July 15, 2012
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Blueberry Island Kelso Lake BWCAW
This week I went into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with some friends of ours. Our entry point was Sawbill Lake. We did a 10 mile loop from Sawbill, through Alton, into Kelso and up the Kelso River before returning to Sawbill by a different route. This loop is a beautiful one day paddle that has some of the best scenery that the BWCAW has to offer.
We had lunch on what I call Blueberry Island; a little rock outcropping that typically has a few blueberries during the months of July and August. The kids ate blueberries and played with the ants and leeches on the island. The leeches had babies on their bellies. When the leeches were turned over it seemed as though it had hundreds of legs. When they were held, the babies would detach and try to attach onto you. They were very tiny; only about a millimeter in length.
Kelso River Pitcher Plants
Pitcher plants are carnivorous insect eating plants that have a poisonous concoction at the bottom of the pitcher that kills the insects when they enter. Tiny little hairs inside the plant force the insects downward into the liquid. The kids put their fingers into the plant and felt the tiny hairs and discovered how difficult it would be for an insect to escape.
Mystery Rock 001
Our final destination was a very mysterious rock located on a little island in the north end of the Kelso River. A table-sized rock rests on three smaller rocks and appears as though someone had placed it there. It could be a glacial erratic, meaning that after the glaciers melted, the gravel just washed away leaving the three stones to hold up the large rock.
Mystery Rock 002
Other stories that are circulating are either Minoans or Vikings placed the rocks where they are. Many people think this is a Dolmen. Dolmen is rocks placed on other rocks found in Ireland, Scandinavian countries, Korea and several other locations around the world.
The other story which sounded more credible to me is that when the Civilian Conservation Corps built the fire tower in the 1930s they pried up the larger one and placed smaller rocks under it as a practical joke. They pushed small carts on the railroad rails to haul materials from lake to lake. Imagine a dozen or so very energetic young men with time on their hands in the wilderness and railroad rails for leverage and this seemingly impossible task could have been accomplished.
Auroa over Grand Marais 001
Later I drove to Cutface Cliff and photographed the lights over the town of Grand Marais. They were faint at first and then within seconds, like someone turned on a switch, the lights danced from the tree covered horizon to the very top of the sky.
