Grand Marais MI – Harbor of Safe Refuge, Part 2

It's said Grand Marais is the oldest non-Native place name on Lake Superior.  Maybe that's so, but it only figures haggard crews of vaguely white guys muscling wave battered canoes across open seas had occasion to call it other things, prior.

Some variation on safe refuge, I'd think. Thank god appended, depending.

In French, Grand Marais means great marsh. Since it's historically been a harbor not a marsh, some folk think the name got mistranslated from maré, or pond. No one knows for sure.

The town’s story is in many ways typical to white settlement along the Superior Basin, though exacerbated by isolation even in a region noted for it. Below, at the very end of the faraway point you can just make out the light standard detailed at the top of this page.

That ever-shifting mountain of sand hems the place in from the west. And what you don't know about the big water beyond won't hurt you unless you're on it, in which case it could kill you. This stretch of Superior nurses a wicked mean hunger for boats of all sizes.

Indians lived in and around these parts maybe ten thousand years. Then suddenly (as such things go), mostly they didn't. Despite the all-seeing eye of the ether, what natives called the spot before any white man ever thought of it remains unknown to me.

The first European on record visited in 1658. He seemed to like the place. Voyageurs came and went. In time, a trading post was built and a nascent village gathered around that. Commercial fishing commenced during the 1860's.

In the 1870's the lumbermen arrived. Soon, those were as locusts.

Civilization brought the requisite railway, saloons, a hospital, banks and a livery. Even a cigar factory, speaking to terminal isolation. Population peaked at over 2,000 souls. Grand Marais thrived until the first decade of the 20th century.

The lumber played out. Millworks closed. The locusts moved on.

Cook Curtis & Miller Sawmill machinery building

The train stopped running in 1910. Afterwards, you could either catch a packet freighter running this way then that along the lake or the stage from also isolated Seney, where at least they still had a train. To that point, the town shares much the same narrative as Fayette and Nahma to the south.

Except Lake Superior isn't Lake Michigan, so Grand Marais didn't suffer their fate. Commercial fishing helped sustain the place until after the first lamprey arrived in Superior courtesy of the Welland Canal, no later than 1938.

Then like the Indians, the pine and the train after that, soon the lake trout too were mostly gone.

For enterprise, what remained of the little boom & bust settlement turned primarily to tourism. That's about where we came in.

*

When Heather and I first visited Grand Marais, Jim Harrison might be found holding court at the Dunes Saloon, now called the Lake Superior Brewing Company. Harrison's camp was out near the Blind Sucker River.

One of the all-time great river names, that used to be the more prosaic 'Sucker River' lumbermen floated logs down. Later it was converted to a spring fed swamp and rechristened the 'Dead Sucker River'. Today, the Sucker runs officially Blind into the big lake.

By any name, from there Grand Marais is pretty well locked in by wilderness and wild water all the way east to Whitefish Point. That's a long way.

Jim Harrison's gone. Bertha Chilson's Cozy Corner Café now houses the Grand Marais Outfitters. On the town’s register of historic buildings, the retrofit is said to have made the first ‘green’ building in Alger County.

Even with that, Grand Marais still hosts a classic American diner. This one salvaged and relocated more than once, now restored to gleaming glory just down the curling harbor walk from Bertha’s old joint.

Ellen Airgood went to Grand Marais on a camping trip and fell in love.

Together with her husband Rick, they rescued a dilapidated diner of Pennsylvanian origin from a field in Illinois. Hauled that sucker up over the Mackinaw Bridge, which must’ve been quite the sight. Then with much love and hard work, at the edge of the wilderness they gave it new life as the West Bay Diner & Delicatessen.

Like Bertha Chilson before them, Ellen and Rick offer fine fare served with generosity of spirit from a smallish space in the most splendid of settings.

As if that's not enough, Ellen also made herself an Upper Peninsula author of note. Like Jim Harrison before her, she’s inspired by Grand Marais’ rich sense of history and place. From an interview with National Public Radio about her novel South of Superior:

“I really wanted to write about the north… I think it’s full of characters that I’m not sure they make people like this anymore – very independent, self-reliant, full of capability… You might almost be in another time, only you’re not. It’s a little bit magical.

To me the lake is a character. It shapes the community. It shapes the people. It shapes the personalities, the attitude towards life.”

*

After the Odyssey ended, the Kingston Plains was the site I most needed to work more. The place nags me. I positively pine for it.

Happily, the Plains is near storied Grand Marais. Still a harbor of safe refuge, as the voracious appetite of windblown sand, wild water and complex history combined somehow haven’t yet managed to eat it.

So should you one day make it off the road, out of the woods or in from Superior exhausted and hungry, haven waits at the great marsh (or pond). As it has for centuries.

And thank god for that, since all manner of safe refuge is necessary when trying to take full account of a wilderness called the Kingston Plains.

From the safety of Grand Marais, we'll head there next...

