Citizen Artists

On a grey, wet day last autumn, a disparate group of citizens gathered beneath a shelter at a public park in Melon WI. You know somebody, they know somebody. Word gets around. Interested parties show up at the appointed time & place.

At issue was Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal that we should sell the Penokee Hills lock stock & barrel to the Cline Group out of Florida to do with pretty much as they pleased and sell it damned cheaply, too. Not to mention the wholesale abrogation of 40 years of Wisconsin environmental legislation thrown in to seal the deal.

The question was: how might we respond to this, using our own special gifts lifted together as voice to speak for these Hills? Every citizen has a right to speak. With artists, that’s what we do for a living, one way or the other.

“Penokee: Explore the Iron Hills” is one result from that initial gathering. The exhibition will receive its preview this Saturday June 2^nd in the Rotunda of the State Capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin. Opening reception is from 11:00am to 1:00pm.

As space constraints in the Rotunda prevented us from mounting the entire show, I’ll defer speaking about it at any length ‘til when the whole thing takes up an extended residency at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland.

But for this show to premier in this place on this date is exquisite timing, as next Tuesday the good citizens of Wisconsin will decide whether or not to recall Gov. Walker in part because too many of his supporters think a middle finger thrust in the air passes for adult conversation:

Traveling through northern WI over the last weeks, it’s obvious that there’s a hotly contested election going on, as signs touting Gov. Walker or Mayor Barrett sprout everywhere.

For instance, in Ashland I couldn’t help but notice the local Pawn emporium’s property was festooned with signage declaring that they “Stand with Gov. Walker” and I’m thinking, “Yeah, as well you ought, considering”.

On a personal note, the very 1^st traveling shoot I ever did with the Linhof brought me to Madison at the end. That would be autumn, early 90’s.

As you can see, the concept of perspective control escaped me.

I went on to master my craft and gained that control, which mature perspective now happily brings me ‘round full circle back to Madison.

I’m told the Farmer’s Market in Madison's Capitol Square is quite the thing. If you’re in the neighborhood, please drop on by…

Notes From the Field -- From Grand Marais MI to Grand Marais MN

Fifteen days, 3,400 miles. All three of these United States along the big lake, no Canada. 340 120mm exposures with the Mamiya, 27 precious sheets of 4x5 transparency put through the Linhof. A few thousand mostly rough hammered words, in my spare time. I guess that’s why it’s called fieldwork.

After such a succession of long working days, it’s easy to run ragged.

*

May 23^rd

I’m hard by the darkening harbor of Grand Marais MN, belly full of fresh Lake Trout expertly grilled. It’s a day of rolling storms pretty much all around ‘cept exactly wherever I’ve been, which means I’ve been able to work regardless. A low wind regime and soft light leave me hopeful.

All along Minnesota’s shore folk gear up for the summer season that begins with Memorial Day weekend. The place is still largely empty and that’s how I like it. Even with some stuff unavailable or closed, offseason travel is aces.

It’s 46° and raining a bit. I’ve stopped for frozen custard all the same, which I eat outside. The owner ladies are glad for the business, however modest. In a couple of days they’ll be dealing fancy pants wood-fired pizzas to tourists. From the sound system inside, a sweet woman’s voice sings a plaintive tune.

“I don’t know about the weather for the weekend. Supposed to be wet”, sez I.

“We really need the rain”, sez she. Indeed they do. From Grand Marais MI to Grand Marais MN, the most obvious constant along the south shore is that everything’s bone stinkin’ dry. I’m still trying to rid myself of dust from the Kingston Plains.

Even with the welcome rain I’ve somehow managed to keep from getting soaked though storms have raged all around. Thunder rumbles in back of me, where clouds troll so low the Gunflint Trail and the Sawtooth Mountains are cloaked in them. Before me over the big lake, lighting pierces the veil of rain shafts.

I wonder if the rain’ll make it all the way to Grand Marais MI. That’s some 400 miles of open water southeast of here. Save for the Keweenaw Peninsula, which in the old days you’d have to either paddle around or portage over, but that can now be sailed right through.

400 miles between here and there doesn’t seem like much to a storm, but weather on and around the lake is a peculiar thing and only rarely does it do what you’d expect.

Exactly here it’s rained hard only while I ate the trout. Then it let up. Geez, it’s almost like I had a plan.

