It has been a while…so here is a favorite from last summer.

In the north country, quite in the middle of nowhere, there is a creek that meanders through miles of unbroken wilderness. I used to paddle it, often times alone, until I reached a secluded lake. One of the few bodies of water without houses or cabins polluting its shore. It was one of my duties as a fish and wildlife specialist to survey the lake throughout the year, monitoring water levels and the growth of wild rice. A job that always contained adventure.

At the place I set my canoe in the water, the creek was only a canoe length wide, and perhaps that is giving it too much credit. The water flowed steady but slow and, having drained from tannic swamps, took on the color of root beer. This dark water hid the substrate and caused me to hit a rock or two which lay quite invisible below the surface.

Petrel Creek snaked its way on ahead, curving through alders and tall reed grass. At this section a few beavers had staked a claim and more than a few times I had to split a dam to continue on. Slowly, the creek widens as it enters a transition into a vast spruce swamp. My favorite leg of the journey.

This section hosts bends and oxbows that hold wild rice and wood ducks in the fall. Tamaracks are sprinkled in among the tall black spruce, and the wind, if blowing east to west, seems to be buffeted by the barricade of trees.

The water stretches out before my canoe like a liquid path into the past. The trees that border Petrel Creek reach towards the sky, a sky so blue and dotted with white clouds that puff along to wherever clouds go. Sometimes I stop for a moment there, to rest my shoulders and back, to rest my worries and troubles and let them sink into the root beer water.

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Then, with the trifles of the day having dissolved, I can sit and enjoy a still moment. The depths of the wilderness reign me in and soon time is forgotten, left somewhere along the previous bend. It will catch up to me eventually. But not now. For now, I sit back and relish in the wonder of the world.

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo, The (Wild)erness Journal

In May, a fine delicacy sprouts from the earth. It grows in damp woods partially shaded from the warming spring sun. They pop up suddenly one day, as if by a spell. Brown, cone-shaped caps spring up out of the leaf litter. One must have a trained eye to make them out. Luckily for us, their lighter colored stipes contrast the caps and when you find one, slow down, you are sure to find more. Morels. The May mushroom.

Kneel down or sit on last fall’s leaves. Get comfortable. Stay awhile. In the woods, time slows down, and so should we. It is grounding to collect a few handfuls of these mushrooms. Not only are they delicious, but, maybe more importantly, there is something primitive about gathering food from the wild. There is an unspoken intimacy between the gatherer and the gathered. A bond that sprouts and connects one firmly to the earth.

As a result, the ensuing meal tastes somehow better than if it was bought at the store. The meal becomes sacred, and each bite is savored a little longer. And, without thought, as if by some pure instinctual reaction, we give our thanks to the land.

We all give thanks in our own ways and there is no wrong way to give it. For me, I often sprinkle tobacco where I gather or when I am particularly moved by an event in nature. It is a tradition of my Ojibwe heritage of which trickles through my veins like a midsummer stream.

It is a thanks not only to the land, but to my Ojibwe ancestors and my European ones too. Yes, I am a mosaic of multiple cultures and ethnicities, and each part serves to make up the whole. Many of us are but melting pots of beautiful traditions and backgrounds.

Found this old maple tree with a large scar from where a beaver once tried to chew through it. Evidently he/she found the wood to be too hard to continue on.

How do you give thanks? Whether it be tobacco, or a silent prayer, ritual or rain dance, showing appreciation for our lot in life helps save us from the temptations of victimhood and self-pity. As if we don’t have the power to change our fortunes at any time.

When we gather, or fish, or hunt, maybe it’s not a bad thing to be grateful for the unsuccessful times too. For if one is to pay attention, they will discover it is not the mushrooms or the fish or the deer that feeds the soul. It is finding the connection between the search and the end target. Life happens somewhere in the in-betweens, and in seeking gratitude, the doldrums, by natural law, drift away…

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo, The (Wild)erness Journal

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Dear reader,

This morning I opened the living room window and tilted my ear to listen. Cold rain fell on dry leaves in the yard, and in the branches of the pines birdsong floated from tree to tree. This combination of spring spoils calmed my previously turbulent mind. It is something how moving our attention from irritabilities to nature’s song can level out the plane of our spirits. A shift in focus makes clear the image of our looking glass.

If not for the rain pattering crisp leaves or the pine siskins singing among the trees, I might have remained stuck in the toils of my mind, and who knows how many more people I’d have brought with me. Instead, I succumbed to the Psalm of the outdoors and entertained a better day for it.

It is easy to get lost in the jungles of our own thoughts and, because of that, crucial to learn how to use our internal compass to find a way out. For me, nature calibrates my inner compass. It is a portal to tranquility. And, as Marcus Aurelius said, “For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind.”

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo, The (Wild)erness Journal

Dear Reader,

It seems to happen almost every year—in March or April, just when all the inhabitants of the great white north think spring is here to stay, a bout of snow falls and resurfaces the thawed landscape in its white grandeur. And so the winds come barreling down bringing icy air back to our landscape. A flurry of heavy snow blankets the patches of open grass and roadside ditches. Once again silencing the whispers of spring. The trees bend tiredly with each gale, exhausted by a winter much too long.

It is on these days we can sit and complain, or we can warm up the last of this winter’s soup on a stovetop. Let the scents of carrots and onions and chicken and spices fill your home with a warmth that only soup can provide. Then sip it quietly inside your home, look out your window at the world and enjoy the wildness of mother nature. Enjoy the fading cries of winter and welcome in a time of growth.

