The Porcupine Mountains, Part 4 -- Fresh Content

Resident Artifacts

I've spent the greater portion of my photographic career in pursuit of what's left behind by those who've come before.

I do that primarily because what's hidden by the obscurity of a wild landscape always surprises & interests me. A sense of discovery coupled with mystery is often especially keen.

For instance, someone once casually mentioned an abandoned railroad grade cut through the woods, on which Heather and I then proceeded to take our old Subaru out for a drive. The grade was narrow and steep and once on it, the only way out was to keep right on going, no matter how or where it ended. Had we come to a collapsed bridge over a river, that car might still be in the woods and decades from now someone could be amazed by it, much like I was once amazed by this...

On our drive along the middle of nowhere, we came across a once fine white house standing hard by the old grade. Long unlived in and with the forest fast encroaching, it was easy to imagine that when the trains still ran, that house possessed a clear purpose since obscured by disuse. By the time we found it, the place was the province only of ghosts and they sang for us that day.

Eventually, we returned to blacktop without having to walk out.

Over the years, I've fallen in love with the geometry of wreckage, which I believe makes for powerful, resonant imagery. It used to be there were only a relative few of us working that rough-edged territory. Recently, digital shooters everywhere have  taken up the cause. These days, Detroit draws photographers from all over the world.

Some folk call that "ruin porn" and sometimes, that's exactly what it is.

The definition turns largely on creative purpose. Some photographers have a ready sense of exactly what they're up to and why. Many don't. Mostly, you can see the difference between the two in their images.

At any rate, if the work is to have lasting value you'd best first come to grips with the fact that you're picking over the remnants of people's lives and livelihoods and learn to treat that with respect.

My stay in splendid isolation at Dan's Cabin was a deeply personal experience. While there, I found things to share with you and earned things to keep just for me. That spoke directly to my purpose at the time, which was both professional and private, depending on the moment.

In the cabin there's a journal kept by the artists in residence, for the residents that follow. It's a great read and often strictly personal. I did my part and poured myself into it. I'd not intended to share any of that with you.

But the farther removed I am from the immediate experience, the greater the resonance of it grows in me and the longer we're on this trip together, the more I think it appropriate to share pieces of what I'd thought I wouldn't.

So here're some edited excerpts from the better than 5,000 words I committed to that journal mostly by lamplight, and a few other things scavenged from my residency besides...

From the Journal

Day Five

It's occurred to me that while there'll surely be other writers/photographers to stay in this splendid cabin after me, it's possible -- perhaps even likely -- that I'll be the last to capture this place on film.

I went up to Lake of the Clouds before dawn yesterday morning on the hope that the coming storm would bleed the sky red. It didn't. So I never took the cameras from the bag 'cause the harsh light just plain sucked.

But that didn't stop the cadre of digital shooters, lined up shoulder to shoulder. Shutters clicked away like a swarm of angry beetles. Bad light? Fix it later.

And I wondered if any of these shooters know that it's on them to create a new aesthetic for their new medium, as the once rigorous craft of capturing light to inform content -- intended to capture the authenticity of a given moment in time -- is fast passing from the world.

What'll replace that aesthetic I can't guess and I'd guess that neither can those digital shooters busily collecting pixels up on the escarpment, to be altered later in Photoshop and turned into what they wanted to see, not what they actually saw.

But you'd like to think the thought's at least crossed their minds...

Day 9

It rained overnight & again late this morning. Hadn't planned to, but as I again awoke a couple hours before sunrise I headed up to Lake of the Clouds in hopes that the valley would be filled with mist. It wasn't.

Had the place near to myself though. The last week's been tough on autumn color as gale force winds knocked it to the ground and the forest floor is littered with brittle golden death. Man, just let the season slide past peak and all the amateurs skitter away. Truth is, the fun's just starting.

The rain came again, more persistently. S'okay. I needed to do laundry anyway so went into Ontonagon and treated myself to a proper sit down lunch while the clothes dried.

Even though the thermometer says it's a bit warmer today than yesterday, the moisture's lent a bite to the air & after lunch I repaired to the cabin intending to hunker down.

That didn't last.

Quite unexpectedly, the rain stopped the wind died and the clouds thinned just enough so that the light became perfect. I hurried down to where the Little Union joins its big sister & for about an hour or so proceeded to do what should be among the most sublime landscape work of the trip to date.

And isn't that the advantage of residency? When the moment came, I was here. Not somewheres else, not on the road, not holed up in a motel 'cause of the rain.

Then the magic hour passed & I returned to the cabin to reshoot the fungi I'd worked the other day. As an old Indian friend used to say: "Everything's better when wet".

