Life in the Snow - Understanding the Winter Environment and What It Means for the Future

A quickly made beaver dam frozen to the ground. The beaver here was found on the move across Swan Lake during the winter season - an unusual and worrying sign for someone like Dave.

Life in the Snow - Understanding the Winter Environment and What It Means for the Future

David Scott and Finn Rachul

March 3, 2026

For the Ojibwe people, life in the environment is a year-round endeavor. In fact, the Ojibwe lived by a six-season calendar, something which we will write about more in the future. Hunting, fishing, and even gathering certain plants all continues into the winter months. As we have observed, plant and animal life are still very active in the cold season, and are showing many concerning signs and cycles as the weather patterns change every year. In this post, we will write about some of those findings and traditional teachings about each, as well as discuss what we expect for the coming seasons based on those findings.

Ojibwe Life In Winter

For the Ojibwe people, preparation for the winter season involved sub-tribal groups bunkering down in valleys and sheltered areas, trading between each other making sure everyone had what they needed. In these locations, hunting and trapping continued, hides were prepared for clothing and other uses, food stores were processed, tools were made from animal bones, and knowledge was transferred from one generation to the next through storytelling. In general, life slowed in pace, with family groups spending time together in one general location around winter camps.

Environmental monitoring continued to be very important. Understanding the movement of weather was necessary for predicting heavy storms that required preparation or for blustering winds requiring secure shelter. Animal behavior was closely watched, such as the movement of herds or the unseasonal behavior of birds. Plants and insects beneath the snow were also indicators of coming weather or were used to predict the health of the ecosystem during the warmer months.

Certain members were trained in different aspects of this lifestyle, such as reading the language of the snow and ice and what it means for the environment. Every community member had a role in the survival and social dynamics, making sure the winter season went smoothly and everyone flourished. Life slowed, but still the Ojibwe people lived alongside their environment.

Winter Wildlife Today

This way of life of living with the seasons thrived for thousands of years. Natural cycles came and went, people moved with the weather, and the Ojibwe communities managed their many ecosystem through it all.

These days, the cycles that the Ojibwe people adapted to and so well understood are changing. As Dave and I do our environmental monitoring, Dave frequently remarks how the cycles and signals he was taught and grew up with are becoming different and more extreme. Through personal experience and oral histories, we will examine some of the signs we are seeing.

Photos from summer/winter monitoring in 2025 along the Swan Lake shoreline.

Winter Beaver Activity

Seasonal animal activity of animals like beavers is key to understanding the cycles of the environment. For example, analyzing the structure of a mature beaver lodge can inform you on what the beaver colony is predicting the winter and spring weather to be like. A stronger lodge structure with lots of logs and branches pile high implies heavy snowfall, while mud packing implies coming cold weather and moisture.

In the monitoring we did in the photos above, Dave and I went looking to see how the local beaver colonies were managing their hibernation, along with whatever other animal activity we could find (tracks, paths, and nearby winter birds). Of particular interest was the beaver lodge in the above photos, which was established by a young male beaver who was kicked out from his colony the previous summer. Along the way, we found a single Muskrat push-up (their version of a beaver lodge), far below the reputation of Swan Lake historically being an excellent place to hunt them. Likewise, this was one of the first years in recent memory of the snow melting to barely inches of coverage on the lake itself.

What we ended up finding was incredibly surprising - the beaver in that spot was frozen out of his lodge, and was gathering food in the dead of winter. As we followed his activity, we found paths to logs with chewed bark, a sign that the beaver was starving and unable to access his food stores frozen in the ice.

While this on its own was somewhat expected - the beaver only began his lodge on the shoreline by a spring fed creek late that summer - what we found as we tracked him was not. Approximately three kilometers from that lodge following the waterway to the Pembina River, that same beaver was gathering willow sticks (prime food for beavers) and pulling them underneath the ice through a chewed ice hole.

The only active beaver in the area, it was following the lake to the nearest thicket of willows approximately three kilometers from his home.

While beavers are skilled swimmers, they are clumsy on land and lack camouflage in winter, making them easy prey for the local coyotes. In a situation like this, a beaver would rather swim underwater to a safer location to grab food than walk on the surface nearby its own lodge.

