Local Features

Snow and trees are plentiful in the Northwoods this time of year, which made the Masked Biologist select a Curious North question to answer as part of this week’s Wildlife Matters.

For Northwoods artists Mary Burns and Debbie Jircik, creating art is sometimes more than putting paint on canvas or throwing clay to be fired. Instead, it’s pulling on waterproof boots, slogging into Northwoods bogs, and collecting large pails of water. “We didn’t see anyone doing any of this kind of work, where they were actually going out in the field, collecting water from bogs and lakes, and comparing how…that affects those dyes,” Burns said. Burns is from Mercer, and Jircik is from Eagle

Native Americans have been making maple syrup and maple sugar in the Northwoods for a long time now. The methods have changed a little over the millennia, but the process is largely recognizable.

Have you had an increase in trouble with squirrels chewing on your holiday lights? The Masked Biologist has, as he shares in this week’s Wildlife Matters.

Harry Resch still remembers every play of basketball games from more than 40 years ago. Resch was Crandon’s boys basketball coach for 15 years in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. He can still tell you how one of his guards drove into the lane, what kind of defense an opponent played, or his team’s scoring average for a given year. He remembers packed gyms and conference championships, having won five in a seven-year stretch. Resch’s teams were high-pressure and hot-shooting, averaging 88 points per

Gary Laguna’s keyring jingles often as he sorts through the right key to the right door. He has to open them in a variety of places as the lead water operator in Hurley, Pence, and Iron Belt, three communities in Iron County. With 18 years of experience, Laguna is in charge of ensuring a reliable flow of water to customers’ faucets and doing near-constant water quality testing. While he plays a critical role in water customers’ lives, Laguna says many people don’t have a clear understanding of

Logging camp work defined the Northwoods during the nineteenth century. It is common knowledge how difficult the work was for both animals and men during the winter months. It is also known that the men were usually well fed for their work, but sometimes the animals helped in feeding the men in unusual ways.

With the arrival of New Years Day comes new resolutions. Have you made yours? The Masked Biologist has, and it is the subject of this week’s Wildlife Matters.

For part of the year, a gravel road reaches a remote piece of Vilas County land. But in the winter, a mile-long snowshoe is the only way in. Snow decorated an evergreen forest as Trisha Moore and Troy Walters reached their destination and greeted Bob Martini, who owns the 31 acres of wilderness northeast of Eagle River. Forty years ago, he built an eight-sided cabin here by hand. “I just kept stacking logs on each corner. It was one of those ‘learn as you go’ things. As you can see, every notch

Christmas today is highly commercialized, and American consumers are encouraged to shop for as much as they can buy during the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It wasn’t always like this, and during the worst years of the Great Depression Christmas in Rhinelander was celebrated a little differently.