Wild About Nature Blog

The Leonids are coming, and it sounds like it’s going to be a big one this year!  With the new moon keeping the skies dark, all we have to hope for is a cloudless sky. Asia will get a much more impressive display — estimates range as high as 300 per hour — but we can hope for 30 or so, with the possibility of some wild fireballs thrown in to the display. Get up in the wee hours of the morning, bundle up, and head outside. It might just be a night to remember =)

Posted on November 16th, 2009 by Kenton and Rebecca
Filed under: Natural Phenomena | No Comments »

“Well, I had no idea,” I said.

We put down the book we were reading — Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.  Among other things, Mr. McDougall talks about ‘persistence hunting’ — a mode of hunting that is almost forgotten today. The idea is that humans run their prey down — which seems quite impossible when you consider that humans seem pretty slow compared to most other animals.

I had said ‘I had no idea’, because a couple of years ago I decided to embark on a strange and rather crazy quest. Spurred on by a sort of mid-life crisis and wanting to test my physical limits, I decided to chase after and catch a wild turkey with my bare hands. I devoted a year to the endeavor, training harder than I had ever trained and spending the whole winter chasing turkeys in the hills and valleys behind Sweetwater. The contest didn’t really seem fair, considering that turkeys can run at 25 mph. A world-class sprinter, at the most, might clock in at 27-28 mph, but I’m not a world-class sprinter. And if ground speed isn’t enough, they’re capable of 55 mph flight. Despite being rather outclassed, I had some great adventures, and wrote a book about the whole affair. Now I have an agent and we’re in the process of finding a publisher. On her advice, I can’t tell you the result of my quest, but I can tell you that I’m pretty impressed by the idea of persistence hunting (my quest was to catch a turkey and let it go, so I wouldn’t really call it ‘hunting’, but the basic idea is the same).

You see, despite the fact that we’re not very impressive sprinters, humans are superb endurance runners. In distance races against horses, humans often come out the victors. Some people are suggesting that during human evolution, it might not have been our intelligence that gave us our best advantage (there is some evidence that Neanderthals were the more intelligent species), but rather our running ability, which allowed us to secure game. The remarkable truth is that humans may very well be the best endurance runners on the planet — outpacing all other species.  This video records a persistence hunt by San tribesmen, and gives an overview of how a human can run down a Kudu (a type of antelope).

I discovered that many of the elements of persistence hunting that Mr. McDougall wrote about (many of which are also portrayed in the video above), had come naturally to me during my turkey quest. Toward the end of the winter, I began to ‘think’ like a turkey, and stayed on the turkeys’ trails for long periods by tracking and ‘intuiting’ where the turkey might have flown. In effect, I had observed them long enough and spent enough time in their environment that I understood the way that they reacted when they fled danger.

Rebecca and I are now becoming ultra-running aficionados. We’re going for longer and longer distances, often barefoot, and are discovering that running can be incredibly enjoyable when you relax into it and just let your legs carry you over the hills. It’s an amazing thought to consider that our ancestors might have used this skill to bring meat home to their families. We may not be using it for hunting, but there’s something magical about running over the ground and wondering if, indeed, we are following the pathways of an ancient tradition that shaped human evolution.

Read Kenton’s Latest Nature Column Article in the Dunn County News! (Sorry, the online version is lacking Rebecca’s awesome photography)

Visit our Adventure Journal to learn about our latest adventures!

Posted on November 3rd, 2009 by Kenton Whitman
Filed under: Nature Inspiration | 10 Comments »

Not too far from our home is an unusual geologic feature that we visited just the other day. It turns out that during the last glacial period (about 10,000 years ago), what is now called the St. Croix River was quite a bit deeper than it now is. Great rushes of water swept down its length, roaring over basalt. In places, sand and tiny rocks would create small eddies, swirling in whirlpools and eating their way down into the basalt. The result is an incredible array of potholes — smooth-sided depressions found all along the high cliffs. Some are quite tiny –

While others are big enough to stand in –

And others are quite immense –

Many remain unexcavated, and could be sixty feet deep or more! It was interesting to consider the small ponds that had made their homes in the potholes, and it would be a fun project to document the life that calls these ‘pothole ponds’ home.

