Rime ice on cobblestones. Spray
I've done little with this blog for quite a while. But I've decided to post a few art photos I like a lot -- and maybe a few family shots, too -- taken now and then during recent years.
I've been totally worthless with this blog for a while. In the months gone by, my daughter Miranda and son-in-law Art, both of whom have made a number of appearances here, had their first child, who is Marsha's and my first grandchild, Aster Davis, born March 15, 2009. She's a sweetheart. We haven't seen her for a couple months now, but we're soon heading north for a summer in Copper Harbor, where we'll see her every day. For Miranda and all, I offer this shot of a bunch of asters on Keweenaw Point late last summer as a way to get myself started again. I told Mir a couple molnths back that I had a number of nice shots of asters, and now I'll be taking lots more, no doubt. I'll work on putting up a photo of the single new Aster soon.
Miranda's in-laws, the Davises, have a piece of property down on the waterfront just a couple lots away from our Copper Harbor house. Miranda and Art sometimes bring their dogs Capone and Gus down there for a swim and a run in the summertime. It's easy for us to take a short walk down Brockway Avenue to join them while they give the dogs some exercise on those days when they can't find time for a long walk in the woods. This is a shot of Mir some time in August with her dog Capone already in the SUV after the visit to the shore at the Davis' harbor property. Capone loves tennis balls, to chase when thrown by a human and to chew and to push around and chase on his own. I regularly bring him my old tennis balls from downstate, since I am a longtime and avid tennis player of some skill. Capone even likes the smell of a tennis-ball can. Mir is beginning to show a lot from her pregnancy, by the way, as she told me in a recent phone call. When this shot was taken, I don't believe Marsh and I yet knew that we were soon to be grandparents.
I was golfing at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge one night in July when a storm started brewing -- or so it seemed. I hustled home in the car and then ran inside the house to get my camera to take a quick look at the storm up on the nose of Brockway Mouintain, just above town. I was hoping for some interesting weather to be coming in. The boys decided to come along, and then Marsha decided to come too. We hustled up the Mountain Drive and then watched the fronts and wind-shift lines rolled past and over Copper Harbor for 15 minutes or so before it started to get too dark and too cold. Here's one shot I took of the family that evening. Funny, but no storm broke loose. We had a little spitting rain and a little wind, but nothing serious or heavy. It was a storm with some scary teeth, but no bark and no bite. I can't say why. This shows you once again how cool the early to middle summer was up north. We shall soon be getting to some photos that actually look like they were taken in the summertime.
A captain always has to be on his toes, even these days. The traffic on Lake Superior is nothing like it was in the days of my youth, back some 35 years ago. The number of big ships on the Great Lakes is down about 90% since the 1970s, and even fewer of the 10% remaining afloat and working are sailing the Big Lake. So we see hundreds fewer ships out on the lake when we are crossing over to Isle Royale on the Isle Royale Queen IV, our family's passenger ferry, than when I was a teenager working on the Queen II out of Copper Harbor. But there are still foggy days on the Big Lake, and there were many more such days this summer than there have been in the previous 10 to 15 summers because of the cooler spring and early summer in 2008. Here's a shot of a freighter appearing in the fog just a half mile from the Queen IV one day when I was captain and ferrying a large load of people across to the national park. My position was about 10 miles northwest of Copper Harbor. I had to "turn down" on the ship as we say. That means I had to alter my course to port to keep out of the ship's way. I stayed a healthy distance away, and finally when I was fully behind the ship and got within a half mile, the ship began to appear in the fog. Within another 5 minutes the Queen IV had emerged completely fom the fog bank that hugged the Kerweenaw coast on that day, but the frieghter kept on going east into the denser fog off Keweenaw Point.
They quickly stand, almost bursting from their seats. They begin cheering. Their cheers become loud -- and then louder. They smile. Their big grins form wrinkles at the corners of their mouths and eyes. Many applaud. Some wave their hands. Some pump a fist in the air. Some wave small flags. I see one woman looks at a certain man standing beside her. They exchange even broader smiles. Their eyes are bright, intent, charged. Another man near me raises his hand high with the palm facing a friend standing beside him. The friend, with hardly a glance, notices that the friend standing beside him (it appears that he is a friend) is holding his hand up and his palm out to him. This man stops applauding and cheering for a moment and raises his own hand in the same manner, palm out. This man then pushes his open palm up and into his friend’s palm. The high-five. They smile more widely yet, so filled with delight that they are almost laughing. Thousands are standing and cheering and applauding now. Some whistle. Some whoop. Dozens of people exchange high-fives. Altogether, the thousands of mixed, loud noises makes up a stirring, thrilling, pulsating roar of elation.
