thinking that my naturalist knowledge would augment their homeschool curriculum. And indeed, I read them Natural Connections articles at story time, taught them the correct name for crane flies, and helped Catherine, age 10, complete the Geology Activity Booklet designed to complement the Museum’s current exhibit.

Storytime selfie with Cousin Em

One of the activities in the geology booklet is making your own dinosaur tracks.
Here's Catherine with hers! 

But by the end, they’d also taught me to find beauty in the spongy moth, empathy for a horse fly, and wonder in a trickle of water. Now that’s a productive vacation.

Love you all soooo much! Can't wait to see you again!

 

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 new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Fawn Feeding Frenzy

I was up earlier than normal to pack my backpack for the Lake Superior Fisheries field trip I wrote about last week, but the Sun was up early, too, on the Summer Solstice. While stuffing my camera into the pack, I glanced out my second-floor window and then did a double-take. On the grass below was a doe. The sight of deer in my yard usually just makes me fear for my garden, but as the doe shifted slightly, her tiny, spotted fawn came into view beneath her belly. The cuteness of baby animals is irresistible, even if they do grow into broccoli thieves.

I pulled my camera back out of my pack and took some photos through the window. The fawn was just finishing up nursing, then the pair began to meander down the trail toward the lake. Click. Click. Click. I snapped away, hoping to catch the cutest expression on the fawn’s little face.

Later, when I uploaded the photos to my computer, a pattern made me chuckle. In every frame capturing their walk, the fawn was mimicking Mom’s behavior. Mom stopped and looked over her shoulder. So did Baby. Mom lowered her head to nibble the daisies. Even though the fawn won’t start testing out solid food until at least week two, Baby watched and sniffed with their nose close to Mom’s. It was a little game of Follow the Leader, which, of course, is how many wild babies learn to survive.

A week later, I was about to do my daily fill of the hummingbird feeder, but stopped just in time. Mama and baby were back. The fawn was a little bigger, and nursing hungrily. I opened the window as stealthily as I could, and snapped some photos without glass in the way. Absorbed in their tasks, they did not look up.

Baby was nursing with furious intensity, their little head bobbing and throat quivering. The fawn’s outsized ears and adorably fluffy white tail were all standing at attention. With similar focus, Mom was licking the little one’s rear.

Watch a video!

Now, lots of animal parents take care of their young one’s poop. My beloved chickadees, for example, keep their nest clean by carrying out little membrane-wrapped fecal sacs, conveniently packaged by the chicks’ own digestive tracts for easy removal. The chicks are primed to poop just after they are fed, which is good timing—the parent brings dinner and takes out the trash in the same visit.

Chickadee carrying a fecal sac.

Similarly, by licking the fawn’s perineal region the whole time they are feeding, the doe stimulates the fawn’s bowels, gets rid of all the stinky stuff, and refills Junior’s belly in the shortest time possible! This multi-tasking is necessary when a doe may only spend a few hours each day with the fawn. Even with limited feeding sessions, fawns double their weight—from an average of 6 pounds at birth—in just two weeks. Deer milk is richer in fat and protein than cow’s milk.

Some of the fawn’s best defenses are to be small, well-camouflaged, and almost scent-free. Big, fragrant Mom hanging around would be easier for predators to detect, and this is dangerous for the fawn before they are strong enough to run. After about five days, a fawn could outrun most predators (including you!), but not all of them. So, for the first three weeks, fawns stay hidden, with Mom hanging out within earshot and returning to nurse them four or five times a day. If a fawn’s cover is blown, a distressed bleat will bring Mom running to the rescue.

Even with all of these precautions, being a fawn is risky business. During the Wisconsin DNR’s 2013 fawn mortality study, only 44.8% of fawns survived to their half-birthday in the northern forests, while 57.8% survived in the eastern farmland. Predators were the largest cause of mortality up north, while starvation was the main problem in farmland. In the absence of abundant predators, fawns still die of emaciation, disease, and birth defects.

These fawn mortality studies are not easy to conduct! Most predators are members of the clean plate club. The Voyageur Wolf Project has been studying wolf predation in the summer since 2012. Their trained field technicians are able to identify the remains of a fawn dinner by the subtle clues of disturbed vegetation, a few bone fragments, or the stomach contents…but only after a wolf’s GPS collar has led them to the site.

This is the season of wild babies! Does nibble on tender young plants (and have even been captured on nest cameras eating baby birds). Fawns drink their milk. Then fawns become lunch for fast-growing wolf pups at a critical time. The food web is humming along at top speed, and everyone’s baby—no matter how cute—is potential food for something else.

And here’s the required PSA: while humans are wired to help cute little babies survive, if you find a fawn, leave it! It’s likely that Mom is nearby. Even if she isn’t, human intervention has been shown not to increase fawn survival over the long run. Somehow, there still seem to be plenty of deer!

