Cedar boughs in the sunset…

Arriving

The gulls seemed to be enjoying the free ride they were receiving from the brisk northwesterly wind that cut across the bridge. That same wind, however, caused the driver a bit of agitation. He wished he could let his eyes deviate from the surrounding traffic and catch a quick glance at the enormous iron ore freighter as it pushed through the great lake waves below, but each gust reminded him to pay attention to the road ahead. The thought of jumping the rail and the ensuing plunge kept him even more vigilant. The wind was strong, but not strong enough to lift the car over the rail. That thought comforted him, although he did recall hearing at least one news report of boat and its trailer being violently escorted off the bridge surface to their demise below by powerful gusts during a storm a number of summers past. He would be content with having the windows open as they drove, allowing the fresh lake air to blow through the car. There seemed to be an element added to the lake breeze which refreshed the senses, altogether different from even the freshest air breathed among the fields at home.

 

Sharp shafts of sunlight broke through the gray clouds here and there illuminating shimmering expanses on the dark gray water of Lake Huron to the east and down a few hundred feet below as the car traveled north. Off to the west a vivid blue sky was succeeding in chasing away the last of the gray weakening clouds, adding to the sense of anticipation each traveler felt welling up inside. The gusty winds were nothing new to travelers experienced in crossing the Mackinac Bridge. Novice bridge crossers were easily spotted and steered away from as they veered back and forth across the narrow lanes each time a gust buffeted their vehicle.

 

The five-mile-wide-gap between land that the mighty bridge spans is notorious for quick changing weather and strong winds. Prevailing westerly winds flow unimpeded across northern Lake Michigan and are funneled through the Straits of Mackinac and out across northern Lake Huron. These winds make one marvel at the fact that the bridge had even been completed, given the elements those hardened heroes who built it had to deal with. That thought was the farthest from the minds of the gulls who continued to glide in the fresh lake breeze as the car approached the northern end of the bridge and the beginning of what is affectionately known as “Up North” in our family, more commonly known as the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to most others.

 

Leaving the fresh lake breezes behind, the car wound through road bed crevices cut into the ancient limestone bedrock and continued north, almost finished with its exhausting journey from the state below. Anticipation gathered as the car made its final turn about a half hour later, descending into a village by the name of Hessel nestled on the northern shore of Lake Huron where the family boat would be tied at the dock quietly waiting. The gulls here, too, were gliding high as the travelers piled out of the car, rejuvenated from the long trip by that same lake breeze that, to everyone’s approval, seemed to be dying down. They were greeted by the familiar call of the gulls and the pleasant, continual clanging sound of mast lines slapping on sailboats in Hessel Harbor. Flags snapped and flapped in the breeze.

 

As the scent of the cedar and pine laden air washed over each person’s olfactory senses, it seemed that more energy was drawn up from some unknown inner source. Maybe it was the sheer love for the area known as the Les Cheneaux Islands instilled in each traveler’s genes by their predecessors who first visited over one hundred years prior. Sure enough, there was the old aluminum Star-Craft outboard motorboat riding smoothly, moving when the heftiest gust pushed it from the dock, only to be gently guided back by the weathered, sun-bleached lines attached to its bow and stern. As the travelers begin to transfer their luggage to the dock next to the boat, and then in turn into the boat, they began to feel they were no longer travelers. They were, in a sense, almost home – a good feeling to have.

 

After shoving off from Hessel, the boat sets off with purpose for Marquette Island and a certain cottage that would be found on one of its sparsely inhabited bays. Following a familiar gentle looping course, the travelers cruise along in their little boat keeping Haven Island on the starboard side, and Cube Point, which is part of Marquette Island, on port. Then looping the exact opposite direction around that point, the ever-present sentinel for the forest-lined bay beyond comes into view. Standing guard along the southern shore near the tip of Cube Point and the size of a small house sits the solitary big boulder. Well, as a youngster, it seemed that big at the time. It’s probably more accurate to say the size of a current day mini-van. Angularly oval with one end higher than the other, it stands out markedly during times of low water when it is surrounded by a vast shoreline of much smaller cobbles ranging in size from that of tennis balls to large watermelons.

 

For generations it has been the destination of occasional afternoon expeditions by foot or canoe for the family of travelers. For each of those same generations as well, it has been both the symbol of a triumphant “welcome back!” and a firm yet comforting “fair well!” Comforting in the sense that one knows that it will be there again next time, or next year. It’s not going anywhere. It is the first and last thing you see of the bay. As a little guy, I recall once my mom’s tears as she watched that boulder pass by as we left for home after a stay on the island at the cottage way back when. I realize now it wasn’t really the boulder that elicited the tears. It was the firm finality of the end of the first summer without my grandpa who had passed away, the builder of the cottage.

 

Amazingly, though, when compared to the eons that it has endured, our experience with that monumental stone is really only a drop in the bucket. It’s entirely possible to imagine that it has been paddled around by Ojibwa Indians in their birch bark canoes, hiked past by French fur traders, surveyed by rugged loggers, and has withstood November gales that have leveled the timbers lining the shore behind it several times over, all taking place just recently in its time at its post. Now past that solitary boulder on Cube Point, the boat straightened its course and set off on a heading that takes it directly to the wide sandy shore at the back of Wilderness Bay.

 

The cottage sits on large cedar posts back in the trees at the end of a well-trodden path from the dock that rises only slightly above the level of the bay. In the warmth of early summer, the winter-chilled limestone bedrock below causes condensation to form on the thin layer of grass and moss making parts of the path to always seem chilly, damp and slippery to the bare feet that scamper to and from the cottage and the dock jutting out from the small beach in the afternoons. Viewed from the water way out past the drop off, tamaracks and cedars hide much of the dwelling except for the front windows which seem to peer out from between the trees, across the bay, to frequent picturesque sunsets.

 

Cedar Haven, as it was named by my grandparents who built it, is nestled among an occasional balsam pine, tamarack and the countless cedars from which that name was derived. Its dark-red painted tongue and groove cedar siding has not changed much in color since it was erected back in June of 1961. White framed doors and windows and a green-shingled roof give it a simple beauty, quite befitting its surroundings. Behind the cottage and elevated several feet on an ancient former Lake Huron beach grow much larger trees. They are older cedars, pines, white birch and aspen, their leaves shimmering and quaking in the mid day breeze coming off the bay. With the larger trees to the rear, and smaller trees mostly to the sides, the cottage appears to rest comfortably, almost as if sitting in a lap.

 

The roar of the large waves of the early morning had given way to the gentler cascades of the smaller wavelets which filled the shoreline trees with its pleasant, relaxingly continual sound. As the boat slowed and began to level off, it became apparent that the water depth had not changed much since the travelers had been there last. Les Cheneaux Island water levels can change noticeably in only several hours and fairly drastically from fall to spring depending on anything from a simple change in wind direction to overwinter snowfall amounts. It was nice to know that the boat motor could be used all the way to the dock. It wasn’t all that bad to use push poles, though, as was necessary in past years due to a much shallower bay. Back then, as the boat would be pushed through the calm, clear water, poles sinking into the sandy wavelet-ridged bottom on each shove, one could marvel at the sight of sun-rays pouring down between the cedars as the boat glided silently toward the dock. Now, however, the boat approached confidently under the power of the sputtering outboard engine. Hands thrust forward to catch the weathered cedar dock posts … the engine is cut … a few more feet of silent drift … then the squeaking sound of aluminum on wood …lines are secured … the sound of shoes on the planks and then finally happy greetings from the islanders to the newcomers.

 

As the group moved off the dock and up the path, each laboring with a suitcase or a box of provisions, the sound of water draining from the boat’s engine shaft, small waves on the beach, and a few black-throated green warblers in the the stand of tamaracks near the dock were all that were left behind. Voices continued to merge with these sounds until they were only an inaudible, muffled replica of humanity left among the trees. Most chattered on into the cottage, eventually going quiet with the bang of the screen door. A few remained outside catching up on the latest fish story.

 

They were home at Cedar Haven. On “the island.”

Some Les Cheneaux Almanac Meanderings…

January

 

Bright Night– Just about once every month, when viewed from earth, the moon’s entire surface is completely illuminated by the light of the sun. The full moon phase is nothing really all that exceptional. It can be witnessed during any month of the year. As well, it can be experienced practically at any geographical location on the planet.

This particular midwinter night is different, however. The cold, crystal-clear, motionless, northern night air combined with the deep pure-white layer of snow all around creates quite the memorable effect. In the surrounding reflected brightness, one can read whole chapters of books without difficulty or even enjoy a walk among the leafless trails of the island even at what would normally be the darkest part of the Les Cheneaux nighttime.