Averaging over 200 miles a day for better than two weeks is enough to tire most anyone. It’s easy to run ragged and I am, a bit. I miss Heather. Between now & November I’ll spend more time away from her than ever I have since first we met. That’s near 40 years now, all told. Truth is, the separation is way harder than the work, which is invigorating until the moment I pause, then it’s exhausting.

Not to mention that the issues facing the Superior basin are as daunting as they are numerous, which becomes more evident to me with every passing mile…

Still, I’ve got about the greatest gig in the whole stinkin’ world:

And when I sleep tonight, Superior’s waves and the rolling thunder over them will inform my dreams…

*

The next day was more of the same, with me being able to work between the storms. Then long about 4:30 while running south down 61 back towards town and along a stretch that offers a good view of the shore, I got stopped in my tracks.

All day the fog rolled in and out along the lake. From this vantage I saw the shimmering white of a fog bank being near to overwhelmed by some of the blackest clouds you’d ever hope to see. I doubled back to the vantage point, hauled out the Linhof, quickly set up and exposed a single sheet before hurrying back to the car as the storm broke above me.

No, there’s no shot from the Toy Canon to show you and treating large format photography like a pocket camera doesn’t often work so well, but sometimes it does and we’ll see if this was one of those times.

When I made it into Grand Marais, the streets were flooded. I ate a quick bite of decently deep-fried walleye along with a slice of pie, then made it back safely to my motel where, for the briefest moment it seemed as if the storm would pass. It didn’t.

Snapped this after I blew a roll through the Mamiya, thanks very much.

That night, near to three inches of rain fell atop the Arrowhead of Minnesota and if you’d like to see what all that water running off a land of hard rock looks like in the Cascade River the next morning, get a load of this:

Later I learned that the rain didn’t reach to Grand Marais and that just east of the Kingston Plains the land was aflame.

*

My last day on the road I retired my eyes for a day and put the canoe out on my favorite lake to see if I mightn’t engage in some conversation with fish. The fishing wasn’t so hot but when all was said & done I had my hands on five different species, which should be a good day in any man’s book. Still, every fisherman I talked to said the same thing: “Weird year”. And so it’s been.

As I took the canoe from the water, a couple dozen Tiger Swallowtails flitted about, happy in the sun. Later, as the first clouds of the coming night’s storms gathered, three Trumpeter Swans flew low overhead. I remember when there were none of these anymore and then when the only ones you’d see were banded. Now wild birds inhabit the Range, which is a good thing ‘cept Trumpeters are damned contentious critters and I once had one try to knock me from my canoe, but that’s a story for a different day.

Spring was remarkably brief and suddenly, it's summer.

*

With the holiday I won’t see my film until later in the week and that’s when I’ll know what’s what. There’s no instant digital gratification, that’s sure. Gathered an awful lot of material along the way, which we’ll cover during the coming weeks.

Right now it’s catch a quick breath and a fast turnaround for a trip to Madison, where on Saturday I’ll be honored to attend a timely special event held in the State Capital building.

I’ll preview that on Thursday.

The Kingston Plains

(See also, The Kingston Plains Revisited -- In Perfect Light)

Unlike copper or iron, timber is a renewable resource. Modern forest management practices demonstrate that, though the concept is curious 'cause without we first intrude ourselves upon it, forests manage to manage themselves quite well, thanks very much.

By the 1880’s white folk had been picking over the shores of Lake Superior for better than 250 years. Etienne Brule first saw the big lake in 1622 or 1623. Father Marquette established a mission at Sault Ste. Marie in 1668. The Hudson’s Bay Company was formed in 1670 and out of their northern headquarters came to control the fur trade around Superior for nearly 100 years. From there the fabled Voyageurs roamed the big lake far and wide.

Yet save for Indians who lived there, almost no one dared venture far from shore. The wilderness was considered an impassible wasteland fit only for animals and savages, which were taken by many as mostly one and the same. Then in 1841 Douglas Houghton documented copper in the Keweenaw and soon the rush was on.

When white men finally did wander inland, what they found there filled them with awe: a region so vast and rich as to be “inexhaustible”. This they believed, even as they proved it untrue and damned quickly, too. At the same time and for a variety of reasons that destruction was mythologized.  These were indeed mighty men engaged to tame the wilderness, which was both us doing God’s work and (happy coincidence!) essential to commerce and the building a great nation.