On these spring mornings, before the sun has had time to bring the temperature above freezing, sound seems to bounce along the snow. A few robins have faithfully returned, and their songs seem to help spring move along. Their presence is welcomed with open arms for if the robins never returned, winter might never leave. As a result, life might remain frozen in the north, leaving a perpetual monotony to the land. Yet, here they are, and their songs are accompanied by the background music of the Hairy and Downy woodpeckers.

This time of year, near the end of March and into April, they not only peck on trees to find food, but also to attract mates and even to keep other birds away from their nests. In the early morning one can often hear their “drumming” on hollow trees. It sounds like a snare drummer rhythmically tapping on a hard hollow log as fast as he can. This sound echoes throughout the woods. In the hardwood forests of central and northern Minnesota, if one listens well enough, they will likely hear this knocking or drumming sound from numerous areas in the woods.

When the woodpeckers begin sounding off this time of year, it is seemingly always accompanied by a stark change in the weather. During this “second spring” there is a certain warmth to the air. The sting of February is long gone. The deep cold now just a memory.

In the north, the weather changes slowly, then all at once. Second spring, feeling pressure from the birds, leaps into action. The fresh blanket of snow melts in a couple days. The runoff thaws streams and rivers whose banks quickly swell and spill over. There is an erratic pace to all these events. But as spring speeds up, I tend to slow down. To take it all in. So to the woods I go.

There is time enough in the woods. There is no hurry to get to something else, to some other place. It is plenty to enjoy the walk and listen to the world. To listen to the robins heckle the newly fallen snow. Not shy to display their discontent with mother nature who just covered up last fall’s thawed leaves with another round of snow.

By now I have come to expect this, a second winter during the proverbial spring. I can’t help to sometimes be like the robin, voicing my pleas for a respite from more snow. Asking for a break to catch. But as my walk goes on, and my life goes on too, I drop all resentment for my current lot. Complaining of the snow won’t make it melt faster, it will just raise my blood pressure. Instead, I change my perspective and walk on…

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo, The (Wild)erness Journal

I like to roam the woods when the snow has mostly melted, when there are patches of bare ground with snow yet clinging to the cold in the shadows of pines. Here I learn about the goings on of winter, when most people stayed out of the woods and the animals had time and space to roam unbothered. There is much one can learn from inspecting late winter woods—where the deer congregate, where the snowshoe hares favor young aspen, and where the local owls have hunted and haunted their prey.

Today I found myself in a quiet forest bordering the Mississippi River. Found myself both physically and mentally, I suppose. There I skirted the borderlands of riverbank and pine forest, a transition zone where wetland meets upland—a favorite haunt of wise whitetail bucks, of the occasional white pine that takes root in the swamp that deer use as a landmark, of the honkings of newly arrived geese on the river, and the song of eagles drifting and singing on spring thermals.

It never fails that some lesson or truth from nature makes itself known to me on my wanderings. A mile or so down the river, busy stepping through alder thickets, I remembered I had other obligations to attend to away from quiet woods. Hesitantly, I altered my course and made a large loop back to my pickup truck parked haphazardly on the edge of some forest road.

As it happens and often tends to happen on my aimless treks into the woods, I came upon evidence of an event that happened while I was away. Near the road where a grove of red pines stood tall, a large patch of hair was spread about the snow—deer hair.

While examining the area, three separate patches made themselves known to me. And no bones were left behind. While I am not a crime scene investigator, my experience in the woods tells me a pack of four wolves found dinner here and communed with social distance under this canopy of red pines.

Wolves, like dogs, tend to take their food away from the pack so that they can dine in peace. While I share an affinity for the spoils of whitetail deer, I think that each of us, wolves and humans alike, can coexist. Though they occasionally meddle with cattle and knock back the deer herd, they have long been a balancer of the wilderness, and in their steel eyes hold some knowledge of the wilds that most of us have since lost.

One of the reasons I write about these events is to remember. So that, weeks later, years even, I can retire into that memory and hear that eagle sing, to watch it fly again—a majestic silhouette soaring unencumbered towards the sun. So these special moments, however small, can be preserved like jam, and spread upon my soul indefinitely, whenever I read the words, whenever I need to remember what is important.

In this way, even when I’m too old to venture out to the woods, too old to explore and renew my spirits, I can read these long-ago stories and relive them from anywhere. That, I think, paired with an open window to let the breeze in, will be enough for me.

Until next time,

Anthony Anselmo, The (Wild)erness Journal

Dear Reader,

As winter drags on, the landscape becomes a blur of white and gray. In some areas the pearlescent woods are also dotted with the dark green of balsams and spruce and white capped pines. It has a certain beauty and sparkle to it, but the longer winter lasts the lower our tolerance becomes for cold and colorlessness. The more we yearn for warmth and the many shades of spring and summer.

When the blue sky hasn’t shown itself in weeks, masked by winter’s veil, tension falls thicker than snowflakes across the land. It is part cabin fever, part something else–perhaps the absence of the star that we orbit, the star that gives us life.

Just as these winter doldrums reach a fever pitch, when hope seems frozen or floating out somewhere in the cosmos, the veil of clouds lifts silently one night. The stars glow bright as ever and in the morning, the nearest star, our sun, rises behind silhouetted trees. A deep blue stretches once more across the sky. As it rises it provides not only an embrace of warmth, but it evokes again the feeling of hope and gratitude. Emotions long buried somewhere in the layers of deep snow.

Seeing and feeling the sun in late winter stirs within me a deep sense of gratitude for life. For all of it. It makes the hard times worth it. The way it brings color back to the earth. In the evenings, it sometimes casts crimson waves rolling on cumulus clouds. The sky just above the western horizon becomes a thin band the color of ripe tangerine and to the east the indigo spreads swiftly like a bottle of ink spilled upon blue parchment.