We also had other adventures at Interstate Park. We rescued a confused and exhausted goose that was running about in a local intersection– with some difficulty we caught it and took it down the riverbank. We also had some great fun climbing the cliffs.

Kenton on his way up.

Rebecca scouting her next move.

Interstate Park is definitely worth the visit — it boasts the highest concentration of these potholes in the world. We’d recommend a week-day visit if you can, however, as it is VERY popular, and the weekends can be extremely crowded. Do let us know if you pay it a visit!

Posted on September 24th, 2009 by Kenton and Rebecca
Filed under: Natural Phenomena | 4 Comments »

Two days ago, while sitting at our computers writing, Rebecca and I heard a sharp retort — almost like a gunshot — issue from our woods.  We paused in our typing.  A moment later, we heard another one.  We looked across at each other.  What now?

Then it was if thirty guns started firing all at once, for a loud crashing emerged from our woods, and we knew immediately what we were hearing.

One of our huge oaks had fallen.

Now, our trees aren’t exactly ancient, but one is large enough in girth that two people can’t touch when they try to wrap their arms around it.  We hiked down into the woods and soon found the fall. It wasn’t a tree that had fallen over, but rather a huge half of an oak that had long been splitting down its middle.  The weaker half had fallen away, crashing to the ground.  Standing before it, we could still hear pops and cracks as the weight settled.  We heard these sounds even into the night, as the wood adjusted to the new strains.

It can be sad to see a fall like this.  Luckily, our oak still lives, and has just lost some significant limbs.  But under that massive branch are healthy trees, bent forever under the impossible weight, and it’s sad to see them shattered and broken when a moment before they were reaching for the sky.

Of course, these falls also bring other changes to the forest.  Now there is an opening in the canopy where before there was only shade.  A small maple tree has suddenly learned that it has been growing in a very opportune position — light streams down on its leaves, and it is free to grow into the wide opening left by the oak’s collapse.  Our woods-camp, just ten paces from the fallen oak limb, now has a clear view to the starry sky.  And plants that favor sun over shade will find, for a year or two at least, that there is an abundance of sunshine.

Rebecca and I will enjoy the fallen oak as well.  It’s a climbing-gym now, where we can pretend to be squirrels and test our balance and agility without fear of falling too far. It will provide a graceful arch over our favorite walking-path up to the woods-camp, and in the winter it will be beautiful, the dark bark coated with snow.

A mighty crash, and the woods is given a new song.  How lovely destruction can be.

Posted on September 14th, 2009 by Kenton and Rebecca
Filed under: Nature Inspiration | 12 Comments »

We rarely watch movies, but something about this one drew us in, and a few nights ago we sat down to watch ‘Le renard et l’enfant’, a French film by filmmaker Luc Jacquet, best known for ‘March of the Penguins’.  We really weren’t sure what to expect, but in moments we were enchanted with the single human actor, who plays a young girl with an obvious love of nature.

Her encounter with a fox opens up an exploration of the natural world, and the film takes you on a journey into a land that seems like a fairy tale when you’re sitting in front of the television screen.  For all of us who regularly venture out into natural places, however, we’ll recognize an accessible and very real world that she’s discovering — a world of beauty, excitement, wonder, and occasional danger.

Taking us along on her journey, we get to feel the impact of humankind on a rather pristine natural environment.  Most significantly, the film shows how our human minds can shape the natural world around us, turning beauty into fear, and fear into beauty.  And in the end, the film delivers a poignant message about the nature of love.

This is a movie Rebecca and I might actually purchase, not only for its story, but for the incredible footage of foxes and the natural world.  It took our breath away again and again.  It is a great family film, but if you’re a grown-up you have to watch the movie with an open heart, because it isn’t necessarily geared for an adult audience.  Personally, we found ourselves enchanted from start to finish.

Posted on August 27th, 2009 by Kenton and Rebecca
Filed under: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »