The Porkies

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 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.

From a 4x5 transparency

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 later clean up after a critter ambles along and savages the jug for to get at the bounty of tasty goo while you're otherwise oblivious.

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

Heather, from a vintage 35mm negative

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.

Me & Johnny, from a vintage 35mm negative taken by Heather

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 engaged in civic conversation about hunting wolves, as we are again today.

This particular wolf instead 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 could be found no sign of fear or aggression, though they fairly shone with a remarkable awareness and make no mistake.

In response, Heather rolled up her window.

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

I've not again been so close to a wild wolf until last autumn, during this Odyssey. To be sure it was under entirely different circumstance but again at the side of a road, which is an unhappy story for another time.

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 there and our template for wedded bliss was set.

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

Heather fishing the mouth of the Presque Isle, from a vintage 4x5

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.

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 perched upon an undercut shelf. I swear she never moved a muscle of her brightly colored flanks and became simply one with the current so when that 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...

Treasure Trove

Heather and I share a love of books.

Because our interests are broad and run deep or may be obscure, we especially love old books. And while compiling the bibliography for this project, it struck me again how valuable that love is to learning, as a significant number of titles on the list are out of print but all I had to do to avail myself of the knowledge in 'em was to reach over to the shelves and dig in.

For myself, I've always loved fishing as much or more than catching...

When you walk into a place with rows of shelves stacked full with books from floor to ceiling and the scent of old paper and bindings and wisdom wafts from the walls like incense in a gothic cathedral, the sense of anticipation is palpable because you just never know what wonders you'll find.

Maybe it's a vintage paperback of Traver's folksy Small Town D.A., only tricked out with lurid cover art better suited to Mickey Spillane and too lurid at twice the price to pass up. Or a first edition of Barry Lopez's towering achievement, Of Wolves and Men. Or a moisture bowed and somewhat beat but otherwise sound copy of Sigurd Olson's Wilderness Days, signed by the author.

Maybe you leave the store content that for all you've seen and tried but came up empty anyway, every day in the field is a day well spent, regardless of outcome.

The best of it is when you reach for a title you don't recognise to discover something you never knew existed and it turns out to be essential. Then when you get it home and settle in to read you find a note or news clipping or pressed leaf left by someone else who thought so too, a gift along the trail to learning. Then you gently put it back where you found it, so someday another like-minded traveler will open the book and wonder at the same gift.

Stores where you can hunt the treasure of used, rare or out of print books are fast fading from the landscape, victims of rapidly changing technology and the cultural mores that change with it.  Sure, you can shop on the Internet and I do, but the experience is never quite the same. It's not tactile.

Luckily for travelers around Superior, there remains a better option.

Chequamegon Books is a mainstay in tiny Washburn WI, near the base of the Bayfield Peninsula and hard by fabled Chequamegon Bay. It's one of our favorite stops around all the lake.

Richard & Carol Avol owned Avol's Books in Madison WI from 1979 until 1994. This last summer we traveled to Madison for the first time in years and went looking for our favorite bookstores in town but didn't find them. I wonder now if Avol's wasn't one of those, the timing's right.

Pretty much everywhere but especially true of big cities, the last few decades brought fundamental change to Madison, including steep hikes in the costs of living and/or doing business.  Unable to buy a building despite repeated attempts and though they were making a go of it, in the face of regular rent increases Richard & Carol weren't enjoying their careers as booksellers as much as they ought. So they decided to move on.

With friends from Madison who'd helped start the Big Top Chautauqua and having visited the place in all seasons, the Avols chose the Chequamegon Bay area for their new home. It took some years to find exactly the right building and a couple more to sell the business in Madison. Finally, they put down their stake in Washburn, at the eastern base of the Bayfield Peninsula and hard by Chequamegon Bay.

The search for a better life brought them north, as it has so many others. It's a path many more desire to follow and those of us who haven't yet take heart from those who have.

Folk don't get rich by selling books. For Richard & Carol it's their sole means of support, which is unusual in the book selling business these days. They've renovated their building, live upstairs from the shop and spend long hours at the business.

