Sounds of Silence

Lin got to ride along with a friend to spend a couple days in the Cities this past week - shopping, a quick visit to Mall of America, haircut - and came home very glad to be living on the Gunflint Trail! The traffic, the slick streets (around here the only thing sharing the road when it's slick is the occasional moose or deer) and the noise and lights... it was very good to get home to starlight and silence. As we unloaded the truck (I did mention shopping, didn't I?) the only sound was the crunch of our feet on the snow and the moonlight was bright enough to find our way down to the house without flashlights.


Sometimes it's so still you think you can hear your thoughts, while the stars have been so bright the sky looks coated with them. And during the day you can eavesdrop on the birds' conversations, right now the siskenfinchpolls are discussing whose turn it is to eat from the feeders and whose turn it is to check the ground. You can even hear the flap flop flap of the little birds' wings as they fly onto the feeder.

It's snowing today, so the world is white and very very quiet - here is the view from our deck looking out towards the lake.







Mike has been fishing a couple times, demonstrating why they call it "fishing", I guess. Going fishing is quite a project this time of year, he has to carry his ice auger and all his gear down the trail, down the "cliff" to the lake, wade through deep snow and then drill his holes with an auger that seems to need sharpening. He's met several new neighbors - and they weren't catching anything either. But it's lovely to get out and enjoy the sunshine and the quiet.

I guess spring is coming. Right now it's perfect outdoor weather - temperatures in the twenties, several sunshiny days - gorgeous for snowshoeing, skiing, snowmobiling and enjoying the silence!

Weatherly week

Not much happening around here this week - except trying to keep the driveway and paths open. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were warm, with light rain and sleet on and off, never enough to matter but enough to soften the snowpack and create huge nasty ruts when we drove in and out. Wednesday it cooled down enough so that Mike used the snowblower to even out the ruts - it was nasty snowblowing that wet, heavy snow but better than trying to blow ice ridges when the ruts have refrozen!

So it's been indoor work for us, I've got the outfitting food for 2009 ordered and have been interviewing prospective employees. We've offered jobs to a great young couple from Iowa to help us this summer. Mike's been organizing and starting work on taxes and this afternoon he started installing the new sauna stove (see 1-4-09 post).

The sun can start shining any time - after a week of our beautiful black and white world we're ready for black, white, and blue! If the sun comes out next week Mike plans to start fishing Birch Lake for splake - pictures to follow?

Walking on water

This week Mike has been testing the theory that it's easier to straighten a dock if you stand ON the water rather than IN the water. (The water is way over his head at the end of this dock.) The dock sits on a rock-filled crib that rests on a large "Volkswagen" sized rock. The crib and the dock have almost slipped off the large rock and need to be put back in place.

Mike has frozen an anchor post into the ice on the left and is using a "come along" to pull the dock to the east to a temporary post that sits on top of the base rock. The stick at the end of the dock shows how far the dock had slid.

Then he bolts the dock down to the post and starts to position a second temporary post - he still has to chip out the ice down to the rock and bolt the post into position. Hopefully, when we have water he can no longer walk on - the dock will be nice and straight and we can rebuild the support crib.

Nothing like a little exercise on a nice sunny day!

Signs of "Spring" on the Gunflint

Happy Groundhog Day! If there are any ground hogs up here, which we doubt, none of them would have seen their shadows this morning - we were getting a very pretty, very light, blanket of new snow. We've not seen a groundhog around - ground squirrels, yes, in several varieties including Franklin's Ground Squirrel, which rather resembles a very ugly squashed ground hog. They didn't see their shadows this morning either!

However - we did - both of us - see a robin! Here's hoping the combination - no shadows (and nice clean snow) plus one very stupid, thoroughly chilled robin means an early spring and great canoeing and cabining weather! In the meantime, Lin has just volunteered for the National Weather Service as a snow spotter so she got to call in her first snowfall report - and see the first sign of spring - on the same day.