Eclectic travelers

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley After giving a talk in Appleton, Wisconsin last night, we drove home, arriving around 3 a.m. Not our preferred time to be driving, but there was one unexpected bonus.  After brushing my teeth and turning off the light in the bathroom, I thought I saw a tiny light outside the window, in the backyard.  I pressed my face to the glass and there it was again:  A firefly (or lightning bug to some) somewhere in the branches of the red pine.  I watched it flash a few times and then it stopped.   Yes, this is truly summertime, when the fireflies dance through the air. I feel fortunate whenever we see these light producing insects (in the family known as Lampyridae, which comes from the Greek meaning “to shine”) in our fields because they have been declining over the decades where they have lost habitat to urban and suburban development.  Many people over the age of 50 have strong memories of summer evenings spent chasing and...

GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley I am a tree hugger – literally and philosophically. Maybe it began in grade school after having to memorize the poem Trees, by Joyce Kilmer.  It begins, “I think that I shall never see; A poem lovely as a tree”. When I was a child; trees were a source of endless challenge and fun, as climbing them became a regular pursuit.  Even today I look at the lower branches of trees when hiking and analyze their suitability for climbing. I admit that occasionally I have tested a few, but with age comes a greater sense of our vulnerability and mortality and I stay on the lower branches (Note by Mike – I have seen her pulled beyond the lower branches).  Trees are vulnerable too. That was very obvious after the last storm when straight line winds toppled, broke or uprooted large, stately trees that had sheltered many a home for decades.  The saturated soil, along with the power of the wind was too much for many of these elders.  Some ...

“How about lunch in Red Wing?”  And thus was born the boat ride with Bill Bixby on his boat June 20th.  From the harbor in Red Wing Kate and I with Bill set off down river.   Hastings is a wonderful little river community with a main street that is reminiscent of the larger Red Wing with brick facades and a feeling of a historic river town.  First established as a camp by soldiers from Fort Snelling to guard a blocked shipment, it soon became a trading post and was incorporated in 1857 with the middle name – Hastings, of future general and governor Henry Hastings Sibley.  The name had been drawn from a hat. Until 1951 it was famous for the 1895 spiral horse bridge that crossed the river and in 2013 it is getting a third bridge opening up the road to the ever increasing traffic demands.  The river port grew because of the Vermilion River that enters near the St Croix.  The falls on the Vermilion provided water power that  ran the gristmills....

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley The day could not have been more perfect for a morning pontoon boat ride on Bay Lake, just northwest of Mille Lacs.  This trip is one we have repeated every June for nearly a dozen years.  We take a group of people with us to Ruttger’s Resort where we rent two pontoon boats and set off  in search of loons.  Normally we go in the afternoon, but this year we decided to try the morning and we will stick with that change because we found fewer boats and noise on the lake at that time.  Our passengers come from around the country and they stay at the Audubon Center as part of a Road Scholar’s (formerly known as Elderhostel) program.   One of the reasons they choose to participate in this program is their desire to see our State Bird.  We Minnesotans, are proud of this big, black and white waterfowl and even if we aren’t fortunate enough to live on a lake where loons are found, we relish the knowledge that they come bac...

GOING NATURE’S WAY By Kate Crowley Several weeks later than planned we have finally begun canoeing the uppermost part of the Mississippi River. Mike had hoped we’d start at the end of April, but I knew ‘the winter that wouldn’t quit’ was going to make that impossible. Most of May wasn’t much better weatherwise, and when the forecast called for continued chance of rain this week, we decided we couldn’t wait any longer.    Along with our neighbor Dick Glattly and another friend, we put our two canoes in the water just 50 feet from the line of low rocks  people love tiptoeing over so that they can say they’ve walked across the mighty river. When we arrived at the famous spot, there was much splashing and squealing coming from the water as a large group of middle schoolers braved the chilly temperatures in the exuberant freedom of a spring field trip. The four of us set our boats in the stream, donned our life jackets and set off into the unknown.  We could only...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley When you see a Baltimore oriole, there is no doubt this bird comes from the tropics. But you may be surprised to learn that this beauty is from the same family of birds as grackles, red-winged blackbirds and meadowlarks.  In coloration and nest type it more resembles the Old World Orioles, but genetically, they are not closely related. Each spring when we see the first Baltimore oriole in our yard, we rush madly for oranges and fruit jelly (grape being the preferred).  Then we quickly slice the oranges and dash outside with it and the jar of jelly to entice the beautiful orange and black birds to stick around. For awhile we even had a special plastic oriole feeder that looked like (sort of) a large orange.  This we filled with sugar water. But even this failed to convince the birds to stay.  Inevitably we went out the next day to collect the orange which was starting to shrivel and the jelly coagulating into a solid mass.  With ...

WINGIN’ IT By Kate Crowley We are as surprised as I imagine some of the returning birds are to discover this much snow on the ground in mid-April. When we left for the south for three weeks on March 23 I skied our trails ‘one last time’, or so I told myself.  And now it looks like I may be able to ski for another week, based on the extended forecast, although the snow is very sticky.  We discovered dark eyed juncos, the so called ‘snowbirds’ because they leave every autumn before the snow falls and return when its gone (or nearly so), and purple finch  which we did not see in all the previous five months at our feeders.  That was rather unusual, because they typically are winter visitors.  I’m not sure where they went this winter, but we are happy to see them back in our yard.  While we were gone, we believe the raccoons came out of their winter dens because one of our best feeders that our neighbor Dick kept filled for us was thoroughly dism...