© 2024 WNIJ and WNIU
Northern Public Radio
801 N 1st St.
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-9000
Northern Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

A Sad Note To Northwoods Lore

This summer my family stayed in a plywood cabin on Low Lake, near Ely, Minn., just outside the boundary waters canoe area.

Every decade or so, a significant weather event helps shape the landscape and lore of this remote wilderness. The big blowdown of 1999 laid down millions of mature trees across half the boundary waters, and the Pagami Creek fire of 2011 turned much of that tinder to ash.

On July 21, another big storm hit the Ely area, with 80 mph winds that blew down hundreds of thousands of big trees. Two boundary waters campers lost their lives in the storm.

As the tempest raged overnight, my wife and daughter and I huddled together in the middle of the flimsy cabin away from the windows. The electrical storm created a strobe-light effect, and we heard the loud snapping of 100-year-old red and white pines just outside. Each time a nearby tree gave up its life, the gale delivered an overpowering pine scent to our nostrils.

Just outside our cabin, a mother hermit thrush had built a nest in a notch of a glacial erratic boulder the size of a VW bug, and she sat brooding two nestlings. After the storm, we found one of the babies on the ground and put it back in the damaged nest.

Now the little edifice tilted toward the front, and it couldn’t contain the small translucent nestlings. The brilliant maternal mind that had built the nest had no inkling, apparently, for nest repairs.

As we cut our way out of the fallen timber over the next week, we kept close watch on the nest. Finally one morning the nestlings were gone, having tipped out over night and making an easy meal for some nocturnal predator.

The lost thrushes will live on in our minds as another event shaping the northwoods lore.

I’m Chris Fink, and that’s my perspective