the sight of the landscape cloaked in fresh snow is an affirming sight…in january.  now however, it seems an unnecessary intrusion, like the traffic cop who holds up traffic just because he knows he can.

winter, i cast thee out because you know what?  i don’t need you any more. 

oh and by the way, it’s mr. 1000 k to you. 

given the storm and its seasonal detour, i spent most of sunday watching woodpeckers jockey around the suet cakes. of course, having suet cakes out now is always a bit of a risk because the bears will soon be looking for a quick snack…or for the bear biologist that raised them by hand and gave them new age or patriot names like “spirit” and “freedom”….(owlman shakes his head, wondering “why didn’t i think of that?”).

when the storm passed and the landscape began to (again) lose its (charlie) sheen of white, i prepared for another survey last night.  there i was, all amped and ready to go when i decided….”i don’t think i want to survey tonight.”  so i didn’t.

watched hockey and then “heavy”.

then i got hungry so i started to eat because i am pretty certain my calling is to be morbidly obese.  in fact, my last visit to the clinic for a rhino virus follow-up, had me on the scale and the nurse scanning her bmi chart and stating, matter-of-factly…”wow owlman, you are obese.” 

but like any fat person, i feel like a ballerina inside.

now, when i go to the clinic, i don’t step on the scale and i don’t allow anyone but a real doctor to perform a digital rectal exam on me.

clinics scare me.

tonight i will be out on the back roads again, trying to survey along a major river where, in a week or so, the roar of springmelt will be overwhelming and owl song will be heard by the owls, but not the owler. 

take that winter.

sincerely,

mr. 1000 k

i first noticed the aurora on stop number 6 last night.  an arching glow to the north that belied sunset and distant civilizations.   i exhorted it on with “come ons” and “yeahs,” because it has been a while since my owl surveys were bathed in their fluorescent glow and when owling, an aurora is the perfect accompaniement for an evening of isolation in the north woods.

the arch sent up shivering stilettos of light, dancing from horizon to horizon.    

electrons danced their dance.

a great-horned owl called its mate.

perfect.

then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the aurora’s luster diminished and within 15 minutes, was gone.  prominence, brilliance, excitement, anticipation, inability to focus,  then disappointment…with me left alone in the dark by myself.

just like most of my relationships.  

after the aurora was done teasing, a thin film of clouds moved in from the south.  after that, my next 40 stops were spent in an acoustically void landscape.  one saw-whet and a single trill call from a barred owl.  

helloooo tedium.

some  parts of owling remain befuddling to me.  mostly, because everything i interpret is done through the eyes of an owler, and not the owl.  when i think like an owl, it is rarely insightful or rewarding.  last night…were i an owl, i would have been getting busy, presenting my mate with dead animals and the warm confines of a homestead; singing, flitting about excitedly, feeling the surge of testosterone and whatever other elixirs course through the rammy owl’s veins during the haughty nights of april. 

some day perhaps, i will figure it all out and everything will make sense and i will be able to let all this go and be content not venturing into the night like the driven biologist i am.  

perhaps that will happen. 

i would sure hate to miss an aurora though.  even if it only lasts 20 minutes.

it may be april 1st to you, but to me, it is april 1st 1992 because every april 1st since 1992 i get to relive my one and only owling evening that nearly ended with me and my thermos on-board the mother ship.

even time hasn’t lessened the adrenalin and panic of that evening, and it was all because of an owler’s curiousity and willingness to try new and adventurous things.

one night in the north wooods…

for years i have been reluctant to tell this story. instead, i have remained silent, not because it isn’t worthy of a retelling, but because i didn’t want to shake the roots of my north shore existence. i didn’t want people to whisper that my field technician’s name was jack daniels, or that the owlman’s medication wasn’t adequately addressing “his problem”.

tonight, i will “celebrate the 19-year anniversary of the “occurrence”. everybody remembers where they were when history was written and this is no different. it shook me to my foundation and not a sunset goes by without me thinking about that night in 1992.

ten years ago, my technician’s name was not jack daniels, it was david mccormick, and he came to the rescue when my first technician left for greener pastures and the daylight they entailed. dave and i were omnipresent in the western portion of my study area. we sat on owls and we found owls, then we sat some more. on our daybreak return to the ramshackle trailer we called home, we drank beer, threw darts, and listened to talk radio. we had perfected the field experience.