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 new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

The Lake Superior Fishery in Wisconsin Waters

Captain Ross Lind welcomes people onto the DNR research vessel, the Hack Noyes. According to the DNR website, “The R/V Hack Noyes was built in 1946 by Burger Boat Company in Manitowoc, Wisconsin and purchased by a commercial fisherman for use on Lake Michigan. The original name of the vessel was Helen Jean. It was used on Lake Michigan until 1951 when it was sold to the Wisconsin DNR and renamed Hack Noyes for use on Lake Superior in the Apostle Islands as a law enforcement vessel. The vessel was named after the late Haskell P. Noyes, head of the Wisconsin Conservation Commission from 1931-1933. In 1970, it was transferred to the Wisconsin DNR fisheries management department in Bayfield.” Find out more at https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Fishing/lakesuperior/HackNoyes.

The boat engine rumbled and machinery whirred as a gillnet rose from the depths of Lake Superior. Captain Ross Lind managed the throttle so that the 55-foot-long gillnet-tug-turned-research-vessel named Hack Noyes moved toward the net at the same speed the net lifter reeled it in.

A group of interested adults on this Museum-sponsored field trip gathered around the equipment. We were mesmerized by the clicking of the metal teeth on the spinning drum as they gripped and then released the line, and by the lengths of delicate nylon net attached to the line. Capable hands guided the net down a long, stainless-steel worktable and into the storage tub. (Check out the Museum’s Reels on Instagram and Facebook if you want to see a video of this operation.)

The invention of net lifters (upper right) enabled fishing tugs to become enclosed, which makes for a safer and more comfortable job during the winter. DNR Fisheries Biologist Dray Carl (far left) explains this to participants on a Museum-organized field trip. Photo by Emily Stone.

Gillnets look like a long tennis net, anchored by weights along the lake bottom and held vertical by floats. Small fish swim right through, but bigger fish get caught. Whether a DNR biologist or a commercial fisherman is setting the net, they can choose the fish they target by the size of the mesh and the depth of set.

A flash of silver rounded the drum. The fish landed on the worktable and Dray Carl, Fisheries Biologist for the Wisconsin DNR, freed it from the filaments. Another fish, and then another and another landed on the table. They all looked about the same to my untrained eye, but after lining them up, Dray began to teach us about the different species we’d caught.

DNR Fisheries Biologist Dray Carl (left) teaches about fish species to program participants. Photo by Emily Stone.

There was one adult whitefish. At 17.7” long it was of legal size, and Dray put it on ice to take to Bodin Fisheries processing plant, which was the next stop for all of us on the field trip. The DNR tries not to waste the fish they catch as part of their research and monitoring efforts, and their catch is factored into the fishing quotas. Quotas are negotiated between the state, the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and the Bad River Tribe, and these entities manage the fishery cooperatively.

Three young whitefish remained on the table, next to two cisco. Other than being slightly different shades of silver, I couldn’t tell them apart. These two nearshore fish species are in the same genus, and hang out in 50-250 feet of water. Whitefish, though, feed on the bottom of the lake, nibbling on insects and snails with their down-turned mouth. Cisco feed throughout the water column on zooplankton and other critters right in front of their forward-facing mouth. Dray held them up, and now even I could see the difference.

Whitefish (top) and cisco (left) are closely related, but the downturned mouth of the whitefish fits their bottom feeding lifestyle, while the forward-facing mouth of the cisco is suited for eating the critters right in front of them throughout the water column. Cisco are also known as lake herring. Photo by Emily Stone.

The third fish species on the table was a rainbow smelt. Though introduced from the Atlantic Coast, smelt gained a huge following during their heyday, when anyone with a net could catch hundreds at the mouth of a creek during a spawning run. Smelt can be beneficial as a prey species, but they also eat young cisco and whitefish. Now that smelt numbers have moderated, whitefish and cisco are able to increase their populations again.

In fact, current numbers of one-year-old cisco are higher than biologists have seen since at least 1978. This boom was spawned in the fall of 2021, and hatched in 2022. Their reproductive success was thought to be tied to high ice cover, but the new hypothesis is that our recent late springs have provided the cold water that the fish need at just the right time.

While cisco populations are high all over the lake, “the highest densities of the little cisco have been observed in Wisconsin waters,” Dray told me proudly. Wisconsin waters only include 7% of the surface area of Lake Superior, but there are more fish harvested out of this jurisdiction than the rest of the lake combined.

Map of Wisconsin waters of Lake Superior. Image from WI DNR.

Part of that has to do with the number of fisherman out there trying to catch fish. Much of Minnesota’s North Shore and Canada are pretty wild and host relatively few commercial fishing operations. A bigger reason? Wisconsin has more shallow water. Eighty percent of Lake Superior is more than 250 feet deep. Sunlight doesn’t penetrate into those depths, and therefore can’t jumpstart the food chain. In the shallow waters of the St. Louis River Estuary, the Apostle Islands, Chequamegon Bay, and Kakagon Slough, sunlight powers algae, and streams bring in nutrients from the uplands, too.

When you mix that productivity with a wide variety of habitats that support a diversity of species as they grow and reproduce, you get a lot of fish. So many fish are born in Wisconsin waters that they disperse throughout the rest of the lake.

