The mythical twenty footer

The subject of countless emails, Facebook posts, and conversations yesterday was the big northwest wind and the alleged twenty foot waves on Lake Superior. When I sent RonO the info from the NOAA mid lake buoy, he trumped my pathetic little bit of data with the glorious full color NOAA wave map above. Actual link is here. The front that brought us Fall on Sunday afternoon also brought steady northwest winds of 35 knots with gusts of over 45 knots, producing the twenty footers shown on the map along the south shore. But were there any twenty footers?

Wave height estimation seems to be like the fish you got right up to the boat and lost, or the buck that you just missed with your bow. Or maybe missed 4 times in 2 days like a nameless.....OK, it was the KingOfIronwoodIsland....Reefer Creek bow hunter. In our mind they always seem bigger than they are. The solid measure of wave height in a kayak is the rough placement of most peoples eyes about 3 feet above where their ass is on the kayak seat. So if all your fellow paddlers can be seen when you are in the trough of the wave, it just isn't a three foot wave no matter how much we would like it to be. About the time that I was studying the map and fantasizing about being windbound on the tip of the Keweenaw with an ample supply of food and adult beverage, I had the brainstorm to get in touch with a couple of on the scene witnesses, Pod and the GurneyGranny. Its unclear at this time who rushed down to Saxon Harbor but 5 images were in my email at about 6:30. As you can see, even the most notorious lying fisherman could not get 20' out of those waves. To be fair, Saxon Harbor appears to be in the 14' bar on the chart but those waves look like all of about 4 or 5 footers max to me. I also received a report from a Marquette native who said, "I saw pictures today from a friend east of Marquette. Pretty awesome there with stacked 7-10 foot waves and howling wind/rain". On the map 'east of Marquette seems to be solidly in the 16'range.

As readers of this blog are well aware, I've never scoffed at forecasts and data from NOAA and am certainly not now. I just want to see a twenty foot wave on Lake Superior. Or a picture of a twenty foot wave. I don't necessarily need to be out on a twenty foot wave, although I do admit that being on the Gull Rock Lighthouse, pictured below off the tip of the Keweenaw, during one of these blows would be outstanding. If you possess an image of a 20' Gitchee Gumee wave, please send it over. I'd really like to see it and I'm sure the readers of this blog would as well. This link has some excellent wave shots but, again, I don't see a twenty footer. A little help out there?

Fall arrives

Even though the autumnal equinox was last Tuesday, it just has not felt like fall yet. The leaves have certainly began to turn, with bright red maple leaves covering the forest floor on top of the sumac which gave up its leaves a couple weeks ago. The ash is pretty much down as well and the aspen and oak are beginning to think about turning color too. The hawks are streaming past Hawk Ridge in Duluth and the V's of geese are heading south as well. Its a big year for apples in northern Wisconsin and the calendar says we are officially into the fall season but the plain fact is that it just didn't smell like fall yet. Until mid afternoon Sunday, that is.

We were lured to the hunting camp with visions of grouse flushing in front of the shotgun but when we strolled in late Friday night and I saw a trailer full of dimension lumber sitting by the site of the long discussed cut up shack, it became apparent that the DeWalt drill, rather than the shotgun, would be the tool that separates us from the apes this weekend. It was the perfect weekend for both framing buildings and grouse hunting. A front had moved through during the night and cleared the clouds but it was not the classic fall system, with rapidly moving scattered clouds and a cold, dry northwest wind. Nor did it provide that first hard frost of the season that hay fever sufferers have been waiting for. This was a wimpy southwest wind that had no chance of giving us that cold air and triggering the decaying leaves, damp ground, brisk fall smell that was missing. It was pretty good weather for building in a T shirt however, and we 'made hay while the sun shone'. Fresh sweet corn, a sirloin tip roast garnished with horseradish produced the weekend before, and apple crisp also told us mentally that we were in the midst of fall but still no smell. I thought that my switching from Summit Kolsch, a superb new Summit offering now known unofficially as Konstruction Kolsch, to Summit Octoberfest might trigger the change but no luck.

Sunday morning broke with another weak front moving through. We had a couple showers but nothing to make a person lay down their hammer. We saddled up about 1pm and headed for Mora, where the VOR had left her car. About halfway there the wind blew up out of the northwest and the temperature dropped from 68F to 49F in the space of about 15 minutes. When I got home I checked the nearshore forecast and found that small craft advisory had changed to gale warnings and that 9-12' waves were forecast for areas within 5 miles of shore on western Lake Superior. More importantly, when I opened the patio door to let Rookie the Wonder Dog outthis morning, the fall smell had magically appeared. Fall is most definitely in the air!

