Standing Our Ground -- Patriotism & the Penokee Hills

Gogebic County MI, from 120mm transparency

Since before collective memory, we've relied on human ingenuity to help protect us from the vicissitudes of the real world. As much or more than curiosity or even creative thought, we lean primarily on a happy talent for construct to carve from the Earth and sustain for ourselves what’s then called civilization.

A raven possesses both curiosity and creative thought. He might think a thing but if he can’t build it, for him the night is forever dark, his nest remains subject to the wind and for life he relies only on wit & wing, as when those fail he promptly dies. The raven will never be us.

No matter how well or how poorly we translate abstract concepts of ethics and morality into lasting law for the benefit of the world's people, it's the comfort and relative security provided by our construct that allows us to indulge the effort. And so far as that construct's removed us from direct contact with the living, breathing landscape from which civilization is built and maintained, our ingenuity fails.

American liberty came to flower during a time when our idea of the real world was neatly summed up in a single word: inexhaustible.

Passenger pigeons rained from the sky. Egret feathers traveled around the world, detached from Egret wings. Rivers were sewers. Northern forests fell to rebuild Chicago after the fire, so Chicagoans could later use steel made from iron scabbed from the earth to construct the modern skyscraper. Of those we created modern cities, which in turn recreated us in myriad ways, often without our being aware or with anything better than our tacit consent.

We moved ever farther away from the landscape that sustains us and in the bargain, too many of us learned a casual disrespect for life itself.

What's true is that nothing earthly is inexhaustible and our notion of things turned out to be wrong.

What's true is that today the only resource standing between the continued viability of our construct and its eventual failure is the same human ingenuity that through unintended consequence created the problem to begin with.

Keweenaw County MI, from 120mm transparency

I set off on this Odyssey carrying a preconceived notion.

After many years exploring southern Superior's crumbling mines, abandoned towns, wrecked schools and the ruined homes of people who carried with them the hope of an American Dream fulfilled, I knew the history of the place and its repeated cycles of boom & bust.

Always, it goes like this:

Prosperity is promised by outsiders in exchange for whatever resource is elsewhere currently in high demand. Once that resource gets carted away, so too does the wealth and often after only a staggeringly few short years.

Then a desolated landscape, multigenerational poverty and lasting cultural despair is the payoff for what remains of people who once gambled everything and lost. Over and over and over again.

Across the Superior Basin, the only thing still inexhaustible is this continuing tale of woe, delivered in the service of an apparently inexhaustible lie.

Iron County WI, from 120mm transparency

I also knew that outside interests were again peddling the same promises as before, angling to take advantage of both a favorable market and a desperate people whose lives and livelihoods are today largely dependent on a regenerative, mostly healthy landscape.

The Eagle Mine near Marquette, to be constructed atop the watershed of multiple wild rivers. The Copperwood Mine, dug into hard by Superior's shore. There're dozens more, all around the Basin.

And of course, there's GTAC's ambition to reduce the last of the ancient Gogebic Range to repositioned ruble because a mining baron safely ensconced in Florida and with private wealth sufficient to purchase a State Legislature covets the poor quality ore still hidden by the last of the Range.

Seems there's yet more wealth begging extraction from what's now called the Penokee Hills.

No matter that the watershed scheduled for desolation wends its way through to one of the world's finest remaining freshwater estuaries and from there to the depths of Superior, where slowly, inexorably it feeds the other Great Lakes.

Which when taken together hold some 21% of global freshwater supply.

And should it turn out badly for this American landscape that even now defines and sustains a robust people? Well, that's what taxpayer funded perpetual maintenance is for, after all.

So stop the whining and start the mining, because if we still desire an American Dream as dreamt in the 19th and 20th Centuries and still embrace progress as defined by inexhaustible, then we leave ourselves no choice but to take our chances, Devil take the hindmost.

Planet of the Apes -- Keweenaw County MI, from 120mm transparency

I knew all this and more.

Shortly into this Odyssey, when a woman burdened by years of despair and with tears staining her all-American cheeks broke down in public to plead the case for Copperwood on the promise of a mere fourteen years unspecified relative prosperity and in the hope that such meager payout might somehow enable her children to remain on the land, what I already knew held sadly true.