People often talk about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but what about the pot of gold found in man’s soul at the end of the day? Those who, watching the sun set, take notice, filling their own pot to the brim with, if not gold, something far more valuable to them. Rich is the man who, no matter how deep his pockets run, finds time to appreciate another day turning over.

The French poet, Guillaume Apollinaire, once said, “now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” In one sentence Apollinaire sums up one of the secrets to enjoying life. Maybe we don’t need the promotion or the girl or the money to be happy. Maybe we can just be happy now, even in the midst of winter.

Whenever I must head back inside, it comes with a hesitant step, a last look at the sky or how the tops of trees are playing in the wind. If not for the cold that comes after sundown, I’d stay a little longer. Nonetheless, I linger as long as I can, to inherit the estate of a day well lived. This spiritual currency, to me, purchases much more than any superficial desire.

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo, The (Wild)erness Journal

Dear Reader,

Last night the fog drifted in after dusk. It crept through the night and among the trees on the edge of a deep swamp. The half-moon glowing just enough to turn the swamp the color of clouded obsidian. A hole in the fog and the trees as dark as a gun bore opened up. A portal into the unknown.

I couldn’t see anything, but I could feel what must be there. Green sphagnum moss buried beneath January snow, home to the skitterings of deer mice who burrow in its fluff. A young swamp spruce, twisted and knotted, reaching for the canopy for a sliver of the moon, for the understory is dark and cold. Reaching, growing, until one day its branches may stretch big enough to shine like smoky emeralds underneath the phantom light of the moon.

Somewhere beyond the veil of fog, the coyotes cast their calls to the moon. Many have never heard the chaos chorus of coyotes on dark nights. The yips and howls echoing hollowly through Stygian forests where in the shadows, every black-eyed hair quivers at the haunting music played by the brush wolves.

Some nights it is unlike anything most will ever hear. The air is charged with howls from all different directions and there I stand alone on the edge of my yard staring into the portal. Surrounded by trees and the wails of the primeval past.

The coyote call spans the ages. It reaches through the walls and time itself to an old trapper’s cabin. Where long ago some lonely soul laid claim to a virgin stand of timber in the north country, and some of the only sounds he ever heard were the sounds of the natural world. A piece of our forgotten past. The call goes even further back and can be heard outside the thin walls of an Ojibwe wigwam. An eerie hymn that makes the night somehow colder.

Some will never hear the songs of the coyotes and the way it can transport one to a more primitive time. The manner in which they change pitches and melodies electrifies the air and sends the backs of dogs bristling mightily. Barking into the cacophonous void. Barking in a panic. Trying to silence the sound of an invisible doom coursing through the air.

Perhaps that is January’s cold, quiet gift. It reminds us that beneath the snow and the ache of cold, the woods are still speaking. If we stand long enough and listen past our own noise, we may hear something older than comfort and deeper than fear, a reminder that we are not separate from the wilderness, but temporary witnesses to it, breathing in time with the frozen trees and the unseen voices moving through the dark.

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo, The (Wild)erness Journal

I have, somewhere along the line, fostered a deep fondness for the swamps and bogs of the north. When it started, I am not sure, but some deep calling beckons me to them.

Like there is something within the trees that holds a secret I desperately need to uncover. Some ancient knowledge hidden in the network of spruce roots and tannic soil. Beneath the cattail’s tubers and the broadleaf arrowhead’s rhizomes.

Maybe it is their pristine pasts, of being mostly yet untouched and unbothered. And so they hold some of the last virgin acres. Forgotten frontiers that only one in a hundred thousand people bother to contemplate.

Mysterious woods yet untamable, so man let them be. The bogs and the swamps only gave him headaches. Can hardly build a railroad or highway through them for they have a way of making things disappear in their endless depths.

As a result, most transportation now goes around them. Better left alone to be the hidden haunts of owls and wolves. Of boreal chickadees and towering moose. Of pitcher plants and labrador tea.

Even during the heat of the day, with the sun straight above, only the leading edges of the swamp and tops of the canopy of trees shine in the light. They act like textured shields with small creases that filter just enough light in as necessary for the continuation of what lies within.

On the inside, they are full of long shadows and shaded oases. Wherein the mosses, lichens, spruce roots and hidden secrets of that mysterious wilderness lie in the cool shadows of a pristine empire. The last frontiers of the lower forty-eight. Clinging to the very roots of the trees that have taken hold in the webs and tangles of a moss-covered forest floor.

Every swamp and bog have their own unique qualities, but they all share, at their core, the secret to life. And there it is! While writing this piece, I unknowingly answered my own ponderings.

The secret is to stay wild. Don’t let the world change you. Disrupt the norm. Have your own mysterious center. One that welcomes all things except ignorance.

The sun, the moon, the breeze, the deer, the wolves, the owls. All are welcome, even the rain and dark nights, the fog and the snow, the pine martens and night hawks and everything else that wanders in the shadow realm.

Be like the swamp and the bog who remain wild even after everything else has been tamed. If you are searching for some sort of meaning of it all, go in and see for yourself. One is sure to stumble upon something that rouses their soul awake.

Don’t let them put roads through you, that you may be easy to cross. To maintain your mystery, be like the bog and force them to build roads around you so that your internal kingdom may remain untarnished.

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There is not much gold left in the hills and valleys of the world that hasn't already been mined, but I'm fortunate enough to have found another type of gold. A type that can't be bought or sold, but only felt.

