Aligning With Nature

These days, with a retired alarm clock gathering dust, waking in the morning is a mostly pleasant and lazy process. But this morning, I was awakened with an unlikely sense of clarity rather than the usual clamber through the state of drowsy fogginess. In the span of a fraction of a second, my primitive brain had ascertained that a potential threat was walking slowly across my face.

Instantly, I absolutely realized that calmness must reign. Rather than slap this insurgent silly or to leap out of bed with sheets and comforter being launched into an airborne tangle, I remained still and quietly took stock of the situation at hand. I’ll admit, for a moment I felt the need for a violent and quick exit. But if I chose that route I knew it would launch my mate,  Miss Nancy, from her deep sleep, initiating a spike in her adrenaline and there would be consequences that might be painful and costly if we were to become entangled with sheets, comforter and each other’s limbs as we rose to the dawning partnered with panic.

Instead, I slowly reached up to the plodding wasp and quickly flicked it off. The wasp tumbled and landed next to me on the bed. Like a stunned lightweight boxer, it staggered on the sheet. The thin-waisted intruder seemed confused as it slowly moved only inches away from my side.

I could see that the paper wasp was not agitated nor any real threat to us. I lowered my head back into the hollow of my pillow, noted that Miss Nancy was still sleeping, and I decided to watch this wayward wasp.

I smiled and whispered, “Good Morning Your Highness.” This wasp, uninvited bedmate, was not a commoner like me, she was of royal lineage.

Earlier this fall, male wasps (They have no stingers.) mated with any late summer born females. In the fall the fertilized female wasps, future queens, must find shelter to overwinter in if they are to survive winter. The wasp in my bedchamber had likely found its way into the house while it flew slowly through the spat of recent sunshine on the south side of the house. This is where our upper bedroom window is located. This house, built by my ancestors, is over a century old. Based on the autumnal influx of mice and wasps, I know there are cracks and crevices that help them gain refuge from the threat of winter.

There is an adage, that the better you get to know something, like a friend, a pet, a bird at your bird feeder, or a piece of land, the more you care for it. Oddly, the only critter that bonding rarely happens are politicians of opposing parties. Sad. But I digress. So silently I began to bond in a platonic relationship with this wee, lovely bedmate with her unique yellow and black striped pajamas.

The first flush of the morning sun spread on to our bed and illuminated the future queen. She barely moved and I began to wonder if it has been days since she has tasted October’s fresh air or any water or sustenance.

Sustenance for wasps at this time of the year is mostly sugars found in rotting apples or other fruits. During the heyday of summer, when the queen of their social colony is thriving and laying scores of eggs, the adult worker wasps are busy flying off and finding caterpillars and other insect larvae for a high protein food for the wasp larvae. Now that the egg season is finished, sugars are sought after more than protein. Wasps need to convert sugars to fat reserves to survive a long winter of hibernation.

Consequently, wasps and yellow jackets often frequent picnics in late summer and fall. They love sugar and they likely are pleased with America’s passion and addiction to soft drinks. Unfortunately when folks find these insects at the picnic table they usually react with violence and swat the innocent striped insects.

Ignoring these uninvited wasps, or gently brushing them away, will result in a calmer picnic or house. Admittedly the sting of a hornet or wasp is painful but none of them go around looking for folks to sting. It is simply a defense mechanism and if you swing madly at it, the insect is likely to feel threatened and they have no choice but to protect themselves.

With my new friend acting slow and confused, I decided to give her a royal ride downstairs to join me for breakfast. I got out of bed, got dressed and then rested my hand next to the wasp, still on the bed sheet. Very gently I nudged her into stepping onto my finger. With the wasp as my passenger, I made my way downstairs to the kitchen.

I gently grazed the wasp off my finger and on to the countertop while I put on coffee and fetched a jar of homemade grape jelly. I removed a dab of jelly and smeared it on the countertop two inches away from the princess wasp. In short order she slowly made her way across the countertop tapping her antennae like a blind woman tapping her cane down the sidewalk. The wasp paused at the colorful smear and then began to feed.

Fifteen minutes later, I pulled a stool up next to the wasp and set my hot bowl of steel cut oats and cup of coffee down nearby to join her for breakfast. The wasp clearly looked more alert and active as it slowly dined on the sugary high-energy breakfast.

To test its alertness, I moved my finger in close to her head. Her large abdomen, tipped with its stinger, and wings raised up like the hackles of a threatened dog. I pulled away and we both relaxed and dined in silence.

Suddenly, the future queen took to the kitchen airspace and slowly looped towards the dining room window. Her multi-faceted eyes had spied a fine day beyond the window. Realizing that if I spent more time with this potential odd pet that I might not have the heart to free her, I decided to fetch a water glass and envelope to catch it and release it outdoors.

Catching a wasp is relatively easy. You simply put the glass or jar over the insect and slide a stiff piece of paper, in this case an envelope, under the glass. The inserted paper becomes the floor of the temporary prison and the wasp can be carried outdoors.

I stepped out into the sunny, but cool, morning air with my breakfast chum. I pulled the envelope away and the wasp swooped to the outside of the windowsill where it landed and began to groom itself by combing her front legs through the pair of antennae.

While releasing this future queen outside might seem like an act of assassination I think I’m giving it a better chance of survival than by subjecting it to the roller coaster ride of fluctuation indoor temps. I make up that an indoor bound wasp will use up its fat reserves too quickly and become one of those dried, dead wasps I wipe off the windowsill when I wash the windows in the spring. By freeing this wasp today she has some time to find another place to shut down for a long restful winter.

And I will find comfort that for a single morning I was prince to this leggy queen. Upstairs, my lovely lady and queen slept on blissfully unaware of the breakfast scandal.