Then as we traveled across the Basin to see firsthand the flower of inexhaustible ambition come to inevitably rotten fruit, the mill at Ontonagon that'd turned a profit while meeting current environmental standards was purposefully ruined.

Recourse to law or truth or what's simply common stinking sense right didn't hold the day, as wealth had ready access to more and better resources than did the good people of Ontonagon.

Old angers in me freshened.

This wasn't history, but future history being writ. With the real world and common folk again the hindmost, it was all just the same. Were I younger, anger at such sheer illogic in the service of naked greed might've consumed me.

Ontonagon MI, from the Toy Canon

I'm not so young as that.

Besides, by that time in this search for perfect light, we'd actually found some. And it's more than just a desperate glint in a dreamy prospector's eye.

Across the Basin we've met folk who with ingenuity and even greater generosity of spirit labor to break new trail and demonstrate that a magnificent and magnificently difficult real world needn't be casually destroyed in order that survivors of the destruction might barely prosper.

More about that later. For today it's sufficient to say that the region need no longer submit to economic terrorism leveled against it by outsiders. With reasonable local alternatives at hand and more in the pipeline, this chain of broken promise leading mostly to human misery can itself be broken.

Provided we stand our ground right here, right now.

Gogebic County MI, from 120mm transparency

The dictionary definition of "patriotism" is deceptively simple: Devotion to one's county.

On Independence Day we celebrate those first patriots of the United States, who at terrible risk to their lives, liberties and fortunes threw off the yoke of tyranny by rejecting those laws designed to enforce it. With that we were made free to create a prosperous new country better suited to a self-determined people powered by new ideas.

With America's natural resources taken for inexhaustible, the real world from which we constructed the American Promise and that today continues to sustain it wasn't accorded equal protection. No one imagined it'd ever be necessary.

Alger County MI, from 120mm transparency

The question of the Penokee Hills is one of American patriotism. Of devotion to one's country.

It's a question of whether the price of self-determination again requires we engage risk to reject tyranny, this time in defense of the land of liberty, thus doing what we might to make liberty inexhaustible by no longer pretending the real world that enables it is.

And in the bargain answering our responsibility to every generation.

Houghton County MI, from 120mm transparency

I can't answer that question for you. I can't presume to even advise.

What's true is this: accepting pennies on the dollar to scab the last poor quality iron from the ancient Gogebic Range and carry it away is no good investment in the future.

To allow that, we must believe that surrendering finite resources to the global market is worth whatever sacrifice is required.

To allow that, we must believe that the "land" in our land of liberty is simple metaphor, or inexhaustible, or of no consequence to a more secure and sustainable future.

To allow that, we must take history as merely the reflection of an inescapable future and must believe that human ingenuity's finally failed us.

Houghton County MI, from 120mm transparency

Recently, a handful of fired up young activists made a run to one of GTAC's deep woods work sites. They danced around and waved their arms, yelled, allegedly damaged some company equipment and allegedly stole a woman's phone. Some GTAC employees were frightened by the display. These activists chose not to make themselves readily identifiable to strangers, though locals present could tell who most of them were.

In response, a GTAC spokesmen compared these youthful American patriots to Al Qaeda terrorists.

At least we know GTAC's official opinion of these young citizen's patriotism. I can almost see the thought balloon above the guy's corporately sponsored head -- eyes wide, mouth contorted in reactionary disdain: This means war!

Well, I've got the news.

Counting a couple hundred years of skirmishes, this war on the land of the free & home of the brave now dates back something like 400 years. The battlefield stretches from sea to shining sea. The scars of war run wide and deep. Some may never heal, though chances are as yet fair that most will, should a truce be declared. As long as that's soon.

Alger County MI, from the Toy Canon

What's true is that much good has come from this war of attrition and no activist worthy of the name should ever forget it.

From its spoils we've set alight a flame of liberty recognizable the world over, for all people and through time. We've used the construct built of these spoils to end diseases, reach into space, gaze deep across the Universe, obliterate archaic cultural boundaries, dispense the sum of human knowledge to nearly everyone, lift the oppressed and destroy tyrants.

