Bobcat Lake -- A Love Story

Two days and thirty-six years and ago, Heather married me.

Yeah, I married her too. Yet you can tell just by looking I was the dumb part of the deal and it'd never have happened had this formidable woman not chosen to take on such a nettlesome task.

I'm me, after all.

The first week of our honeymoon, we camped at the Presque Isle unit above Superior near the far western border of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness. Shortly after arrival, I carelessly bounced the business end of an ax across the back of my hand.

Dr. Heather sprang to action and healed me. Today, I can't even find the scar.

We spent the second week of our honeymoon at Bobcat Lake, surrounded by the massive Ottawa National Forest. Our preference for both the spare, dry campsite atop the bluff overlooking mighty Superior and the messy one on intimately equal footing with swampy Bobcat was already well established.

If we considered any other destination to revel in officially sanctioned love, I don't recall it.

At seventy-six acres and maxing out at about eighteen feet deep, Bobcat is a modest lake. Most days a fitting venue for a canoe, even sometimes leeward the great forest when the breeze blows hard.

The thing about Bobcat Lake is that you're never, ever alone. Not even close.

Frequently, I hunt a bay alongside Bald Eagles. Sometimes I do better than the birds and they scowl at me.

But then, my game's different than theirs. Of necessity, raptors come to kill. Of necessity, I don't.

Not for decades now. Not since a seminal event in my life unexpectedly played out on a similarly gorgeous morning a few steps up from here, under the trees:

Used to be the main beaver works ran a long ways back toward the woods, where at that boundary the beavers engineered a complex series of step dams, complete with sluice gates. It was there we encountered a rare (for Michigan) Canada Lynx, still the only one in our experience.

While on the lake I've watched Osprey hit the water at speed, flap their wings twice to shed liquid diamonds, then rise with a fish and soar off into an azure sky above trackless wilderness.

At Bobcat, everybody eats.

One morning I sat frustrated in the canoe, shrouded by dense fog and becalmed on placid waters. Entreaty went unanswered. No fish came to play. I pondered my miserable fate.

Crunch…Crunch…Crunch, broke the dead silence.

I looked all around. Directly behind, an otter stood impossibly high out of the water, contentedly eating a fish while watching me.

"You're the reason I'm not catching anything," I scolded. The otter was unperturbed.

Often, at Bobcat I'm accompanied by loons. They're the signature bird of the Northwoods and much revered.

It's said loons are sensitive to our presence and we should keep our distance whenever possible. That's tough to do, when they follow you around. To date, I've managed to not take the loon's lilting song as laughter at my fishing prowess.

That stare, on the other hand…

Down from the beaver works where the inflow sent by the forest feeds the lake, there's a seasonably variable but otherwise permanent expanse of wild wetland. Look close when the light's just right and you'll find that strung along slender reeds waving in the breeze an entire kingdom of spiders thrives, suspended above the water, beneath the sky.

There's all manner of life there too. Well, call much of that ex-life. When the light's not right, the gossamer kingdom vanishes.

Though it can be sharp-edged and fraught to live at, the place is magnificently fecund.

At Bobcat Lake we've seen glowworms turn grassy shoreline into starry night. Predawn fog rise thick, then dissipate with the sun. We've watched towering storms bear down fast over the forest's crown, lightning leading the way. We listened as the woods above and all around roared with indignation at the lashing, with only a sheath of rip-stop nylon between us and the fury.

Always, the sun returns.

In warm weather or chill, still winds or fierce, caught in shimmering light or with midday turned to midnight on the storm, I love the diverse company found at my lake. No less so, the place itself.

Landscapes speak. Those we've not altered overmuch speak plain. Some offer a glimpse of what the world might be like without us.

Perennial host to riotous life and death, hidden by the mighty Ottawa Forest but for a winding gravel road out from hardscrabble Marenisco, little Bobcat Lake speaks not only to the myriad critters that call it home. It also speaks to me. And for that, I am blessed.

Plainly put, ours is a longstanding love affair. No more, no less. Don't worry, Heather knows and wholeheartedly approves.

So you'll understand how happy I am to have once again returned to the embrace of my love...