For someone like Dave, this is a signal that the beavers themselves are having a difficult time reading the environment, a trend that we have been observing happening more frequently. Typically, the female beavers will kick out the young males with enough time for them to establish themselves at a new location. With barely two months of summer to prepare himself, this male did not have the time to build his dam high enough so that the water wouldn't freeze to the ground. In other situations, beavers are moving or having kits at unusual times, a sign that human activity destroying dams and removing habitat along with a changing environment is taking a toll.

A large mushroom growing in a relatively healthy poplar forest in the Dead Horse Creek valley

Mushrooms in Winter

As we've talked briefly about here and one of students spoke about here, uncontrolled ant populations are becoming a significant problem for our local forests. Ants have some incredible relationships with their environment, one of them being storing mushrooms spores in their nests during the winter and then planting them in many ways across different ecosystems. At other times, ants will fold leaves and change the growth of plants to suit their needs.

A mushroom ring around a planted hybrid poplar tree in a nearby town.

Mushroom rings such as in the photo above, particularly around Black Poplar bluffs, were a signal for traditional Ojibwe land managers that ants populations required attention. Typically, this would involve a quick burn of the top layer of soil to remove ants from the area. If left alone, these poplar stands would eventually be entirely knocked over by a strong wind as their root systems die back from the mushrooms.

Fungi-planting ants, without predators like songbirds or natural controls like fire, are spreading significant amounts of mushrooms throughout even the healthiest of forests. Poplars, ash, maple, and other soft-wooded trees are naturally susceptible and usually have the growth rates to compete with the pressure of fungi making them sick. However, limited habitat, unrestrained winds, and weather extremes are beginning to knock over increasing amounts of trees.

It's an increasingly common sight to see White Poplars such as these heavily covered in black scab-like bark with leaking sap, an ant-induced fungi that will greatly weaken the tree.

While ants stay underground during the winter months, their planted mushrooms continue to impact trees year-round. Current weather is speeding this trend, as the heavy moisture, melting, increased warmth, and even rain in winter are creating conditions that strengthen fungi and weaken trees. Species such as Paper Birch require cold conditions to thrive, which could be why it is so difficult to find birches the size that once would have been traditionally used to build canoes. Likewise, cold conditions for longer stretches of time killed off pest insects that impact the health of trees.

A flourishing ant-induced mushroom growing from a White Poplar into a Green Ash growing next to it.

Once you start to look for the signs of a fungi infection in a forest, you'll see it everywhere. Here in the reserve, whole stands of poplar are thick with black scabs, dying branches, and brittle trees broken in half from winds. Below are some examples of mushrooms that have been introduced by ants.

The Language of Snow, Ice, and Water in Winter

Understanding moisture behavior is another major indicator of weather conditions that have been and weather that is to come. While the sheer amount of snow is useful to know, especially when combined with oral histories that talk about there being much more, the texture and layers of ice beneath are just as valuable.

As Dave has been teaching me out in the field, we see several distinct layers in a typical snowpack. On the top layer, we usually find a hard pack almost thick and strong enough to walk on, followed by a near-ice portion. Beneath these two layers, we would typically find partially crystalized snow, caused by the heating and cooling of the ground and insulation from the sun by the above portion. In many part in between, soil that has lifted off of bare and unprotected fields settles, forming distinct layers almost like rock strata.

These types of layers are just one part of the story. South facing slopes have the warmest conditions, resulting in thicker melt-freeze layers, and usually have the highest amount of drift-settling. Sheltered areas in forests or north facing slopes typically have light, fluffy snow, although this is becoming rarer due to longer low-snow periods and warmer weather. Valley tops, due to the strong winds and direct sunlight, are almost always shallow or bare.

Ice on lakes and creeks is another necessary part of the story. As we have seen, the warm weather melts this winter have contributed to water seeping down through the snow, into the ground, and leaching out into the surface of waterways. This produces a layer of ice on top of creeks and lake edges where the melted groundwater drains, sometimes brown or yellow in color. Likewise, it feeds into creeks and can sometimes melt their frozen tops and become visible to the surface. On lakes, this produces rotten ice, and can become a problem for aquatic life if it leads to lake ice becoming bare without snow protection on the surface.

