On this Voices from the Heartland, Laurie Allmann reads a version of her essay on the sub-boreal forest of Minnesota later collected in "Far from Tame: Reflections from the Heart of a Continent," published by University of Minnesota Press.

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(00:00:00) On a photograph taken at Night by satellite the United States looks like a constellation where the big cities are stars in between them are black spaces places were scattered sleepy towns are too small to cast much light where the land is in fields or ranches or still wild black spaces that grow bigger and darker as you look to the west across the Great Plains and the Rockies. Ever since I saw the photograph of few weeks ago, the image keeps coming back. I think of it again. Now as I sit on a log bundled in layers of wool on a Winter's Night at the edge of a frozen lake near The Boundary Waters canoe area of northern, Minnesota. In the dome of sky above me are the real stars. I pick out Castor and Pollux the Pleiades aldebaran the red eye of the wool. The planet Venus is Riding High in the southwest. I listened to the Halo Arctic wind coming across the far lakes and ice-locked islands and feel myself cradled in one of those blessed black spaces on the photograph an ecologist would call this area part of the Ontario, Northern, Minnesota. Boreal forest far enough North for the growing Seasons to be short and the Winter's to be long. It's an evergreen land of pines and spruces Cedars and Balsam Fir streaked with pale Birches and Aspen trees. The soils are shallow laced with acid rock the dates back to the earliest of geologic history comes to the surface in outcroppings and Road cuts and along Lake Shores. Extinctions of animal species are thought to be few in this region in part because there are still large areas where the density of roads and humans is low. But also because Wildlife populations from adjacent Canada replenish some of what we lose Carnivores like wolves and black bear links and pine marten that have lost most of their original range in North America still have a claw hold here in the North Woods and every year at least a few people report seeing cougar morning finds me in a booth at the Knotty Pine bar drinking coffee and eating salted peanuts from the rack, which is the closest thing to breakfast that Gladys the owner has to offer. I'm her best customer. Also, I notice her only customer. We talked about wolves and coyotes. I think I saw a wolf last night. I tell her and she nods she says it's mostly wolves around here. And that where you find wolves, you won't find many coyotes. She goes in the back room and comes out with a Warren Wildlife book opens it to a page that compares the two. And points to the text that says that coyotes are only a quarter to half the size of wolves that their ears are proportionally larger and their noses are more pointed. It says that wolf Pack's have territories that range from 30 to over a thousand square miles each depending on the prey base. Gladys says she likes to look at the book when things are slow. I think of her that afternoon when I see a line of wolf tracks leading across a lake. The sun today is just a glow behind an overcast Sky moving on its Low Winter Arc over the North Country. The air is Dead Calm mild enough for snow flees to be out peppering the surface of the snow after a long walk through cut over areas down an Old Logging Road in the Superior National Forest. I reach an area of mature Forest. Following the trail of a moose. I enter the woods hoofprints in occasional strands of brown hairs that feel like plastic. One of its legs is bleeding maybe a for leg rubbed raw from breaking through the icy crust on the deep snow. It leaves bright red half moons of blood every time it takes a stem. I hear a whistle of wings and look up in time to see a raven pass across a window of Sky between the branches of the Pines seconds later. It's rough call comes back. The rest of the day I hear variations echoing around the woods quarks and trills yells and knocks and pops and bells and a sound like a lively ping-pong game all nuances of Raven language Eileen to rest against the rough bark of a red pine and it occurs to me that somewhere near where I stand on this January day a drowsy female black bear May well be giving birth to Twin Cubs in the dim light of her death. A breath taken in through my nose brings in nothing, but the cold but I know that the sensitive nose of the wolf whose tracks I saw in the lake would find a thousand sense here down in the base of each deer and snowshoe hare red squirrel and pine marten track that crisscrosses the forest floor between these trees I break off a sprig of Balsam Fir and crush it in my fingers to let loose that find distinctive smell that to most of us. us means North It's a place like this where the Boreal owl would find what it needs to breed tall white pines offer a protected perch and a high stage for the male to sing out at staccato songs of territory and courtship. The black Spruce lowlands are hunting grounds old Aspen's on the Uplands with cavities rotted by Fungus and entrance holes chiseled by Pileated woodpeckers are sites for a
(00:05:47) nest.
(00:05:49) The first Boreal owl nest for Minnesota was documented only 15 years ago. No one knows how long they've been breeding here or how many other species are part of this natural community that have yet to be discovered. Minnesota's Northern forests have grown younger and simpler over the last hundred and fifty years many stands that once held a variety of different types of trees of different ages have been replaced by monocultures single species crops of marketable trees with many areas clear-cut to release pure stands of Aspen with only little islands of larger trees. Arius that favor game species like moose and deer and grouse. Now they've always been changes in the Northwoods storms and fires and Wind Falls, but the natural changes were more random and patchy openings were short-lived seated by the big trees that remained and the canopy would close back over. Statistics might show that we have as many trees now as we ever had but that doesn't tell you anything about the structure the diversity the health of the Forest Community any more than the amount of metal in your car will tell you how well it works. To understand the Northwoods Community. You have to look beyond the color green and ask what kind of trees are there how old in what combinations and what do they support and to know that there are questions that we don't know enough to ask. The North Woods is a big place. There's room there for the men and women who make their living cutting Timber and there's room to if we're careful for the wolf and The Owl and the links and the Raven and all those creatures we can help best by just getting out of their way. Driving home in the dark that night. I look up and wonder whether in those multitudes of stars, there might be a satellite taking another night photograph of the United States like the one that I'd seen. Just in case I reach over and push in the knob that shuts off my headlights. And for a few wild seconds careen Through The Dark.