West of Grand Marais MI and south of the Grand Sable Dunes, on the Kingston Plains a vast forest of old growth White Pine stood on sandy ground. Then Thomas G. Sullivan came to town and in three years his crews removed 50 million feet of white pine from the Kingston Plains and areas nearer the lakeshore. Often this work was accomplished during winter when the heavy logs were sledded over to the base of the Dunes to await the first barges of spring.  At night men sprayed the snow with water to make ice roads to facilitate transport of the next day’s work.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress

Come ice out on Superior, crews then hauled their treasure right up the backside of the Grand Sable Dunes and dropped it piece by mighty piece onto a constructed wooden logslide leading some 500 feet down to the water and barges gathered there to haul logs to mills in Grand Marais and Munising. Sometimes, the logs went down the slide so fast the thing caught fire. Sometimes, instead of bobbing around on the water at the bottom, the massive logs skipped as much as 200 feet over the surface of the lake and occasionally crushed those men tasked with their retrieval.

From the top of the Grand Sable Dunes Logslide

Just like the copper and iron folk want to mine for today is mostly targeted for sale to China, much of this timber was shipped off to Europe, though a bunch of it went down to Chicago, which was then being transformed from a devastated town into a great city after the Fire of 1873.

Others followed Sullivan. The Plains were logged over again and again, finally abandoned in 1909 and left piled high with “slash”, which is vernacular for branches and fast drying scraps of wood with no commercial value. All of it full of resin.

Then came fire and like the loggers it came repeatedly, caused both by lightning and the hand of man. The last big fire on the Kingston Plains occurred in the 1930’s. After that the barren landscape fell to rest.

No one knows absolutely why this forest failed to regenerate. Probably the fires burnt so hot they cooked the resin in the wood and left no seeds to germinate. Certainly, the poor soil of humus and peat that nevertheless once supported a mighty old growth forest burnt right down to the sand. What’s true is that more than 110 years after the last logger left the Plains, the landscape remains a stump field.

During recent decades, some of the place has been replanted, which accounts for those lines of trees you see on the horizon. But most of what grows there of its own accord are lichens with the occasional scrub bush thrown in for good measure. Perversely and/or appropriately, the morning I worked the landscape the only vehicles to kick up dust along the Adams Trail were logging trucks, rushing from somewhere to somewheres else. There’s no need for them to stop anymore, along the Kingston Plains.

Still, for all the evident devastation that surrounded me, I found sights like this:

And most amazingly, these tender spring flowers finding life from within a flower pot that’s been stone cold dead for better than a century:

It’s said that “life finds a way”.

No matter how heedless our intrusion upon it, regardless that a given landscape isn’t what it once was and might remain forever altered by our inveterate ambition to bend nature to our will, life does indeed find a way.

And on the Kingston Plains, there is proof:

Notes From the Field -- On the Road

You’re right, this isn’t Thursday.

But by then I’ll be hard by the lake in territory that’s as remote as any along the south shore, made famous in literature first by Ernest Hemingway and later by Jim Harrison. Better by Harrison I think, as Hemingway was too concerned with making himself the World’s Greatest Living Writer, as he explicitly was with his ‘Nick Adams’ stories. Anyway, this writer’s ability to access the Great Grid while traveling this storied region remains an open question, especially as services there aren’t quite “Open for the Season”.

The past winter on the basin never was what it’s supposed to be, though perversely it managed to hold tough until May, which is about right for most years.

There wasn’t a single day with ice on the big lake sufficient for a trek out to the ice caves of Cornucopia, which was planned as the cornerstone for my winter’s fieldwork. That’s a desultory thing, but any lack of opportunity on my part is insignificant when compared to the wholesale cost of a mild Northwoods winter. When a lake doesn’t freeze, it evaporates all year long. Superior is meant to be sheathed in ice for months on end and it hasn't been that, not for some years now.

I’ve been on the Range for three days. I like to start on home turf, to get my bearings. It’s amazing just how drastically things have changed over the three weeks since I turned tail and ran home in the face of recalcitrant winter. The rumor of apple blossoms that brought me in April remains a rumor, only this time they’ve come and mostly gone in the blink of a seasonal eye. The woods that in April were still asleep aren’t only now wide awake, they’re quickly gathering the green veil of summer to obscure what’s held within.

I turned my back for but a moment and spring exploded.

It’s a good year for Marsh Marigolds:

And the best year I’ve seen for Trillium:

Early this morning I drove up County 519 to visit with my river and do a little fishing, all work and no play and all that. The river was low but heavy. In good shape, I thought.

