Denali to Seward

The life of a wandering, adventurous soul never truly experiences monotany.  Just when the dog has found a routine and I feel like a complete yuppie walking with my briefcase back and forth to work, my life gets a little douse of adventure.

I've been drawn to Alaska my entire life.  There's something about a place where the natural order is the dominating force that intrigues me.  Although I have spent a fair amount of time in the Alaskan bush, I can honestly say that I still feel like a "kid in a candy store" every time my feet sink in to the tussocks of the tundra.  Alaska is a place where the scale of the landscape is too large for a human to comprehend.  It's a  place where ones eye gazes over a valley to a mountain that is a New England state's width away.  The Alaskan wilderness is immense.

Denali is one of those places that everyone has to see.  The highest point of land in North America, Denali (Mount McKinley) is a temple of ice and rock.  Formed by the compression of earths crust, Denali was thrusted upwards as two of earths plates collided and sheared themselves against  each other.    The pinnacle of the mighty Alaska Range, mountaineers call it the "coldest mountain on earth" for its frigid temperatures.  The backcountry of Denali is home to caribou, grizzly bear, dall sheep, wolves, fox, snowshoe hare, wolverine and lynx.

Alaska is a breeding ground for the best bush pilots in the world.  During my time in exploration geology, I've had the privaledge of working with a number of outstanding pilots.  Most namely, I had the honor of working with Wild Bill Michel.  Wild Bill was simply of surgeon in the air.  He was flawless.

It's a whiteout.  I'm on the some peak in the Kuskokwim country of SW Alaska moving an exploration camp to it's winter storage site on a ridge out of sight.  My field partner is huddled next to a twiggy fire shaking profusly.  We've been on the ridge in a blizzard for twelve hours as Wild Bill has been slingling load after load of camp tents, gear, drill rigs, etc. up to us.  Slinging gear is a common practice in which a helicopter has a line with a hook attached to the bottom of the craft.  Someone on the ground hooks the load, the bird transports it and it is unhooked in a new location.  Today I drew the lucky straw of unhooking the gear on a spiny ridge at 6,000 feet. The conditions are horrendous.  There are times that Wild Bill makes an attempt to get up to us but is turned away by shifting mountain valley winds.  Some attempts are detoured by the white out.  In short, winter is closing in and we have to get the camp broken down!

With my partner huddled against a palette shivering with the early signs hypothermia and a relentless blizzard bearing down off the Bering Sea, Wild Bill simply handed me the sling load every time, literally dropping the hook in my outstretched hand time and again.  He was an artist with wings.

Flipping through paper on a bus ride near Talketna, a familiar face was printed in the pages.  Wild Bill had crashed into a mountain ridge at the edge of Denali National Park.  The reality of life in the north too often takes the best.

As we flew southeast on the redeye out of Anchorage the northern lights danced along the late summer frontier of the great boreal wilderness.  I feel small every time I come home from AK.  For some reason, this time left me feeling inspired.  It has taken the dedication of so many brave, smart and hard working people to make a life in the Alaskan bush.  These people show me the dreams I have are possible.

Warm Wind Through Spruce Knob

Summer in the north woods comes slowly but is busy for the few months it lasts!

It's already the end of August.  Our freezer is full of blueberries and walleye.  A tent platform is built.  Two fire rings dot the land.  Another few dozen freshly-planted red, white and jack pine trees rim the north and western property lines.  Concrete blocks for the foundation of the tool shed are leveled and the property is slowly amassing the materials that will eventually be the structures we will some day call home.  Our road is dry, ditched and awaiting its final lift of gravel.  The driveway is not in a hurry and neither am I.

A view looking up the driveway.

We camp out on the land as often as schedules permit.  I sleep better under the spruce.  Whippoorwills echo their name under the soft darkness of a moonlit night.   Their echo sometimes persists through the morning hours!