On my chilly trek, bathed in the half-light of reflected sunrays, I’m struck by how the moonlight illuminates even the haze of my exhaled breath. I can even see the billowing shadow of that vapor cloud on the snow below. With each step I marvel at the bulky shadows of snow laden cedars and pines, but my attention is drawn more intently to the picture shows created by striking, long, naked, black shadows of the tamarack, birches and aspen as they move silently past on a silvery screen of untouched snow.

 

 

February

 

Found Frozen– I’m not sure exactly when I read it, but in an edition of The Weekly Wave there was once an account of a tragic event that occurred many years in the past. The Weekly Wave was the newspaper that served the Les Cheneaux Islands area as I was growing up. It has since become part of the St. Ignace News.

The sheer sadness and dreadful outcome of the story has stuck with me ever since even though I am unable to recall the exact details. Bits and pieces remained in my memory and I have always wondered exactly how it came about so I’ve reconstructed its occurrence in my mind. I imagine this is how it might have unfolded.

The tragedy occurred one deep winter day many, many years ago when a man who I imagine was hunting on Marquette Island found himself alone and in quite a jam. It’s unclear as to why he was alone, and it is also unclear as to why he was attempting to traverse the far outer shores along the open Lake Huron.

The lone man was perilously far from any type of assistance should he run into trouble. It was a frigid day. It was a windy day. The wind chill that combination created proved to be fatal.

After surviving breaking through the ice and remarkably avoiding the possibility of drowning, the man was able to get back to the shoreline which was strewn with nothing but snow-capped boulders and stones. Soaked to the bone by the ill-timed plunge, the man knew that the hike back to safety would take longer than it would take for the lake water to freeze solid, encasing him in a coffin of ice. There was no sun to warm him. There was no fire to thaw or dry in front of. He had nothing with which to even strike a spark.

There was absolutely no type of shelter in which to take refuge. Ahead of him was the endless white of the open lake. To either side was seemingly endless frozen windswept beach.  Behind him only deep snow, thick forest, and another ice crossing to the mainland. Ice was already forming on his outer layers and on the hair that tufted out from under his worn wool hat. His toes, squishing in his boots, had already become chilled.

He knew that water in his boots on a day like this was a very bad thing.

His first inkling of what he was up against.

Lake water froze in drops on the tip of his nose. He shoed them away in disgust with a crystallized mitten. As he pulled his coat tighter around his back and shoulders, ice crackled and fell in small shards knifing into the snow at his feet. He stood still with his back to the wind. It didn’t help.

He felt completely and utterly dumbfounded. How could he have let this happen?

The realization of his dire predicament was slowly sinking in and closing around him, not unlike the deadly chill which was steadily infiltrating his inner organs. His lungs ached from the frigid, dry air which was everywhere around him and now deep inside him. There was now a concerted effort required to open and close his eyes. If he closed his eyes, his eye lashes instantly formed together into an icy zipper. His pants had long ago become rigid and stuck to the hairs on his legs, pulling on them even when he only moved a little.

Looking up with weakening hope, he saw only gray snow-filled skies. In bleak defeat he looked down at his cold boots. He had no options. No way to get warm. No way to even just delay the cold.

It was inevitable. He sat down on a rock and prayed until he could no more.

 

 

March

 

A Mighty Drip– The sound of dripping water can begin to be heard during the month of the vernal equinox throughout the Les Cheneaux Islands. Sometimes it’s not until April. This year, the very first drip occurred off the roof of a cottage along the southerly exposed Lake Huron shoreline of Marquette Island, Coates Point to be exact. The tiny cottage with its oversized picture window facing the Straits of Mackinac just behind a narrow rocky shoreline is positioned perfectly to capitalize on early spring sun which is magnified by the great lake’s ice field sprawled out before it.

Increasingly intense late March sunshine worked its way through an area of shallowly drifted snow on that rooftop, warming its old dark shingles enough to melt the lowest layer of snow, possibly deposited there as much as several months ago, probably during a heavy lake effect squall. Once the liquid water was stubbornly released, a sure sign of the clench of winter losing its strength, it pooled under the snow as a layer of slush. The slush built up on the edge of the roof, ready to cascade fluidly to freedom. A cold shadow of a cloud quickly blocks the source of the warmth and the pool is mercilessly hardened and is once again immovable. Afternoon turns into a sun lowering evening, sentencing the slush pool to another night of rigid chill.

On a calm, sunny afternoon several days later the slush is once more loosening, readying itself for freedom.  The sun’s warmth needs only a little effort more to finish the work started on that previous day. The effort is found in the slightest increase in its height in the mid day sky giving its rays just a little more warmth as more of its energy is able to penetrate the earth’s atmosphere. Now only a weakening, thin dam of old packed snow keeps that slush in check. A moment’s more of sunrays and the dam is thawed. Then, a brand new, pristine, crystal clear drop of liquid water slips silently through the sunshine into the drifted, dirty, worn out snow below.

 

 

April

 

Ice Out– Vast, thick sheets of ice that have capped the bays all winter now have several inches of slush in large patches across their surface. During the long winter, the ice has intermingled, intertwined and solidified its grip on every rock, reed, and dock post that inhabited the zone which now is frozen solid. The sheets of ice are feet thick and several acres across.

Once they warm in the spring sun, booming and gaping cracks are exposed. When enough of their largeness is melted they become mobile and are at the mercy of the spring winds and powerful lake currents. The winds and currents push and pull the enormous slabs of ice often crashing them together in slow and ponderous collisions. They grind up onto beaches shoving anything and everything left on the beach over the winter out of place or disintegrating it altogether. If the enormous swath of ice locked into a dock or other shallow water or beach structure gets pulled from shore by the winds or currents, it will, without effort, take it all with it, or at least give it a damaging slow-motion heave as it releases its grip as it retreats into the bay before melting. Boulders the size of cars are pushed leaving scars on the bottom in the shallows the size of their width and as long as several feet from its original position.

Once a cornfield sized sheet of ice gets moving there’s not much that can make it stop.

 

 

May

 

Blue Clouds– Clouds cover the forest floor. Low clouds. Faint blue clouds. These clouds do not disperse with the prevailing winds, however. They only sway slightly and gently when a sharp gust penetrates the forest canopy above. Winds that usually dissipate by the time they reach the bases of the pines, birches and cedars that surround these clouds.

Blue-ness veils our view of the trail ahead. We can not continue on, trampling through the vast patch of faint blue daintiness.

The trail will need to detour, at least until mid June when this ankle-deep haze of Forget-Me-Nots adorns the floor of the forest no more.

 

Cold– The water, even close to shore on a calm, sunny afternoon, is too cold to swim in. I’m guessing the water temperature to be in the low 50’s but I can’t confirm that.

A step into the cold brings on a slow and deepeningly dull ache. Even the coldness of shallow water less than knee deep brings on that ache. The first instance of contact with the water doesn’t seem to register anything out of the ordinary. But after less than a minute, the ache begins. It is the best real-life definition of the word “ache’ that I’ve ever come across. Gradually and with purpose it moves through the skin and into the muscles. Before you know it, it’s heartily attacked the very center of the bone. It’s as if icy fingers of the lake itself are encircling, tightening, gripping. Capillaries and other larger veins constrict as if repulsed.

The water is bone-chilling cold. No, make that marrow-chilling cold, even now at the end of May when we have a dock to build that is in waist-deep water.

Thank goodness for insulated waiters.

 

 

June

 

Deer Fly– Comfortably established atop the farm tractor tire sized inner tube floating amongst the wavelet strewn shallows of Wilderness Bay, I doze along, enjoying another Les Cheneaux summer solstice. I am, however, worn out from the morning’s hard work reeling in all those big pike. Yeah, nice try. More likely tuckered out from hauling in the anchor each of the numerous times we moved the boat due to the lack of big pike, or any pike for that matter. A nice lunch in the cottage might also be contributing to my malaise as I ponderously bob on the slightly over-bloated black rubber tube. I haven’t been all that productive yet this day.

Teenagers aren’t designed to be all that productive most days, though.

Slowly I register a sensation of buzzing about me. Or, maybe it’s more like a whizzing, coming and going like a mad bomber buzzing a control tower.

Awe, man. Deer fly.

And the control tower is my groggy head.

According to Michigan State University Extension services, there’s really nothing that can be done to ward them off, such as is the case with mosquitoes, which can be thwarted by repellants due to the fact that skeeters find their targets via smell. Deer flies, on the other hand, rely on a slew of eyes to visually find and track down their prey. So, unless I can somehow engage an otherwise nonexistent cloaking device, I’m outta luck. On top of that, they’re known to be one of the fastest flying flies around.