Shining Light on Prairie Pollinators

Honeybee

Following a resolutely cold wet spring, summer opened similarly dismal. Everyone who wants to know already knows that pollinators – those myriad tiny critters without whose collective, dedicated labor humankind would fast dwindle then soon perish – are in trouble.

Silver-spotted Skipper

This year on the prairie, early season misery spread well into supposedly warm, fecund summer. Prairie plants held back on perennial richness like pregnant buffalo refusing to risk giving birth during a blizzard.

I nursed concern and everywhere, looked hard for hopeful signs.

Cabbage White

Among early arrivals that toughed it out were particularly hearty Red Admirals. They appeared early, came in force and are even now only a little worse for wear.

Red Admiral

But throughout the first half of summer, bees remained few and those there were worked hard for too little.

Carpenter Bee

Invariably, the days grew shorter. Then in July the heat waves came. Rolling storms threw warm rain not cold. With that, color finally intruded upon a world of resolute green.

Black Swallowtail

After the rains a good crop of fireflies emerged on our little patch. A positive delight now mostly spent, some stragglers still dance nightly to lingering cicada song.

Today marks the final third of meteorological summer. There's less ahead than behind. I know the feeling.

American Lady

Used to be, for me fieldwork meant traveling thousands of miles to periodically shoulder 50# of gear, then set off in search of failed construct and history being consumed by resurgent life.

I still do that work, but travel less and walk lighter.

Fiery Skipper

More often than not, fieldwork today means stepping out my back door and peering past our world of construct, sometimes right down to the heart of the matter.

Milkweed Blossoms

What's true is that soon, the season of soft fading light will again be on us.

Sweat Bee (Or a Hover Fly, maybe...)

Counting the days down from here, autumn is just over the horizon. Beyond that lurks winter, a ravenous cold beast.

Great Black Wasp

With proper summer, the bees returned. In bright sun, all manner of them swarm the bolted oregano. So for a bit longer yet, even the least if most sorely imperiled among us get to eat.

And as they go, we go.

Honeybee

Lake Superior Day, 2019

Alger County, MI

Together, North America’s five roughly conjoined, aptly named Great Lakes hold more than six quadrillion gallons of fresh surface water. Or about one life-giving fifth of the world's present remaining supply.

Some might think that's a lot of water by god and by god, they'd be right. Just the same, should you also believe we can't damage that beyond all good repair or otherwise lose it outright, you're dreaming.

Pukaskwa, Ontario

Of the titular five, Lake Superior is by far the greatest. It holds more water than the others combined, and then some. By surface area, Superior is the largest freshwater lake on Earth, representing roughly 10% of its fresh surface water.

Pukaskwa, Ontario

Stand beside it and depending on the day/hour/minute, Superior dazzles with beauty, lifts spirits in awe or even shatters all notion of human primacy by exposing our entire race as a brief passage in an age-old story that continues on long after we're gone.

Reduced to pictures, open lake capped by big sky at the horizon barely hints of the water’s all powerful presence. It's far too easy to lift our gaze to the heavens, often at the expense of life as lived on Earth.

Copper Harbor, MI

Perhaps Superior is indecipherable. Probably, it visually translates best with terra firma included for reference.

Pukaskwa, Ontario

Generally, a slender spit of land. Often, precipitous. Beyond is the unknown. Even, one suspects, the unknowable.

Ontonagon County, MI

And isn’t that what keeps drawing us back? Proximity to Superior lends humans the sense that we’re not alone, because as an infinitesimal speck of a demonstrable yet mystifyingly magnificent whole, we belong.

Gogebic County, MI

It's said 100 non-native species already inhabit Lake Superior. Take that for an educated guess.

The scariest invasive currently seeking entry at the Great Lakes' southern border is commonly called Asian Carp. Maybe to distinguish four distinct foreign fish from our own common carp. Those originally came from Asia too and if you've looked at the link you know some Wisconsin fool saw fit to stock them in Lake Superior, circa 1897.

Not doing so would never have stopped the foreigner, it's true. But still.

At some point we live with an invader so long it becomes native, I think. Such is our common carp. Ask any kid who from local water fouled beyond native tolerance lifts for the first time a wild carp wriggling on gossamer string into the startling golden light of midsummer's day.

Look Ma, a fish!