the snows were deep that year, but by the end of march, there was a hard thick crust at the surface and during a brief window created by warm daytime and cold nighttime temperatures, access to the forest was there for the taking.

i had long been intrigued by the lowlands along the toohey lake road, but never had the luxury or the time to survey its length. the road stretches from lake county 7 to the sawbill trail and at one time, was the substrate upon which trains moved. it is flat and straight. local legend has it that a locomotive was lost along the road, sucked up by a bottomless bog, never to be seen again. being a railroad brat, i like to think that the train is just running a little behind schedule.

to the north of the “grade”, the timber-frear loop connects the quasi-wilderness chain of lakes, including timber, frear, and elbow lakes. i have fished those lakes under the billowy clouds of summer but even then, saw the surrounding hillsides as promising for the obligate, secondary cavity nesters that now control my life.

david and i structured our plans with coverage in mind. he would drop me off at the westernmost reach of the grade and continue with surveys to the north, then east. meanwhile, i would pedal the nearly 25 miles, stopping frequently to tally the music of the night. sometime before the first light of day, we would meet at the sawbill trail. with safety in mind, david and i carried portable radios, although we both knew the inherent risks associated with our isolation.

at sunset, we moved up the road to the grade. dave dropped me off and paused as i pedaled my way towards the eastern horizon. two miles later, i watched a pair of saw-whets as they danced their furtive then frenzied dance of reproduction. pausing, i listened as dave and the truck moved beyond a distant ridge, leaving me alone in the night.

after the saw-whets, the enthusiasm for my journey quickly eroded. my fingers and feet lost touch with their world as near-zero cold penetrated my clothing. i labored up the slopes and fought frostbite down them. but just when i was lamenting my decision to take this journey, i took in my surroundings.

the sky was as rich and as dark as it gets on a north woods night. black and gray streaks from distant galaxies were framed and interrupted by stars and planets that have created both fear and poetry through the ages. the wind was non-existent and any sound (had there been any) would carry for miles. i took a deep breath of the north woods smelling salts, drank hot coffee from my thermos, listened, and heard absolutely nothing.

pedaling in a low gear, coming out of one draw and then entering another, my mind wandered as it so often does when silence bathes my nights. i identified and solved all of the world’s problems, and resolved to change those things in my life that needed changing. but then everything became irrelevant. for it was there atop a small knoll, that i saw hanging in the sky, the “lights”.

my first reaction was calm and focused. i cynically shook my head, rolled my eyes, and said, “oh great, now i have to wait for these snowmobilers to move through.” and then, the electricity of awareness shot through my system: the snowmobilers were in the air, there was no sound, and…hailing the depths of instant paranoia…my approach surely had been observed.

my heart pounded like a kettle drum, my breaths could not supply enough oxygen, and my eyes welled with the tears of complete and total fear. i straddled my bike, unable or unwilling to move. i watched as the lights rose slightly, banked at a 30º angle, then settled lower to the ground. they were framed by the road i had once followed to meet my technician. now, however, it was the road i followed to meet my fate.

thoughts become jumbled when evidence of ones’ demise is presented as it was that morning. i was instantaneously turned into a buffet of irrational thoughts. i reached for the radio and was about to call dave, when i realized that if i used the radio, “they” will know i’m here. “my headlamp, jeez, why didn’t i turn it off?” i waited for the beam of light to appear and pull me to the mother ship. .

but then, in a sure sign of desperation and panic, i became emboldened. i reached for my thermos and decided that i would not pass easily into the night they could come and get the owlman, but not without a fight. i was going to crack some alien skulls.

and so i waited, and i envisioned the headlines: “owl biologist vanishes from the landscape.…..thermos found…..details at 10.” 

if this was a chess match, i was waiting for my opponents next move. the lights tilted a bit more and then disappeared behind the ridgeline. the cliché of “out of sight, out of mind” had never been more incorrect. i felt strongly that out of sight meant the “landing party” was on the ground.