Them and horse flies.

Could easily be one of those I guess.

Makes sense, naming them after fairly large mammals. They’re fairly large pests.

This buzzing seems of the smaller deer fly variety. A bite from a deer fly or horse fly is something one should go to great lengths to avoid. While the after-effect itching is not as intense and prolonged as that from a mosquito, the actual act of the bite is much more sharply painful. My only recourse is to deftly slither off the inner tube into the chilly clear shallows of the early Les Cheneaux summer.

 

Muck Bridges– The heavy snows of a long upper peninsula winter must go somewhere when they melt. A majority of the thawed winter accumulation finds its way to the Lakes when the weather warms enough. Some of it, though, gets held back in woodland sponges known as the cedar swamp, also known back in the day as the muck bridges by those short-timer summer inhabitants on our end of Wilderness Bay.

As is much of wooded northern Michigan, Marquette Island is home to large meandering tracts of these mucklands with fallen moss-ensconced logs crisscrossing and traversing the chilly slogs.

Not far off the beaten path the sturdy dry forest floor gives way to a sloping pillow of moss, the launch pad for this afternoon’s running of the muck bridges. The general aim of this running of the muck bridges is nothing more than to successfully and dryly make it from point A to point B with A and B both being high and dry cedar root island mounds separated by haphazardly deposited slick logs over the perpetually chilly muck below.

The scampering, slipping shoes of agile young feet do well to stay above the mossy muck below.  It’s only a matter of time, though, before a liquidy sucking sound announces them being pulled up from the black rich mush pudding of rotting cedar boughs, pine needles and birch leaves.

 

 

July

 

Cherry Bombs– A piercing flash illumines the black but starry night sky and the flat water below it. A second or two later comes a bang which was likely more impressive heard on the beach right near where it exploded in the air. While sitting in the canoe out near the drop-off during a perfectly calm, windless night a multitude of family fireworks shows begin to light up on the shores all around the canoe. It is so calm that an anchor is not needed.

It is the week of the Fourth of July. Flags have been flying during the days at almost all of the camps around the bay indicating not just love for country and patriotism, but also that each respective cottage is inhabited by their owner. Each day has seen several boat trips to and from the mainland from almost every dock on this end of Wilderness Bay.

Those on the shore have fancy sparkling fountains that change from green to gold to white to purple and so on and so on. They also have bottle rockets that scream into the air and terminate with a single “pop!”, so it sounds out here on the water. Sound travels well over the water so we’re even able to hear the heavier thuds from the fireworks show on Mackinac Island and every now and then an accompanying faded flash is even visible from out over the open lake in that same direction beyond Long Island and Birch Island.

Now some of the shore shows are displaying more impressive mortar shells. They launch skyward with a “whoosh”, leaving a trail of sparks and then burst in many colors and designs. They are miniature versions of the big ones going off at Mackinac Island. The mirror smooth water reflects each display beautifully and gives them an artistic swelling affect.

The shore shows have a multitude of fireworks at their disposal. We, on the other hand have only one pyrotechnic in our arsenal.

We, in the canoe, have cherry bombs.

Well, not really, we like to call them cherry bombs or M-80s, sounds much more exciting. Cherry bombs and M-80s have been outlawed for some time while now. They’re actually more like M-60s. But they are waterproof. Once lit and flicked onto the water at a safe distance, they explode with a thumping “PLOOMP” sending water spraying high into the starlight. The most impressive effect is the flash of light that radiates out in all directions under water in a perfect circle. When lit and flicked into the air, the blast lights up the area surrounding and below the ignition point. But amazingly the expected percussion is not heard until it rebounds off the cedars, pines and birches that ring the bay. What an astonishing effect and discovery!

Watching the shore shows mirroring on the water and hearing the louder thumps from the percussions over Mackinac Island makes me wonder if that’s what it might have been like for John Adams and his family and the rest of the future Founding Fathers of our nation as they watched the explosions reflect on the water surrounding Boston and heard the distant thuds of cannon fire from British ships. It must have been an intimidating sight from the Adams farmstead overlooking Boston. All the while probably wondering what in the world had they gotten themselves into.

And thank God they did.

 

 

August

 

Autumn Bay– In August, northern pike fill the weed beds of Autumn Bay. Not just any old pike, mind you. These are the big ones. Pike weeds tower up from the dark green bottom. Some reach almost all the way to the water’s surface. Things grow big here in Autumn Bay, especially this time of year, both weeds and fish.

The most productive parts of the bay for fish are the weed beds that lay just inside a protective reef from the open lake. This rocky reef is crowned by a large rock that sits above the waterline known as Horseshoe Rock. To some, the bay is actually known as Horseshoe Rock Bay. As is the case along all the sandy shores of Les Cheneaux this time of year, the reeds surrounding Autumn Bay are full, thick and deep, dark green.

Looking down into the dark-green-ness on a sunny late morning, all you can see are the gently swaying pike weeds and sunrays refracting in undulating prisms all the way down into the depths until they dissipate. The main stems in this forest of the towering pike weeds reach on further below it seems. They appear to continue on to the shadowy dark lair of the lunker pike. The only obvious movement is the slow motion of the massive and, for some reason, mysteriously intimidating weeds as the slight current flows in or out from the big lake. The long bronze-sided fish lay in wait among the tree trunks of the pike weed forest eager to flash up and engulf an unsuspecting yellow perch or minnow with its many rows of razor tipped teeth, sometimes swallowing them whole.

This is a good place to fish with a live action bait lure such as the piking minnow, especially if it floats. Trolling with sinking lures can be difficult here. Sometimes it seems like you’re dredging the bay. At every turn of the boat or when gusts of wind cause the boat to slow momentarily, the lure sinks deep into the vast weed beds, then it’s time to haul the line in to clean off the raft of weeds that have accumulated. If the conditions are right, however, the frustrations of trolling at Autumn Bay in August will pay off in a big way with a water-spraying, thrashing, huge northern pike in your net.

 

Three Day Blow– Old-timers call them Three Day Blows. Basically, they’re just fair-weather wind storms that last a few days. Sometimes they can keep you holed up on the island the whole three days. Trips to the mainland are the only water voyages that are set out upon, and then only if really, really necessary. These important excursions would normally be for the obtainment of the likes of food and medicine (or other “essential” provisions … like ice cream or the mail or the day’s edition of the Detroit Free Press back in the day).

Woe to the poor souls that arrive for their time of vacation on Marquette Island only to find the channels and bays under the grip of one of those infamous Three Day Blows. Heavily loaded family pleasure boats and large cresting waves don’t make for a good mix. Usually the Blows occur following the passing of a strong cold front which brings strong, gusty west to northwesterly winds down the length of the bay. We’re talking serious, continuous gusty wind, not just a breezy afternoon that might be typical in July.

Fishing is out of the question. Occasionally, an effort is made, thinking if they could only get to that protected channel or reed-lined shore that lay sheltered from the wind and waves, they would be able to get some good fishing in. Typically, though, one finds that you can’t get there from here without being in considerable peril at least during one leg of the trip. If the rollers in the open bay don’t make things miserable if not hazardous, the multidirectional chop around the points could very well do one in.

The dazzling expanse that is Wilderness Bay during afternoons on these windy days is nothing less than described as glorious. These are good days to just sit and watch the bay. Gulls glide gracefully and high. The shadows of puffy cotton-ball clouds dot the otherwise sun-washed aqua-marine bay as they race each other to get to the other side. The infrequent hull-pounding passing of an either very brave or very foolish boater can be both entertaining and suspenseful. Whitecaps litter the bay. Compared to the wind-chilled air, the usually cold water among and beyond the sandbars becomes bath-tub warm, until you stand up dripping in the breeze that is.

Hiking is most excellent during Three Day Blows. Even more so if the trail you’re following runs anywhere near the windward shore. Not only are bugs and mosquitoes a non-issue, you’re also sure to take pleasure in a refreshing breeze the whole way there and back. If it’s late in the month of August, a hike will afford an opportunity to be thoroughly entertained by the numerous red piney squirrels that chatter, scamper about, and scold each other and even you if you pass too close to its booty of cedar nuts. As one travels the paths, the thud of clusters of cedar nuts hitting the forest floor all around combined with the frenetic activity of the spastic squirrels in the trees above can be quite amusing.

As long as the boats are secure and riding the waves without endangering themselves or the dock, a hike to Cube Point is a perfect way to enjoy an afternoon of one of the days of a Three Day Blow. The hike follows the shoreline the entire way going past several distinctively interesting and historical cottages.