Yeah, we’ve seen this before, but not in spring…

While there I kept company with an immature eagle, who hadn’t quite earned his white feathers. The bird hunted the same water with the same results as I, which was nada, zilch, nothing and so it goes. For a little while he sat perched atop a tree across the river and struggled mightily to keep his grip on a slender branch waving in a freshening breeze out from the west. I let him go unmolested. Sometimes, you have to just look and not work; else you see things only through the lens of your ambition and that ain’t the real world. A notion Hemingway might have profited from...

Eventually the eagle flew off in search of breakfast. I took the clue and did the same.

Imagine my surprise when I got back to the South Boundary Road and found a barrier erected in the interim. “Road Closed 2.5 mi” it read. I drove around it and sure enough, in 2.5 there was an impassible barrier and down a piece from that, heavy equipment completely blocked the way.

I’d noticed that trees along 519 had been marked for cutting, step one in widening a road. It was also plain that work crews had been pickin’ around the culverts that run beneath it, but there was no signage when I drove in. If there’d been any hint I’d have demurred, as what ought to have been an easy jaunt of 17 miles to breakfast turned into a 70 mile drive back home in time for lunch.

Funny sort of business, all this work for a mine whose permits aren’t yet let. Sure hope the State got Orvana to pony up their minority split of that heralded “public private partnership” in advance. And if the “bonus” to the ruination of a splendidly scenic drive is gonna be a spiffy new road for the convenience of future travelers, then you’d like to think Orvana’s lackeys in the Gogebic County Road commission would pay better mind to said convenience of travelers today with a little handy signage strategically mounted in advance.

And so it goes. We’ll see a whole lot more of this sort of thing along the way, past & present. It didn’t ruin the day, as it was along the South Boundary road that I found the most robust field of Trillium I’ve ever seen.

Which tells us the season of darkness is well & truly over. Winter is gone now even from our rear view mirror and (with the exception of 519) we can hope the road ahead is clear.

So let’s get back on it. Seatbelts strictly optional for everyone but me.

See ‘ya again on Thursday. Or maybe not…

Animal Stories -- Channeling Dr. Doolittle

The great northern wilderness comes stuffed with wildlife of all sorts or it wouldn’t be wilderness. From the notable bear, wolf and cougar down to a host of tiny creatures unnoticed, all manner of beasties bring character to the woods. Even the smallest is critical to the health of the place and in ways we might never suspect.

Over the last few decades, many species once lost to the Superior Basin or winnowed down to the significance of rarity are resurgent. That’s due in part to what we’ve done but more to what we’ve stopped doing. That is, mostly we no longer harvest, poison and otherwise destroy with abject abandon.

We’re better these days at recognizing hard choices and the information necessary to make those wisely is more readily at hand, so the real world occasionally holds the argument over relentless construct. These are comparatively better days for wilderness and everything that prospers from it, to be sure.

Forty years or so ago it’d have made your trip, to see a single eagle. Today our national symbol is busy feasting on fresh road kill off the shoulders of highways, with your trip well and truly made should you happen to drive off the road while trying not to hit one. And there’s a bit of a story to tell about just how long it was locals knew the cougar again roamed the shaded hills before the State finally confirmed the popular consensus. We’ll get to that sometime later.

Insect life is particularly robust in the wilderness. Worth a mention, as you’ve not lived ‘til some five inch bug drops from the night and lands on your bare flesh to pursue unknown intent...

Spend enough time in the home of myriad critters and your paths are bound to cross. In the midst of such abundance and diversity, that intersection will range anywhere from sublime to ridiculous and sometimes all at once.

*

The Barred Owl

Barred Owls are at home in the northwoods. Their distinctive voice is often heard at night and conversations between birds can carry on at length.

The woods that on three sides surround the Presque Isle campground in the Porkies are as good a place as any to hear these. It’s tall forest sporting a dense canopy over sparse understory and much of what falls is annually picked over by a steady stream of tourists gathering wood for fire. On clear nights the light of those fires is seen a long way out over Superior.

Towards the forest away from the lake, light fades fast and when you venture out at night home fires fail completely. We’d walk those dark woods with flashlights turned off because when needs be your feet have better vision than they generally get credit for and once you figure that out it’s only natural to press it, just to see what’s what.

Sure we’d bump around some or now and again take a fall, though not so often as you’d expect. And walking the woods at night without construct to preserve expectation is primal, which can be an exercise in fun. So off we’d go, the occasional minor injury proudly worn as a badge for time in the woods well spent.

