Outdoors Posts

Vignettes from the Edge of a Beaver Pond

Researchers at the Voyageurs Wolf Project placed cameras around the edge of a beaver pond this past summer hoping to get good footage of wolves. Instead, they captured a whole lot of otter activity along with a few other critters, including a black bear and three cubs that predictably knocked over a camera.

Holiday Aurora: Lights of Summer

The latest video from Seth Trobec is new to the internet, but was shot last summer over Independence Day and Labor Day weekends — July 2 and Sept. 4 to be precise. The timelapse was created from Trobec’s photos of the northern lights.

The Slice / Almanac North: Gunflint Mail Run 2023

The Gunflint Mail Run, an annual sled dog race in Cook County, was held Jan. 7. PBS North Producer Megan McGarvey captured the scenes for the station’s feature The Slice (embedded above) and also for a segment on the weekly show Almanac North (embedded below).

America’s Forests in Minnesota / Chuck Leavell in Duluth

Famed musician Chuck Leavell visited Duluth on March 29 to record a performance of the Bob Dylan song “Like a Rolling Stone” with the Duluth band Big Wave Dave and the Ripples at Sacred Heart Music Center. The collaboration was for the closing segment of the 10th episode of the television series America’s Forests with Chuck Leavell. Embedded above is the full episode, which recently aired on select PBS stations, but not in Duluth. Another video, isolating just the music performance, is embedded below.

Duluth View Checklist

From the Institute for the Study of Light and Water. There are three main components to your scenic view from Duluth, Minnesota: the sky, the lake, and in between those, whatever Wisconsin is doing. These components have been sorted below into color and texture for your convenience. Using the provided ingredients, you should be able to record and/or recreate any Duluth view. Print out and carry with you. Circle all that apply.

Date/time: __________

Sky Color: Sky blue. Teal. Blueberry. White. Pink. Lavender. Burgundy. Violet. Subdued sunrise/set like a natural gas flame. Blazing sunrise/set like an atomic bomb. Black. Gray. Red. Magenta. Periwinkle. Pastels. Peach. Indigo. Orange. Layer cake of colors.

Sky Texture: Cloudless. Partial cloud cover. Full cloud cover. Full cloud cover allowing sliver of sky at horizon. Fog. Partial fog. Brooding twisty clouds. Washboard/fishbone clouds. Cigar-shaped clouds. Strips of clouds like filets. Pulled cotton clouds. Clouds underlit by sun or city. Towering cloudbanks like Southwestern mesas pregnant with lightning. Two or more unique cloud layers moving independently. Crisscrossing white contrails (gold/pink at sunrise/set). Single contrail (gold/pink at sunrise/set). Aircraft. Laced with birds. Single bird. Gulls making a racket. Gulls in great gyres. Raptor/s. Sheets of rain. Sprinkles. Sun shower. Mists (glowing/not glowing). Rainbow/s. Snow flurry. Blizzardous. Big fat snowflakes practically hovering in the still air. Sleety. Full moon. Middling moon. Sliver of a moon like God’s fingernail clipping. Moonlight coming from somewhere but you’re not sure where. Full of stars. Intermittent stars. Single star. Electrifying auroras. Auroras so faint you’re not sure if it’s a thing, but maybe. Antenna farm. Antenna farm in fog. Antenna farm in deep winter frosted white against blue sky. Layer cake of textures.

Great Lakes Now episode: “Great Lakes Wildlife”

This contains several segments including one about Enbridge Line 3 (@17:15), and a mention of Duluth’s “Water is Life” festival (@24:58).

Vignettes of the Northwoods

The Voyageurs Wolf Project has been the source of some of northern Minnesota’s best trail-camera wildlife videos in recent years. The latest release is a montage of the very best.

The Institute for the Study of Light and Water: Another psychedelic weather report

Sunset a silent H-bomb

Now a burning Saturn, now an apricot pastel dab on slate. Sun zips the sky closed behind it as it goes, now dying, now resurrecting in orange creamsicle. Color cosmologies. Gold birch leaves rattle like paper coins. Leaves crunch, clatter, gather against curbs.

The Slice: Fall Colors at Downer Park

A look at the fall colors and the general peacefulness of the season in Downer Park, a 17-acre undeveloped space in Duluth’s Woodland neighborhood.

In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.

Video: Fall Colors at Enger Park

Videographer Adam Jagunich captures the fall colors around Enger Tower in Duluth via his Yuneec Typhoon H Plus hexacopter.

Big, fat black bear montage / wolves eating blueberries

The folks at the Voyageurs Wolf Project keep rolling out the hits with their trail camera videos. Above, clips of the chubbiest bears in Voyageurs National Park this summer. Below, rare footage of wolves eating blueberries — and perhaps the first footage of a mom and her pup foraging for blueberries together.

Lean into Your Fear: Whitewater Rafting on the St. Louis River

This story is from my personal blog, “Marie’s Meanderings.” When I write a travel post, because my blog’s name has the word “meander” in it, I usually open by saying I “meandered” here and there.

Well, I can’t use that term this time. It’s more accurate to say I reluctantly agreed to go on a whitewater rafting trip down the St. Louis River and promised to scream all the way!

It all started when my friend Russ, who is an experienced kayaker, won a silent auction item at a fundraiser for the St. Louis River Alliance in 2018. He won two tickets for whitewater rafting through Minnesota Whitewater Rafting, a local company that operates out of Scanlon.

Upon my insistence, we agreed to wait for the trip until the water was warm, to make it a more comfortable experience. Now it was August, month of warm weather and water, and I was out of excuses not to go. We gathered everything the company’s information sheet instructed rafters to bring: a dry change of clothes, snug-fitting footwear, windbreaker, towel, etc. And off we went.

Paddling Blatnik

Selective Focus: John Keefover

John Keefover poses with the Northern Terminus sign after completing his thru-hike of the Superior Hiking Trail.

John Keefover is the Duluth-based nature photographer behind the photography business Keefography. This June, Keefover thru-hiked the Superior Hiking Trail, sharing photos, videos and journal entries along the way. Keefover used this adventure as an opportunity to raise funds for the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center.

Wolf Pup Wrestling

This four-way battle royal is scheduled for one fall with a 43-second time limit. From Voyageurs National Park, each maybe weighing something like 25 pounds, they are the Half-Moon Pack.

The footage is from a Voyageurs Wolf Project trail camera.