And to dust...

Some years ago I learned of a sawdust burner still standing in the old mill town of Nahma, MI. On the Great Lakes that's rarer even than headframes, which once fairly littered both the Copper and the Iron ranges of Superior. These days what headframes remain are prized by preservationist's and woe be to you, should one fall down on your watch.

First visit to Nahma, I caught this on 4x5 chrome:

That happened when one year after Heather and I visited Fayette, we searched out this logging era relic. It's in the neighborhood of Fayette. I put the burner on the list, right next to the Thompson State Fish Hatchery.

When on the road never miss a fish hatchery. Just sayin', speaking of fish.

Anyway, apart from being a bit off the well beaten path, once you arrive in Nahma the sawdust burner's easy to find:

I don't believe the town's iconic leftover from glory days tilted quite so much that afternoon, when I crawled into it and Heather handed me the Linhof then stood watch outside, in case my being inside proved unwise. Probably, I entered here. About the only thing missing is the Abandon all Hope sign:

This spring when returning from Grand Marais and the Kingston Plains via Fayette, I traveled alone.

Nothing much is what it used to be and preservationists notwithstanding, life's dirty little secret is that it mostly never was. Certainly, Nahma's prized sawdust burner, having been built by the Bay de Noquet Lumber Company circa 1888 – 1893, operated until 1951 and left fallow after that is significantly degraded since last I visited.

Inevitably at some point the odds turn against you. As regards this burner, because I'd already been there done that and using large format chrome no less, I nurtured no particular ambition to venture inside. Outside, decrepitude now plainly reveals the structure's once sturdy construction of limestone and brick, sheathed in cast iron.

There's a plethora of what're alternately called Wigwam, Tepee or Beehive sawdust burners still standing out west, but evidence of only one other such artifact remaining anywhere else around the Great Lakes, where once we denuded old growth forests to build great cities to the south. That burner's at a splendidly abandoned sawmill in Balaclava Ontario near Lake Huron and it may or may not still be standing, as 2006 is akin to dog years when a thing's abandoned to northern winter's mercy.

By Ddeyell at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

It's likely little to none of the old growth White Pine purged from the Kingston Plains made its way down to Nahma, which fed primarily on local trees (why would that ever be a problem?) and mostly, at a different time.

Just the same, descending south from the Plains through Fayette and then to this once bustling sawmill town felt fitting. When it comes to old growth forests that's something of a trail of tears. For all the 2nd and 3rd growth woods along the way you wouldn't necessarily know that today, except scattered relics dot the landscape with remnants of failure hinting that once upon a time, something was definitely up:

Schoolcraft County, 2018

Note the American flags, bottom right corner of the image below, waving in the bright breeze of abandonment. What the hell does that mean?

These aren't an accident. They're not some coyote's trick. Are they like the little flags people fly on graves of soldiers to honor the fallen dead? Or is this what passes for defiance in these, our times? I'm not even sure I want to know...

Schoolcraft County, 2018

This year found the Kingston Plains awash in spectacular light. Some of the best of my career. More on that, later.

At least when the sun shines and fills Nahma's burner with fire from above instead of sparked by waste wood below, the light is always fine inside it. I'd bet with the fires doused nighttime's quite the thing in there and that local kids are intimately acquainted with it. Full sun's all I can speak of, firsthand.

On a shining spring afternoon, I took what might be my last best chance to poke the Nikon, if not quite my head, inside.

As much as anything the place resembles the construction of a near forgotten people. Perhaps they were surrounded by desert. Which of course this tower once more or less was, when all the timber was gone and the last sawdust burnt.

"Nahma" is derived from the Anishinabe word for sturgeon. Long ago, native people gathered at the mouth of the Sturgeon River on Big Bay De Noc and took sustenance from a prehistoric line of great beasts come in from the freshwater sea. Those fish inevitably returned each year to their natal stream. Folk could live on that, provided they also lived with it.

In time, the lumbermen arrived and the native people who knew the fish dispersed. If not by then soon after, the mighty sturgeon were gone as well. 'Wild' only takes so much human industry before it flees or fails.

For a while, this community named after a vanished fish prospered. Once the lumber ran out, the timber bosses took their hint from the sturgeon and the flowing wealth that created an illusion of prosperity was permanently stanched.

Far as I can tell, today no sturgeon returns each year to the river named after it. Yet the ancient beasts still swim big water nearby and the greatness of these fish is again recognized by men. That means there's hope yet, for the sturgeon.

Maybe not so much for the iconic sawdust burner at Nahma, the region's last of its kind. As of now it survives tilted on a grassy spit of land that reaches out into the bay, near where sturgeon and native peoples once thrived.

I for one hope the burner stands sentinel to failed history until the day the sturgeon return. Then let the thing go to dust.

That too, seems only fitting.