Ecotrips with a story to tell. :: Aspen EcoExperience is a unique opportunity to be inspired by our natural world and inspire others with your stories.
We're excited to share our new (and first official) logo and we'd love to know what you think of it. It's been a challenge to bring the nature/eco and storytelling elements together, but we think this works for "ecotrips with a story to tell." What do you think?
A wolf’s ears aren’t just for picking up sounds of howling or prey, they’re also helpful for thermoregulation, allowing heat to escape. But what if you’re an arctic wolf who lives in, well, the Arctic? Too much heat loss can be a dangerous thing. So the Arctic sub-species of the gray wolf has evolved smaller ears to minimize heat loss in its colder climate. It has also evolved a white coat - for obvious reasons. :)
Our best chance of seeing a moose was along the Gunflint Trail road at dawn and dusk. So we woke up before sunrise, bundled into a couple layers, and set off on the road, hopeful we’d roll up to a moose friend along the drive. By the time the sun was peeking over the horizon we hadn’t seen a thing, but then we rounded a curve and saw a dark bobbing blob in the middle of the road. It wasn't a moose, but we were pleasantly surprised to find it was a spruce grouse, a species we’d never seen before. Nature has such a unique way of transforming disappointment into wonder.
As we were snowshoeing on a quiet trail, we came across a collection of boulders that stopped me in my tracks. Something about the shades of gray, the contrast of the snow on them, the shapes they created… I can’t explain it. Even as I type these words, I can’t come up with the ones that would convey how or why these simple rocks were so beautiful and engaging to me. But maybe I don’t need to. Maybe you’ve had a similar moment and know exactly what I’m talking about.
Sax Zim Bog is an interesting place to go birding. You spend pretty much all your time in the car, slowly driving a collection of rural roads. You scan the road ahead and the trees that border it, keeping your eyes peeled for movement or the unmistakable outline of a great gray or northern hawk owl. If you’re sane, you do this with the windows rolled up, especially when it’s below zero. I, however, like to make it a little more interesting. Besides, there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad wardrobe.
Wolves have a bad reputation: violent, aggressive, even evil. For hundreds of years and in countless stories, they've been portrayed in a way that makes that negative reptuation obvious and justified. Just take a look at the top photo - scary, right?! But that moment is an incomplete story. That moment is out of context. In reality, this wolf is not violent or even aggressive; he's simply in the midst of a post-nap yawn. And that makes me wonder: how much of the wolf's story have we missed and misunderstood? How many incredible, beautiful parts have been edited out so that we're left with an incomplete story or one that's taken out of context? Unfortunately for wolves, they can't edit their own behavior and story. But we can stop editing it for them.
This video is the sound of wolves howling in the night. Well, sort of... We went on a moonlit hike with the wonderful Gunflint naturalist, John. Our goal was to hear wolves howling. We had to earn it, though, by howling ourselves. At the start of our hike John gave us a howling demo and a few quick instructions, and then we attempted our first collective howl. After we finished we listened silently for a while, not daring to make a human sound. We were met with silence. So we hiked a bit and stopped at a clearing to try again. We howled, listened… silence. We hiked farther down the trail and again we howled, listened... silence again. Near the end of our hike, John said, “Okay, let’s try one last time.” So we howled, listened… and then, off in the distance, I heard it: faint, but distinct, howling. I closed my eyes, felt the cold wind on my face, and listened in awe to that wild sound.
The impressive-sounding howl at the beginning is John. Our howls are… well, at least they weren’t so terrible that we scared off the wolves!
There are some things you think you’ll never see. You think, “wow, that’d be amazing…” and then resign yourself to the fact that it’ll probably never happen. This was my thinking on flying squirrels. I think they are so cool but I was sure I’d never see one, especially since they’re nocturnal. But then, it happened. There he was, a tiny little squirrel hanging on the side of a feeder in a wood shed having a late-night snack. And he wasn’t alone; several more were jumping and running – lightning-fast – from the feeders, to the wood pile, to the wooden posts and beams of the shed. Then I saw a streak across the sky, from one tree to another - a distance of at least 50 feet. And then another streak! Not only was I seeing flying squirrels, I was seeing them fly!! (Well, technically, they glide - but that’s no less incredible!) I spent two hours in the dark and cold watching them and attempting at least a semi-decent photo of these amazing critters, mentally pinching myself the whole time.
Check out the first batch of EcoExperience stories:
In late December, we went on a mini EcoExperience to the North Woods in Minnesota to kickoff Aspen EcoExperience's launch and contribute to the goal of 5,107 stories in 2017. We started the...
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