It's mined in the mind in those places where no one has dared to reach. In those quiet, secluded spots where no sound can enter. And this gold, this weightless, sightless gold, flows in torrents when it's found. When unearthed & gleaned, there is no price one wouldn't pay to mine more.

Whenever I am feeling poor in spirits, I go outdoors to restore my vault. And this wealth can be found almost everywhere. It's in the air molecules. In the atoms of trees, the heat of the sun, the particles of dirt and sand and moss.

I cannot give it to you, but if you read my posts you will, at the very least, discover where I found it, and with any luck find some of your own. There might even be some in the words, like shiny flecks chipped from the real thing. Enough to satisfy you for a moment, before you go out searching for more. I do hope you find it & feel it. It's the most expensive thing money can't buy.

Dear Reader,

Winters are different now than they were a hundred years ago. It used to be when you would go outside on cold, calm days there was a stillness to the land. Noise and busyness were dormant until leaf-out in spring.

One could stand outside and listen to nothing. The great primal silence of winter in the north woods. Where not only does the ground freeze and the water too, but the cacophony of birds and frogs and crickets and streams, which I dearly enjoy, freeze also.

It used to be so quiet one could ponder the great mysteries of the universe. There was time to just be still. To learn how some trees bend under the weight of winter snow and others break under the burden. Time to discover our own capabilities and limits.

How much can we bend under the weight of winter?

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But nowadays it is nearly impossible for most people to find that time of solitude. There is hardly a moment of pure silence anymore, even out in the country, even in winter.

There is almost always background noise—a plane, a car driving by, the mill churning down the road, our phone ringing in our pocket, our mind talking and thinking useless narratives. Because of this, finding those brief moments in the day to be still and find your solitude is so important. We all need to slow down. To take it all in. To heal and grow.

There are a lot of small joys that can be found in winter if one looks for them. When the conditions are just right, on cold, calm nights, the moisture-laden air freezes to almost every surface. In the gray light of dawn, the land radiates white. As white as the inside of an oyster pearl.

It is a phenomenon unique only to winter. Where branches and fence posts, strings of barbed wire and still standing cockleburs are all coated in delicate frozen crystals. Shining shards created by damp frozen air. Sharp as buckthorn and cold as ice. White as snow and delicate as dead dandelion tendrils.

On certain dark nights, snowflakes fall silently like forgotten dreams. The white fluff shows plainly underneath the silver glow of a full moon under whose light no excuse can hide. The snow twinkles, as it does, while it drops from black skies.

And somewhere up there along those dark, astral skies, all the hopes and dreams of the world float about. Endless possibilities waiting to happen. It is on these nights of eyeing millions of tiny miracles, each one unique and beautiful and falling without a sound, that I regain a forgotten belief that the impossible is possible. That anything we truly desire and strive to become is attainable. And I cling to these short moments and the absence of noise.

In the moonless mornings, stars still dot the dark sky, and they appear more pronounced, as if the cold air sharpens the image. Still green grass and fallen leaves have taken on a frost and there is much to be said about November frost.

The way it sparkles in the morning sun, like cold fallen stars from the night. The way it crunches underneath feet and the chill it radiates across the northland. How it is the silent messenger of what is to come. The harbinger of white fields and woods. Of frozen lakes and frozen air

The lakes in the north are beginning to ice up. The subzero nights have swiftly cooled the waters until one morning I woke, and a thin layer of ice stretched out from shore, like a fine sheet of glass leaning into the still open water in the middle of the bay.

Frogs and turtles have since buried themselves in the mud below the water where they will wait patiently until spring, their hearts beating slow and slushy. And as I write, the last migrators can be heard soaring south on wintry air–the trumpeter swans, whose white bodies blend in, then stand out with every wing flap in the gray-white skies of November. They leave reluctantly, even as ice forms on most water bodies, as if they are part winter themselves.

Slowly, mating pairs begin their journey towards the south-central states of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, picking up stragglers along the way. Then all of the sudden their echoing trumpets can no longer be heard, and an eerie silence settles across the land and lakes. It is the stillness of waiting—of a landscape holding its breath for winter’s arrival.

Meanwhile, in protest against the unseasonably warm fall, the northern skies turn darker and heavier, filled with low, bruised clouds that carry the promise of the season’s first snow. But when will it come? Will there be snow this month? Or will November rains carry us into December? As nature’s rhythms unfold, the wood piles grow taller and the furnaces run longer, keeping our houses warm and providing a refuge against the looming cold.

Winter is coming, bringing with it an almost sacred stillness that will blanket the northland. Each year, it’s the same: a cycle of quiet, of cold, and of waiting. And while the silence can feel endless, there’s a quiet comfort in knowing that, beneath the ice and frost, life slows down a bit, giving us time to reflect and to reason. Although it is getting colder and greyer, the deep green of conifers still provides some color to the land. And that green will carry me through the winter.

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There is a brief period of time around Halloween when tamarack needles are so orange that every swamp and bog look ablaze while the deep green of spruce trees creates a backdrop to another autumn coming to an end. When the sun shines just right, the tamaracks turn the color of campfire flames, whose fires slowly smolder down to embers until November gales blow them out. There they will stand for the next few months–spiring dead heads the color of soot.

It is at this time that hordes of ducks stream down from Canada and northern Minnesota where they have been feeding on wild rice and pond weeds. In the early mornings and late evenings, you might see large flocks of these ducks, hundreds or thousands strong. Moving in unison like a giant black amoeba controlled by an invisible orchestra conductor. Floating along the skies this way and that way to some silent rhythm of the heavens.