Northerners like myself seem to never fully acclimatize to the warmth of late summer.  Subsequently most summertime productivity on northern homesteads occur in the early morning or evening hours.  Walking down the driveway after a full morning of working on the shed foundation, I found myself a hundred paces from a shining, mature male black bear.  He's probably the same bear that destroyed my tent.  He sniffed me. I raised my arms and acted cocky to chase him off.  Luna, the obedient dog that she is, sat at my feet.  I clutched her collar as she intently watched the bear proceed to walk closer.

This isn't my first black bear encounter.  Heck, I have always thought of them as the cuddly, fuzzy pillow compared to their grizzly counterparts.  Nine times out of ten black bears run the second they realize there are humans around.  This one didn't.

I continued to act tough as the curious bear ambled towards me.  I'm the type of person who doesn't just sit back and let another animal take control of the situation.  I bluffed the bear.  Lunging forward I "fake charged" him.  It's generally not the brightest thing to do with a bear but I had to assert my dominance.  It was clear that he wasn't worried about me.  It worked!  My bluff startled him just enough to question my intentions and he spooked.  The bear took off into the bush and up Osier Creek.

In retrospect I probably shouldn't have bluffed that dumb ol' bear but the risk paid off.  I admit that I have been taking my time and scanning the woods in the clearings to make sure he's not around since the encounter.  In the end, all that I can do is hope that he is smart enough stay clear of these parts.  Otherwise the score might be settled in the fall...  

The materials that built this tent platform all have their orgins within a stones throw from the site.  The rock is local, the balsam beams were cut on location and the spruce deck boards come from a tree that was harvested and milled on the property.

The block foundation for the tool shed.

There is simply no such thing as a typical day out here!  The second my daily chores become monotonous, a bear, wolf or storm enters the picture to spice things up a little.  It only makes life interesting.  In the meanwhile, I work, take a stroll down the trail and scheme up the next step.  Before I knew it, a brilliant summer on the North Shore of Lake Superior has rained it's days and is coming to an end with warm wind through Spruce Knob...

Ode to the tent...

The afternoon began as every afternoon.  I got done with work, walked home, ate a snack, put on my boots, told the dog to "truck up" and headed up the shore.  Five minutes later the truck is parked at the end of the dirt road.  From there Amy and I grabbed our tools and began the hike up the hill to the property.  The task for the day: build a platform for our backpacking tent.

The walk was the same old hike that I have become very accustomed to.  The dog trees a couple of squirrels, chases a rabbit and on a good day flushes a grouse.  Amy and I talk about the day.  I like to observe the slow phenological changes of the great north woods.

When we arrived at the garage site my stomach dropped!  All I saw was my beloved tent flapping in the soft early May breeze; the rain fly was destroyed.  The tent door has two 4 inch bear claw puncture marks!  I just had to walk away.  At first I wanted to take a picture.  As much as that picture would be a great visual for you fine folks reading this, I'm glad I didn't.  You don't take photos at funerals, do you?

I know, the tent can be sewn.  But, the tent will never be as tight as it once was.  I remember the day I rolled that tent up in the gear store and bought it with my high school graduation money.  I walked out of the store and drove to Vermont to hike the Long Trail.  That's were it all began.

That tent has logged hundreds of nights pitched on the remote lakes of the Lake Superior Border Country of Northern Minnesota; it has been set up in every state west of the Mississippi and has endured freak mountain blizzards in the Sierra Nevada, Uinta, Cascade, Sawtooth, Olympic, Teton and Big Horn Mountain Ranges.  This tent has provided shelter to travel companions and me from white-outs in conditions 12,000 feet above sea level to 50 below zero.  I've lived out of this tent.  I've grown into the person that I am in this tent.

I was pretty bummed as I worked the rest of the evening.  At this point I'm happy to report that the story gets better.  On our way out we stopped to chat with our neighbor and warn him of our unwelcomed guest.  He has a tent pitched on his land as well.  He felt my anguish.  However, there was a faint smile to his response.  It turns out that he had left a fresh case of Pabst Beer outside of his tent.  The bear decided to help himself and polished off 13 beers!  The punctured, mangled beer cans are all that remain of his visit.