All to the point that our human ingenuity dazzles us like something akin to Biblical miracle cloaked in mystery  and handed down from on high.

But it's also true that nothing earthly is inexhaustible. That includes us and everything we make. We know that now. Or at least some of us do.

Across this Superior region, human ingenuity is turned full out towards living with as opposed to against this land that makes us free. Nothing this worthwhile comes easy. No healthy change so profound is achieved without some choose to reject it as radical. Or even illegal, depending.

Like it or not, it's on our watch that it's come to this. It's our opportunity to reconstruct the American Dream into a tangible, sustainable promise that offers something distinct from the old lie still being ferociously peddled by some.

All we must do to hold the day is stand our common ground against those who'd claim it for theirs alone, to do with as they please. Because a new promise is upon the place, but it needs fresh construct to protect it from the wind, to provide it the chance to grow.

So until that promise is secured, I'll fly my Gadsden on the 4th.

That's merely a symbolic action, sure. And this is only rhetoric, which is cheap, when far more than symbolism and rhetoric is what's called for. Resistance, is what's called for.

But it's a grand old flag all the same, emblematic of original American spirit, renewed today through shared purpose and entirely appropriate for patriots to plant atop any American common ground.

Including the Penokee Hills.

Atop the Penokee Hills -- Iron County WI, from 120mm transparency

And what history teaches is that sometimes, well-fired rhetoric hurled into a figurative dark sky is just the construct needed, to help banish night from a real world.

Happy Birthday, America.

Notes From the Field -- Gone Fishing

Sometime during our 14 month 26,000 mile Odyssey around Superior, I realized that I’d need to reestablish a relationship with the place that wasn't primarily intellectual and strictly about work.

Then when a too long winter was followed by a recalcitrant spring, an injury suffered early on in the fieldwork necessitated surgery and convalescence chained me indoors just as the seasons finally turned. I suffered greatly for the timing. No intellectual appreciation for the cultural, historical and natural landscape of the Superior Basin could sustain me.

What’s true is that the overriding value of wildness to humans isn’t what we think of it, but how it makes us feel. Landscape exists within as well as without. It informs us.

That’s a deeply personal connection -- an intimate, ancient and ongoing relationship with the real world that’s unique to each of us. This is why we've so much collective difficulty protecting wild landscapes, as their profound value resists easy translation via reductive formulae everyone can understand -- like resource extraction vs. wetland preservation. Measured strictly by dollars, wetlands inevitably lose.

It’s while fishing that my most intimate relationship with the real world is consummated, especially so on my beloved Presque Isle River, just up from where it pours its heart into Superior. So that’s where I’ve headed, after my winter of discontent.

I've a bit of work to do while here, places to go and people to see, all of which will end up on these pages in one form or the other in time. But mostly, I’m just hanging out on my favorite landscape in the world and will encourage it to fill me once again with that sense of wonder and awe and magic and quietude that set me off in search of perfect light to begin with.

Norman Maclean closed his magnificent “A River Runs Through It” with these sterling paragraphs, among the most evocative in all of literature. Would that I could write so well but I can’t, so I’ll lean on Norman to help see us through:

Of course, now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, though some friends think I shouldn't.  Like many fly fishermen in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening.  Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four-count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.  The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time.  On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops.  Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters.

Of course, I’m no fly fisherman and my river is the Presque Isle in Michigan, but Norman nailed it and for all time. He knew, as do I, that wildness is the best medicine for what ails us.

The Presque Isle too, suffered through a long, tough winter. Evidence of that is everywhere, in the form of shattered slate and tumbled trees. But she’s running as healthy now as anytime I've seen her in years. The river is heavy, like when it tried to claim Dick from Wakefield or my friend Johnny.

And just downriver from that, at the edge of the maelstrom, I coaxed out this:

The photo is through the kindness of a passing tourist who couldn’t help but notice when this trout cleared the water five times before coming to the net. A moment later the fish was back in the river. A few moments after that, she was out of my hands and again cruising the depths -- unhurt though perhaps a bit wiser about the deceptions of man.