The Barred Owl’s voice proved simple to imitate reasonably well. That’s rare opportunity for me as I can’t whistle worth a damn and typical bird calls are well outside my reach.

One night at Presque Isle a particularly incessant bird rang out from the woods. No answer forthcoming, it called from near the same spot again and again. Inspired, I went off into the forest to talk with it, partly to pursue the aforementioned pleasures of blindly stumbling around at night and mostly because when you make weird noises while sitting in the dark at your picnic table in an otherwise crowded campground, the neighbors tend to look askance.

Maybe fifty yards or so into the night and no calamity having claimed me, I found a likely tree to lean upon and commenced as best I could to talk bird.

I called once…twice. A third time, then went quiet to listen. The owl of my ambition maintained place and pace. We parried like this for a bit. By all evidence, the bird was unimpressed. Eventually I slipped down to the forest floor, content to sit and listen to the owl.

Wilderness works in shifts. If anything, nightshift is more active than day. It’s fine to be in the woods in the dark with your back against a sturdy tree and the world around wide awake. Sit still enough long enough and all sorts of things might come to visit -- some even that you can hear and not see, which is quite the thing.

After awhile my owl fell silent. I grew chill in the night and missed the companionship of friends and fire. I stood slowly, all but defeated. With desultory effort, I made one last stab at talking owl before returning to relative civilization. My voice croaked off through the night, “Oout, ‘o oout, ‘o oooooo…”

No sooner had the sound cleared my throat than the genuine article answered back from my tree, not twenty feet above my head. Reflexively, I ducked.

“Geez Louise!!” I cried aloud, or words to that effect. That's strictly human talk, but I'm bettin' the owl got the gist of it.

I’ve often wondered and of course there’s no way to know, whether I’d managed to call that Barred Owl to me in the dark or whether he’d just wandered over to see what the stupid human was up to, sitting in the woods at night, pretending to talk like an owl. Not to mention the chance to startle the stupid human right out of his skin, a sport that animals sometimes engage in just for fun, trust me.

Doesn’t matter. When I returned to the comfort of the campfire, it was with a tale to tell.

Notes From the Field -- A Spring Not Sprung

Middle of April on the Superior Basin is only nominally spring, the average high temperature being all of about 46°. March was unusually warm and some of that spilled over into April. With rumors of apple blossoms fully a month early, I headed north to see for myself.

I’d jumped the gun and knew it but planned to make a go of things, starting on the Gogebic Range then heading east along the lake to Grand Marais and the three shipwrecks that lay in the sand near there. When shooting those, low water and an offshore breeze are helpful. Otherwise it can prove a long way to travel for slender reward:

Prepping for the trip, near perfect conditions were promised for the week ahead. By the time I’d arrived on the Range the thing had turned and a day later it was plain my ship’d been sunk in the near certain prospect of high winds and roiled seas beneath leaden skies at Grand Marais.

That’s the way it goes with fieldwork...

So I stayed around the Range and covered nearly 1,500 miles over five days, scouting for spring. Mostly the woods were like November except duller and with harsher light. In April, rich colors left from the previous autumn are everywhere leached out to a resolute dull brown. Then you round a corner coming down a hill and lingering winter suddenly relents:

Bluebird skies don’t often deliver anything like perfect light, though it was good to work beneath a warming sun all the same.

Birds were active throughout the forest. Especially turkeys, which this time of year are consumed with courting & contest and don’t care who knows it. Frogs sang in hopeful chorus sometimes even during the day but all through every night, save for during the dark of the morn when temperatures dropped to freezing and the need for warmth trumps even the desire for love.

Many years ago during a September afternoon cloaked in cool mist, Johnny, Heather & I ate lunch while resting on a bed of pine needles covering the rock knob above a cascading waterfall. An eagle flew close over our heads and the day was memorable. The fir that shed those comfy needles is fallen now and the pine needles gone. Hard rock is covered with a cushy green moss, still a fine place to sit and listen to water rush by. While there I shot this:

Reindeer Moss (lichen), with a spring of Wintergreen

Track left by the imminent changing of a season is often subtle and easily missed. You must look beyond the immensity of the wilderness to nooks & crannies in order to find it. While land looking I spotted these, peeking up from heaps of winter’s detritus and reaching towards the sun:

Trout Lilly (Erythronium americanum)

Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica)

Those Spring Beauty blossoms are no bigger than the nail on my little finger and I felt lucky to spot ‘em.