Now my mind conjures a slightly different scenario.  Picture this: the bear comes out of hibernation ravished in the nearby woods.  He stumbles down the hill towards the lake when he wanders onto my neighbors property.  Smelling a good time he helps himself to a half case.  After that, the bear is a little turned around and needs to find a den to rest one off.  He wanders over Osier Creek to our land were he sniffs out our tent and crashes through the rain fly of my favorite tent!  At least we weren't in there sleeping!

Another adventure for my tent!  It didn't fair very well.  However, it probably faired better than that poor Black Bear felt in the morning!  Me, I need to learn how to sew...

Digging stumps and waiting for the road...

This project is beginning to change the way I think, work, eat, sleep and live.  Each night as I walk down the driveway to the truck and head into town my mind is racing with ideas and my body is sore from labor.  In many ways, I have never felt so alive.

Northern White Cedar planted on property

This has been a productive spring.  The driveway, garage, cabin and tool shed sites are all cleared.  Timbers have been sorted by species and stacked.  One cord of mixed aspen and birch firewood is bucked.  Another 3 cords are stacked in 8 foot lengths awaiting future bucking.  1,000 feet of single track bike/hiking trails criss-crossing the property are cleared and raked.  

We have a 25 x 25 foot garden bed cleared.  Our intention this year is to amend and cover crop the bed to grow vegetables next year.  I need a mule.  The process of grubbing the stumps without a big critter or equipment pulling is long and arduous; especially for one lone soul in a cold, early May sleety wind storm.  It certainly provides one time to think long and deep about what you are doing.

The garden site.  Note the stumps and rocks being dug.

A couple of weeks ago I had my first opportunity to help build a timber frame.  Cutting timbers into a structural frame is an artful balance of engineering and craftsmanship.  This experience only reinforced my intrigue with this simple, yet effective building design.  I hope to build a small timber-framed structure (maybe a sauna or studio?) someday soon.

While the ideas are still racing: I'm in no hurry right now.  It's great.  I just work away on the garden, firewood and trails, and wait for the driveway to be built.  Once the road is completed, we will finally be able to truck materials to the site:  dimensional lumber and 3/4 inch spruce board decking for the tool shed, canvas tent and yurt platforms; compost, lime, buckwheat seed and a rear-tined tiller for the garden and most importantly, tools.  

For the time being, I'm going to keep digging away at this stump, plant as many trees as I can and think of banging together the walls of the tool shed...

The canvas tent is located just shy of the north line at the base of Spruce Knob.  It provides us a dry place to rest and store tools.

Red pine bark on a Seagull Lake island

First trees planted...

Windy, warm.  A red flag warning of potentially harzardous windy fire conditions issued today.  The forests have had little rain since the snow melted.  The giant Lake Superior iron ore ships are following the shore.  They are cautious as a strong northwestern wind is gusting up to 30 mph.  A black wall of cold superior wave trains pushing them out to the great lake.  In the woods, the warm air is heavy with the pungent smell of pine.

The great canoe waterways of the Border Country are open early.  We loaded the canoe with a day pack and lunch and entered the wilderness at Baker Lake.  We paddled north to Peterson Lake.  At the northern point of the lake we landed for a shore lunch.  The first paddle of the year feels like running into your childhood best friend for the first time in years.    There is a level of comfort that I feel in the wild places of this world that I would feel closing up the house for the night.  It's like going home.

After a rest at the Kelly Lake portage we paddled back south.  Amy showed off her strong draw from the bow while shooting the rapids between Peterson and Baker.  The move kept us in the current and away from a rock garden and grounding in the middle of the run!

