Monthly Archives: November 2009

There’s a marked change in atmosphere where I-75 narrows somewhere north of Bay City. Farmland gives way to mixed hardwood and evergreen, M-23 separates off to the east taking a good portion of RV traffic with it, and gone are the concrete walls that divide road from country.

You’re up north.

Last spring a fire raged across the jack pine forest near Grayling, the sole habitat of the endangered Kirtland’s Warbler. The jack pine is a pioneer species, its small, hard cones opening only when exposed to the heat of flames, thus renewing a matured forest no longer useful to the birds. This is the natural order of things, though a few area homeowners no doubt complained of the nuisance. Today, blackened trunks of the dead stands of trees are still visible from the highway even at dusk while racing north at 75 mph. But it’s no more a graveyard than the rows of brown and dry corn stalks found further south that will be turned back into the soil. The earth eventually swallows itself one way or another.

Farther up flows the Indian River, part of the inland waterway that connects Lake Michigan to Lake Huron and also the range boundary of a small elk herd that still manages to roam the northern Lower Peninsula despite an abundance of predators gamboling about on four-wheelers. Beyond the river, forest, beyond the forest, the Mackinac Bridge, lights strung high along the topmost suspension cable a signpost for sailors traveling the straights both east and westbound.

Crossing the straights of Mackinac by bridge can either be a leisurely coast during mild weather or, when the wind is blowing across the span, a white-knuckled fright fest with every gust. In any case, I never fail to think about the unfortunate fate of Leslie Anne Pluhar and how her memory will forever be tied to a 1987 Yugo that was blown like a leaf to the depths below. It is said that divers searching for Leslie’s body found a junkyard’s worth of vehicles resting on the lakebed. Meanwhile, area Ford dealerships had a run on the new Explorer SUV.

The first thing my seven-year-old daughter, Audra, bid farewell to upon leaving for home after a long weekend in the UP were the dirt roads. I learned the hard way a few years back after a vacation near Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore that a low-slung family wagon was not the most appropriate vehicle for the area. It took three days to lose a piece of the nose and the entire undercarriage engine guard. I drive slower now and avoid the larger stones. If it weren’t for dirt roads there wouldn’t be anywhere to go. We stayed at a house on Piatt Lake, miles and miles of dirt roads back from M-123. Two-tracks and logging trails branch off in all directions. These are fun to explore though treacherous for owners of low-slung family wagons. Naturally, cell towers are not priority in a county with a population lower than the average inner-ring Detroit suburb.

Getting around late at night in the UP requires a different set of navigation skills. Driving directions may include mileage between dirt roads and spotting landmarks like a Smokey Bear sign or the little house with the candle in the window. When you eventually reach your destination it’s handy to have a bottle of whisky nearby. The glass to pour it in is optional.

We awoke Friday morning to a frigid wind blowing hard from the northeast and whipping up a small froth on Piatt Lake. Eager to begin our exploration we made a pot of coffee and a large breakfast of sausage gravy, scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. Soon after breakfast we headed north toward Whitefish Point.

Essentially fictional, the village of Whitefish Point is nevertheless known as the cranberry capital of Michigan. Presumably due to the one, century old cranberry bog two miles down Cemetery Road. The point itself is a compound of museum buildings commemorating the hundreds of ships Lake Superior has swallowed over the years. The main building houses artifacts recovered from wrecks near the point. There are photos and paintings and plaques detailing the last minutes of sailor’s lives. Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is piped into the room. It’s all very reverent and sad. There’s a boathouse, the lighthouse keeper’s quarters, the lighthouse, a snack shop, and a gift shop with all the requisite mementos that people require when they travel to see far away things of interest.

A platform leads over the dunes and onto a coast where time falls away into the surf. Whole trunks of cedar, red pine and birch lay bleached and gray, some with their roots still intact, some forty feet in length, swept in from the Canadian shore and strewn about as if they were twigs. The northeast wind howls here, forcing white-capped rollers five and six feet high to break over flat stone disks of blue and orange that line the margin. Further in, sand the color of the stones drifts against the bones of trees making patterns only nature can. I stand and look where I’ve been as waves of sand obliterate my footprints in minutes as if I were never there.