It was mid-September and we had pulled stakes from our Yukon Outpost.  Our last night in the Territory, we stayed with dear friends who served us up a fine supper of a big black bear roast, salad and spuds from their garden. A huckleberry pie put us to bed out in their big wall tent. It’s tough to leave with these compelling ingredients easing into my soul. “Stay here,” is the message.

Alas we are aliens to this foreign country. (Why does it feel so wrong to think of Canada as a foreign country?)And our time is up so we must head south to the Big Noisy.

A few years ago, a three-year-old, absurdly precocial, bush kid named Juneau was chatting about leaving the Yukon to visit relatives in the “Big Noisy.” He was referring to his mother’s home ground in New York City. And in a nano second after telling us about the big city, he had jumped subjects to livestock. Juneau understood that their big, home-grown pig had to be kept close to the house because the animal was a porcine delight for the local grizzly bear. But he also understood that the hog was going to provide his family with winter sustenance and that was perfectly okay.

For the next two days we enjoyed our drive down the Alaska Highway, a highway we have gotten to know quite well. We have travelled this corridor of civilization for half a dozen years and we know where to dally and where to keep driving.

Gold is abundant on the mountainsides in the fall. If you travel the highway in the ten days from September 15^th through the 25^th, you will be treated to slopes loud in their chorus of gilded colors. These grounded fireworks can be distracting so don’t be shy about pulling over for a good dose of amazing “wows.”

However after having our annual “recalibration” in the Yukon where we are lullabied to sleep every night by a tumbling river, Miss Nancy and I both felt the insipid creep of “civil-lies-ation” as we headed south. An Alberta friend wishes us well and waved us off with a stretching grin and cheer, “Good luck on your re-entry into the “Excited States of America!” I smiled at his joke, but dammit we earned that title! According to a story in the Washington Times, the USA is the most overworked nation in the developed world.

Who cares if Canada is consistently number 5 or 6 as one of the worlds happiest countries! Who cares if Forbes magazine calls Canada “the most prosperous nation in the Americas and ranks first in personal freedom”?

As we make our autumn migration towards an easier winter in Minnesota, there is a very real shift in energy. The pulse quickens exponentially the closer we get to Minnesota. The accelerated heartbeat is not from excitement or even the eventual approach of family. No, the blood begins to race as the gaze goes from glaze to furtive and increased glances in the rear view mirror. There is a direct correlation to an increase in human population to an overall harriedness on the highway. I don’t like it.

However, we found some unexpected solace in North Dakota. It appears that the Peace Garden State has embraced the seductive sell of the extraction industry. But like all boom and bust cycles, their high days will taper and disappear. So just swallow the Kool-Aid flavored, “Git While the Gittin is Good,” and the hell with aquifers, farmland, wildlife habitat and our children’s future.

Our Dakota hideout was the Theodore Roosevelt National Park where we surprised ourselves by staying four nights. In an 1899 speech, Teddy Roosevelt implored, “. . . our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor.” TR would have been proud of us because for three days Miss Nancy and I mountain biked through the bison, forded the Little Missouri River with our hiking boots knotted and draped over our shoulders and packs on our backs to go beyond the civil-lies.

Pulling out of Medora, we found ourselves sucked up in the current of Interstate 94 and swept east towards Base Camp in Minnesota where a summer’s worth of fecund mice hailed us home. We are once again one happy family tucked into a small patch of woods where images of vast, wild Yukon landscapes will be relived all winter.

We use knots a lot. While Nancy and I don’t pretend to be knot experts, we have what we call our “necessary knots.” These are the handful that we often rely on when setting up a camp or tying canoes on top of the truck.

Neither of us is a knot master but we each have our strengths. I am quick with trucker’s hitch and timber hitch and love the bowline ,but when it comes to a taut-line hitch Nancy can tie it in her sleep and do it quickly. This knot is an adjustable knot that is useful for tightening and loosening a line under tension. It is great for setting up tarps and tent guy lines.

Recently, Nancy made a good trade with our Yukon friend, Banjo Kim. She bartered a lesson on how to tie then taut line hitch  for a book titled The Pig Plantagenet. Kim had raved about this tale of fantasy that expounds the world of wonder while reminding us of the constant and fruitless war man has with nature.

Banjo Kim is a black belt nomad and she lives in a world of barter and foraging. She is a pert young woman who was born in the Northwest Territories so she wears her northern stripes honestly. Rarely have I met someone so comfortable with his or her life.

For the time being, Banjo Kim resides about three miles from our Yukon Outpost. She lives in a small wee house that she built on the bed of an 8-foot by 16-foot, double-axel trailer. She can avoid buying property and paying the associated taxes by pulling the trailer to a friend’s land and setting up for awhile. Easily heated with a small wood-burning stove Banjo Kim lives a simple but rich life.

One of my favorite images of Kim was seeing her stride with her decal-covered banjo case in one hand and her other hand hoisting a Pulaski tool over her shoulder through the Whitehorse Farmer’s Market. The Pulaski is hand tool resembles a hybrid between an axe and an adze and is very handy in fighting fires in backcountry and in grubbing out trails. Kim had used it for digging up a piece of garden space.

As she strode confidently through the market and crowds, she looked so utterly normal; and she hardly drew a stare. It was just another day in the Yukon.

Not only does Banjo Kim put up her own wood, but she hunts, fishes, gardens and is an expert and highly regarded forager for wild edible plants and mushrooms. Inside her small abode she had clumps of various plants hanging upside down to dry and scores of jars with wild herbs. It smells like a sage-covered Yukon hillside.

