Here Comes the U.P. in All Its Glory

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.

Beavers at Work

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.

80 Years of Snowshoeing

Much time has passed since I took Logan snowshoeing a second time in one weekend some weeks back. Here's a shot from that second expedition in the Michigan woods. This is a photo of (l to r) my brother-in-law Tom Valli and his son Anthony (from Okemos) and me. We are standing on a bluff above the Flat River in the Lowell State Game Area. This park in located east of Grand Rapids about 25 miles and north of the city of Lowell, which is west of Okemos some 50 miles. In the photo, I'm giving you a good view of my old-school snowshoes. I bought these snowshoes when I was in college some 30 years ago. Actually, it was my former father-in-law Stan Van Antwerp, who passed away recently, who bought them for me at a garage sale for $5. They are probably a good 80 years old now. They're made of wood and varnished gut with leather bindings. I've been using them all my adult life. They've been excellent tools, and I expect that they will serve me well for the rest of my life, perhaps another 30 years. The modern aluminum-and-plastic snowshoes are certainly very functional, but I love my old-school shoes.

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.

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.

Detroit Auto Show

A friend from my MSU office and I went down to Detroit for the North American Auto Show a few weeks ago, for the first time since the early 1980s. The scenes it laid before my wondering eyes were quite a contrast to the Michigan haunts I commonly inhabit, the woods and fields of central lower Michigan and the wild shores and forests of Lake Superior. I had heard that the Show was conducting an amateur photo contest and so brought along my camera to see whether I could capture anything I thought worthy of entering. But, alas, I didn't succeed as I had hoped. I needed more time to study the hall and concentrate on some test shots before trying to take a few shots that might have a chance in a competition. Nonetheless, I did take a fews shots that I liked and thought skillful and expressive. Here's one, of an older concept car that had never seen a day of mass production but was still worth admiring as an historical icon of modern technology. I was back in the wild woods, way up on the Keweenaw Peninsula, within days of this foray into modern commericialization, but the experience was enlightening.