Winters on Hunters Point

The snow has been heavy from time to times this December up in Copper Harbor, according to Internet reports and reports home from my daughter Miranda Davis, who lives up there year round. But the forecast is calling for some drizzle or even light rain over the next day or two. I haven't been up there since the early fall, but I do have a shot of the Hunters Point Preserve from a couple years ago, taken on a day of fairly wet snow, when the temps were in the high 20s. If the pictures from the coast I've been seeing lately are close to a true indication of conditions right now, this photo is probably fairly close to what things look like up on the Superior coast outside Copper harbor as of now. This is one my favorite pictures of the coast in winter time. It was taken on my old Olympus digital on one of those brooding days, when the skies were dark and the wet snow was spitting and the waves were coming in with only moderate force, the wind having eased up for a day. The days are short, too. If I recall rightly, this was taken about 4:00 in the afternoon, and it was already getting close to sunset and darkness.

Holiday Table Tennis

The Holidays and ping-pong, a tradition that goes far back for many American families, and the Kilpelas are one family that is trying to keep this tradition alive. Pictured are my nephew Tom Baumgart (in his late 20s) and my son Drew, 12. I've been laid up with a removable cast, the dreaded boot, for four weeks now (stress fracture from too much tennis), but I still had enough mobility and savvy to hand young Tom a quartet of losses on Thanksgiving Day at our house in Okemos. Drew then took on Tom, but I failed to find out the final results. Drew is just learning, but he is a natural athlete and should turn out to be good enough to challenge the Ol' Man some day. I must admit, though, that I am really the only person striving to keep the tradition alive. I'll keep doing my best. My brother Don and I used to embark on some epic table tennis struggles back in our college days, such as when we decided one Christmas season to have a tournament of the best-of-seven matches, each match being contested by the best-of-seven 21-point games. We got close to getting sick of ping pong by the end, but I don't remember us slowing down even after that epic war was over. If I recall, I won it in the 7th game of the 7th match, many days after Christmas. Don probably recalls it differently, and since we fought about ping pong incessantly back in those days so often, it's only fitting that we woiuld continue to dispute every nuance now.

The MSU Campus

Cousin Kev Koski, from South America, asked for some photos of the beautiful MSU campus. Kev grew up nearby, but has moved on to Miami and points even farther south. He's currently biking around the world. His blog on that can be found by searching at google. I'll try to remember to put up the address some time soon on this blog. So for Kev here is one shot, of the family, minus Miranda, who is really in a new family of her own now. That's Marsha on the left, Drew (12), Logan (15), and me on campus. We are standing beneath Miranda's first dorm room, in East Holmes Hall on the far east side of the MSU campus. The photo was taken in late October. The vapor lights were already on when we were finishing a fall walk through the gorgeous woods of Sanford Natural Area, which is a place I regularly visit on campus and of which I have thousands of photos. I'll try to post some more campus shots. I sell my work concerning MSU for publications and as notecards in a series I call "Natural MSU."

Melville in Hand

My 52nd birthday passed in October. My boys were very pleased with their gift to me, which I have in hand in the photo, taken in our living room in Okemos. The book is an illustrated edition of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, my favorite novel (even though it's hardly a novel in the technical sense, which is a subject for a different blog). I own several editions of the work and have read it many times, but I had requested a nice copy. There is nothing like a fine book in one's hands. I read a few passages to the boys. Logan has already read the work, but he has yet to make it his own. Note the stains on the knees. These are work clothes I am wearing, stuff I put on when doing the repairs and maintenance around the house. It was a Saturday night, and I hadn't yet changed out of the work clothes at the end of a day of putzing around the house.

A Lingering Fall

I haven't been writing much, it's true, but this transition time is always difficult for me. I find it hard to restart my interest in doing posts about my southern Michigan life in the fall and doing the opposite in the spring, writing post about northern Michigan when I go north to Copper Harbor for the summer tourist season. The fall has been strangely (though the condition is certainly welcome) persistent for many weeks down here in Okemos and throughout mid-Michigan. The weather has been average, but the leaves have been hanging on the trees for a long, long time. Several trees in my yard are just now dropping their leaves, about 4 weeks later than usual. Here is a shot on the MSU campus from a couple weeks ago of a thicket of beech trees on the Circle, the center of the MSU campus and the site of its first buildings (it's known in some old books about the college as the Sacred Circle). These trees have been colorful for more than a month now.

