Blown away in a state park

Earlier today I made a trip to St. Croix State Park in Pine County. I'm working on a poetry-photography project for which I had hoped to be able to get some white pine photos in the Park. As the DNR staff said, I should have been there before the storms in 2008 and again in 2011 caused as much damage as they did. Plan B involves a trip to the Bemidji area to visit the Lost Forty.

St Croix State Park storm damage       © harrington

Of course, I reconfirmed that our Minnesota DNR still has a sense of humor. The picture below is of a "designated trout stream." It reminds me of some of Hemingway's scenes from Nick Adams fishing trip to the Big Two-Hearted River. I could figure out how to drift a worm downstream, but there's no way I could figure out how to cast any sort of fly in that jungle. I was standing on the road shoulder when I took the picture, so I suppose I might have been able to flyfish 20 or 25 feet or so, as long as I didn't hook a Chevy Impala or something on my backcast.

designated trout stream in St. Croix State Park     © harrington

There are some pretty summer wildflowers growing along the sides of the roads in lots of places in my neck of the woods. I'll see if I can identify them tomorrow or over the weekend. I just hope what I saw today doesn't become typical of what our forests will look like after a generation or two of global warming. Wendy Videlock writes of the forest as it once was. Hawks may now soar but, as it is today, there's no deep to the forest I visited.

Hawk

By Wendy Videlock

The forest is the only place

where green is green and blue is blue.

Walking the forest I have seen

most everything. I’ve seen a you

with yellow eyes and busted wing.

And deep in the forest, no one knew.

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