A venture in the direction of the center of the island to the locally renowned “Liberty’s”, reliving the legend of the hermit-like man the whole way, is another of many options for hiking in the woods around Cedar Haven. The roar of wind rushing through the tree-tops energizes and invigorates each step on any hike made during a Three Day Blow.

 

 

September

 

Closing– Over the Labor Day holiday weekend there is one last flurry of activity around the bay. Some camps remain open and available for their owners to visit further into the early fall. By now some have blinds placed over their windows, water turned off, and electricity main circuit breakers flipped off until the next spring.

Humans once again relinquish the bays, beaches and woods to their native inhabitants. The forest belongs once again to the deer, raccoon and piney squirrel. The sky and wooded shoreline belongs once again temporarily to the gull and an occasional Bald Eagle both soon to be departing southward. A few hardy Snowy Owls will soon settle in for their winter stay along with the ever-present and ever-perky Black Capped Chickadee. Summer song birds have long since vacated to warmer climes. Bays and inlets belong once again to schools of perch and large predatory northern pike.

With the autumnal equinox fast approaching, crossing boats are few and far between. Dark green reeds are crowned with brown dangling tassels. Aspen and paper birch are hinted in yellow. With the exception of the distant sound of a breeze brushing a tree-top up in the woods, not a sound is heard on the front deck of the cottage.

On an east wind day the sky is gray, the bay is dark as waves push away.

One by one the cottages tucked in among the trees lining Wilderness Bay go back to sleep. At Cedar Haven, and surrounding cottages, boats and canoes are stored. Docks are hauled in. Their sections, planks and poles stacked safely beyond the beach. Beach chairs, buckets and toys are permanently brought in for the long winter. All will have to wait until next summer to see the sun again. An extra roll of toilette paper is left in the outhouse as a courtesy for the hunters that will surely visit. Smoke no longer wisps up from the cottage chimney.

Without batteries, the hands on the clock hanging on the wall above the old cedar chest in the cottage are frozen in time.

It will be seven minutes after one inside Cedar Haven cottage until the end of the next May.

 

 

December

 

Snow Squall– The lake effect snow squall came on quickly and silently. If we were on the shore, we would have seen it coming across the bay in a dense drapery of white, but we were in the woods and hadn’t noticed the hushed onslaught until it was upon and totally around us, engulfing us, overwhelming us, causing us to stop what we were doing and take notice.

The squall only lasted several minutes, but it was the heaviest snowfall I have ever witnessed. The air smelled of super-chilled, fresh lake water. There was no wind in the protection of the clearing in the pines. The snow just fell heavy and intense, straight down. The large quarter-sized flakes didn’t even seem to twirl or dance as snowflakes usually do on their way down to their final resting place. It was as if they were on a mission to get to the ground without delay. They just plopped straight down and piled up in mass.

If I had thought about it, I probably would have been able to actually see the depth of the snow on the logs, cedars and surrounding ground increase before my very eyes. Another layer added to the soft blanket that was everywhere relentlessly but gently pressing down on spent leaves, twigs and grasses, assisting in the process that would transform the green vitality of the prior summer into nourishment for the coming spring’s offerings, faithfully continuing the parade of creation on this, the very eve of the winter solstice.

Three does emerge a fair ways down the clearing. Their backs and hind quarters covered in white. They do not sense our presence yet as they casually move about in the deluge of flakes. Within a matter of moments, however, their bodies are rigid, and their nostrils and ears are fixated in our direction. After another glance upward into the snowy cascade, I look back to the deer. They’ve vanished into thick air, thick and saturated with snowflakes, so much so that all sound is muffled, absorbed into the billions of fluffy white sound-dampeners fluttering down.

It is the quietest quiet I have ever heard.

 

Walking On Water

Walking On Water

“We need matches, go get some from the cottage” came the instructions from one of my brothers. I knew just where to look. The hollowed out small birch log container hanging next to the stove. As I hustle in from the gathering darkness I wonder where that peculiar hanging container came from and why it came to find a permanent place on the wall next to the stove. I suppose it was bought on a trip to the Soo, as it’s known around here. Officially known as Sault St. Marie, it is the nearest city for shopping, or at least was, when the adults got tired of the water, trails, trees and sand of the island. It seems pretty obvious that it found its home on the wall next to the stove because of its handy location, back when the wooden matches it held were used to start the pilot light in the oven when cottage cooking was done by propane. It seems to me that the pilot light had to be relit on a fairly regular basis. I can still remember the burning sulphur smell when a match was struck, although now that I think of it, that could have come from many other instances requiring a small flame such as the lighting of the fireplace, kerosene lamps or even the aromatic tobacco in a pipe about to be puffed upon. Now that we have an electric stove, the container holds matches for other important purposes, this particular one being a campfire on the beach.

It’s almost a perfect night for a fire on the beach. The only way it could be better would be if there were a slight easterly breeze. Any embers or sparks would not stand a chance once they got out over the water. There’s always the terrifying thought of an ember blowing into the woods and landing in the dry cedar underbrush. Tonight they would go straight up and extinguish before they could do any harm, so still the night. The last glowing remnants from the day’s sun have almost disappeared from out over the bay. The warm southwesterly breeze of the day has given up. The waves they stirred all afternoon have lain down. The bay is glass.

Distant familiar voices and the bang of a screen door piercing through the trees break the silence. Laughter is heard heading this way. Out past the drop-off a flailing fin spreads water drops across the glass. They were big drops. “That must have been a big one” a voice nearby the fire pit observes dryly. There now are bobbing lights accompanying the voices as they approach from down the beach. A match is struck on one of the chalky-white rocks that ring the fire pit. The dry kindling is lit easily. Soon there is a small roar of crackles and pops as the cedar catches and in turn lights the larger birch logs. Their papery bark sends up billows of thick, black smoke until burned away.

To be honest, there is another thing that would make this night even more perfect for a beach campfire. Or, more accurately I should say the lack of a certain other thing. That thing is the very unpopular but ubiquitous mosquito. It just takes one. Then you’re itching for the next two days, usually in the most inopportune spot. What is it about the back of the knees, behind the ear, the ankles? It’s becoming obvious that these mosquitoes are not at all that choosy, however. And there’s way more than one. Everyone gathering for the fire knows the mosquito factor will be very evident this evening. That accounts for the long pants and long-sleeved shirts worn on this otherwise warm night and the faint smell of bug repellant in the air. A shifting column of smoke is almost appreciated on buggy nights at the beach campfire when it comes your way, providing a brief sanctuary from the pests. “Let’s find more birch bark!” Pesky stingers aside, the heat from the fire is very much welcomed. Even though a warm evening, there’s a bit of a dampness hanging in the still Lake Huron air.

Conversation moves from one topic to the next usually punctuated by short bursts of youthful teen-aged laughter and then still periods of silence except for the occasional pop or a short lived hiss from a damp log. On these types of evenings, sometimes the fire does more talking than those enjoying its warmth around it. Its mesmerizing glow reflects off faces. There’s always a stick poking in on one side or the other. Better get another piece of cedar wood.

Actually, the sky could be clearer this night also. Annoyingly slow-moving, huge rafts of clouds obscure the normally brilliant show of stars above and the occasional perfectly straight moving satellites. Through the gaps we catch glimpses of the canopy of ever-present points of light. Unfortunately, this calm and warm summer night would not be one for star gazing and enjoying the Milky Way or Northern Lights.

Staying near the fire or as one walks the paths through the trees between cottages on a starry night, all that can be enjoyed looking heavenward are the stately black spires of the pines as they poke up into the illuminated haze of stars which, indeed, surely has a simple beauty of its own. Out on the dock, however, away from the flickering light of the fire and the dark towering trees, the true splendor of the Milky Way becomes vastly apparent. Above the clouds this night, like it has and will every night, the Milky Way spreads along an uneven and broken corridor from the direction of the Lonesome Pine behind Cedar Haven across the sky to the northern horizon towards the mainland, just to the right of where the lights of Hessel dimly lighten the sky. The Milky Way looks as if God Himself had taken a bucket full of stars and splashed them in an arc across the heavens where they’ve now stayed in place for all time.

