Northwoods Memories Multimedia Productions

Late last year we received an email from a friend about some notes from a conversation with Sean Walshe, now deceased, who was the Quetico Park Naturalist for many years.  That note was from the ’80s and had been forgotten until some files were cleaned out and the note found.  While the notes were somewhat confusing, it described a Lynx, like on Darky, and contained a description of the location of the site.  Note that one other  site on Cirrus Lake has been known for many years. 

This past summer we went to the described location and found the site.  It contained one simple image that appeared perhaps to be the body and head of an animal, and could have been a Lynx. We hoped that with some photo processing, we could see the rest of the image.   On arrival home we did some preliminary processing but were not able to identify any other part of the image.  More processing will be done prior to its inclusion in the Cirrus Lake chapter of our book. 

We searched the rest of the cliff face and found no other images.  We photographed much of the surface of the cliff and will examine it with photo processing techniques.   If any other images are found, they will be included when we write the section in our book.

Every time we visit and study a site newly described to us and not previously reported in common references, it provides us with an opportunity to understand more about the culture of the people who left these images on the rocks.  We also become more aware that these images are going away.  The rest of the image of the Lynx has, evidently been eroded away since it was observed in the 80s.  We have expereinced the urge to record all of these sites as they now exist, knowing that every passing period of time makes them less visible.  The loss of these spiritual images is a very unpleasant feeling. 

The complete story of the site and how we learned about it will be included in the Cirrus Lake chapter of our book.

Our first trip of 2008 took us to a total of 14 pictograph sites around the periphery of Quetico and in the Boundary Waters.  To complete our series of Northwoods Pictograph Bulletins, we committed to revisiting every site we have visited in the past to check the accuracy of our photographs and records, and to visit the few remaining sites we had not yet visited. (more…)