Back home I planted the first trees on the property this week.  Two white pines have found new soil just below the spruce knob on the north western corner of the property.  After logging hundreds of trees during the winter it felt good to start the other half of my forestry plan: replant species with succession into a warmer climate.  Red and white pine, white spruce, sugar maple and red oak will dominate the landscape.  And with these two 10 inch tall white pine saplings my replanting begins.  

Since these first pines were planted one has disappeared.  Deer: I'll hope for a 50% survival rate.  

White spruce, northern white cedar and tamarack have also been planted.  Nonetheless I intend to keep planting... 

The implications of a dry, early spring...

The past month has been one of the warmest and driest Marches in recorded history. Insects are already in the air!

The winter of 2009-2010 on the North Shore was marked by below-average precipitation and above average temperatures.  A high-pressure air mass has loomed over lower Canada and the upper midwest for most of the winter and spring. Consequently there is a fire ban until "green up."  This weather certainly has its impact on the forest.  Most of the minor creeks are drying up by the day.  A large percentage of the lakes have washed out their ice.  In places by the shore, the snow wasn't deep enough to matt the grasses down.  As a result the grass is upright and dry.  

The fire danger is high. In 2007 a large fire called the Ham Lake Fire ravaged the upper Gunflint Trail during similar conditions.  The fire grew quickly burning through the upright dry grasses.  The fire was huge compared to other recent fires such as the Cavity and Alpine.

So, I haven't burned slash in over three weeks.  My piles are about as tall as I am and growing daily.  There are four piles at the corners of the cabin site about 100' away from the future structure.

I have been slowly thinning balsam fir from the cabin site. Right now I have a continuous 30' perimeter around the site that has been thinned to 10' spacing of aspen and white spruce. It is amazing how much different the forest feels when void of 2-6 inch fir every foot or two!

Before I make any cuts I cruise the timber and flag the "keepers".  I prioritize white spruce, birch, aspen, and balsam fir.  Nowadays if you're a balsam, you have to be the prettiest ol' balsam around or else...

I've been cutting every few days or so.  The days following the cut, I limb logs, pile slash, stack timbers and plan the next move.  To date, half a dozen healthy and straight grain aspen and spruce "keepers" are within 30 feet of the structure.  My goal is to thin the 50' perimeter around the structure before the driveway is built.  Next year I'll thin the next 50 feet.

I've been learning quite a bit about forestry practices through these last four months of logging.  The idea about the distance between trees is to avoid crowns touching.  The strategy to promote the healthy growth of trees means you have to remove the competition.  If the tree has adequate soil for nourishment and plenty of room at the crown to grow, you're giving the tree its best chances for growth.

I've found some spruce budworm in the balsam around the property.  Budworm is a communicable disease that is often carried by balsam but can spread to other species.  The sickly trees are characterized by dead trunks, missing low limbs and a sea-foam green moss growing on the dead branches.  This forest has been taken over by balsam, which increased competition and led to a decline in the aspen.  You can tell that this is happening by the darkening of the bark at the base of the trunk.  Some trunks are completely black.  

At this point I have accumulated a couple cords of 6" thick, 10' long Balsam timber.  My hope is to mill them into posts for the shed.  I hope to mill onsite with a portable Alaskan mill. 

The forest behind the property offers a lifetime of exploration. Slowly, but surely, I have been wandering further and further out from the property.  The land has become such a familiar setting, it has dominated my thoughts and energy for some time now, so exploring new turf is a great change of pace!

I'm hiking new trails everyday and have begun building mountain bike trails...

The lower Devils Track River gorge.  3/4 of a mile directly west of the property.

Site plan

Here's the scheme:

To date the driveway, garage and cabin sites have been cleared. I have thinned the forest in a 50' perimeter around the cabin site.

We have been contemplating rotating the cabin so the gable ends are aligned East/West to maximize a southern exposure. There may no need for a privy as we are still entertaining the option of a composting toilet for the cabin. Other than that this depiction accurately illustrates our plan.

Wilderness doesn't give in easily

The wolves have roamed up stream. A pileated woodpecker is hanging around the cabin site.

