Notes From the Field -- Transitions

Listen close. You can hear the difference.

All summer, a breeze through the trees sings primarily of life. Sometimes a sudden freshening warns of impending storm. Especially come evening, wind and trees and clear nights together might whisper of wonder and mystery. You can hear it, provided you're awake.

These last couple weeks as the light's fallen low, that same chorus through those same trees is turned brittle. Not yet cold, exactly. Little warmth left, either. Like millions of tiny skeletons, shrugging dry skin from agitated bones.

The time for passing is at hand, they cry.

In olden days (think 40 years ago), long about the third week of September every year we'd give ourselves over to the wilderness. That was the spot on the calendar when autumn's full, flagrant display most reliably graced the Gogebic Range, our gateway to the great wilderness beyond.

Some years the timing was better than others as years and timing both go, but more often than not the 3rd week in September proved pretty much spot on. By and large, we received of our indulgence what we'd asked. Even when we couldn't recognize until after the fact what that was.

Occasionally, the razor's edge between risk/reward wore mighty thin.

Typically, the weather during this annual endurance test was mostly crappy. That's a meteorological term, you could look it up.

Not infrequently, the raw edge of winter descended upon the Range while we were there. One morning Heather & I awoke to the sagging sides a darkened tent. Outside, four inches of heavy wet snow blanketed the forest.

A whole stinkin' season turned on us, while we slept.

The next year we sheltered in one of North Face's then radically inventive four season domes. That tent cost more than the car I drove, but it buffered us against the wildest caprice of late September in the northwoods. Not having to flee in the face of that would've been cheap at twice the price.

We meant to persevere against whatever autumn threw at us.

To understand that in the real world there're only two times of every day that matter a damn - light & dark. Of seasons just warm or cold, with a bit of mixed blessing between each. We meant to take life as it came, not try and invent it.

At least for a while. Then return home to relative safe harbor knowing we'd done that, however briefly. Knowing it was in us, to do.

So much the better, those years when we happened to meet the autumnal equinox head on in a place where that really counts.

Impossibly young, awash in the vast wilderness that flowed steadily from summer into winter and purposefully positioned on the cusp, pagan belief came easy. If shy wood sprites, powerful fairies and other such do exist, tell me they don't live here: 

If not, then they should.

These days, full raging autumn at the point of dying typically comes to the Gogebic Range sometime in October. Make of that change over the years what you will, there it is. A mere ten days ago, everything was still mostly green.

The steadily sinking sun blazed hot on the Superior Basin for days and a south wind blew a breath of life back into the woods. One afternoon I swam in the big lake as if it were high summer. The water was at least as warm as it'd been this past July.

Thinking it unproductively bland, I booked out early. Most of these images are from my back catalog of many Septembers. It's a large catalog.

*

Two days ago, the prairie remained hot & muggy. Broke the all time record for heat on that date. The old record was set last year. Make of that what you will, there it is. Records aren't what they used to be neither, for sure.

Passing Monarchs plied the remains of our garden. Most of the bees were gone. Sparrows savaged seed of the oregano that recently raised great wasps. Goldfinches tore at those sunflowers the squirrels can't reach. With night, katydids called. Crickets chirped.

Yesterday brought sudden reversal of fortune. Everything runs downhill now. That'll go faster by the day, until only open water lies ahead.

Since I left, to the Superior Basin has come cold rain, bitter wind and mountainous high seas. The season's first frost warnings are up for tonight, autumn marking the transition from then to now with frigid fingers.

On a quiet evening just prior to the usual week of September, after coming off the beach I sat awhile to savor lingering summer. Just me, the folk in that boat out there and the wheeling gulls. I thought this trip I'd not gotten exactly what I'd asked for, but was content with what I'd been given all the same.

In the gloaming I met a small brown snake in no hurry to yield the path that even after sunset held on tight to the heat of day. That snake moved only when I did, otherwise we might've stood there like that all night. I reminded the little fellow to be wary of owls. The snake took haven in the tall grass.

This year, my northwoods adventure was sunshine and unseasonable warmth carried on a fresh southerly breeze. That filled my lungs with promise for to better get through a season of short days and long nights. One friend's personal loss reminded me no season's entirely bereft of that save perhaps the most golden. My heart goes out to her.

In any event, what I needed most was the company of my very best Superior friends. By jumping the annual gun just a week, my timing was pretty much spot on as regards that.

Let the world turn as it will, I say.

Shining Light on the Prairie -- The Last Day of Summer, 2018

Yeah, I know. The old gods tell us the lush green season's got three whole weeks and a bit yet to go. It's marked on their calendar. Yea, summer.

Nonetheless, we'll diverge here on the trail from Nahma and Fayette leading to Grand Marais and the Kingston Plains for to pay real time respects to this day. Meteorologically speaking, on the stroke of midnight tonight summer is officially over.

That's as in finito. Kaput. See y'all next year.