Three fingers Riley roams these shores. Once a sailor on a doomed freighter heading east with a load of ore, Riley’s body washed ashore near the point and soon froze in the surf ice. A young Coast Guard Petty Officer on duty after the wreck was charged with exhuming poor Riley from his wintry tomb. While chopping through the ice with an ax he unintentionally removed a finger. Nowadays, in the half-light of dusk, Riley searches on.

We escaped the ghosts of the point and headed into Paradise for a whitefish dinner. The wind had eased and a cold rain began to fall. We stopped at the IGA and picked up six packs of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale and Wisconsin’s Stevens Point Brewery Belgian White Ale. One advantage of vacationing in the Eastern UP near where the Two Hearted River flows into Lake Superior is that just about every convenience store and gas station has a six pack of Bell’s for sale. Back at the house I donned my rain gear and roamed the woods with my Labrador, Ginger, until dark, and then relaxed fireside with a few bottles of beer.

A steady rain continued through the morning and eventually eased into sporadic drizzle. After a couple of hours of tossing Ginger’s ball into the lake we drove to the lower falls of the Tahquamenon River. Tannins leached from the cedar and hemlock swamps that drain into the Tahquamenon River color the water amber. Besides being the second largest waterfall east of the Mississippi, the river is perhaps best known from the epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha.

And thus sailed my Hiawatha
Down the rushing Taquamenaw,
Sailed through all its bends and windings,
Sailed through all its deeps and shallows,
While his friend, the strong man, Kwasind,
Swam the deeps, the shallows waded.

Up and down the river went they,
In and out among its islands,
Cleared its bed of root and sand-bar,
Dragged the dead trees from its channel,
Made its passage safe and certain,
Made a pathway for the people,
From its springs among the mountains,
To the waters of Pauwating,
To the bay of Taquamenaw.

A boardwalk and a couple of overlooks allow access to two of the five lower falls. From here you can hike a moderately challenging four miles to the upper falls (we conquered this several years ago). There’s also a loop that runs to the campground and along the entry road back to the gift shop. As we studied the trail map Audra went exploring a small stream that coursed down the high banks and under the boardwalk. Out of the corner of my eye I watched her foot slip into the ankle deep water getting a good soaker. She looked around to see if anyone noticed and casually shook the water off her foot and began leading the short but rigorous trail, skirting deep ravines, marching steadily forth beneath the trees.

The trails at the upper falls are paved and terminate at stairs that lead down to two outlooks, one at the brink of the falls, the other downriver. Signs indicate there are about 200 steps between both outlooks. We lost track before those counts could be verified. We suspect the signs are short by a step or two dozen. At any rate, climbing all those stairs made us thirsty. Fortunately for us, rebuilt on the site that was once logging camp #33, and adjacent to the upper falls parking lot, is a log complex containing a souvenir shop and Tahquamenon Falls Brewery & Pub. We settled in for a couple pints of balanced and tasty Falls Tannin Red Ale and whitefish sandwiches to refuel for one last hike.

Just north of the Tahquamenon lies a vast stretch of peat bog. A trailhead two miles down a rutted two track near the lower falls allows access to a network of hiking trails traversing this strange and beautiful ecology. This is moose country. Always the adventurer, Audra discovered a small foot trail that led to a narrow boardwalk over a quaking bog. A quaking bog is formed by a layer of peat about 18 inches thick that rests on top of water. It feels something like a water bed. Growing over this layer of peat are lichens, bright green and blood red mosses, and hundreds of pitcher plants. Another half mile stroll took us to Clark Lake. In the quiet of early evening we felt as if we were the only humans on earth. Not one of us wished to leave this place of peaceful beauty.

Our last night on Piatt Lake I stayed up late hanging around the fire and drinking from a growler of Falls Tannin Red Ale. Unseen animals rummaged in the brush. I wanted to get drunk by roasting the heart of my enemy on a stick and howling into the night but since I had no heart to roast I simply finished the growler and the rest of the Two Hearted besides. In a dim way I felt the sap running through the trees and the pull of the moon on my blood. Here I stood on a piece of country that can change a person, the details of which become a part of him and endure through all the small tragedies of routine. This is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The next morning we headed south toward home. Obligatory smoked whitefish was procured from a tiny smokehouse in St. Ignace. I splurged on a bag of beef jerky that Ginger promptly crawled into the front seat and ate while we ordered coffee and other goods at the fudgemaker’s in Mackinaw City. After one last stop at Mackinaw Pastie and Cookie Company for a half-dozen frozen pasties the north was behind us but in no way forgotten.