That weird sport where you slide rocks on ice...

So curling...what a funny sport. So every year Wolf Ridge has a bonspiel - curling tournament - and it is ridiculously fun. It is an insane game that is so complicated I hardly thought about strategy so much as not falling on the ice. There is four people on a team, the captain is called a skip and they tell you what angle and how much curl to put on the stone. I just tried to do what they told me to. 

 Here is a shot of me sweeping. Sweeping was so exhausting. The skip tells you when and how hard to sweep. You sweep to straighten a stone and to speed it up. It's interesting you sweep your stone to get it where you want and the other team might sweep more to make it move past where you want.

 Me preparing/trying to figure out what my skip is telling me to do.

 The slide....

It was a ton of fun. I played 4 games total and my team placed 6th out of 16.
I won't become a pro curler anytime soon but I would certainly play again for fun and have a much bigger appreciation for the sport.

This is something silly. For rock climbing I laid out bananagrams on a table with the word adventure already spelled out. I asked my 7th graders to spell out other words that had to to with adventure throughout class. This is what they came up with.








Coming home on Saturday - break is booked solid! I'm so excited to see all you beautiful  people!

Tis the Season

The holidays have arrived and I started them off with a bang. It was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and while I missed my family and friends dearly, my Wolf Ridge family made a pretty good substitute. I have tons of pictures that I'll share the story with. A permanent staffer donated their house to us since they were going out of town. We shared her house with Carson the parrot and two golden retrievers Chevy and Shiloh. Here's a picture of one of the dogs waiting for Carson to drop a treat.

This house is one of the few with cable in the area so we also got a chance to watch the Macy's Parade. Although truthfully I didn't watch much because I was cooking in the kitchen.







I almost forgot the gravy(I did...but Jill asked where it was). You can see most of the food is laid out and I'm scurrying to figure out how to make gravy.












Mary Beth took some artsy photos of our beautiful turkey. I think we did pretty good. It tasted pretty good too.







It looked so pretty I was scared to cut it....and in truth it looked very mangled after I dug in. Props to my mom for telling me how to cut it over the phone.














Group photo before we ate.









And let the eating marathon commence. If you know me you probably know I eat a lot. Thanksgiving is a whole new game. I think I scared my tablemates when I just wouldn't stop eating. They were done long before I gave up.





And then Carson started hoping around on the floor....
















A few hours later they talked my stuffed belly into desert. I made a cheesecake, apple pie, and MB made pumpkin pie. I was still stuffed and could hardly appreciate, but I enjoyed them as breakfast the next few days.
















Poor me.








Then it was time to cuddle with the dogs. Yes, that is me intertwined with a dog on the floor. How could I not? This is also when cribbage began (an awesome card game I will be teaching everyone who will let me when I get home) and Christmas movies!















And then with a perfect ending we got our first heavy snow! We made the dogs take photos with us and danced around a bit. We got ~5 inches that  night and a few more over the rest of the weekend.

The next day we set out on an adventure. We took a hike through the picturesque woods to find our very own Christmas tree.


We finally picked a winner, and used an old fashioned cross cut saw to cut it down. It was pretty silly  because of how thin the tree was but it was more for the stories/photos then anything.





I also made one of the most perfect snow angles of all time.












It's kind of a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but in reality it's the cutest thing ever. We're still in the process of decorating. We're hosting a holiday parting this Friday so it will be all decked out by then.

Other things that have been happening....

We took a field trip to the Duluth aquarium last Friday. We got to meet with the education staff and get some behind the scene tours. It was fun to see environmental ed in a different setting. We also had class at UMD and decided it warranted a night on the town. Mostly just exhausted us though. 

Saturday we went to a concert - Cloud Cult. I highly recommend them. They're from MN, and pretty popular up here. The show was fantastic and a full on artistic experience. They had about 6 people playing in the band, videos playing, we were dancing and two artists painting on stage throughout the concert. The paintings get auctioned for local causes. 

This afternoon I was carving a spoon. There is a staff member who is a pro spoon carver that has been sharing his skills with us. It's hard work, and my spoon isn't quite done yet but working hard on it. 

