The Kingston Plains Revisited – In Perfect Light

During the dark of night, south of Grand Marais I turned west along the forested section of the Adams Trail.

By the time I arrived on the open plains, from a stand of scrub pine a bird already broke the silence with a tune I didn’t recognize. Its solitary voice was bright, melodic and notably insistent.

I am here! I am here! I am here!

Over and over again, that bird called beneath the stars. No bird of any kind answered, that I heard.

It might seem lonely out there on the Kingston Plains, especially in the dark. But be assured, you're nothing like alone.

Upon first light and a rising crescent moon, wolves sang.

That voice I recognized. Theirs is an ancient race and wolf song goes back to before the beginning of us. So that's in our bones and blood, informing late night dreams since the collective memory of our still young species began.

We are here! The wolves definitely said that. I heard them.

Always, I imagined. Then -- And we’ll be here after you’re gone, too.

A bit later came a cacophony of frogs. That surprised me. At least in verdant spring, potholes on the Kingston Plains still hold their water and happily, that hosts frogs. It’s not at all certain those will outlast us.

Each individual frog among a multitude of frogs sang. Their voices rained around me as if from land, water and sky at once.

Pay attention to meeeeeeee…

Birdsong beguiles. Wolf song thrills. Frogs delight. I was, by then, all three. And with the sun not yet above the horizon.

As golden light broke on the Plains, coyotes added their voice to the world. They yipped and yapped in staccato coyote rhythm.

Day is begun, the coyotes sang.

That morning on the Kingston Plains, perfect light flowed richer for longer than is deserved by any flawed man bent on capturing an ineffable landscape's spirit of place. Bedazzled by cascading moment at every turn, I stalked that light like a madman, taking it for everything I could.

Holy-shit!-Holy-shit!-Holy-shit!

I sang until well after the sun climbed high, when the magic time was passed and all else fell silent but for a slight breeze.

*

“The place is a mental disturbance…”

Russell McKee

 Audubon Magazine, March 1988

For certain, since the time I first learned what I was looking at, the Kingston Plains has haunted me.

Some dismiss it as barren. At first glance that’s understandable perhaps, but it isn’t close to true.

Others call it a wasteland. It’s not exactly that either, unless wasteland can be defined by riotous life.

Often, these plains are referred to simply as a stump cemetery. While biologically meaningless, that’s fair enough.

Except, then it’s a graveyard of harvested old growth white pine slowly morphing into a spindly forest of ferns.

I suppose that when you walk this same landscape during the height of summer, grasshoppers rise in waves before you like sand thrown to the wind.

Ultimately, I see the Kingston Plains as a great gaping wound, inexorably healing into something it should never have been.

And would never have become, given a better, saner world. The hand of man came down hard upon this place, but did not kill it.

Could not kill it. No matter our Herculean effort, later compounded by a hundred years of callous indifference, after we believed these plains were well & truly dead.

The late teacher and poet Patrick O’Neill sang, Death is life.

That I know of, there’s no other easily accessible scar ripped by our perennial ambition into the magnificent emerald necklace draped around the great Superior Basin where that fact is laid so plain.

Though it might take another hundred, a thousand, ten thousand years or more, here is proof that life finds a way. Even on blasted ground.

In the end, I suppose that’s what draws me back to the profoundly damaged, maddeningly complex, yet resolutely rich kingdom of the Kingston Plains.

Pay me no mind, I whispered to the wolves.

I'm just passing through.

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...