Northwoods Memories Multimedia Productions

Late last year we received an email from a friend about some notes from a conversation with Sean Walshe, now deceased, who was the Quetico Park Naturalist for many years.  That note was from the ’80s and had been forgotten until some files were cleaned out and the note found.  While the notes were somewhat confusing, it described a Lynx, like on Darky, and contained a description of the location of the site.  Note that one other  site on Cirrus Lake has been known for many years. 

This past summer we went to the described location and found the site.  It contained one simple image that appeared perhaps to be the body and head of an animal, and could have been a Lynx. We hoped that with some photo processing, we could see the rest of the image.   On arrival home we did some preliminary processing but were not able to identify any other part of the image.  More processing will be done prior to its inclusion in the Cirrus Lake chapter of our book. 

We searched the rest of the cliff face and found no other images.  We photographed much of the surface of the cliff and will examine it with photo processing techniques.   If any other images are found, they will be included when we write the section in our book.

Every time we visit and study a site newly described to us and not previously reported in common references, it provides us with an opportunity to understand more about the culture of the people who left these images on the rocks.  We also become more aware that these images are going away.  The rest of the image of the Lynx has, evidently been eroded away since it was observed in the 80s.  We have expereinced the urge to record all of these sites as they now exist, knowing that every passing period of time makes them less visible.  The loss of these spiritual images is a very unpleasant feeling. 

The complete story of the site and how we learned about it will be included in the Cirrus Lake chapter of our book.

While much text has been written for the 20 Northwoods Pictograph bulletins currently in print, and much photo image processing has been done for the book. the hardest and most difficult part of writing the book is getting it all formatted.  Having never had the experience of writing a book before, we accepted the advice of one of the designers at Fisher Publishing and bought a copy of Adobe InDesign.  This software is especially for working in print media.

We have used the software in producing each of the Northwoods Pictograph bulletins, and now I am using it to format the book.  Among the very laborious tasks in writing a book are things like putting together the Table of Contents, the List of Maps, the List of figures, and the index.  Given that the book will probably not be written from page one to the end page, as chapters are written, and put into order, and shuffled around as the book develops, the pagination must keep up.  Features in InDesign allow one to structure the files to automatically keep up with the page numbering.  Formatting to do the tasks listed above is also possible.

We are now nearly finished with formatting all of these parameters.  This will enable us to write a chapter, and by the way there will be a separate chapter for each lake that has one or more pictograph sites, and fit it into the book file.  Automatically the pagination, tables, and index will all be updated.  Spending the necessary time to format all of this will save tremendous amounts of time and reduce the possibility of errors in the final book.  We have nearly completed this part of the task

We anticipate we will be beginning polishing the chapters and begin to fit them into the book file next week.   We will keep you posted.

Early last July we made a trip to the Beaverhouse pictograph site.  We had been there several times before.  But this trip was special.  As many of you know we made the commitment six years ago to revisit every pictograph site we had visited in the last few decades and to visit every known site we had not visited.  During the course of that incredible challenge, we have met some wonderful people who are interested in pictographs and the culture and religion of the people who put them there.  A few years ago we made contact with Jon Nelson and his wife Marie.  They were rangers in Quetico, first at the Beaverhouse entry and then at Cache Bay and finally at Prairie Portage.  After leaving the Ranger position, Jon reentered graduate school, completed a master’s degree in archaeology, and worked as an archaeologist in Quetico for some time.  He recently published an incredible book, Quetico: Near to Nature’s Heart.  That book is reviewed in an earlier post here.

Jon put me in contact with Glenn Nolan, who was also a Ranger at the Beaverhouse entry some time ago.  Glenn is Native American.  He first reported the pictograph image at the Beaverhouse site that is up high on the cliff and is multicolored.   It is a white and red image of a caribou.  When we first visited this site, we did not find the image.  On corresponding with Jon, he told me of conversations with Glenn that resulted in Edwina and I meeting up with Glenn and his wife, and Jon and his son and daughter-in-law at the Beaverhouse site.  Read the rest of this entry »

We are writing a book utilizing our nearly 4 decades of studying the pictographs in Canoe Country.  It will include sites in both Quetico and the Boundary Waters as well as a few sites near the borders of the two parks.   During the last 6 summers we have revisited every site we visited during those decades and visited every other site of which we were aware.  During that time we have learned about sites not known to us before.  We discovered a site ourselves.  We have visited two sites that we are convinced are  not authentic.  The book will document 63 sites based on our own personal visit to each site.  Several of these sites have not been reported in writing before.  They will be completely new to the majority of readers.  Material in this book should be complimented by the series Northwoods Pictographs presented elsewhere on this site.