Just two weeks before Christmas break. I think it'll go fast but at the same time it'll be very  busy. Have to write a paper for my UMD class, I'm doing the raptor program for the first time all by myself Wednesday night, and just lots of teaching. 

Chickadeedeedee

It snowed on Monday. It was gorgeous. I was teaching Orienteering so I hung out at the start while the kids navigated courses with compasses through the woods. The snow actually hung out for a couple days...but it's been warm again this weekend.

Snow means it's winter time,and winter time means the chickadees are flocking, and that means we get to do chickadee landing now! So there are benches set up year round that have cutouts of people and are dressed up so birds get used to them. In the winter chickadees don't migrate but they form flocks which kind of work like wolf-packs - there is an alpha chickadee and the flocks will defend territories (usually around feeders). Anywho we get to bring kids here, they sit really still, and we put seed on their head and on their hand and chickadees land on them. Obviously you can tell from my expressions it's a really cool experience.

 Here's what we really do when we're waiting for kids to come to class after setting up. There are two buildings here with classrooms but classes don't have designated rooms so each time we teach we have to set up and tear down the classroom. And then we just run around from room to room talking to each other till someone sees kids out the windows and we yell 'The kids are COMING!'

Yesterday we had a geology field trip/seminar. All about the geology of the north shore. Lots of stuff about lava flows because pretty much all our rocks are igneous because of the mid-continental rift that formed Lake Superior. This picture shows two different lava flows....and yah that's about how far in depth I'll go haha.

Just Another Day on the Ridge

So weather has been a bit dreary lately. We are all just wishing and hoping for some good snow that'll stick around versus the freezing rain. Classes go on though. I got some new rain pants were are nice to have. I had a rough day last week where I struggled to get my fire going at Voyageur because it was raining  and then in the afternoon I had two seventh grade boys become two year olds. And what I mean by that is they threw tantrums where they screamed at me, threw things, stomped their feet, and one cried. It was a little crazy but the kids were just at their breaking point. But I did find this cool branch with these pretty little mushrooms on it before the tantrums happened!

Here's some pictures of Thistle to lighten the mood haha

He's being trained to come to the stick and climb on command. 

I have my first FEB day this week - which means we go down to our forest ecology building and stay in the valley all day. In the morning I'll teach Forest Ecology and in the afternoon Beavers.  So today I took an adventure down there to figure out the trails with another nat who also has their first FEB day.   We discovered the beavers are going crazy down by our fishing  bridge. All kinds of new canals and chews. 

The whole area by the bridge is just really flooded as well from new dams and lots of rain recently. This is an old dam that isn't working anymore.

The Forest Ecology building is pretty sweet. It's got all kinds of fun plants, aspen paneling, composting toilets, etc. There are two classrooms and a lobby (picture) where we'll eat lunch.

Forest Eco is fun because it's a lot of trails that don't get quite as much use. Trails go through different types of forests and a deer ex closure. 

November Already?

 Okay I know, it's been ages.
I've found two new Superior overlooks I like a lot. The first two pictures to the right are from an adventure last weekend. We went off Wolf Ridge property to hike a bit on the Superior Hiking Trail - goes from Duluth to Canada along the shore. We accidentally missed our turn to Raven Lake campsites but stumbled upon this view, so really not all that bad.
The weather is pretty crisp nowadays. More layers but still not too bad. We've had quite a few days with flurries, it accumulated last night a  bit, but melted today. Has me shopping for some serious boots...
It's been good weather except for Lake Study last week. It was cold, in the shade, and the there was a thin sheet of ice over the test sites. I felt so bad for the kids because they had to get water samples. But they survived and I got back to the classroom as soon as I can. That was the last week on Lake Study. We are now transitioning into winter classes. Frozen lake study will happen as soon as it can...maybe late Dec but probably Jan...I'm not sure. They were setting up for Winter Survival class last week as well.