What’s true is that after today I’m a bit wiser about the ways of trout and the Presque Isle.

The afternoon turned sodden and cold. Near nightfall, clouds rose from the Bessemer Bluffs in the way that they do.

It’s dark now, chill and wet. The spring chorus of frogs is in full and celestial voice all the same.

And this morning from the grey ash of objectivity and intellect I rekindled the flame of true love, on a wild river at the big lake. I’m a better man for that, no matter how unwell. More healing to come it’s hoped, in the days ahead.

Geez but it’s good to be home…

The Iron Giant & the Hermit of Gogebic County

Eventually, the story of exactly who does what, where and when is written by folklorists, historians and other interested parties. It belongs to everybody, after all.

But at the time of an event, especially when discovery occurs deep in a trackless wild then leads to untold riches, who wins claim to credit determines who goes on to live how. It's mostly winners who first alter the authentic narrative that later becomes what we call "history".

Which means that oftentimes, nobody alive knows exactly what actually happened. So we fill in the blanks as needed and when satisfied, call the compilation true...

The southern Gogebic Range

For a critical few transformational years in America's history, the Gogebic Range of the Superior Basin served as the nation's greatest producer of iron ore.

Through frightful work, brave men scabbed wealth from beneath the shrouded hills and with their labor helped make possible the transition of America from an agrarian to an industrial society. With so much going on, the question of credit for what led directly to that became a casualty of ambition.

What's true is that by 1848, federal and state geologists had mapped the existence of iron ore across much of the ancient range. It was a hard, inhospitable place said to be infested by insects and where even Indians didn't go. The landscape rested in relative obscurity as attention turned to the nation's first great mineral rush, the Copper Boom of the neighboring Keweenaw Formation.

The year before, Richard 'Dick' Langford emigrated to the States from Ireland. Then in 1852 or thereabouts and for reasons unknown, he'd found his way to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  There he made of himself a hunter, trapper, prospector and general all around woodsy. Langford wandered the dark region of the Gogebic alone, deeper than most any white man had.

It's said that in 1868, Richard 'Dick' Langford sunk a test pit at a promising site on the Gogebic, but didn't dig deep enough to find ore. Near there and atop a hill in 1871 or '72, he discovered iron laden rocks wedged into the roots of a fallen tree. The story goes that at some point, Langford took an unemployed mining captain to the site.

What's true is that subsequently, D.T. Moore wasn't long unemployed.

Probably in 1873, analyzed samples of stone provided by Moore proved to hold iron ore. On the strength of this he raised capital, bought the site and by 1884 the legendary Colby Mine pumped iron all the way to furnaces in Erie PA, to make steel for to build modern American cities, which then gave rise to a radically new American narrative.

A year later, no fewer than seven mines were open on the Range. The rush was on.

Later, D.T. Moore recalled how he'd been timber looking when he picked up a reddish rock from between the roots of a fallen tree and the rest was history.

That story's retold on the vintage Wisconsin State Historical Marker posted at a tourist's view of the Gogebic Range:

The officially sanctioned prose reads in part:

Nathaniel D. Moore (sic) uncovered iron ore deposits in the Penokee Gap near Bessemer in 1872, but it was not until 1884 that the first shipment was made. The news spread rapidly, attracting speculators, investors, and settlers. By 1886 there were 54 mines on the range and the area boomed, having "inexhaustible deposits of uniformly high-grade Bessemer ores." For a brief period stocks rose 1200 percent. The crash in 1887 ended the extravagant prosperity.

Well, not quite. There remained decades of fortunes to be made, lost and made again, while the collective family of miners came and went. When they stayed, most died poor and too often prematurely because the fortune mostly flowed elsewhere.

This is what Richard Langford had to say about it, as quoted by Victor F. Lemmer in his "Ghost Mines of the Gogebic Range", published in 1966:

My labors have brought wealth to others and me to the poorhouse. I could have established my right to one-quarter interest in the Colby Mine, but I did not care to take such a step. I never had a lawsuit, been arrested, or served as a witness or juryman. In fact, I have never been put under oath.

