Artist In Residence – Ten Years After

Over time, significant life events simmer down to what's inside you and go on to inform life ever after from there. Eventually, specific memories of those events turn to vignettes.

As has happened to my October 2012 artistic residency in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness…

 

 

Bio portraits give me the willies. That'd be why there're so few of them and mostly, far between.

I've used this one despite the pretense that I'm Joe Cool photographer/writer guy.

Because in this single image, taken by my dear friend Phil on the afternoon of a much dreaded event, both my primary and secondary jar of Heather's Magic Trail Mix stand plain.

Trust me, that's a thing.

Fifteen months. Approx. twenty-six thousand miles. A genuine Odyssey everywhere I could reach around the Superior Basin. One or both of those jars was always within reach.

Water. Zippo lighter. Heather's Magic Trail mix.

Check.

Remote mine sites. Collapsing farmhouses. Crumbling school basements. Each and every time I stepped away from the car and went off alone into the wilderness, most often with no one in the whole wide world knowing where I was.

Every mile of every day, Heather's Magic Trail Mix helped sustain me.

 

*

 

After months of regularly scheduled endurance trials, my stay at Dan's Cabin was ideally timed and I counted on that.

Nearly done. Two full weeks anchored to the same place. Full on autumn. Home turf, no less.

Among friends, old and new.

That first night at Dan's Cabin I was so jacked I set the little travel alarm for extra early the next morning. Except I neglected the time zone change that wanders through the Porkies.

Boy that was early.

So I sat a long time on a log enveloped in pitch black, sipping coffee while from unseen trees Barred Owls called out here and there around the small clearing that in the deep forest allows for the residency fire pit.

What is that stupid human doing anyway?

 

*

 

The two-week working plan was always for me to decompress. Take the opportunity of extended residency to relax and sink in. I'd counted on the inevitable foul weather days forcing my hand.

Didn't much work out that way.

Mostly, I roamed the general parameters of the park.

 

 

Revisited places I already knew. Took a few chances that played out.

 

 

Ambled, more or less aimlessly.

Which in all the time and miles since hitting the road in September 2011, I rarely if ever did.

One afternoon, clouds of irritated Dark-eyed Juncos rose from the forest floor as I walked golden woods near the cabin. Their scolding was persistent.

 

Travelers value good waysides. It pays to know where those are.

Spring of 2013, I first noticed Dark-eyed Juncos using our yard for a wayside along their trip north. They've stopped by by twice a year since, to & fro.

The Dark-eyed Juncos, they know my wayside. True fact.

*

It was always the plan to set one day aside during my residency, when I'd drive out to the far reaches of the Keweenaw and work a different sort of wilderness, the Wolverine Mohawk mine.

 

Staying in the cabin cut nearly two hours off the typical round trip. And I could get fresh fish & chips atop the hill in Hancock, so wouldn't have to think about cooking when I got back.

 

The day that chose itself happened to be Sunday. The fish & chips place turned out to be closed.

It was like a dagger to the heart.

 

On a lark, I hit the last best grocery store before wilderness closes back in. There, yesterday's Lake Trout was on sale.

That evening I feasted on laker and wild rice. So what if I had to cook it myself at the end of yet another long working day on the road?

Afterward I made sure no lake trout leavings drew any bear in the night, then slept particularly well.

 

*

 

Considering how persistently miserable October can be around Superior, the weather those two weeks ten years ago turned out to be like a gift from the field work gods.

Except for the morning it snowed.

 

By then very much alive in the moment, I embraced the prospect of an entire day spent in a cabin artisanally crafted so to invite the quietest creative contemplation over successive generations of temporary residents.

And maybe not even get my boots wet.

Kept the camera bags packed. Fired up the stove. Hunkered down. Did some writing. Stared at wet woods dripping just outside the great wall of glass.

Ate Heather's Magic Trail Mix as needed.

 

Relatively late, high quality light broke through the woods. The wilderness fell to an absolute hush. Not even birdsong pierced the cold air.

Like the world had that day rolled right over into winter. Except not, exactly.

 

Lickety-split, back at it I went.

 

 

Time slowed.

 

Through those couple hours of subtle light cast over chill, damp woods, I did perhaps the most purely representative work of the entire Odyssey.

Knowing I needn't drive anywhere after dark so to safely call it a day made that possible.

 

There was just to follow the river, go a short distance up the hill and be home.

 

*

Speaking of night...

Because Dan's Cabin is where it is, you're often some miles away from the next human being and that's nothing like solitary confinement.

