March in the BWCA - this year

The pussy willows are blooming! Yesterday we saw two (stupid?) butterflies! The lake ice is turning black and there are air holes with open water popping through!

Yesterday in the middle of our bay there was only 18 inches of ice. The ice is honeycombed and very weak. I've decided that solo trips out on the ice this month are over for this fisherman.

Last year the ice was off Poplar Lake on May 8th. The year before the ice was gone on May 10th. From the looks of things outside it is hard to believe that we will have ice on Poplar Lake beyond April 20th. If the ice leaves early we should have some great Lake Trout fishing in May.

I guess spring is arriving early on the Gunflint and in the BWCA?

We're busy at Rockwood

It's been a busy week at Rockwood! Besides spending time on all the stuff we really enjoy - talking to people, helping them with their vacation plans, making reservations and getting Boundary Waters entry permits, we've had a lot of late winter chores too. Mike is taking down dead trees; it's much easier when you can drop the tree on the frozen lake and don't have to worry about hitting something. Of course, it isn't a lot of fun to haul all that stuff OFF the lake, but there's a lot more room to maneuver!

We've also been doing trail research, checking websites and catalogs for new gear, and studying job applications from a bunch of great people who've applied to work at Rockwood this summer. We've also been making lists of all the maintenance work that needs to be done... think of the stuff you might need to be doing on your house come warm weather and then just multiply by 12 or so!

More winter fun at Rockwood

We had fried chicken the other night... and I always skin the chicken before I fry it. So there I was with all this nice, nutritious, yucky chicken skin - I put it back on the meat tray and told Mike to put it out for the foxes. We don't usually feed them, but what else do you do with chicken skins?

So Mike took it out to our "once in a while" fox feeding station - about 100 yards from the house on the driveway between the Gunflint Trail and the shop building.

The next morning the skins and the white foam tray were gone... oops! I was a little concerned until Mike went out to the birdfeeder next to the house - and there was the tray, fox tracks all around it, with only one little bite mark from being carried. The fox enjoyed the skins so much he brought the tray back down to the house for a refill!

The foxes have been down to the house looking for handouts before, witness this photo from last spring.

Flying squirrels and northern lights

"Clipper" is becoming a regular at our birdfeeder - and she's getting fatter! The book says that flying squirrels breed in late winter and have their babies about 40 days later in "early spring". We didn't see any groundhogs on Groundhog Day, but do you suppose our "growing" flying squirrel is foretelling an early spring?

We got another e-mail from Dr. Deehr this week and he was right - we had a bright green auroral haze in the north that night. It looked just like there was a big city with green streetlights up on the other side of South Lake! I didn't see any streamers or dancing lights but at least it shows that the sun is continuing active and maybe we'll have bright dancing northern lights this summer?

Trout and Northern Lights

Mike's been doing a lot of ice fishing lately - and the fish are cooperating! Here's a nice mess of brook trout he caught the other day (and made me hold for him). The weather's been great for ice fishing - he's planning to go out again tomorrow.

I got an e-mail this week from Dr. Charles Deehr at the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute telling me that "no, he hasn't forgotten me." I hadn't heard from him in a couple years. Dr. Deehr offers a wonderful e-mail alert service that gives subscribers notice when solar flares are active - so that we can predict when the Northern Lights are likely to appear. He says that the first solar flares of the new solar cycle are beginning to produce auroral activity - and that while he's not predicting any Northern Lights right now, "it's good to know the sun is awake again." So... maybe we'll have Northern Lights dancing above our heads this summer - and since I haven't been "forgotten or dropped from the list" I'll be able to tell our guests when Dr. Deehr thinks they'll appear!

The Institute has a wonderful website, by the way, at www.gedds.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast .