Layers upon layers upon ...

In the interest of full disclosure, I confess to being back on a bioregional binge. A few days ago I began rereading Kirkpatrick Sale's Dwellers in the Land. Before that there were encounters with some intriguing resources via Plantmaps. Even when enlarged, it's challenging to determine specifically where our property lies, because it's near the edge(s) of:

• USDA hardiness zones 4a and 4b


• St. Croix Outwash Plain and McGrath Till Plain and Drumlins (Ecoregions)


• Close to the border between Deciduous and Coniferous Forest biomes


• Near the divide between the Laurentian Mixed Forest and the Eastern Broadleaf Forest (Ecological Provinces)
• Near the divide between Western Superior Uplands and Minnesota and NE Iowa Morainal (Ecological Sections)


• Near the divide between the Anoka Sand Plain and the Mille Lacs Uplands (Ecological Subsections)

Geology of Minnesota, Stillwater Region

Photo by J. Harrington

Many of these borders / boundaries will shift over the next decades or century as climate weirding affects precipitation and climate patterns. What is unlikely to change is that the property will remain within the:

• Sunrise River Watershed of the


• Lower St. Croix River Watershed of the


• Upper Mississippi Watershed

All of which is before we begin to consider soils, political and related boundaries, foodsheds and other cultural geography. This is part of why Dwellers in the Land is being read again. The more I learn about the concept of bioregions and its application, the more I feel like good old Winnie, a bear of very little brains. But I'm also becoming more and more convinced that we need a broader understanding and use of bioregions if we want to have a fulfilling life for our remaining years and the same for our descendants.

Map

Linda Hogan

This is the world
so vast and lonely
without end, with mountains
named for men
who brought hunger
from other lands,
and fear
of the thick, dark forest of trees
that held each other up,
knowing fire dreamed of swallowing them
and spoke an older tongue,
and the tongue of the nation of wolves
was the wind around them. 
Even ice was not silent.
It cried its broken self
back to warmth.
But they called it
ice, wolf, forest of sticks,
as if words would make it something 
they could hold in gloved hands,
open, plot a way
and follow.

This is the map of the forsaken world.
This is the world without end
where forests have been cut away from their trees.
These are the lines wolf could not pass over.
This is what I know from science:
that a grain of dust dwells at the center
of every flake of snow,
that ice can have its way with land,
that wolves live inside a circle
of their own beginning. 
This is what I know from blood: 
the first language is not our own.

There are names each thing has for itself,
and beneath us the other order already moves.
It is burning.
It is dreaming.
It is waking up.

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Is MNDNR's role on invasive species just information and enforcement?

Have you read the recent article about a new invasive species that threatens Minnesota's forests? ("University of Minnesota botanist discovers feared invasive Japanese stiltgrass in Wisconsin") It appeared shortly after I took some pictures of nearby wild cucumber and Joe Pye weed and some other local wild flowers. On the way home, I noticed some purple / lavender streaks in the rushes along the Sunrise River in Carlos Avery Wildlife Management Area South  of County Road 36. I fear the streaks may be made by sizable stands of purple loosestrife.

is that a purple loosestrife stripe?

Photo by J. Harrington

I've noticed over the course of a number of internet searches, that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources [MnDNR] provides lots of information to Minnesotans to help us manage invasive species, but I've yet to find a description of their own invasive species management programs for state parks, wildlife management areas and similar public properties for which DNR is responsible. And yet, since we live at the edge of a large wildlife management area, and near several state parks and Scientific and Natural Areas, we frequently see stands of buckthorn and loosestrife(?). According to one of DNR's web pages

Common buckthorn and glossy are listed as Restricted noxious weeds (link is external) in Minnesota. It is illegal to import, sell, or transport buckthorn in Minnesota.

But, apparently, there is no requirement to eradicate it although a number of responsible conservation organizations do organize buckthorn removal activities.

Perhaps it's just me but I find it more than mildly annoying and hypocritical that DNR' s aquatic invasive species [AIS] program is focused on enforcement of the prohibition of transporting such species, but DNR does not seem to feel obligated to remove AIS, or terrestrial invasive species, from their own properties. As long as major reservoirs of invasive species exist in Minnesota, we'll constantly be playing catch up and our efforts to manage invasive species are likely to be further hindered by the effects of climate breakdown.

Japanese Knotweed Killers 

By Jan Wrede

We smote and killed.

No broken needle.

Some chemical remains.

Needle too large for small stalks.

Injector refill problematic.

 

Victim mortally wounded.

Time for mercy

And finishing spray?

When is the coup de gras?

Killers are ready

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Happy Birthday, Aldo!

