New sights.

Although the walking trail I showed you last (part of Iron Horse Trail) is closer to my home, it was nice to be surrounded by more natural settings in the biggest park in town, Parc Lagasse Park (hehehehe... park twice still makes me smile). The park sits along the shore line of Therien Lake, a huge lake bordering the southeast side of town. It's really nice, they have a long boardwalk and bridges with playgrounds, park, bathrooms, etc on the north side and edge of lake (lots of cat-tails) and of course lake on the south side. I thought this was very cool, that they are trying to protect the edge of the lake - the native vegetation there can help protect water quality, prevent flooding, and provide fish and wildlife habitat. So very cool. They even have a couple of observation decks leading out on the lake, and pictures/info on the birds you may see (remind you of any place?). And when I was on the park side, I saw something really interesting...

the trees! How weird, a big trunk in the middle and then a whole bunch of little ones growing all around it... and growing so much... well, up! I'm going to have to check up on what that's all about :)

trails away :)

I walked the part of the Iron Horse Trail through St. Paul (part of Trans Canada Trail) and I thought I would show you it. It's multi-use so there is a walking path and a motorized vehicle path (ATV's, quads, snowmobiles, etc.)next to it. On the north side of the trail (right) is open country and industrial land (at the far end, they have parks and 10 soccer fields), and on the south side of the trail (left) is the town of St. Paul (residential, commercial and parkland). In the picture, the clump of green boxes is the recycling centre where you can drop off all your recyclables. Pretty interesting, eh? It is a real mix of urban, natural and industrial places.

It's snowing!

It's snowing here in St. Paul, big white heavy and wet snow, perfect for building snowmen and even I couldn't resist a litte snowball fight! I'm hoping this snow lasts even though it's slippery. Why do I want it to stick around? because it makes it so much easeir to find animal tracks! Speaking of, I will be home in Red Deer for Christmas so I am looking forward to checking out the crossing paths Diane pointed out earlier :) I'll let you know if I find anything.

time to move again :)

I must have been a caribou or something in my past life - your northern correspondant is moving again. Not to the south where it is warmer, where the mass of Canadian Geese I saw around a little pond in a farmer's field will be headed. I will remain north and head almost straight west to St. Paul for November 1st. It will be good to be back in Alberta. I look forward to sharing my northern nature experiences with you from my new home.

Fall almost already!

Wow just another week until it is fall. My backyard is getting ready as you can see in the pictures.

I have a lot of nature in my backyard - One thing about not living in the town (I live on the reserve right beside town), we don't have to cut our grass except right around the trailer, which is great. I always liked the idea of just letting things grow or maybe I'm just lazy :) but I love that I just have to take a few steps out of my house and I am surrounded by more than just grass and dandelions. I get to see the busy bee getting the last bits of pollen from the aster (and take pictures of it),and see all the damselflies and dragonflies enjoying the last warm days of the early fall. A big brown dragonfly buzzed past me while I was taking the above pictures. I'm told Meadow Lake was built on swamp land, and the Meadow River is just over a block away so we get quite a few of the wetland species over here. I see some of the ducks have already left the river. And trees surround my place on three sides so I'm looking forward to seeing the true yellow, orange, and red colours of the trees shine through. While everything else is getting ready for winter, I guess I should too, like cleaning my bird feeder as suggested in Kerry Wood Nature Centre's newsletter. I want to provide some extra energy for those busy birds. Hope you are enjoying the nature around you. I look back and see it is almost a year since my last post, wow time has flown. I am in Meadow Lake for another year so I will try to represent the nature of the north a little bit better here :)

A New Tree To Me

Hello to all... living now in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, I found a new tree to learn about. In the Gaetz Lake Sanctuary, there are a lot of white spruce, balsam poplar and aspen poplar trees. I took a walk through the Alcott Creek Demonstration Forest here, and while they have many spruce and aspen (not so much balsam), there were also many jack pine trees. In the picture, the jack pine are all the yellowish green trees, and the tall spruce are in the back, and if you look carefully there are some naked aspen trees. This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago.. if I took it now, it would look much more white. Yes, we do have snow here, hope Red Deer gets some soon, I'm really enjoying it up here. Anyways, back to the jack pine tree, I'm rather new to it, so if anyone has some stories or facts about it, feel free to post a comment or two :)

Backyard snowshoe

Hello from up North! We are finally getting a good whack of snow so I could enjoy one of my favorite pastimes... snowshoeing! Like anything, it's important you get them on correctly. There's nothing that creates more misery when your snowshoes keep falling off (like my first time). I figured out that my shoe is too small or that the binding is too big but I managed a short term fix of stuffing a glove between the shoe and the binding. :) It was a beautiful day for a snowy romp, the sun shining, not a cloud in the sky. And lots of deep snow. At first, I experienced the first impressions that I have seen with many beginners, that little disappointment that you don't stay right on top of the snow and do sink quite a bit. Seems silly to doubt it, I know but it's like driving.. when you're driving on the highway and after awhile it doesn't seem like you are driving that fast anymore (til you slow down anyways).. well, it's the same with snowshoeing, after awhile it doesn't seem like you're staying that much on top of the snow (until you try it without them).And being me, I had to make sure.