A very good day...

Day 12

So at night I've been practicing my Barred Owl call, which used to be fairly good. Apparently not anymore, as I've drawn no owl response. However, every time I do it some tiny critter in the woods near the cabin goes apoplectic.

"Alarm! Alarm!" it chirps.

I don't recognise the voice. Maybe it's a Red Squirrel, a little bird or even a mouse with operatic lungs, I dunno. But making so much noise when you think an owl is near doesn't seem like sound survival strategy to me. Having had no luck with the owls, I'll desist, as all I seem to be doing is disturbing some poor neighbor's sleep...

A couple of days ago I learned through the Ironwood Daily Globe that I'd be doing a reading as part of my presentation. I'd forgotten I'd promised one of those. That being the case, I figured I'd better write something to read. Which is how I spent Day 10 -- sitting at the table writing.

Note: you can read what I wrote sitting at that table during Day 10 by going here. Scroll down to "A Landscape of Perspective".

This image was taken by a dear friend who visited with me on the day of my presentation. I figured it too precious by half to ever show. But what the hell...

Day 13

Last Full Day.

O.K. then.

Woke slow, purposefully. It was raining, a bit.

Eventually went down to the Folk School to get a copy of the book 'Dan's Cabin' by Karen Berg. Stayed for a while to chat. Awfully nice folk, these are. And smart like nobody's business, too.

Rain stopped, no wind. Heavy overcast. Walked the Union Spring Trail 'cause Bob Wild said there're a couple old cars at what once was a lumber camp & there are, but only pieces. Sure am glad I didn't haul my gear in. Only the second time in two weeks I went walking with just the Toy Canon in tow.

Shot my way back from Ontonagon -- creek mouths & the blue house about midway between here & there. Intended to make an early day of it but as I approached the Park that changed.

One of the things I love about the Bessemer Bluffs of the Gogebic Range is that occasionally the sky drops down so low that the tops of the hills are shrouded with clouds. So it was this evening at Lake of the Clouds. I ran up there one last time & hot damn, it finally paid off. Mist rolled over the cliffs and through the valley. I've waited 30 years to catch that with pro gear. I was the only shooter there.

Made it back to the cabin at dusk. The woods soft & still. Struck a fire in the ring & devoured a piece of seared cow flesh.

Tomorrow I'll work my way down the South Boundary Road & depending, maybe even stop @ the Presque Isle to see if there're any more Steelhead with my name on them.

I think it likely that I've done some of the best work of my life, these past two weeks. It's what I needed to do, 'cause who wants to bring a decades' long creative craft to a close by moping & putzing around?

One more night & a wakeup & I'm out of here. I've no desire to leave save for that I must & the cabin isn't mine, though from here on some bit of my spirit will help inform this place too.

Note: There's frequent mention in the Journal of a nighttime skittering across the Cabin's roof.

Likewise, I've heard the visitor in the roof. Neither do I know what it is. But unlike some, I don't care. I figure as long as this fine place isn't being damaged the critters are welcome, whoever they are.

To you digital imagers who follow -- remember, it's on you to establish a new aesthetic for your new medium. Sure, you can keep trying to do what photographers like me have done for more than 100 years, but the authenticity of light is today rendered irrelevant and there's no good reason for you to pursue it further by working backwards into the past.

Consider instead what filmmaker and documentarian Werner Herzog calls "Ecstatic Truth".

Pursue that with your wondrous new tools and you've the chance to achieve something great...

It's at or about the new moon & still heavily overcast. Not a hint of breeze. Through much of my stay I heard each individual leaf fall through the night air to strike an invisible earth. Now most are fallen and none fall tonight. Only the creek murmurs, refreshed by eight days or so of generally light but persistently periodic rain. The Little Union finally sounds happy.

All is dark, silent & still. A right & proper night, to call it a career.

My chapter of this profoundly inspiring narrative is drawn to a close.

Your turn.

Live it large.

*

Finally, the same dear friend who took that picture of me also captured a few bits of video during my presentation at the Visitor's Center. I viewed it once immediately after the fact, then not again until I started gathering the material for this post.

Despite the relative roughness of the video, regardless of the fact that 14 months of road food made me resemble a backwoods Santa and even considering my positively relentless use of the word "alright" as some sorta verbal bridge, I've decided to share some of it with you.

My presentation lasted better than an hour. It began with my reading of A Landscape of Perspective, followed by a slide presentation similar to this.

Then I winged it. I'd not known I could talk so long off the cuff at such a stretch, though that'd probably not surprise some of my friends.

