Kicking an addiction begins with this

Something, somewhere, might prove an 'alternative' energy source

If you are an alcoholic, and you probably are, the following will make sense to you. I say "probably" just from a statistical standpoint. Stats tell us that the proportion of alcoholics in society is at least as high as those who belong to a political party, be it Conservative or Liberal in Canada or Republican or Democrat in the U.S.
Then consider that alcohol is just one of many addictive chemicals out there, i.e. cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, prescription drugs and, of course, let's not forget about the most widespread one of all-- tobacco. Now add in addictive behaviours like eating, sex, video gaming and texting, even work. The point is humans are primed to be addicts of some sort and it is incredibly difficult for us to break the habit.
Oh by the way, how do you heat your home?
Let's get back to alcoholics who are the group with which I'm most familiar. Although everybody's situation is unique the reason people start overusing alcohol in the first place is usually because they find alcohol is the miracle drug that eases anxiety, social awkwardness, physical and emotional pain and bad memories. It makes boring lives exciting and hectic lives calming. Thank goodness for alcohol! But then eventually the same people find that nothing in their lives is going right. They can't hold a job. They are deep in debt. Nobody trusts them. All their relationships go bust. For a long time they just put it down to bad luck. They can't understand what is wrong. It certainly can't be alcohol because that is what made life worth living.
From my perspective the tide starts to shift toward sobriety when it occurs to the person that if he wants to change his life, he needs to do something differently although what to do is still a mystery.
Alcoholism-help groups put it this way: to continue doing things the same way and expect different results is the definition of insanity.
In an effort to do things differently the person might switch from liquor to beer or beer to wine or only drink on the weekends or only at the bar or only with friends, etc. If he is lucky it will gradually dawn on him that perhaps, just maybe, he shouldn't drink at all. He then faces the difficult task of learning to live life without what used to be his best friend.
Anyone who has gone down this road is a hero in my book. They have fought the toughest battle of all -- the one within -- and continue fighting it every day. They deserve all the respect in the world.
Their experiences offer a life lesson for every one of us: if we want our lives to change, we must start doing things differently. 
It seems simple enough, doesn't it? But remember when you are addicted to something, the answer to your problem might be the last thing you think of.

"This nation is addicted to oil"

What left-winged, granola-crunching, tree-hugger said this? It actually was President George W. Bush.
With these words President Bush hit the solution to climate change squarely on the head.
The world is facing the most dire of futures due to the consumption of fossil fuels like oil. Because we are oil addicts it doesn't seem possible that we can live our lives without it. Our belief is so strong that we ignore the options right in front of us. But if it occurs to us that we must do something differently then that is at least a start.
Oh, and about the question I posed about how you heat your home, how many people answered "with the sun?" That should have been almost everybody's answer. If you instead put down oil, natural gas, propane or electricity it is an indication of oil's addictive power over you. All the fossil fuels are just storage systems of the sun's energy from the past. Hydro electricity too is a result of solar radiation since it creates the evaporation that fills lakes and rivers that turn turbines. It is the sun's energy that also creates the wind to drive wind turbines. Wood heat is another product of the sun but it is a renewable resource.
Now I wonder what holds the answer to our oil addiction?

Slow-arriving spring welcomed by all

The first garter snake emerges at our hibernaculum

Here is some good news: the next 14 days are expected to be normal in temperature for this time of year, at least in Nolalu. Red Lake might not be as fortunate.
I saw the first garter snakes emerging from a hibernaculum on our property yesterday, April 27. That is about three weeks later than usual. The site had only been clear of snow for two or three days.

Bluebird weather makes snow history

Friday, April 20

Today, April 23

What a difference a few days make. A week ago today we were digging out from a foot of new snow; creeks and rivers were still frozen; there wasn't a spring bird to be found.
Today the temperature was 20 C (68 F); the snow is gone from yards and fields; the Whitefish River is roaring and I saw the following spring birds: junco, purple finch, grackle, sandhill crane, robin.