Today is the 132nd anniversary of the birth of Aldo Leopold. We've visited the Aldo Leopold Center and, closer to our hearts, the Leopold "shack" a couple of times in the past few years. We don't remember how old we were when we first read A Sand County Almanac, probably during our college years or just before or after. We've reread it many times since. Our preferred edition, published by the Oxford University Press, includes Essays on Conservation and photographs by Michale Sewell.

main building, Aldo Leopold Center

Photo by J. Harrington

Aldo Leopold, Ian McHarg, and Donella Meadows are among those who have been major shapers of our perspective on the relationship among humans and nature. Throw in some Gene Hill, Frank Woolner, and John Gierach and we've largely covered the waterfront. Our parents took the family on outdoor day trips but were not really into camping, fishing or hunting. We think our early exposure to pony rides, swimming, and a few similar excursions got us started and, like Topsy, we "just growed."

"The Leopold Shack"

Photo by J. Harrington

Almost all of the close friends we've had over the years have been those with whom we've fished, or hunted, or both. Much of our professional career focused on environmental protection, restoration, and balancing the built environment with the natural one. Those, and related factors, may well explain why we've never been willing to accept a trade-off between jobs and the environment. Done properly, we can have both, just not necessarily in exactly the same place. We learned a lot from Aldo but we're still trying to learn to think like a mountain.

Above Pate Valley

By Gary Snyder

We finished clearing the last

Section of trail by noon,

High on the ridge-side

Two thousand feet above the creek

Reached the pass, went on

Beyond the white pine groves,

Granite shoulders, to a small

Green meadow watered by the snow,

Edged with Aspen—sun

Straight high and blazing

But the air was cool.

Ate a cold fried trout in the

Trembling shadows. I spied

A glitter, and found a flake

Black volcanic glass—obsidian—

By a flower. Hands and knees

Pushing the Bear grass, thousands

Of arrowhead leavings over a

Hundred yards. Not one good

Head, just razor flakes

On a hill snowed all but summer,

A land of fat summer deer,

They came to camp. On their

Own trails. I followed my own

Trail here. Picked up the cold-drill,

Pick, singlejack, and sack

Of dynamite.

Ten thousand years.

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A house divided against itself ...

Very early this morning I walked my dog through fog and temperatures reminiscent of this time of year on the southern Massachusetts coast, between Green Harbor and Duxbury Bay, just north of Plymouth. Back East the weather we're having in Minnesota this week is just seasonable along the coast. Here it's above average, although last year at this time was very much like now. The photo shows a wetland along the northern edge of William O'Brien state park in December 2014. No aroma of the salt marsh, but otherwise a reasonable facsimile of my "home" territory in Massachusetts. The weather and the Star Tribune's series have added to my interest in the similarities and differences between the Minnesota of my arrival and today's Minnesota. Those, and things like it, continue to fire my desire to understand My Minnesota in the New England terms I still find most native.

wetland near William O'Brien state park, December 2014

Photo by J. Harrington

If you believe in coincidences, you might believe that the concurrent publication of the Star Tribune's three-part series on Minnesota’s Growing Divide: Urban and rural areas are splitting apart... with Politico's publication on the nation's political geography is a coincidence. It may be, but I've grown very skeptical of coincidence. What's fascinating is that Politico is asserting that "our most abiding fissures are not urban versus rural, “North” against “South” or the coasts against the interior. Rather, they are between nearly a dozen dominant regional cultures..." at the same time the Star Tribune series finds a "functional alliance between city and country folk is at the core of Minnesota’s success story."

Politico includes Minnesota and New England in what they refer to as "Yankeedom." Having lived for extended periods in both New England and Minnesota, i've found the culture in each place to be more dissimilar than similar. As a budding bioregionalist, I'm looking forward to seeing what, if anything, the Star Tribune has to say about Minnesota's "common goals" and what else Minnesotans have in common. It was almost two years ago, in February 2014, that My Minnesota raised the question of whether Minnesota has a cultural identity. I'm delighted to see others are finding value in both the question and potential answers. At a local, bioregional, state and multi-state scale, we as a people need to place more emphasis on what we have in common than on what we may disagree. We must get better at putting planet before profits and people before politics. New England seems to have found ways to do that. They're smaller, geographically, less unified politically, have about three times the population and, on a per capita basis, are a little more economically successful than Minnesota. What bearing does that information have on Minnesota's common goals? Do you remember the essay fundamentals of "compare and contrast?"

basic source: Wikipedia

An Identity Crisis

By Garry Gottfriedson 

I certainly know who I am . . .

I can get away with being politically incorrect.

I am the ambassador to First Nations’ poetic expressions

& as Kinsella pompously put it straight

“I have the license to do so.”

what a magical way to escape tyranny!

just like Trudeau & Chrétien hiding beneath cowboy hats

nevertheless & back to the point,

call me cowboy

call me First Nations

call me aboriginal

call me native

call me chug

call me skin

if you must,

but never call me Indian.

I call myself that!

& if you feel guilty when I say so,

this is not about postcolonial rhetoric

it is about an identity crisis

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Happy Labor Day to My Minnesota's Superior readers

Do you suppose it's true that the 1% don't understand what Labor Day is all about because they're so busy working 24 x 7 x 365 creating Work Jobs for the rest of us? They've never had a hot dog, or brat or marched in a small town parade? Poor them! They probably aren't huge fans of one of my favorites, who has an interview in Saturday's issue of the guardian.

