End of Summer and Early Fall

Wow long time no post! Work over the past month has been real good. Our first project was working in the St Croix State Forest clearing out horse trails that were made impassable by a severe blowdown event. A windstorm with very high speed straight line winds dropped trees everywhere. This made for some very interesting cutting as blown over trees are highly unpredictable.

Blowdown Damage. Note the all the bent over and snapped off trees especially in the background

A section of trail we were clearing

Blowdown

Looking down the ridge, the far ridge was spared from the damage

Full moon in the morning

Christy tackling a big red pine

Me cutting another section of the same pine

I took this picture from about 20 feet above on a deadfall I climbed

Though pictures do the blowdown site some justice I think that the videos I took capture it much better. The first video below is a tour of our work site.

This next video gives a panorama view.

and another pan

And lastly a video showing some of the cutting work.

Overall this was a very memorable project as the work was challenging and the scenery was otherworldly.  It's really incredible the destructive power which nature can have.

Our next project, which ended up lasting a whole month, was right near Bemidji on the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway. The byway stretches from Highway 2 near Cass Lake to Blackduck, MN.  We were working mostly near Pennington, MN. The byway is named after Minnesota's state flower, the Showy Lady Slipper. The highway is scheduled to be paved and widened so the roadside will be destroyed from the road work. Since there is a very high concentration of the flowers on the roadside the Lady Slipper Scenic Byway association has received a grant to relocate these flowers to a safe place then put them back after the construction is done. So we spent the month digging up these flowers and relocating them to a safe holding area. These are very beautiful flowers as can be seen from these photos below.

Closeup of the flower (courtesy of Charles Pierce)

A patch of Showy Lady Slippers (courtesy of wikipedia)

During our project the flowers were already past their blooming phase so we had to identify them by the leaves only.

Jeff and I listening to our project host

Gotta love the high visibility vests!

A few lady slipper clumps

Jeff and Jarret digging up a lady slipper clump

Fully loaded trailer with Lady Slippers

Moving a clump to the holding pen

Getting a hole ready for the transplant

A completed pen

another pen

I also have a few videos of the project. Again I think these do more justice to what we were doing than the pictures. The first one here shows the digging and loading process.

This next one gives a tour of our holding area.

This overall was a good project. It felt good to know that we were making a difference in saving these flowers.

Outside of work my life has been great as well.  I've been really enjoying the end of summer and the beginning of fall by getting outside as much as possible. Lately trail running has been my go to activity. I'm really looking forward to the spectacular fall colors in the Northwoods so hopefully in one of my next posts I will have some great pictures of that.

 I also had some really nice times with my girlfriend. I made a trip out to NYC to visit her which was really nice. A highlight of that trip was getting to tour central park with her. Central Park is really amazing in that it is a (relatively) huge green space within the biggest and one of the most densely populated cities in the USA.

I love the contrast of the natural beauty with the urban scenery

Erika and I in Central Park

Lot's of people were out on the water paddling around with rowboats.

Another of Erika and I earlier in the day before our walk around Central Park

The trip was really nice and I look forward to going again soon! Other than that I have really failed at taking pictures lately. With working the same project for a month and spending a lot of time moving quickly through the woods I haven't took that many pictures. Stay tuned though as the fall colors should be really starting soon!