Clash of the Titans

Two global forces met head to head recently, and it was a struggle to decide which side to be on. On the one hand, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Fest was arriving in town. But at the same time, a potential flood of warblers and other migratory bird species were due to pass through town on their way to nesting sites farther north.

Hilary and I decided to split the difference and spend six days on a cross-country trek that included stops at the Ice Age Trail north of Bloomer, Wisconsin; Hunt Hill Audubon Camp an hour north of there; the wild and strange and ragged landscapes of the Totagatic Pine Barrens west of Minong; Wisconsin Point, just east of Superior; The harbor and rock shelves of Two Harbors; Crosby-Manitou State Park; a number of woodsy trails in the vicinity of Ely; and one final stop at the Sax-Zim Bog north of Meadowlands, where we'd been often but never in the springtime.

Following that itinerary, we still arrived back home in time to catch plenty of films before the festival left town.

The days were breezy and cool, the leaves were barely unfurling, the serviceberries were in bloom, and the ephemerals dotting the forest floor were bathed in dappled sunlight. The woods and fields were full of song, especially in the early morning, and the word "idyllic" cropped up in conversation more than once or twice.

I'm not going to give you a complete rundown of the eighty-odd species we came upon during our trip, but I will mention a few things we did not see: We did not see a boreal chickadee at the Sax-Zim Bog; We did not see an upland sandpiper OR a sharp-tailed grouse at the Totagatic Barrens; and we did not see a single shorebird at Wisconsin Point. On the other hand, while we were sitting in the car on Barker's Island eating a miserable lunch from Taco John's, I did see two common terns fly by overhead. (Not a common sight, actually.) And at Vermilion State Park we got an extended point-blank look of a magnolia warbler at eye level. Wonderful bird.

And here's an odd fact. We had spotted ten other warbler species before sighting our first redstart or myrtle. Go figure.

I sometimes think that the black-throated green warbler is the most common bird in the north woods, but on this trip his song was overshadowed by the high-pitched ascending ratchety sound of the northern parula by a wide margin. This was true especially during an early morning hike we took along the shores of Bass Lake, a few miles north of Ely.

The sun was just coming up at the far end of the lake, the morning was very cool, and the woodsy smell of balsam filled the air. That combination of sensations evoked a random collection of outdoor memories including some associated with my summers as a canoe counselor fifty years ago, which include playing chess, reading  Scientific American, and listening to the Neil Young Song "Helpless," which one of the other staff members used to play endlessly in the bunkhouse after dinner. The entire concatenation presented itself to me in a flash, bundled up in a wrapping of adolescent melancholy that strikes me now as sweet. 

It also occurred to me, as Hilary and I strolled through the woods along the shore of the lake, that I have always approached that evocative woodsy environment with a reverence that I have never tried to further conceptualize, objectify, or converted into a theology. But it has often been present, during excursions like this one, as a source of pleasure and gratification and focus.

In short, it was a very nice walk.