The Northern Lights, a phenomenon also known as Aurora Borealis, is difficult to describe in a way to do it justice. The Northern Lights resemble curtains of pale pastels, or sometimes just faint white, seeming as to be blowing in the solar breezes that swirl past and around our planet much like how water from the open lake swirls past the boulders in the currents that flow through the cut between our island and Long Island. These silent elusive lacy curtains of glowing galactic plasma can be substantial enough to engulf and illuminate the sky over the entire bay stretched out before us or minimal enough to hardly be noticed as they momentarily unfurl across the sky north over the mainland and are then gone as swiftly as they are noticed. If one happens to catch it just right on a moonless, still night and a full sky-filling display, the experience is greatly enhanced as the glass-calm water of Wilderness Bay in effect doubles the size of the show. Experiencing the Aurora Borealis on Marquette Island is quite the special thing and doesn’t happen often. It’s unfortunate that the frequency of shows is markedly less during the summer months as compared to the winter months when mostly only vacant, boarded up cottages are able to witness its grandeur.

Nothing that magnificent will be witnessed this evening, however. Instead, attention goes to the blinking red and green lights of the channel buoys far across the bay. “The green one there…that’s the point of Long Island buoy, off from the blockhouse.” After several cracks and a pop a revision is made. “Wouldn’t that be a red light, then?” No answer. In the silence it’s evident that each glowing face knows the answer. Each one has been around that point a hundred times but in the dark and across the glass, things can look a bit different.

In reality, the land across the bay is a land formation that juts out into Lake Huron known as Point Brulee. A tale ensues regarding the explorer for which the point of land is supposedly named, and I do mean supposedly. A Frenchman named Étienne Brûlé, it is said, is likely the first European man to experience the vast waters of the Great Lakes, establishing the settlement now known as Sault Saint Marie, just a stone’s throw north of our island getaway on the Canadian border. He could be found exploring these parts around the early to mid 1600’s which is during the same time as when the Ojibwa and Huron Indians lived here in large numbers. Legend has it that during his travels, he became a captive of the Iroquois Indians where he was tortured, almost to the point of death. Upon escape, he made it back to his friends, the Huron. Leary of his release, they surmised that he had to have made friends and even traded with their enemy, the Iroquois. For this, it is said, they tortured Brûlé as well. The outcome was most grim. According to legend, after killing him, the Huron buried his body. It is said the only time that tribe buried the dead was when the unfortunate soul met a gruesome and violent death. Silence, again, surrounded the scene of circular shadows as the words of the tale sunk in.

Five beams of light suddenly snap on and focus on five distinctly different places along the edge of the pines and cedars. One actually ends up fixated about forty feet above the ground on the dead branch of a dark looming aspen tree. “Did you hear that?” Nothing but pops and hisses. Everyone heard something, though. You could hear a pine needle drop. After a few moments of quiet comes the first uneasy observation. “Yeah…just something running along the ground, uh, breaking twigs.” No, they sounded like big twigs. “Must have been something big” came another dry observation. The intentional emphasis on “something big” leaves an insinuation hanging in the air of the mysterious unknown. Finally, the old stand-by is used: “Might have been Liberty.” Referring to the legendary recluse who supposedly lived in the middle of the island. Nothing further is said as minds race, engulfed in imagination. With nothing else to go on, the beams snap off, one by one, until the trees stand dark once again. Last to go dark is the aspen tree beam.

No one knows who had the idea. It seemed like a good one at the time. We all thought crayfish tails sautéed in butter would taste just like fresh Maine lobster. Who wouldn’t? We started with a few fresh crayfish – plucked straight from the minnow trap. The small but meaty tails were separated from their shells. They were spitting images of miniature lobster tails. It seemed like we were on to something. Maybe it was the uneven heat of the campfire. Maybe we didn’t use enough butter or should have used some seasonings. Maybe it was the baked bean can we used to do the cooking. There are probably many reasons, but this culinary exercise was a flop. The succulent, flavorful campfire snack turned out to be more like eating fish flavored rubber bands, the big wide ones. It was unanimous. Crayfish, no matter how fresh, was in no way as tasty as fresh Maine lobster. That’s quite a statement given that none of us had likely never even had fresh Maine lobster.

After the taste had worn off, more conversation and even more periods of quiet another flashlight beam snaps back on. This time it is aimed at no particular point of interest. It seems to be more interested in how it looks itself as it cuts back and forth through the smoke, then straight up to the sky, fading before it reaches the broken clouds. It holds there for a moment and then snaps off without comment. The mind behind each glowing face saw something different. A light saber from a current science fiction movie or maybe a spotlight beam in search of enemy planes over an embattled city during World War II. A splash of much less magnitude breaks the still water over towards the reeds just inside the sand bar. It’s the kind of little “plop” that doesn’t even deserve a comment, however. After more peace and quiet comes the customary and completely intentional flashlight beam blast in the face from one brother to another. So much for the silence and so much for gazing at the buoy lights across the glassy bay for the rest of the night.

The voices move away down the beach, flashlight beams prodding the sand ahead. The fading glow of the embers in the ring pull my attention back as I settle into a daze. I’m about to get up when from down the beach comes the sound of breaking water. A steady paced “ker-plop, ker-plop, ker-plop” turns into a quicker paced and full fledged “SPLASH … SPLASH … SPLASH” until all that is heard is laughing and snickering and wet shoes running on sand. The question arises after the quiet returns. Was he pushed or was it that he just couldn’t tell where the beach ended and the lake started? From the distance it is confirmed that he wasn’t pushed. He’s been down that stretch of beach a hundred times before, but in the dark and across the glass, things can look a bit different.

 

A few throwback pics…

How about a few throwback photos of goings on around Tannenheim in the early summers?  Seems like a good way to close out the year.

Tannenheim was the original Pfeiffer family Marquette Island summer cottage built back around 1913.  Since then my branch of the Pfeiffers has moved down the path a bit (in 1961) and now enjoys summers in Cedar Haven.  We’re still enjoying the sandy shores of Wilderness Bay over a hundred years later.

Photo 1: someone surprised my mom Doris (on right) and a college friend, Marian Sanborn, while sunbathing!  I think we still use that mattress.

Photo 2: nothing like varnishing the decks while wearing your Sunday go-to-meet’n clothes.  That’s my great grampa Dr. Rudolph Pfeiffer of Detroit, the guy who started our whole Les Cheneaux heritage.

Photo 3: looks like a wild game of Pinochle has broken out.  That’s Dr. Pfeiffer’s back, my grampa Dr. Harold Yochum (with the deer in the headlights look), Margaret Krause’s husband, Al Koeppe (probably), and then Dr. Clarence Becklein, my grampa’s brother in law, on the right.

Photo 4: two of the three Yochum sisters reveling in the sandy clear waters of Wilderness Bay.  Faith on the left, Doris on the right. Missing is Marilyn.  Maybe she is taking the photo or is hanging out on the dock.  Nice hats!

If I’ve gotten any of the names wrong, please let me know.  Thanks to Robert Metz for sharing these photos!

The Christmas Bell

The Christmas Bell
By Jon Jordan

 

 

Christmas was always fun. Everything about it was grand when I was young.

Nonstop presents, sometimes in wrapped boxes larger than myself. Ok, I was small as a young feller but some of them really were big! Piles and mounds of presents surrounded the Christmas tree as I remember. My dad and my mom both worked and made a nice living for our family. I guess there were three of us boys so just that alone would lend itself to large piles of presents to be unwrapped on that big morning or right after the Christmas Eve church service most years.

Stuffed Christmas stockings need to be added to the scene as well. Can I just stop here and talk about Christmas stockings? I always felt a little embarrassed as I seem to recall that my stocking featured an image of a little boy with his rosy butt cheeks partially uncovered. Like his jammers were partially pulled down from behind or something. It was supposed to be cute. I guess. I never, ever understood why a bare bottom would be appropriate while celebrating a high holy holiday. I regularly got over that awkwardness in a hurry, though, once I focused on the treats bulging out of the stocking’s stretched out top.

My emphasis at that age was not on the “high holy” part of the holiday.

My brothers and I were on the receiving end of some pretty cool presents as kids, and not just at Christmas. My dad was kind of like an adult version of a kid sometimes it seemed. It was like he possessed the innate ability to see and to know what would be fun for a kid to have and he regularly enjoyed involving himself in playing with our new gadgets and toys. We were one of the first households in the subdivision to own the magnificent game known as Pong. The precursor of the soon to be ubiquitous video game. We were high tech before it was a thing.

There was always something newly bought or created to play with. From the exciting Vrroom X15 pedal car, erector sets (who needs those plastic Legos when you can work with steel) and remote controlled airplanes to a full scale drum set. One summer day dad came home from work with a Sunfish sailboat strapped to the top of the car. We also had a shiny brand new gazillion gallon galvanized steel horse tank for a swimming pool that he somehow got home. It was parked next to our multilevel fort complete with a trap door, the lower level of which served as a heated doghouse for our Lassie look-alike collie named Pal. Some winters our backyard garden was even turned into an ice skating rink. I’ll never forget hoping for a new sandbox and then later on spying a sand laden dump truck backing down the lane toward our backyard. Forget the box. I had a pile!