From Richard Avol:

Most of the visitors who come into our store are amazed such a store exists in this remote rural area. Many are book lovers and are very glad we are here. Most wish they could leave the cities they reside in and do something like we have done. It gives us pleasure to provide a bookstore for them that has real books in all fields, in large quantities on the shelves for visitors to handle, and we hope buy.

Heather & I do our part -- sometimes by the armful -- each & every time we visit the region. We build extra hours into any day planned for the Bayfield Peninsula because there exploration doesn't end when headed back towards Bessemer and we know just how rich the rewards might be, with one final stop made in Washburn.

Today Chequamegon Books is a fixture along a revitalized main street in Washburn. The day I visited in November, their coffee machine was on the fritz and that was the talk of the town. Must be some mighty fine coffee...

Of bookstores, Novelist Richard Russo wrote: ...they're the physical manifestation of the world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

Nowhere around the Basin is the truth of that more evident than at Chequamegon Books, where Richard & Carol Avol continue to honor that conversation through their life's work.

So stop on by and dig in 'cause though you never can tell what treasure you'll find there, you're absolutely assured of being in the very best of company while fully immersed in that most thrilling conversation that never ends...

Guest Shots -- The Sea Caves of Cornucopia

The fieldwork for this project was originally scheduled to run a single year, like it says up on the header. As it stands, we went 15 months.

With each passing day it grows more unlikely that I'll manage a coda. I'm good with that 'cause if the fieldwork ended at the Presque Isle River in November, then that was an entirely appropriate place for it, during some of the most perfect light of the entire gig.

While I've spent this winter largely housebound, others have been out and about. So this week we've turned things over to friends.

Photographers Philip J. Kucera & Betsy Wesselhoft recently walked Superior ice to work the fabled sea caves off Cornucopia and have generously agreed to share.

We'll let Phil go first:

Image Courtesy of Betsy Wesselhoft

Betsy & I have traveled the south shore of Lake Superior for a little over two years, gathering material for a photo exhibition. It's a collaborative effort to present two perspectives on the overlooked and secret sites of Superior's basin.

I'll admit we're an odd couple with the tying bind being our love of photography, the wonder of discovery...and the never ending quest for a decent noon meal on the road.

Betsy & Phil about to enjoy a decent noon meal at Maggie's in Bayfield

A friend of Betsy's sums us up with "You guys should title the exhibit The Lady and the Curmudgeon". Maybe she's right.

I'll try to describe us.

We met while covering a January 42k cross-country ski race in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It's cold up north in January, know what I mean? We're working the finish line as the skiers limp in. I'm shooting close-ups of bearded faces turned icicle white, eyes almost frozen shut, aid workers manhandling the afflicted. 42k in the snow and cold and wind chill well below zero. I don't know why I was out there.

And Betsy? We warm to a cup of coffee at a greasy spoon after the race and I scan through pictures on her LCD screen. Skiers approaching the finish line with poles flailing -- you can almost hear the triumphant shouts; smiling faces in every shot, couples hugging -- caught midstream and jumping for joy.

Looks to me like The Agony and the Ecstasy, I tell her. You must watch a lot of movies is the reply. Thus are partnerships born.

But the subject for today is the sea caves of the Bayfield Peninsula. After three long, warmer winters, we're finally able to photograph the amazing caves in January. With global warming stirring the waters of Superior, these days the big lake doesn't often freeze over.

Image courtesy of Philip J. Kucera

You reach the cave area on Wisconsin Hwy. 13, a few miles east of Cornucopia, Wisconsin. Watch for the Meyer's Road sign. It's a one mile-plus hike on snow and ice from the plowed parking area to the first of the caves. You'll walk on frozen water and the footing can be treacherous. We carry climber's crampons and use them when the ice is bad.

Image courtesy of Philip J. Kucera

The caves come under the aegis of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore. You can call the park hot line for info on ice conditions and access to the caves.

 It's an adventure for the hardy and the cautious.