There was a bit more fog this summer than in summers past. The weather was a bit cooler and cloudier, as I have written, in the first half of the summer, which left Lake Superior much cooler. That, in turn, led to more fog as the days began to warm up in mid-July. There was one day in mid-July that had one of the foggiest summer nights of the past 10 years or so. The visibility was down to about 50 feet. You could see cars until they were within a few feet of you. Here is a shot of my youngest son Drew, still 12, standing on the Isle Royale Queen IV dock and next to the Queen herself on that night. We toured the town, and I took a number of photos of various scenes of Copper Harbor in fog. We wound up my daughter Miranda's place, in the muffled silence that descends over areas covered in fog. I loved the whole scene. Drew seemed a little blase about the occurence, but he put up with my excitement well enough and kept following me around. The fog lifted about 10 PM, which surprised me. I find it quite mysterious how fog comes and goes and how hard it is to predict those comings and goings, as hard as I try to make predictions. Jesus might have been advised to speak of the Spirit as being like fog, for the wind is much easier to predict than fog, though Jesus probably knew little fog, except on the Sea of Galilee, perhaps. I am not conversant with weather in Israel either now or then. My Dad asked for a shot of the finale of the 2008 Fireworks show, and I will get to that soon.
I've always wanted to set up my camera and tripod for some shots of the Fourth of July fireworks show in Copper Harbor. It's a great show, and one of the best and best known in the Upper Peninsula. The Copper Harbor Fire Department has been going BIG TIME with the fireworks show of late, with ever more of the bigger cannisters being shot into the sky over the central harbor, directly across from the Queen IV dock. Here's a shot from the Queen dock on that night. The show took everyone's breath away. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
I must admit, though, that I am not an especially big fan of fireworks shows. I don't know why. That might be something to write an excogitation about. In fact, I have been tinkering with a post for some time about "shared rhythmic motion" that might have some bearing on this topic. I'll try to get it finished soon. Fireworks just don't do all that much for me. I do like this photo, nonetheless. That's Porters Island across the harbor from our business (and my parents' home). The boys of the CHFD fan out along the beach facing town on the west end of the state-owned island.
I'm always dragging my poor children off into some nook in the wild, and poor, trusting Logan is often the child who will follow me farthest into the woods on my adventurous treks. A few days ago, I took Drew and Logan and their cousin Anthony out to the Estivant Pines Sanctuary south of Copper Harbor for the afternoon. After touring the pines, we set off for the Leaning Giant, the massive pine that fell about 20 years ago along the Montreal River. The unmaintained trail to the Giant is considerably rougher this year because of logging south of the sanctuary and the rain, which has made the swamp between the main sanctuary and the Giant much muckier and much more difficult to cross. The trail was especially difficult to find at times out in the middle of the swamp. I dragged Log across it, and then went back back for Drew and Anthony, who sensinbly refused to follow. So I had to go back across the swamp yet another time and guide Logan back. Here's a shot from the return trip across the big swamp just north of the Montreal River and just south of the Estivant Pines. Oh, by the way, I took this shot of Logan on the trail. A little hard to see it, don't you think?
The unusual weather continues. Well, it might not be so unusual. It might be that the spectacularly beautiful summer weather we have had over the past decade has been much more unusual than all the wind, rain, fog, and cool temps that we have had this spring and early summer in the north country. We even had a delay for gale warnings on last Sunday, the first such delay that I recall in the month of July ever in the period that the Kilpela family has owned and operated the run out of Copper Harbor to Isle Royale (since 1971). I was scheduled as the captain for the trip Sunday, and the captain-brothers decided to delay departure 6 hours. The winds settled down quite a bit over that time, but we still had a rough crossing -- much less than it could have been, but rough nonetheless. I went out to look at conditions by eye on the morning of that day, after the winds started to ease slightly. This shot was taken on the shore outside Copper Harbor 3 hours before we departed in the afternoon. That's the 1000-foot ship, the Stewart J. Cort, out on the lake passing by CH about 2 miles off the coast. I could see that the waves were decreasing a bit because the Cort was not taking as much water over his decks as I expected. I knew we would have better conditions for the crossing later in the day, and it all worked out well in the end. What weather, though. It's been hurting business, especially in CH, in addition to the fuel-price problems. We've had to cancel many Sunset Cruises so far. Businesses are all just hanging on, waiting for things to turn around.