I’d have returned home pretty much straightaway, but the threat of tornadic thunderstorms over the entire route kept me on the Range an extra day and as sometimes happens, unplanned fieldwork proved providential.

Cruising down a road I’ve rarely traveled, I spied an old car hard beside the ruined stone foundation of a barn on an abandoned homestead. Behind that car stands an old wall, propped up by a few aged timbers. Behind that wall hides this:

Such treasures from the past are fast becoming incredibly rare, even along the Superior Basin where there’s much that’s long abandoned and left undisturbed. Though the light wasn’t near to optimal, now I know where the thing rests. I’ll return with the Linhof during high summer early one morning, when I suspect this faded American icon will come alive in perfect light. That is, provided the protective wall hiding this prize doesn't first collapse in the swell of a fierce spring storm and finally crush the thing.

It’s sadly not uncommon to make plans to shoot some exquisite remnant only to find upon your return that time and the seasons have conspired to relegate the object of your ambition to wistful memory.

I did spy the apple tree rumored to be in bloom, by the way. A single tree not quite half in flower, having also jumped the gun in hopeful March now holding on for all it’s worth through cold, damp and windy April. It too awaits the bright days and warm nights of May when the promise of rebirth will almost certainly be fulfilled.

And somewhere in that field behind that wall while picking over the rusted but remarkably intact shard of cultural antiquity, I also picked up my first wood tick of the season. On my pants leg not my leg but still. If ever there’s a sure sign of spring…

Dick, from Wakefield

I’ve fished at or just up from the mouth of the Presque Isle River into Superior for a long time. Near to 40 years, I figure. That’s fair time gone even without bragging. The place whipped my ass for maybe half that, then in tantalizing stages relented to my enticements. Or maybe I learned better how to romance a river. At any rate we've reached rough accommodation, this river and I. And as an old married man, I recognize a key to true & lasting love when I see it.

Though the signage is specifically for vacationers, it offers a word to the wise all the same.

I’ve no need to beat the Presque Isle and would prefer it not to beat me. Careless tourists are occasionally carried by watery sinew down from the falls and offered up to the cold embrace of Superior, where one’s mortal remains might remain forever lost. I’d be of mixed mind, as to that.

Along our trip you’ll not escape this river, as others sometimes have. If we return here often, that’s because this glistening ribbon that rises in lowland to inform a great forest before tumbling through a hard rock cut at the end is my river and its terminus at big water my anchor in this wilderness.

Spend quality time over decades in a place and you’ll meet other folk who feel about it much as you do, often for reasons entirely their own. Then, whether generous of spirit or jealous in their prerogatives, time erodes most things down to the nub and so it is with people too. Years of watching someone’s approach to fellow travelers, wild waters and especially the creatures that thrive in those mightn’t leave you with a person’s proper name, but it will provide a decent window upon their character.

*

On the lower Presque Isle you could mistake Dick’s last name for Wakefield ‘cause the appellative came so firmly attached, as in: “Dick from Wakefield’s upriver. He’s got fish.” And frequently when no one else had fish, which puts a mark by a man’s name. I’ve known two people who’ve gone into the Presque Isle during heavy water and lived to tell the tale. Both were fishermen. Dick from Wakefield was the second.

Dick was taciturn in the way of men most at home in the woods and on waters. I say “was” as I’ve not seen him on our river for a few seasons running and suspect Dick’s story is likely well and truly told, some bit of it now only retold here with affection by me.

Already well along when first I encountered him, his keen eyes would flash from wary to twinkling and back again at moment’s notice. I never saw him without a Duluth pack, an old camo jacket hung comfortably from his sharp shoulders and a sturdy fly rod with battered old reel in his hand, mostly with a length of line expertly played out so his bait’d ride through cauldron hole and maelstrom alike, always face to face with fish.

For years we nodded to each other across our river or offered a quick “How’re ‘ya doing?” when our paths crossed. Almost always he did better than me; evidenced mostly by his bulging Duluth pack, no braggart he. Except for one glorious, bitingly wet morning when from across the river Dick stood agape as I returned an in-season trophy walleye unharmed to the water. Though he’d grown accustomed to my releasing fish, I suspect he’d never seen anyone do that before.

One morning I met Dick from Wakefield along the narrow trail that runs close under the bridge then down to a deep, fast run between the final set of falls.

