Uncommon Perspective

For many of us, life in contemporary America is defined largely by our immense technological reach. Distracted by the complexity of modern construct, increasingly alienated from our neighbors and adrift in community freshly unbound, we forget that most of America remains wide open landscape: sparsely populated and lacking ready access to what the rest of us take for granted. For some, a trip to the Superior Basin is at least in part a means to reconnect with the real world and reclaim healthy perspective.

Of all the memories I savor from the northwoods, the most revealing turns out not to be a tall tale at all, but rather a single phrase uttered by a child in a moment of youthful wonder.

Black River Harbor

Black River Harbor once was a thriving fishing village and is now a park complete with marina, the town having long since been moved lock stock and barrel away from the lake and into the woods where there’s no fish at all, which is a story for another time.

Across the bridge and east from the harbor is a long stretch of sandy beach backed by steep red cliffs where miles of forest abruptly end at the shifting boundary of the big lake. An easy drive from Bessemer, in high season it’s a favorite place for families and tourists alike. Then as the sun sets on warm summer nights, young folk gather in groups to make beach fires in hope of burning lasting memory by doing what young folk do when under cover of darkness and left to their own devices.

On the hottest days even the forest sweats. When the sun climbs high there’s no better remedy for it than immersion in the chill waters of Superior.

*

Heather and I were at the beach and the day was fine. Seagulls lent staccato accompaniment to a soft wash of gentle waves over sand. A man walked past toward the glistening water, his nearly adolescent son in tow. Together they stood silently at the edge of the world and peered off into the gauzy horizon, each dreaming private dreams.

Suddenly the boy pointed to the bottomless blue of the summer sky, arm stretched straight, finger fairly quivering in extended excitement.

 “Look Dad, a jet!”

And sure enough, across that shimmering sky, riding so far above and beyond mighty Superior that the roaring engines weren’t even so much as a whisper, there was indeed a contrail wavering through the upper winds. And for the young boy, in that moment all the forest and lake and marvels of the real world that surrounded him fell away. You could see it. Like a serpent wriggling free of its skin, all at once.

Born to the wonders of wilderness, the siren song of human construct flung across the heavens caught this boy’s imagination and the glittering promise of contemporary America must have seemed very real to him indeed.

While certainly possible, it’s unlikely that any temporary job scabbing metals from the hard earth will keep him long from its embrace…

Northwoods Follies -- Johnny

Years ago, I enjoyed the company of a friend named John. A smart, energetic fellow and sympathetic to my character at the time, which sympathy I suppose is the basis for most friendships, lasting or not.

Johnny’s grandparents lived in a splendid vintage home on the shore of a fair-sized lake over in Wisconsin. It was too near the big fiberglass fish and the tourists of fabled Hayward…

Heather, about to be eaten by a giant Musky

…but was a nice spit of wooded land all the same. Once while walking the beach we spotted a bear track big as a pie plate in the sand and cast glances over our shoulders the rest of the day.

For some years running, Johnny, Heather and I tempted the wilderness together. Mostly in late season when the air is cool, the light sublime, weather persistently variable and the whole world knows exactly what time of year it is. That is, time to prepare for a cruel, dark season or suffer the consequence.

It’s said there’s strength in numbers. That isn’t always true, though it’s sure nice to think so when deep in the autumn woods at two in the morning and a serious case of heebie jeebies suddenly arrives. But numbers also sometimes breed false confidence, which often leads to foolishness. And that then leads to everywhere from serious fun to serious injury and/or death, depending on the quality of foolishness.

*

I don’t remember John’s gear but he was proud of it and I’m sure it was fine because that’s the kind of guy he was. After a couple years of rather steep learning curve, Heather and I’d purchased a new North Face geodesic dome (1978), a tent that at the time cost more than my car.

Being a big guy, I’d lusted after the sort of thing you could sit in behind a desk to review the Union troops, but Heather thought the pair of drawstring openings in the back of the dome would make for ideal escape hatches in the event a bear politely entered through the front, so we left the tent store with a revolution in gear nestled in my arms and have never regretted it, regardless of bears.