A Beating from Your Sister

The days of summer are long gone, and now the color season has ended as well. Most of the shops in Copper Harbor have closed or are in the process of closing. My son-in-law's parents' place, the Minnetonka Motel and Thunderbird Gift Shop, are still operating, but on a limited schedule. Here's my last shot of summer, 2007, that I will post this year, as many shots as I would like to post. Late in the summer, the whole family got together one night after supper, a night when the Sunset Cruise had to be canceld, at the Tunderbird, on the corner at the blinking light. We all looked around the shop, as we do from time to time during the summer all around town. Miranda and Logan were having a friendly disagreement about something or other that I was not privy, and I caught Mir giving him a working-over to straighten out his attitude and to find out who's boss. Coming up next will be photos of the family down here in Okemos this fall.

Sandstone Shore

I go back a month and more to a shot of my niece Caroline Thomas (I hope I'm spelling her first name right) standing on the Lake Superior shore one windy day in August. This spot is about two miles west of Copper Harbor. We had taken a bike ride down M-26 to this spot. Caroline and her sister Christine came up from Houston, Texas to visit their aunt, my wife, Aunt Marsha and the rest of the famiy. It was the first time for either to visit Copper Harbor since we came back to our family business and began spending our summers in CH in 1993. It was a long way to come for a short stay of just four days or so. They flew from Houston to Milwaukee and then drove a rented car to CH. They had that experience of just how far everything is from CH on that drive north from southern Wisconsin, which took the better part of a day. We are used to the distances, but when you seldom drive up here, it can seem bewildering and daunting. In this photo, Caroline was getting ready to take a photo of the sweetwater waves tumbling in to show the folks back home in Texas. This is an interesting spot along the shore. It's mostly made of layers of conglomerate, or puddingstone, but there are a few of these bulging layers of sandstone here and there along the way. And that blue sky looks exactly the way the blue sky looks so often along Superior: ravishingly blue. I still have a few more summer shots I want to post, and hundreds I could post.

MSU Hallway

I am back in my other life, the one lived in Okemos. This is a shot at the end of a day at my workplace, the offices of University Development at Michigan State University. My building is part of Spartan Stadium, a new addition to the stadium's east side. The offices of U.D. are located on the second and third floors of this new building, the top four floors of which (floors 4-7) are various skyboxes riding high above the football field at the bottom of the Spartan Stadium bowl. It's a nice view all the way down this hallway, which runs some 150 yards from south to north. My cubicle is about 25 feet in back of me as I stand at the windows overlooking the MSU track and the I.M. fields near Munn Ice Arena and the Breslin Center, where MSU's basketball games are played. What was I thinking this day? Not much, really. It has become a routine, going back and forth between Okemos and Copper Harbor and my two jobs. It's just the life our family leads, and we don't tend to think much about it day to day. It just something that we keep doing, and it would only feel peculiar or even worthy of notice if we DIDN'T do what we have done for some 15 summers since I returned to the Kilpela family business in CH.

Pokemon Stickers

Before we get too far down the road of time, I want to go back to a shot I took in the late spring and neglected to post. It marks a transition that has been continuing through the year in the life of our family. Logan has gone into high school and Drew into middle school, and they are both off to fairly good starts in their new educational surroundings. This photo is of Logan in May, when I rented a construction dumpster to get rid of all the old windows and doors that I have been removing from the house as I finish replacing old fixtures with new. This window frame with the window pane still intact was from Logan's bedroom. It was just about to get toosed into the dumpster with all the rest when I realized that it was from his room. That wasn't hard to figure out, since the glass was covered with Pokemon stickers that he had pasted on when we was in second grade or so. Pokemon was the rage during Logan's elementary years, but the boys tell me it is making a bit of comeback nowadays, and all their Pokemon cards and trinkets might actually be worth a little bit, if they'd take care of them. But these faded stickers are now at the top of the Grand Ledge landfill, almost surely never to be seen again, just as Logan's childhood is becoming a rapidly more disatant memory.

Working on Miniature Sets

Logan was up to another creative project late in the summer, with Drew's assistance. Logan is a filmmaker, and he was working in August, just before Mom and boys headed home for the opening of school, on some movie whose story involved my canoe. They found a "rocky" hunk of stryofoam in our business's work room down on the Queen IV dock, and Log set to work spray painting it to give it just the right look as a miniature rock cliff for a scene in the movie he has planned and has been working on. Earlier, I found him painting a toy canoe red in order to match the look of my real canoe, with the intention of shooting a scene in which my red canoe burns. I'll be interested to see where all this is heading.