How late is spring? Check this report

Good news, sort of. A lake is finally ice-free -- in southeastern Minnesota!
Average ice-out for Lake Pepin is March 30 but this year it was April 20 or about three weeks late.
Here's the CBS news report:

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2018/04/20/lake-pepin-ice-out/

The melt here in Nolalu has really taken hold now.  There is water flowing on top of the ice in the Whitefish River; the snow level is back to where it was before the snowfall last weekend. The ground is melting in exposed areas. Water is flowing down driveways and ditches. I've seen a red-tail hawk and a merlin -- both migratory birds and heard what was probably a chipping sparrow. Oh yes, there was a garter snake inside the Nolalu Community Center -- all signs of spring.

Yeah, baby! Temps finally hit normal

Northwestern Ontario is getting its first double-digit C temperatures! We're looking at highs of 12 C (53 F) for the next four or five days. That is pretty much normal temperature for this time of year.
We should see significant melting of snow now and the beginning of the thaw for lakes and rivers.

Foot of snow falls on Nolalu area

Well, it is just what we didn't want. A foot of heavy snow fell on the southern and eastern regions of Northwestern Ontario over Sunday and Monday. This will delay ice-out on area lakes and rivers by a week at a time when almost nothing in the way of melting has even started.
Red Lake escaped the late-winter surprise.

A great way to shed light on the outdoors

Books that are specific to your area are a must

I've got books on everything from birds to mushrooms

Is there anything at your house that you would buy without batting an eye? I mean besides beer?
At our house no one ever hesitates to buy a book. This is mostly Brenda's influence. Her attitude is that the covers of books are doorways to knowledge, wisdom and entertainment. If there isn't room on the credit card for a book, then just try another credit card. We will find the money somewhere; it's that important. Brenda is a big library user but buys lots of books as well.
My weak spot are field guides that are specific to our region. And since I never know when I'm going to need them the library isn't a good solution. I need the book right now, in my pocket or on the shelf.
Over the years I've accumulated a great number of field guides on birds, flowers, trees, shrubs, fungi, lichens, amphibians, just to name a few, and they are among my most prized possessions. With these books I can learn the names of everything in the outdoors. More than that, I can begin to understand the role they play in the ecosystem, how they were used by First Nations and how precious they are to us right now.
I also find that books are far and away a better way to identify things than is the Internet. Case in point: years ago I wrote on my old blog about an enigma involving herring gulls at our remote outdoor business -- Bow Narrows Camp -- on Red Lake in Northwestern Ontario. See Gulls Catch Tiny Blue Flies, Then Migrate
Herring gulls live to eat fish. They are the birds that will sit on the water behind your boat just hoping you will toss away a dead minnow. They are also the ones that will swarm you when you are emptying fish guts on a rocky island, nearly landing on your head in the process. They are bonkers, crazy, nutsy for fish and never pass up an opportunity to get some more. We all know that, right? Well, not always.
Every year in late August I watched the big gulls flying erratically right over camp. They were obviously trying to catch something right out of mid-air, 100-200 feet off the ground. They would dip, dive and swerve like swallows. And I could never make out what they were catching until one year. I think it might have been quite windy and that is what forced their prey down lower. They were tiny bluish-white flies and I mean tiny, like one-quarter the size of my little finger nail. What were they and what was it about them that made the normally voracious fish-eating herring gulls spend so much energy catching them?
I must have wasted dozens of hours scouring the Internet for an answer. I also asked in the blog post if anyone had any ideas. No one responded.

It has "bugged" me all these years that I couldn't solve the riddle.
Then this spring Brenda and I stopped at Tettegouche State Park on Hwy 61, north of Duluth. This place is my favourite source for the North Woods Naturalist Series field guides that are just about the Northern States and Northwestern Ontario. I had thought I already owned every book this company has published when my eyes spotted two new ones on the shelves: Insects of the North Woods and also Ferns and Allies of the North Woods. Jackpot!
I read field guides like other people read novels, cover to cover. I was almost finished the Insects book when I came upon the chapter entitled Fruit Flies. "Fruit flies!" I almost yelled out loud. "Fruit flies!" Why didn't I think of that before? Small flies that are poor fliers and therefore easy to catch.
Sure enough, there among five wild fruit flies found in this region is the exact bug I photographed up at camp. It is called, simply, Fruit Fly, or in scientific language: Paroxnya albiceps.
The guide says P. albiceps feeds on asters in late August and into September. Asters are a common flower around the yard at camp.
They must be intensely nutritious, perhaps all fruit flies are. When the herring gulls are feeding on the flies I could pass right beneath them with pails of fish guts and not one of the birds was interested.
After feasting on the fruit flies for a few days, the gulls apparently got the fuel they needed to migrate as they then took off, not to be seen again until the next spring.