That tent led directly to foolishness like the week it never got above 45 degrees and rained for five straight days. Sheets of rain, mostly. We dug a trench in front of the fire pit to divert the running water. Spent the week huddled together beneath a makeshift tarp, clutching coffee cups in trembling hands, peering to the angry, sodden sky to offer feeble prayers like “It seems to be letting up a bit”.

Then on the six day it snowed. Four inches.

Back in the city, when family and co-workers asked after our vacation and we told the tale, their response fell squarely along the lines of “What kind of vacation is that?!?”

We just thumped our chests, low grade foolishness well survived and proud of it.

*

We were young. City life was brutish and cruel to our youthful sensibilities. The Great Spirit of the Northwoods intrigued us. It ain’t Disneyland up there, that’s sure.

So we constantly prodded the wilderness of Superior to respond to our interest and whether or not it ever did, we generally got what we asked for and sometimes a good bit more.

Repeatedly.

Show & Tell -- November/December

Select images from when autumn turned to winter. The first snow fell to the woods, we were there and it went like this.

When next autumn turns to winter, it’ll be time to head for the comforts of home. A long time, with much to see and do, between now and then.

Vivaldi, off 40 year old vinyl. Beautifully played by the Academy of St. Martin-In-The-Field:

Show & Tell -- September/October

Mostly, it’ll be show.

The central dilemma faced by photographers of my generation revolves around the revolution of digital capture, reproduction and dissemination. Those sound like three different things but are instead a slender string of craft applied that ends in the achievement of creative purpose; whether that purpose is purely documentary, to reinvent reality or whatever. And with revolution the whole thing’s been made different, in a flash.

Not long ago this Search for Perfect Light would necessarily have taken place in private. Then I’d have completed the year of gathering, collated the material, reproduced the best of it, tied it all together in the finest presentation I could manage and tried to publish. With revolution the whole thing’s been made different and here I am walking a creative tightrope, sorta live.

And of course, not long ago I’d have enjoyed a steady supply of large format film to burn through at my leisure, instead of the last in the world to work through with pride, which is why we’re here.

Fine reproduction is the noblest end for any image, hung upon a well lit wall and appreciated from appropriate viewing distance. That's especially so for any image that wasn’t conceived of pixels to begin with because so much is lost in the translation of film for digital delivery.

The chasm between what my field work on film actually looks like and how it appears onscreen is aesthetically irresolvable. But because I’m asking you to follow along, I’ve a responsibility to deliver at least some of it all the same.

So this is what I’ve come up with.

Later there’ll likely be somewhat higher quality versions of these clips available for viewing through my website, but for now here’s short selection scanned from both 4x5 and 120mm chromes, culled from the hundreds generated to date and set to a traditional American song in an exquisite arrangement by the great Ry Cooder:

Animal Stories -- A Bird in the Hand

A memory plucked from a fast receding autumn, told today lest it fade beneath the complex accumulation of seasons spent in the field, with all their attendant marvels large and small…

I’m alone at Au Sable Light -- just west of the mighty Grand Sable Dunes, a couple of miles in from the nearest road and with some hundreds of miles of open water before me, stretching to Superior’s northern shore.  A bluebird morning in a splendidly remote place, it’s unseasonably warm beneath a high sky.

To reach the lighthouse I pass the site of three wrecks on the beach. Depending on the vagaries of wind, waves and sand, these are the visible evidence of the Graveyard of the Great Lakes, so named due to a treacherous reef off Au Sable Point.  This year, the Sitka is buried while Gale Staples and Mary Jarecki are at least partly exposed.  I’ve gone in just after sunrise in pursuit of long light and some hours into the work am thoroughly distracted by the geometry of light and shadow.

A bird’s eye view of Au Sable Light

Lakeside off to my left flies what peripheral vision takes for a locust.  I’m concentrating on my set up, left arm partly extended, hand outstretched.  The ‘locust’ comes to light on my index finger with the taut, slender grip typical of large insects.

I look down to find a tiny puff ball of a bird clutched tight to my finger. A heartbeat passes, then two. I stare at her and she looks squarely up at me. Then she’s off to the safety and comfort of the forest. I watch until she disappears, a fleeting speck lost to the autumn woods.

After later consulting my Sibley’s bird guide, I figure her for a female Common Yellow-Throated Wood Warbler. Tough to say for certain, as in that too brief moment I saw mostly only the gaze of her dark, liquid eyes and that’s what I’ll always remember.

