On Thursday December 21st we drove to a camp in the far northeast corner of Minnesota, 25 miles up the Gunflint Trail and surrounded by the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This was a Christmas visit to our daughter, who works up there. This time of year, the daylight there is 30 minutes shorter than northeast Iowa! Our first night up there, the moon was peeking through the clouds. Quite lovely and very fitting to spend winter solstice in the far north, surrounded by wilderness.
After that first view of the moon, the remainder of our visit was cloudy and unseasonably warm. Although the lakes continued to sleep under their shell of ice, all the snow retreated.
Instead of snowshoeing, we enjoyed hikes into the forest. The boreal forest is beautiful… stark and serene. Paper birch, aspen, balsam fir, white spruce and black spruce take foothold among the rocks covered with lichens and moss. We caught a glimpse of a spruce grouse, heard an occasional chattering squirrel, and saw the droppings and tracks of a moose that had ventured the trail before us.
Upon our return to Iowisota, I was struck by the comparative richness of the forest in the Driftless Area. Both habitats are blessed with abundance of water, but that water yields quite different results based on soil and weather conditions. Our relatively nutrient-rich soil gives root to a huge diversity of tree and plant species, which in turn support a rich variety of animals and birds. Compared to the quiet of the boreal forest in winter, today I was listening to the cacophony of geese on the Mississippi River and overwintering songbirds in the brush along the ravine. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to go and enjoy the serenity of the northern Boundary Waters, and equally grateful that I get to dwell in this amazingly bountiful region of bluffs along the Upper Mississippi River.
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