Gotta Love That Junker

My son-in-law Art Davis loves his heap, that old red Jeep that he bought a couple years back. He seemed, perhaps, more excited about buying it than getting married to my daughter, Miranda, last September -- though I must admit that Miranda seems to love that old heap with a special fondness as well. Here's a shot of Art and Miranda, my sons Logan and Drew in the narrow and rugged back seat, pulling out of the driveway at our Copper Harbor house one late evening in mid-August a good hour after sunset. They use this old clunky vehicle for getting around in the Keweenaw woods on their various berry-picking missions and for hauling their big dogs, pictured elsewhere several times on this blog, to the trailheads they hike out from. I guess it has served a couple of great purposes, that old Jeep. It's always a rural luxury of our unpretentious sort to have a car or truck that you can beat the hell out of. I offered my old green Caravan to Art and Mir this summer, but Art's still happy with this thing, and so I drove my old Caravan home to Okemos and finally sold it to a friend who needed transportation. I'll miss it just because I could beat the hell out of it.

Horseshoe Channel

The days of summer have ended, and I and the family have returned from Copper Harbor to our life in Okemos. The weather has changed considerably as well. It is cool down here in Okemos on this early September day, in the low 60s, and fall-like up in CH, with a temp in he 50s and a heavy gale brlowing over Lake Superior. But I have many photos of the summer in the queue still planned for this blog, so I will keep with summer for a while longer, if only to keep as much of it as I can in the memory for as long as possible. In mid-August I took my boys out to Horseshore Harbor, the 600-acre preserve of the Nature Conservancy, to enjoy a fine summer day on the Lake Superior shore. We all went swimming in the West Harbor, as I call it, out at the preserve. A west wind was really jumping that day, and there were some sizeable waves crashing in (though the Queen IV had a fairly placid crossing, I was to find out later when she returned from Isle Royale. Here's a shot of the boys, Logan and Drew, swimming up one of the rocky channels in the West Harbor area of Horseshoe. They were pretending something that I was not privy to and having a great time.

Studying the Shallows

The swimming has been excellent the past few weeks. Ther water warmed up once again to the high 60s in Copper Harbor in August. Even on open Lake Superior, the water has been very, very nice. I went swimming a few times with my boys and my wife Marsha, both in the Harbor and on the open Lake. This is a shot of Andrew, my 11 year old, looking for agates and other pretty stones in the waters along ther Hunters Point shoreline, which is the newly protected park on the north side of Copper Harbor, a favorite beach for many down the years. This vast Lake stretches about 90 miles in the direction I am facing as I took this shot, about north-northeast.

The Queen and the Light

There have been a lot of great Sunset Cruises on the Isle Royale Queen IV lately in Copper Harbor. The Kilpela family, of course, runs the Queen IV, and we run the Sunset Cruise, for the past 35 years. This is a shot of the Queen turning out into the Big Lake as she passes the Copper Harbor Lighthouse on Hays Point at the east end of Copper Harbor. It was my brother Captain John Kilpela who was master on board that night, and I believe my daughter Miranda was on there, too. The weather has been great for all water activities in the harbor for the past four or five weeks. Just one great day after another. The goodness of the weather actually starts to pall -- in a way. We need rain badly. Every front comes through dry.

Wading in Copper Harbor

My son Drew and I canoed down to the bay in Fort Wilkins State Park where Fanny Hooe Creek outlets into Copper Harbor one night a couple weeks ago. Here's a shot of Drew looking for rocks and objects in the water on that very nice summer evening. The harbor water was still somewhat cool that evening, but now it has warmed up considerably, and we're swimming frequently in the harbor, as we do at this time of year every summer.

Eagle River Beach

My goodness, have things been hot everywhere in the Midwest, even way up here in Copper Harbor. We might have the coollest weather around these parts, but it's still been far above average. But it's not so unusual, really. We have a spell of heat every year. It just doesn't get quite as hot as anywhere else and the heat doesn't last quite as long. I think we have the best weather in North America right here in the Keweenaw most years. I follow these things, and I can't think of a better place for continual pleasant weather in the main summer period. Lots of people mistakenly think Lake Superior never warms up enough to be swimmable, but such is far from the case. In late July and throughout August, we swim all around the Peninsula, in Copper Harbor, even on the open Lake -- and even out at usually colder Isle Royale. Here's a shot of the boys, Logan and Drew, trying to stop up a creek entering the lake at Eagle River. The lake was a little cool this day, about 10 days ago, but still very swimmable. Superior has gotten even warmer since.

Brockway Without Sunset

The picture makes it look as though it was darn cold on Brockway this night in early July, a few days after the Fourth. On the left at the edge of the Bockway cliff is my wife Marsha, next to her is her niece Sarah, and on the right is her sister Patty. Patty and family are from Houston, TX. They visited us for a few days during their tour of the northern plains states. It has turned hot here in Copper Harbor after that stretch in early July, when things were cool, at times, and rainy and rather unpredictable. The shot was taken at the top of Brockway Mountain, which is about 5 miles up the ridge from town. We went up there on a very windy evening to see whether the sun might peek out and make one of those superb Brockway-Superior sunsets. It didn't happen. In the distance you see Lake Medora, along US-41 on the way to CH.