We have documented the exact location of every site.  We have carefully studied the cliffs to find all images possible.    We have done extensive photo analysis and using those tools we have identified many images that cannot be seen at all with the unaided eye.  We have clarified a number of images where the unaided eye only sees some red coloring on the rock.    While some would object to photographing the sites, and doing photo analysis,  these images are going away.  They are being removed from the rock surface by a number of erosion processes.  Water running down the cliffs washes the pigments small amounts at a time.  Wind carrying minute particles of sand and dirt acts like miniature sand blasting.  Lichens grow over the images.  We hope we will be providing a complete and accurate record of all known sites.  We are positive others will be discovered in the future, but we will report all currently known to us.

  We have personally benefited  from the study of the culture and religion from which the images have come.  It has been very rewarding learning about these images and the messages they convey.  We have decided to share our learning experiences with others who are interested.

This category will keep interested visitors to our site up to date.  We will write a chapter on each lake known to have a site.  We will post when each chapter is started and will post interesting things about each lake.  We hope to add a new page to the web site which will keep track in tabular form the progress on the book.  We hope you will become interested enough to follow along on the progress.

News Flash: We are announcing a new service on our website: Canoe Country Encyclopedia.
For about 35 years we have been taking pictures in Quetico and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and for nearly 20 years we have been video taping in Canoe Country. We are now adding a section to our website that will be in encyclopedic form that will use a large number of carefully edited video clips, audio segments, and photographs. We are also expanding this multimedia approach to current pages of our website. Extensive cross referenced links will help you move around our site to gain the maximum possible information.
The initial page of the Encyclopedia will be uploaded in a few days and will be the starting point. As soon as it is on line and tested, we will begin formatting it into pages for ease of reference in anticipation of its rapid growth into many hundreds of entries.
Have you ever wondered what the Ranger Cabin on Kahshahpiwi Lake looked like before it was burned? Would you like to show others what the “bathtub” in Lousia Falls looks like? When you talk to your friends about what a portage is like do they look back at you with a blank stare? Well now you can show them short clips of some of the portages you have carried your canoe and pack over.
If you have never been to Canoe Country but are contemplating a trip you can scan the encyclopedia to learn about the area. If you have made a trip or two, you can learn about other areas and skills, or show your friends and family what your trip was like. If you are a long term paddler in Canoe Country, we hope you will be able to scan through the entries to find clips or photos of that bring back wonderful Northwoods Memories.
Join us in trying out the new Northwoods Memories Canoe Country Encyclopedia. We will appreciate your suggestions and comments here on the blog about the new entry.

Earlier this summer my wife and I needed to take a particularly difficult trip to visit the last few pictograph sites about which we knew, and we had very little time to make the trip.  One of the pictograph sites, Swartman Lake, involved a long bushwhack trip along a route about which we knew little.  From there we would travel up the East Agnes River to Kawnipi to check out a pictograph site we had discovered two years ago and then on to Montgomery Lake and the Montgomery Creek site.  And we had to do the entire trip in six days, as that was the only time available. 

We elected to hire a guide to provide some extra paddling and carrying power.  Additionally, since we have no bushwhacking experience, we needed someone with excellent woods skills.  After talking with an outfitter friend of ours and a long term friend with lots of guiding experience we were referred to Dean Bushey ( dbushey1@hotmail.com ). Read the rest of this entry »

This book is unquestionably the best book I have read about Quetico Provincial Park.  Jon and his wife Marie were Quetico Rangers, first at Beaverhouse, then Cache Bay and Prairie Portage.  After his tenure there he returned to Graduate School for a Master’s program, I believe, in Archaeology, and worked as an archaeologist in Quetico for several years.  During that time he interacted with and got to know a number of the First Nation citizens of the Lac La Croix community.  As we are very much interested in the pictographs of the area, his multiple comments on this aspect of First Nation culture and religion were very interesting to us.