To help celebrate our year's worth of labor, and because The Daughter Person wanted us elsewhere while she and her bridesmaids had a bachelorette party, the Better Half and I took an overnight trip to Port Wing, WI. Up until recently, my experiences with beaches on Lake Superior had been limited to the cobblestone strands along Minnesota's North Shore. Then I visited the sand spit that runs out from Duluth. Now I've been to sandy beaches along Wisconsin's North Shore, which is also Superior's South Shore. They have lots of sand, with interesting rock outcrops in some places (and a few cobblestones in others).

Port Wing beach and boreal forest

Photo by J. Harrington

We stayed at a B&B that I can recommend if you want peace and quiet, a wonderful breakfast and, if you want, convivial conversation. Check out Larson Creek Farm if you've a desire or need to head in the direction of Port Wing. Coming back we took a different route and were surprised (at least I was) to find that there is a notable difference in topography within 25 or 50 miles east to west. Driving on the "blue highways," looking at forests, fields and swamps, both alder and tamarack, heightened my awareness of why Native Americans and European explorers traveled so much by canoe and of how much work much have gone into turning some of the forests into the fields and pastures we drove by. Settlers didn't have 8-wheel-drive tractors to pull stumps. That was back and heart-breaking work.

As a follow up to our trip and my new learnings about Superior, I discovered that Lorine Niedecker has a book by the title of Lake Superior. In lieu of a poem today, why don't you check the linked review. It looks interesting and it's too early in the season for Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

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Minnesota's healthy ecosystem?

As I've been traveling Minnesota's blue highways this year and last, taking more photos of "wild flowers" than ever before, I've noticed that many of the most conspicuous clusters, plots, tracts and beds of wild flowers are listed as invasive species. I've been aware of the issues of purple loosestrife for some time. Now, I find that the attractive orange flowers over many of the roadsides in St. Croix State Park are orange hawkweed.

orange hawkweed, an invasive plant       © harrington

Along the roadside bordering Wild River State Park's western boundary are clusters of Ox-eye daisies (white/yellow) with some (yellow) invasive birds-foot trefoil mixed in. Both are listed as invasive.

Ox-eye daisies(?) and birds-foot trefoil, invasive plants      © harrington

My concerns don't focus on whether it might be preferable to avoid  invasive species, I'm all for intact native ecosystems. I'm wondering if these widespread invasive wildflower outbreaks might actually serve as forage for our honeybee and butterfly populations. I'm also really curious when and if land managers will engage more in a holistic approach to management, rather than relying on remedial controlled burns, herbicides or mowing after the beachheads have been established. Or is that a job for our politicians? The green building sector, both construction and operations, is increasingly utilizing Integrated Pest Management. Some reference works can be found online, with much of the focus on controlling insect pests more than invasives. Maybe we need to take some lessons from the military about counter-insurgency? I think that, over the next generation or two, we're going to have our hands full adapting to climate change and, probably, peak oil and heaven knows what else. The more we can improve our basic land and water management abilities, the less we have to consider spending on remedial activities. Kind of like the way preventive medicine and our health system are supposed to work.

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Prairie and pines

Yesterday, early morning, we had clear skies, a waning crescent moon and a bright, shiny Venus right next to it just before sunrise. What I didn't have was my camera on a tripod, so all my shots are streaky due to the amount of time the shutter was open, even though I bumped the ISO up to 1600. This morning, I had my camera on a tripod and very cloudy skies. Sigh. At least it hasn't rained (or snowed) yet today.

back yard prairie, flowers and grass seed heads       © harrington

If this were a forest, the flowers would be understory. I'm not sure if the same terminology applies to grasses and prairies. The different forms the seed heads from different grass species are taking is amazing and, to me, delightful. I'm also in awe that, on the same small (relatively) patch on Minnesota, we have prairie and pines within shouting distance (or less) of each other.

pine trees next to (in?) the prairie           © harrington

Is Karen An-hwei Lee trying to convince us pines and grass are mirror images of each other?

Dream of Ink Brush Calligraphy

By Karen An-hwei Lee

In prayer:

quiet opening,

my artery is a thin    

shadow on paper—

margin of long grass,

ruderal hair, sister to this

not yet part of our bodies

your lyric corpus of seed

in rough drafts of pine ash,

chaogao or grass calligraphy  

in rough drafts of pine ash—

your lyric corpus of seed

not yet part of our bodies:

ruderal hair, sister to this  

margin of long grass,

shadow on paper,

my artery is a thin

quiet opening

in prayer.

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A brighter future

© harrington

Election day was damp, drizzling and/or snowy, depending on where you were in My Minnesota. The day after election day dawned bright and sunny, no matter the cloud cover (except maybe around the 6th Congressional District). Perhaps now we can make progress overcoming our cultural reticence (janteloven according to LandOf) about promoting our local treasures. As the saying goes "it ain't bragging if you've done it" (or something like that). My Minnesota has four plus seasons, four ecosystems, numerous biomes, and a built environment that's getting smarter by the year.