A Restful Evening

The family went to "town," as we say, meaning the city of Houghton (45 miles southwest of Copper Harbor), one day a week or so ago to shop for groceries and to run some other errands. During our roaming to various stores and other locations, my son Drew and I came across this fellow in the parking lot at the Shopko in Houghton. The man was taking a siesta on a piece of plywood in the bed of his pickup, waiting for someone to return from the Shopko aisles. He never woke up to face the nice evening.

Independence Day

Ah, the Fourth, in Copper Harbor. It's a good day. The long parade. The kids' games at the Community Park. The big fireworks show at 11:00 at night (which was especially nice this year). My first photo of the holiday festivities is of my son Logan jumping over a small firework in the backyard of my brother Don's place on the main drag in Copper Harbor. I must admit I was the adult who was encouraging the kids, the Kilpela grandchildren, to take leaps over the fireworks. Only Logan gave it a try. Perhaps it was a bit foolish of me to offer him the chance, though Log survived my indiscretion.

My second shot is of my brother John with the mannequin that would become the Isle Royale Queen of our parade float. My sister Lisa had the idea for the float and dressed her up in a nice dress and various baubles and beads and attached her, with a salute, on the front bumper of her pickup truck, which was serving as the float foundation. I might put a picture of the final product up some time soon.

Fishin' at Sawmill Cove

This shot is one one of Copper Harbor resident Jaime Engstrom and my son Andrew fishing on the Isle Royale Queen IV dock one recent glorious evening in Michigan's northernmost town. Jaime has lived during the summers in Copper Harbor for almost all his life, Drew for all his life, and Jaime has been working for the Kilpela family for 10 years on the boat and in other capacities, one of our longest serving employees, if not the longest. I'm not much of a fisherman, but Drew has shown some interest in learning how to fish. Jaime has been talking about taking him out some time soon on the Harbor or on Lake Fanny Hooe nearby. We've had some wonderful weather lately in the Harbor after a long spell of cool, even rainy days in the first two weeks of July. I dub this place "Sawmill Cove" because there was once a sawmill located on what is now now the Queen IV dock. This was back in the 10's and 20's of the twentieth century.

Garden Brook Pathway

The family, my family -- Ben Kilpela and wife and kids -- went for a walk in the woods just a half mile south and west of Copper Harbor on a recent evening. Included in the group were my daughter Miranda's dogs, Gus and Capone, and Harry, my brother John's dog (see a previous post for a close-up of Harry). This trail, maintained by the Michigan Nature association, runs along the bluff above the Garden Brook, a small stream, which often almost dries up in the summer, running parallel to the backside of Brockway Mountain down the Brockway valley to the flats just south of the village of Copper Harbor. It's a pretty walkway. To get the dogs a drink, we went off trail down the bluff to the Garden Brook itself to find a suitable pool of drinking water. The walk down the side of the bluff was steep and over loose gravel and through dense foliage. We found the edge of the brook well grown over, too. This shot is (l to r) of my son Logan, my wife Marsha, and my daughter Miranda Davis right on the edge of the Garden Brook in amongst the dense, Jurassic-Park-like foliage. Miranda and Logan tried wearing fern-fronds to keep the mosquitos off. I didn't think the bugs were bad at all.

This second shot is of Miranda working with Gus, her German short-haired pointer, on heeling. Gus just wants to move, but sometimes he can move too far too fast into the woods, at his usual breakneck pace, and get himself completely lost. He also will choke himself silly pulling on his leash. In the shot is Harry, my brother John's Jack Russell terrier. I think it's going to take Gus a long time to get the hang of this business.

Sundown at the Top of Michigan

I took a bike ride down M-26 along the lakeshore on a recent evening and took in the sunset along the Lake Superior coast. This shot was taken very near the northernmost point of the State of Michigan (discounting the island of Isle Royale). It's a place called Dan's Point, just a couple miles west of Copper Harbor. Boy, have we been having the sunsets this summer. I don't know what's going on, but almost every night, even the cloudiest, ends with a wonderful sunset. Of course, the Kilpela Family runs the Sunset Cruise out on the Big Lake most nights during the height of summer, so we get to enjoy one gorgeous sunset after another, which we share with our passengers.

Fog over Copper Harbor

I went out canoeing on Copper Harbor one evening about a week ago. It was pretty foggy in the late evening -- and had been all day long. This is a shot from the Isle Royale Queen IV dock across the little cove on the central waterfront in town. Three fishermen were out on the public dock doing some fishing there before dark settled in. It's not a bad place to try your luck. There are loons and ducks and geese and merganzers that visit the cove, so there must be a few fish that come in there.

