Life in the Big Woods

Technically speaking, Laura Ingalls Wilder's book "Little House in the Big Woods" doesn't really take place in the Big Woods. The Big Woods are defined as an area of Minnesota from St. Cloud in the north to Mankato in the south, west from Northfield to near the Minnesota River. Laura's home was in Wisconsin near Lake Pepin, east of the Big Woods. While Laura's family lived in a big woods, they weren't actually considered part of the area known as the "Big Woods."

Nevertheless, in that area of Wisconsin the land and forest type was very much like that of the Big Woods of Minnesota, as was the area I grew up in Minnesota on the Wisconsin border, a bit further north and a century later than Laura. These were thick, hardwood deciduous forests with elms being the most common tree (since the appearance of Dutch elm disease in recent decades, elms have severely diminished), followed by basswood, sugar maple, ash, and oak. Maples can be tapped in the spring for their syrup. This is done when the "sap in running," during the days when it freezes at night and thaws during the day. The old way of tapping trees I learned was to carve a plug of ash, take out the pith to leave a small hole through the center of the plug, and use a hand drill to make a hole in the tree. The ash plug drained the sap--which is thin and watery but sweet--into buckets which would be collected every day and boiled off to make maple syrup and sugar.

left bank Minnesota,

right bank Wisconsin

 Stretching up the Mississippi River along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border, the Mississippi turns inward into Minnesota while the river along the border becomes the St. Croix. The woods are thick and lush on both sides of the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers from Lake Superior down past Lake Pepin where Laura's family lived with trees so close to the river's edge that only slim deer trails led to the water and the deer would vanish into the woods within feet. Eagles glide above the treetops, hunting.

A road through the woods in Laura's time must have looked like little more than a trail with the vegetation constantly trying to grow back over it and return it to the woods. I have often wondered how the pioneers managed to get wagons through the woods--the trees and underbrush are so thick and hard to even walk through that making a trail that could let a wagon pass must have been a formidable task.

In the summer the woods are hot and humid with the shady areas filled with mosquitoes and gnats. In the sun, though, the air is pleasant with a delicious, clean flavor. The trees make a soft breezy sound with their leaves.

Deer, bears, foxes, bobcats, and wolves roam the woods, though seldom let themselves be seen. There were nights, though, where I'd hear a single wolf howl in the distance, then all up and down the river valley the cry would be taken up by other wolves with a sound both haunting and chilling. There were some nights we'd hear shrieking cries from deep in the woods that sounded like a woman screaming. We thought at the time they were bobcats (which we had even seen in our yard), but I wonder if it might not have been cougars. Not many years ago a cougar and her two cubs were seen in one of my parent's fields.

The big woods and surrounding forest land fell to the axes of farmers who cut the trees to make their houses and barns and used the cleared lands for fields and pastures. Those who moved on to the prairie lands, like the Ingalls, in turn brought trees with them, bringing small pieces of forest to the prairie.

In July 1846 Charles Lannam visited the Lake Pepin area by coming up the river. He describes his first views:

"The next object that I would attempt to describe on my way up the Mississippi, is Lake Pepin. It lives in my memory as the Horicon of the wilderness. It is an extended portion of the Mississippi,--twenty-three miles long, and from three to four wide. It is surrounded with hills, which abound in almost every variety of game; its shores are gravelly and covered with the most valuable of agates and cornelians; the water is clear, and very deep; and it yields the very best of fish in great abundance. My first view of Lake Pepin (I wish I knew how it came by that name!) was on one of the most charming evenings that I ever witnessed. The cloudless sky was studded with stars, and the moon sailed upward and onward with an uncommon beauty, as if proud of the wilderness world she was then flooding with her beams.

For hours did I sit musing upon the eastern shore, near the outlet, whence I could discern no less than sixteen peaks or bluffs, looming in perfect solitude against the horizon. 'The holy time was quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration.' The water was without a ripple, and reflected in its pure bosom every star, while the moon, as if determined that it should so remain for ever, spanned it with a bar of gold. The only sounds that trembled in the air were the hoot of an owl, the wail of a loon, and a hum from the insect world. I looked and wondered, until the night was far spent, and the dew upon my brow was heavy and cold."

--A summer in the wilderness; embracing a canoe voyage up the Mississippi and around Lake Superior. By Charles Lanman, 1846