A few years ago she, and likely her banjo, travelled to Scotland and since she was on a tight budget she foraged for wild edibles the whole time she was there. Once could say she grazed across Scotland.

This summer she has become a Johnny Appleseed of sorts as she has wandered all over the Mt. Lorne area planting Siberian pines. Someday she is hoping she and others can harvest pine nuts for culinary delights.

Last year, Banjo Kim was with Nancy and I when I took a fall while rock climbing up on Needle Mountain. I had a very nasty gash in my shin and a broken metatarsal in my right hand. We were 3+ hours from the nearest road so Kim immediately had me chewing willow leaves (nature’s aspirin), while she found some lungwort or bluebell leaves for a compress that was placed under a splint she fashioned over my hand. As for the bloody cut, she had me chewing yarrow leaves to make a poultice that we placed directly on the wound. Yarrow has properties that make it a reliable styptic to reduce or stop blood flow.

Over the past summer she worked contractually as a field biologist for the Yukon wildlife section. She paddled her canoe around the perimeters of Snafu and Tarfu lakes looking for river otter “latrines.” These are sites, usually at points of land, on large exposed rocks, fallen logs or even beaver lodges where otters leave the water to take care of the business of voiding wastes, scent-marking and grooming themselves. . . you know an otter bathroom.

She set up 26 remote game cameras, each overlooking an otter latrine. Then a week or two later she would return by canoe and recover the memory cards from all the cameras.

Besides being a fine banjo picker, songwriter and forager, Banjo Kim is an indefatigable dancer and a skilled butcher of livestock. These are all skills that can earn you a place in what is known as the “colorful five per cent” in the Yukon. (Anyone in this eclectic group is set apart from the remaining 95% of the population.)

Kim has a recently fabricated summer kitchen that she put together out side of here wee house. She also has a canvas wall tent that serves as guest quarters. It was the wall tent that drew the attention of Nancy. She had noticed that some of the guy lines were loose. So she offered to tie some taut line hitches to tighten everything up. Kim was excited to become acquainted with the knot. So a trade was made, a book for a knot.

Knowing we were soon heading back south to Minnesota, we exchanged hugs and good wishes. We left Banjo Kim and her collection of new found taut-line hitches stretching out her proud standing wall tent and we held a tale that would carry us to a land of whimsy.

Damn good trade.

I was  sitting at the edge of our Outpost deck tying my hiking boot, when a green spruce cone bounced off my  head. Thinking nothing of it, I continued booting up.  Immediately a second cone dropped behind me and then a third.  Given there was no wind, I looked up to seek a “Why?” In a second, I saw another small cone sail out from the treetop and drop to the ground. I leaned out for a better view and heard the unmistakeable, sassy Chrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr of a red squirrel. I sat down and remained still. Soon it resumed showering two inch, pale green spruce cones again.

(Can you spot the airborne cone just below and to the left of the squirrel?)

While the calendar reads August, this smallest of the squirrels is deep into autumnal tasks. These hyperactive berserkers know little rest at this time of the year (beserkers were ancient Norse warriors possessed by a consuming frenzy).  Given that they cannot cope with winter by hibernating, they must rely on the boom and bust supply of spruce cones and other food stuffs. These cold weather survivors are champion hoarders.

I grabbed an old dented bucket that I had found a few years ago near the Skagway summit. The bucket was likely a remnant of the Klondike gold stampede, just over a century ago, that brought  thousands of folks  to the Yukon. While I was scolded by the red squirrel, I began to pluck the sticky, resinous cones off the ground and drop them into the bucket.I wanted to see how many cones the squirrel would snip and toss down. Let’s just say it took me longer to shuffle around plucking the tight cones off the ground than it took the squirrel to drop them. In less than 15 minutes I had more than half filled the bucket.

There are at least three distinct red squirrel territories around the Outpost. The frequent squirrel chirrings are a way they post their territory boundaries.For the most part they can be seen zipping here and there in their amazing herky-jerky accelerations and stops, with a single cone sticking out of their mouths like a big cigar.

The squirrel hurries each cone to its storage trove called a midden. The midden is a the hub of their hoarding efforts, usually located under a dense stand of spruce. Long established middens create humps on the forest floor. Many generations of squirrels will use the same middens.  When I step onto a midden, the dome is spongey and soft because it is mostly old spruce cone bracts. The cone bracts are the scales of a cone and protect the seed.

Earlier this summer, I repeatedly encountered white-winged crossbills picking through the middens. I often approached within a few feet of the birds before they would flush. Like the squirrel these birds are fond of the seeds. But without teeth, they have evolved to have a unique beak that resembles crossed fingers. This adaptation allows the crossbill to more easily extract spruce seeds from behind the bracts in the cone.

Like wise investors, squirrels don’t put all their eggs in one basket. They practice a strategy known as scatter-caching. I was introduced to this term over a decade ago when I first came to the Yukon with Nancy to paddle a remote river with the late Yukon wilderness guide, Dick Person. I noticed that every morning as we finished breakfast, Dick would tuck pieces of pancakes or toast into various clothing pockets on his body and daypack. After seeing this pattern develop I asked about it. “Scatter-caching,” he said, “like the red squirrels. You can never be sure when you need a surge of  calories so you improve your odds by scattering your riches.”

Funny, that’s the same advice that our financial advisor gave us. . . .Wall Street scatter-caching.

I have learned from them that red squirrels often gather mushrooms off the ground and carry them up into the trees. The squirrels hang the mushrooms, like drying laundry, high in the spruce or other trees. Being excellent hoarders, they frequently will take advantage of a good fungi year and harvest some for future use.