If you've the spirit, you'll find yourself in icy wonderland.

Image courtesy of Philip J. Kucera

I'll turn it over to Betsy to tell you about our recent walk out on the ice...

Image Courtesy of Philip J. Kucera

At the bottom of the stairs to Meyer’s Beach, we encountered a family of four returning from their walk to the iced over sea caves.

Seeing the two young daughters beam with the pride of conquering the caves triggered a random memory. An Olympic coach told his adult gymnasts before competition: “If little girls can do it, you can”.

I had my mantra for this excursion.

Left foot, right foot, one step at a time. This isn’t so bad. I can tell we're walking the shore as there's dirt in the snow. It’s cold, but I'm dressed for it and at least in this one regard, I’m comfortable.

After about twenty minutes we're on the ice. It’s lumpy but solid and my photography partner says it's eight inches thick.  He doesn’t know just how much a chicken I am at heart. Or maybe he does.  He mentions that I shouldn't let noises heard out here bother me. Check.

Imagine if you will a suburban-raised woman of a certain age smack dab outside her comfort zone.  Having heard about the beauty of the sea caves, I've anticipated seeing them for years and have often envisioned myself on the wrong side of the ice. It’s not a happy thought.

Enough of that. I’m on the right side of the ice and am actually breathing normally, though my senses are on full alert and my heart is grabbed by the very first turn we make.  I start shooting and don’t want to stop. Can I capture this? Can I bring a piece of this home in my black-camera-wonder?

Phil beckons me on to the next area. Keep moving, says he. There is so much more.

He’s right.

Image Courtesy of Betsy Wesselhoft

We encounter more folks on the ice and everyone is filled with goodwill. We're out together in this magical place where the only price for admission is a bit of bravery and a $3.00 parking fee, paid on the honor system. For this place where jaws drop and eyes widen with each new view. For this place where danger lurks all around, in the caprice of ice and the winds it shifts with.

"Look in here," Phil says. "Hoarfrost".

There are millions of ultra fine strands of ice inside the cave. These ephemeral beauties evade our ability to capture without the benefit of ground-hugging tripods. We take memory shots and walk on.

After a bit, Phil wanders while I stay grounded where I'm at. I take a deeper look all around, allowing this other-planet view to settle into my soul. It's like nothing I've ever experienced.

The sun goes down behind the overcast sky.

Phil waltzes back through uneven ice in his normal deft manner as I anticipate the walk back. He never slips and refuses any kind of a walking stick. Earlier, I took a quick digger even with mine.

On this day of days, we're last to head off the ice.

I follow Phil around the outer edge of an ice ridge and that takes us a significant distance from shore. I wonder how we'll get across this high ridge to reach the shoreline. A wave of anxiety rolls through me.

"If little girls can do it…"

Breathe. Left. Right. Left. Right. A few long minutes later an opening appears and a clear path is presented. Gratitude resonates throughout my being as I glance upward.

Let the light seep away I think to myself, since we're now at the base of the stairs.

Soon we're back in the warmth of the car. Contentment fills time and space as we journey back to Ironwood.

If women can claim notches on their belts (and of course we can), I’m claiming this one. I’ve faced my fear of the ice and returned with evidence of the day to share. That night as I drift off to sleep, my gratitude goes out to all little girls who inspire us to take risks.

And to Phil, who knew not only that I could walk the ice, but how enriched I'd be once I had.

Image Courtesy of Betsy Wesselhoft

Snapshots -- The Bayfield Peninsula

Peninsulas are blessed with special properties. Surrounded by water, they're generally cooler in summer, warmer in winter and often receive more moisture than the mainland during the course of any given season.

Wisconsin's ancient Bayfield Peninsula is today noted for apple orchards and berries. In springtime the place is positively riotous with blossoms. Each fall the Bayfield Apple Festival draws visitors from far & wide to fill up motel rooms all the way to Bessemer, MI and that's a fair piece.

Cornucopia

Cornucopia WI is at a place on Superior so splendid that if it weren't resolutely remote we'd have long ago surrendered it over to mansions on gated acreage.

