Echo Island or A Visit to Squire's Table

Echo Island, Lake Kabetogama
Voyageurs National Park

mallard feeding at shore

Echo Island is tucked just several hundred yards off shore in the southwestern corner of Lake Kabetogama. Facing away from the resorts and private camps that line the lake edge, the island sits like a shy child caught in the midst of a party—its tree-lined shoulder turned inward, protecting on the other side a small rocky bay.
Set ablaze by the late September sun, its evergreen shore warms to gold. The small island barely visible beyond misted morning water, by evening, has found itself in the spotlight.

Echo Island, afternoon sun

Taking a direct path from the sand beach just beyond our cabin’s doorstep across this narrow band of water, skirting the gilt edge of Echo Island, we found the rocky bay, entered and pulled the canoe up onto a sequestered 20-ft beach.

Butter and Eggs, Linaria vulgaris

Once privately owned, as was the case with many islands which over the years have become part of Voyageurs National Park, remnants of its previous life remain. From within a tumbled pile of what must have been, years ago, a meticulously built rock wall entry, a mink watches our slow progression onto land, and then disappears into the depths of the woods. There is a park campsite here, complete with one-seater and bear-locker, available to anyone at any time.

American Red Squirrel, Tamiasciurus hudsonicus

On this day we find it empty, inhabited only by a most irritated red squirrel whose duties of the collection and disposal of pine cones evidently our mere presence has interrupted.
In the change of ownership, this small resident has risen in stature.

Red Pine with lichen-covered bark

Dense and damp within, the woods of Echo Island, aside from birdsong, are silent. A heavy blanket of needles from towering red and white pine carpets the ground. Soft and fertile beneath it, a bed of dark organic matter has formed on top of the sandy base.

moss and lichen

Cushions of moss run over every rock and envelope every fallen form.
Into it reach the roots of delicate wildflowers.
Lichens cover bark and branch.

Pink Corydalis, Corydalis sempervirens

Nose to the ground in this well-appointed space, I can see Pixie Cups and Fairy Thimbles, Witches’ Beard above me, and British soldiers below--
named for the shapes they resemble, to be sure.

Pixie cups

And perhaps for the enchantment left by time spent in the places where one might find them.
For I thought I caught a glimpse of something magical there.

Harebell aka Fairy Thimbles, Campanula rotundifolia

Squire's Table

Wandering back through my summer

I woke to a leaden sky, and a cold, damp dawn that in every way spoke of winter’s return.
I love this season more than do most--its character of change, its constant contrast from the delicate vulnerability of a single snowflake to the strength and fury of a stinging blizzard. But, given a shorter day, one bound by a hesitant sunrise and hasty sunset, I am left with little time to be in the outdoors.
It’s just as well.
This is the space between the holidays.

To that, introduce deer hunting season with its dangers to off-trail pursuits, and it's likely that a trip to the store or a jaunt along a tamer trail will, in this time, replace my walk in the woods.
I wander through my summer memories.

Lake Kabetogama
Voyageurs National Park

This is Lake Kabetogama (Ka-buh-toh'-guh-muh), an expanse of cool, clear northern Minnesota water that, linked with Rainy Lake, Sand Point Lake, and Lake Namakan, makes up Voyageurs National Park.

Un voyageur

Named for the apparently very large French Canadian voyageurs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries who paddled canoes for fur trading companies along a route between Canada's northwest and Montreal, its 55-mile length is a maze of inland waterways including over 30 lakes and 900 islands. In addition to its being a water-based park, meaning that the access to sites within its boundary is primarily by boat, Voyageurs National Park is the most recent addition to the national park system, having been acquired just 35 years ago, in 1975.

The dock
Moosehorn Resort

With walleye, northern pike, muskellunge, small mouth bass, and crappie abundant in these large lakes, fishing is by far its greatest draw. Try to find just one poster promoting the area that does not boast a boatful of broadly smiling fishermen or a toothless child proudly displaying his record-breaking catch.

common mergansers on the lake

But the attraction for me was its wilderness.
Accessible to any who wishes to hike the miles of backcountry trails or step out of canoe or kayak onto the land once walked by the Chippewa, the morning air rings with the call of the loon.
A wolf print is left in the soft mud along the trail.
And the still water is parted by a beaver swimming at dusk to his lodge at the edge of this small island.