Grand Marais MI – Harbor of Safe Refuge, Part 1

Heather and I first spotted Grand Marais MI well after nightfall, decades ago. We'd forged our way in via uncertain roads working northeast from Munising through Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, keeping as close to Superior as possible.

The big lake drew us there. Dammed if we'd bypass it.

Armed with a county map book, we set off from Munising toward the tiny dot marked Grand Marais. Often, there wasn't much of a road. Sometimes none at all, indications on the map notwithstanding. Travel took longer than planned.

Not for the last time, our expectation of civilization deceived us. I'm over that now.

Late on arrival, Grand Marais felt about derelict that night. Of course it wasn't, but the distinction got lost in the dark. We secured lodgings and hungrier than sin, walked a deserted street overlooking the harbor toward the welcoming light of a diner.

Couldn't guess what manner of all American fare we'd find there. Likely didn't much care, so long as it passed for food.

Born of a Grand Marais fishing family, at the Cozy Corner Bertha Chilson offered a choice of fresh, all we could eat whitefish or lake trout, either way with fries. Order up and before long she delivered sweet mercy to the two hapless young tourists by placing on our table a holiday-sized platter overflowing with two massive flanks of crispy Superior fish spread wide atop a smoldering mountain of fries.

Can't remember what I exclaimed. Who knows, it might've even been incoherent. Call it youthful enthusiasm.

But I recall real well, Bertha's reply. And will I suppose, until recalling nothing anymore.

"Pfftt," the old fishmonger said. "I've a local comes in here eats two of those."

Probably, we didn't finish the fries. Made absolute mincemeat of the fish though.

After dinner Heather and I wandered along the harbor out to the old Coast Guard Station. Bats flitted through lamplight, where insects swarmed.

Near the end of a wooden dock swam the largest live fish I'd ever seen in the wild. I raced like the wind to the car for my gear then likewise, back to Heather and the fish. Sans fishing license, I flailed shimmering black water for gargantuan creatures wandering unmolested beneath brilliant stars. Heather amused herself with the bats.

Each in our own way, we reveled together in intimate proximity with Superior. We'd made safe harbor after all. And were damned well fed for our trouble, besides.

On that first night in Grand Marais, the lasting maritime character of the place seeped permanently into us. I don't recall it, but I'd bet we slept well.

*

The Coast Guard Station at Grand Marias was built in the 1940's, when the Guard took over the duties of the old U.S. Life-Saving Service, whose storm warriors are the stuff of Superior legend. In wooden boats, Surfmen rowed toward the gale against the ice and frigid seas to save lives.

Now the Coast Guard Station that replaced the Lifesaving Station of the Surfmen houses park staff for the National Lakeshore. Near there, you'll find memorials to fishermen lost at sea and also to a pair of young men.

This memorial to the fishermen reads, They have seen the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.

The one for two friends who died together too soon reminds us that big water is a slayer of innocence.

Inspiring stories of courage and heart-rending tales of loss are essential to the character of any maritime town's narrative. So it is with Grand Marais. Lifesavers are needed, at the only Harbor of Safe Refuge between Marquette and the Soo.

Except that's a lot of sand. And there's a whole lot more where that comes from.

Today, the grand marais wants to fill with sand.  The larger boats needed for life-saving on a really big, angry lake struggle getting in or out of what might soon enough be a grand marsh, were we to stop imposing our will upon it.

In any age, travelers whether by land or sea require safe harbor. No less so in the middle of nowhere. And in this particular middle of nowhere, Grand Marais is it.

During the early years of this century, irrational enthusiasm threatened to bring the housing boom down on this scenic lakeside tourist town. Shortly before the Great Recession busted that speculative nonsense good and hard, I stayed in the same motel Heather and I had during our initial visit, decades before.

The view remained the same but unlike back then, the room was unkempt. On the table next to an ancient TV was a leaflet, by way of explanation.

Condominium conversion coming, it read over theoretical schematics. 'Get in now' was the point.

I got it. Why waste money replacing grubby carpeting when a one time gut rehab promised a six figure return per unit?

A storm warning went up for early the next day. I turned eager to beat it and slept but a few short hours that night.

Bathed in splendid predawn light, I fled Grand Marais. Heading south past the Kingston Plains and back toward civilization, I feared for the little town's future. 

Wind warnings were already up for the Mackinac Bridge. Approaching Lake Michigan I turned right not left and was in for the long haul. Sleeping Bear Dunes would just have to wait.

Still a few hours out from reaching safe haven on the prairie, tornadic thunderstorms overtook me. Swimming with semis roaring three lanes at a time through blinding rain as darkness fell, I pushed on.

Travel took longer than planned.

Along a stretch of well-maintained Indiana road near my second Great Lake of the day, a roadside sniper abused folk's expectations of civilization. Caught in the wilderness at the height of the storm, I made it home just the same.