Back to Christmastime. We lived in a warm comfy house extensively festooned and festively strung with lights on the outside at Christmas. Not just the typical red and green or multicolored strings of bulbs I might add. Nor just the all-time classic and tasteful, white. At our house, alternating blue and green C7 lightbulbs gracefully lined the gutters and peaks of the single story ranch home. Even Pal’s house would get lights. When viewed from out in the snowy neighborhood our house, which sat at the end of a street just before it curved sharply to the right, bloomed bluish-green, perfectly accentuating the frigid feel of a holiday season evening and contrasting with the warm golden glow of partially steamed-up windows.

This snowy glowing blue and green scene at the end of the street was especially eye catching at twilight. As an imaginative little shaver, I liked to pretend I was on an expedition to an outpost at the North Pole to locate and confirm the existence of the one and only Rudolph and his famous red schnozzola as I stomped around in the fresh powder on some Yuletide season evenings. I had never really witnessed the northern lights yet at that age but comfortably lounging in a waist-high drift while squinting in the direction of the lit-up house really gave me what I though was a pretty good idea of how they looked. If you tilted your head the green and blue hues would undulate just like the real aurora of the north. All the while staying on the lookout for that snaggletoothed Abominable Snowman. That dude was crazy scary!

This is probably as good a time as any to address snow and the Christmas holiday as I was growing up. Like I said earlier, Christmas was fun. The only drawback might be that it always rolls around at the coldest time of the year. But that was before I developed an affinity for warmer living conditions so that isn’t something I can call a real drawback in all actuality. In fact those frosty Michiana winter days and nights along with regularly dependable lake effect snow showers just seemed to kick the season up a notch or two.

Our house sat on the eastern fringes of what is known as a lake effect snow belt region. We wouldn’t get the foot-or-so at a time snows that folks would get closer to Lake Michigan, but we would get frequent squalls that would drop several inches before you knew it. Being only about an hour’s drive from from the lake, occasionally you could actually get a whiff of the super fresh Great Lake air as it blew flurries far inland.

Sometimes at night, during the heaviest of snow squalls, the athletic field grade bank of floodlights in our backyard would be flipped on from inside the garage. It was a perfect example of my dad’s ingenious handy-man-ship. Not only was that tall pole of multiple mega watt floodlights great for shining down on our re-enactments of spectacular Monday Night Football plays at night, but you should’ve seen what it would do to a full fledged lake effect snow squall. With the snap of the heavier than usual toggle switch next to the back door of the garage the entire backyard would be instantaneously washed in bright light, illuminated in whiteness. You could see nothing but swirling curtains of snow billowing this way and that in the breezes over the whitest drifts of snow possible. It was as if we were watching dense schools of swimming snowflake fish furiously foraging their way past the floodlights.

That bank of backyard lights probably accounts for the unusual peacetime uptick in purchases of blackout shades on the west side of that small northern Indiana town.

As if we didn’t already have enough to enjoyably occupy our days as youngsters, we also had two woodsy areas beyond a horse pasture and a cornfield at our disposal in which to play, spending hours and whole afternoons hiking, tree climbing and fort building. They were known by me and my band of friends as the “Little Woods” and the “Big Woods”. Pretty original, eh? The Big Woods reminded me of the hundred acre wood known from the popular stories about a bumbling lovable honey-addicted bear. Adventures to the Big Woods in the winter were infrequent.

The Little Woods, on the other hand, was more of a regular wintertime destination. It was within closer proximity and had a certain draw after the cornfields were leveled and the snow began to fly like down from a thistle each year. To me it was quite reminiscent of the scene from the movie It’s A Wonderful Life in which George Bailey’s little brother breaks through the ice. Our Little Woods would regularly flood and freeze over providing exquisite conditions for sliding, slipping and sledding. I think we had high aspirations for an impressive game of organized hockey but usually it turned out to be more of a haphazard free-for-all of sliding until someone started crying. Fortunately no traumatic break-throughs like the one in that movie occurred. It was somewhat difficult to avoid the randomly scattered tree trunks, though, I must say. Several abrupt meetings with the immovable trunks did take place but no bones were broken and no one’s head was concussed. Uhh … at least that I can recall.

One other aspect of Christmas as I grew up that cannot be overlooked is the all important subject that is … Christmas cookies. Permanently lodged in my being is the scent of freshly baked fudge punctuated by a hint of anise from the springerle cookies that just had been birthed from the oven. It’s right up there with the first sniffs of the welcoming and robust smell of Sunday pot roast as you come in the door from church as a hungry youngster.

My mom comes from a long line of distinguished Christmas cookie bakers. I easily remember my grandma’s Christmas specialties including cookies with funny sounding German names like lebkuchen, Pfeffernüsse and the previously mentioned springerle. Of the best Christmastime aromas, the intermingling of ginger, allspice, anise, cinnamon and clove ranks right up there high on the list. There is just something about that warm Christmas cookie aroma when inhaled upon busting in from a rousing session of snow football under the lights or an afternoon of playing on the ice in the flooded woods amongst the fields behind the house. Normally set out to cool and to be saved for later or a special occasion, I have to admit I did stealthily abscond my share of cooling Christmas cookies. Frozen fingers and faces seemed to thaw instantly when holding and chewing a warm freshly mom-baked Christmas cookie.

Our house was decorated beautifully for Christmas every year, another one of my mom’s many talents. Our living room Christmas tree was perfect and mesmerizing, even before being surrounded by presents. There were candles, bows and Christmas cards from loved ones and friends on display. Occasionally, especially when company was expected, festive holiday tunes drifted through the house emanating from the Drexel Motorola Hi-Fi console in the living room.

My grandpa Carl, who was an accomplished artisan in every sense of the word, handmade a beloved illuminated multidimensional tabletop scene depicting the three wisemen heading toward Bethlehem. It is not possible to describe accurately its uniqueness and sublime workmanship. The rising heat from a hidden colored Christmas lightbulb caused a suspended propeller to twirl, casting a fluttering soft light upwards warmly illuminating the scene. Accordingly, it was set out in a place of prominence each year.

Finally, hanging perfectly centered in the lower sash of my bedroom window was a wreath of holly surrounding a Christmas bell which lit up molten red when plugged in.

The wreath was roughly the circumference of one of my basketballs stored away in the toy box in the garage. The plastic but realistic looking holly leaves that comprised the wreath were of the variegated dark and light green variety. A specialized orange bulb complete with a red flame shaped tip really made the red bell glow vividly and warmly against the dark nighttime window. The view of the wreath with its glowing red bell from outside through the steamed up window had to be nothing less than Norman Rockwell-ish.

The stillness and quiet of a dark night sky flooded with thick snowflakes falling on festively lit trees, shrubs and houses created a introspective, almost spiritual feeling. The faint sweet smell of a wild cherry log burning slowly in the fireplace acted almost like incense. Over and among, running through and beyond all that grandness that was Christmas back as a young lad was the assumed understanding that the real purpose of the holiday was to celebrate the birth of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. The ultimate gift from God, when the Creator became truly human, a decisive step forward in the masterful plan to make it possible for us to become reunited with God again.

Yeah. Um, I just didn’t quite get that part of it, though. Not yet.

That is until one particular evening at bedtime, a Christmas Eve evening, actually. Until that eve, I’d never really gave it much thought. I was a young boy just having fun and goofing off mostly, trying (and a lot of times not really trying) to stay out of trouble. The words of the story of Jesus had been instilled over the several years I’d been around and were very familiar for sure. But for some reason, that quiet Christmas Eve bedtime epiphany made me realize that I, as a human being, had done, did and was surely going to do things that were wrong. That just didn’t jive with what God wanted for me. There was a break in the equation between God and I and I began to realize there was no hope that I could do anything to fix that break myself. Something or somebody had to make up for my propensity for shortcomings and wrongdoings and I knew it wasn’t me.

Then, trying to make sense of it all while staring at the glowing red Christmas bell, that warm spiritual beacon in the cold dark night, it began to dawn on me. That Christmas Eve’s sermon message settled in and began to make sense. Maybe I actually had been listening and not just dreaming of the pile of presents waiting at home under the tree.

God loved me so much that he had figured out a way to fix that break in the equation – even before I knew it existed. That something or somebody, that fix, was … Himself!