Considering the season it’s at least possible she’d ridden favorable winds the entire width of Superior, was desperate for safe refuge and once hard to the shore fell in near exhaustion to my outstretched hand.

Or maybe with approaching dotage I’ve come to best resemble a gnarled old tree.

It doesn’t matter precisely what species, how, from where or why. That little bird was a fellow traveler in the wilderness and especially in time of need, those must always be made welcome…

Notes From the Field -- A New Year

Traditionally, the turning of a New Year is occasion for a glance back and a look forward. Maybe that’s ‘cause short days and long nights leave little else to do but contemplate past mistakes while planning new ones.

As many of you recover from holiday merriment and the gauzy hangover of our annual indulgence in peace on earth good will towards men, this seems an appropriate time to take it easy on this blog business for a few weeks, as before us loom hard months stretched through the depths of a dark season.

High noon @ Bobcat Lake

I’ve film to work though, portfolios to compile & and submit, research to dig deeper into and plans to be finalized -- including a February visit to a special place reached only across Superior ice, a foray for which I’d best be well prepared.

I ought also make time to do some printing. Even with the reaper of digital facility leavening photographic excellence down to meager measures like pixels & screen resolution, an image isn’t a work of fine art until laid down on  paper, when its luminous quality can be judged beneath balanced light. After all, the core gig here is to make lasting art. What’s already in hand must be properly assessed before making more or risk being buried beneath a massive pile of undifferentiated effort.

The next ten months or so will demand everything I’ve got and it’d be wise to make myself ready to push on through, so for a few weeks these posts will be…well, shorter at least. Then we’ll more deeply engage this Odyssey already well begun.

These are the most interesting of times around the Superior basin -- fraught with difficulty and offering too little authentic promise to meet the challenge. 

That means there’ll be a lot for us to see. 

Together we’ll take well worn roads to familiar places for a fresh look at those, considering modern times. We'll also broaden our horizons by wandering paths less traveled and even blaze new trail now and again through the complex wilderness of landscape and culture, just to see what’s there.

And of course, because it's Superior, there will be marvels.

So I’ll be back full bore real soon and then we’re hanging tough for the duration, come what may.

Happy New Year, one & all...

King Copper -- Lament

1913 was a hard year on the Copper Range of Michigan.

By December, a worker’s strike against the copper mines was in its 5^th month and faltering. The great Calumet & Hecla Mining Company refused to negotiate with the Western Federation of Miners and many strikers returned to work or left the range. The dispute was as always and is still today: the right of working folk to determine the value of their labor versus the right of Capital to determine what return on their investment is acceptable.

Then as now technology played a critical role. A one man drill was introduced to replace the old drill, which required two men to operate. For labor that meant harder work for fewer workers. To the Company it meant increased productivity and greater profit. All too familiar lines were clearly drawn.

On Christmas Eve, the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Union held a Christmas Party for strikers and their families on the 2^nd floor of Calumet’s Italian Hall. Much of what happened that night remains in question.

Perhaps as many as 500 people gathered in the hall. The celebration was barely begun when person or persons unknown yelled “Fire!” Panic ensued. The single stairway down to street level quickly filled with the dead and dying. Some say the doors at the bottom of the stairs opened only inward, which apparently isn't true. Some say they were held closed. There was no fire.

No one can say for certain how many people died that night, crushed to death by friends and family in a narrow stairwell. Most victims were Finns. Most were women and children. Christmas morning, a local Finnish newspaper put the number at 80 dead, all told.

What’s indisputable is that the worst disaster of its kind in Michigan history was the direct result of a bitter dispute that set neighbor against neighbor over the harvest of copper and it occurred on Christmas Eve.

A funeral procession was held. An inquest during which folk who didn’t speak English were forced to answer questions in English proved inconclusive. No one was ever charged. Recriminations followed and however faint, those echo across the region even now.

The strike of 1913-1914 ended in April of ’14, with only 2,500 of the estimated original 9,000 members of the Western Federation of Miners left to vote on the referendum to call off the strike. Little was gained and much was lost. The town of Calumet never fully recovered and the Italian Hall was torn down in 1984. By all reports, it didn’t fall easily.