When seen from far away they appear to fly without sound, but if one is lucky, they get to hear the clamor of the flocks flying right overhead. On lakes and ponds where they propose to feed, a half hour or more before sun up, they stream just above the tree tops sounding like so many fighter jets divebombing the water. Like miniature Blue Angels, they fly in squadrons, dropping low just above the surface before locking their wings and putting down their landing gear. Whoosh.

And then silence as the world once again settles until another streaming flock careens in. I consider myself lucky to have been introduced to this fall phenomenon when I was just a boy and the tamaracks were burning orange against overcast skies. To have known those cold, dark mornings when night still had hold of the land and water. Sneaking atop the water in an old aluminum rowboat. My dad rowing across the bay and me sitting on a mountain of duck decoys, a flashlight in my hand the only glow guiding us to an old blind on a distant shore.

Someone who has never experienced the full process of a duck hunt might not be able to appreciate that it is so much more than shooting wild game in hopes to have a dinner provided by the earth. It is the early mornings rowing or paddling or motoring across black waters under black skies. The sound of oars swirling the water, breaking the silence of the pre-dawn darkness.

In these hours between midnight and sunup, I have seen the woods and waters dark as coal. When the clouds are thick and not even a pin-hole star can peek through. I have felt the silence of the earth at these times. A short stretch between the night creatures, the hooting owls and howling wolves and the morning birds.

The silence is haunting and beautiful. A tension builds in this atmosphere. A taught line of suspenseful stillness pulled tight by the final grip of night and the promise of the soon to rise sun. In these moments a certain nervous anticipation radiates from me. Focus floods my veins. I’m half scared, half in my element. As if the old ways, the echoes of the wilderness still coat my DNA. In these moments I am most alive. Most in tune with the self and my surroundings. Most connected to the land and the eternal wisdom it beholds.

A bond is built with whoever you share the boat with. It is memories made on the duck waters, memories that bond themselves to the old boat and decoys so that years later, one still remembers when they pick up an old decoy from the shed. As if holding it in one’s hand is enough to transport them back into the past—back to quiet mornings on the water.

Decades later, when in the fall I see the tamarack needles turn orange, I still remember. I think of mid-October long ago, when the skies were black with swirling ducks, and a giant grin graced my father’s face as we watched them fly. Even now, when the tamaracks turn, I’m taken back to that day—when the world felt wide, the sky was alive, and we shared a feeling of utter peace.

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo

The (Wild)erness Journal

Sometimes around mid-Autumn, one can see ghosts. In the north woods the seasons are changing swiftly–leaves are beginning to turn colors into autumn palates of golds and oranges, and waterfowl are starting their great migrations south.

But it is the nights that perhaps change the most. The daytime temps still reach into the 70s and 80s, and the surface waters of the glacial lakes cling to the upper 50s and 60s, struggling tremendously to maintain their grasp of summer warmth and freedom.

Then at night, after the sun has set and the stars dot the sky, the ghosts of Autumn come out. When the orange harvest moon rises above the quiet pines and the air temperatures drop below 50 degrees, the ghosts come out. If you wish to see them, find a shoreline to a northern lake, river or pond, and stand and wait. Or silently paddle out in a canoe if you dare.

Wait long enough and you will witness ghosts emerging from the cooling waters. Long ribbons of wispy fog drifting eerily atop the surface, drifting towards the moon above as if it can save them.

I like to think these ghosts are condensed memories of summer freedom taking leave from black waters that will soon be locked with ice. Echoes of summer, of swimming, fishing, and canoe trips evaporating into the cool air so they can come back again next spring when the waters warm once more.

These nights feel alive with mystery. Crickets still sing, though their songs are slower now, deliberate, as if each note carries weight. Barred owls call from deep in the woods, their voices carrying across the water, a reminder of a wildness we rarely touch.

And then there is the air itself—thin, sharp, and fragrant. It carries the scent of decaying leaves, the spice of pine needles, and the faint trace of woodsmoke from some distant cabin stove.

By morning, as the sun crests the trees, the fog, the ghosts begin to vanish. They are burned away by the rising sun, and the world seems ordinary once more. Autumn is a season of change in more ways than one. Every tree dropping its leaves is letting go of something, just as we do in our own lives.

The woods are full of reminders that all things pass, and yet nothing is ever truly gone. The geese will return, the trees will bud again, the lakes will open. And in this turning of the seasons we are invited to remember that life, too, moves in cycles.

So go. Stand at the water’s edge some crisp October night. Let the fog curl around your boots, let the owls call in the dark, let the moon cast its pale reflection over the drifting ghosts of autumn. And let yourself enjoy it all.

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo

The (Wild)erness Journal

Something is to be said for the dew that forms on the predawn grass in early September. Hot end-of-summer days mix remarkably with cool autumn nights and the result is the cleanest, coldest dew your feet have ever felt. And it forms on grass so plush and thick from long hot days and soft, fertile rains. Little cold droplets from the distant stars themselves. Stars and constellations now changing with the seasons.

This is why I often wake up at five in the morning, not because I need to rush to work, but to be outside before the sunrise to capture the stillness of the land. So I can enjoy the first breaths of day–the silver-blue dawn sky, the last remaining stars still shining, and the dewy-scent of late summer air.

In those moments, I’m most aware. I am in oneness with all things. The world is so infinite in those early quiet hours before my thoughts have yet stirred. So that is why I still chase it. And why not? What else is there but to find joy in all little moments?