As the cabin is also in the midst of a wild wood, prior to moonrise nights are so black you can't see your hand in front of your face. There, it's not just another turn of a phrase.

 

Taken as a whole, my exceptionally artistic residency at Dan's Cabin granted me the darkest, quietest nights of my life.

Once, I spent an indeterminate length of time siting comfy on the porch trying to figure out what I was hearing. Turned out to be mice, going about regular, busy mouse in the night business.

The forest is actually quite chatty. You just have to be able to hear it.

 

Today it's that supreme quietude, when only wilderness spoke and I listened, that most lives on inside me.

I expect it always will.

Thank-you, Friends of the Porkies.

 

*

 

The price of residency was that I'd have to speak about myself and my work for an entire hour. Less audience participation, if any.

I've never spoken extemporaneously for more than maybe five minutes on any subject, before or since.

From the beginning I didn't much think on that, because just the prospect scared the livin' bejesus out of me.

The big day came.

 

I spent a soft afternoon at the cabin, visited by friends. Enjoyed a good meal, cooked out over the fire.

Then they left so I could make ready alone, in abject silence.

 

Like the opening image, the clip below isn't there because I'm pretty.

Ten years ago yesterday, before an informed group of interested locals, I held forth on a region many if not most of them knew more intimately than I ever will.

Without my friend Phil captured the event, all I'd likely remember about it today is that the feared ordeal went reasonably better than expected.

Probably that's because when it came right down to brass tacks, I unleashed my native enthusiasm and trusted it to speak for me.

 

 

Afterwards, the entire year+ gig was to be pretty much home free.

Happily, the annoying verbal tic that afflicted me during the presentation proved to be a one off.

*

Later that night and again stone cold alone, standing surrounded by dark woods beside Dan's Cabin where you can just see open sky over its roof, I thanked the wilderness for my survival.

And also fully grasped that I'd soon be well & truly done.

In the moment, I was at peace with that.

 

Last Call

 

More or less.

 

This year, autumn pretty much nailed the equinox and with a vengeance. Hopefully, that's not a harbinger of a long hard winter to come.

 

Chill and dry (except that afternoon when six inches of rain pummeled the earth), as the light's gone longer and the day grows shorter, the prairie considers sleep.

While setting the stage for yet another spring.

 

A prairie is nothing if not fully prepared for what goes around coming around, as it will. As it must.

 

Increasingly, life lays low.

That'll only accelerate once the season's first frost/freeze arrives. They say that might happen late tonight, in the dark before dawn.

 

Being as a prairie is exceptionally hardy, basking in late season sun will continue on past that.

Lacking a sudden cruel winter, autumn life will inevitably rebound.

So long as light holds and there's food, someone will be here eating it.

 

Latecomers to the party likely won't make it much past tomorrow.

Today I spotted the first Dark-eyed Junco of the season, brought down from Superior way by persistent northerly winds.

On the prairie at least, everyone knows exactly what time it is.

 

Superior's North Shore, Revisited – The Fork in the Road

 

Hurtling almost straight south from Lake Superior Provincial Park, the road gets easier with every passing mile as you leave the high rugged wilderness behind. Those complex comforts of civilization that you couldn't carry with you on the long trek up over the big lake are more readily available.

Then you reach the Soo. For me that's like hitting a rock wall at full speed.

All the worse, because I know it's coming.

 

Sault Ste. Marie, Canada

 

A drop of water fed Lake Superior by the Pigeon River near Grand Portage circa 1831 is only now being caught up in the rapids at Sault Ste. Marie.

1831!

There was no Minnesota, then. No Canada either, least not as we know it today.

But there was a City of Sault Ste. Marie.

Established in 1668, "Sault" is a French-Indian term for the impassable place where Lake Superior sends its water en masse to Lake Huron, via the Saint Mary's River.

Or maybe Sault originally meant 'jump.' Depends on who you ask.

Whichever, it's a considerable barrier to travel and trade because at the Soo the greatest of Great Lakes sits twenty-one feet higher than little cousin Huron, some miles downriver.

Before leaving Canada, there're two more stops to consider. Tucked away alongside that -

Is this:

Yeah, it's just an obscure totem nestled on lawn along a quiet street. Except the word restoration is a critical distinction.

The NW Company Headquarters at Grand Portage in Minnesota and the Fort William that later became 'Old' in Thunder Bay are strictly recreations. Historical amusement parks.

Think pirates of the Caribbean. Only with fur trappers, missionaries and mostly noble savage natives.

Not so this old Bateau, which apparently is where it was and (again, apparently) still contains authentic elements of the original lock itself.

I mean, 1798. How cool is that?