i slumped to the snow, resigned to this unforeseen ending of my life. i waited, but nothing happened. with temperatures near zero, shivering woke me from the abyss of helplessness and despair, and i realized that survival may not involve contusions on alien noggins caused by a flailing thermos, but it did involve moving.

underway again, i tried to put a good spin on what had just occurred, but it all came back to the fact that i was going crazy. too many nights fueled by half-gallons of coffee and too many days without enough sleep. i pedaled towards the ridge that hid the lights, and didn’t care what happened. i had given up.

when i stopped, i could only look at the ground. i didn’t want to see the sky, didn’t want to know what lurked or hovered above me. i listened for owls, but not very well. my concentration had deserted me.

the last 5 miles, i pedaled as though in the tour de france. ironically, the only boreal owl heard that night sang less than a half-mile from where dave sat, his headlamp flashing down the corridor of spruce during my sprint to companionship.

it was 3 in the morning, i was late, and i apologized. dave and i made small talk and i tried not to alert him to the fact that i was going crazy. but i think he sensed something was wrong.

“how’d it go?” i asked.

“slow.”

“anything unusual happen?”

“no”

“did anything unusual happen?” i repeated.

“you mean with the owls?” he asked.

with that, dave moved towards me, grabbed me firmly by the arm, and said, “the lights, you saw the lights.” i crumpled to the ground, swearing, relieved, still sane. “shit dave, you saw them too?” i cried tears of exhaustion and relief.

never, in the history of mankind, was so much beer consumed and so many misdirected darts thrown after daylight then were consumed and thrown that morning. in his retelling, dave was north of windy lake, driving to the next survey stop, when something caught his attention. he stopped, didn’t see anything and exited the truck. then, he saw the lights, not knowing that as he watched from his distant vista, i was watching the same thing from a much more tactile location. he said he hurried back, shut the door and watched. his mind raced because this was an anomaly in the night sky and he “didn’t need to see an anomaly in the night sky”. “it freaked me out,” would be his oft-repeated saying the remainder of the spring.

the next day, i called the cook county sheriff to register an anonymous report. the dispatcher took my call, said she needed a name, paused, and then said kind of quietly, “yeah, one of the deputies saw the same thing.”

dave and i stayed trailer-bound for two nights. we didn’t speak about owls, we didn’t speak about the lights. we avoided any references to reality and made several trips to the liquor store. if nothing else, biologists know how to avoid reality.

for weeks, dave and i wanted to speak with the sheriff who had unknowingly shared his night with us. in a roundabout fashion, his story gradually found us. it turns out that while on patrol, he saw the lights, and watched through binoculars at the “object” rose in the sky before the lights vanished. but, even with the lights off, the outline of an object remained. another deputy told me, several years later, that the deputy was kind of “freaked out” by the incident. after analyzing dave’s, the sheriff’s, and my reaction to the occurrence, i am now convinced that “freak out” is a generic term used to describe that very moment in life, where the decision to shit in your pants is no longer a decision.

and so several nights later, after putting off the inevitable, dave and i were back in the woods. the owls were active beyond the capacity of our ears most nights and we worked ourselves into exhaustion making sense of all the music. and as we just had experienced, on some nights in the north woods, the music is all that makes sense.

a follow-up

in 1997, i attended the second international owl symposium in winnipeg, canada. during one of the pre-conference socials, i spoke with other biologists whose passion places them in darkness. after animated conversations about owls, i changed the subject to the things that happen when owlers are owling. i was surprised at the response. and while ufo stories were the most common, there were also stories of poltergeists and apparitions that, at the very least, made an evening in the woods seem not so important. one noted finnish researcher confided to me in broken english that after his sighting “ah vass freaked owt.” it’s good to know i wasn’t alone then, or on april 1, 1992.

it wasn’t long ago that i could do this all night.  sunset to sunrise.  just load me up with some caffeine, a little nicotine, some data sheets and i was good to go. 

ten hours of survey bliss.  my life in half-mile, 3-minute intervals.  over and over.

get in at 7, sleep until 3.

perfect. 

obviously, things have changed.

i knew it was going to be a tough night last night when somewhere around my eighth stop, my head started to droop.  for the unaware, the drooping head of an owler means only one thing: despite high levels of charisma and enthusiasm, he is tired.  

