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   Home