I am always taken by the animals willingness to use the human made pathways.
It reminds me that we are as much animals and we all prefer the easiest route.
The Animal Way
trail
Dissolution
We arrived in Minnesota early Sunday afternoon after two days of driving and two nights of miserable lodging. It's hard to imagine making this drive anymore after a dozen years of doing so, twice annually, and it's quite possible this will be our last. Rex's ability to take in oxygen is at its limit as is the machine's ability to provide it. He is slowly suffocating to death. We like to imagine his lungs will finally give out under the influence of morphine and heavy sleep, but one can't know.
His days are filled with an anxiety of breathlessness and jokes mustered around such a condition and a general disposition lighter than one might expect. Every now and then he makes it to his Estonia grand, orchestrating his nimble, digital memory. We cook and although he passes on most lunches, he eagerly takes in dinners under the magical influence of prednisone. We are lucky for his nine to five caregiver, Patsy, whom he listens to as much as she patiently listens to him. The dissolution of age will come for us all, gradually or quite suddenly. It is best to have a plan.
The best indicator of Rex's declining health was the gradual but evident retaking of the trails by plants and fallen timber. Many have become impassable with tangled windfalls and occasional widow-makers, the soft padding of chips disintegrated into soil, the buckthorn and even trillium growing center trail. There was considerable flooding this spring and the smaller marsh became the smaller pond, it's overflow draining underneath this bridge. The rain fell so long and heavy that pond waters rose high enough to float the bridge, dismantling it, and nearly over washing the driveway forty feet beyond. In other words, the woods is a mess and in need of a chainsaw samaritan who will work for cord upon cord of wood. Do you know one in the Twin Cities area? Email me.
The moisture and cool, darkened understory has produced a good crop of mushrooms, like these corals and those below.
Ductifera pululahuana or the White Jelly (Roll)
Last year's unharvested chicken, the ghost chicken.
Right alongside the driveway, growing on a strategically placed, chainsawed oak stool, is this summer's small but wanted chicken.
A day later it looked like this.
And the day after that, we harvested.
Autumnal
There has been a heavier heart this big woods trip. Rex likes to say that there are only two things in nature -chaos and chance. I like to say that the only thing between civilization and chaos is maintenance.
From the very first day, we've been at work on the house as rot has set in. We stem the tide and wait for next summer.
The air has been cool, and I have seen the leaves changing, day to day.
The trails have not been worked, and have not been walked. There's no greater sign to the changing of things in the woods. Oak wilt has taken out more of the red oaks, and old falls have not been sawed. Nettles grow, obscuring the path for the first time in my decade of coming here.
Indian Pipe appears ghostly for the first time.
The bridge is missing planks, and most have rotten through. It is now dangerous to cross the marsh unaware.
The chicken, laetiporous, the one focus from the changes afoot.
Happy Trails
Last year I built this parks-type sign for the trails Rex built on the property he moved to in a neighboring town. He has an open attitude about his trails, i.e. he lets bow-hunters hunt deer and neighbors hike.
Rex lives on the western portion of the lakes district of Hennepin County, Minnesota. It's the western most extent of the Big Woods, and full of glacially-created lakes and wetlands. Driving around a few summers ago, I noticed that this glacially-sculpted landscape would be an excellent location for a woodland trail. I became aware of an arc formed along an esker traveling roughly north to south, extending a short distance from Rex's property. In Google Earth, I mapped out the rough route you see above and below.
Ideally the trail would follow the arc from his trails all the way to the Dakota Rail Trail south of the Gale Woods Farm. But property being as it is, the trail would have to go around the farm field belonging to one of his neighbors. Afterward, it would follow the eastern side of the esker along Little Long Lake and it's string of smaller lakes all the way to the Dakota RT. Once there, you could walk east to the town of Mound, and Rex could even stroll by his old property on Lake Langdon while on his way to town.
Not far to the north is another rail trail, the Luce Line State Trail. From Rex's current trails, we could strike a trail along Painters Creek all the way to an intersection with the Luce Line. Painters Creek is part of the Minnehaha Watershed, and has been straightened or re-routed in places. A hiker following its course from Lake Minnetonka could potentially follow it all the way to Baker Park. Some of the trail would need to be boardwalk as the creek routes through wetland marshes.
I think my inspiration for this trail is the Long Path, the NJ through NY trail that one could hike from Fort Lee, New Jersey all the way to near Albany. Utilizing many public park trails along the way, the path also traverses private property. Where property owners won't provide trail access, hikers must take the roadways. The NY-NJ Trail Conference works with landowners to keep trails off the roads and advises hikers to respect private landowner's wishes.
Could the landowners, private and public, join to create a trail like this? To be continued...
Winter Path
Amidst our winter visit , our first woodland walk. Starting at the trail head, we take a little jaunt on the southerly wetland edge trail.
One of the several foot bridges spanning wet ravines. This one crosses a temporary brook that issues from a tree's roots a few feet from the bridge. The brook drains a wet basin that is just a few feet higher in elevation. Notice the larger twig pile in the background.
One of many animal trails in the snow. This is a good place to learn winter animal tracks.
Leaves of some understory trees hang on, golden, warming the view.
The long bridge comes into sight, crossing one point of drainage into the big yellow-grass marsh (that's what I call it, as I tend to see the marsh in winter, full of ochre grass.) This location has less grass than the rest of the marsh, can hold water in wet times, dry out in drought, and is shady-what a gardener's complication!
Crossing the long bridge. Its made with tree log cuts for legs and pallet-like dock laid over it. Remarkably hardy, the docking sheds water easily -resisting decay.
Resting on a boulder under matchbook tree, on the hillside trail facing east.
A View
This is the view from one of the trails
Trail Maker
Rex's woods had been neglected over the years, probably at some point a farmer's woodlot. But he is a woodland trail maker -its his favorite activity. It gives him an intimate knowledge of the woods he lives in and opens the woods up to people, mainly his neighbors. Last year I carved a trail sign out of Redwood for his network of trails. We mounted it on two Cedar posts this passed July at the head of the main trail behind the house.
Rex uses the fallen timber to frame the trails and the wood chips from the chainsawing to soften the path. Moss often grows on the old logs.
He can often be found clearing the woodland brush. These woods have been invaded by Buckthorn, an invasive brought over from Europe as a hedging shrub. Over many months he piles up the brush and twigs which form great piles like the one below.
At any given time there may be a few of these piles around the woods. In winter, if there is good enough snow cover, he will burn these piles. I'd like to be there when he does.