The Keweenaw Forest

I went on a bike-and-hike journey east of Copper Harbor on a recent June evening. This shot was taken deep in the woods east of town up on a ridge that was within about a half mile of the Lake Superior shore near Horseshoe Harbor, the superb and famed Nature Conservancy Preserve that the Conservancy has made into such a wonderful place to hike and rock-hound. It's rugged, too. Going off-trail can be a challenge.

This next shot is one of me taken on the Horseshoe Harbor Road on the same evening. I got off my bike to explore among the birches near the road as the sun was finally setting (sundown is about 9:45 in mid- to late June). I balanced the camera on my bike seat to get the photo. I was wearing my full bug jacket because the black flies had come out in droves, as they do especially around sunset at this time of year. Blackfly season runs from about mid-May to the Fourth of July, though on certain days they can be no problem. With these bug jackets, you can enjoy a great deal more of the Keweenaw Forest at this time of year. A superb invention. Wouldn't be without one in June. A few years back, a tourist stopped on US-41 in CH to take a p[hoto of Marsha pushing our infant Logan on a walk. She was dressed in the bug jacket and the stroller was wrapped in a similaR bug baffler. The tourist found it amazing, but I guess one does what one must.

Harry

My younger brother, Captain John Kilpela, has one of the famous dogs of Copper Harbor, a Jack Russell terrier (short breed) who goes by the name of Harry. They live in a cabin in town behind Ragamuffins Clothing and Gifts. One night I was hanging out at John's while Harry was taking his nightly constitutional out in the yard. Harry spends a lot of his time out in the yard waiting for a certain chipmunk to come out of the woodpile behind the house next door, my brother Don's place. This is a shot of Harry studying the woodpile as night comes in. I was a bit jealous of Harry a couple years back, since I would sometimes walk down the street with him and find people running out of their motel rooms to say hello while paying no attention to me at all. Visitors even knew his name, like an old friend, though they had no idea who I was.

Storms

June is always a time for few thunderstorms to roll over the U.P. Marquette had a huge hail-storm on June 20. A few days before, Copper Harbor saw a few large thunderstorms pass over on the edge of a swiftly moving cold front. This is a shot about 10:30 on that evening -- it stays light a long time in June in CH. The storm has passed east. This was taken on my bike on the main street in town, down near my home and close to my mother's gift shop, Ragamuffins. We've had lots of nice weather this year, some dry spells, some hot spells, some cool weather, a few swarms of black flies, even an early appearance of the stable flies that torment you on the Superior shore. It's always changing up here. My Dad often repeats an old saying that we hear from the locals a lot: Don't like the weather? Stick around five minutes and see it change.

The Minnetonka

Business has been, as usual, a little quiet this early June in Copper Harbor. This is a photo of Art and Miranda Davis in Art's family's motel in town, the Minnetonka Resort on the main corner, where the blinking light signals the junction of M-26 and US-41. Art was exercised about some business matter and trying to make some important point.

Lake Mango

I am now in Copper Harbor, northernmost town in Michigan, for the summer business season. I had a very pleasant first day in my northern home town, if conditions were a touch cool (temps only in the 50s, though sunny). Miranda, my daughter, Art Davis, my son-in-law, and I went to Lake Manganese just south of town late in the evening Tuesday last week to let their dogs, Capone and Gus, have a good run to get some exercise -- and wear themselves out for a night of sound sleep. This shot is a great one, don't you think? -- with the dogs standing by the sides of Art and Miranda with looks of worship in their eyes. I really don't think they were expecting anything other than more attention from Art and Mir. They had no treats in their pockets, in case you think this shot might have been faked with the use of dog biscuits. Rather, they took up the worshipful prosition you see without prompting. They are seldom found like this, believe me. The level of Lake Manganese seems no different from years past, though Lake Superior is down considerably.

Crossing the Mackinaw

So, the fun begins for the summer. My job at MSU has been suspended for 3 months, as usual, and I have moved north to Copper Harbor to run the Isle Royale Queen IV with my brothers, daughter, and parents, while my wife and 2 boys family remains south in Okemos for the end of the school year. It was quite a lousy drive north on Monday,June 4. The rain was coming down in buckets up in the northern Lower Peninusla and in the east half of the Upper Peninusla. Here's a daunting shot from the front window of my old van on the way across the Mackinaw Bridge. That's the landmass of the U.P. coming into view out of the fog and heavy rain, about 2 miles up ahead. I've just passed the north tower of the bridge and am heading down the deck toward the toll booths on the north end of the bridge. Quite a summer welcome to the ol' U.P.