At our latitude, August drains from the prairie some seventy-seven minutes of daylight like drought leaching water from seasonal wetlands. Appropriately, our little patch of prairie shows signs of wear and tear. The prairie's not stupid.

Neither are its many denizens, who know full well that as daylight recedes, so too does opportunity. For some weeks now, in all languages the cry's gone out: Everyone eats!

Okay, not that guy. At least, not that day.

The young Cooper's Hawk came to feast on sparrows. At Death's dark shadow cast across the hot white sky, a raucous alarm was raised. The sparrows took refuge in a bush too thick for hawks to penetrate. From safe haven they hurled insult in their loudest sparrow voices at the would be sparrow eater. That day, this hawk just stewed in the heat while sparrows swore.

It's been a productive season for great wasps, both Black and Golden. Especially Black, they've been prolific. In numbers I've not previously seen, Great Black Wasps swarm fast-fading oregano. Since these awesome flying beasts are non-aggressive, I stand close among them beneath the still searing sun and watch as they have at it.

Lately, that stand of hardy blossums is turned more competitive.

Last week a female Great Black Wasp knocked a pair of conjoined Monarchs right off the oregano, where they'd peaceably settled to do their essential late season mating thing. That giant wasp chased those Monarchs a good thirty feet up in the air and maybe another thirty southwards, before peeling off and returning to the oregano. I'd never seen the like.

The Monarchs settled on a broad sunflower leaf and presumably finished their business.

Though the hereditary monarchy's in trouble, at our place it's also been a fine year for Monarchs. We grow milkweed to call those in and it does the rest.

Once the bloom's off the milkweed, other flowering plants provide fuel for the Monarch's multigenerational trip south. Most days this time of year, we get multiple travelers passing through. This morning I counted four. Some stick around a few days, as at a way station.

Monarchs can be surprisingly aggressive. Occasionally, they'll chase sparrows for no good reason I know. The sparrows run from the butterfly. It's a hoot. Monarchs don't seem to well tolerate Swallowtails, either. There've been a bunch of those this year too. Starting with the Hurricane River in May, it was almost as if they'd followed me home.

Down here, we get both Black and Eastern Tiger.

We've a hummingbird that visits the ­­honeysuckle probably twice a day, early and late. We're on the regular route of at least three different varieties of hummingbird moths. Those are reticent critters and tough to adequately capture. Not to mention the moths most often visit after dark.

By contrast, skippers favor the sun and are unabashed posers.

Some years, skippers emerge by the score. Upon approach they scatter in flicking clouds before me. Not this summer.

Still, we've hosted a few. And with skippers comes variety.

When I transitioned from large format film to digital capture I desired something new to do. A fresh effort. One that took full advantage of my spiffy new toolset.

Playing to the Nikon's core strengths, over the last few summers I've taught myself to see small. Today's my bug shooter coming out party.

Bees of all sorts are in trouble worldwide, for a complexity of reasons. I understand no abundance or variety of those on our little patch will affect change great enough to alter the pollinators' collective path. That's an abiding sadness.

Yet all summer long -- day in and day out, rain or shine -- looking at life in the macro and finding it so robust proved a joy. All most any creature ever requires is the right invitation, then the party's on. With the months of June, July and August came profusion under harsh light, unabated.

From that brutal light, bits of welcome shade offered refuge. Provided you knew where to find it and could fit. Otherwise, it's damned sweaty work.

Today's light is significantly softened. Shadows fall easy on the prairie, muted harbingers of short times just over the horizon. Some of the the sunflowers might hold till near frost. Even now, attention turns increasingly toward those. This little bugger wouldn't have bothered with a sunflower, even a couple weeks ago. He needn't have. Now, he must.

Cicadas no longer wait on evening for vespers. They take up the chorus upon morning then continue loudly on and off throughout. Night is owned by crickets, katydids and other mostly tiny, sometimes winged things generally unseen, but whose summer song is much appreciated. It's a time of furtive hummingbird moths.

On warm nights especially, there is a symphony. With the dew, a kingdom of spiders stands revealed. Then it all begins again, if not quite anew. And sometimes, in the dark of night things turn.

Autumn brings the harvest. After that, the hard season. Old gods, new gods or no gods at all, that is the law.

Lucky for me Painted Ladies don't covet strawberries. Heather and I like to think of those as ours.

Feast while you still can, the prairie says. Time's a-wastin', it says.

And so we do.

The Iron Giant -- Fayette, MI

As I worked the Linhof during my first visit to Fayette, a man approached. About my own age, he'd enthusiasm to spare and an obvious desire to share.

"I saw you carrying that camera down the hill," he said. "It looked like your hair was on fire."

By way of explanation I waved one arm wide, as if that might take everything in and also excuse the metaphorically flaming hair. He seemed to understand. Two strangers by prior inclination tossed together on a strange land. Few words passed between us. Few were needed because there we stood.