As it stands, State Highway 13 cruises right through the place.

The sea caves near Cornucopia is where we wanted to be long about this time last year and where we ought to be long about now. It's where I'd hoped to make my last trek as a large format shooter -- a mile or so across Superior ice to capture even a mean representation of natural wonders I suspect would weaken my knees on first sight.

Except that last year extraordinary seasons of temperate conditions combined with ongoing drought to make the ice unsafe all winter through.

Then this year, when the ice path has already been intermittently open, I've been unable to get there. Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you, which is the way it goes in fieldwork & in life, too.

All the same, should I ever remake myself as a full-fledged digital imager, a visit to Cornucopia would be high on my list. In addition to a commercial fishing museum, pleasant marinas, a great beach, Halverson's Fisheries and those aforementioned sea caves, there is in Cornucopia a collection of old fishing vessels, permanently beached.

These too, have mostly defeated my every effort to capture them...

Cornucopia is the only place I know where a photographer with a keen eye can work from gentle distance the ragged interiors of boats like these. And what makes the sight so extraordinary in even perfect light doesn't translate to film.

Can't translate to film, really.

To properly capture these requires the full dynamic range of pro digital capability, processed through the finest software via the deft touch of a digital artist.

To make these old boats sing their faded fisherman's songs requires the application of a new aesthetic.

So if that interests you, by all means go see for yourself. Regardless of season.

And if in the interim winter remains what memory says it should be and I grow suddenly younger in the bargain, look towards the horizon for a dark speck trailing a sled across a craggy desert of white.

That'll be me on one last quest in this search for perfect light...

Frog Bay Tribal National Park

It's not often you get to visit a one of a kind, first of a kind kinda thing.

Out of Cornucopia, take WI 13 east across the Bayfield Peninsula to the town of Red Cliff, which from Buffalo Bay faces a Superior archipelago called the Apostle Islands.

Hang a left on to Blueberry Lane at the Legendary Waters Casino. Now you're on sovereign territory of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and if your penchant is to cheat the speed limit, don't do that here.

After a piece, turn right on Frog Bay Road and take that to the end. Park at the small lot freshly carved from the woods. Walk the old road on down until you come to a trail marker.

Then step in to the first Tribal National Park in America.

At 89 acres of boreal forest rising from a quarter mile of pristine beach protected from the big lake by a clutch of Apostle Islands, it's barely a sliver of land. But outsized importance resonates from the place like the call of a loon carried on a freshening breeze after a long, hard winter.

Used to be, all the land hereabouts was Indian land. The journey of the Ojibwa People led them directly to here. They planned to stay forever and so far, have.

After treaties and reservations and white folk's claim to all things American, Indian land hereabouts was reduced mostly to the 14,000 acre Red Cliff Reservation. Through the years and for a variety of reasons, today nearly 50% of reservation land is owned by someone not Ojibwa. Including the Frog Bay estuary and traditional Ojibwa rice beds, apparently.

And most of what remains of Indian land is landlocked, so a proud people whose spirit is fed & replenished by great waters are withheld from their natural heritage and made the poorer for it.

Frog Bay Tribal National Park changes that. Because of where it leads, as much as for what it is.

Home to a century of regrowth undisturbed, this snatch of primordial forest hosts all the critters emblematic of northern wildness, including bear and wolf. It's safe haven to some 90 species of birds. And in the shaded ravines of the place there thrives a community of rare plant life.

Once again owned by the Red Cliff Band of Chippewa and with a conservation easement held in perpetuity by the Bayfield Regional Conservancy, the story of this repatriation is perhaps best told here.

It's a narrative of multi-cultural, public/private cooperation between people who've always known and those who've of late come to know that the landscape of Superior informs those who live on it and when we try to bend this land to our will, we degrade not only it but ourselves in the bargain.

Frog Bay Tribal National Park opened to the public in August, 2012. On that occasion, tribal Vice-Chairman Marvin Defoe said this:

It's an environment that is conducive to practicing solitude. I'm hoping that users of this park will practice the art of listening. Listen to the water. Listen to the trees. Listen.