I carried my dented bucket away, so much for detailed data collecting. As I walked away, a squirrel delivered a scintillating staccato from the treetops.  This was clearly a long string of red squirrel cuss words rather than a melodious goodbye.

Frank is an unflappable fellow.  He is eager to cast off on an adventure to see what is on the other side of a mountain. A self-made, skilled woodsman, he aptly describes himself, “I’m like a grizzly, I follow my nose and I mind my own business.”

Born of German immigrants in Toronto, Frank made his way to the Yukon as a young man back in the 1970s and since then has called this wild country home. He spent eight winters living in a small bush cabin he built 40 miles from the nearest road down the 80 mile fetch of Teslin Lake. When he needed supplies, he would take his dog and sled and go for a two-day hike that was often well below zero to buy grub in the small community of Teslin.

Wincing at the thought of such a task, I asked, “Wasn’t it much harder to pull a full sled 40 miles back to your bush camp than the empty one you had on your trip in?”

“Oh,” he said enthusiastically with a big grin, “Oh I was a happy boy!” He paused to rub his hands briskly together, “Because  I was heading back into the bush with a sled full of grub and goodies!”

Fortified with mostly moose meat, Frank snowshoed and explored miles and miles of  backcountry. One winter when he and his wife were short of meat, he had to resort to snaring snowshoe hares.”There’s not much warming meat on the bunnies.”

Another year, found him without a moose when the lake started freezing up in November. He spotted a tardy grizzly walking along the lakeshore ice. Bears are typically hibernating by then but for some reason this one was still moseying about. Frank  quietly worked himself to a position to make a shot.  He is a skilled marksman and he grimaces while recollecting that his shot was not a killing shot and he ended up having to track a wounded grizz.

Alert, he moved cautiously.Noticing that the tracks were starting to swing in a broad loop, he became razor sharp in his attention. Suddenly from off to one side the wounded bear came through the snow towards Frank. One shot killed the bear. He gutted the animal and removed its hide before pulling the meat back to the cabin. “That bear,” he recalls making a sour face, “tasted like a wet dog smells.” For two days he and his wife tried to eat the bear, but they could not. “At least our dog had meat  for the winter.”

Frank and his wife Debbie had invited us to their home, a two-hour drive from our Outpost to celebrate Frank’s birthday. Frank suggested that we come early in the day to join him on a hike into some country up along the Canol Road.

The 270 mile long Canol Road is a gravel and mud road mostly etched with the texture of washboard and potholes. The summer-maintained road demands sporadic drivers to pay attention.

Built during WWII, this crude  road, dubbed the Canol for Canadian Oil, was built so an adjacent oil pipeline could be constructed. It was determined that the oil would be needed to help support military operations in the Yukon and Alaska. The source of high-grade oil was in Norman Wells in the Northwest Territory. Short-lived, the oil pipeline operated less than a year and was shut down shortly after the war ended in 1945.

There are no services on the Canol for over 140 miles until you get to the small remote community of Ross River.

We rendezvoused with Frank at Johnson’s Crossing on the Alaska Highway for a cup of coffee and freshly baked raspberry scone. The turn-off for the Canol is nearby and after 20 miles we eased on to a meager pull off on the rugged road. I wondered if the dark pile of recently deposited bear droppings had served as Frank’s marker for the unseen horse trail we were to follow.

Debbie had stayed home to render garden grown cabbages into sauerkraut and to tend  the outdoor fire that was slow cooking a Dutch oven full of bear stew and home grown vegetables for the birthday supper. Like Frank, she could tell us a tale or two of bush living that would make good copy for a horrific adventure tale.

Anytime I have gone for a hike with Frank, he foregoes hiking poles or a staff and prefers to carry a rifle. With a rifle he feels he has no need to carry bear spray; nor has he ever had to shoot a threatening bear other than the earlier mentioned grizzly. He understands he effectiveness of bear spray but is more comfortable with his rifle.

We hefted our packs with food, spare clothes, pepper bear spray, cameras and binoculars and fell in behind Frank as he led us from our parked vehicles into the bush where there was really no discernable trail entry. Immediately, behind a spruce,  we found ourselves on a well-used old packhorse trail.

We wondered who had made the horse trail up here and Frank said that years ago this was the outfitting range of the late Old Andy Smith. He guided big game hunters up this way.

“ Old Andy Smith had a deep booming voice and ferocious eyes.” Frank chuckled, “I called him One-and-a-half man because Old Andy proudly growled “I’m one half Tlingit, one-half Scotsman and one-half N_ _ _ _ _r!”

No matter the arithmetic of the pedigree, I was grateful for the trail that “One-and-a-half-man” had etched on this forested slope.

We wove upslope under the pines and spruce and soon encountered subalpine fir. We crossed a couple of swampy areas and two creek crossings and passed several recent piles of bear droppings. There was no disguising the fact that the bears were feeding heavily on mossberries (also known as crowberries) as their piles of waste looked like beautiful black mounds of shining preserves.

After an hour of steady climbing, we broke out of the trees and continued climbing through the knee-high snarl of dwarf birch or as Frank calls it, “the shin tangle.” We paused at a small lively mountain stream banked with blossoms of varying bright colors for face washing and cold mouthfuls. When Nancy exclaimed about the lovely smell along the rushing flow, Frank grinned when he said this was “Weasel Piss Creek.” His timing over his newfound title was perfect.

Another half an hour of hiking found us on top of the ridge and summit. Here the walking was easy on the lawnlike alpine. We stopped to eat our lunch and to glass the large expansive basin that opened below us. Dotted with ponds and clumps of fir, it appeared  like a park setting.

Herds of clouds dropped sheer curtains of rain in the distance and we wondered if they might move our way. Frank assured us, “We’ve got nothing but sunshine. . . in our hearts and we’ve got gear to protect the other parts.”