Before the sun rises in the dawn sky, the constellation Orion, also known as Bibookeonnini (“Wintermaker” in Ojibwe), can now be seen to the southeast. The arrival of this constellation signals, for me at least, two coming transformations–the beginning of autumn, and before long, winter.

For now though, in the crisp waking hours of day, with the tremble of glowing light just awakening to the east, the remnants of summer can still be heard. The fading tunes of crickets and song birds still ring calmly among the woods though with not as much gumption. The robins are busy, I hazard a guess, preparing for a long journey south, where they will later grace the lawns and wood edges of another place and another time.

For now, life continues to stir in the forest, but Wintermaker will soon freeze these sounds in a snowy tomb until spring. Until then, I shall tilt my ear to the chorus of the north woods.

This transitional time, for many of us, is a bittersweet time of year. In the evenings, from decks and lawns, the spring peepers and gray tree frogs can be heard once again. After a mid-summer lull, their calling resumes once more, as if bidding adieu to summer. A season that they seemingly just welcomed in.

But summers in the northland are always short. Short and sweet like the temporary flavors of its bounty: the wild strawberries, raspberries and blueberries of which now reside in our freezers or have been made into jams to be opened up midwinter to provide us with a morsel of summer.

Now, the frogs call from the safety of trees instead of spring ponds that have all but dried up. Calling not for mating rituals or territorial disputes, but calling, I suppose, to say goodbye to whoever and whatever is listening. Singing a few final songs to the evening travelers. Singing the closing lines of the season before they crawl back into their winter beds beneath covers of ice. When their symphonies will be but waning melodies playing somewhere in the backs of our minds.

Because of this, the ephemeral nature of migratory song birds, frogs, and crickets, I make sure to listen for a spell, trying to capture the essence of their calls so that when winter comes and they are silenced for months, I can still hear their tune playing somewhere in the woods of my being.

Most of us have experienced internal winters and if we at least have the sounds of summer to recollect, the visions of green grass and wild berries to sustain us, we will withstand winters of any length and any severity. I fear for those who have not captured the light of summer to balance out the darkness of winter.

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo

The (Wild)erness Journal

As soon as I stirred from my bunk this morning, I was greeted with a golden glow outside the window of my family’s shack that sits far out in the country. It demanded my attention and so I crept outside to greet the day and the rising of the sun.

Morning dew clung to the tall grass of the field like it needed it for life. Drops as big as peas somehow sticking to every stalk of grass and every wildflower. As the sun awakened above the trees on the horizon, the field of dew began to twinkle. Millions of delicate diamonds shimmering among the golden grasses.

Somewhere, still deep in the woods yonder, a ruffed grouse drummed its wings on a fallen log. As if on cue, the forest began to stir all at once. Squirrels skittered about and chattered at one another. The song of a robin floated across the crisp air above the field. And the most wonderful sound of all was in fact the absence of man-made noise. No whining of passing vehicles or droning of airplanes. Just the wild. Just the woods and the fields. Even if just for a few moments.

As I scanned the open field, the sky, and the woods, I said aloud, “I am thankful for another day,” and I meant it. And it felt good to have that conviction. Gratitude brings us back down to earth. It helps us become more present in our lives. It does one good to be more thankful for what one has rather than yearning for more.

Life, and our experience of it, all comes down to perspective. If you perceive that you live a good life, you will have that. If, on the other hand, you perceive that you were dealt a bad hand, you will likely have that instead. René Descartes, a famous French philosopher and scientist once said, “I think, therefore, I am.” Such truth and simplicity in that line. We think, therefore, we are.

During this still moment out in the country, with only the sounds of the wilderness to grace my ears, I thought how nice it is to slow down on occasion. To get away to a place where one can live more simply for a time and reset. As the sun rose higher, and the dew began to drip off the grasses, I felt the weight of the night drip off my own stalks.

And that internal dew soaked into the fertile soil of my mind, watering the seeds of another type. Watering the seeds of good thoughts and self-reliance. These particular seeds, if taken proper care of, are perennial and will bloom year after year and when you see them, so too will others see them, and perhaps they will then gain the courage to till their own gardens.

Sincerely,

Anthony Anselmo

The (Wild)erness Journal

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What moves you in the summer months? Excites your soul and grounds your feet? Is it the rhythmic lapping of the waves on a sandy shoreline? Or the painted sky at sunset? Or is it something overlooked by most, like fireflies in the night or the hoot of an owl? Whatever it is, I hope you never cease to notice it. Noticing makes all the difference.

For me it is June and July nights, where the robins sing into dusk—carrying summer on every note. As the western sky turns from yellow to pink to dusky blue, still they sing. I used to walk through life not paying much attention to the different types of songbirds or wildflowers. I appreciated them certainly, but as I’ve gotten older and come to learn the names of them—what bird sings that particular song, or when certain wildflowers bloom. I feel more connected. Life seems to mean a bit more.

So every June and July, I make sure to pay special attention to the roadside ditches where orange and yellow hawkweed dances like flowered flames in the summer wind. I look to the hayfields as the ox-eye daisies, in full bloom, look like dustings of fresh snow upon the tall grass, and if I’m truly lucky, I happen by a vast bog where the white bloomed flowers of cranberry bushes and labrador tea glisten in the dense green backdrop like fallen tufts of cumulus clouds.

As for now, in these final minutes of twilight, I hear the leaves rustle and see them flutter too–like a thousand green tethered butterflies–but the best part, I think, is feeling them rattle my bones, shaking off the dust set upon my soul. That is what summer evenings are to me. When the heat of the sun is buffeted by the horizon trees and the coolness of night has mixed with the humid air of the day into a union of astral proportions.

