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By Griff Wigley, on November 26, 2009, 9:09 am
Carleton Arb’s annual deer management hunt begins today. The warning signs are up, so be sure to stay on the trails. FYI, Nancy Braker, Arb director, is our radio show/podcast next Monday.
Here’s a short video on why we motorcyclists refer to white-tailed deer as forest rats:
Continue reading Forest rat thinning begins today in the Carleton Arb
By Griff Wigley, on September 29, 2009, 12:13 pm
I’ve been taking macro photos of the fall colors in the past couple of weeks, mainly in the Carleton Arb but also around the wetland NW of the Skoglund parking lot (can someone please name that area?).
  
I’m working on a macro photo album but it’ll likely be another week or two, so here are three photos from the collection. The lady bug on the acorns is my favorite so far.
By Griff Wigley, on September 15, 2009, 8:13 am
 
I happened to be biking and walking in Carleton’s Upper Arb last night when the clouds parted a few minutes before sunset. Click the thumbnails once to see a medium-sized version; from that pop-up, click the green arrow to see a larger version and then use your left/right and up/down scroll bars if necessary.
By Griff Wigley, on August 23, 2009, 11:52 pm
Last Thursday, MPR aired a story titled Minnesota monarch butterfly population falls.
Minnesota’s monarch butterfly population is 38 percent below average this summer, according to preliminary statistics from University of Minnesota’s Monarch Lab. Cool, dry weather is likely the prime culprit, but ecologists also suspect human beings are playing a role.
  Robbie and I went for a walk in the lower Carleton Arb on Saturday evening and the monarchs were plentiful… and amenable to being photographed up close. Click the thumbnails to enlarge and then click the green arrow to enlarge further.
By Griff Wigley, on July 12, 2009, 8:07 am
 One of my favorite loops to walk in the Carleton Arb is the one that’s adjacent to Wall St. Road and Spring Creek Road in the Upper Arb. They’ve been planting a variety of trees in the field in the middle of the loop for many years, protecting them from deer and rabbits with some nifty enclosures.
I noticed this week that a new batch of trees has been planted, and that all the grass around the plantings is dead. Anyone know the reason for killing the grass? I don’t see anything about it on the What’s Happening Now in the Arb? page.
By Griff Wigley, on July 11, 2009, 7:12 am
 
The Carleton Arb is currently featuring visual and gustatory delights in the form of blackberries and wildflowers. And if you time it right, there are pretty women there to help you pick the berries. Nice.
By Griff Wigley, on July 7, 2009, 7:29 am
By Griff Wigley, on June 25, 2009, 2:21 pm
 Could “Walking the Carleton College Arb” have the same euphemistic cachet as “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” and be a boost for local tourism?
Northfield’s Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) launched a tourism campaign earlier today, hoping that its similarly catchy 8-syllable phrase will convey to out-of-towners that the Carleton Arb in summer is the perfect place for a little sex alfresco, with plenty of nearby restaurants and pubs in downtown Northfield to enhance one’s visit before and aft.
“Since the media is going crazy over this development right now, I thought we’d strike while our irons are hot,” said CVB Executive Director Red Ruffensor who created the campaign.
By Griff Wigley, on June 20, 2009, 7:55 am
 I dabbled with geocaching about 8 years ago when I bought an attachment for my old Palm V. With Robbie and I both owning a G1 now (AKA Google Android phone), I’m starting to get back into it.
Once I learned how to how to download waypoints from Geocaching.com to my PC (a current bug prevents downloading via the G1’s browser) and then import them into a $10 app called Geodroid, things got a lot easier.
There are currently 46 caches hidden within a 3-mile radius of Northfield’s 55057 zip code. On Thursday, I thought I’d try one in the Carleton Arb.
 