Northwestern Ontario ice-out could be late

It is nearly mid-April now and at our home in Nolalu we should be hearing the roar of the Whitefish River, about a mile away. How streams get their designations is a mystery. The Whitefish "River" would just be a creek in many other places. The only time it is the least bit navigable is normally right now when the spring melt sends all of the winter's precipitation down a myriad of rivulets that dump into the river. A month later you can walk down the river in most places, jumping from rock to rock and never get your feet wet.
Today the Whitefish looks just like it did all winter -- frozen from one side to the other with no visible signs of flowing water.
Even though we have lost at least half our snow, none of it seems to have gone to runoff. The ditches are completely dry. The snow has just evaporated in the stronger-than-normal winds.
Temperatures should be +10 C in the days and around 0 C at night. Instead we are just starting to see the first hours of above-freezing with miserly temperatures of +1 or 2 C. At night the mercury plummets to -15 C. The nighttime temperatures are not unlike those of winter.
The reason for all of this is climate change that has sent Arctic temperatures soaring and forced cold air farther south. The result has been Ohio-like winter temperatures at the top of the world and Arctic temperatures in places like Ontario, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
There is about four feet of ice on the lakes everywhere in Northwestern Ontario. That is about as thick as it ever gets. The ice itself acts as insulation that prevents it from freezing deeper. It is only about a month before the opening of fishing season, May 19. Can four feet of ice thaw in just one month?
If fact it can, if the temperatures got back to normal right away but according to the weather forecasts, normal temperatures are at least a couple of weeks away.
A good picture of what is normal can be found by going to The Weather Network Canada
Find the locality you are interested in and click on the 14-Day Forecast. At the bottom will be a chart showing a line for the normal highs and lows.
For places like Red Lake, keep in mind that the normal ice-out date is May 8 with a normal variability of a week before and a week after that date. Then keep in mind that there is about a foot more ice this winter than normal so it will take higher than normal temperatures to melt it on time.
As I said earlier, we have seen in the past four feet of ice melt in a month but that was when the springtime temps were pretty normal for this time of year. That has not been the case so far nor is it expected to change for at least a couple of weeks.
On the positive side, lots of the snow has evaporated and there haven't been recent accumulations of new snow. Every new snowfall sets back the ice-out by about a week. Also the ice itself is what we call blue ice. It is the strongest type but because of its bluish colour melts more rapidly when exposed to sunlight than white ice that reflects the sun rays.
When I put all the factors together my best guess right now is that ice-out is going to be late. For places like Red Lake that could put it around May 19. Nolalu and Thunder Bay areas are usually a week earlier.