I'm tired after 3 months of clearing. I've felt a bit beat lately and our dog, Luna, scratched the cornea of her eye on a branch. It's like the wilderness is reminding us who's boss. The woods are going to kick us around a little before we can make ourselves too cozy in this space.

I vividly recall this particular moment; it was one of a hundred-some trips up and down the driveway, hauling a log of wood when the reality of my situation struck me. For the first time in three months I asked myself: "what the hell am I thinking?" My thoughts churned, "I don't know how to do any of this! I'm making it all up as I go. I'm making mistakes that I won't realize until they bite me down the road."

I have to admit, I felt defeated. I finished my load and sat down at one of my favorite driveway spots and stared off at the lake. That's when I realized that this was exactly the moment that you make a decision. You get off your self-defeated butt and figure out the next piece of the puzzle. You take things slowly, work hard, find the solution and grow from the experience. It's not defeat, it's exactly the type of lesson I set out to learn.

Needless to say, I have been taking it easy on the workload since. I've hauled the rest of the firewood to one of the two aspen woodpiles. Like many folks in the County, I plan to burn a 50:50 combination of birch:aspen. Fortunately, we have no shortage of aspen on the property. The birch will have to come from somewhere else.

Most folks have their wood for the following winter delivered in 8 foot long logs in early spring. That way you can buck and split the wood and let it cure all summer and fall before the next heating season. We'll be a little behind with firewood next year.

Last week I started to clear the garden site. I flagged off an area and dropped the smaller trees. We have been watching the sun's seasonal and daily patterns over this area since we first found this land about a year ago. The seasons certainly seemed to have turned. I got my spade shovel 8 inches into the clay loam before I hit frost this week.

I have been hiking the forest directly to the north of our land. I'm working on establishing a route for a spur trail to access the Superior Hiking Trail (SHT). The SHT is about a half mile to the west of the property along Woods Creek. World class hiking just outside our door...

I've found it's important to take some time to explore the woods around me. It's a nice break. Nobody ever said this was going to be easy. I just have to remind myself no matter how tough things can get, I've got to keep working. I've got to keep working for the day when I'll simply open the door, hang the wide brim on the hook, stoke the stove, kiss my sweetheart, stir the soup, and sit down to do nothing but enjoy this place that I call home.

I'm going to start building a tool shed...

Osier Creek

A view of the driveway from under a spruce.

A close-up of that spruce.

The western property line follows Osier Creek.

The first hot meal...

Yesterday we hauled up our grill and ate our first hot meal on the property. It's the little things that make this space feel like home. Just sitting around devouring onion & garlic cheeseburgers topped with tomato, ketchup and mustard, radiates a warm, comforting feeling that one typically feels sitting in their easy chair or kitchen table at home. Since most of the week has been full of thinning firs, this meal was a great break in the monotony of felling, limbing and piling.

We are slowly figuring out the front and back yard of the cabin site. I have flagged white spruce "keepers" on all four corners within 30-50 feet of the cabin. I am going to take out all the firs within this range. All poplar within a heights distance from the cabin will go as well. All shorter poplar will remain. Basically we will have one tree every 15-20 feet apart in the half acre area occupied by the cabin.

It's amazing how fast the water ran its course through the property. In just four days the melt water tapered off. The property is well drained. There will be one location where I will definitely build a board walk between the driveway and cabin. Other than that, I feel confident that the rest of the infrastructure will be poised well to accommodate future storms and spring melts.

We got a solid bid on the driveway this week. I purposefully waited until the runoff to bring a couple of contractor's to the land and bid out the driveway. That way they can see how the water will run under the most extreme circumstances and design the roadway accordingly. Most of our landscapes are shaped by the great, catastrophic events and resulting processes.

It's definitely feeling like spring. The "Alaskan sneakers" (rubber boots) are officially on. I haven't worn my fleece-lined pants in over two weeks. Cardinals are in the trees and the water is meandering it's way back to Superior...