*

The good citizens of Michigan receive near to nothing in exchange for their precious resources. If you think Capital pays good value in cash to any community for their irreplaceable wealth, you should think again. What jobs are created last only so long as the resource lasts and that’s rarely very long. Then jobs and the capital to fund them and the resource from which both flow are forever gone.

Always some few hardy people stay, drawn to a land by false promise and remaining for reasons of their own. Some stay for love of place and they put down permanent roots spread wide over hard rock.

What’s true is this: American resources belong to American people before corporations and jobs alone are insufficient to buy them. If the harvest of our resources can’t be made to profit workers and Capital alike, if wealth created from our resources can’t be kept in the communities that earn it and the exhaustion of the resource means the exhaustion of the community, then those resources ought remain untapped until such time as a wiser, more just people can work out better means.

Until we determine what a land and its people are worth when measured in copper or iron or oil or water, we sell our resources and us blindly and our children’s future entirely too cheap.

Because what’s indisputable is that the world and we are one beneath the heavens.

Or at least on Christmas, we’re encouraged to hope and entitled to dream…

A Superior Christmas

They say there’re only two seasons in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: winter and a couple of days in late July.  That may or may not be, but illustrates the legendary status of winter around the Superior basin all the same. 

Flush with youthful enthusiasm, I once proclaimed to an aged local my desire to live on the range. His grey watery eyes narrowed. He took a long hard look at the kid then replied, “Well…pretty nice up here. Winter’s kinda long, though.” This from a man who for the duration of the bitter season kept a baseball bat handy to dissuade porcupines eagerly working over accumulated salt from chewing through the brakes lines of his car.

Undaunted by tall tales or the skepticism of old men, Heather and I thought to see for ourselves. Christmas is for family but this once we’d go off to create a living gift for just the two of us. A friend of a friend had cabins for rent along the Montreal River and arrangements were made.

Excited at the prospect of seeing familiar sights radically altered by the season, we compiled a mental list of things to see and do. We rode our old Subaru wagon, which modest ride nevertheless possessed a robust four-wheel drive and having previously driven it without incident along abandoned railroad grades, winter gave us little pause.

Our cabin was rustic, cozy and warm. A vintage outbuilding long converted, nestled in the woods outside Ironwood with a Finnish sauna onsite and a waterfall on the river for added ambience. We were the only tenants for the duration and game for adventure.

A frozen waterfall is an incongruous thing, current caught in motion and transported out of time. Being inexorable, the river finds ways to travel downstream under the ice, around it, over it, through it. The mineral content of the Montreal River made our picturesque little falls look like a root beer float.

Accompanying photos are from vintage 35mm images captured during our Christmas adventure

Snowshoes were provided for use of guests. At first it was tough to find a proper gait, what with oversized tennis rackets strapped to our boots, but once you figure it out they’re a damned sight better than tromping your way through knee-deep snow with who knows what hidden beneath. Temperatures headed lower and we set off downriver beside the Montreal, through skeletal trees over snow covered ground.

Apart from the occasional deer track, we blazed trail. Before too long, Heather returned to the comfort of the cabin. I pressed forward alone, exhilarated.

Though evening in the woods is exquisite any season, the blue half-light forest of winter leaves its mark. I hiked a fair piece until near full dark then lingered upon a log, listening to the trickle of water over ice, the only sound in the world. In time I returned to the cabin, path plain by the river through the woods, moonlight shimmering over all. High time for a sauna.

Finns settled across the UP during the 19^th Century, drawn by promises of “streets paved with gold”, which as it turned out meant work in the mines. When those played out the Finns stayed. Many built farms and some prospered but most ended up as rock farmers -- a hard, unyielding land being one reason that today the basin is dotted with abandoned farmsteads. The ‘Yooper’ accent, pasties and Finnish saunas stayed too.

Our sauna sat maybe 100’ across pure Michigan winter from the cabin. Inside, tongue & groove cedar made for a tight seal and benches lined the room. A thick metal basket filled with Lake Superior cobbles adjoined a fireplace, already well stoked. A bucket sat next to a spigot. We got properly naked, poured water over hot rock to raise the temperature beyond steady reckoning, then indulged in the physical and spiritual cleansing properties of abundant sweat.

