365 True Things: 185/River Time

I'm tired of thinking about how I might "improve" myself, so today I'm going to simply share some photos I took in 2008 while spending three glorious weeks on the St. Croix River in eastern Minnesota as an artist-in-residence of the St. Croix Watershed Research Station, affiliated with the Science Museum of Minnesota. My abode was Pine Needles Cabin, right on the river; no neighbors, just me and the trees and a vast array of birds, not to mention a thieving raccoon. And the flowing water. I had a table to write at, a path to walk along, a canoe at my disposal. It was heaven.

I wrote a piece about my experience and the research being done for the station's newsletter. It was called "River Time." Unfortunately, it's no longer online.

Just looking at these pictures makes me feel happy and very, very fortunate.

Pine Needles Cabin

My writing perch

My hosts told me there were some old names carved into the
sandstone beneath the cabin, so I had to check it out.
These are the rickety steps, and that's the cabin perched above.
And yep, some signatures from the 1870s. The Dunns
(not the Judds) are the original owners of the site;
the cabin was built in the 1910s by one of them.

I don't know what kind of turtle this is, but I also saw a snapping turtle
and a painted turtle during my stay at Pine Needles.

Oriole and cowbird singing a duet

My thieving friend

Out in my canoe

River views from my bluff

Restoring prairie in southern Minnesota

Taking water samples in a St. Croix tributary

Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea

Columbine

Golden alexander and squirrelgrass