Had one of those climbs yesterday that reminds me of why I like living in northern Minnesota, especially close to Star Island, where I do most of my climbing.

Star Island is an island in Cass Lake, part of the Chippewa National Forest, and it's where I do most of my climbing. It has a small lake in the middle (Lake Windigo), and is covered by a mix of pines, aspens, maples, basswoods, and oaks. My grandfather bought a cabin on the island in 1946 (on land leased from the forest service), which has been in the family ever since.

Found a white pine on the tip of a low bluff that overlooks Cass Lake, Lake Windigo, and much of the northern half of the island. Clear sunny afternoon, moderate gusty breeze from the east, temp in the low 80's to upper 70's. Got to about 55 feet in 3 pitches - could have gone higher but the canopy would have been crowded (hard to move without doing the tree damage), and the view was nice right there. The last residual exhaustion from a fascinating but grueling 2 weeks of fieldwork in E. Texas fell away after 2-3 good breaths of sparkling clear air. An eagle was fishing just below me along the lakeshore, and having a good day judging from the fish it was carrying as it flew by on two different occasions. Another eagle flew by overhead from time to time. Stayed up there about an hour and a half.

About as close to a perfect way to spend an afternoon as it is possible to get.

Now that sounds like a mighty fine climb. Nothing like a climb to get the cob webs cleared out of the brain. Are white pines sappy in your area? What is your trick to keeping clean and ready for the formal ball after climbing that species of tree?

What were you doing in E. Texas? I went to jr. college in Jacksonville TX not far for Tyler before I dropped out to be a hippie. Sure are a lot of pines there.

Treeman:

I'd be happy to show you or any other tree climbers around up here - anytime (well, the middle of the winter might be a bit rigorous for most folks, but most of the rest of the year...).

Around here, some white pines are very sappy and some aren't. A lot of sap seems to go with a lot of recent injury, and I've decided that trees like that would like to be left alone for a while. All of them have a little sap, but it seems to climb off the rope quickly enough. If I really needed to be ready for a formal ball (now there's an incongruous thought), I'd use a lot of rubbing alcohol.

E. Texas was a work trip to survey three permanent forest plots (run by a guy named Paul Harcombe, who I've been collaborating with for the last decade or so) in the Big Thicket for how they were damaged in Hurricane Rita. The work (I was in on the last half of the job) involved two weeks of climbing through fallen snags, trying to identify and get the condition of something like twenty thousand tagged trees. I'll report more on it later.