Tradition dictates a roll in the snow upon leaving a winter sauna. Once done with the heat, I left my shoes and clothes for Heather to carry and stepped naked out into the universe of ice beneath the stars. Snow to my calves, breath hanging in the frigid air, I hurled myself onto the snow and rolled over exactly once, amongst the most deliriously bracing movements of my life.

Then I yelled, “Goodness gracious!!” or words to that effect and beat Heather back to the cabin.

We bundled together to sit awhile, gazing at the picture postcard outside our window. The next day was Christmas Eve. We slept like contented children, secure in the knowledge that whatever gifts winter had in store for us, we’d begin receiving them in the morning.

Snow depth is inconsistent in the forest and travel proved easy. We found our favorite lake asleep beneath a blanket of white then pressed deeper to a high vista over trackless wilderness and a creek that meanders through a tamarack swamp. Many’s the time I’ve wanted to go down there and once hiked alone into those woods to see what could be seen, only to become temporarily bewildered, which is a technical term for “lost” and another story altogether.

The top of the ridge was covered with otter tracks and at its edge snow was tamped to a bright sheen. From there a well worn slide ran all the way down the precipitous hill and across the frozen creek below, ending in a black hole of open water in the ice. Thick waterproof fur covering layers of insulating seasonal fat, a pair of otters had been amusing themselves by climbing up that hill, frolicking around and then sliding back down all the way to that hole in the ice.

Lacking the otter’s fur coat and layers of winter fat if not their sense of play, we soon left them to their games atop that windblown ridge.

Our next stop was the mouth of the Presque Isle River at Lake Superior. County 519 was plowed and clear but at the South Boundary Road such industry ended, unbroken snow on the road into the park proving that no one had recently preceded us. Icy crust scraped the undercarriage of the car as we made our way in to where a trail leads down to the falls.

What a sight awaited us at the bottom!

All was ice and snow, a world frosted over in white. The river ran high and roily, most of it pushed angrily beneath a shifting, groaning ceiling of ice. Never had we seen treachery and beauty so freely interwoven. A dangerous river along its lower reaches, the Presque Isle that day invited disaster, as even the slightest misstep would mean certain death and burial at sea.

We explored thoroughly, ever careful of our step. The hour grew late. As we hiked back up to our car the wicked cold and bitter wind increased its grip on a wild world. Light flurries turned to moderate snow. No sooner did we make it out of the park and onto County 519 than the car balked and coughed, still deep in the wilderness and seventeen miles from the nearest phone with winter bearing down hard. We were reasonably well prepared, the backseat piled high with city folk winter clothes just in case.

This was in the days before cell phones but even today those don’t always work so well on the far side of the hard rock hills. And a forced hike through a nighttime blizzard is an uncertain endeavor under any circumstance.

Though the car grew worse with every passing mile, we limped all the way to Ironwood. Then, late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, smack dab in the middle of the region’s only truly busy intersection, the little Subaru sputtered and died. No amount of coaxing made it start again.

We stood beside our car in the street, feckless and perplexed. The temperature continued to plummet as the wind grew stronger. A State Trooper stopped traffic and helped get us out of harm’s way. Then he stayed with us while we tried to come up with a plan. Time was short, with slender services shutting down by the minute, as people went home for the holiday.

Heather and I worked the phones amidst a steady stream of last minute shoppers in front of the local Kmart. A car dealer in Hurley stayed open late to provide a tow. A used car lot with the only rentals on the range stayed open until Heather could secure the single taxi that worked the area. Strangers stopped to offer help and advice. Everyone bent over backwards to see that we’d be safe.

The mechanic said he’d never seen a carburetor so badly frozen. Somewhere along the way I’d purchased fuel with excessive moisture content and the brutal weather proved more than our old car could withstand. Once thawed they’d fix it, though with the holiday on a weekend that wouldn’t be ‘til three days later, when we were due back to our jobs in the city and a full day after our cabin was spoken for by others.

Still, everyone agreed that had the car died just an hour before it did, there was no telling how or whether we’d have made it out of the woods alive.

Heather pulled up driving a well used mid-seventies land yacht, a lifeboat to us. With best Christmas wishes all around, we guided the beast back to our cabin. After telling our tale of woe to our host, he offered us the comfort of his mother’s home for Sunday night as she was away for the holiday.