Dray did a fantastic job of explaining the biology and management of the Wisconsin fishery on Lake Superior. To my delight, he even brought it back to geology. About a billion years ago, the Mid-Continent Rift tried to rip apart North America, right through where Lake Superior is today. The lava that erupted from immense seam volcanoes in the rift became the steeply dipping bedrock on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Sandstone filled in the resulting basin, and glaciers carved that softer rock into the islands and bays—and fish habitat—of today’s Wisconsin waters. As the land rebounds from the weight of the glaciers, the lake is tilting southwest to flood the mouth of the St. Louis River and create more great habitat there.

This Friday, as I nibble on a locally caught fillet of Lake Superior whitefish or cisco, I’ll be quietly thanking all the people (and geology!) who contribute to the health of Wisconsin’s fishery.

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 new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.

Professor Hike

A roll of duct tape bounced along in my backpack, and a permanent marker poked out of my pants pocket as I strode down the trail. A group of 20 Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteers-in-Training ambled behind me. We’d had a challenging morning of botany and geology at Morgan Falls in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. Lunch had revived us, and now it was time for the afternoon activity. Anticipation bubbled.

“During this activity,” I explained, “you will each become a Professor of something in these woods.”

While most of the group opened up their new nature journals to pass the time, I led my first “professor” a little ways down the trail. Maggie and I paused by a big log on the ground, and I asked, “How would you feel about being Professor Coarse Woody Debris?” She was game. I dug out the marker and tape as I explained that foresters use this term to describe fallen dead trees.

We looked at some punky places on the log where fungi were clearly doing their decomposition work, admired the moss growing in the spongy, water-holding material, and talked about death’s roll in the ecosystem. “Ecologists often say that a tree is more alive when it’s dead,” I quipped.

Then, as I handed Maggie a strip of duct tape with her professor name written in black marker, she practiced teaching that same information in her own way. Satisfied with her grasp of the material, I waved at the group of remaining students, beckoning one forward.

“Hello, my name is Professor Coarse Woody Debris,” Maggie introduced herself, and proceeded to teach Craig this little chunk of newly acquired knowledge, ending with a deep thought about how death provides the resources for new life. Then Maggie stayed by her log and invited a new student forward, while I walked Craig down the trail to find a new professor topic.

We stopped by a cluster of little three-leaved plants. (No, not poison ivy!) “Professor Little Jack” I wrote on the duct tape, while I told Craig how Jack-in-the-Pulpit plants can take seven years or more to build up enough energy to finally produce a flower. After expressing his amazement, Craig was ready to teach the next student.

Bit by bit I moved down the trail, finding something interesting for each new “professor” to teach about, while making sure that we were out of conversational earshot but within sight of the professor on either side.

I took advantage of the prolific Jack-in-the-Pulpit flowers let my professors teach about them in easy chunks. After that first patch of just leaves, we found one of their unusual flowers. The outer part looks like a narrow pouch with a graceful rain awning, or an old fashioned church pulpit. Inside that spathe lives the preacher Jack. His part is played by the spadix—the spike that pokes up out of the pulpit structure. At the base of the spadix are tiny flowers, protected from rain by the curving hood of the spathe.

The next professor taught that young Jack-in-the-Pulpits begin by producing only male flowers, because those take less energy. After the leaves churn out enough photosynthesis, older plants eventually gain enough resources to produce female flowers, seeds, and clusters of scarlet fruits.

Down the trail, I left a line of Professors strung out like pearls of wisdom: Professor Virginia Creeper, Professor Habitat, Professor Native Honeysuckle, Professor Buddy Tree, Professor Tip-Up-Mound, and Professor Shade.

The Museum’s new director, Rich Jaworski, became Professor Advanced Regeneration during the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteer Training last week. He’s taking the course to become more familiar with this area and the mission of the Museum. Photo by Emily Stone.

(Remember how I wrote about mosquitoes last week? They're still here! Both Rich and his student are wearing bug jackets from Sea to Summit.)

When I reached the final student and transformed her into Professor Scratch-and-Sniff at a sweet-smelling yellow birch tree, my job was done. Back in the woods, once Professor Coarse Woody Debris ran out of students, she became one herself, visiting all 19 other professors along the trail. The line folded back on itself.

The activity ended with big smiles and rave reviews when we gathered at the trailhead for our wrap-up. Everyone had loved being a student. They were bursting with the delight of fun facts and chunks of information that they could actually remember and were excited to share. Plus, each Professor was proud of how their talking points had been practiced, polished, and perfected over the many repetitions. The shyer students were relieved that these small bits of public speaking felt very manageable.

Over the years, I’ve found that this Professor Hike activity is very effective at connecting students to nature. What’s been a surprise, especially as I lead it with adults instead of sixth graders, is how wonderful it is at connecting people to each other as they teach and learn.

I chuckled during the wrap-up when a student exclaimed, “Maybe you should bring back the duct tape so we can all be professors again tomorrow!” I chuckled…as I tucked the roll into a handy spot in my backpack.

To find out more about the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program, visit https://wimasternaturalist.org/ or give Emily a call!

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 new exhibit: “The Northwoods ROCKS!” is open now! Our Summer Calendar of Events is ready for registration! Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and cablemuseum.org to see what we are up to.