As it happened, the question & answer period turned on local issues and proved so lively that we ran overtime. You won't see that here, though later this month I'll repost the essay that came from it, as that continues to have lasting resonance not only to the region but for the nation at large, as we assess what hard times have wrought & why with a mind to moving forward and making this country better for all who love it.

In the meantime, here're a couple artifacts of me...

The Porcupine Mountains, Part 3

These are incredibly challenging times for artists. The Democratization of all Media has made for a chaotic, undifferentiated cultural marketplace that's devalued intellectual property to the extent that you can now buy a novel for less than an order of fast food fries.

In addition to having to sell themselves cheap, most creatives hold down 'real jobs', while working at their art as best they can. That's not gotten any easier, what with these being the hardest stinkin' times since the Great stinkin' Depression.

So maybe it's high time to do something for yourself and your work.

Opportunities for artistic residencies exist throughout this land and across the great, big world beyond. Some offer contemplative isolation in remote places. Others feature vibrant cross-cultural conversation in big cities. These residency programs come in packages large and small, whether publicly supported, privately funded or a collaborative combination of the two. Taken together, they favor every sort of creative effort.

All exist to serve you, the dreamer. The aspirant. The artist.

Among those things that've pleased me most during this project is that other creatives have applied for artistic residency at the Porcupine Mountains, inspired by my experience at Dan's Cabin.

Because as it turned out, my residency was among the finest, most productive two weeks of my life and that's the sort of thing that simply must be shared.

So do yourself a favor. Give it a shot.

If not to the program at the Porkies, then Google for one that suits you and apply there. Should the first time not bear fruit, try again. If you've been applying for years at one program, switch up and try another.

What's true is that great art came out of the last Depression. Art that helped make the world a better place.

Today the culture at large needs you more than ever, even if the wages don't reflect that. And there are all sorts of fine folk just like in the Porkies, ready and willing to share a personal commitment with you.

As an artist your only choice is to either keep at it or give up, there's no third way.

Never give up.

Creative Conversation (Revised)

Many people act like they expect to live forever. But they won't.

Others spend their lives creating things that might.

So artists offer their song to the wind and the wind carries the best of them to an unknown place where echo is the only currency of trade and whether or not their offering lasts, they'll never know it either way.

What's true is that art informs us, whether for a moment or forever.

It shows us who our we are, how we see our lives and culture and our neighbors too, so that we might better understand what it is to be human and better define our own place in the cosmos, having shared.

Creativity is a conversation as essential to human wellbeing as are earth, air, water and sky. Without its saving graces, we'd be a poor race indeed.

And from the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness of Michigan, a diverse group of dedicated folk devote their best efforts to assure that conversation thrives.

For two weeks during October of 2012, I reveled in a residency at Dan's Cabin, courtesy of the Artists in Residence Program  sponsored by the Friends of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness. 

While there I led the ideal artist's life -- near the only time in my life I've been at liberty to do that, for whatever length of time. As direct result I accomplished some my best work ever.

And as is true of most of this Odyssey, where I've gone you can too.

Burdened by regular jobs, cultural noise and myriad sundry demands, tempted by handy distractions like T.V., Facebook and blogs, many artists yearn for an opportunity to submerse themselves in their work.

That opportunity is here.

Yeah, it's in the wilderness and maybe that's wholly outside your experience, much less comfort level. I get that.

So here's the gig:

Nestled in a splendid grove of hemlock a mere quarter mile from the road, your fellow creatives have built a comfortable, sturdy cabin reserved for you.

Outside, the real world rules and a creek runs by. Inside there's a comfy bed, a well equipped kitchen, ample working space and a wood burning stove for warmth, with everything framed by a wide expanse of windows that let the wild woods shine in, day and night.

And you're welcome to bring someone along whether for companionship or courage, should either suit you.

What the place lacks is phone, Internet, T.V., radio and all the distractions of contemporary life. There're resorts charging big money to rent that sort of liberty for even a single night.

On that table is a journal kept by a succession of residents for the benefit of those who follow. It's quite the read. Artists use their stay at Dan's Cabin for everything from relaxation to adventure, from quiet contemplation to life altering self-discovery.

While there, they also accomplish fundamental work.

Out your door is a well maintained trail system cut more than 87 miles through 60,000 acres of wildness, offering prospects that range from remote waterfalls to accessible vistas.

Then there're the pristine beaches of Superior, where folk hunt agates or swim or simply spend a relaxing afternoon beneath a warming sun.

After which you might choose to bathe in the wonder of twilight as seen from the edge of the world's greatest inland sea and later marvel as the Milky Way blankets the sky one star at a time, an exquisite filigree undimmed by light pollution.

