With apologies to easya, I'm sober...oh well.
So back from the chippewa forest. The leaves changing colors, the weather, and the work made the trip quite enjoyable. Although it was predominantly a coniferous forest there was still a quite a bit of coloration to be seen and enjoyed. In one section it was particularly nice because oaks, maples, birches, and aspen were changing to orange, red, and yellow beneath a canopy of dark green pines. It looked like an abstract representation of a forest fire. Also this morning there was a hard frost and white trim formed around a lot of the ground vegetation which gave it an almost magical or fairy tale aspect. Keeping with the fall theme we drove through a lot of tamarack forests on the way back, which is a conifer that loses its needles, but first they change to a stunning gold color, whenever these were interspersed with still-green-evergreens it looked like what I imagine lambeau field does on 8 sundays of the year.
For lunch the first day we ate near Lake Winnebegoshish or something like that which is actually part of the mississippi river and at one point we saw two bald eagles flying overhead calling to one another in cries that seemed a little high-pitched for such stately birds. We also saw one on the side of the road pecking at a dead porcupine, its funny how porcupines and eagles take the place of racoons and crows up there.
We stayed at the Gosh Dam motel which was adjacent to the Gosh Dam bar, which is where we took our meals and recreation. Saw the last 5 minutes of the USC-ND game and was a little disappointed, bryan please extend my condolences to the brothers, I imagine carlos would take it particularly hard, or at least kind of hard for a few hours. Then watched the south siders inch closer to the WS.
The bar was crowded with grouse hunters. It was sort of disconcerting to be working in the woods while hearing shotgun blasts every few minutes, some far and some near, but I took comfort in my orange vest and that I wouldn't leave any orphans in the care of the state. Our first night there three of us got the question, "So y'all up here for grouse or fish or both?" To which we responded with some sort of gibberish about resin bags in stockings, nitrogen and saplings, I didn't really understand it myself. After this incident I, familiar with these situations from eating out at ultimate tournaments, decided we should change our story. We were now first-time hunters; with guns bought in warba (pop. 187 whose major commercial enterprises centered around guns, liquor, and leather); hoping to shoot birds, with the follow up query, "do you know any good spots." Sadly we never got to play out this fiction as no one else cared what we were doing, oh well.
Before we headed back we took a side trip to the Lost Forty Acres, which is a plot of forest that since its initial surveyors listed the area as underwater, managed to escape the woodsmans' axe. It was filled with enormous white and red pines whose size in my experience was only dwarfed by the redwoods. Sort of daunting to think how much lumber was taken out of the north woods of this country knowing that norm now was the exception back then. Was enlightening to be in that after walking and working in secondary forest all year. They were probably around 200 feet high, I sadly tried to estimate their height by imagining high up them I could throw a disc, and were said to be ~400 years old. Was also cool because only the second time in my life I've been over the Laurentian Divide, which means if I went tubing on a river I'd wind up in the artic ocean rather than the seas I and my readership are more familiar with. There was also a good deal of balsam fir there which reminded me of maine and my balsam fir story.
So it was my first day of work in maine and a fellow named ben was showing me the differences between red spruce and balsam fir, the two coniferst that we most often measured. He explained that balsam fir has nodes or warts on the side that are filled with sap, he then demonstrated with his thumbnail how if you punctured them sap would squirt out. The effect of this was that a gob of sap shot right into his eye and caused him no small amount of discomfort. Now I was standing there trying to not laugh too hysterically because I had only met ben a few days before, but that was hands down one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen happen to someone.
Anyway, hope this didn't bore anyone to tears. As far as any sort of return to Chicago it will probably be sooner rather than later, though I'm not sure myself yet when it will be.
For lunch the first day we ate near Lake Winnebegoshish or something like that which is actually part of the mississippi river and at one point we saw two bald eagles flying overhead calling to one another in cries that seemed a little high-pitched for such stately birds. We also saw one on the side of the road pecking at a dead porcupine, its funny how porcupines and eagles take the place of racoons and crows up there.
We stayed at the Gosh Dam motel which was adjacent to the Gosh Dam bar, which is where we took our meals and recreation. Saw the last 5 minutes of the USC-ND game and was a little disappointed, bryan please extend my condolences to the brothers, I imagine carlos would take it particularly hard, or at least kind of hard for a few hours. Then watched the south siders inch closer to the WS.
The bar was crowded with grouse hunters. It was sort of disconcerting to be working in the woods while hearing shotgun blasts every few minutes, some far and some near, but I took comfort in my orange vest and that I wouldn't leave any orphans in the care of the state. Our first night there three of us got the question, "So y'all up here for grouse or fish or both?" To which we responded with some sort of gibberish about resin bags in stockings, nitrogen and saplings, I didn't really understand it myself. After this incident I, familiar with these situations from eating out at ultimate tournaments, decided we should change our story. We were now first-time hunters; with guns bought in warba (pop. 187 whose major commercial enterprises centered around guns, liquor, and leather); hoping to shoot birds, with the follow up query, "do you know any good spots." Sadly we never got to play out this fiction as no one else cared what we were doing, oh well.
Before we headed back we took a side trip to the Lost Forty Acres, which is a plot of forest that since its initial surveyors listed the area as underwater, managed to escape the woodsmans' axe. It was filled with enormous white and red pines whose size in my experience was only dwarfed by the redwoods. Sort of daunting to think how much lumber was taken out of the north woods of this country knowing that norm now was the exception back then. Was enlightening to be in that after walking and working in secondary forest all year. They were probably around 200 feet high, I sadly tried to estimate their height by imagining high up them I could throw a disc, and were said to be ~400 years old. Was also cool because only the second time in my life I've been over the Laurentian Divide, which means if I went tubing on a river I'd wind up in the artic ocean rather than the seas I and my readership are more familiar with. There was also a good deal of balsam fir there which reminded me of maine and my balsam fir story.
So it was my first day of work in maine and a fellow named ben was showing me the differences between red spruce and balsam fir, the two coniferst that we most often measured. He explained that balsam fir has nodes or warts on the side that are filled with sap, he then demonstrated with his thumbnail how if you punctured them sap would squirt out. The effect of this was that a gob of sap shot right into his eye and caused him no small amount of discomfort. Now I was standing there trying to not laugh too hysterically because I had only met ben a few days before, but that was hands down one of the funniest things I think I've ever seen happen to someone.
Anyway, hope this didn't bore anyone to tears. As far as any sort of return to Chicago it will probably be sooner rather than later, though I'm not sure myself yet when it will be.
posted by Joe Little at 6:53 PM
1 Comments:
I enjoyed that one. Not quite as good as drunken tales of debauchery, but quite descriptive at parts, especially the abstract forest fire. I fear I will miss out on the changing of the leaves, just because I won't take the time to look. Anyway, I give the post a 4.5, a couple stars, and maybe some random fingers in the air.
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