We glassed the large basin in front of us for signs of any wildlife. Frank was particularly interested in sighting  woodland caribou. He carried a caribou tag in his pocket and if he got lucky, he had four cloth game bags to carry out a quartered out caribou. The lightweight bags make it easier to handle the quarters of meat and keep it clean from dirt and debris.

Why not take advantage of four extra hikers if the opportunity came up? Rather than shuttle back and forth up the mountain he would be able to get it down in one trip if we weenies could manage. Frank reckoned that he has packed out over forty caribou, moose and bear in his lifetime and any help is appreciated.

In less than a month, Frank will  boat to his remote moose camp where he will attempt to call a horny bull into gun range. Rarely does he miss filling his freezer with fine moose meat. We asked about bears that come around his moose camp looking for some food. “Well,” he said, “if a bear comes around camp while I’m there. . . I’ll eat him!” He always carries a bear tag while moose hunting because he likes nothing better than bear stew on his birthday.

The rain clouds avoided us and we resumed our hike to the very summit while Frank stayed put to continue his methodical hawklike glassing the mountain bowl for caribou.

After an hour or so of  roaming the high ridge line, we made our way back towards Old Andy Smith’s horse trail. More than a dozen cackling ptarmigan took to the air as we brushed past a thicket of sub-alpine fir.

Three hours later we were gathered around a beach campfire with plates piled with steaming chunks of tender bear stew. I wondered if the moose near Frank’s distant moose camp could hear our rousing singing of “Happy Birthday.” If so, they might do well to shudder knowing that a keen predator has survived another year.

Our Yukon rhubarb patch resembles an experimental forestry project. One leaf makes an umbrella for two adults and the reddened stalks look like the lean-muscled, sunburned forearms of a ten-year old boy. Real men wear rhubarb leaves rather than a wee frail fig leaf. I’ve even thought of making a shed out of the robust stems.

Today, the long-bladed knife, more like a machete, will render a stalk or two into sweet and tart rhubarb crunch that will be our offering for a neighbor’s annual summer potluck and music jam. (Okay, I’ll admit, it’s kind of weird to think of her as our neighbor when she lives off-grid about 16 miles away on the Wheaton River.

I’ve never seen such exuberant rhubarb as up in this country. It is continually popping up in the lawn like insurgent dandelions. The cool weather combined with timely moisture and Miss Nancy’s tucking mounds of the neighbor’s horse manure around the plants has created hedges that would prove suitable obstacles in the Grand National Steeplechase horse race.

According to Jill Shepherd,  Alaskan master gardener and retired senior editor of Alaska Magazine, rhubarb was introduced into North America when Russian seafarer and merchant Gregory Shelikhov established the first permanent Russian post in North America on Kodiak Island in 1784. He claimed to have planted it there and wrote in his journals that it did well. (There is no record if he took viable seed or divided sections of the roots to plant.)

Shepherd, author and amateur historian, says that rhubarb was such an important trade item at one time in Russia that by 1638 they had a Department of Rhubarb. In those times it was not used so much as a food item as a dried medicinal, used primarily as a laxative. Only when sugar became cheaper and more readily available did this tart plant become a popular food item.

In Lake Wobegone country, popular Minnesotan radio personality and author, Garrison Keillor sings praises of rhubarb nearly every week on the Prairie Home Companion Show. He is fond of telling the audience that “rhubarb pie is the kind of pie that was worth going through the rest of the meal to get it.” Why thousands of radio fans can sing along with his weekly rhubarb pitch, “Mama’s little baby loves rhubarb, rhubarb, Beebopareebop Rhubarb Pie. Mama’s little baby…

In Little League baseball, I learned to taunt opposing batters from our bench with loud jeers of “Hey batter, batter! What do ya want eggs in your beer?!” We were encouraging them to swing the bat and hopefully miss the ball. I had no clue that the phrase was a popular WWII expression that indicated you wanted a bonus or something from nothing. I simply emulated the ribbing of the older guys. And I also learned that one could get in a “rhubarb” (argument) with the umpire or the opposing team.

While I’m not aware of any major rhubarb between the two countries that once battled in the bloody American Revolution, both Britain and Alaska (USA) take great pride in their rhubarb and both host many festivals revolving around the plant. I shudder to think of face-to-face pitched battles swinging sabres of stout rhubarb stalks at each other.

When Miss Nancy and I began coming up to our Yukon Outpost, I discovered a proper bush ax in the wood shed. The worn and chipped axe head had lost its original wood handle long ago and someone had added an axe prosthesis to rejuvenate it’s cutting days. Now there are two pieces of spot-welded aluminum conduit duct-taped into place. It’s truly a thing of beauty and a testament to my late Great Gramma Schmidt’s adage, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.”

The bent and battered handle is sketchy on pine or spruce but it’s perfect for stout rhubarb.

While my rhubarb crunch is damn good, I get more compliments from the rhubarb chipotle salsa that I make. I got the recipe from Yukoner, Michele Genest. She is an excellent cook and author of The Boreal Gourmet. Her books provide spectacular visual treats as well as culinary treats.

So here is the simple recipe. Enjoy.

Rhubarb Chipotle Salsa

(This is very good with chips, veggies or grilled game)

Ingredients:

1 tsp olive oil

1 med. onion

2 cloves of garlic

4 tbsp chipotle pepper in Adobe sauce

4 C fresh or frozen rhubarb*

½ C packed brown sugar

½ tsp salt

Preparation:

In a saucepan (I use a cast iron frying pan.) sauté onion in oil until translucent (7-10 minutes)

Add garlic, stir and sauté 2 min.