And being a creative, you will work, as the spirit moves.

Maybe you think it all seems daunting. That you're too utterly urban to risk the real world or it's too distant or maybe you're too old to engage it or that your particular creative effort is an unlikely fit for the program.

What's true is that artists grow excuses like an untended garden grows weeds.

The Residency's hosted a rich array of artists whose work runs the gamut. Writers. Photographers. Poets. A filmmaker. Sculptors, painters, composers, graphic artists and musicians. Ceramicists and a glass artist. Printmakers and more.

That includes an octogenarian painter, a ceramicist in from Australia and an installation sculptor who traveled from Tokyo. So there's that.

What these folk share is a commitment to creative effort and the rewards earned when willing to take a leap of faith in oneself. What they have in common is that they took a chance.

Did I mention the built in audience?

In return for Residency, your obligation is to donate a piece of work inspired by your stay and to give a public presentation during it -- the audience for which is involved, informed and friendly.

Can a working artist ask for more?

Yeah, the deadline for 2014 entry is March 31st and you might think that leaves little time to prepare.

All the same, most working artists have their best work compiled and at hand. So putting together a proper presentation takes at most a bit of judicious consideration and just a few hours time. I'm here to tell you that a modest if well considered effort expended late in the winter of 2012 paid off for me in spades come that autumn...

These last few years of fieldwork sparked by specific creative purpose then informed across a magnificent landscape populated by a diverse, indomitable people have indelibly informed me.

And with that, whatever light I possess is edged closer to lastingly perfect. A proper source of warmth for blood run thin once my day's grown long.

Of all the miles over all the months across country grand & hard, of the people, places, sights, sounds and smells, of the incredible history freely mixed with triumph and misery and truth and lies and glimpses of a regional future with promise unlimited -- even considering all that and more -- it's likely that my two weeks spent as a guest at Dan's Cabin will be the time I treasure most through the years.

So do yourself a favor; consider applying for an artist's residency  at the Porcupine Mountains. Do it for your work. Do it for yourself.

Put your very best effort on the line for something uncommon.

Again, click here, to stop procrastinating and get started.

And by all means please share this link with other creatives of all inclination everywhere, whether via Google or Twitter or Facebook or good old fashioned word of mouth.

Because creative conversation is the name of the game and you never can tell where that'll lead...

The Porcupine Mountains, Part 2

To me, one of the most stunning developments in American politics over the last 40 years or so is the indiscriminate hatred of government that drives so much of our freshly populist political rhetoric.

That used to be merely the province of hippies, malcontents and other outsiders. Regular folk and mainstream opinion countered that desultory view with determination born of an innately positive attitude and approach that had been passed down to them across generations.

Today, demagogues that relentlessly peddle this new delivered wisdom want us to buy into the silly notion that an outright rejection of our Government is a core value of the American character.

Self-destructive stuff and nonsense, is what that is. Long ago, Mr. Lincoln said: "A house divided against itself cannot stand" and he was right. He's still right.

Mind you, I'm not saying folk should just blindly trust their government, American or otherwise. Far from it. Anyone who came of age after the 1950's knows damned well that's unwise. But American government belongs to all of us, just the same. And we must each take full responsibility for it, as the ongoing American Experiment in liberty requires collaboration among free citizens or it fails.

It's hard to counter delivered wisdom, especially when pandering to people's fears and despair is so effective.

But if you're tired of all the gloom & doom relentlessly tossed your way and would like a short shot of real evidence that when people of good will partner with their government things still work the way they're supposed to, or if you've come to believe such things are no longer possible, you need look no farther than the Porcupine Mountains for proof positive that the shrieking fear mongers who so beset the public conversation these days are feeding you a steaming pile of of hooey.

Because there, in a region ravaged by hard times, Americans continue to make things better for all of us by partnering with their government and working together for common cause...

A People and Their Government at Work (Revised)

In the arena of contemporary public discourse, American government and government workers are routinely disrespected. How and why that happened doesn't much concern us here.

What's true is that a constituency exists for each taxpayer's penny spent, for everything the government spends those on. From warheads and surveillance to corporate welfare. From education and environmental remediation and public health, to the critical research necessary when trying to transition an entire civilization over to sustainable against a fast ticking resource clock.

Our inability to make government function wisely and at optimal efficiency leads us to a conversation where government itself seems rendered unsustainable. Save that almost everyone who yells "Cut!" is yelling about cutting yours not theirs.

So there'll always be some form of government left to deliver theirs, if not yours.

