Foraging for wild berries in the BWCA

Foraging wild edibles in the Superior National Forest

Berry-picking season has arrived! You can find all kinds of berries and mushrooms within the Superior National Forest and BWCAW. Foraging wild edibles is a highlight of summer adventures, connecting people to the land while adding flavor to camp meals.

Proposed amendments aim to overturn the 20-year mining ban

Last week, Representative Pete Stauber attached five amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act. These aim to overturn the 20-year mining ban near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). While four of those amendments were defeated, one remains under review.

No longer “off the grid” – phone satellite coverage coming to BWCA

Full smartphone satellite coverage may be coming to the Boundary Waters sooner than you think. If made permanent, users would have the same level of connectivity that they experience daily. Wilderness areas like the BWCA could have full coverage by 2025. Search and rescue response expects to benefit…

Tail End of the Greenwood Fire September 20, 2021 - Photo Credit Val Cervenka

Boundary Waters Wildfires 2021

Superior Hiking Trail closed, Boundary Waters closed due to fires. Updated maps, photos from fires in Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Superior National Forest as official information is available. Greenwood Fire grows, Moose Lake Fire detected…

Icy Wonderland

“I could hear the ice shattering like panes of glass as it came ashore… One moment you can see an endless expanse of skim ice and with a shift of the wind it can be gone, waves lapping the shoreline – sculpting ice as far as the eye can see.”

Showy Lady's Slipper by Ben Olson

Orchids of the Northwoods – Lady’s Slippers and beyond

“It all began by happenstance…The trail was overgrown, littered with fallen boles, when I noticed a glimmering iridescence unlike anything I had seen before. I had stumbled upon on one of Minnesota’s most common orchid species, the stemless (pink) lady’s slipper, glimmering with rain drops…”

Boreal Birding in the Bogs of Northern Minnesota

The sun casts its auburn spell on the red osier dogwood of a sedge meadow…we head to a bog that attracts many boreal winter birds to the area, particularly in Cook, Minnesota. Why do they come to the bog? How do they live here? What attracts birds to this habitat in northern Minnesota?

Wilderness Voices: Kelly Beaster

“While I create each drawing, I get to re-visit past trips and adventures, and I notice things from the drawing itself that I didn’t from the photograph, details that were always there, but the drawing has brought out new details…”

Wilderness Voices: Travis Novitsky

“Some of my most unforgettable moments are sitting on the shores of a boreal forest lake on a calm night with no wind, watching the northern lights dance overhead while the haunting calls of loons echo across the water.”