*

We’d made reservations at a local ski lodge for Christmas dinner. Warm in the cabin and bathed in relief over a narrow escape, we made ready for our big date. Outside, the weather deteriorated even further.

In the woods it’s sometimes tough to tell just how bad the weather is. A forest acts as a windbreak, trees catch their share of rain or snow and shelter might be found beneath the canopy. Full dark when we left our cabin, we’d traveled only a mile out onto blacktop when we realised exactly where we were, which was again adrift. This time in seventeen degrees below zero with a forty-five mile an hour wind hurling snow every which way across a howling world of fury.

Out on the highway visibility proved all but nil. Then the red glow of brake lights flickered through the white and we came to a halt. A car had come down off a hilly side road and slid across the highway. The resultant four car pileup had the road completely closed. Emergency crews were at the scene. We sat and waited, gleaning the story off local radio, land yacht rocking side to side in the wind.

Time for discretion to be the better part of valor, I doubled back across the closed highway to pick my way through side streets towards Hurley, hoping to find someplace open for a suitable Christmas Eve dinner.

Walter’s Café in Hurley was one of the periodic attempts to bring fine dining to the range. It probably did fine business in peak times, but fancy eats are expensive and outside the reach of many locals, so such places don’t much last. Today the site is home to an antique/resale shop, more suited to the traffic that passed its door. But on that memorable Christmas Eve, Walter’s Café served as welcome haven for two weary travelers who enjoyed a meal of which Walter should forever be proud.

When we left the Café, a full moon hung in the sky south of Hurley and just to the north roared the Arctic. The Superior snow machine was on full bore and outside the woods the demarcation between comfort and risk stood plain in the night. We returned to our cabin and spent the last of Christmas Eve in front of a crackling fire, music of the season playing softly, a bit of fine wine and gifts exchanged between us while outside, winter raged.

If the most precious gift is that of giving and Christmas is the special season for that, then we were made rich indeed that Christmas Eve. In the very best tradition of the northwoods, no one is a stranger in time of need and all folk are neighbors, never more so than when thrown to the mercy of the wilderness.

And two hapless tourists could hardly have been more grateful for a gift so selflessly given.

King Copper -- Nonesuch

The special relationship between copper and people across the Superior region dates back at least 7,000 years because geology made it easy. Ordinarily underground, around the lake and significantly along the Keweenaw fault, this easily worked metal was found on or just under the ground; casually discovered, easily accessed and put to handy use.

Many of our most famous historic mines were founded on prehistoric pits and those were first dug using tools of stone often lashed with hide to wood.

By the middle 1800’s, much of the Upper Peninsula was being stripped of its great forests. Turn of the century, what the lumbermen left fell to the service of folk that moved in after. Notable were miners, who needed wood not only to fuel the fires of industry but to warm hearth & home.

Before long, this same landscape that today again nurtures wilderness resembled post-nuclear catastrophe. But at the time, it looked only like progress.

During the great copper era of the 19^th Century, dozens of working mines dotted the region and if you add the wildcatters and unnamed speculations, the number climbs exponentially from there. Despite the tens of millions of 1880’s dollars invested and the mountains of material hauled from the ground through the heroic labor laid down by thousands of mostly immigrant miners, only a rare handful of these operations ever sustained any profit at all.

That brings us to Nonesuch.

Image used courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources

Located at the southeast corner of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Nonesuch operated in fits and starts under five different owners roughly from 1867 to 1912. Its prime years were 1879-1881, when the mine is said to have returned a profit, however marginal.

The town built to support the mine peaked at perhaps 300 souls. Though little is known of cultural life specific to Nonesuch, there was a school, a boarding house, stores, a stagecoach stop and other trappings typical to a small company town. Still, life for the workers and their families was hard and not just by modern standards.

Nonesuch lost its post office in 1887, when the machinery at the mine was disassembled and shipped away to other, more promising sites. While some folk stayed on and though the Calumet & Hecla Mining Company later threw near 200 tons of equipment at the mine to try again, it was all downhill from there.

The town of Nonesuch as it appears today

When I first went in to Nonesuch, the site was privately owned but thoroughly abandoned. A friend said: “Watch for the sharp turn in the South Boundary Road. There’s short gravel to park on, behind the trees. Walk the old road in, then when the trail hangs a left, turn right and go down the hill. Keep your eyes open.”