Dick headed up and I was going down, which meant I’d arrived too late. We paused together on the narrow path. Everything about him was as ever save that instead of a fly rod he held the exact same outfit as mine, a fairly upscale pairing of rod & reel rarely seen on our river. Dick cast a glance down at my gear. One’s choice of tools carries particular weight with certain men and our shared judgment went in my favor.

As we exchanged pleasantries I was a trifle embarrassed, caught by the old river rat while wearing an inflatable pfd. That’s my sole hedge against the vicissitudes of loving as fickle a partner as a wild river and the funny thing is, I never wore one before that affair matured.

Then, like no time before or since, Dick from Wakefield told me a story. It went like this:

Dick was fishing his favorite spot -- upriver beneath the suspension bridge and hard to the edge of a shale shelf just below the last set of falls. One foot found empty air. Dick’s balance shifted, aged reflexes proved slow and before he could draw a breath, Dick plunged into dark, swift water.

The river carried him downstream. Dick realised that a tourist on the bridge saw him go in. When the startled man tried to run to the rescue, his legs went out from under him and he fell flat upon the bridge.

“That’s that”, Dick thought.

The old man tried to swim out but the river had him fast. He said it tried to yank his boots off. I’d heard that before, though didn’t interrupt to tell him when or why. All the way down to near the mouth, Dick from Wakefield desperately tried to pull himself from the river. Like the sign says, rock is slippery when wet and all he managed was to delay what seemed to him inevitable.

On the east side of the river at its mouth, cut rock falls steeply away and current gains strength with depth to make a final rush into the big lake. As Dick approached the point of no return, he spied the tourist waiting for him with outstretched arms. As he hurtled by, Dick from Wakefield reached out for one last time and didn’t miss. The tourist held strong. In a moment, Dick was again high, if not dry.

The dappling sun along the trail seemed to dim in response to Dick’s story, which was startlingly familiar to me. The old man looked downriver and far, far away.

 “I dream about it every night”, he said quietly.

There was in his voice a hint of sad betrayal, that a lover he’d devoted himself to so well for so long sought finally to claim him completely. We stood silently together for a moment, each of us caught in private current of terrible memory.

Then the old man did something extraordinary. A slow smile spread over his craggy face. He reached for the zipper to his camo jacket, which was closed tight about his throat. Then he slowly slid it down a piece to offer me a peek.

Hidden securely from the prying eyes and summary judgments often leveled by tough old river rats, men who’d known him for decades and whose respect was long since granted under any circumstance, Dick from Wakefield wore the exact same inflatable life vest as I.

Our river had claimed him and he’d barely escaped. Only a fool would count on a second chance and Dick was no fool. Unwilling to abandon his river and no matter that he’d first have to unzip his jacket to use it, the old man now possessed a secret weapon. And that morning he chose to reveal his secret to me.

I say thee godspeed Dick, from Wakefield. May your pack always brim with fresh fish and your boots remain forever dry.

Sidetrack -- Full Moons over the Colorado

We boarded the legendary California Zephyr at Union Station in Chicago. Took a sleeper car and headed west, with Heather a reasonable approximation of Eva Marie Saint and I, sadly for Heather, what passed for Cary Grant.

Bridge repair across the Mississippi forced a detour straight out of Chicago. We ran non-stop all the way to Omaha NE on Union Pacific rail, the 1^st time passengers have ridden that track since 1955, or so I was told. Should you think that unimportant or obscure, try telling it to the folk gathered at odd spots along the way to record the event for digital posterity.

We disrespect the railroad in America. That’s extraordinary, considering its outsized role in our history.

Most old depots have long since fallen to decrepitude, with shells of some now retrofitted into sparkling cloaks for shopping malls promised to revitalize faded downtowns. From track level, the old Union Pacific Station in Omaha is a rusted derelict hulk, though I hear it remains magnificent inside. I’d have happily shown you a haunting image of the thing except both times we paused in Omaha it was but briefly and in dark of night. Still, I saw enough as we went to know that riding the rails expressly to pick over the bones of Railroad Barons’ grandiose monuments to themselves would be an interesting gig.

America’s collective back is turned to the railroads that built the larger part of it. Instead of stopping near city squares first brought to existence ‘cause the train stopped there, rails course past backyards and junkyards and endless remnants of once vital industry, offering a ghost tour through the echoes of an America much different than today’s.

Even with all that, the Zephyr lives up to its legend.