 But anyways we did find our way to Raven Lake and watched the beavers and muskrats for quite awhile. I think they're stockpiling for winter. It was crazy to see a beaver drag a stick across the lake because he had to break ice almost the whole way.

 Random sunrise...

I had another adventure up Mystical Mountain - the one where you have to use a rope to get up a cliff face. This is a shot of the ridge - campus.

Now that all the leaves are gone you can see everything and its crazy. You can see Lake Superior from almost everyone on top of the ridge.

But this is the second view I was talking about - from the far side of Mystical Mountain.

I love being able to see the wind on the water.

This was around sunset and the colors were great.


We went on this hike to get rid of some energy after sitting in a 4 hour grad class on Friday afternoon. The classes are the hardest thing about being here. It's really difficult for me to be teaching active student led classes to then sit in a traditional classroom for 4 hours. But I guess it has to be that way for now.

If you didn't already know, I like birds.

I know it's been awhile but it's been busy! Lots of teaching. I was a liaison two weeks ago and will be this week as well and that basically just means you have no free time. Last week is rainy and cold which kind of stunk. My Voyageur class couldn't make it back across the lake when the winds were over 30 mph, but I did give them a crazy adventure and we hiked back over Marshall Mtn. Sure we got back about 25 min late....but they loved it. 

Last Saturday the nats got a little bird banding seminar. We practiced holding them and showing off different things such as furcular hollow (fat storage), ear, listening to heartbeat. We caught tons of black-capped chickadees then at the very end we caught this gorgeous purple finch. Isn't he a stud?

Then if you weren't jealous enough... I have some pictures of me with Ruby and Hunter finally. PS I'm usually making funny faces because I'm talking.

 Isn't she gorgeous? I love starring at her colors.

 This is how Ruby gets hand fed. She has to calm down before I open my hand. Then you have to open your hand very flat so she doesn't accidentally get your skin.

 Hunter is so mellow looking, but in reality a lot of stuff freaks him out.

Look at those gorgeous and intense eyes

Owl Banding

So this isn't something normal, but it was very special. One of the second years is also working closely with banding at a bird observatory in Duluth, and he was showing off way too many adorable pictures with saw-whet owls which are way too precious. So we started begging to get in on this...and finally I got to observe for a couple hours on Tuesday night. These guys usually band all night every night for owls but we were only there for a bit since we still had to drive the 1.5 hours back and work the next day. 

So first picture is removing an owl from the net. These nets are very fine and hard to see so the bird will fly in and kind of get folded over in it. It's the same kind of net we use at Wolf Ridge for banding, but meant for bigger birds. 

Once the saw-whets are removed from the net they get stuffed in pvc pipes....they call it a six pack of saw-whets. Then they just hand out in their little pipe till it's time to be banded back at the blind. 

Back inside the blind the saw-whets are banded on their leg. Measurements are taken of the wing chord and weight. Then the tricky part is aging them based on molting patterns. They did this by looking at the primary and secondary flight feathers to see which were old and which new and it was so hard to tell the difference for my untrained eyes.  But I love how this guy is looking down his wing so perfectly posed.

And this wold be an owl ear....and that white round thing, yah that's the back of it's eye. 

I was mostly just observing, but they did allow us to hold them and then release them. We'd set them on our hand and they tended to hang out for a second like this guy, then take off when he was ready....

But they would land in a nearby tree for a few minutes to recoup and probably debrief on what the heck just happened to them. 

An even more special part of the night was catching a long eared owl which I'm hold there....you can see how happy she is about the situation. This lady was going for one of the saw-whets in the net when she got caught (the saw-whet was just fine). This is how we held all the owls, by their legs. She was a little annoyed and kept trying to pull free hence the angel wing look, but this is normal and doesn't hurt them. 

It was a determined it was a she because of the general buffiness...yah I'm not sure what that means either. Look at the stare though. They're named long eared because the feather tufts on top of the head are long...not actually the ear though if you remember the earlier picture :)

And then I got even more lucky, because I got to release her. I sort of gave her a couple bounces so she knew it was coming, the gave her a little 'toss' back into the air. She wasn't too fond of me, but I liked her.