The Wolf and I

"We're a lot alike, you and me," he said and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I had thought I was completely alone but here was a wolf right at the side of my bench.
"Jeez, have a heart," I gasped. "You shouldn't sneak up on a guy like that!"
The wolf shuffled a step or two away.
"Well, just for the record, I was here first. You nearly sat on me."
"Now that would have been embarrassing," I said. "What are you doing here?"
"Watching to see if any deer come to eat the branches you piled, same as you."
We both stared at the brush pile for a few minutes. There wasn't a deer to be seen.
"We're also about the same age," the wolf continued. "I'm 10."
"Well, I'm 65," I said and was cut short by the wolf.
"That's 10 in wolf years."
I took a close look at him then. His muzzle was indeed gray and he had silver tips to the hair all over his coat.
"And we're both retired," he added.
"Wolves retire?" I was surprised.
"Of course we do, in a way." He smiled then. He was missing all but two teeth, one on the top and an opposing one on the bottom.
"Moose hoof," he said. "Couple of years ago."
The old canine explained he now mostly existed on road-kill. No worries about starvation though. There were enough dead deer along the highways to feed dozens of retired wolves. Mostly he hung around in the vicinity of our property. He had been here all his life and liked the place.
"You know I could have killed you a dozen times over those years," I said.
"I could say the same thing," said the wolf.
Now we both smiled. I liked him. Maybe we really were alike.
"And we both eat deer," he added.
"Well, I do eat other things, vegetables for instance," I said as I watched the pile.
"Never understood that. Deer are vegetarians so when you eat them you get vegetables too. They are like the perfect food, man."
I could tell he was serious so I didn't laugh.
I opined that it was unlikely a deer would walk up to the pile with the two of us sitting just a dozen yards away. I wasn't hunting, of course. I just wanted to see them. The wolf said it was the same for him. He would chase them for a ways, for the fun of it, he said, but he couldn't kill a deer with just two teeth. Anyway, it was good exercise, he added.
The wolf turned to look at me.
"Have you seen Junior, the wolf who took over the pack after I left?"
I had lots of trail camera photos of him, I said.
"Dumber than a stump. I mean the kid couldn't outwit a stupid clam."
He was silent for a minute, before adding, "I shouldn't talk that way. I apologize for that last remark."
Then, in a loud voice aimed at the woods, "I apologize to clams everywhere!"
We both laughed until we cried.
"I told him that if he would just pay attention to his physics, he and the pack would only need to get a deer every few days instead of every night. They run around all night like a bunch of partridge with their heads bit off, howling and yelping like jackasses in heat. 'Use your head once in awhile,' I told him. 'Think of the energy you're expending.'"
Wolves know about physics? I wondered.
"Certainly we do," said the old wolf. "If you run and run and run your mouth will get fizzy and next you'll upchuck last night's icky supper."
It took me a moment. "Oh! I get it," I said. "Fizz-icks."
"That's what I said," said the wolf.
"I told him, just put a couple of wolves on stand and have a couple others drive the deer to them."
That's the way we humans do it, I said.
"That's the way anyone with half a brain hunts, " said the wolf. "Anyway, Junior told me that at least he was still able to run all night. 'Not like you, Grandpa,' he said."
"He actually called you Grandpa?" I asked. "I'm surprised you didn't cut him down to size."
"Well, I wasn't going to get in a pissing match with him, my chompers being what they are. Junior may be stupid but he's also mean-stupid."
I asked the wolf where he learned to speak English.
"Never did," he said.
Then how are we carrying on a conversation, I asked.
"It's you," he said. "You're speaking wolf. I wouldn't be surprised if you picked it up listening to Junior and his gang singing their lungs out every night. Singing is a good way to learn a new language."
He was probably right.
A raven flew overhead and let out a couple of squawks. The wolf watched it intently.
I started to say, "Anyway, my ma'iingen friend...'
The wolf cut me off. "You're starting to drift," he said. "You're switching to Ojibwe for some reason, and before you go there I don't speak that either. In fact, I only know one word in it, ma'iingen, Ojibwe for wolf. We all know that one!"
Two more ravens now flew over in the same direction as the first, making gurgling sounds.
The wolf jumped up.
"Well, it's time to go chew some real fat. A furnace oil truck just clobbered a deer over on the sideroad!"
He trotted off a few yards, then stopped and looked back.
"I may not speak English or Ojibwe but I'm fluent in Raven."
He smiled his near-toothless smile.
"See you next time," he said, then added, "Bro'!"
I waved at his tail disappearing into the bush.

Lunch time

The deer are especially hungry at this time of year

Twenty minutes after I finished piling the limbs of birch trees I had cut down for firewood my trail camera recorded these four deer stepping up to browse on the branch tips.
If the dog isn't with me while I'm cutting I can usually spot the deer standing around in anticipation of their feast. They pretty much come running as soon as they hear the chainsaw.

Ever get the feeling you're being watched?