You may not realize it, but today is longer than yesterday, and yesterday was longer than it was a week ago. We turned the corner on day length with the passing of the winter solstice on December 21, before Christmas. From now until the summer solstice in June, days will do nothing but grow longer and longer, and our noontime sun will be higher and higher in the sky each day. You can remember this and take hope during those cold days this January. We are sure to have cold days in January because the coldest part of the winter lags behind the shortest day, just as the warmest days of summer arrive in August, weeks after the longest day in June. In the meantime, it’s time to get outside and enjoy our long winter nights. People get excited, and rightly so, about a good showing of the aurora, but turn your eyes heavenward on any clear night in the winter and you’ll actually see an amazing sight – our universe. While it may look like everything is fixed in place and unmoving, it doesn’t take standing outside for too long to realize that the stars are slowly creeping westward. Go out a few nights in a row, and you start to notice the changes in the phases of the moon, and if you’re observant, you’ll see that the moon is slowly creeping eastward across the background of stars. Earlier civilizations noticed far more than those changes in the night sky. In fact, it is incredible how much they were able to discover about the movement of stars and planets, but they were outdoors in the night more than people are now, and their night sky was unpolluted by the light of streetlamps and billboards.
The Superior National Forest is one of the few places in the U.S. which is still genuinely dark, and despite the cold, you should take advantage of that by putting on lots of warm clothes and going out into the night. While the cold may be hard on you, it actually makes for more stable air and better viewing of stars and planets with a telescope. That stable air is noticeable to the naked eye as well – people often refer to winter nights with words like “sharp” and “crisp,” and the pinpoints of light which are stars are brightest against a black cold winter sky.
While you are out, think about how long it would take before you’d notice things like the movement of planets against the background of stars, let alone discovering complexities like how to calculate eclipses, and how many nights earlier people must have spent gazing at the heavens to learn those things.
An important one of those “earlier people” recently had a birthday. While most people think of December 25 as Christmas, Sir Isaac Newton, born in 1642, thought of it as his birthday. It was his ideas of motion and gravity that finally allowed people to make sense of all the complexities of the solar system, and his invention of the reflecting telescope that made a close study of the planets possible, but long before Newton, people around the world had discovered many of the motions in the night sky.
You may have never thought of that night sky as part of the forest before, but for many people visiting the area from more urban settings, some of the best parts of a Boundary Waters trip are the stars. Take time to look above the trees and see what you can discover about the cosmos.
Back on earth, we’ve been working on making the Pincushion Mountain area more user-friendly. That area is almost as complex as the solar system, but you’ll find that there are new maps to guide you at the trailheads at the parking lot. Return users will discover that some of the trails near the parking lot have been rerouted so that different user groups will be on more completely separated trail systems, so be sure you are following the new routes.
The volunteers with the Superior Hiking Trail worked with us to reroute all of the SHT in the area so that it is no longer sharing the trail with cross-country skiing. We also now have digital maps available on our website for both the skiing and the fat tire biking trails, which can be used with phone-based way-finding apps such as Avenza. All this should help make people’s visits to Pincushion much less confusing and a lot more fun.
Winter roads are in good shape and solidly frozen. What ruts are there very well may continue to be there until spring thaw. Look for log hauling on the Tofte side on the Trapper’s Lake Road, the Caribou Trail, and the Schroeder Tote Road. Up in Gunflint, trucks are using Greenwood Road, Firebox Road, Blueberry Road, Sunfish Lake Road, and the Hall Road and County Road 60. Be aware that this is not an exhaustive list. There may be haul trucks associated with timber sales on state, county, or private land, of which we have no knowledge.
If you got skis, or snowshoes, or ice fishing gear, or maybe a snowmobile for Christmas, now is the time to get out in the woods and have some fun. We are Minnesotans after all, so think snow, enjoy winter, and maybe, if you need to, on frigid days, remember that days are getting longer all the time.
Leave a Reply