Just before crossing the border, by all means visit the Whitefish Island Indian Reserve @ St. Mary's Falls, if only to remind yourself of the wild places you've just traversed.

Whitefish Island is special, perhaps unique. A spot rich in cultural history, set amidst a resurgent natural landscape. Protected and nurtured since 1997, when the island was returned to the Batchewana First Nation People.

That's as close as you'll ever get to the 'real' Sault - inclusive historical narrative and the natural world that enabled it, combined.

After that it's off the North Shore and fast out of Canada. Happily, we needn't portage:

Sault Ste. Marie, U.S. of A.

And a glimpse of Lake Huron too.

 

You can search for clear-eyed cultural context and bits of historic authenticity on the U.S. side of the Soo, but you'll not find much of that there.

For sure, they've a 'Tower of History.' That opened in 1968 as the Shrine of the Missionaries.

Subsequently, the Tower features more history than just that. But it's still a 20th Century edifice, populated with words and a handful of artifacts that more easily celebrate rather than convey the full story of time, place and the diversity of peoples who've left lasting marks on the region.

As for authentic, this is called "The Captain's House." At the time it seemed unoccupied if not utterly abandoned. The sign on the door warns against trespass.

A little farther along:

Everything's downriver from that, all the way to Lake Huron.

One year, Heather and I rode Huron's northern shore. Admittedly that's far afield of where we're at, and a whole 'nother story to boot.

Yet on the Bruce Peninsula where the lake at one side is shallow Georgian Bay and on the other the Niagara Escarpment drops straight off to cold nowhere, while working the edge light I captured this:

What a right proper place for a couple of chairs, eh?

Anyway, I digress. Back to the Upper Peninsula, at the Soo…

Sault Ste. Marie MI's big attraction is the locks and the boats that pass through them. This remarkable feat of engineering allows great lakes freighters to squeeze along what had been an all but impassible barrier since forever.

The commercial locks at the Soo used to be on the Canadian side. They relocated to the U.S., because ours are bigger. If just barely big enough, these days.

This is also the way many invasive species slipped into Superior, often from waters on the other side of the world. Just sayin'.

Near the famous locks, Sault U.S.A. sports a carnival atmosphere. Folk come from all over to see the freighters up close. Schedules are posted. People keep track. A variety of goods and services are readily available while waiting.

Sometimes the viewing platform gets crowded. Happily, it wasn't the evening I visited.

Of course, once upon a time there were only native peoples at either side of the Sault. They fished and hunted, laughed and cried, had sex, made babies, got sick/injured/old and died.

Naturally, there's an Anishinabek burial ground located there.

A portion of that traditional gravesite is now more or less returned to Native auspices. There's a stone monument. No mature trees. No verdant paths. No wetlands. An industrial Sault looms in the background.

At least they finally got a friggin' fence.

On the brighter side, Lake Superior State has a fish hatchery. I never pass on a fish hatchery. All the little fishes and the people who look after them are awesome.

Plus, they've got an online fish cam.

Heading west from the Soo along Superior's southern shore, you'll come to Bay Mills Indian land. They call it The Land of the Pike, though of course pike live in water.

Past that and near where wildness begins again is a place named Iroquois Point. There's a lighthouse there. People like lighthouses, sort of how they like freighters. This one is well maintained.

On the lake near the light is a stone beach. To your right is the great gathering place of Superior waters, each drop having taken its sweet time migrating out of the freshwater sea.

Unless I miss my guess, to the left is the true north shore as embodied by mighty Pukaskwa and the boreal forest.

You can't see that, but it's there.

Fed up with the Iroquois riding west on the coattails of the French, on this beach in 1662 the local Anishinaabe decided to send the encroaching world a message. 

Early one morning, they fell upon the enemy's encampment.

Only two Iroquois were spared. Those were provided a canoe so to carry the Ojibwa message eastward, beyond the Sault to Lake Huron and all the way to the St. Lawrence River, as needed.

They say Iroquois bones and skulls littered the beach more than a century later. That's why even in the midst of Ojibwa land, this place is still called Iroquois Point.

Monument enough, I'd think.

 

Coda

Now we've returned to my home turf, that part of the Superior Basin I know best.

Some miles still farther west, you'll come to the Tahquamenon River of white folk Hiawatha fame, where Longfellow's powerfully poetic fake news still echoes in the touristy woods.

People like to say "hope dies last."

Maybe so, but I prefer to believe truth will outlive it.

 

*

 

The Future is out there. Way out there. Beyond the curvature of Earth.

And yet somehow, still within our collective grasp.