When fueled by the populist righteousness the democratization of all media has unleashed in us, the nuance of real life is too often obscured and our public conversation fails.

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park is a landscape eminently suited to the restoration of healthy human perspective.

It's prudent to remember that your liberty to visit was first secured through direct government response to local citizen advocacy, while today an ongoing and robust public/private partnership smooths your way.

Without government & government workers, it'd be just you alone against nearly a hundred square miles of undifferentiated, cut over northern stump field turned to slowly evolving desert, like out in the Kingston Plains. It's unlikely you'd ever think to go there or even guess this exists, much less be able to launch a boat on it or snap a picture when someone does:

The real world stays open 24/7, so folk wander the Porkies day and night through the seasons. It's impossible to tell exactly how many people visit the place during any given year. Something upwards of 300,000, best guess.

And they come from all over the world.

There're day trippers, trekkers, skiers and kayakers. Families with picnic baskets next to beach blankets. Fishermen and other dreamers. Hunters, bird watchers and gatherers of berries. Collectors of solitude, busloads of school kids, devoted travelers and casual tourists alike.

And during a few short weeks in autumn, the Porkies play host to flocks of migrating photographers who descend on the landscape like hundreds of busily clicking starlings, only to flee south again when leaves fall to a wet north wind.

So the Park employs 35 workers to provide for the education, amusement, comfort and safety of all comers.

That's 12 full time paid staff and 23 part time paid staff to ride herd on better than 300,000 of us let loose over 60,000 acres of otherwise inaccessible wildness, open to us 24 hours a day, 360 days a year.

These 35 government workers maintain 87 miles of mostly backcountry trail. They clean toilets, cut grass, respond courteously to every inquiry and rescue the careless. They fix what we break, replace what can't be fixed as budget allows and otherwise faithfully serve the needs of everyone who visits.

They do all this and oversee the natural health of the place too.

Being so near the Visitor Center during my stay at Dan's Cabin offered the opportunity to interact with Park staff far more than is usual for me, as my home turf of the Presque Isle is something of a lonely outpost by comparison. Near the end of my residency, I took advantage of one of the fine interpretive programs regularly offered by the Park.

Which is how I came to spend a bit of quality time with Lynette Score, government worker...

When traveling the Northwoods, many people hope to see a bear. The Porkies are a good place for that, as bears roam throughout the Park. But most times, bears know you're there before you do and head the other way. Typically, any easy way to turn the odds of a sighting in your favor invariably courts disaster for both you and them.

Near the end a damp, chill afternoon, Lynette greeted me and two other travelers at a trailhead, then led us into the woods to get up close and personal with the next best thing:

That's a split trunk Birch and one-time winter home to a bear. It's located not far from the road, but you'd never know it's there and in all my years bustering 'round the woods, I'd not stumbled across the like or I might've tried sleeping there myself during some mystic summer night of my youth.

In command of her subject and thoroughly engaging, Lynnette said this was likely the den of a mother bear, as those need to approach winter's rest with far greater care than do their male counterparts. After all, it's the female bear that carries the considerable burden of ursine reproduction, a truly extraordinary process that Lynette explained in terms easily understood.

On the other hand, guys being guys whatever the species, male bears sleep pretty much wherever. They might fall asleep up in the branches of a tree or just lay down atop a depression in the earth  and nod off, only later to be covered by a blanket of snow.

Take this little guy, who made his den smack dab in the middle of what in full winter becomes a groomed, cross-country ski trail and for a while at least, slept right through all the traffic that passed over him. With the discovery of the den, Park staff ceased grooming and rerouted the ski trail, though a trail cam later captured the bear's early emergence on a too warm day in March -- mighty wet but apparently none the worse for wear.

Image courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources

And while I know a bit about bears, it was Lynette who clued me in to the disagreement over whether or not they're true hibernators, because bears confound our necessarily reductive scientific criteria for that by occasionally waking up.

Like when some hapless intern is sent into a den and checks the hibernation temperature of a bear via insertion of an anal thermometer...

Lynette offered the opinion that whether bears aren't true hibernators or are the most adept practitioners of it, the bear shows us that the wonder of Nature resists efforts at reduction.

Of course, she was right.

During these hard times and especially considering her expertise, young Lynette Score might well have accepted full time employment downstate. Instead she chose to take her chances and work part time in the Porkies, hoping to make a home and build a career serving people and a landscape better suited to bears than to most humans.

Would that more of us had that kind of moxie or shared that level of commitment.

And from now on, whenever some cackling demagogue appropriates government workers as excuse to constrain a people's government down to the narrowest of selfish purpose, Lynette and her co-workers who've chosen tough careers in public service at publicly funded Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park will be among the folk I think of first.

