Ice forming on Two Island Lake.  There's snow in the forecast. 

The leaves have long since fallen.  The snow shoe hare is white.  November gales shove piles of waves that batter the shore of Superior.  The garden has been harvested.  Firewood is split and stacked.  The deer hunting season opens this weekend.  Snowflakes and frost crust the ground cover most mornings.  Darkness prevails.

The summer came and went with the sinking sun of this late autumn afternoon.  We learned what it meant to raise a toddler, improve a homestead, maintain careers and explore the deep wilderness around us.  Our adventures were short.  Our camps offered luxuries we weren't accustomed to having- extra blankets, pillows, fresh fruit, bathing suits, beach toys, boxes of wine.  Our building projects paled in comparison to earlier endeavors.  

In short, we entered a new phase of life.  We learned a lot, enjoyed more.  Now that the bird migrations make their way through the north woods, moose rush to feed in the ponds before they completely glace over with ice, few travelers venture on the water and trails we've come up for our first "breath of fresh air". 

Our focus has shifted up towards the top of the property.  The lower cabin that we inhabit is complete.  Now we set our sites to the larger project- our dream house.  This winter will entail a lot of planning and decisions.  (Hopefully lots of skiing and ice fishing too!)

Oberg Mountain

Golden poplar leaves fall and blanket the driveway like glitter upon Broadway on New Year's Day. Our daily hike. 

 

Fern Near Stairway Portage

 

Summer solstice has come and gone.  The days remain long but are now getting shorter.  Heavy rains continue to pound northern Minnesota out of it's drought.  Long days mean just that for us.  The work days seem never-ending.  Afterward we have plenty of garden chores, BBQ's with friends, moon rises over Superior and angling to take up the remaining portion of our waking hours.

The garden is flourishing.  Fishing is as good as it gets.  Blueberries are ripe for picking.  With great effort, next winter's firewood continues to stack higher and higher...

Cold Rain in July

Ever since I read One Man's Wilderness, the story of Richard Proenneke who homesteaded the remote south west Alaskan bush, I've had this ideal of a life tucked up in the wilderness where I would build and explore and photograph by day and write by night.  The life that we know today is an attempt at this notion mixed up in the realities of modern America.

We were planning on camping on Seagull Lake tonight.  However, a cold July rain hampered our blueberry-pickin', walleye hookin' foray.  Instead, I'm tucked away in along Superior writing, listening to music and watching Penelope play with the camping gear that remains unpacked and strewn around the cabin.

It's funny: I've been more busy in the last couple of months as ever in my lifetime.  I've been maxed out professionally and personally for a while now.  For some reason though despite all this I've gained a particular insight of my current situation.  Although it is nothing that I envisioned as a young kid; camping along the water trails of Boundary Waters reading Proenneke's proclamations by headlamp, I've realized that life is everything that it is suppose to be.  It is a fine, delicate balance of dreams, ambition, thought-out decisions, luck, love and hard work. 

The rain beats down on a forty degree day in July.  Rumors float of snow tonight in the high country.  My back hurts.  Still, I am more grounded than ever...

P is for Paddling: Stairway Portage via West Bearskin, Duncan & Rose Lakes

The warm, sweet smell of pine needles inundate my senses.  A robin chirps in the distance.  Old wolf scat and moose droppings flow by along the ground.  There's certainly no irony there.  Today, amongst the norms of our northern reality, my view is shadowed by the hull of a canoe.  It is the first paddle of the season for us.  Most notable, however, is the fact that it is the maiden voyage of our "new to us" Kevlar canoe.  Penelope rides along on Amy's back down the portage trail and on to the next lake.  She bangs her tiny, delicate fists on the blades of the wooden paddles her mother carries.  I stroll a few feet behind- light weight, space-age synthetic canoe on my shoulders and traditional canvas & leather Duluth Pack on back.  A blend of new and old: today we are headed towards the Canadian border.

Canadian hills in the distance, Rose Lake below the palisades...

The sounds and sights of summer are finally amongst us!  Whippoorwill chat at dusk, I picked off the first tick crawling up my leg, the trees have finally leafed, large leave aster sprouted throughout the upland soils of the forest, and sarsaparilla has begun to turn root beer brown.

Our garden is planted with beans, peas, parsnip, potato, carrot, onion, cucumber, zucchini, and tomato.  We added to our orchard with the planting of a cherry tree.  Our rhubarb is flourishing.  We've started a raspberry patch on the back edge of the vegetable garden and strawberries on the sandy hill in front of the house.  Lettuce is sprouting in lined up containers.

With long days helping the cause I had a birch splitting marathon and now have a pile of curing fuel for next winter's fires.

I often find myself wandering up to the main house site on top of the property during the last fleeting moments of light. I'll stumble there and simply look down over the homestead. Quite often I'm amazed at the sight. These quiet times serve as moments of reflection and inspiration. I've pounded nearly every single nail that holds those buildings together, cut every tree, lifted every rock and dug every hole.  Most of the time, however, I simply find myself standing there watching the wind whirl through forest thinking of nothing at all...