Image courtesy of the Philp J. Kucera collection

What's true is that blind and broke, Richard 'Dick' Langford died in 1909 at the age of 83, in the infirmary of the Ontonagon County poor farm.

Today, traces of both Langford and Moore remain on the Range. A short piece on the hill from where the Colby was dug, there's this:

Upon which there's a plaque erected by the Daughters of the American Revolution (no less) and take that, Wisconsin State Historical roadside signage...

Then if you'd like a hint of the landscape that first drew Langford to the Gogebic, head east and wander back roads through the Ottawa National Forest to reach Langford Lake. It's at the shore of this lake that Langford's image was captured in front of his shack, or so I once was told.

As for D.T. and/or Nathaniel Moore, we'll have to return here:

This is the best spot for passersby to get a look at that part a the Gogebic Range left relatively unmolested through the mining years. You'll find it at a quick pullover off U.S. 2 in Iron Co WI, a few miles west of Hurley.

Here you'll see a soft line of ancient hills that rise from a landscape counted among the most pristine in Wisconsin. That distinction's earned the place its own name, so today we call it the Penokee Hills. Whatever the name, rains run off its flanks add to a watershed that feeds the entire region, then flows into the rice beds at the Kakagon and Bad River Sloughs, before nourishing Superior.

At the behest of their Florida partner the Cline Group (GTAC), downstate Wisconsin politicians intend to make these hills disappear, as the last remaining scabs of iron in the once fabled Gogebic remain buried deep within. It's poor quality ore, tough to get at and retrieval is an exceeding dirty business, sure. But hey, someone's gotta do it and these are hard stinkin' times. Or so the story goes.

Gazing from this wayside at some of the oldest mountains on the face of the earth -- what used to be like the Andes or the Rockies but are now worn with geologic time -- the State of Wisconsin's got your back because behind you on official signage it tells the story of one Nathaniel D and/or D.T. Moore, a once unemployed mining captain made definitely good.

But the way better bet is to keep looking at those hills, while considering the story of the Hermit of Gogebic County.

Northwoods Follies -- A Friend Indeed

Almost always, it'd be a Friday in mid to late September.

Johnny, Heather & I'd end our respective work weeks, head to our respective homes and pack. Some hours later I'd make the rounds to pick them up. We stuffed the car to bursting along the way.

Then late at night or even later, with little sleep or none at all, we'd hit the road and drive on through. Which was often an adventure in and of itself. Like the time the little arrow read "E" and we spent precious predawn hours fretting at the outskirts of sizable Fond du Lac WI, waiting for the only gas station to open. If you're reading this and younger than 35, just try to imagine that.

Thing was, we'd no time to lose.

Vacation in the Northwoods meant we'd soon be set loose in Wonderland. The first of so few, brief days at liberty had to count for more than just driving. If we pushed through the night we'd secure provisions at least for the weekend and set up camp in time to do something.

It was important.

When I told a story on the late Dick from Wakefield, I said I've known two people who'd gone into the Presque Isle River in heavy water and lived to tell the tale. Dick was the second.

My friend Johnny was the first.

From a 120mm transparency

*

Heather & I arrived in front of Johnny's house long about 11:00 pm, my big-assed black Oldsmobile '88 already pretty well packed. A pile of Johnny's stuff lay out on the walkway, the known quantity of which had space barely preserved for it in the car.

Gear taken for granted today was then still exotic and expensive to boot. Apart from my radical North Face tent, we camped much as our fathers did and their fathers before. Tarps. Axes. White gas stoves and lanterns. Thick flannel sleeping bags. Cast iron cookware, metal dishes. Every bit of fishing gear we owned. Our favorite hats, wide-brimmed and not yet made crushable.

And for a couple years at least, a 16mm filmmaking outfit, sans sound.

We carried lots of stuff.

A man approached from down the street, military gait undisguised by civilian semi-ease and make no mistake.

"Artie!" Johnny greeted the fellow with open arms.

