Homestead 2002

Firewood The Homestead, 2002

We had some wonderful times at the homestead this year and enjoyed sharing it with a lot of special people. We cut, split and stacked eight cords of firewood to replace our dwindling reserves.

The porcupines were overpopulated and kept people awake by gnawing on the cabins at night. (We know someone who had the siding eaten off his cabin by porcupines.) Goldie lost his battles with them, and the BB Dennis' 5-year-old grandson shot at one didn't permanently scare it away. Our best opportunity came one night about 2:00 a.m. We were awakened by what sounded like a big one chewing on the cabin right under the bed. Dennis reluctantly got up, grabbed the shotgun and went under the cabin. Ka-boom!

The next morning I went below to see how big the beast was (about 30 lbs.). In the dark crawl space, it was easy to locate the dead rodent by the spray of holes through the wood siding. In the dark, Dennis missed the propane tanks by inches.

In early September, Dennis was out on Swede Lake alone in a heavy rain. He saw two immature bald eagles. One was flying with difficulty and crashed into some bushes on shore. Dennis pulled the boat to shore. One eagle hopped away and the other attempted to fly with its heavy wet feathers. It didn't get far. It flopped into the lake close to shore and had to "swim" back. It struggled back up on shore only a few feet from Dennis. It hissed like a cornered cat, its 6' wings outstretched, its beak open wide, and its eyes flashing danger.

In October, the trail from the highway was trodden down with large grizzly and wolf tracks, more than Dennis has seen in the 40 years he's been up here. One set of bear tracks couldn't have been more than five minutes old; we must have spooked him off the trail. Goldie alerted us to something moving on a ridge a few hundred yards ahead. It was a big wolf, one of four. We watched them through binoculars as they sat on their haunches to watch us.