My next shot is of me, Captain Ben, on the shore of Lake Superior several hours later. This was taken at one of the roadside parks along Au Train Bay, one of the spots I almost always stop at along the way north, and the way back south. It was warmer than it might appear. Though it had been pretty darn cold at the Mackinaw Bridge, in the low 50s, if that, here at Au Train the temperature had to be in the mid-60s. Copper Harbor here I come.

Okemos in Spring

Remember the shot of "Okemos in Winter" from a few months back, that shot of the the blizzard that hit southern Michigan and many points south in March? Well, here's a shot of almost the same exact scene two and a half months later. The field remains unplowed and unplanted, though most of the corn fields have been laid in over the past week or so. This shot was taken along Every Road, about 2 miles west of Okemos Road. Drew and I were on a bike ride on a Sunday evening along the fields and woods near our home south of Okemos proper. It was a mighty chilly night, 50 degrees with a sharp north breeze. We needed, but hadn't worn, gloves. I was actually in a tee shirt, which was a big mistake. But, being the hard-headed soul I am, we kept going for the full ride. It feels strange to be posting these thoughts on a day that it is almost 90 degrees here in Okemos. All that cool spring weather has become a part of the past. Here's the url for the winter shot:

http://copperharbor.blogspot.com/2007/03/winter-day-in-okemos.html

My next shot was taken on the same evening, as Drew and I were headed back toward home after going away from home about four miles. The color in those cheeks is not enhanced. It was so cold that we came back with red faces and very red hands. Drew sometimes wonders whether I am truly sane. He was rather quiet about my decision to proceed with our ride this night. Though he didn't say so, I think he was enjoying himself, despite the chill.

Michigan's State Capitol Building

It's just about time for me to head north to Copper Harbor for the summer season. But before I leave (Marsha and the boys to follow at the end of school), my sister Jo came down for a visit with her son Griffin, first time in 13 years, she calculated, that she had been down to our place in Okemos. She did a lot of shopping, as is her wont, but she took a little time to take in a few of the local sights, such as the State Capitol Building in downtown Lansing. The evening had turned quite chilly, two weeks back, even for southern Michigan. But we parked the car and walked up the steps to the front doors and tried to stay warm in a harsh northeast breeze. I got this shot of (l to r) Jo, Logan, Marsha, and my daughter Miranda, down from CH for a week to work at a dog breeding place that she likes to spend time at. This was an interesting test for my camera, the Canon Digital Rebel. I used a flash, but I was standing some 50 feet in front of the group. The shot came out almost entirely black, but I used Photoshop to get what I could out of the black photo, and I think the results are at least a decent record of the event, which is the purpose of most family shots.

Frost on Beach Stones

There is plenty of time left for frost in the Keweenaw Peninsula. In Okemos, in south-central Michigan, the safe date is May 25 or so, but in the far northern reaches of Michigan, there will be plenty of frosty mornings to come well into June. Here's a shot of ice-cold beach stones delicately coated in frost near Hunters Point. The stones are mostly that ever present chert, the fine-grained sedimentary rock that is closely related to flint and jasper. Chert comes in several colors and is red on the beaches of the western U.P. because of traces of iron in the stone. I have read that chert was used for stone tools in prehistoric times, though I don't know how widespread its use was among the Native Americans who inhabited the shores of Lake Superior.

Where the Hell Are Those Dogs?

My daughter Miranda Davis, Copper Harbor year-round resident, listening for the sound of Gus and Capone (short-haired pointer and husky-shepherd mix). These two make so much noise as they hurtle through the woods that we can safely conclude that they must be far away. A very typical pose, even down to the chuk almost covering the eyes. This shot was taken just south of town up the ridge and near the golf course, on a challenging new mountain biking trail that Sam Raymond of Keweenaw Adventures has cut through the woods.

The Gnomes of the Snowlands

Before winters disappears entirely, as it has almost done, here's a little reminder of those long, darker days when spring seems to have decided to skip a year or two. This fellow stands serenely at the foot of the front door of Art and Miranda Davis's place in Copper Harbor (Miranda is my daughter). Art enjoys his gnomes, for some reason I cannot fathom, and there are a number of them inside and outside around their CH cabin. I was so pleased to give him a couple more this past Christmas. I insisted on buying them for him, though Marsha couldn't believe what I was doing as we looked them over in a market in East Lansing. This chap is the Davis's Greeter Gnome, nearly buried in the snow a few months ago, but still holding his post.