God, the Creator of the universe, Maker of all things seen and unseen, arrived in the humblest of ways and stooped so low, to become human … like me. He slept in a cattle feed trough. A manger!

The manger was a changer.

That overwhelming realization caused me to let out an audible whispered “whoa” in the otherwise quiet darkness. (Believe me when I say, this was not a cool sounding Fonzie-like “whoa,” this was a being hit with a ton o’bricks in pure humble amazement kinda “whoa.”)

He came to me, to all humans, to make it possible to have the ultimate future. A future of endless glory in the eternal presence of God.

Just stop and think about that.

Can I get another “whoa” here?!

As I was realizing this, I noticed a lump forming in my throat and a dampness moistening both my eyes. I wasn’t laying there in bed balling or anything like that, but I have to say, it was quite an odd feeling. I had shed many tears of fear, anger and pain as a typical young boy to that point in my life but never could I recall shedding a tear of gratitude, a tear in response to pure love and of sheer, dumbfounding amazement.

The image of the familiar red Christmas bell was becoming blurry as I struggled to focus on the only light in sight. I touched the moisture slowly and gently with the tip of a finger and blinked awkwardly as this new and heavy concept really settled in.

Then the Christmas bell came clearly into high definition focus.

All this … for me.

Not the presents. Not the lights. Not the decorations.

Not the cards. Not even the cookies.

Those things surely were wonderful, so very good and sources of great and meaningful lasting memories but they do fall way short when compared to this simple concept:

That God came into this world and gave Himself for me.

Me!

And, in the words of good old George Bailey … “that goes for you, too!”

 

 

White Hurricane

Many maritime historians agree that the most significant and most dreadful storm ever to impact the Great Lakes occurred on Lake Huron November 8th through the 10th in the year 1913. It might as well be called the Great Lakes version of the “Perfect Storm.”

While the Les Cheneaux Islands would have been in the lee of the storm and somewhat protected, it’s likely that the White Hurricane, as it’s been named by some, sent its howling winds straight down Wilderness Bay. Its gales pushed the largest whitecaps and crashed some of the biggest waves ever experienced in that bay against its sandy eastern shores. The same shores of Marquette Island that would very soon become the home of Tanneheim and eventually Cedar Haven. Thankfully, construction of the Pfeiffer summer cottage would not be initiated until the following summer.

The 1913 storm was first noted up on the western end of Lake Superior on Thursday, November 6th. It then progressed and intensified rapidly toward northern Lake Michigan and the Straits of Mackinac. By Saturday morning, the weather bureau had posted storm warnings for all of the Great Lakes. By that same afternoon a cold front had pushed its way down Lake Huron and through Detroit bringing an unseasonable warmspell to an abrupt end. Somewhere over Lake Huron as it passed the Straits of Mackinac and Alpena, the accompanying low pressure system merged with another low pressure system which had rolled out of Colorado and crossed Chicago and the southern Great Lakes.

Captains of freighters, also known as lakeboats, some as long as 550 feet in length and 58 feet wide at that time, were finding sailing conditions out on the lake that were unlike any they had ever seen before. These lakeboats were full of various cargos. Some laden with grain from the recent harvest, coal or iron ore, others heavily loaded with steel rail or pipe. The sleet that had coated their vessels turned pilothouse windows opaque. It sealed and froze the doorways solid tight, like nails in a coffin. Waves were higher than the ships were tall and as they crashed down upon them their windows and the cabins caved in.

Each lakeboat was blinded by the elements. There were no guiding lights along the shores. The storm had caused the primitive electric lighting to fail on both sides of Lake Huron. Radar had not yet been invented. Radio was still new and few ship owners had installed the device. Unable to communicate or see land, each ship became a multi-ton steel torpedo, lost on the lake and an extreme danger to itself and to others on the water. During a brief lull in the snowstorm the captain of one ship had the misfortune of being able to look across and see another being beaten into the tempest. As he watched somewhere out on the lake, the other ship disintegrated before his eyes. A monstrous wave at its bow and another at its stern raised the entire ship and its 4,000 tons of cargo, leaving the middle unsupported. The ship cracked in two and was gone.

As dawn broke on Monday morning, the Canadian shore began to reveal the extent of the damage and destruction that had occurred on Lake Huron the days before. Shattered pieces of woodwork from ship’s cabins and various other forms of shipwreck debris floated everywhere just offshore. The frozen bodies of crewmen had already found their resting place up on the beaches along the shoreline.

According to National Weather Service records, the storm’s central pressure plummeted to a measurement of 968.5 mb which would qualify it as a solid category two hurricane. Surviving lakeboat captains testified that the waves were at least 35 feet high and followed each other in quick succession, with three waves ordinarily coming one right after the other. Other numerical data in the wake of the storm includes the fact that up to forty shipwrecks tragically resulted. Eight of those were large lake freighters that sank below Lake Huron’s churning surface, taking all hands with them. In all, as many as 250 men perished. One hundred years later, five ships still have never been found.

The shipwreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald which occurred sixty-two years later to the day may be more well known, but the great storm of 1913 and the enormous loss that ensued make it the most tragic of days on the Great Lakes to date. It’s sobering to note that out on the big water from the protected bays and islands of Les Cheneaux, the devastating storm of 1913 brought many a ship and its crew to an awful demise. A few had the luck of only going aground, averting a total loss, along the usually protected St. Mary’s River some twenty miles to the north and east of Marquette Island. Most of the others met the greatest of misfortune southeast past the Straits of Mackinac, beyond Thunder Bay and Alpena in the open and completely unprotected vastness that fueled the fury of the White Hurricane.

Lonesome Pine

As you stand on the path about half way between Cedar Haven and the Lonesome Pine, you can look back and get a pretty good, slightly elevated view of the cottage from behind. It looks solid and sturdy sitting there among the trees. The path goes up a small hill into the woods behind the cottage. After visiting the towering pine tree, aptly named by my grandpa Yochum, it is fun to run as fast as you can, almost completely out of control, back down that path towards the cottage. At least it was fun to do when I was young. The thought of wiping out by tripping on a root or the terrible outcome that would surely ensue if a tree was hit head-on never crossed my mind. I would run down that slight incline anyway, cedar boughs and pine needles flying, trees blurring past the whole way. My feet would make a neat hollow thumping sound as I pounded down that trail.

Sometimes the reason for flying back down the trail towards the cottage had nothing at all to do with fun. Sometimes it was fear. Usually the fear was precipitated by a seemingly harmless sound of a twig breaking somewhere further back in the nighttime woods although on at least one occasion, it was the sound of a menacing growl not too far away in the dark that spawned the all out dash back down the path. Flashlights or not, we brothers were not staying a gasping breath longer. Yeah, uh, we were in high school then. Visits to the Lonesome Pine at night were very infrequent and never solo.

It is near and around the base of that big tree that many memorable interactions with several species of wild animals have taken place. There’s no way to know, but the night time growler previously spoken of was probably either a badger or a bobcat. There was also the whimpering sound of a smaller rodent-type animal involved in that incident, so we brothers have assumed that the growls were actually intended for that small prey, not us.

On one particular damp and rainy morning, I witnessed a doe deer in a hyper-cautious state due to her nearby hiding fawn. As the fawn lay motionless under the nearby ferns, the doe stared me down, standing erect just on the other side of the path from where I crouched, also motionless. I could tell she could tell that something was there on the other side of the path from her, but her relatively poor eyesight made it difficult to identify me completely. As she sniffed the air with urgency, I stayed still and downwind. It was obvious she was becoming more and more frustrated. In what seemed to be a last resort, she acted as if she was about to charge. Her body became completely tensed and she lunged toward me with all her might only to stop just as abruptly by stamping both straightened and strong front legs as hard as she could. The dampened, needle-strewn forest floor muffled her hooves as they stomped. Again she faked a charge, this time adding a piercing and intimidating snort, also meant to scare me into moving so she could see what she was up against. It didn’t work. For some reason, I moved not. There was one more stomp and snort, and the next thing I remember seeing was her huge white flag of a tail bounding away past the Lonesome Pine and then over moss covered cedar logs. Amazingly, she hardly made a sound as she gracefully but swiftly moved through branches, twigs and undergrowth. I plopped down on the soft needles and sat quietly for a moment, pretending that I was not intimidated. As the blood began to circulate again in my stretched-out legs, I also realized that I was once again able to breathe.

Other animal memories include a comically clumsy porcupine that didn’t seem to know how to extricate itself from a hollow birch stump. I really wanted to help, but there were all those sharp, needle-like quills. I came back an hour later and found it had left without a trace. Finally, there are the spastic red piney squirrels, as we call them. In the late summer, they can be found continually scolding each other and scurrying up, down and across the cedars that reside below the Lonesome Pine, undoubtedly gathering provisions for the long winter ahead. The area around and below that pine tree have proven to be great for observing north woods wildlife at it’s best, especially on damp mornings when shoes can move without a sound.