Wolves, deer in the Apostles, and no $20 permits

Last week wolves were put back on the endngered species list, at least until US Fish and Wildlife decides to try to delist them once more, a lengthy process that will begin again shortly. Also, the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore announced that Sand and York Islands will be closed for the season at the end of the month so sharpshooters can take care of the massive deer overpopulation that's threatening the native plant species on both islands.Finally in related deer news, most of the deer management units in northern Wisconsin have been changed from 'herd control' units to 'regular' units, which means that even though hunters will receive an anterless tag with their license, they won't be able to use them.

The states and the various tribes have been managing the wolf population for the past two years but a judge ruled that the US Fish & Wildlife Agency had not properly allowed for public input before delisting them. Now the public hearings and comment periods will begin all over. It seems like the wolf population is healthy enough in our area and the only threat they pose locally seems to be to bear dogs. For those unfamiliar with that activity, these bear 'hunters' let their dogs run loose through the woods for most of August to train them. They come loping and barking through camp as we sit and enjoy the summer, maybe shit in the yard, and then keep going. The guys who run dogs seem to see no problem with this, even though they would run you or your dog off their land in a heartbeat. Most of the time we don't molest the dogs.....much.....but the wolves generally aren't so accommodating when the dogs move through a packs territory. Dumb bear dogs stand no chance against a timber wolf and then we taxpayers get to pay the knucklehead that steered his dogs into wolf country in the first place. I think the Feds are wise to let the states and the tribal resource managers work with the wolf population in their state. After all, whats good for Ely, MN ain't necessarily the same thing thats good for Ashland, WI.

All the whining that took place after the deer season last year about too few deer and too many wolves seems to have caused the Wisconsin DNR to come up with what they must consider to be a winning solution. We can still shoot does, we just need to pay for a doe permit now. Managers have decided how many permits each unit will have and one a day can be purchased by each license holder until they are gone. $12 a pop for residents and $20 each for us Wisconsin tax paying landowners who are not residents. My thought on this is that they should require people commenting at the meetings and whining in the paper to have spent at least 20 hours in the woods during the previous hunting season. You can't see many deer from a bar stool and you can't believe what the guy on the next stool says about their being no deer. Maybe some sort of ass size/blood alcohol ratio test can be developed to screen for real hunters.

Which leads us to too damn many deer on Sand and York Islands. I've written about this before and witnessed it first hand every time I've camped on those two islands. If you don't see several deer at the campsites, 20 yards away or closer, you just aren't paying attention. Even though the islands are open for hunting its a pain in the rear end to hunt them. First of all a boat is needed, although when I think about it, a quartered deer just might fit in a kayak. If a deer is harvested it needs to be dragged to the shoreline to get to the boat. No ATVs to keep us elderly hunters from having a heart attack while dragging a 180# buck. Then there are likely permits to be filed for, an aggravated boat owner when you throw the field dressed deer in the bottom of his boat.... No, I think this trained marksman idea is perfect, plus the food shelves get the venison. Good luck to the NPS on knocking down the deer population and maybe even eliminating it on York, which is a much smaller island.

It seems funny that we need to control and manipulate animal populations to the extent that we do. It would appear that the phrase, "balance of nature" is nothing like a balance at all but an attempt to control the swing of the pendulum and keep it at a manageable level. Good luck I guess.

A change of pace - fall harvest

For the first time since the ski box was traded for the kayak rack sometime in March, we headed north and right past Lake Superior with no boats on the roof. Weather and waves were perfect and in fact a number of the SKOAC Renegades were on Sand Island for the annual Fall Ball. Our mission this weekend had no time for paddling in the mix. It was time to convert the summers bountiful harvest into food and drink.

