Lake Vermillion, MN   Lee E. Frelich
  Jun 13, 2005 10:56 PDT 

Bob:

Yours was not the only weekend adventure. I went to Lake Vermillion at the
edge of the Boundary Waters in northern MN. This lake has 300 miles of
shoreline and 365 islands. The towns of Embarrass and Tower are near Lake
Vermillion, and they are the locations where -54 and -60 degree
temperatures have been recorded in recent winters.

I stayed at a friend's cabin at Sunset Rock on a peninsula called Grassy
Point, and there are a number cabins in the neighborhood on large lots with
1/4-1/2 mile of shoreline per house. Access is by boat only. Even the mail
is delivered by boat, as each house has a mailbox at the end of its dock.
The edge of the peninsula has vertical bluffs created by glacial plucking
and rounded bluffs created by glacial grinding and polishing, and each dock
has a stairway that goes up 50 feet or so to a house perched on top.

We visited several people, some of whom live on their own island, and all
of them were interested in my estimates of the ages of their trees, in
addition to forest disturbance history, species of wildflowers, how to get
more white pine regeneration, etc. Most of the forest in the area is second
growth white pine and red pine mixed with paper birch and aspen about
90-100 years old, although there are also a lot of remnants with older
trees. Ironically some of the oldest trees were in front of the historic
master loggers cabin, where there is a white pine and some red pines that
are 250-300 years old.

One uninhabited island about 1/2 mile long is owned by the state and has a
unique upland white cedar forest that was never logged. The forest is
multi-aged with trees 100, 200 and 400 years old. There has not been
reproduction for the last several decades because of deer browsing on the
seedlings. There was an extremely high diversity of mosses in the forest,
which grows in high quality soil a few feet deep over 2 billion year old
Ely Greenstone. The forest reminded me of hemlock forests like those at
Cook Forest or the Porkies, if you substituted cedar for the hemlock. Some
of the trees were about 80 feet tall, which is outstanding for that species.

Lee