While all of these seem like small details, they paint a bigger picture. When the snow freezes on the surface and become hard-packed, deer and other grazing animals struggle to punch through the snow to find food, bloodying their shins and causing hunger stress. In years where this is particularly bad, deer will abort their babies. Hard-packed snow also insulated the ground from the cold air, leading to insect population booms in spring. Along with that, with the snow being melted during the winter and seeping over the frozen ground into waterways, we lose valuable meltwater that helps plants bloom in spring.

The Bigger Picture

Fungi-damaged trees, insulated insects, and half-melted and icy snowpacks paint a worrying picture for the coming seasons. Oral histories from the old people of the community warn of increasing insects, sick trees, low moisture during winter and summer, fire, and more. Likewise, Dave frequently mentions the snowpack being much higher in his memory and those of his elders.

Heat and Drought

With weather year-round becoming warmer resulting in events like winter rain or intense but highly localized thunderstorms, drought increasingly becomes part of the picture. The long, drawn out melt of large snowpacks is key to restoring creeks, lakes, wetlands, and groundwater. However, with the majority of the prairie landscape being altered for rapid drainage, water doesn't have the chance to settle. Combined with snow already being melted partway through the winter, especially in unprotected agricultural fields, and rain coming in the form of larger downpours that flood over the landscape, water simply doesn't absorb where it's needed.

Events like these combined with other man-made practices resulted in the Dust Bowl events of the 1930s, recorded in both oral and western histories. Groundwater is already of serious concern for Dave, as his old teachers once warned about what will happen if we continue in this direction. As Dave tells me "The old people told me that if we continued down this path of manipulating water, the streams, waterways, and wetlands will no longer provide for us."

Insects and Plants

With a warmer and generally wetter winter season, we expect to see large increases in pest insects like grasshoppers, crickets, ants, ticks, mosquitoes, and other species. The decrease in bird populations due to habitat loss and biodiversity loss will also mean less controls on these pest insect species. Plants that are impacted by the decreased spring melt, already highly affected by drainage infrastructure on the land, will be have a harder time fighting off pest insects and diseases, and can even become food for said insects. Likewise, drought-stressed plants tend to have difficulty growing and reproducing, with species like Burr Oak trees even killing baby trees around them during periods of stress. Plants that require either extreme cold weather to create future growth conditions or cannot adjust to increased insect, heat, or drought pressure will become stunted or disappear until those conditions return.

Tree stress will be one of the first signs of these processes happening. Being limited to small valleys, hilltops, or tiny bluffs, trees do not have the multi-layered plant community around them to keep them healthy. Species like poplars, when exposed to extreme winds (increased by the lack of trees already) and impacted by mushroom growth, will be knocked over in larger and larger numbers. With these trees damaged, water will sink into the ground less, and moisture transpiration into the air will be reduced.

The chain reaction set off by events like this if they continue down their current path is complex, but it is easy to see how everything from birds, plants, insects, and animals, and people will be greatly impacted. Ultimately, without buffers against storms, wind, drought, and pest insects, growing food will become much more difficult.

What Do We Do?

The old people Dave was taught by talked extensively about the problems we all would eventually face using their deep understanding of nature from life experience and living on the land. As they watched the removal of trees, the manipulation of water, and the destruction of habitat, they predicted the weather changes we see now.

However, within that story is a solution. While land has become synonymous with production and our lives are disconnected from nature, the first step towards fixing this situation is awareness of what is happening in the environment all around us and finding a new way to take responsibility for it. Planting trees, holding back water, creating bird sanctuaries, and restoring land back into nature are all key to preventing drought and making the future safer.

As the story goes in Ojibwe culture, we can't help our land if we can't relate to one another. Land is broken into square property lines and communities are divided by jurisdictions, stereotypes, politics, or religion, but we all need clean water, healthy food, and safety from extreme weather, especially as climate change continues down its current track. In the Ojibwe culture, it is everyone's responsibility to create and maintain a good future for each other and future generations. We are, after all, human beings who need the same things to survive and thrive regardless of what color our skin or religion we ascribe to.

Obehmaatizee is the first law of the Ojibwe people, a big value that describes how anybody can change their own little world for the better - looking at all of us human beings regardless of categories, living with and relating to the environment around us, and always making a better future for each other and the next generations.