Add remaining ingredients and stir and cook about 10 minutes.

Let cool and puree. (I simply mash the cooked rhubarb with a fork.)

The salsa stores well in the fridge for 2 weeks.

I was kidnaped the other day.

Okay so “kidnapped” is a little strong. Perhaps a better description would be that I was hijacked while working on a task.  Revelry suddenly swooped in and tugged playfully at my responsibility of tending to toilsome home improvement efforts. 

I had been working at tearing out a rotting deck section that serves as the entry area to our lower door. As I piled up short sections of salvaged 2 x 6 boards that were still sound, I realized I had a place for them.

Across the river from us, on Native Settlement Land, is an old trail that runs atop the river bluff. It’s a sinuous footpath that runs for at least two miles. In the winter the path becomes a ski trail that requires snowshoeing to pack it down before you can get a decent stride that becomes a cross country ski trail in the winter. During snow-free months it has become a favorite single-track mountain bike trail. The trail is known by a few people and the only time I have ever seen anyone was a neighbor skiing there in the winter.

Two years ago, wildlife researchers, studying riparian wildlife movements along the river placed a game trail camera along the trail.The camera’s shutter is activated by a motion detector so as critters pass they unknowingly shoot self-portraits of themselves. Not only did the biologists get photos of us hiking by but they had images of bear, moose, fox, a lynx and porcupine. In the winter, we have seen caribou here as well. Obviously it’s a popular trail.

For three consecutive days last week I hopped on my silver bush pony, my Trek “twenty-niner” (29 inch wheels) and headed for the bluff trail. My daypack held a water bottle, a folding saw, a shears and bear spray. Every year trail maintenance is required as there is always a dead pine or spruce across the trail.Each day, I cut brush or sawed through prostrate tree trunks if their girth was not too great for my little saw. For bigger tree trunks, I cut small sections and stack them in a sloping manner up and over the tree creating a ramp. In mountain biking parlance these are known as “features.”

Some demanding mountain bike trails have features that are narrow, almost rickety bridges crossing creeks, ravines or through boulder fields. Sometimes features are literally ramps that launch the cyclist up and over obstacles. I stay clear of trails that feature  jumps that propel my bush pony airborne.

Two days ago I turned 63 years old and bike jumps, boulder hopping and so on are no longer part of my repertoire. I’m hoping for at least another 20 years of mountain biking.

I digress. But the idea of features is important because to get to the river bluff trail requires us to ride just over a mile on gravel roads. If I followed an old game trail along the river, I could cut more than three quarters of a mile while providing some fun trail riding right next to the river. But to do so would require building a couple of features.

So with a pile of scrap 2 x 6s strewn in the grass, an idea was hatched. In minutes, the deck project was forgotten and I was grabbing a saw, hammer and nails.

The primary feature was a ramp that angled from our elevated yard down to the riverside trail. It required two sections to complete the ramp of about sixteen feet. As I built it, I began to wonder if I would actually dare, or that matter, actually attempt to descent the ramp on my bike. And how about pedaling up the ramp? Would that be easier?

For an hour I cut, hammered, fit and adjusted the new scrappy highway.Tentatively, I shuffled onto the ramp and taking baby steps, eased down it. There was a noticeable sag in the span, so I added some structural rounds of firewood beneath the ramp to firm it up. It worked.

With the sun shining today, it would be a perfect day to christen the ramp with a bike ride but in the two days since the completion of the project, we have had lots of rain. And rain accelerates the snowmelt from the high country. And all that water funnels via  freshets and creeks into the Watson River as it passes our Outpost.

The Watson has risen higher than I have ever seen it. It is moving past at a scary clip. Every so often Nancy and I watch nervously as a tree or stump floats by. Our river deck is completely submerged and I don’t know if it can withstand this kind of constant pounding.

There is no longer any bike trail visible along the river and the surging water level is approaching my lumber scrap ramp. I will likely have to try and pull the two sections out before they become floating features.

In the meantime, my face bears worried features of concern as I impatiently await the passing of the river’s crest. Only then will I be able to contemplate getting back to work on resurrecting the bike trail and the ramp that stole me from chores.

Hmmmm. You know with a little adjustment, the ramp could turn into a kayak slide.

I’ve just walked down from a morning stroll up to the little summit of “Pulpit Hill.” There, under a canvas of a vivid Yukon blue sky, I quietly reflected on the recent road trip up here from Minnesota.

Initially our Minnesota departure was delayed by a full week. After a wet spring, wepulled away from our verdant Basecamp.   The population explosion of mosquitoes was likely sad to see their hosts light out for the Territories.

The first day we managed to put in 26 miles. No, we were not driving a team of oxen and a Conestoga wagon. We stopped at Nancy’s parents and spent two nights with them. Both of them are closer to ninety than eighty and both had been dealing with  health issues. Her mom, Winnie, was nursing a broken wrist and having a cast made life difficult. Then, while we were there, an infected ankle showed up and that added to the care focus. Nancy’s dad, Dave, is nursing a very sore back that makes it difficult to stand up.

After two days of helping and visiting, we headed west on I-94. We had gone about 100 miles when Nancy began to cry. She was thinking of her parents and realized that she wanted to stay a while longer to help.  I said no problem so we turned around and headed back. The Yukon Outpost was empty and sitting idle in spring is not a big deal.

Just over a week later, we headed out again. This time we got twenty miles before Nancy realized that she had not packed her clothes bag into the truck.

There was no third feint in our Yukon trek as we finally passed into North Dakota. We eventually made our way just west of Minot and felt the need to stop for something to eat.