The main event of the weekend was brewing beer. Twenty years ago I was deeply immersed in the fledgling homebrewing movement, a hobby made possible by the repeal of stupid prohibition era laws at the normal Congressional timeline of 50 years too late. A variety of things, including kayaks and the availability of really good beer at the liquor store, cut back on my brewing but the Podman had planted some Centennial and Cascade hops, as well as 6 row barley on his and the GurneyGranny's estate and needed some instruction in making Real Ale. Yet another avocation opened up by his retirement one year ago this month. We whipped up two five gallon batches, one of a brown ale to replicate the excellent South Shore Nut Brown Ale brewed 20 miles down the road in Ashland, and some IPA, India Pale Ale. India Pale Ale was concocted because English brewers in the mid 19th century needed to come up with a product that would make it around the Horn to the troops in India with out spoiling; this was of national importance at the time because of rumblings of mutiny amongst Her Majesty's troops and a real fear that crappy beer could be the straw that broke the camels back. Back in rural Gurney, WI we had put our batch of brown ale to bed and had just started on the IPA when the KingOfIronwoodIsland showed up to lend moral support. Cynical observers (GurneyGranny and the VoiceOfReason) suggested that the chance of making more beer than we actually drank during the lengthy brewing process had now plummeted to almost zero with the King's arrival. Photographic evidence would suggest however, that we were not the only ones depleting the beer supply. The womyn were also out in the summer kitchen with we intrepid brewers, producing and bottling horseradish, which had been dug, cleaned, and was being blended with vinegar, sugar, and possibly a secret ingredient, we don't know for sure. Ambitious ladies that they are, they later ventured out into the woods to a large blackberry patch to compete with the bears for the sweet berries.

The summer on the south shore of Gitchee Gumee has been very cool this year. Possibly because of that, the gardens, berry patches, and apple trees have been positively laden with fruit and veggies. Locals can't recall a more productive year, although there is worry about the tomatoes actually ripening before the first frost. Sunday's mission was to pick and press a bunch of apples in the neighbors cider press. There were so many apples on the tree that the ladies recruited a tall guy (guess who?) to shake the branches and just stood underneath them with a blanket. The cider press was a sturdy looking contraption that would have been familiar to people in the 17th century. A large flywheel was cranked by hand as the apples were pitched into a cylinder that had a hardwood wheel with metal teeth. This ground the apples and they were then pressed using a wooden cylinder that was forced down using a big screw that reminded everyone of the sort of device used to ferret out heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. A solid three hours of cranking the grinder and screwing the press by 8 willing workers produced several gallons of excellent apple cider. Because several varieties of apples were produced, each gallon had its own distinct taste, all of which were eminently drinkable.

Even though we were kind of wistful as we rounded Chequamagon Bay with no boats on the roof, it was a very productive weekend. The best thing, other than the bounty of cider and veggies that came back with us, was that even though it was work, it did not feel a bit like work. I think we may have even had some fun.

Witch Tree - the Spirit Little Cedar

One of the coolest, most evocative, and most history laden spots on Minnesota's north shore of Lake Superior is this relatively small white cedar tree that sits almost on the tip of Hat Point near Grand Portage. It's first written mention is by French explorer Sieur de la Verendrye in 1731, who commented on the tree as a mature tree at that time, making it at least 300 years old now. The local Ojibwe in Grand Portage had known of the tree long before that and Manido Gizhigans, the Ojibwe name for the tree, has spiritual significance and the land it sits on is considered sacred. Because of that access is restricted and now hikers must be accompanied by a guide from the tribe when they visit the tree. If a person visits by sea kayak however, both the view and proximity are excellent.

I've taken a lot of images of the tree including the one above on our last trip. I'm almost embarrassed to post it though, when I look at Travis Novitsky's images of the tree. Travis lives in Grand Portage and one of his images, not mine, is framed and on the landing of our St Anthony estate. The VOR and I are big fans of his work and stopped to say hi and pick up yet another Travis image on our recent trip to the area. Don't try to visit Grand Portage State Park during the week this fall though, its closed while they build the new visitors center.

Part of the lure of the tree is the history that its witnessed. We had a similar situation out in Oregon when we hiked the same trail in Ecola State Park Lewis and Clark had taken on a mission to acquire some whale oil in the Cannon Beach area. The giant Sitka Spruce are roughly 400 years old and were there and mature when Lewis and Clark passed by. I find that sort of thing compelling and the Spirit Little Cedar falls into that same category. The voyageurs and the couer de bois, the independent French trappers, used the tree as the landmark that told them they were almost to the fort at Grand Portage and their journey was almost over. On the way back to Montreal, in the big freighter canoes heavily laden with furs, they would offer tobacco to the tree to help insure safe passage on the often treacherous waters of Gitchee Gumee.

It an interesting tree with a lot of legends associated with it and its unique shape, formed in part by the 'bonsai' action of several centuries facing the gales of November on the big lake, make it an interesting photographic subject. But if you're paddling on the lake, starting a major crossing, it can't hurt to offer a little tobacco to the Spirit Little Cedar. Legends and traditions like that always seem quaint and funny. Until a person is in the presence of the tree that is; then all of a sudden it doesn't seem so funny and there is that feeling that maybe it would be prudent to sprinkle a little offering before heading out on the big lake.