Artie was just in, on leave from the Marines. He'd come over to see what his best boyhood friend Johnny was up to on a Friday night. You can imagine how it went:

Geez Artie, we're all set to leave for a week... I wish... Hey, do 'ya think?... I dunno... only a week... What else 'ya got to do? ...of course there's room... It's freakin' awesome up there...

O.K. What the Hell.

Don't ask how we did it, I don't remember. The car sure was crowded but as driver my space was sacrosanct so I didn't much care. At any rate we didn't have to lash Artie to the roof and there'd be room for him in Johnny's tent. As a Marine, Artie'd been unburdened of most personal stuff. What little was left he'd been well taught to keep tight. We were good to go.

So off we went together, spirits high and set firmly on adventure. For the first and only time, our happy little trio of Northwoods Players had added a fourth.

*

In the short afternoon of a late September day, we arrived at the Presque Isle unit of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness. The place was mostly empty and we secured our two favorite campsites overlooking Superior.

From a vintage 35mm transparency

We ought to have set up camp but were like restive kids finally spilled from a full season of school. Excitement overrode judgment and instead of doing chores we headed down to the river to see what we could see. That was why we'd come, after all.

With the right wind at night and the Presque Isle running high, you hear the rush of the falls all the way to the far end of camp. That's a fair piece. Even more than the nocturnal rhythms of the big lake, it's probably my favorite lullaby.

You can't see my river from the trail leading down to it.

Over the years I've come to anticipate the state of things by what I hear of her from on high. When the river's white song informs the woods it sings mostly of good fortune. When she's silent, it generally means you'll work harder for less.

On this day in September, the Presque Isle's voice was full. As was the parking lot and with Michigan plates, another good sign. Locals don't much waste their time fishing where fish aren't but when edge seasons draw runs of mighty beasts from big water all the way up the river to the falls, locals take full advantage.

Down the stairs we tumbled, clumsy with anticipation. What sights awaited us at the bottom!

Jammed shoulder to shoulder, fishermen lined every reasonably safe spot along both sides of the heavy river. On the suspension bridge we stood agape as dozens of Coho salmon were hooked, disgorged and rudely tossed to the rocks behind, with fresh lines quickly laid out then all but instantly hooking another silvery fish. Behind every fisherman there flopped a pile of not quite yet dead salmon.

None of us had ever seen the like. We were transfixed.

Then we shook ourselves and ran the steep steps up from the river two at a time, a thing I can no longer do regardless of circumstance.

We threw gear from the car and built the essentials of camp. Even so, the day slipped towards dark while we made ready. Which was why we carried Mr. Coleman's portable sun, to blast the night.

Flush with anticipation, we headed back to the river.

At dusk the parking lot emptied, as did the riverbank below. With fresh choice of spots, we clambered down a narrow trail to a smooth rock ledge along furious water. We fired the Coleman, rigged our gear and commenced to fish.

We rode astride the world, as intended.

Johnny stood upriver to my left and nearest the falls. Heather came next, then me. Artie ended up downriver, nearly submerged in total darkness. Fishermen and fish were both fled with the day. Only we four tourists remained, hard beside hissing water in the night. So close were the falls, you couldn't hear much of anything beyond river song. Turbulent air over the water ate the light from the portable sun.

We proceeded to catch exactly nothing but fished on, true to our purpose.

Above the white rush of the falls, an existential alarm sounded. I turned. Out of the night Heather ran to me along the cruel edge of slick stone; yelling for all she was worth, arms waving wildly. I inhaled sharply to scold such dangerous abandon, then something caught my eye and instead I looked down.

Johnny was in the river.

Were it not for flailing hands clawing at black slate I'd probably never have seen him. His head was roughly even with the ledge, thrown back in terror to keep from drowning then and there. I'll never forget the look on his face.

The current flung him to me. I stretched out my fishing pole. Johnny grabbed it and maybe even slowed for the space of a fleeting thought. It proved insufficient. He hurtled irrevocably past, to what in my horror I absolutely recognised for imminent death.

Johnny fast faded from sight.

Deep in shadow, Artie bent at the waist.

With a mighty swipe of a single Marine hewn arm, Artie clutched the shoulder of Johnny's sodden coat. In a single fluid motion he plucked Johnny straight from the raging river and into the air, then set him down gently upon the welcome stability of slippery stone.