sure enough, immediately after the drooping came the wandering, aimless mind.    

owl surveys are defined in webster’s dictionary as “monotonous, repetitive, often unrewarding efforts by charming owl biologists and owl biologist wanna-bes, wherein many hours are spent alone at night, listening for the songs and calls of owls, but mostly wondering why they are doing what they are doing.” 

really.   

last night would afford no owl karma, no serendipitous discovery, no declaration of “this is why i do this.”  instead, the storyline was an owler’s dogged determination to finish a survey route and then drive the hour back to his den of disarray for much-needed sleep. 

reality tv at its worst.

there was a thin overcast for most of the night but otherwise, nothing endearing about the evening.  three listless male saw-whets and one cantankerous barred owl after 25 miles, 51 stops, and another 2.55 hours of my life chalked up to a “stubborn refusal to change his ways.”  

the drive home was another white-knuckle, asleep at the wheel adventure which seems to occur more often as i get older and push the surly bonds of aging. at 0130, my inner voice demanded i pull into the cascade river rest area and sleep, even though my home was only 20 minutes away.  i slept deeply for 5 minutes and woke up with a convulsion, not knowing where i was.

instant, deep sleep, then panic, then relief knowing the airbag had not deployed.   

looking back at the first round of surveys, the most notable feature had to be the immobile high pressure system that sat over me for nearly 2 weeks.  it was cold, but calm.  rarely at the end of march can i count on anything more than a couple of nights of perfect owling ambience before “poof”, it all gets blown away by a low pressure system from hell. 

my summary statement:  weather good, owls bad.

sleep:  even better.

all it took was 15 degrees on the happy side of zero and again, the night fit like a glove.  it didn’t matter that the owls were few or far between, or that the stream of vehicles out of grand marais was steady until 2100.  what mattered was the perfect ambience of a late march evening in northeast minnesota.  

i have long acknowledged that my favorite hour of any day is the shift between daylight and darkness.  it is the gloaming, the magic of crepuscular light when those things diurnal stop, and those things nocturnal begin their stirrings.  in an owl spring, the end of daylight typically means reproductive effort which means song which means detectability. 

but surely, you already know that by now.  

until the moon again appears in the evening sky, the clear nights of march and april provide a full presentation of zodiacal light, which is the fleeting glow in the western horizon caused by sunlight scattered by the detritus of  space. like so many night sky events, its show is brief but compelling viewing. when it is gone, it’s nighttime baby. 

that’s what i’m talkin’ about.  

four saw-whets in 3 hours does not seem like a lot and in fact, i had several stops where the inner voice issued its keen observations, wryly suggesting “it’s fucking dead out here tonight.” 

okay, that was my audible voice.  

if an owler is in the woods and he issues a stream of profanities and there is nobody with him does he actually issue a stream of profanities?  

of course not.  

tonight, i will make the long slog up to the end of the gunflint trail and work my way back towards last night’s starting point.  i will stop every half-mile in the windstorm/fire/fire ravaged forests and listen for life, even though the triumverate of catastrophic events have created a void in the strigidaen landscape.  

i can think of several reasons not to survey there, but know if an owl is in the woods and makes a sound and an owler is there, it will make perfect sense.

if one is looking for interior forest owls, it helps to have interior forest. 

last night, my route took me up the caribou trail, yet another route that has changed immensely since my owling infancy.  the more recent changes, those that have occurred since my last traverse in october, were profound.  several large clear cuts and thinning that has essentially removed all the understory and shrub layers from acres of forest.  i mean, acres of former forest.

i don’t know if the intent is forest management or to protect the haughty summer homes from the smites of a vengeful god,  but whatever the reason, it seems a curious landscape now.  

there were some big aspen in those stands.  i mean, former stands.

only a lone saw-whet last night.  he sang from the backside of a ridge and i nearly missed him because my attention had drifted to one of those teary-eyed, nostalgic owling journeys i so often take when there are few distractions.  last nights trip took me back to 1991, the first of several years i was able to utilize the services of field assistants and the middle of several years where boreal owls were as thick as thieves. 

i stopped at an old ’91 nest tree whose 80 feet of bole and canopy have been reduced to around 20 feet of bole. 