We stopped at a roadside joint in Foxholm, North Dakota. We had no choice and both of us wished we had stopped earlier in Minot. Not only was the food limited in choices, but also it was also poor and expensive. (At trip’s end  we jointly declare it “worst meal” of he road trip.

With the sun approaching day’s end, and no campgrounds nearby, we scored a guerrilla camping spot shortly after leaving Foxholm. I spied a big pile of gravel in a scoured pit north of the highway and we took a rarely traveled township road to reach it. We pulled our truck around to the backside of the pile and called it home.

Before crawling into our comfy berths under the truck topper, made softer by the recent acquisition of a 3-inch memory foam mattress topper, we took a short walk to move our bodies. With binoculars in hand we headed uphill out of the small river valley, with grasslands flanking both sides.

With each trip to the Yukon we keep a bird list tally. It helps pass the time and it offers a challenge to see if we can beat the previous year’s total.  Our goal was to tally 80 bird species.

As we strolled uphill with curious beef cattle eyeing us like newfound toys, I heard a trio of birds that came to the high water birding mark for the entire 2,700-mile trip. First was the melodious, buoyant, sweet song of a western meadowlark.

The meadowlark’s song was a regular occurrence when I was a kid. Now, five decades later, I haven’t heard their notes near my home grounds for a long, long time.  Meadowlarks require grasslands for their preferred habitat. In east-central Minnesota housing developments and converted grasslands for the unsustainable cycle of soybeans and corn has pretty much erased meadowlarks in the region.

According to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, breeding populations of meadowlarks have been declining in North America at a rate of approximately 1 percent per year since 1966. The result is a loss of about 36 percent of meadowlarks.

The North Dakota meadowlark we listened to was just finishing its choral performance when from high overhead I heard the distinct, almost haunting wavering notes of a male Wilson’s snipe. The winnowing sound is not a vocalization but is created from the snipe’s  fanned outer tail feathers as he zigzags high overhead.

Snipe prefer wetlands and I have a profound memory of being duped into going on a snipe hunt one dark night at a Boy Scout Jamboree. With gunny sacks our group of Tenderfoots was instructed to head into the snipes preferred haunts, a swamp or marsh, and to call out, not too loud and not too soft,  “Here snipe, here snipe.” Armed with empty gunnysacks we were told that these long-beaked, squat birds could be coaxed into our sacks.

After an hour or stumbling and splashing in the wetland we returned wet-footed and panted to the campfire where we humbly realized that we were the ones who had been caught . . . in a practical joke.

Hearing the meadowlark and the snipe simultaneously was a gift in itself, but when the third member of the evening trio chimed in, I was nearly brought to my knees. Descending over the grasslands uphill of us, advanced a loud and and declarative upland sandpiper with its long yellow legs trailing behind it.

The bubbling flight call is distinctive and rarely heard call in Minnesota. This 12 inch tall, grassland sandpiper was once a sought after delicacy and hunted to unsustainable levels for its meat. The real culprit in its alarming population decline is the loss of native prairie habitat. Like the meadowlark it requires diverse grasslands.

I suspect my love for this bird stems in large part, from the fine essay that the late Aldo Leopold wrote that is included in his compilation of writings in his classic A Sound County Almanac.

 “When dandelions have set the mark of May in Wisconsin pastures, it is time to listen for the final proof of spring. Sit down on a tussock, cock your ears at the sky, dial out the bedlam of meadowlarks and redwings and soon you may hear it; the flight-song of the upland plover, just now back from the Argentine.”

In my lifetime,  the American Ornithological Union decided that this bird was not a true plover but instead a sandpiper and hence the official name change to “upland sandpiper.”

 After minutes of watching and listening to the evening vespers of these three birds, we turned back and descended to our hideout behind the house-sized mound of gravel. The sun melted into the western horizon and a lone coyote barked an exclamation mark for day’s end.

It was nice to be on the road again and sleep came easily.

Oh and our final tally was exactly 80 species with three of those being most memorable.

Profiling or labeling is one of the great embarrassments of being human.

Sadly, we not only profile individuals based on how they look, eat or believe,  I see we have stooped so low as to unfairly judge hungry wildlife.  And why not? Of all species on the planet, humans are not only the most judgmental but the sloppiest as well.

A recent piece was published in a local newspaper about a hungry black bear wandering into the nearby city limits of  Cambridge, Minnesota. It did not end well for the bear.

First some background. Bruins learn that we two-leggeds have a keen propensity to be messy with food. Why wouldn’t a winter hungry bear roam into a neighborhood following the promising smells coming from open garbage cans, torn garbage bags, open compost bins topped with yesterday’s leftovers, BBQ grills soaked in bratwurst and burger fat.

Bears are wise in avoiding humans. But once in a while they get used to us. Such a bear is called a habituated bear.  They learn to ignore folks and basically become unafraid of humans. But that doesn’t mean that we become unafraid of them.  Most folks have a deep-rooted fear over large mammals with sharp teeth and claws. They are convinced that the bear will kill them.

Ignorance goes along way in delivering a fear package. Black bears are expert omnivores. They eat alot of plant and alot of protein. But note that much of their protein is garnered from insects such as ant eggs and larvae. Every spring I watch black bears unabashedly slaughter heaps of dandelion blossoms as they graze roadside ditches near our Outpost in the Yukon Territory.

For the record, I am an avid hunter. However, I’ve never been drawn to the idea of shooting a bear because I don’t find it sporting to sit over a pile of greasy and sweet bait foods to wait for a bear.

What if the recently executed Cambridge bear had been visiting such a bait station last fall and managed to avoid getting shot? Now spring comes along and it smells all those delicious odors again. Hurrah easy picking calories just down the street!