Fayette Historic Park isn't curated architectural aggregate like Old World Wisconsin. It's no reconstruction of a legendary past as at Old Fort William, which though admirable is today neither where it once was nor old.

Unlike Fayette, Nonesuch comes shrouded in wildness that eats it. Though by no means impenetrable, Nonesuch is mostly incomprehensible and always will be. What stands at Fayette stands plain.

Victoria's character is down-home gritty. At Victoria on any given autumn afternoon, as long light fails behind the ridge and a lone docent fires up an aged smoker to chase the chill, with a shiver you might yet catch an authentic hint of a real past. Pumpkins and corn stalks optional.

In 1951 abandoned Fayette was cast in administrative amber. That's when the Escanaba Paper Company swapped it to the State of Michigan for publicly owned timberland.

Fayette Historic Park  was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. The currently crumbling icon of Nahma is on that list too.

This is a ghost town shorn of ghosts. Under bright light it shines cold. Maybe because the only living thing that ever really mattered here was the fire, which is long gone. You wouldn't invite that back, even if you could.

Fayette first came online in 1867 along the eastern shore of Big Bay De Noc at Snail Shell Harbor, to take advantage of nearby Escanaba's then bustling commercial docks.

At Fayette the Jackson Iron Company built roaring charcoal kilns and blast furnaces fueled by local hardwood and limestone. The Company used those to transform their cut of the Iron Giant into more profitable pig iron.

A monument to this fiery enterprise remains, as at the burial site of a barbarian King.

Structures were built primarily of wood. Except the walls of the Company's last company store are lime mortar and brick.

Fayette's population likely peaked somewhere short of 500 people. Mostly, these were immigrant folk. Workers got paid monthly. In gold, they say. That's some Nice work if you can get it, as they say. Residential areas of the town were laid out strictly according to caste. In Fayette, you knew where you stood. There was a railroad.

A race track and baseball field were up the hill behind and above the furnaces. Woe be to you when you placed a bet on a horse or played a little ball while Fayette belched into a full fetch breeze off the lake. There was nowhere to go for the smoke and stench and flying bits of hellfire, save to follow you up and over the hill on your one day off.

Taverns and brothels were located beyond the playing fields. It's said the citizens of Fayette once torched a brothel as a penalty for sexual slavery.

The town boasted a theater. That's still on the second floor of the original wooden structure, accessible only via a single enclosed stairway. On a wall of the theater, preserved behind Plexiglas, you can read the signatures of traveling performers who once played there. It's a nice touch.

Yet each and every time I mount those narrow wooden stairs I recall Calumet's later Italian Hall disaster. What were any of these people thinking?

Did they just not believe they'd burn? How could that be? Especially at Fayette, considering why they were there. Bet no docent fires up that stage right smoker, these days.

In May of 1883 the furnaces were feared destroyed by the fire they were constructed to contain. How that can happen, I don't know. The Jackson Iron Company made repairs and in September production resumed. The charcoal iron market was by then in decline and market forces soon did to Fayette what fire couldn't, quite.

Midway through 1885, operations at the kilns and furnaces became intermittent. By 1891 they were done. Once set, industrial fire burned hot at Fayette, then was struck. The flame lasted twenty-four years.

The town changed hands. For a while, it was a resort. That too, failed.

These days, the trail down the peninsula toward Fayette Historic Park cuts through farm fields studded with towering wind turbines that look like massive inverted grasshoppers, broken legs spinning in the wind.

This enterprise is named The Heritage Garden Wind Farm. It's quite the undertaking. Likely, the garden's creators take actuarial certitude as in their long term favor. Over a broad stretch of land, they've claimed the horizon and much of the sky.

Critical elements of endeavor melded to time and place don't well translate. Not to words. Not to images. Not to administrative preserves. Nonetheless, at Fayette we've chosen perpetual maintenance, hoping the future will take a lesson and render better, more lasting product from history's raw makings than a postindustrial cemetery, where today rest the bones of an Iron Giant.

*

As of this writing, should you head north across that wild water you'll still soon enough spy the leaning sawdust burner of Nahma, near the mouth of the Sturgeon River with no sturgeon. The burner was built circa 1888-1893, after wooden Nahma burnt one time too many.

Enterprise at Nahma and Fayette didn't coincide but briefly. The former was being born with the latter on its deathbed. Under any circumstance, one couldn't readily see the other, for the white limestone cliffs protecting Snail Shell Harbor.

I like to think one summer night two lovers made their way up those cliffs above failing Fayette, to forget their troubles and focus only on the moment. Then the deep red glow of newborn Nahma burning caught their eye. There'd have been just enough overlap between the two enterprises for someone to have seen that, from high enough ground during a sufficiently dark night.

In any event, at the administered ghost town that is Fayette, no spark left by any flame once called upon to build a modern world exists. What remains there is abstract reflection.