Upland Redemption 2024: Northwoods Trip and A Very Special Announcement

There hasn’t been much to report about life where I’ll work and stay for the next 3 months, so I haven’t reported anything. There is a lot I’d like to say, but I decided to wait about a month and settle in a bit longer before making statements. My initial thoughts are not very positive though.

Totem came in season a few weeks earlier than planned and it took a bit of doing, but the stud owners and I worked everything out and each drove about 9 hours to meet in the middle of somewhere in the Northwoods! I couldn’t have been more happy to see the coveted Northwoods during the first week of October. I can’t believe how everything worked out. I ended up with an extra day off at work and everything fell into place perfectly!

Can I take a sidebar here and try to convey how incredible it was to wake up in the Northwoods? I don’t know if I can ever express my love of the area, the smell of the woods, the striking colors, the winds of the Gitchi Gumee, (Lake Superior) whipping my face as streams of tears fell onto my jacket. Tears of joy and some of sadness as memories came flooding back; memories of what I thought was love and of old friends, and my son, and all the dogs. But I had to shake it off and stop right there. I will look forward, not back.

So, I am very proud and excited to announce a pairing of Laurel Mt Llewellins to look forward to. Totem was bred to the very handsome tricolor dog, Dylan (Litter name “Sherrif Sam” out of Santana by Count), due in December. I’ll have an application available soon for previous LML customers interested in a pup as soon as I’m certain of the pregnancy. If you want to get on the list, send me an email.

We got to do a short hunt, and thanks to Wisconsin’s first-time hunter’s discount, it didn’t hurt the pocket too much to hunt only part of a day. Thanks to OnX Hunt Maps and Scout and Hunt maps, we found some fantastic cover and put up birds in the beautiful Autumn Northwoods of Wisconsin.

I got to spend another night in the middle of those woods and was able to shoot the Northern Lights with critters creeping around nearby. And next to that, it was pure delight to wake up in the middle of a humongous Aspen cut far from anyone and anything, make coffee, and run the girls out of the Ambo with the frost on the ground and the sun rising. I don’t have the words to describe how incredible that was. The joy, the freedom, the smell of the Northwoods, leaves crunching beneath my feet, the breeze, the sound of Ruffed Grouse drumming, the happiness of the girls running free, and the skip in our steps are indescribable.

A very special thank you to Bill and Evelyn for making the journey to meet up, for pulling the Ambo out of the ditch when I got it hung up trying to make it into an area that I approached from the wrong angle. And for fixing my tire, for picnics on the shore and middle of the woods, for dinner and homemade applesauce, and most of all, for their friendship and being such excellent dog parents.

And then it was the 9-hour trek back to the middle of South Dakota for work in the morning. I wasn’t so excited about the drive back, though it was a beautiful trip across Minnesota. It was so hard to leave my beloved Northwoods, the Gitche Gumee, and Ruffed Grouse, yet again, but I left with even more gratitude that I got to be there again and spent the drive planning how to get back there. For now, I have a work contract to fulfill and promises to the dogs to get them on prairie birds. And a very special and exciting litter of puppies to look forward to that should make their entrance into the world in early December. And I’ll spend December – February raising them—one of my favorite things to do. You know how much I love raising a litter of Llewellin Setter puppies. And it looks like I’ll be doing that back where it all started, in the Laurel Mountains of PA!

That’s all for now, peeps. Thanks for reading and thank you all so much for the emails and messages. It means a lot.

Love, M.