On to Duluth

This morning we pushed on to Duluth, which means we came about as close to driving diagonally across the State of Minnesota as one can. As is our habit, we stayed off interstates and four-lane highways.  We were forced to use I-35 for about fifty miles, but that wasn’t bad.  The experience did, however,  focus my thoughts on the subtle ways in which we damage our precious environment.

As I described in yesterday’s post, we spent two days at Birch Coulee in Renville, Co.  That’s farming country, and for hours this morning we drove through fields of soy beans and corn.  Because of our tremendous human over-population, I can hardly complain about the farms. (Actually, I’ve never complained about farms.) It isn’t like putting up another McDonald’s or Walmart that we don’t need. We need these farms. We need to support family farms! Family farmers love the land and do their bests to care for it because they want to pass it on to future generations. Big Agri-corps just work the land for a profit. They don’t take care of it. And, yes, I’ve seen the memes, “don’t complain about farms with your mouth full.”  The damage we did to the land was done long ago.  Minnesota became a state in 1858, and we know that white immigrants began to show up here and start farming as early as 1820.

The farming communities in western Minnesota sure aren’t growing.  Olivia, the county seat of Renville County, had a staggering 2,347 people in 2019.  It had 2,569 in 2000.  The really big city in the area is Willmar with a 2018 population of 19,673, up by 63 people from the 2010 census.  Then we got to Saint Cloud.  Pamela used to travel through St Cloud on the way to her husband’s home in Canada each year.  The last time through has been quite a few years ago and she said she didn’t even recognize it. I can understand.  It has grown by around 11.4 to 21.1% every census since 1990.  When Pamela was passing through it had a population under 50,000. The 2018 estimate was 68,462.  Here we began to see the signs and symptoms of human over-population.

It was actually around St. Cloud that we noticed several changes.  Firstly, the big farms were behind us. We were entering a different ecosystem.  Behind us the soil was black.  Except for some geological features like Birch Coulee, most of that area’s “surficial” geology is wetland-organic sediment according to the Minnesota Depart of Natural Resources.  Heading northeast from St. Cloud we were entering the famous lake region.  This lake region is awesome and the lakes are lovely, so I don’t want this to sound derogatory, but the lakes are actually holes left behind by the glaciers that filled with water. But aren’t they magnificent holes? Thank you Unci Maka;  Grandmother Earth; for such a wonderful remnant of the glaciers. We saw no big farms in this area.

While what few trees we saw in the southwest were ash, hickory, hackberry and oaks, when we entered the lake region we were seeing mostly firs, pines and lots and lots of birch.  The birch were as thick as our aspen are back home in Montana. I had to look them up to see if they too reproduce by rhizome. They don’t. Birch reproduce by seeds. It makes sense to see so many birch when the area is so wet.

Less than sixty miles from Duluth we had to use an interstate.  That’s when it really hit me.  Up until the introduction of the interstate system during the Eisenhower administration in 1956, our web of county, state and federal highways did minimal damage to the environment.  There was still sufficient damage done to the environment as we crossed wetlands and cut through fragile ecologic areas, but the big difference is that our one-lane roads didn’t stop or interfere with animal migration. There is, of course, the danger of animals getting hit. According to Outdoor Life, there were six million deer killed by hunters in 2018. The same year 1.6 million deer were killed by vehicles.  On interstates there are often barriers in the median as well as high fences on both sides to keep animals away from the road.  Not wanting an animal-vehicle accident is admirable but the means used to avoid such tragedy blocks natural wildlife migration which is a tragedy in its own right.  Wildlife bridges have begun to show up in the west, but we have never seen one cross an interstate. Our interstates are extremely detrimental to our wildlife!  Some of the old highway system had billboards, but generally signs were small, often on a farmer’s fence or his barn.  In eastern US we’ve gone from the ubiquitous “See Rock City” painted on the roof of a farmer’s barn (my grandfather had “Mail Pouch”) to a giant “Cafe Risque” every few miles from southern Georgia to central Florida. Those who have traveled to Florida more than once can tell you about these “adult store” billboards every few miles for several hundred miles. Since the interstate system started there has been a proliferation of giant towers holding advertising billboards and cell towers. These not only destroy the land around them but there must be roads to them for maintenance, etc.  Billboards are not only distracting from the beauty of the land, but detrimental to the environment.  I was very happy that we only had to be on interstate for fifty miles.

We came to Duluth today because of the weather.  There has been a heatwave for the past several days. The temperature effect of Lake Superior makes a big difference. While I was comfortable sitting in the shade at Birch Coulee, I found that my fingers were getting quite cold after sitting at the picnic table above the St. Louis River close to Lake Superior typing. The temperature is still 79 degrees with  69% humidity, so it must be the lake.  We’re staying at a place called Indian Point Campground, on the southwest edge of Duluth and on the St. Louis River. It is a nice place, but I’m anxious to get out into the wilderness where I belong. We plan to explore this area tomorrow then up the famous North Shore, along Lake Superior, and move into the interior forest and lakes when the cooler weather comes midweek.  The anticipation of what we will see and experience next is exhilarating.