Meteorological Spring, One Long Week In

We come from the land of the ice and snow…

For some reason, that Led Zeppelin line about rampaging Northmen keeps coming to mind. Especially the savage alarm that precedes it, which just doesn't translate from Ah ah, as in the officially written lyrics. At the very least that's short two whole syllables, one of them quite long.

February was the fifth cloudiest on record, round these parts. As promised, this week a late chunk of broken polar vortex blew in. Tuesday, we shattered the record for lowest high temperature ever on that date. There's gotta be a better way to say it than 'low high', but there it is.

Up north, for the first time in more than two decades Lake Superior is 90% ice covered, about double what it was prior to February. That's well above forecasts, though it doesn't mean the sea caves of Cornucopia will be open, so don't get your hopes up on that.

Likewise, the mass of great northern ice that forestalls evaporation suggests it's unlikely the shipwrecks along Au Sable beach will be readily available this summer. So I'll chalk those off any speculative list.

What ice cut by open water running through the prairie says is that while there's a ways to yet go until ice and snow yield their wicked grip, the sun climbs higher in the sky by the day. Higher, faster, than any other month of the year. Even when you can't feel its good effects, the landscape absolutely does.

I've been working the new lens during brief forays to a local prairie remnant. The patch is only recently preserved and still full of invasive bull thistle. That'll take years of hard won volunteer work to clear, if ever.

It's good to get out but also to stay close to home. I don't much trust any winter, much less one that exerts a will to overstay. I've gone ice-fishing three times in my life and went through the ice twice. Lesson learned.

Thankfully, even this local bit of scrub prairie sports an abundance of natural riches.

One morning, coyotes mimicked a slow passing police siren. They sang and sang and sang, until they'd chased the intruder away. Couldn't beat the joy out of their song with a stick.

In my youth I typically enjoyed two successive autumns. The plan this year is to reap the benefit of two springs. The first, here on the prairie. The second, at Superior.

I've about had it with ice. The new lens checks out. I've restocked my fishing gear. The canoe is high, dry and ready.

Now there's only waiting on the world to catch up to my ambitions for it. Until then, an illusion of spring must serve...

Shining Light on the Prairie - Meteorological Spring

Maybe that title should better read meteoroillogical...

Freeze/thaw, freeze/thaw then freeze some more makes for a wicked nasty season.

Racing across three hundred miles of freezing big water before smacking into the prairie, arctic winds howl. The grayest February skies seen 'round these parts in fifty-seven years persistently weep. Even when a warming sun shines, the landscape is bone chill.

Every day the sun doesn't make an appearance and that's most of them, the world is cruelly muted. It's voice, a crackling murmur.

Still, signs of hope are found. And what's hope for anyway, if not to rely on during hard times?

Late autumn, I purged an accidental strawberry plant from the place it claimed in our garden where we'd let it grow wild through last summer, just to see. Purged that sucker with extreme prejudice, as only the squirrels benefited and not so much at that.

Yet there it is. Come back through hard frozen ground, even beneath a sheath of ice.

The new lens helped turn this barely transitional season that's normally opaque and indolent into a rich opportunity for fieldwork. On the right occasion, the freeze/thaw not only reveals but frames a post-seasonal spectrum of life and death. I'll remember that and be better prepared, next year.

"Death is life", the late poet Patrick O'Neil wrote. So it is. On the prairie as well as in the Northwoods, and everywhere else besides.

At least I know for certain that last autumn the Goldfinches twittering about outside my window feasted on this purple coneflower as it fell.

Beneath prairie tallgrass collapsed from exhaustion…

…and invasive bull thistle gone sandpaper sharp,

to inside the crust of barren native oaks obscured by waving ghosts, I believe renewed life grows.

Soon enough this will be Blazing Star shining with riotous life, not just its bones:

Call that a matter of faith if you wish, but in this one tough little bugger below, I keep finding early proof.

After the next chunk of polar vortex departs, I trust I'll find it still.

Shining Light on the Prairie – Late Winter, 2019

This year's dark season was by & large a forced march gone long from the start. Then in February between the stinking polar vortex and an ice storm, a new lens arrived. Count that as just in time, for me.

Step away from the screen, winter demanded. So I did.

Next week about this time, winter's over. My meteorologist tells me so. Meanwhile, the new lens is a keeper. 

Occasionally, the light is good and the wind doesn't blow too hard across the prairie. That and the inevitable turning of the season from dark to light is all I need know, for now.

With longer days, late winter's sun is warming. The season freezes, thaws then freezes again. Inexorably, cold darkness melts. There is but to look.

That first morning with the new lens, stepping gingerly so as not to slip and break my fool neck (or the lens) on a world sheathed in ice, I spotted the first frog of the year.

Maybe you don't see that speckled frog caught like a memory by winter in frozen Lamb's Ear. I didn't, at first. Now I can't unsee it.

But should you drive a harder bargain than me and find an illusory frog doesn't cut it to pin all seasonal hopes on, there's this: