I
am kind of wandering aimlessly at night now. The weather won't allow me to
do much else. I have visited most of the old cavity trees that I can get
to without Divine guidance, and with the male boreal owls as quiet as
they've been the last two weeks, there is not much to occupy my free time.
One can only watch the antics of snowshoe hares for so long. If night
won't come to me, I go to it.
Last
night I visited what has become my favorite old forest aspen stand in
northeast Minnesota. It sits in a bowl beneath a vertical slab of the
Laurentian Shield near Kawishiwi Lake. The soils are deep and moist. The
trunks are bigger than my arms can encircle. They are anachronisms
in a young, manipulated forest . Their position beneath the bedrock has
likely saved them from both man and nature over the years, but now, age is
pulling them towards the forest floor.
The
future of this stand can be seen in the trees that remain. Conks sit like
crescent moons on the boles, and dark blotches of Hypoxylon tell
the tale of a slow fungal death. The fungi have already exacted their
toll, turning the hard, dense wood into a styrofoam-like byproduct of
decomposition. Then came the insects, and the woodpeckers, and finally the
owls - always waiting until the laborers had finished their work.
Even
in the year since I last visited here, one of the trees has fallen. It now
lays on the ground in angular 10-ft segments, its crown spread like
tentacles, an old cavity staring at me from below, rather than from above.
For these decadent aspen, the clock is winding down. When the next
windstorm hits, more trees will topple and then, even brief gusts will
return these giants to the nadir of life.
Old
aspen still dominate the site, but there is not much reaching skyward to
replace them. Balsam fir and spruce are slowly marching up the slope from
below. Alder and hazel cover the soils. In adjacent stands, the trees are
but teenagers. The fungi, woodpeckers, and owls will use the resources and
then move elsewhere.
Bud
Heinselman wrote that in northern Minnesota's forested history, aspen as
old as 250 years old could be found in the landscape. Those trees sat on
the very best soils with nourishment close to their roots. They survived
fire and winds, and then, even they felt the tugs of gravity. Today, if
you find an aspen that is 100 years old outside of the BWCAW it is a rare
find. The big brothers of the stand near Kawishiwi Lake surely approach
that. There just aren't many to follow in their footsteps.
©
W.H. Lane