*

Significantly, the Porkies benefits greatly from a working public/private partnership through which citizens and their government together put shoulders to the load and achieve common goals.

Having worked my way right through my residency, I was well & truly done and it was only on the last full day when finally I took all things easy.

Late that morning I stopped by the Folk School for a bit of business, but mostly for the warmth of friendly company. There I chatted while everyone else in the room busily made for themselves pretty much from scratch a traditional Finnish stringed instrument, called the kantele.

Later, they'd learn to play it.

Friends of the Porkies thrives on a deep loam of citizen advocacy and appropriate government response. As the Artist's Residency is one result of that, I came to know this fine organization far better than I previously had.

It's like a big old backwoods Hemlock. The landscape might be hard but the Hemlock rises tall and sturdy just the same, with roots spread wide and the whole of the thing essential to the forest's continuing health, as new life invariably springs from old.

First there's the famous Porcupine Mountains Folk School from which the artist's program, Dan's Cabin and a host of other good things stem.

Like the annual Porcupine Mountains Music Festival that attracts both talent and audience from far and wide.

Then, should you care to see what a top drawer workshop overseen by a diverse cooperative of dedicated creatives looks like, go here.

Across all the miles we've traveled together on this Odyssey, I've kept a special watch for sustainable practices because it's only through those that the region will ever escape the historically destructive cycle of boom & bust.

Turns out, the Superior region is a veritable Petri dish of those.

Prime among them is the personal partnership forged over time between concerned private citizens and their government, to advocate for ancient Kag wadjiw. That's a distinctly American relationship that assures a unique landscape and the people who live on it not merely survive but thrive, so that all of us are the better for it.

I'm the better for that partnership.

And if you're a working creative, please drop by next week to learn how you might be too...

The Porcupine Mountains Wilderness, Part 1

Following my stay at Dan's Cabin courtesy of the Artist in Residence Program run by the Friends of the Porkies, it became my business to do everything I can whenever I can to promote the interests of the place and of its most devoted Friends.

It's an ancient landscape that encourages profoundly personal connections that last a lifetime. My love for the place trails all the way back to the quick dimming years of my largely misspent youth. My adventures there gave me something precious to hold on to year after year and you'd think things couldn't get much more connected than that.

But during the penultimate trip of the fieldwork and due in no small part to the people who serve this magnificent land, I found much, much more. Through those couple of weeks spent as a guest in splendid isolation, the land and its people enriched me in ways I could never have anticipated.

With a new year's Artist in Residence Program submissions deadline approaching, the steep hills still shrouded in snow, Superior blanketed with an expanse of ice greater than she's seen in years and no end soon in sight, the time is ripe to dig back in to one of the most splendid places on the Superior Basin.

And to honor those good, hardy folk who devote their lives to its continued wellbeing. Because through their labors they honor the real world that sustains us.

So if you've never been to Superior's Porcupine Mountains, this is the year you should go. If you're an old lover of the place, start dreaming now of spring and making plans. And if you're an artist in need of solace and support, awash in an undifferentiated landscape of noise, read on over the next month or so while I fill you in on what riches to look forward to, gleaned during a visit to one of the region's authentic and lasting treasures...

The Porkies (Revised)

Though coincidentally home to porcupines, when viewed from the east this range of ancient mountains resembles a crouched Kag, or Porcupine. That's why they were first called Kag wadjiw by the Ojibwa.

The name stuck.

Due to years of citizen advocacy, this magnificent place was first secured as a park in 1945. With further protections since gained, the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness became the crown jewel of the Michigan State Parks system and today ranks among the finest relatively undisturbed landscapes on the Superior Basin. At its heart stands nearly 35,000 acres of virgin northern hardwood forest, said to be the largest such tract to remain in North America.

After near to twelve hours on the road and well past dark, on the first night of our first trip together to Superior, Heather and I arrived at the Presque Isle campground that marks the western end of the Porkies. We set up camp and devoured a stack of hastily prepared Bisquick pancakes slathered with rich currant jelly made by Heather's dad. Then we fell asleep to the whisper a big lake offers at its shore.

The next morning brought our first Northwoods lesson: leave a plastic jug of dough on the picnic table overnight and you'll then have to clean up after a critter savages the jug for to get at the bounty of tasty goo.

That morning also revealed that we'd pitched our tent at the forested edge of a high bluff looking roughly west over Superior, so it was all good.

Our relationship with the place now stretches near to 40 years and is indelibly personal.