Concerts and Language

It's one of those times of year in which there are many school concerts. Drew and Logan were both involved in Okemos's joint-school Spring Concert at the high school recently. Logan is in middle school choir and Drew, in fifth grade, is in first year strings and choir as well. This is a shot of Drew on the risers in the high school auditorium on the night of the big concert. That's him separated from all the kids in this perspective. It was just a chance shot. Being tall, he always stands in the back, so I try to get a shot of him when he's coming on stage. I always enjoy photos like this one, of a crowd of people doing something. I like studying the faces and the gestures of each person and reflecting on how each person experiences a shared event differently. Many stories are being told in this photo, but the stories are almost entirely hidden, as is so much in life -- sometimes even in our own private lives.

Next up we have a shot of Logan on our short trip to the Ohio River and Mammoth Cave National Park over spring break. Logan was sitting in a downtown restaurant in a farm town in central Indiana where we were having burgers for lunch. He's studying his Latin flash cards. Logan loves languages right now and is always working on something to do with learning or even making up languages. Keep up the good work, boy. There is a story or two being told in this photo, too, but they are narrower and more focused stories. Yet there is much in Logan's face to study, and don't we all love to study our children? Marsh and I, when we go out alone, have to work hard to keep from spending all our time alone talking about the kids, as is so common among parents.

Spring Fields

Just before last week's cold snap and snowfalls, which took the shape of that massive blizzard up in Copper Harbor, down here in Okemos the snow had all melted and the fields, though still a bit muddy, were beginning to dry out. Here's a shot of a soybean field down Sandhill Road west of our house in Okemos. I hopped out of my car on the way to work to get this shot. That's no permanent pond. It's a flooded low spot, which fills up when the snow melts or the spring rains are heavy. The family who owns this field has never been able to keep the spot dry enough to plant in it regularly. Ducks and geese stay in the pond when the water is up, but then quickly move on when the water gets low or stagnant.

The Spring Blizzard of '07

We've been staying in touch with our daughter, Miranda Davis, all weekend during one of the biggest snowstorms of the past 20 years on the south shore of Lake Superior. I've heard and read differing figures, but it seems that the mining ghost town named Delaware about 11 miles southwest of Copper Harbor got about 40 inches of snow over three days. It was a true blizzard, with north winds blowing at 40 to 50 for lengthy periods. I've been bugging Mir to send me some shots of the action up in CH since we were last there, but she hasn't done so until now. Here's a shot of her standing on a trail somewhere in the woods near town a couple days ago, after the blizzard had let up:

Looks as though it was quite the storm, even for the Keweenaw. Here's another shot from Mir, this one taken outside her and Art's log cabin near the Mariner Restaurant:

The birds will have to look elsewhere for sustenance -- and for warmth. If the forecasts can be trusted, it looks as though this is going to be a long spell of April cold and snow in the Keweenaw and all along the Superior south shore. Notably, my parents, Don and Betty, made their way back to CH through Escanaba on Saturday and found just a trace of snow on the ground on the south side of the Upper Peninsula. Of course, it's cold everywhere east of the Rockies and north of a line about 200 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico.

West On Our Road

I said I wouldn't often be timely on this blog, but I tried to do it today. This shot was taken last evening, a half mile west of our house in Okemos. That's Drew on the left, looking sulky, as instructed, and Logan on the right, carrying books in his fleece jacket, as is his wont (good, good boy). Drew is entering middle school next year. Marsh and I were talking about the school requirement for the kids to run a mile. We didn't think Drew was ready. So we're going to try to get him ready. We started out yesterday with a mile and a half walk down Standhill to a spot I wanted to get a photo of around sundown. The moon had come up behind us in the east during the walk west, and when we turned around, we had some lovely views of the moon sailing over the empty farm fields as we walked home. Marsh didn't join us because this week she has had a touch of the stomach flu that has been going around the whole Midwest lately. Even two Detroit Pistons basketball players went down with this nasty virus recently. Drew was getting a little irritated by this point in the walk, but he made it all the way in good shape. We'll do some more regular walking before starting to run, probably a third mile to start out.

A little later in the walk, just across the street from our house, there was a very dim golden glow lighting one of the droopy power poles along Sandhill, as the very last bit of twilight sifted over anything it could touch before night settled over all the landscape. Here's a shot of that scene.

The Bed of a Pickup

If I had not put up that title how quickly would you have recognized this photo as a shot across the bed of a pickup truck? This was taken at the Detroit Auto Show some six weeks ago. This is one of those sorts of photos that can be interpreted in probably countless ways. What do you see and think and feel as you look at this composition? It might be the equivalent of an abstract painting. The people might be considered only incidental shapes to bring out the contrast between the red section and the blue section, with their contrasting colors and textures and forms. Or do you see some social statement or some personal vision in this? I find the photo very interesting, and to generate a viewer's interest (my own interest as viewer included) was probably all that was on my conscious mind as I took it. I'm not usually this kind of photographer. I usually most appreciate telling a story through a photo, and the story, to be a story, must somehow be decipherable, cogent, sensible as story. But I also am drawn to striking contrasts in my surroundings and in my life, and this photo also was taken because of my interest in showing one of the many kinds of contrast that I find express something important about my experience. Well, there's enough artsy talk for one day. I'll return to something more customarily story-like next time around. All interpretations welcome.

