I heard wing beats over head and looked up to see a Bald Eagle circling away, then back to shore to light atop a nearby snag spire, with an odd kippering call.
>350 year old White Fir (Abies concolor) snag stump, about five feet in diameter, pine needles above left of glove, marking 50 year increments, counted twice. This tree was a sapling when the Hudson Bay Company was first given a royal charter to control commerce in 1.5 million square miles of what is now central Canada and parts of Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, largely to satisfy the voracious needs of a passing fad for beaver skin hats. In what kind of world would that make any sort of sense? That’s a rhetorical question. We all know the answer. The same kind of world that would knowingly ruin its own climate and habitat for convenience. And all in the time it took this White Fir to grow up and die. Many locals call them piss firs, because they are a somewhat weedy undergrowth tree here, coming in thick, shading the pine seedlings and saplings till they get their footing, prone to fungus and beetles, their crowns dying and becoming lawn darts. Also, sometimes they smell bad when you cut them down. A landscaper I know insisted they were non-native. Really? You think maybe the trappers brought them here 350 years ago? /s