In the Porkies Johnny, Heather and I bushwhacked over the hills searching for evidence of Copper Complex people, to no avail. Likewise our always half-hearted hunt for the crashed B-17, artifacts of which can be found in collections scattered throughout the region.

We didn't actually look for the legendary pictographs as told to Henry Schoolcraft by the Ojibwa shaman Chingwauk, but always hoped we'd somehow find them anyway. To date, no one has...

It was on the South Boundary Road at dusk where we encountered our first wild wolf, many years before those were properly reestablished and long before one could even imagine we'd be reengaged in killing them for sport, as we are again today.

This particular wolf worried over road kill just off the shoulder of the road.

We slowed and pulled alongside.

The wolf lifted its formidable head to address us with the most sentient eyes I've ever seen. In them was no sign of fear or aggression, though they fairly shone with awareness and make no mistake.

In response, Heather rolled up her window.

After a while the beast took a step back and drew itself in to the darkening wood. We left the wolf to its business and returned to camp exhilarated.

I've not again been so close to a wild wolf until autumn of 2012, during this Odyssey. To be sure it was under entirely different and unhappy circumstance, but again at the side of a road.

Heather and I spent half our honeymoon at the Presque Isle. On my 2nd night of marriage I managed to bounce a thankfully dull axe off the back of my hand. Heather fixed me then and the template for our continued wedded bliss was set.

Of all the fish I've ever tussled with, by far the finest of 'em swam the Presque Isle.

I once fought a fish upriver and down for more than forty minutes, tethered to only 6# test. Finally I gained the upper hand. At last I brought the behemoth to dark water at river's edge. In another moment, I'd need come to grips with a monster from the deep.

Then with a sharp thwipt no doubt heard all the way to Isle Royale, the line snapped. My knees shook while I used my left hand to pry loose my right from the rod. The name of the beast remains a mystery, but it's Promethean nature has never been in doubt.

Then there was the time the biggest Steelhead I've ever seen rose from beneath my feet as I retrieved a spinner through fast water while standing on an undercut shelf. I swear she never moved a muscle of her brightly colored flanks and was simply one with the current so that when the spinner reached just there she was there too, to kiss it softly as it passed. And the fight was on.

For... I dunno, maybe three seconds. Seemed like forever then as now, so amazing the sight and rich my memory of it.

Funny, how often fisher folk's greatest tales involve no fish at all or the one that got away. Best leave that to ponder for people who don't fish...

And did I mention that the South Boundary Road is my favorite drive anywhere? Miles of classic two lane blacktop rolling up and down and all throughout the naturally indistinct boundary between governmentally sanctioned wilderness and not.

The Porcupine Mountains Wilderness is wonderland. A complex, richly rare landscape ideally suited to adventure and quiet contemplation in turn and at your discretion.

It's for that and because I take the place so personally, that we'll spend some bit of time there over the next few weeks...

King Copper -- Nonesuch (Revisited & Revised)

Throughout this Odyssey, I've referred to the always shifting promise of future prosperity offered by resource extractors in exchange for us letting them take the last of the region's minerals today as a lie.

That's not politics, that's the truth.

Better than 170 year's worth of evidence in support of this hard truth litters Superior's basin, perhaps no place in the region more vividly and readily accessible than on the Keweenaw Copper Range and the Gogebic Iron Range.

At some point and no matter how desperate the times, we must stop buying into the lie. Now that what's left of the copper and the iron is down to the last of it and if we buy in one more time there'll never again be a choice to be made, the time to stand fast against the siren song of profit is now.

Since we'll spend February revisiting the Porkies, it's appropriate that I offer up Nonesuch as Exhibit A of how some of the hardest working folk there ever were found themselves way down the pecking order when it came to resource extraction and the wealth outsiders glean from the landscape through the sweat and pain and labor and hopes of people who then prove every bit as disposable as is iron or copper.

And who in the long run matter less than either, when it comes to profits.

Don't believe me? Fine. There's no good reason to take my word for anything and with dozens of sites scattered across the region, you can go see for yourself.

So next time you're near the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness, take a worthy side trip.

Because these days the Park conducts regularly scheduled tours of Nonesuch, a bustling town of 300 or so hardworking souls and their families that once shook the ancient hills and blackened the sky with the sights, sounds & smells of a promised, lasting prosperity.

And which today is no more...

 

Image courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources

The special relationship between copper and people across the Superior region dates back at least 7,000 years because geology made it easy.

Ordinarily underground, around the lake and significantly along the Keweenaw Fault, this easily worked metal was found on or just under the ground; casually discovered, easily accessed and put to handy use. Many of our most famous historic mines were first dug on prehistoric pits and those were first dug with tools of stone often lashed with hide to wood.

