Category: Life at Tuscarora Lodge

Tuscarora guest Greg Mickelson shared some of his video footage this week–taken last July where they found one of the home sites for the resident wolf pack. We were lucky to be able to keep tabs on them for awhile, along with the staff and guests. They are so cute, it still breaks my heart a little every time I watch this.

In two weeks Shelby turns 16. She’s a good driver, calm, coordinated, competent. Of course, it will help us when she can help facilitate the extracurricular chaos, she’s eager to pass this big liberating milestone . I know every parent goes through this..it’s just my first time, learning to LET her drive. Alone. In the dark. Up the Gunflint Trail. In the winter. I just can’t imagine.

On the way to the bus stop this morning, in the little dip before the access road–the car thermometer hit -30 degrees. As smart as Shelby is, she still comes hopping up the steps to grab her oatmeal and zip out the door –with wet hair and a short sleeved shirt. (In all fairness, she also slips into pack boots, grabs her parka, and swears she has a hat and gloves at the bottom of her backpack.) I’m a mom, it is my job to remind her that she could die.

Earlier, when I started the car, I had a little sub sub-zero warning, first from the squeaky quality of the snow (it feels different when it’s below -20 degrees). The car doors felt like they might break, the electronic dash messages were funky, the sky was so clean and clear and still; it was wicked cold.

Last weekend, Daniel had a hockey tournament in Inver Grove Heights…isn’t that lucky? Right in the epicenter of a Minnesota blizzard, it snowed 3 inches an hour for awhile on Saturday afternoon, and that was too much for the plows. As we passed through my old Mpls neighborhood –I remembered the biggest challenges for me when I was learning to drive–merging from 35W to the Crosstown–to get to Southdale. Even as we drove slowly through the piles of snow, there were people, cars, Perkins restaurants nearby.

That was quite a contrast to last night’s drive up the Gunflint Trail. It’s such a dark snowpacked tunnel through the woods. I drove the first 30 miles, with the funny but distracting car pool boys singing about “Spuds and Tubers” in the back seat, raucous like they were in a pub. I had a feeling it was a moose night–and yes, it was. I can’t help but yelp sometimes, they’re such big monsters when they suddenly appear out of the darkness to the middle of our path.
After we dropped the boys off, Shelby took over. Along the way, we talked about possible scenarios–what if you were alone and slid off the road right here, right now? Do you leave the car? How many miles to the nearest house? How often to the cars come by? No cell phone service. What kind of clothing back-up do you have? I don’t want to scare her, but…… I actually want to scare her.

And then she came on another moose–a young male, with a smallish rack. He kept looking at us with such wide frightened eyes–actually, we could only see one monster eye at a time. Shelby slowed down, and took note of where she was–the straight stretch up by the Octagon House by Loon Lake—a safer-than-usual place to stop, so she did. We watched the guy go in the ditch, then trot up on the road, then the ditch, then the road, then he started slipping–it was comical, actually, but we did not want to rush him because it is a LOOOOOOOONG way for him to fall on the pavement. She turned off the brights to lessen his panic as he slid and trotted safely off the road. She handled herself well, not a close call, not even a little yelp.

Do you know what ? I’m always glad to discover that the moose hunters didn’t shoot all the moose again this year. Even if they are big monsters that come out of the darkness and startle a yelp out of me, it’s still nice to see them. Sort of.

And you know what else? Shelby’s pretty good at merging onto the Crosstown from 35W too. At some point, I’ll be OK with all this. I guess she’ll turn 16 either way, she’s going to get a driver’s license, and……..I guess, I’ll have to let her drive the Gunflint Trail. Alone. In the dark. In the winter. I just can’t imagine.

Yesterday it stopped snowing, and the sun came out, it no longer felt like the White Witch had taken over Narnia. It was such a nice day.

So, what started out as a little kicksled ride down the road with Denali—- ended up as a video project fuzzy bandwidth challenge–with quality not even that great to start with.
Oh well……it was especially intended to send Matt Hahn and the gang in Indiana all kinds of good snow ju-ju. Here’s what Minnesota winter does to your familiar Tuscarora places…

It keeps falling. And we keep shoveling and plowing. It seems as though the sky should run out of snow, one of these days. It must be finite.

Thanks to Kari for sharing a photo of her Tuscarora Thanksgiving this year. This was taken at least 12 inches ago. And it just keeps falling……….

Andy said that I’m not allowed to contemplate the meaning of my life when I’m running a fever for the 2^nd day in a row. Then he took the kids out in the heavy snow to do the hockey circuit. I was left wrapped in layers of fleece, under a dog, to die a slow and painful death.

It turned out that I have the kind of strep throat that only shows up on the 24 hour test, so even though we live 47 miles from a pharmacy that is closed on Sundays, it is a lucky thing that the doctor who cultured me in this small town is also a friend who tried to arrange for a nurse in the ER who happens to live up the Gunflint Trail…to get the antibiotics to me.

I’ve been reading a mystery by Nevada Barr about the wolves on Isle Royale. It’s fiction, but the Winter Study is not. Before I moved here, Isle Royale was the only place I’d ever heard a wolf pack howl. I read everything I could find that David Mech wrote when I was in college, and when the MN Zoo was new, I sat in the observation hut to watch them a couple times—but the way they paced there made me sad. I didn’t imagine that he wolf population would rally in such numbers, that someday I would have so much direct contact with them. We saw one yesterday and Shelby said—“Well, he is certainly playful.” He was romping in the new snow just like Denali does. Usually—the adults are much more serious, slinky, and deliberate.

Shelby wrote a speech this week outlining her position on wolves as an endangered species. We have an estimated population of around 3000 wolves in Minnesota— mostly in the north woods. The DNR recently re-petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to have the wolves removed from the endangered species list, and the federal agency has until March to make a decision. It has been interesting to listen to her tangle with her own mind as she studies the complexities and public opinions that accompany species management issues.

By afternoon, the snow stopped, and since I hurt all over anyway, I took my fevered self outside for a walk. Actually it was a shuffle, a little bit delirious, but very pleasant too. Denali and I saw no wolves. Not cold, very still, and unbelievably quiet. I tried to take pictures, to capture how beautiful it was, but I found I wanted my photos to capture the stillness, the pure silence–and I couldn’t do that.

You can see that the lake is frozen in our bay, and we got enough snow to slush up the shore ice. Somehow we’ll figure a broomball rink, but it won’t be easy or early.

The air made me feel alive again, and I was grateful to be out in it, in a slow motion kind of way.

The hush of the woods was like walking through a prayer. I had been listening to Rabbi Jonathon Sacks. (I don’t believe it was just the fever!) I was in the deep snow, quiet gray standing in the presence of a deeper form of knowing–the Being at the heart of Being. The calm, the beauty of the world reminded me–although I was experiencing complete solitude, I was not alone in the universe. I will never be alone. Whoa. I will never be alone.

After awhile, Denali hadn’t nearly had her fill of bounding, but I spotted the house, and I could see the light above the couch, and it was calling my aching body back to my murder mystery. I am grateful that there are places in this world where complete silence exists. I’m grateful for the spirituality that wild places can inspire. And also I’m very grateful for the couch.