Anyone can watch, anyone can listen, but the secret is to remember how to feel it all too. That is the by-product of slowing down, being outside, and noticing things again. Technology has evolved more quickly than humans, and our ever-racing minds cannot keep up.

It is for that reason we must follow the trails less traveled back to a simpler way of life—back outside so our inner wars do not become more. We must learn also, to quiet our inner tellings and tuck them neatly to sleep. When our thoughts are silent, we are able to take in our surroundings. I have learned that it is more than enough to just be with the birds. To listen to their songs.

It still happens that, every once and a while, I reminisce on yesteryear and ponder if it was better to me. Are the golden days really over? Left behind in the footprints of my childhood? Or am I only remembering the good times, having released or buried all bad thoughts from the past? I get caught in these thoughts when I spend too much time indoors or on my phone.

Nature, for me, is a bridge to the oases of time, memory and spirit. In nature time slows down, my memory becomes sharper, and my spirit lifted to great heights. Suddenly the past is no longer central, thoughts of the future don’t take a toll on my well-being, and the present, the now, becomes the only thing that matters.

So, I ask again, what moves you in the summer months?

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One can tell a lot about a lake by observing the weeds on its shorelines. They give clues about what species of fish the lake might harbor. They give clues to what the substrate is like beneath the surface and what aquatic insects might be burrowing below.

The lakes that lack much of any floating or emergent vegetation perhaps are bog stained or rocky or both. Few species of plants find refuge in the rocky Canadian shield lakes of northeastern Minnesota. Where the waters are darkened by dissolved tannins that reduce light penetration and ancient rocks that lie thick beneath the surface.

But what about other lake weeds and what can they tell us? Bullrush is one. Common along shorelines across the state and sometimes in the middle of bays. If you see stands of them one can bet that below is a sandy bottom not more than six feet from the surface.

They extend out of the water like so many long green whiskers, about the diameter of a pencil, two to three feet high and narrowing to a point at their ends. The longer ones have a certain bend to them as if holding some great weight of the world. Reed spiders abound in their midst and many a paddler has received a face full of spider web when traveling amongst them.

Often enough, various submerged pond weeds lie at the outer edges of bullrush forming dense patches. Semi-permeable membranes that slow the flow of insect and fish activity into and out of the bullrush. Like they are life-size depictions of the barriers of bodily cells.

Yet, they too are conducive to supporting animal life and do so well enough. Many a northern pike have ambushed prey on either side of pond weed patches. Pike are like antioxidants of the inland seas, the cleaners up of free radicals and toxins unfit for the survival of the whole organisms itself–of which is the lake.

Where the bullrush meets the sandy shores there lies a kingdom of its own. A peculiar place that hosts a variety of subjects. This is a favorite haunt of many a green frog. Whose kind thrives in the protection the reedy stalks provide. These are their hunting grounds and hunting is good for there is food aplenty amidst the bullrush in the shallows and the leafy shrubs that form a border between lake and woods.

In these places one may find green frogs of all shapes and sizes. Younger ones the size of a nickel and larger ones nearly as round as baseballs. They dodge in and out of the tall green stalks. Sometimes hopping into the lake where they craftily disappear and sometimes diving headlong into the cattails or manna grass that lines the shore. There they feed on reed spiders and black flies and other similar tasty morsels.

In the early summer, one might find other visitors lurking in the shallows of the lake. Black and brown bullhead young often school up and linger amongst the bullrush, sometimes in water as shallow as a few inches. Their curvy bodies and short “whiskers”, called barbels, make them look like miniature catfish, which they in fact are. Bullheads are ictalurids which are a family of catfish native to Minnesota.

When I was a kid, before I knew about ictalurids and percids and the overall scientific names of things, I remember watching a school of young bullheads swim around and beneath my grandparent’s dock. I decided I wanted to hold one so I grabbed a small net and scooped up a dozen or so and dumped them into a bucket of lake water. Watching them completely entranced me. I think watching them swim helped forge my admiration for not only fish and lakes but all of the outdoors. This world, I found, was full of tiny miracles at every turn.

Out there on the dock, in the shallows of the lake, was a place that didn’t hold back the truth. What I saw and observed was real, and wild, and pure. There were no filters. Out there, on the dock, in the shallows of the lake, was a place I felt fully alive. When I got older, somewhere along the line, I forgot to notice those tiny miracles and, as a result, the spice of life kept drifting in the wind ahead of me, always just out of reach.

But now I have remembered. Now, I return to those places where time softens, and the weight of the world slips off my shoulders like water from sun-warmed skin. A place where I can remember who I was before the noise—before the world asked me to be anything else.

Who were you before the world asked you to be anything else?

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There’s a reason I keep coming back to the woods—not just with boots and a backpack, but with pen and paper too.

I write about nature because it's the only place that tells the truth without trying. The wind doesn’t pretend. A deer trail doesn’t lie. Out here, the world strips itself down to what matters most: stillness, instinct, survival, beauty. I think we all need that reminder from time to time.

Writing about the outdoors isn’t just nostalgia or hobby for me. It’s a kind of remembering. A way to stay rooted in what makes us human—storytelling, observation, reverence. The outdoors has always been more than scenery to me. It’s a mirror. It shows us what we carry, what we’ve lost, and what we’re still searching for.

And I think that matters, especially now.

We live in a world pulling us in a hundred directions, but when we pause long enough to listen to birdsong, to watch the slow trickle of a creek, or to feel the cold bark of an old pine, we return to ourselves. That’s the gift of the wild. That’s the reason I write, to help those who have forgotten, to help them remember.