This book relates a broad range of topics from the early geological and natural history of the time when the glaciers of the last ice age were retreating from the area now Quetico, to contemporary issues with the park.  It is divided into sections allowing the reader to read sections of interest in any order.  To me, with my woefully inadequate knowledger of pre-history, the readings on the early post-glacial era and the Paleo-Indians were fascinating.  For the biologist or the reader interested in biology and ecology, the chapters in part three relating to ecology, tell the stories of lichens, orchids (yes, orchids in Quetico), moose, ravens and forest fire ecology along with other topics.  As a biologist and biochemist myself, I found these chapters fascinating, well written, and full of interesting information.  I learned a great deal from them. Read the rest of this entry »

The complete title to the book is “Reading Rock Art:  Interpreting The Indian Rock Paintings Of The Canadian Shield.”  It is an excellent resource for people wanting casual reading to learn more about the pictographs of canoe country but it is also a scholarly work with an excellent and extensive bibliography for those who want more intensive study of this subject.  We have used both the text and the bibliographic references extensively in our research into the Quetico and Boundary Waters pictograph sites.  This book is cited as a reference in nearly all of our publications.  The Northwoods Pictograph series of informational bulletins for use in the field (see pictograph pages on our website)  contains extensively referenced work by Dr. Rajnovich.

Grace Rajnovich is an archaeologist who spent fourteen years in field research before writing this excellent book.  Her academic preparation (B.A. from  York University, M.A. in English from University of Toronto, M.A. in Anthropology from University of Manitoba, and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Michigan State University) is excellent, but don’t get the idea that this is a hard-to-read book written in academic jargon.  Her well-rounded approach to the content not only presents interpretations of many figures found on the rocks of the Canadian Shield, but weaves the figures and their meanings into an overall discussion of the culture and religious practice of the Native Americans who painted these messages on the rocks.  Read the rest of this entry »

In this section we describe a short overnight trip  into Pickerel Lake and the return for a few nights in Atikokan.  For beginners–the paddle through the Pickerel River is easy access to Pickerel Lake, a very large lake with lots of campsites and good fishing. We also relate our research time in the John B. Ridley Research Library (http://catalogue.legacyforest.ca/ ).  Of note, the Pickerel River and Pickerel Lake is very rich in history back to the time of the glaciers of the last ice age.  Receeding glaciers created the features of this area including the river itself and many of the features of the lake like the pines area and the glacial moraine visible there.  For excellent reading Jon Nelson, a former Ranger in Quetico and archaeologist there, has written a book, Quetico: Near to Nature’s Heart.  It is excellent reading and has a lot of information about this region of Quetico.  One paddling this area for the first time should definately read this book before going, and folks who have paddled it before should read about the region.  It will probably make them want to go again.  This book is critiqued in a blog posting of August 27, 2010.  We highly recommend the book as excellent reading about the entire Quetico experience.

Northwoods Pictographs Bulletins on this trip:  There are no known pictograph sites on the short trip we took here.

We traveled to the Dawson Trail Pavilion, where we checked in with the Rangers for our overnight permit.  We then drove to the parking lot next to the put-in area and unloaded our packs and canoe. This was an unusual trip for us for we had no real agenda.  Several years before we had traveled from this entry after flying in from Ely.  We paddled south through the park to exit at Prairie Portage.  On that trip we started behind schedule and paddled quickly through the first lakes.  Just south from the entry point, there is a short stretch of water, the Pickerel River.  We both really love paddling narrow rivers.  View the video clip below  of a small part of the Pickerel River.  On this overnight we planned to take time for taking some pictures and video.  Then we would find an early campsite, sleep the night and return in the morning.  In addition to taking some pictures the trip would fulfill the requirement for this entry point toward completing the Quetico Quest. Read the rest of this entry »

Edwina and I just returned from Canoecopia.   I presented a short program on our three-year project to compile a complete and accurate record of all known pictograph sites in Canoe Country.  As we were driving home from Madison, we talked about how we meet the nicest people in canoes!  While that is not exactly literally what I mean, since we were not in a canoe in Madison, we do mean that canoeing and related activities have introduced us to a group of really great people.

A number of years ago we flew into Atikokan on a float plane and were met by our friends from Canoe Canada Outfitters.  They shuttled us to our hotel room.  It was July 1.  We had planned to spend the rest of the day in Atikokan walking around, visiting, shopping and generally enjoying the small town canoeing atmosphere.  We did not know that July 1 is Canadian Independence Day and businesses would be closed.  We enjoyed being around the town anyway and have gone back a number of times since.  The next day, the folks from Canoe Canada dropped us off at the French Lake entry and we began our trip back to Prairie Portage.  We  looked for the remains of old log cabins, steam boat relics on beaches, and visited the Dore Lake pictograph site.  Nearby was the sunken steam boat in shallow water.   But the best part of the trip happened in Sturgeon Narrows. Read the rest of this entry »