I know, I know, I've been saying that the weather has been rather iffy in the north country this early summer in 2008. But there have been many nice days as well -- and even a few warm ones. Conditions have been getting better and better. Here's a shot of me, Captain Ben, and my wife Marsha on the Isle Royale Queen IV dock one lovely night less than a week ago. We were watching a beautiful sunset long after the Queen IV had returned from Isle Royale (the boat is in the background). The sun sets close to 10:00 this time of year up in these parts. Hey, what's that gut showing on me? Looks like I've got to cut back on the pork chops, as my Dad likes to say. You get so many gorgeous sunsets up here that you can start to take them for granted. And they can be very localized as well. A couple nights later, there was a truly spectacular sunset visible only up on the golf course at the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, a mile south of town. I didn't have my camera for the event, since I was golfing with my son Drew, but it was a stunner that was only taking place up there because just a few low clouds were drifting through the Brockway Valley near the course and were lighted up shocking shades of pink and orange by the setting sun. Such sunsets have happened to me many times before when I've been golfing late.
I was up at Manganese Falls about a half mile south of Copper Harbor on a recent morning. I road my bike up the side of the ridge. The blackflies were not too bad, though I did have a bug jacket with hood on when I was in the woods, just to be sure. The falls are running with more water, which comes from Lake Manganese a half mile farther south, than they have in recent early summers, which have been rather dry rather quickly in June each year. As you can see in the photo, the trees growng in the canyon walls are getting bigger and bigger and now starting to block the view of these falls from the overlook alongside the road to Lake Manganese, the road that passes Copper Harbor's old bear dump, which has been closed for about 25 years now. Funny that people keep talking about the old dump all summer long so many years later. I'll have to get a shot of it from the old days and the present for this blog some time soon.
The boys and I took a bike ride out to the end of US-41, 2 miles east of Copper Harbor, and stopped on the way back at Fort Wilkins State Park, where one of their favorite places in or around town is located. They call it Bounty's Rock, upon which Logan sits in the photo. The reason for the name I haven't learned yet or forgotten (I'll ask them tonight). The Rock is a ridge of bedrock across from the Copper Harbor Lighthouse, which you can see in the photo. The boys are plotting and planning a new movie to be fiolmed on Bounty's Rock. It will include scenes of the entrance of a copper mine on this rock. How Logan will accomplish that I cannot guess. But he's resourceful, indeed. Logan recently posted a new film on YouTube, the address of which I'll chase down at some point. He's quite the filmmaker. It is fascinating that my children have adopted special places in and around the harbor that are different from mine. This ridge of rock meant little to me as a youth, but my boys see as a place of great importance and meaning.
The weather has been very sketchy up in the north country since I got up north for the summer. It's been one of the coolest Junes I remember. We have one fairly decent summer day, but most of the days have been decidedly fall like. There have been a number of rough crossings to Isle Royale on the Queen IV as well, which is quite unusual for June. Here's a shot from a couple nights ago, taken down the coast from Copper Harbor about three miles. The wind was hard out of the southeast, which the north shore of the Keweenaw is well protected from. But the wind was so strong and steady all day long that the waves were curling around Keweenaw Point and traveling some 10 miles to this spot along the coast and pounding in with vigor. The Queen IV, headed for home from the crossing, would pass by about 5 miles off the coast about 15 minutes after I took this shot. And the rain began falling heavily just another 15 minutes after that. I was on my bike and had to ride three miles home in a hard rain. I had no rain gear, but I didn't mind the ride too much. The family is due any day now, my wife and boys. They have had very hot weather downstate. How will they take the sudden change. Conditions are often so different in the north country.
Another Copper Harbor period of this blog begins. The summer has come, and it is time for me to go north to help run the Isle Royale Queen IV out of Copper Harbor. It turned suddenly hot and humid in southern Michigan on the morning of my departure north, and I quickly got the heck out of Okemos without the family and headed for the Upper Peninsula and my second home. On the way north on I-75, a vast mass of storms passed over the Lower Peninsula. It poured. I mean poured. And then when I reached the Straits of Mackinaw, the temperature dropped by about 20 degrees, the wind started coming sharply out of the east, and the weather turned plain raw. Welcome to the U.P.! Just like last year, I was greeted with some raw early spring weather in early summer. Well, here's two shots taken during the crossing of the Makinaw Bridge as I approached the Upper Peninsula. The first shot was taken 
near the center of the Bridge looking north at the north tower, which was lost in the fog and rain. The second shot is of the north tower emerging from the fog. I'll be posting, of course, some more shots from my arrival in Copper Harbor soon. The weather turned very warm, even humid, even up here in CH, for a couple of days. The blackflies came out in droves, especially with a humid south wind. But then on Sunday, June 8, the the wind turned east, off the cold surface waters of Lake Superior, and the temps dropped 20 degrees again. Only in the 50s today. You just never know what's going to happen up in these parts.
