West End News: April 9

The umpteenth annual Tofte Trek trail run is accepting pre-registrations from now until July 1.  Race day is July 4, which falls on a Saturday this year. You can also register the morning of the race, but it costs a bit more.
 
The Tofte Trek is famous for its muddy, wet conditions as it winds around roads and trails of Tofte for 10 kilometers.  It is recommended that you wear your old running shoes because they will likely be ruined.
 
Originally the brainchild of the well-known Tofte character, Jan Horak, the race is now a major fundraiser for the Sugarbush Trails Association that maintains the cross-country ski and mountain bike trail system in the hills above Tofte. 
 
The event starts and ends at the Birch Grove Community Center in Tofte.  It includes kids’ races that begin at 9am and the main event when the kids are finished.  Same day registration opens at 8 am.
 
To pre-register, or get more information, go to the Sugarbush Trail Association website at: sugarbushtrail.org.
 
It’s been fun to have Peter Hall working near us at the end of the Sawbill Trail for the last couple of months.  Peter is a logger who was born and raised in Lutsen, the youngest son of the well-respected Hall family.  He logged for many years around the West End until he moved to West Virginia 17 years ago to be a field engineer for a heavy equipment manufacturer in the coal mines there.  Recently, Peter has returned to his roots and started logging full time back in Cook County.
 
It’s always a pleasure to watch anyone who is good at what they do and Peter is certainly a highly skilled logger and mechanic.  His artistry operating the complicated logging equipment is a marvel, but he is also highly attuned to the woods and what is going on in the ecosystem.  He is always alert for opportunities to help out wildlife, improve timber regeneration or protect the watershed.  His mindfulness pays off for his business, as he is a much sought after logger with a two-year backlog of timber sales.
 
One funny thing did happen while Peter was working near us.  We are in the habit of taking our two feisty terriers for a walk on the Sawbill Trail every afternoon.  The dogs, Roy and Phoebe, love to be walked on leashes, which is kind of odd because they are normally free to roam our property all day long.
 
Last week, while Cindy was walking the dogs, she could hear Peter chain-sawing in the woods alongside the road.  Like all terriers, our dogs are on constant alert for intruders of any species.  Surprisingly though, they are not concerned in the least with the engine noise from a logging operation, so they were paying no attention to the chain-saw noise.  However, just as they came even with where Peter was working, he emerged suddenly from the thick brush to their right, wearing his orange chaps, Carhartt jacket, hardhat, earmuffs and eye goggles – idling chainsaw in hand. In other words, he was the very picture of what every terrier thinks that a terrier-murdering monster looks like. The dogs went from calm to ballistic in a heartbeat.  The chorus of panicked barking was so deafening that Peter just smiled, shrugged and walked back into the woods.  Of course, the terriers were convinced that their ferocity had saved Cindy’s life, as well as their own, and probably most of the civilized world.
 
More recently, we had an unusual wildlife sighting along the back road known as The Grade in Tofte.  We were driving over the Temperance River near Baker Lake when we spotted two swans in the river.  I’ve only seen one other swan this far back in the woods and that was just flying overhead.  These beautiful birds were floating regally on the still water below the rapids.  I don’t have the skill to determine if they were Tundra or Trumpeter Swans, but they surely are a beautiful harbinger of the approaching spring season here in the West End.