aspen does that:  it grows like a weed and then falls apart.  order, owls, then chaos.

despite the punky condition of the wood, several spike marks in the tree were visible, the remnants of my early, white-knuckled climbs to get to the cavity to determine the status of the nest.   

i should have hired spiderman. 

i have two surveys left and until thursday to get them finished,  then i start the whole process over again.  then, once more through the end of april.   

oh oh…the 1997 owl season is calling me.

i returned home last night, just as the clock tickled midnight.  the temperature hovered around zero, which just so happened to describe where my interest in owls was.  still, i had to spend a few minutes on the deck to see if anything was happening with my “boy”, the male saw-whet who has come-a-courting.

alas, there was no song and no one in the cavity, which means it’s still early or…he has moved on.  making deductions based upon 5 minute observations is not sound (unless you are a naturalist or attend umd) and so, i am cautious about coming to a conclusion about the tree top events in my back yard.

diurnal update:  i just checked the cavity tree and there was nothing there but “good god man” (inner voice of owl wisdom), “it’s not even april yet.” 

“you are right, inner voice. now please stop!” 

my good friend jan horak brought me a deer carcass a couple of weeks ago (a true sign of north shore giving) and while the corvids are currently enjoying it, they have taken umbrage over the arrival of an adult bald eagle.  scavengers show no class when it comes to sharing.  right now, the eagle is sitting at the top of a spruce, surrounded by 20 cacaphonous crows.

owl surveys last night were conducted without so much as a taste of an owl.  the weather was cold and calm, but the landscape was surprisingly quiet.   the nighttime temperatures are supposed to remain around zero the next couple of nights, so swaddling myself in stinky fleece is on the menu.

speaking of stink (warning: another heartwarming owlman anecdote coming), in 2001, i went 11 days without taking a shower.  i didn’t do it because i was rustically situated, i did so because as a biologist, i was curious about the putrification process.  the stink was trapped in fleece whenever i ventured outside, so i don’t think anyone noticed or cared.  then again, i never had to wait in line at the holiday or super america.  when the shower came, it was glorious.   i wrote about it on a long-lost blog and assumed that the immersion and reveling over ones’ personal stink was a “guy thing.”  lo and behold, i received a response from a female field biologist who confessed it wasn’t just a “guy thing”, that she too had conducted a similar “experiment lasting several weeks.” 

ewwww……that is so gross!!

cold and clear and calm.  no moonlight to douse the landscape with the lighting of a wal-mart parking lot.  stars and galaxies forever.

insignificance.

a perfect storm for early season owling.  

i love not having the moon, more than having the moon.  darkness affords attention, affords connection.  i look up and know the night sky is the same night sky seen by voyageurs and native americans and australopithecus when their heads turned upward in reflection or curiousity or fear or…

…complete self-awareness.

i am nothing.  those stars can be touched, but never reached.  millions of years of conscious humility can be found in each galaxy and here i stand on a gravel road in the middle of everywhere and think i am all that, and more, but i am not.

this is why i owl:  i owl because in every strife or challenge or hardship or loss or celebration or distraction, owling forces me to deal with the totality of life. there are few precedents; each experience is unique. the survey stops have remained unchanged for years, but each stop is different.

in my personal life, i have regularly heard the chagrin and disbelief about my owling passion. i accept that i march to the beat of a different drum, but also, that i am powerless over its pulse.

each owl can be identified by its song or call.  when i hear an owl, i hear the nuance and tempo and emphasis and urgency that remind me of where i have been and also, who has been there before me.

it now appears i will be unable to venture into the cold, late march nights without freezing my nordic skiing-toned buttocks off.  i hate when that happens.  lows around zero through sunday and when the warming comes, it isn’t going to be much of a warming. 

just in from a brief, non-hypothermic stretch on my deck and indeed, the male saw-whet is in courting mode.  he flew into the cavity and is tooting like a teenager and by tooting, i mean, trying to get busy. and by get busy, i mean trying to engage in a brief, yet satisfying bout of copulation.   

i think the voyeuristic part of owling is what i like the best.  even though i can’t see a thing.

acoustic voyeurism? 

that works too.