The boys and I went camping near Cadillac on the Memorial Day weekend, as is our longstanding tradition, while Marsha stayed home and did some gardening and worked to reduce her never-ending pile of school papers. We camp on a piece of wilderness property alongside the Manistee National Forest that I have camped at for more than 30 years. The property is owned by my former brother-in-law Glan Van Antwerp and his wife Di, who live in the very small town of Tustin nearby. Glen and Di and Marsh and I have stayed friends down the years, and I have maintained the Mem Day tradition into this next generation. Of course, I still have a connection to the Van family, for my daughter Miranda is Glen's niece. The days were nice, but dry, as is quite uncommon for Memorial weekend in northern Lower Michigan. We have had periods of heavy rain almost every year in the last dozen on this weekend. On Saturday, I took the boys to a spot I have visited a number of time, in spring, fall, and winter, but they have never seen. It's a large beaver dam at the south end of a very large bog in the National Forest about a half mile from the Van property. Beavers constructed the dam at the outlet of the bog, which was drying up, about 15 years ago and have been maintaining it and increasing its dimensions ever since. Their unceasing work has caused the water level of the bog, meantime, to get higher and higher each year. The photo is a shot of the boys on top of this very solid dam. I am standing on the dry side, about four feet down, with another four foot drop behind me into a tangled swamp. Look closely and you will see that right behind the boys' feet is the stagnant water of the beaver pond, the dammed up water of the giant bog that gets a touch more boggy every year. The beavers have been a blessing, all in all, for their efforts have saved this beautiful and rugged blog from drying up, as is the destiny of all bogs. It's going to be very interesting to see how things change in the bog and at the dam as the years go by. I can already give you 30 years of perspective on how conditions have changed. This bog is a favorite place, and a favorite topic of study, of mine. Judging from their reaction, the boys will be joining me in the study as the years trudge slowly on.
We finally got to the point in our home project list that we signed a contract, after five bids, to have our roof and siding redone. This step has been a long time in coming. I replaced all the windows and doors in the house myself over the past couple years. The work on the roof and siding began a couple weeks back. There were delays in siding the house -- is not a delay or two inevitable? But the roof was done almost immediately. Here's a shot of the boys out on the front lawn on Sandhill Road with the new roof nearly finished. You can see the roofers working on details on top of the house. What a beautiful day that was, already two weeks ago. It was the day that we took the boys out of school and went to Flint to join the Thomas family as they interred the ashes of Marsha's mother at a cemetery north of Flint.
A last couple shots from our spring vacation to Pennsylvania are on tap today. Here are my boys, 12-year-old Drew on the left, 15-year-old Logan on the right, getting ready for a day of exploration and learning in one of our country's famed national landmarks, the Gettysburg Battlefield. Did I say they're getting ready? My mistake.
volume and intensity of the hollering, a practice from which I derive only momentary pleasures, though one must enjoy the pleasures one can in such circumstances. The greater intensity did get them moving. But the motivation for their movement was for other reasons than I had striven. Logan thought this a chance to grab the camera and get a shot of me in the act. Now before you decide to call the those ever-so-vigilant Texas authorities on me, I must say I was hamming it up a bit for the camera. And that hair? Well, that's what it really looks like on most mornings when I am in need of a cut.
During the family's vacation trip to Pennsylvania on spring break, we took a walking tour of Society Hill just south of downtown Philadelphia. We stopped in at a dozen churches and graveyards in the district. Saint Mary’s Catholic Church is the oldest Catholic church in this old city (old by American standards, of course), and our visit there was moving. When we went in (this was on a cool, sunny Wednesday morning), the sound of a massive pipe organ filled the sanctuary, though we could hardly hear it right outside the foyer on the street. It turned out that the organist was practicing for that Sunday's Mass. We listened to him play a couple of powerful hymns before I invited myself up to the balcony, where I took this photo of the organist at practice. He was a friendly fellow, but I didn’t get his name. He treated us to a chorus of an old Protestant hymn, being a Protestant himself. He told us he plays Protestant hymns regularly at the church's Catholic services.