Glaze Snow

Before winter has hopped the big train to get to the southern hemisphere for the change of seasons, I still have a cache of winter shots from Copper Harbor that I want to get on the blog. This photo shows what amounts to a frosty morning in the woods up in the Keweenaw. It's not frost, as you might guess, but a sort of rime ice, though it was actually half snow and half ice. But there are word differences that need resolving. What does the phrase "rime ice" apply to? What is shown in the Okemos photo from the previous post, I have read, is called by some "rime ice", though I have always called what is shown there "frost", or "hoar frost". Some say that what I and others call "rime ice", the ice that is driven by wind and forms on trees or buildings, is properly called "glaze ice". I will have to investigate that language issue further. But I like the phrase glaze ice and will put it to use.

This photo was taken very near the shores of Lake Medora, near the boat launch. The lake is about four miles west of CH along US-41. The wind often drives across the lake and slashes into the trees. If it's snowing at all, the wind will build up a thick coating of snow or semi-ice on the side of the trees facing the wind. Along the shore of Lake Superior, when the lake is still mostly open except for shore ice, the wind will drive spray from the lake waves onto the shoreside trees and create rime ice (as it has been often called) or "glaze ice" on the windward side. But the trees in this shot are actually pasted with glaze snow, though upon inspection I found that the wind had so tightly compressed the snow against the bark that it was nearly a fluffy form of ice. As my Dad mentioned in his comment to my previous post, CH does not often get hoar frost like that shown in the post about Okemos, three hundred miles south of CH (as the crow flies; it's 550 miles as the automobile drives). What the CH area almost always gets is glaze snow and glaze ice.

Frost

It was a very frosty morning in Okemos one day a couple weeks ago. There had been fog over night, but the temperature had dropped, and the fog began adhering to everything it touched. This is our front yard in Okemos, on the west side of our house. I was heading for work and took the the camera just in case there were some good shots to be had along the foggy roads to Michigan State that morning. Beauty often seems to spring at you out of nowhere, no matter the source of the beauty, even when you're writing or reading. I was backing out of the drive, saw the branches of our little crabapple caked in frost, and hopped out of the car to get the shot. Within an hour a warm late-winter sun had melted and evaporated all the frost, and now, two weeks later, there is no hint of this scene in our front yard, since all the snow is gone.

Birch Stand and Global Warming

The broad stand of birches about a mile east of Copper Harbor, down the Slaughters Lake Road and then down the Horseshore Harbor Road, has always been one of my favorite places in the area. My family (Miranda Davis, Marsha, Logan, Drew, and I) and my brother Don took a drive out that way in early January. I took this shot from the top of my Dad's pick-up as we slowly worked our way back toward CH from the Horseshoe Harbor entrance. You can see that conditions were rather unusual for this neck of the woods at this time of year, as I have discussed before. There was panic about the lack of winter business back then, but things have changed by now a great deal. A long cold spell with lots of snow brought the snowmobilers and skiers and cross-country skiers, and the CH businesses that stay open in winter had a decent second half of the winter tourist season.

But just this very day, March 16, 2007, the news came out that 2006 was the warmest year in recorded history on planet Earth. Do you think that human industrial activity is creating this warming and that it is leading to disaster? The belief in these two concepts appears, from my view, to be spreading and strengthening. Yet I noticed on this very day as well that the Hoover Institution, which is relatively politically conservative but still generally sound (in my judgment), has an article out that claims that global warming is NOT as significant nor as terrifyingly problematic as we have been led to believe by hundreds of reputable scientists and scholars. This is all related, as you see, to the Problem of Disagreement, which my book of philosophy is about. It can be found at:

http://www.msu.edu/user/kilpela/disagree.htm

My opinion. I remain undecided, but as with many such matters, material and spiritual, we've got to make the best guess on the best evidence we have, and I don't think we should wager that global warming is not a significant danger and the result of our industrial activity with what we know so far. The evidence might not be fully persuasive that global warming is real and a threat, but should we take a chance that it isn't? Right now, I think the probabilities suggest that we should do something to curb the activities that appear to be causing global warming. You might want to chase down a review or two about Richard Posner's (the fascinating and philosophically "pragmatic" American judge) book about thinking about the risks of potential catastrophes and doing something about them. I can't remember the exact title, but by searching on "Posner" and "catastrophe", you should get to a number of reviews.

Thanks to all for visiting my blogs. I hope you find reasons to keep coming back.