Getting into improperly stored human “food” (trash, etc) even just once can start a bear down the path of securing the title “habituated.”It’s far too easy to label such a bear as a nuisance bear. It makes it easy to justify its removal.

In reading the recent short story titled, “Nuisance bear spotted in Cambridge,” the end of the first paragraph states that the bear was “taken care of.”  Usually when something is “taken care of” it means that efforts are made without causing damage. Come on, don’t try and sanitize the act. Be bold, just say up front that the bear was executed for following its nose to our mess.

By labeling a bear as a “nuisance” we can easily justify its removal. We humans are good at that. If the paper had run a title such as, “Beautiful black bear murdered in Cambridge,” I suspect just as many readers would have read it. Its another perspective that is just as accurate as the one printed.

Given that bears, raccoons, skunks, crows and other critters that love our overflowing bird feeders, sloppiness and garbage were here first, should we not consider who the real nuisance is? In all fairness, the paper did go on to give good instructions of the need to keep your premises clean of food temptations for wandering bears.

All I ask is for us to take responsibility for the death of a bear that was looking for an easy meal. You know, kind of like when we dash to a fast food joint for a quick and easy meal.

This is a case where we have met the nuisance and it is us.

Fate would have it that the old brass bed, the same one that my great grandfather slept in, would align with our bedroom window so well.

With the second story window opening next to my supine self, there is maybe an inch between the top of the mattress and the windowsill. On recent nights, I’ve tucked  the familiar dried piece of birch sapling in place to hold the double hung window open.  Our house  is over a century old and the inconvenience of blocking a window opening is almost pleasing. With the window “locked” open I can push my pillow onto the window sill and practically  lay my head outdoors. It is the closest thing to camping while sleeping in my home.

Walt Whitman, one of America’s most beloved poets, urges us in the lines of Songs of the Open Road to live robust lives and “inhale great drafts of air.”

In sleeping nightly, almost in the oak canopy just outside the window, I am following his advice as dictated in his highly touted poem,  Leaves of Grass.

“Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

It is said that sleeping outdoors strengthens one’s immune system and improves overall physical vigor and endurance. An additional benefit is found among the nocturnal sounds. Buzzing and chirping insects, rustling leaves or sighing winds through pine boughs create a soothing white noise that lullabye asleep.

Carl Linnaeus, the famous Swedish scientist, often dubbed the “father of botany,” flung open his family’s house windows in the summer to simply hear bird and insect song.

But that wasn’t enough. Linnaeus so loved the male cricket’s courting stridulations that he even secretly released live crickets into their Uppsala home. These courting songs produced only by the male crickets did little to excite his wife, Sara. She was not pleased with the housebound crickets and did her best to rid the household of them. When the house cricket music lessened, Carl quietly found more replacements.

Another fellow Scandinavian, Norwegian polar explorer, Roald Amundson loved the practice of open windows. He was a giant in polar exploration and was the first human to reach the South Pole and the first to fly successfully over the North Pole.

His open window sleeps were not seasonal. As a means of acclimating himself to cold weather, he also allowed the Norwegian winter night into his bedroom.

While lying in our bed, spirited by fresh air,  I am privileged to experience the blessed duality of my mate snuggled next to me and to sleepily peer out the window at an emerging spring morning. My gaze takes me directly into the craggy branches of a dear bur oak that I have christened the “home place oak.”

In the bold annual act of pushing open the window, I am declaring winter’s end. Some years, like this I clearly rushed the issue and I had to pull the birch out and set it aside for another week or more.  Recent chilly nights have both not  freshened our sleep but also prolonged the need for the down comforter. And I am assured more snuggling.

Usually the first grand window openings are in April. It is then that I bear witness to the sassiness of courting crows and even the occasional guttural croak of neighborhood ravens. Ravens have steadily become a newer fixture in our parts and I am partial to their corvid calls.

By mid-April, I am assured of being awakened prior to sunrise when the roosting male turkeys gobble their dominance to other males and more importantly, their readiness to put on the strut for the hen turkeys.

Call it cruel, but I love having a morning chat with the gobblers. I sometimes keep my mouth turkey call on the windowsill. After I’m awakened by a distant gobble, I can slip the call into my mouth and either gives him a challenging gobble or a seductive hen cluck.

The first time I did this, I learned that it is to my advantage to awaken and warn Miss Nancy of my turkey talk. To do otherwise, threatens the snuggling part I mentioned.

In May, I get to witness the amazing daily transformation of opening oak leaves. My favorite view is early spring when the all the trees within view of my bed, wear a different shade of green. Most are muted and soft. By the time we hit June, the colors all blend to a sameness of dark green.

But it is when the tiny bundles of new bur oak leaves emerge that I await the tassels of butter-colored, catkins. Even at this stage the tiny oak leaves are easily recognizable as bur. Unlike other local oaks, the top of the bur oak leaf throughout it’s growth is . . .well burly. It has the look of broad shoulders. Like the white oak the lobes of the leaf are rounded. But the white oak does not share the broad shoulder and tapered profile of a bur.

Before things leaf out much, early dawns become noisier with bird song. I find I wake up more fully when I hear the slurry, robin like call of a rose breasted grosbeak that perches only feet away.

Pillow birding is an amazing sport. Without lifting my head, I have simultaneously spied four species of warblers from the home place oak. The breaking sunshine illuminated each of them. All bore the colors of a painter’s pallet.  Less than four bed lengths from me was a Blackburnian warbler, a Chestnut-sided warbler, an American redstart and a yellow warbler. It was so newsworthy that I dared disturb Miss Nancy’s sleep. I nudged her foot with mine and  excitedly hissed the discovery of newfound colors in the home place oak.

These are indeed the secrets of making the best persons.