Echo Island
Lake Kabetogama, Minnesota

Translated as Rough Waters, Lake Kabetogama at 25,000-acres in size can in one moment become a small craft’s captain’s nightmare. Wind raging its length piles 5-ft waves on top of its 80-ft depths. Islands become the only refuge in a storm.
But, each morning it lay again invitingly still—shrouded in a heavy fog that obscured both boat and bird.
And begged to be discovered.

Foggy Morning

Morning Sun

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

The pictures worth a thousand words...

northern shore of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

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Olympic National Park--This Place is WILD!

Sign posted at trailhead

I’ve discovered an effective strategy for overcoming my fear of bears.
Settle in for a week of hiking--in cougar country—complete with details of how to avoid, or, if faced with an encounter, stare one down and escape with your life, posted plainly at every trailhead.
A repeated reminder throughout the Park, for those who might have it slip their mind.

Chances are, I’d never encounter one.
But with 300 cougars within the national park boundaries, I read each instruction sheet and studied it well, then picked up my stick and stepped into their world.

Every scrubby cluster became a point from which one could suddenly leap.
Every dark lump, a crouching form.
Hiking no longer was a mindless trek, but an exercise, carefully plotted and executed.
We must keep an eye on the sun--these deep woods lose light quickly.
Stumbling along a dusky trail would be definitely out of the question.

Having just stepped off a plane from Ohio days earlier, made this new place all the more disconcerting. As if suddenly waking from sleep to find the room rearranged, nothing looked the least bit familiar.

Within the deep, dark woods of Olympic, mostly silence. An expansive, lavishly carpeted space with cathedral ceilings opening to spots of bright blue above.

Arion sp. (?)

Snail-eating Beetles eating a worm
Scaphinotus angusticollis olympiae
of Pacific coastal forests

Along the paths we walked, huge slugs.
And their predators, flightless Snail-Eating ground beetles scurrying to and fro, hoping to catch one, or a snail or other slimy, spineless creature that lives in the dark of these woods.

Douglas squirrel, Tamiasciurus douglasii
of Pacific coastal states
eating Sitka Spruce cone

Douglas squirrels, small and noisy, munching cones of odd shapes and sizes.

The evergreens, of course, were huge--and enough like similar species to hazard a guess. But, there were maples--with leaves the size of dinner plates.

Devils Club, Oplopanax horridus

And a low, lanky, creeping shrub, its ferocious spines hiding coyly behind bunches of lovely red berries—and even larger leaves.
Devil’s Club—nothing a hiker wishes to get into a tangle with.

hot springs of Sol Duc Valley

Sulfur hot springs were covered in a morning’s mist. Their aroma less than inviting—yet, after a day’s journeying, a warm welcome home. Nature’s hot tub, clean and clear. A constant renewal from below the earth’s surface.

coast between Clallum Bay and Sekiu

wild blackberries

One afternoon, a barrier of hefty blackberry shoots teased us from the road’s edge with large and luscious ripe fruit as we stopped to watch the tide slip from dark-covered rocks at the coast. We stole all we could of the bright, dark berries, and filled a hat to the brim—a snack to carry us through.



The table for lunch, reminding us again of this wonderful wildness we had landed in.

Rock Crab
Wilderness Beach Trail connecting Alava and Sand Point

Second Beach
Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, Washington

A place where the sand on the beach bears only your footsteps.
And those that follow, are of another world.

Posted in Camera Critters!

Cape Flattery

Pacific sunset from Cape Flattery

At the end of the road, the end of the earth.

Cape Flattery, the furthest point at the northwestern tip of the continental United States, and last to see the sun set over the Pacific Ocean, is within the Makah Indian Reservation on the coast of Washington.
Weaving our way over narrow, unmarked roads, racing the sun, past scattered trailers and tribal gathering places, we found the deserted lot, displayed our just-purchased Recreation Permit, and hastily hiked out to the point.

From a high, narrow lookout, the ocean faintly seen, pounding the rocks and caves below.
The fog, thick and cool.
The sky, white.

Thinning bit by bit, Tatoosh Island and its lighthouse emerged,
rosy skies to either side.
And glimpses of Vancouver Island to the north.
Then a clearing,
and the sun slipped past the horizon.

appearing through the fog
Tatoosh Island

looking toward the north to Vancouver Island

looking south over Pacific Ocean

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