Maybe you feel that pull too.

Maybe that’s why you’re here—reading these notes, walking this trail with me. If so, I hope my words feel like a place to breathe. I hope they offer something solid to hold onto in the noise.

And if they ever stir something in you, write me back. I’d love to hear what keeps you close to the wild.

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Until next time,
Anthony
The Wilderness Journal

I have, somewhere along the line, fostered a deep fondness for the swamps and bogs of the north. When it started, I am not sure, but some deep calling beckons me to them. Like there is something within the trees that holds a secret I desperately need to uncover. Some ancient knowledge hidden in the network of spruce roots and tannic soil. Beneath the cattail’s tubers and the broadleaf arrowhead’s rhizomes.

Maybe it is their pristine pasts, of being mostly yet untouched and unbothered. And so they hold some of the last virgin acres, forgotten frontiers that only one in a hundred thousand people bother to contemplate, mysterious woods yet untamable, so man let them be. The bogs and the swamps only gave him headaches.

One can hardly build a railroad or highway through them for they have a way of making things disappear in their endless depths. As a result, most transportation now goes around them. Better left alone to be the hidden haunts of owls and wolves. Of boreal chickadees and towering moose. Of pitcher plants and labrador tea.

Even during the heat of the day, with the sun straight above, only the leading edges of the swamp and tops of the canopy of trees shine in the light. They act like textured shields with small creases that filter just enough light in as necessary for the continuation of what lies within.

On the inside, they are still full of long shadows and shaded oases. Wherein the mosses, lichens, spruce roots and hidden secrets of that mysterious wilderness lie in the cool shadows of a pristine empire. The last frontiers of the lower forty-eight, clinging to the very roots of the trees that have taken hold in the webs and tangles of a moss-covered forest floor.

Every swamp and bog have their own unique qualities, but they all share, at their core, the secret to life. And there it is! While writing this piece, I unknowingly answered my own ponderings. The secret is to stay wild. Don’t let the world change you. Disrupt the norm. Have your own mysterious center. One that welcomes all things except ignorance. The sun, the moon, the breeze, the deer, the wolves, the owls.

All are welcome, even the rain and dark nights, the fog and the snow, the pine martens and night hawks and everything else that wanders in the shadow realm. Be like the swamp and the bog who remain wild even after everything else has been tamed.

If you are searching for some sort of meaning of it all, go in and see for yourself. One is sure to stumble upon something that rouses their soul awake. Don’t let them put roads through you, that you may be easy to cross. To maintain your mystery, be like the bog and force them to build roads around you so that your internal kingdom may remain untarnished.

In the north country, quite in the middle of nowhere, there is a creek that meanders through miles of unbroken wilderness. I used to paddle it, often times alone, until I reached a secluded lake. One of the few bodies of water without houses or cabins polluting its shore. It was one of my duties as a fish and wildlife specialist to survey the lake throughout the year, monitoring water levels and the growth of wild rice. A job that always contained adventure.

At the place I set my canoe in the water, the creek was only a canoe length wide, and perhaps that is giving it too much credit. The water flowed steady but slow and, having drained from tannic swamps, took on the color of root beer. This dark water hid the substrate and caused me to hit a rock or two which lay quite invisible below the surface.

Petrel Creek snakes its way on ahead, curving through alders and tall reed grass. At this section a few beavers had staked a claim and more than a few times I had to split a dam to continue on. Slowly, the creek widens as it enters a transition into a vast spruce swamp. My favorite leg of the journey. This section hosts bends and oxbows that hold wild rice and wood ducks in the fall. Tamaracks are sprinkled in among the tall black spruce, and the wind, if blowing east to west, seems to be buffeted by the barricade of trees.

The water stretches out before my canoe like a liquid path into the past. The trees that border Petrel Creek reach towards the sky, a sky so blue and dotted with white clouds that puff along to wherever clouds go. Sometimes I stop for a moment there, to rest my shoulders and back, to rest my worries and troubles and let them sink into the root beer water.

Then, with the trifles of the day having dissolved, I can sit and enjoy a still moment. The depths of the wilderness reign me in and soon time is forgotten, left somewhere along the previous bend. It will catch up to me eventually. But not now. For now, I sit back and relish in the wonder of the world.

On the water, we float and glide in a sea of possibility. The closest thing to experiencing another realm. On the water, thoughts of tomorrow and worries of work are forgotten. There is no room for them out there. They get filtered out by the scenic screens of the lakes and rivers.

The love for the lakes is in the blood of so many Minnesotans, whose ancestors were pioneers, or homesteaders. Fur traders, or Ojibwe or Lakota. Ancestors whose lives depended on the water for travel, for food, and for life. A community of people who learned to tame the waters and gave thanks to it. There is a freedom and some mysterious independence about being on the water. I think it lies in our DNA somewhere.

Around the final bend, the creek opens up into a jewel of a lake surrounded by pines and peace. Swans swim unhindered along the eastern shore. A dragonfly lands on my knee as if it were a table and takes his time eating a mayfly. For a moment, I too am a part of the wilderness.

Joy courses through me in that connection with the wilds. The feeling that I am not disturbing the goings on of nature. White lily pads bloom across the southern portion of the lake, a patch of opaque diamonds flowering from floating green plates. I watch as bees float from flower to flower, gathering drops of golden pollen and nectar—the currency of plants, flowers, and bees. I listen as the warblers echo from their perches in the woods. I smell the fresh air of a lake tucked back in time and place. I feel attuned with the ancient rhythms of the earth. And that, my friends, is plenty.