By the middle 1800’s, much of the Upper Peninsula was being stripped of its great forests. By the turn of the century, what was left by the lumbermen fell to the axe of folk that moved in after. Notable were miners, who needed wood not only to fuel the fires of industry but to warm hearth & home.

Before long the landscape that once and again nurtures wilderness resembled post-nuclear catastrophe. But at the time, it looked only like progress.

During the great copper era of the 19^th Century, dozens of working mines dotted the region and if you add the wildcatters and unnamed speculations, the number climbs exponentially from there. Despite the tens of millions of 1880’s dollars invested and the mountains of material hauled from the ground through the heroic toil of thousands of mostly immigrant miners, only a rare handful of operations ever sustained any profit at all.

That brings us to Nonesuch.

Located at the southeast corner of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Nonesuch operated in fits and starts under five different owners roughly from 1867 to 1912. Its prime years were 1879-1881, when the mine is said to have returned a profit, however marginal.

The town built to support the mine peaked at perhaps 300 souls. Though little is known of cultural life specific to Nonesuch, there was a school, a boarding house, stores, a stagecoach stop and other trappings of small town community. Still, life for the workers and their families was hard and not just by modern standards. Nonesuch lost its post office in 1887, when the machinery at the mine was disassembled and shipped away to other, more likely ventures.

While some folk stayed on and though the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company later dropped some 200 tons of equipment at Nonesuch to try again, it was all downhill from there.

The town of Nonesuch as it appears today

When I first went in to Nonesuch, the site was privately owned and thoroughly abandoned. A friend said: “Watch for the sharp turn in the South Boundary Road. There’s short gravel to park on, behind the trees. Walk the old road and when the trail hangs a left, turn right and go down the hill. Keep your eyes open.”

Our eyes were soon wide open because what litters that steep hill blanketed with dense forest are sights like this:

Huge dark stones mortared into thick, towering walls rise through obscurity in a wilderness that’s worked for more than 100 years to reclaim those stones for its own.

It’s hard to overstate the case for how special this place is. Walking the trail down that hill to catch first sight of the ruins of the Nonesuch mine is akin to an explorer being caught unawares by remnants of a great race of builders, with only mysterious works of stone as evidence of their existence.

The problem at Nonesuch was that unlike most of the rest of the Keweenaw where copper was found in thick veins or even in boulders on the surface, here the commodity is particularly fine and all but inseparable from within a bed of sandstone and underlying shale. The customary method of separating copper from poor rock in a stamp mill didn't work with Nonesuch copper.

But where there’s a resource to be tapped, human ingenuity is brought to bear.

During the 1880’s, the Nonesuch Syndicate engaged in a radical process to recover copper by dissolving host rock in harsh chemicals, to cull metal from waste. Though the process later went on to great success, this first attempt failed.

Evidence remains of the chemical leaching process tried at Nonesuch

In the ‘Copper Handbook of 1902', Horace Stevens wrote of Nonesuch:

“Discovered in 1865, the mine was first opened in 1867, since which time it has swallowed several large fortunes, and has yielded the insignificant amount of 180 tons 1,072 pounds of refined copper from one of the richest beds of copper-bearing rock ever opened.

“The copper is there -- millions and millions of pounds of it, not worth a penny a ton in the mine. Someday the problem will be solved and a new crop of millionaires made from Nonesuch.”

And that, as they say, was that. I suppose those millions and millions of pounds of copper are still there. For certain, no new crop of millionaires has been made from it.

Today Nonesuch is protected by the Michigan DNR and the Keweenaw National Historic Park, which combined efforts help protect the last vestiges of regional cultural heritage before those are swallowed by time made harsher through abandonment and neglect.

There’s never been a complete archeological survey taken at Nonesuch. Consider please, that the removal of artifacts at this or any historical site is the destruction of knowledge.  Not merely a crime by law, it’s a crime against our living cultural heritage.

So when you visit Nonesuch, be content to stand in awe of what the industry of our forebears left in their stead and of how the wilderness reclaims it now, right before your eyes. Sit quietly beside those sentinel walls amidst towering trees. Try to imagine what the place was like at its height -- the stench of caustic chemicals in the air, the sounds of axmen making constant fuel from dwindling timber, the persistent pounding of a stamp mill shaking the hill upon which it’s still perched and everywhere the sweat of labor and lives spent to little or no profitable end.

But most of all, listen for the voices of children. Life at Nonesuch wasn’t unrelieved, especially for them. 125 years ago, children ran this hill between these stone walls and down by the river the air rang with laughter.