I failed to find one called In the Arb with a difficulty rating of 3 (left photo: a Google map of my tracks on the G1; see the actual map of my tracks here). So I tried an easier one, Geese Island Hunt, and put an AhaDiscounts card in it (right photo).
FYI, Carleton has some guidelines on hiding geocaches and letterboxes in the Arb. What’s letterboxing?
By Griff Wigley, on May 12, 2009, 8:02 am
 See these Arb notes for an explanation.
By Griff Wigley, on April 14, 2009, 8:51 am
By Griff Wigley, on April 8, 2009, 8:21 am
  
Yesterday’s cold north wind despite the sunny skies sent me looking for signs of green and I found some in the Upper Arb, just off the paved path below the hill at Second St. and Oak. where Spring Creek flows under the bridge. The Arb has a web page devoted to spring but alas, the text/photos there are brochure-like, true for all springs, not current for this spring. (Hey Doug, the Arb needs a blog!)
Northfield-based blogger Mary Schier has made some ‘signs of spring’ posts lately to her My Northern Garden blog, eg, Snow Blooms and An Early Spring? (BTW, kudos to Mary for winning a Garden Writers Association award for a recent blog post.)
Got some signs of spring to report? Photos? Let’s have ‘em.’
Update 8 PM: I’ve changed the sentence about ‘canned text/photos.’ See the comments below.
 Rob Hardy alerted me to his blog post Pasqueflowers for Holy Week: “Here you go, Griff! The pasqueflowers are blooming, right on schedule. (This photo was taken at approximately 2:45 pm today, Wednesday, April 8, 2009, at an undisclosed location owned by Carleton College.)” More about pasquelflowers here. Bright Spencer alerted me to the sugar maples that are popping buds in our Hidden Valley Park neighborhood.
By Griff Wigley, on April 7, 2009, 8:34 am
 I got spammed by Clay Oglesbee today, an email of his e-newsletter which can’t be linked to because he quit blogging, just like he quit Northfield. (I’ll get over it eventually, but not yet.) The title of his newsletter was Emptiness…and Easter and it reminded me 1) why I love to walk by myself in the Carleton Arb; and 2) of some of my favorite solitude-related quotes.
As a spiritually-oriented atheist, I’m a big believer (heh) in grabbing a Shot of Solitude (SOS) regularly. (continued)
Continue reading It’s Easter week; grab a Shot of Solitude
By Griff Wigley, on December 21, 2008, 7:30 am
    
Before the wind came up yesterday afternoon, the fluffy snow piled up on objects everywhere to make snow hats.
In the Arb, local archers are not only doing young trees a favor by thinning the herd of forest rats. Area motorcyclists are especially appreciative.
Update 12/22: I added another ‘snow hat’ photo (far right above) emailed to me by Bright Spencer.
By Griff Wigley, on December 17, 2008, 8:55 pm
By Griff Wigley, on December 31, 2007, 6:14 am
It’s been a winter wonderland here in Northfield and much of Minnesota since Thanksgiving. I took some photos yesterday afternoon along the Ann Sipfle Memorial Ski Trail in Carleton’s Cowling Arboretum.
I blogged about the trail back in December of 2005 on Northfield.org and in response to my inquiry about Ann Sipfle, I heard from Northfielders David & Mary Alice Sipfle who wrote:
Ann Sipfle is our daughter. She grew up in Northfield, and was a sophomore at Bryn Mawr College when, in November 1977, on a family vacation, in Vermont, she was killed by a drunken driver.
I also mentioned in that blog post that I had purchased my skis from Sun Dance Outfitters, a chalet-like store on 2nd St. where the entrance to The Crossing is currently. When I saw Carelton’s librarian Sam Demas today near the Waterford Bridge end of the lower Arb, he remembered hearing about the store and that recently retired Carleton library assistant Nancy Casper had worked there.
(Bonus: two photos of my niece, Ellen, sledding at St. Olaf’s Old Main hill on Friday afternoon and skating at Way Park on Saturday morning. Did I mention we’re in a winter wonderland?)
See the 2007 photo album or this slideshow of 8 photos. Below it is the 2005 album and slideshow of 14 photos… with better berries.
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