Musings

For today’s big outdoor adventure we walked through a woods…

…by a creek…burble, burble…

And popped out of the wilderness to see A Big, Huge Lake!

Sooooo gorgeous. The water was so clear. Along the shore, it was beige-ish through the blue water tint, then further out: trending to aqua…then almost midnight blue way out where it’s deep. Fantastic color graduation. With breaking waves. And SSSSUUUUUNNNNNshine!

Then, we retraced our route to return to the trailhead; no loop possible (without walking an impossible gajillion miles).

Posted at 9:31 PM | Comments Off on Special date

Sometime during the night the wind went silent and I found the change almost eerie. For today, almost entirely sunshine! Yay!

Nurdles are lentil-sized plastic buttons that manufacturers buy to transform into bottle and other shapes to hold their products. An estimated 53 BILLION end up in the ocean every YEAR. Critters think they’re food, and you know there is nothing good about that.

If you can’t find it in yourself to worry about nurdle pollution, think about the plastic bits that are torn and worn away from the whipping action of weed-eaters.

Back to a positive note: sunny day! ☀️

Nurdle photo-story by Annaliese Nurnberg and Gianmarco Maraviglia, “‘Mermaid Tears’: A photographer documents one of the most dangerous marine pollutants,” in the Washington Post, dated 5 October.

Posted at 5:47 PM | Comments Off on New vocab: nurdle

Please do not say we were avoiding chores. We say we were getting out of the house and doing a bit of City Shopping. We got take-out lunch from the Lockview, including broiled whitefish for meeee. Mmmmm. We drove to a nearby parking spot where we had a view of the downstream end of the locks. There was no traffic up- or down-bound.

It wasn’t as dark as it looks here, just low late sunlight. And wind. Gusty wind. I walked into a couple of gusts where I had to really work to keep my pace even. Not scary gusts, but: still. [Lady Mallard scared me taking off again. This has been happening for what? Two weeks? She needs to fly south, I keep thinking.]

Posted at 7:02 PM | Comments Off on Lockview, swampview

With Covid raging, presidential hi-jinks, and enabler shenanigans, let’s focus on sunlight! We had it all day! Soooo wonderful.

The first photo is mid-day light streaming into the living room. This one is nearing sunset. Such warm colors! So calming. And this is good.

Posted at 9:06 PM | Comments Off on Breathe

Walking around the orchard these days, there’s an uneven chorus of dull, rather quiet thuds. Apples falling.

I don’t remember Dad telling me about this tree, but since the deer are avoiding the drops, I’m guessing this is a pollinator—so: for the pollen and not the apples. I guess the pollinator trees are somewhat like the drones in an ant colony. Somewhat.

There’s a poetically named Lake of the Clouds west of here; this is Lake under the Clouds. There wasn’t much sunshine today, but we had constant cloud-cover (shown here), and even some rain.

Posted at 10:02 PM | Comments Off on Nearby

I’m not burying the lede. Our lede. We went to the Refuge, and saw swans. And a few other waterfowl. And a raptor-type something or other, I think.

The light was odd and not always helpful. And I forgot the binocs.

Pouring rain for this shot. Lasted about two big minutes, and this is near the beginning. The wind came up and the rain came in and I rolled the window up. Goodbye, cattails.

In WashDC, the lede this evening is something else entirely.

Posted at 7:51 PM | Comments Off on Refuge quietude

I just checked out GooMaps satellite view to see how far this channel goes, as this direction is toward the upper reaches of the catchment. Less than a quarter mile.

You probably can’t pick her out, but just at the last visible bend is a lady mallard paddling away. I think she’s the same one who surprises me most days when I walk this way by jumping into flight while loudly quacking. As she did today. She sure is hanging around this spot for quite a while.

Posted at 8:24 PM | Comments Off on Me and one lady mallard

Daylight began with piercing quiet and heavy ground-fog.

As the day progressed, overcast and intermittent precip alternated with streaks of sunshine—you can see one of the latter illuminating a sand dune in the distance.

Today’s big chore was heading to town for groceries and a raid of the hardware store. Instead of the direct road, 44 miles round trip, we took the long way, up to Lake Superior in a big loop—a detour that took us 111 miles. Well worth the miles of mud puddles and bumps on the unpaved stretch between Grand Marais (where I took the photo) and Deer Park. Great names, no?

I walked subsequently, toward the end of the daylight portion of the day, when it was windy and sunny and surprisingly pleasant, quite the opposite of the morning.

Now, as darkness closes in, it’s less windy and threatening rain. Soooo good to be indoors.

Posted at 6:21 PM | 1 Comment »

I found the sunrise foine, and the sky terrific. I find that channel through the left-of-center especially striking.

I kept hearing sandhills yesterday, and today I caught them cruising just above the trees (right of post), attracted by their calls, which resonate I swear for miles. Just a pair.

You can see only one raven in the dead elm (elm is ID hypothesis); actually, when it flew seconds later, I saw it had a companion.

No Canada geese, however.

Posted at 8:19 PM | Comments Off on Bird report (partial)

Today’s photo tour of my day begins with these tracks, fresh-made as it rained into the wee hours. There are a couple of shoe-wearing horse-tracks in the lower left, and continuing across. But the rest are deer. I cannot come up with a scenario in which the long drag “prints” were created.

Also on my walk, a slight detour onto a bridge, perhaps installed by a fisher-person or birdwatcher, that crosses the ditch in the swamp. I learned about duckweed when I had Biology I in HS, back in the Middle Ages. It’s the floating green.

Kinda looks like funky soybeans in this shot. One leaf per plant, I just read.

Much later, I walked down to the lake…. Offshore breeze today (after days and nights on onshore winds). That means we have a beach! Water’s still way too high, though, IMHO.

Quick stop to check out the low-ground plants on the bluff-top. Sphagnum moss. Always thought “sphagnum” was lovely to hear, almost melodic, and no fun to spell.

Posted at 5:43 PM | 2 Comments »