Our eyes were soon wide open, because what litters that steep hill blanketed with dense forest are sights like this:

Huge dark stones mortared into thick, towering walls rise through obscurity in a wilderness that’s worked for more than 100 years to reclaim those stones for its own.

It’s hard to overstate the case for how special this place is. Walking that trail down that hill to catch first sight of the ruins of the Nonesuch mine is akin to being caught unawares by remnants of a great race of builders, with only mysterious works of stone as evidence of their existence.

The problem at Nonesuch was that unlike most of the rest of the Keweenaw where copper was found in thick veins or even in boulders on the surface, this commodity was particularly fine and all but inseparable from within a bed of sandstone and underlying shale. The customary method of separating copper from poor rock in a stamp mill failed at Nonesuch.

But where there’s a resource to be tapped, human ingenuity is brought full to bear.

During the 1880’s the Nonesuch Syndicate engaged in a radical process to recover the copper by dissolving the host rock in harsh chemicals, to cull the metal from the waste. Though the process later went on to great success, this first attempt failed.

Evidence remains of the chemical leaching process tried at Nonesuch

In the ‘Copper Handbook of 1902', Horace Stevens wrote of Nonesuch:

“Discovered in 1865, the mine was first opened in 1867, since which time it has swallowed several large fortunes, and has yielded the insignificant amount of 180 tons 1,072 pounds of refined copper from one of the richest beds of copper-bearing rock ever opened.

“The copper is there -- millions and millions of pounds of it, not worth a penny a ton in the mine. Someday the problem will be solved and a new crop of millionaires made from Nonesuch.”

And that, as they say, was that. I suppose those millions and millions of pounds of copper are still there. For certain, no new crop of millionaires has been made from it.

Today Nonesuch is protected by the Michigan DNR and the Keweenaw National Historic Park, which combined efforts help protect the last vestiges of regional cultural heritage before those are swallowed by time made harsher through abandonment and neglect. There’s never been a complete archeological survey taken at Nonesuch. Consider please, that the removal of artifacts at this or any historical site is the destruction of knowledge.  Not merely a crime by law, it’s a crime against our living cultural heritage.

So when you visit Nonesuch, be content to stand in awe of what the industry of our forebears left in their stead and of how the wilderness reclaims it now, right before your eyes. Sit quietly beside those sentinel walls amidst towering trees. Try to imagine what the place was like at its height -- the stench of caustic chemicals in the air, the sounds of axmen making constant fuel from dwindling timber, the persistent pounding of the stamp mill shaking the hill upon which it’s still perched and everywhere the sweat of labor and lives spent to little or no profitable end.

But most of all, listen for the voices of children. Life at Nonesuch wasn’t unrelieved, especially for them. 125 years ago, children ran this hill between these stone walls and down by the river the air rang with laughter.

Patrick O'Neill, Teacher and Poet

Patrick O’Neill is an esteemed teacher of college literature and composition, along with being the author of seven published books of poetry, the latest of which is titled “Snake Spit.”

Upon seeing that title, I had to meet the guy.

Photo courtesy of Patrick O'Neill

At a reading in Ironwood, the audience was full of Pat’s students, past and present. Throughout the evening, their laughter, knowing nods and obvious affection for Pat demonstrated not only that he’s a teacher in the finest sense of the word, but also a provocative, persistently engaging, always entertaining lecturer of the first order.

And an authentic local legend to boot.

Patrick O’Neill continues to teach in ways large and small. He sets an example for the rest of us by donating the proceeds from his readings and from the sale of his books to funding for the Arts, including the Ironwood Carnegie Library’s creative programming for children, the creative needs of children being Pat’s raison d’être.

Considering the nature of the man, his accomplishments and particular skills, no prose reduction of mine can provide adequate representation, so this week I’ll turn things over to him. I only urge you to support Pat in his efforts to help the children of the region, which are its future. A good start would be to purchase one of Pat’s books of poetry or to attend his next reading, which will be held Wednesday December 7^th, at the historic Ironwood Theater and is a fundraiser for the Ironwood Theatre and Carnegie Library Creative Writing Programming for Area Students: Sharing Poems and Stories.