Against all reason, Johnny wasn't drowned after all.

Because Artie'd taken leave from the Marines, then was unexpectedly hauled hundreds of miles overland only to find himself placed precisely in the two square feet of all existence at the exact same moment ever when he'd be perfectly positioned to save his best boyhood friend's life, which he did.

We gathered around Johnny who was alive. He shivered cold and wet, but just then was maybe less scared than any of us, considering. We made it off the river, up the stairs and back to camp at least as quickly as we'd made it down.

We built the sort of bonfire that lights the night to let the world know you're there.

It was just the slightest misstep that pitched Johnny full into the river. He told us that the great beast of the Presque Isle tried mightily to drag him below the undercut slate and claim him for its own.

Johnny said It tried to yank my boots off, which were the exact same words used some decades later by old Dick from Wakefield, high above the same stretch of river on a sparkling morning.

Through the night we four laughed and maybe cried as our fire shot sparks off to the sky over Superior. We spoke of life and death and life some more, always more.

Life chose Johnny and we remained at liberty to howl at the moon, our purpose for that day in that place forever secure.

Notes From the Field -- Reboot

When I started my 30 year career as a commercial photo tech in the big city, it was in the company of veteran lab rats intimately acquainted with the vicissitudes of professional craft as applied on a time critical basis.

Appropriately, these were called "craftsmen".

During that 30 years the Digital Age dawned.

The earth shook and the skies grew wild as old ways disappeared into the whirlwind of progress, from which there's no return for the past.

Then the day came when decades of high level performance got paid off with casual insult and I'd seen enough to know it'd only ever get worse and there'd be no better end, so I said screw it and walked away.

Out of a job and flat out of career prospects, later that day only one thought dominated:

I'll never again work under crushing deadline except by choice.

And more than a decade later here I am, having spent the last 19 months producing comprehensive, cross-discipline product from scratch and just as fine as I can make it, considering the running Digital Age deadline of 'live'.

Maybe one can't teach an old dog new tricks after all, despite new fields of play...

This is a job traditionally done in isolation.

Had I engaged this fieldwork even a few short years ago, I'd have spent as much time, traveled as many miles, shot the same film at the same locations and not talked much about any of it along the way.

After which I'd have poured over the images and sifted through accumulated stacks of notes & prose, encouraging each to carry me back to a moment captured with purpose upon a highly specific landscape.

Then in order to fashion this pile of gathered stuff into a coherent body of work possessed of cogent context, I'd consider everything about it and at my own pace would make it all into a new thing. Maybe another year or so of concentrated effort, or at any rate until satisfied.

Only then would I let it loose upon the wind.

This being now not then, blogging changed everything. Except I still have on my hands this pile of gathered stuff and already partly formed, too.

In order to do something with it, I'll first have to not juggle quite so much. Me spitting into the digital wind and trusting to faith won't cut it because while I like being able to juggle, I set out to do much more and don't trust the void one bit.

Giving this work its best chance to last requires I revise the workflow and again shrug off deadline pressure, so I can revisit old ways in order to craft something new and more tangible than ether.

From the beginning of this Odyssey and throughout, I've worked from a list of subjects. That list grew as our travels assumed a narrative that gained definition mile by mile, through an organic process of exploration & discovery intrinsic to quality time spent on the road.

There's more yet to come, both of list and exploration, but a good bit of it requires surpassing effort on my part, as some nuts are just plain tough to crack.

To accommodate that as well as my backstage efforts to make what I intended of this gig, we'll slow things down a bit. From here on I'll post new material at least once a month, which means we're likely to remain on this digital journey together for a good deal longer than was originally planned.

Of all the images gathered during our travels, the two used here today have become emblematic for me of where we've been and where we're headed. This narrative promises to only deepen and grow richer as we go.

It's a distinctly American story. I hope and trust you'll stick around to see this project through.

So with that in mind, please drop in on Thursday April 4th, when we'll relax the pace and complete this current trek through the Porcupine Mountains with a story so unlikely you might think I've made it up.

But it's true, all the same...