Climbing through serpentine switchbacks out of Denver, the train then traverses once all but impassible mountains. And amidst such wild magnificence are found cultural curiosities, like this whimsical fence near the station in Fraser CO.

Along the way there’s much to marvel at, not least the incredible ingenuity it took for folk to cut track through mountains. Notable is the Moffat Tunnel, completed in 1927. At 6.21 miles in length and topping out at an elevation of 9,234’ it’s the highest elevated, third longest passenger tunnel in America. And should you think that unimportant or obscure; by turning a key in Washington D.C., President Calvin Coolidge set off the final blast that “holed through” the Moffat Tunnel while from the heart of the mountain that signal event was broadcast nationwide via radio.

Once the Zephyr deposited us in Salt Lake City, we rented a car and toured a bit. In Park City we saw more old hippies, new hippies and wannabe hippies gathered in one place than at any time since 1974. It was there I wandered into the shop of Michael Fatali and there was reminded that for all the antique craft applied and the various trials that inform my own field work, when put next to an authentic Master Photographer/Printer, I’m a documentarian.

Humbling aesthetic context aside, the next morning we headed off to our cabin in Zion National Park.

I have to think that when white folk first wandered up the Virgin River and found themselves in its great canyon, some fell straight to their knees with the sight. Towering above the river and the elegant Cottonwoods that flourish beside it, great towers of rock rise to the sky like mighty sentinels celebrated by Greeks in ancient myth.

Of the ‘Big Three’ critters that roam Zion, I saw two: the Bighorn Sheep, of which by the 1950’s there were none left in the Park and a California Condor(!), of which there remained only 22 free flying in the entire world as recently as 1987. Today the sheep are returned home and some 130 California Condors again soar over the vast American West, including the one I saw off Angel’s Landing.

The 3^rd beastie of that aforementioned Big Three is the Mountain Lion and as I’m not anxious to meet one face to face whether in Utah or the U.P, it’s all good.

In a robust day and a half I made 200 exposures using the Mamiya. Later I learned that Kodak’s discontinued the film I used. Thankfully, there remain other good options on the market. But like the railroad during decades past, what practical cultural value film retains is fading ever faster. And with that my creative obsolescence gains speed by rolling downhill.

I can’t burden Zion with interpretation. That’s a task best left to poets and painters. But in honor of having ended more than 40 years association with Kodak product while there, here’s a short shot of spring at Zion National Park -- captured with a Mamiya RZ67 Pro II D shooting 120mm Kodak E100G transparency film, requiescat in pace:

I closed my stay in Zion by shooting ancient petroglyphs in high desert on a sparkling morning. We found these courtesy of a fellow traveler’s detailed instructions. All roadside signage is removed, due the casual disrespect shown by tourists when signage leads them too easily to sacred places.

Then after a fine weekend passed in the company of creatives gathered together in Salt Lake, we boarded the train home. Of everything we experienced, perhaps the most curious was cultural.

For a lengthy stretch, the California Zephyr follows the path cut by the Colorado River. This includes through canyons inaccessible except by kayak, raft or train. For reasons inscrutable, it’s long been the habit of river rats both male and female to moon the Zephyr (brief partial nudity) as it goes by.

Don’t often see wildlife like that along Superior…

*

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan was once honeycombed with rails. Trains hauled poor folk into the region for work then hauled out the product of the work those folk put in. Resources exhausted, people were left to fend for themselves. Rails that once fed the region have been scavenged, there being only poor folk left to haul and there’s little profit in that.

Heather fondly remembers that on our first northwoods trip together, the call of trains beguiled the forest through the night. Now the railroad is just another cultural memory like the axmen and the miners, with old grades serving for rough roads or snowmobile trails. Having ridden the Zephyr out to the western wilderness and back, I suspect we’ll now pay a bit closer attention to those remnants we find along our way.

For all the wonders of Utah and the greater American west, the thing that struck me most about the place is how arid it is.

They told me there’s a swamp in Zion, but it’s a postage stamp of moist land off the Virgin River otherwise hemmed in by hard rock. My home turf of the Ottawa National Forest is ‘round about 100,000,000 acres of forest and maybe a quarter of that is real swamp -- the sort you can too easily get lost in if you’re careless.

All the time I was out west, increasingly with each passing moment and no matter how much in awe of my surroundings or how good a time was had, I positively yearned to be near water. 

Especially big water, as in Superior. And when the wind is hard out of the north, I can smell that from here.

It’s good to be home.