The reason that particular tree is called the Lonesome Pine is basically because, well, it’s lonesome. It’s not lonesome in that there are no other trees nearby. On the contrary, there are all sorts of mature birch, aspen, cedar and even a maple or two that keep it company. There is, however, not another one like its exact species anywhere on the slightly less than two acre pie-shaped lot that Cedar Haven sits on. Oh, I tried years ago to plant seedlings near and around its base to keep it company, but the deer mowed them down before another needle could grow. There is a grove of mostly smaller pines of the same species on the other side of the clearing and north of there more than four lots away. There may be other singular pines here and there as well in the vicinity, but none as tall and majestic as the Lonesome Pine. Ever since I can remember, that tree has been bigger-than-life and always there. Sometime around the turn of the century, though, logging practically cleared the forests of northern Michigan.

Prior to logging the scenery was much different than what we see today. I can only imagine the grandeur of the island being covered over with those towering pines. From what I’ve learned, the original vegetation of the region was quite diverse due to the variety of landforms, soils, and drainage one finds there. Swampy pine areas were found throughout. On the higher more solid ground, hardwoods and pines were both found. Northern white-cedar dominated the wetlands as it does today. Tamarack and black spruce trees were common in sandy areas. Near the shores were found marshes and wet meadows where there was protection from wave action. Northern hardwoods, including sugar maple, beech, American elm, basswood, and yellow birch, were common in the drier locations. Finally, white pine and red pine were common on sand dunes and beach ridges. White pine could also be found within the swamp forests.

The saws didn’t miss the pines of Marquette Island simply because they were a little harder to get to, however. The pines there, too, fell in great numbers. I can only imagine that this tree, for some reason, was over looked. When you stand at the base of the tree and look straight up its massive trunk, you notice a slight curvy twist as your eyes reach its main canopy. Maybe back then, when it was a sapling, the loggers saw that imperfection and maybe it was more pronounced. It’s possible that is was decided to leave it as it wouldn’t make good lumber. It’s also possible that the slight twisted curve might have more to do with years of November gales that roar off the big lake. The winds catch the canopy of the tree like a sail as it looms over the other trees sheltered below it. If that’s the case, there’s no way to know why the loggers left it behind. Either way, I imagine once all the logs were dragged off the island, leaving behind that solitary sapling, it was a pretty pathetic specimen of a tree, and of course, lonely. But then the miracle of God’s creation kicked in over the next hundred or so years and the whole island landscape renewed itself, giving us the surrounding healthy forest we have today.

After employing the latest and most complex analysis of its needle clusters years ago, I have determined that its exact species is that of the white pine. I knew it had to be that or a red pine, and my analysis proved correct. How does that saying go? Five needles in the cluster means white pine. You know, five needles correlates to the five letters in the word “white” as opposed to three needles and three letters in the word “red”. Since it has five needles per cluster, it has to therefore be a white pine. So much for my thorough and sophisticated analysis.

Around its base on the ground is a wonderful collection of flowers and low growing plants in addition to many younger perfectly shaped balsam firs. Not far past the Lonesome Pine along and even across the path one will find hazy blue clouds of forget-me-nots in May along the forest floor. Right near its trunk, blooming from June to August or so, one can enjoy a wide patch of wild oxeye daisies as they relax in the sun’s warm rays that filter down through needles a hundred feet above. Everywhere else, off to the sides, are the ever present woodland ferns swaying in breezes that rise from Wilderness Bay and up that hill. Those ferns where a particular favorite of my Grandpa Yochum. I don’t know what it was that he liked so much about them. I just know that they were great to hide under as a kid when playing hide and seek in the woods.

When I visit the Lonesome Pine, whether actually physically there or just in my mind, it seems I often end up thinking about my Grandpa Yochum. Although he passed away when I was young, I have many happy memories that involve him. Some of them include his favorite ferns found commonly around the base of that towering tree. I can only assume that the magnificence and solitude of that tree must have meant enough to him to cause him to give it a name. A fitting name it is indeed. In a way, my grandpa is kind of like that tree to me. When around him on the island at the cottage he was like those ferns that were just fun to see and play among. Now, when I look at the life he lived, his accomplishments, the lives he touched, and the Faithfulness he exemplified, I see something else. I see that towering, strong, bigger-than-life tree.

 

Special Hurricane Edition: Palm Haven Reader

Special Hurricane Edition: Palm Haven Reader

Memories are bubbling up in my mind as hurricane Irma moves strongly through the Caribbean and glances past Cuba. Years ago right out of college, I did a stint as an Interpretive Naturalist at The Conservancy of Naples, Florida. I was based specifically at the Briggs’s Nature Center located deep within an estuarine marine sanctuary between Naples and Marco Island. I had graduated and wanted to check out a career in environmental education, and this internship lasting a little less than a year altogether, was one of the neatest paying gigs I’ve had yet.

I spent most of my time exploring, boating, paddling, swimming and hiking in and around Rookery Bay and a protected pristine gulf barrier island beach along Keewaydin Island. While on the clock, along with other staff, I would lead groups on guided interpretive tours of beaches, mangrove swamps, slash pine lands, everglade bays and channels, brackish backwaters and open Gulf waters. I also had a weekend job at a large marina on Marco Island gassing up, cleaning and managing their fleet of rental boats.

Beyond that, more specifically, I was able to experience and witness some of the grandest and memorable natural moments. The magical phenomenon of bioluminescence. Dolphins mating. I don’t want to get into details, but that was interesting, shall we say. Viewing Bald Eagles and Ospreys spar over fish the Osprey had deftly lifted out of a backwater bay. Watching with amazement as a pod of dolphins corral a school of mullet and then take turns slicing through that school taking mouthfuls of the frenetic fish. Excitedly pointing out a pair of eyecatching Scarlet Ibis on a birding boat tour. Google an image of the bird and you’ll see what I mean. Being shocked, unnerved and knocked off balance as a lumbering cow manatee slowly raises up directly beneath the bow of my tiny John boat while fishing. Then quietly watch and relax as her calves mosey on past. Cringing as a huge tarpon lifts and then thunderously lands just yards off the stern of our boat.

I could go on.

One more thing, though. I also learned from our boat captain that the Calusa, the indigenous folk of southwest Florida, would tie and anchor their boats and canoes among the sprawling mangrove forests that carpet the coastline when a hurricane was blowing up. How they knew a hurricane was afoot way back then before weather services, radar and forecast models is something I’d like to know.

How perfect and cool does that sound for a youngish version of Jon Jordan? A life of boats, water, beaches and natural wildlife (including mosquitos) surrounding me twenty-four, seven.

The most memorable thing, though, I’d have to say, was being with and seeing the kids of Imokolee, Florida setting their eyes on the ocean (Gulf of Mexico) for the very first time in their lives as we took fourth grade classes on beach field trips.

That was the most wonderful and at the same time quite possibly the most saddening thing I remember from my time along the shores of southwest Florida.

Wonderful in that you could see in their eyes the wonder and amazement that makes learning so meaningful and fun. They dove right in, eager to fill their brains and senses with everything they came in contact with. Saddening in that their migrant worker based, economically depressed town was probably only a mere 30 or 40 miles inland as a pelican flies and these excursions were the first time some of them had been beyond the small perimeter of that town or the watermelon fields nearby.

I now think about the people of Imokolee as I watch hurricane Irma’s menacing eye churn directly toward them on the various weather radars. Maybe after these almost thirty years since I lived there things are better overall in Imokolee. I hope so.

I also watch with apprehension as I see the storm target my former short term home only feet above the surface of the mangroved backwaters of Rookery Bay. I am comforted, though, in knowing that being securely anchored among the mangroves is one of the safest places during a hurricane. We should all strive to be securely anchored to the tested, tried and true.

 

Wooden antique boat “Shab-Wa-Way”

‪In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Les Cheneaux Antique Wooden Boat Show tomorrow in Hessel, enjoy a shot of our neighbor’s former Best of Show winner “Shab-Wa-Way” moored out by our drop-off a few July’s ago. Expertly and lovingly refurbished by Dick Metz and his good friend “Moose” (John Strehler) it is named after the former Ojibwa Chief who lived among these Les Cheneaux Islands. A ride in her was like a dream. It is a beautiful craft for sure, but I also just can’t get over the emerald clear water in which she comfortably and gracefully sits.