Sadly for your children and theirs, among these latest Asian carp are known piscine berserkers. A horde gathers at the threshold of Lake Michigan that promises to fundamentally alter the Great Lakes' collective biologic, economic and cultural ecosystem if/when it breaches our puny show of resistance meant primarily to sustain lingering commerce rather than accept any responsibility for all that precious water.

An underwater cow fence. Sure. That'll do it.

It seems likely to me that Superior is sufficiently cold, deep and (essentially) barren that alone among the interconnected Lakes it might yet prove inhospitable to Asian Carp, which were also invited by us, though never intended to spread.

Ontario, Canada

So there’s that. On the other hand are the Gay sands.

Keweenaw County, MI

Taken as a sure sign of progress prior to the 1930's and largely ignored since, hidden beneath the lake's surface this creeping black death impinges upon Buffalo Reef, a critical spawning habitat for whitefish and lake trout. During the first half of the last century, Lake Trout were decimated by invasive sea lamprey.

Decades of human effort and expense today mercifully allow Superior’s signature fish to hold on in some bits of it. Not much longer at Buffalo Reef, should things continue apace.

So there’s that, too.

Gogebic County, MI

Thirty-six years ago about this time next month, Heather and I honeymooned approximately here:

Ontonagon County, MI

The actual campsite we stayed at – from the trees that shaded us to the ground we slept on – sloughed off and was swallowed by the lake years ago. The fresh air is the same.

Chipmunks and other critters that thrive on Superior’s ever shifting high edge remain, because they made adjustments.

Gogebic County, MI

Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. – W.H. Auden

Recently, the Native American phrase Mní Wičóni gained transcultural attention. Simply put, that means Water is life.

Keweenaw County, MI

Without fresh water, Earth is just another hot rock and we aren't on it.

Marquette County, MI

By continuing to value artificial wealth over the real deal, future prospects dim.

Gogebic County, MI

Our vaunted 'way of life' becomes more the stuff of myth and legend by the day. Even as at a mad pace we obsessively record its history and passing, both.

Agawa Rock, Ontario

Can meticulously compiled fact possibly tell that tale right? And to whom? There's just cause to wonder.

Despite what we've long believed, current hydrologic knowledge says there're only four Great Lakes, not five. Some days it seems most everything we think we know is proven wrong.

Industrially aged premises that've enabled us thus far are near played out, regardless who argues to the contrary or why. Truth is, we'll just have to adjust. Even chipmunks and trees do as much, while balanced hard along an unforgiving edge.

Gogebic County, MI

More or less officially, this coming Sunday is called Lake Superior Day. I suppose we tag things with titular days to remind us they exist.

No matter how far away or disconnected from the big lake you are, every day's the only right & proper day for to contemplate the ineffable glory of a water borne planet, and our rightful place on one.

At this greatest of all lakes, life naturally assumes penetrative force. Profound purpose is manifest. With that, the whole story is made clear. At least what you really need know to thrive as long as you might, during your little part of it.

All things said and done, in the end that's what makes it Superior.

Pukaskwa, Ontario

Summer Solstice – 2019

Or, creeping toward summer…

A good & proper argument can be made that the moment marked in tomorrow’s sky signifies for northern climes a turning back toward winter, rather than the beginning of summer.

After all, from that moment light grows shorter by the day.

Regardless. This May saw more and steadier rain ‘round these parts than any May ever and was followed by a chill, dank June that most often felt like April. Tonight I dance with the pagans.

Lupine have come and gone.

The Veronica’s off to a good start.

But there’s nothing to readily sustain the bees except spiderwort…

And far too little anywhere for butterflies, who warm themselves on barren ground during rare sunny days.

Maybe if tomorrow we shake the earth, the clenched fist of the black-eyed Susan will finally open for business.

Or the Echinacea will reveal its typically hard heart bristling with life-giving pollen, rather than burbling along beneath the resolute grey like some kind of raspberry tart.

For certain, as spare as it’s turned out to be in the end, this spring’s not been without its rewards. A lot of people like green.

Even though you do have to peer mighty hard through it, to see the wealth it hides.

Meanwhile, fireflies have hatched but are yet to shine and the north wind still blows. 

Speaking for them, for bees, butterflies and northern hemisphere pagans everywhere, at this point I’ll gladly tolerate the daily shrinking of the light in exchange for life doused in warmth and riotous color, however inevitably that fails.