The creation of this Park demonstrates that today we're listening better to each other, which is a good and necessary start.

Bayfield

Image courtesy of the Bayfield Chamber of Commerce

My favorite small towns on Superior are those that once were fishing villages. The ones I'm most drawn to are those few that still run commercial boats.

As headquarters for the Apostle Islands, Bayfield has long since been given over to recreational concern. But they still run commercial boats out of there and there're times in Bayfield when near everything's like it once was and the town breathes deeply with the ancient rhythm of men setting off through the dark in small wooden boats, to ply fish from big water.

When Heather & I first visited near to 40 years ago, Bayfield was cozy if shopworn. It's more prosperous today and probably not as cozy either, but neither is it as frenetic and expensive as Grand Marais MN nor as isolated as Grand Marais MI, from where they no longer run any boats anyway.

Image courtesy of Philip J. Kucera

And Bayfield overlooks that magnificent archipelago, a sacred place where human habitation goes back to when there was only oral history, where later in the story all the foibles and venalities and glories of modern history are on regular display, ever since civilization first visited the place.

I like Bayfield most in the morning, before the first light of dawn.

Rouse yourself maybe 4-ish, depending. Do what's necessary to get even marginally ready for the day. Wander down to the center of town and walk the dark streets near the water. When you see where folk are already gathered for coffee and breakfast, go on in and get something for what ails 'ya.

With the first streaks of light in the sky, go back out to the water. Likely, you'll hear the big diesel engines cough awake.

Secure comfortable vantage along darkly glistening Superior as folk turn to it to feed a people. It's a form of worship as old as man. Seagulls trail in loud celebration behind. Watch the procession until it's but a speck on the sea or otherwise lost around the far edge of a dark, bristling island.

Turn around to find Bayfield proper stretching in its bed, and you already a full day ahead.

Some hours later, pass through the bustling tourist traffic to walk back over to the working mariner's side of town and greet the boats as they return to dock. Marvel at the great boxes loaded with ice and freshly caught fish, lifted to the dock in the strong, weather-worn arms of fishermen.

Then when evening approaches and the long day is near to over, visit one of the places in town that serves local fare and indulge yourself.

Rarely will fresh fish ever taste better.

King Copper - Ghosts of Victoria

The Cushin Mine opened in 1849, downriver a bit from where Julius Eldred snatched the Copper Rock of Lake Superior and over the hills a piece from the famous Minnesota Mine. It went through a succession of owners, was reorganized, suffered a variety of disasters and operated intermittently until 1899, when a half dozen companies in the area combined assets to create the last Victoria.

By the turn of the 20th Century, the denuded landscape caused a fuel shortage. The Victoria brought in a Canadian inventor who built an air compressor driven by the power of the Ontonagon River and the new operation was in business.

High atop a hill they built their company town, Victoria, MI.

Though the ore was poor quality, nearly 20 million pounds of refined copper was produced from thereabouts. In 1917, the town numbered a robust 750 souls and for a while life at Victoria was likely about as good as it got in the Superior wilds, with the rest of the world at war.

Image Courtesy of the Society for the Restoration of Old Victoria

In 1921 the mine closed and Victoria was mostly abandoned.

*

Company town sites are everywhere across Superior's basin.

Some remain home to modest communities of folk and are innocuous; small houses sided or painted, plastic deer set on scrappy, sloping  lawns. When there's no historical signage and often there's not, a casual visitor mightn't know there was ever a mine.

Except that most all the houses are built exactly the same, decades prior to subdivisions cutting their swath across an American landscape.

Often, a couple of the houses are notably fancier and set off from the rest, while some are just wrecks. Maybe there's a crumbling three story brick school that someone lives in a portion of. Or even a shuttered hospital, its tiny parking lot choked with weeds and a dead car or two.

All for a few dozen residents perched atop a hardscrabble hill at least half to the middle of nowhere, which has gotta make you wonder...

Many (most?) Company towns are today lost to a resurgent landscape.