I took a picture of my snowshoe track,as you can see. The hole beside it was a step I had taken without the snowshoe. The hole is at least one hand deeper than my snowshoe track. It was proof that my snowshoes really were helping me stay on top of the snow. I quite happily snowshoed all over the back yard and along the school yard after that, it was great. Now I just have to get bigger shoes (some boots maybe) and I can head into the forest :) and find the smaller version of my tracks (the snowshoe hare's tracks)!

A looooooonnnnggg walk somewhere by Fox Lake

Snowmobiles. Some people like them, some don't. I followed a trail through the forest a couple of days made ago by them. The trail was wide enough for two snowmobiles side by side heading into the forest. I thought that it would lead back to Fox Lake turning back to the left. However after a very long walk, and the sun going down, I gave up trying to find Fox Lake by continuing the trail and decided to back track. I was thankful for the wide trail on the way back as it made it easier to tell which way was home in the dark. And I knew it would be a long walk back, I was hoping a snowmobile would stop by. But no luck. I saw lights and heard them in the distance. One was even coming my direction but then turned off into the forest. My legs were so sore the next day (turned out to be a 6-7 hour walk). So I still don't know how I feel about snowmobiles. I saw lots of tracks across the trail, even saw two critters at different instances scurry across from one side to the other. The first I think was a red squirrel as the tracks led from tree on side to a tree on the other but it was pretty far away so hard to say. Tracks looked squirrelish but not very identifiable. The second critter that scurried across was closer, a small brown plump little thing that climbed up little ledge of trail back into a hole under the snow. A shrew maybe? I saw mouse tracks further down the track leading from a tunnel to another tunnel. I saw a pair of pine grosbeaks, both male - they were so red, nice against the green - I should've known I wasn't getting that close to Fox Lake by the trees... it's pretty much all aspen around where I live, but this forest had quite the number of spruce trees amongst the aspen. On my way home, there was some big creature close by the trail too. I didn't get to see it, but I heard it - I must have scared it (it sure scared me, as hear this huge thrash right beside me, something running away knocking branches full of snow right by me). And it was too dark to look for tracks. I'm sure it is used to the few strange big things announcing itself from long off such as the noisy, bright snowmobiles. It was an experience, that's for sure :) A beautiful peaceful walk (I didn't see or hear any snowmobiles until after I wanted to see one, three quarters of the way back home so I really did get to enjoy a beautiful peaceful walk with safety from not getting lost by staying on the trail). Hopefully though, as suggested by my aching muscles, my next adventure is a bit shorter :)

Frozen pay offs

Well I got a little lost in Fox Lake so my one hour walk turned into a four hour walk! Although frozen, I got to seem some really neat things... One of them was snow prints! Given the pairs of tracks, their size, and how far north we are, I am guessing it is the tracks of the least or short-tailed weasel - that's my best guess anyways. Sometimes snow can make identification hard because you can't see individual tracks very well. Then I saw a pine grosbeak, you could really see the red when it flew away and such a pretty song. Then I saw the most bizarre thing.. pink/red aspen trees. It looked like a big shaker from the sky had poured red powder on the trees. At closer inspection it was red flecks all over the bark but didn't stick out or anything, really flat lichen, maybe?? I'm really not sure. And it was just the one block of trees. It reminded me of the pink bellies of fish... interesting.. the rest of the aspen trees here as I mentioned before look really white so the red really stands out. Another interesting thing I saw was a fence I saw (there aren't very many of them around here, but this one outlines the airfield and the posts were made of aspen trees, makes sense seeming there are so many aspen trees, just interesting instead of seeing smooth wood posts, seeing chunks of tree with wire in between.. I almost wondered if they were actually rooted trees just cut off at such and such a height.

the birds and the trees

You would think there would be snow up here... not yet! But the ground in the forest here is so soft. I looked under my feet to see why. You may remember how when leaves fall, they form a leaf litter layer with later snow on top that invertebrates, small rodents and plants use to survive the winter. Well the leaf litter layer is 10 cm thick here! Years of accumulation. I saw some small birds too, exciting for me since I have seen little else besides a crow and a magpie. They were small and way up in a tree so difficult to identify but I think they were snow buntings, light yellow underneath, white wing patches, darker on top... it was so nice to see cute little birds again.. I miss seeing chickadees everywhere. I'll keep my eyes out for more and keep you posted.

The wilds of Fox Lake

I saw my first wild animal today... a mid sized white moth, well at least its feathery antennae told me it was a moth, not sure what kind though. But I haven't had a good chance to explore as just settling in.. for those of you who don't know, I have moved to Fox Lake, a reserve way up north east of High Level and Fort Vermillion, to the west of Wood Buffalo National Park. I am honored that I will get to share my northern nature experiences with you. I didn't have a camera with me, and the moth was flying a little funny probably from the cold or being near the end of its life. We haven't had any snow up here yet but it is getting cold.. no rain either so it is pretty dry, very yellow place right now and dusty.. lots of dust.. maybe all the wildlife are hiding under it :) I'll get a good days worth of exploring in and let you know.