With that, I proudly introduce Patrick O’Neill:

For Awhile

by Patrick O’Neill

Jack London and Robert Service sent me to the Range from Lower Michigan. Their dramatic/humorous stories of life in the Yukon that I read in junior high school gave me an appetite to tangle with bitter cold and heavy snow. The appetite lingered long enough to send me to the UP. Having been here so many decades killed my taste for snow and cold years ago. Now it’s the wilderness that holds me. The wildernesses’ compelling challenges drive my right brain, sending it exploring, discovering, creating. An appetite for the emotional impact of the mysterious and the unexplored draws me to the woods daily. The narrator of my poem “The Woods Is a Woman” and I share the same feelings, reflections, and inclinations:

                  The woods is a woman, a lover.

                  I enter her—not to escape or elude—

                  but to learn her pristine passion,

                  absorb her inspiration—and share

                  what I can of it with other inhabitants

                  of our crumbling world—where the frigid

                  calculator Institutionalism has captured,

                  castrated—robotized Reason—sent him

                  to war against his own sons and daughters.

Much of what draws me to the woods daily also draws me to my present and former students. They, too, are products of the wilderness. I don’t understand them anymore than I understand the birds, deer, rivers, trees, swamps. I bond with all of them. I walk into the same woods, classrooms day after day—and no two are ever the same; they shouldn’t be. It helps me keep strong my struggle against consistency; it chases me off traveled roads, trails, paths. Like the narrator of my Poem “Loops,”

I memorize

the annular trail

by tree buds, ripe berries,

stump mushrooms, snow.

But each trek my memory—

like a defiant kid—

hightails it into the woods,

vanishes. Lost, I—

without direction, haste—

discover alien buds,

berries, mushrooms, snow—

that blow presumptions

that wandered the bygones

with me to all Billy hell.

Former students often reassure me that my spontaneity—shortages of structure and direction both in and out of the classroom—along with my emotional outbreaks as the wildernesses clash with tamed uniformity has had some impact on them. It’s sent them to wildernesses where they explore, discover, invent, build vehicles, deliver—share only what they alone can share with the world. All of this does more than to reassure me that I don’t understand anything at all and to inspire me to keep trekking. The wildernesses of the woods and classrooms waft more than an independence; it’s a beautiful distance—a supreme poetry—that both humbles and inspires me. I embrace it.

Review

by Patrick O’Neill

I submit my

images, thoughts

to the River.

It doesn’t applaud or jeer.

It just keeps rippling

and roaring its own poetry—

diminishing my words.

Its blatant disregard passes

a caustic, demeaning

judgment: documented disdain

that discourages, silences you—

or rankles you to keep

yapping—for awhile.

Growing and Gathering

by Patrick O’Neill

A frequent question people shoot at me is, Have you noticed dramatic changes in high school graduates in your classes?  I’ve always disappointed them, answered the question with a head shake and, “No”—until the last couple decades. More and more students walk into my freshman comp classes not knowing they can invent, not knowing what invention is, or believing it’s unnecessary—a waste of time and energy.

Economic declines reinforcing governmental pressures that demand nearly exclusive objective curriculums have crippled our educational institutions. Excessive objective testing and the cutting of classes that promote creativity make it unduly difficult for educators to devote the necessary time and energy to give our kids the incentive to be creative.  Our elementary teachers—who hold the most important jobs in our culture—battle the brunt of the assault. 

I believe that during impressionable elementary-school years our kids are most able to discover, embrace, and hold on to the revelation that they not only can be but have a responsibility to be creative. It’s the only way they’ll ever share what’s vital to the health of any culture: the exclusive essence of its individual members. Creatively deprived cultures wither like root-bound plants and die. The Romans who sat comfortably rooted in their pots of plenty, letting other cultures invent for them, showed us that.  Their long, withering demise was their most useful contribution to the world.

My lifetime goal is to donate all the time, energy, and money I can grow and gather to give as many of our kids as I can what our elementary and secondary schools never seem to have the finances or time to provide: the inspiration, encouragement, direction, and self confidence to grow creatively. And along with this, I hope that my audiences—cultivators and producers of this endeavor—will find some inspiration, encouragement, direction, and self confidence in what I share in my books and at my readings.