A handful of sites are preserved by people whose efforts ought be held with those folk who first made the mark, who carved a place from the wild to live and work and die there. At these sites our collective past isn't irretrievably lost.

Victoria is such a place.

All remaining images taken from 4x5 or 120mm Transparency

The Captain's house still oversees a smattering of private homes on the hill, just up from the wreckage of the last workings and the huge pile of tailings it bequeathed the landscape. Down the hill stands a clutch of wooden cabins, the largest group of vintage log homes in the region that remain on original foundations.

Officially The Old Victoria Restoration, the site is operated by the Society for the Restoration of Old Victoria, which is made up mostly of neighbors and of late is associated with the Keweenaw National Historic Park. My own association with Victoria goes back better than 30 years.

Speaking strictly as a photographer, I prefer my architectural history mostly wrecked.

The geometry of wreckage informs my best work. But there're only so many abandoned school buildings and factories and farmhouses and barns left to crawl through and it can be dangerous, too. I figured out a long time ago that working historic sites bears its own distinct rewards.

None more so than Victoria. Or 'Vic', as she's called by friends.

Across the Superior Basin is a wealth of culture and history preserved by the will of local folk. It's a never-ending task that grows only more intensive with time. The work is hard and too often mostly thankless. The pay (when there's any at all) is meager. The hours are long and can be lonely.

It's a labor of love. Folk devote their lives to it so that our children & our children's children will know that sometimes, the song of who we were might still be heard in places where once we lived.

During our Search for Perfect Light it's the docents and caretakers and site managers and interpreters and Friends of wherever who've proven most helpful to the project. They welcome fellow travelers.

Through my extended association with Victoria, I count two of these indomitable people as personal friends.

Lynette's visited the place since she was a child, then came around a few years ago as a docent and stuck, which wasn't the previous pattern for docents. She's bright & personable and has a handle on the formalities introduced to the site through its association with the Feds. Lynette's now the Interpretive Manger of Old Victoria, which means most days it's she that'll greet you when you show up at the door.

That's a tough job.

In addition to myriad 'behind the scenes' things that need be done on a regular basis -- from sweeping dead flies out of cabins to pondering a maze of federal stipulation -- Lynette's also the public face of the place, whether for the occasional tourist or 30 hyper kids suddenly spilled from a school bus.

I've known Victoria during hard seasons when you wondered if it could hold on. Lynette's been a godsend.

Which brings me to Patty -- over some decades and at various times the Site Manager, President and today Director of Old Victoria.

Patty is like a tree prevailing upon a windswept landscape and is well suited to her hard place. Compassionate, whip smart, skeptical, capable, protective and occasionally bawdy. A resolute sufferer of no fools and funny as hell.

You don't get to hear my Patty stories.

Except one year I got ambitious and called to ask if we could open the place at night during a full moon so I could capture it like it was alive. I'd rent a cottage on the hill for two nights to be certain.

And a couple months later there we were in the gloaming, working together to call the ghosts of Victoria.

Smoke wafted from a chimney and the place was aglow well before the last birds turned in for the night. A group of hikers coming off the national North Country Trail saw the lights and stopped on by, just like old times. Patty played hostess while I mostly worked until full dark when the hikers retired for camp and Patty for home.

I sat for a while, alone with the ghosts.

Fine folk like Patty and Lynette and all the others across the basin take our history in their hands to cradle it until a next generation comes along and does the same.

Or until such time as resurgent wildness, rural poverty and even cultural indifference combine to let it slip through our collective fingers, as it often does.

All the same, when my images outlive me via the Internet and when the Victoria Restoration operated by the Society for the Restoration of Old Victoria outlives Patty, someone will erect a sign there saying that the place never would have survived as well as it has, without Patty dedicated the bulk of her adult life to the task.

Since neither of us will be around to see that sign, I'll get a jump on the proceedings by posting my favorite image of Patty here -- dedicated not only to her, but to every preservationist at work around the basin.

And to all the ghosts of Superior. Past, present or future...