Lately I’ve been gripped by a powerful urge to move in a different way to banish ‘oldster malaise.’ It’s too easy to get too settled, like a tired summer fly perched on an autumn window, content to look outside ‘til it finally drops off. The usual ‘move-it-or-lose- it’ solutions, though- like riding my ten-speed bike, testing cool playground equipment (especially tunnel-slides) before ‘smothered child syndrome’ erases the best stuff, running along a beautiful woodland TART trail with Bryn-dog- weren’t enough. I needed to venture into new territory. Exploration keeps one young.
Wait a minute: What about some short boat trips? Well, water and I generally get on. Oceans, though, unnerve me. Cruise ships glide over their immense depths too far from land. There are sharks. Lakes though, are different, especially when land remains within view. And rivers are fine. No qualifiers.
Joe and I were invited to experience a two-hour sail on a beautiful two-masted ship, Appledore 1V, berthed on the Saginaw River in downtown Bay City, Michigan. It can carry over 40 souls, sleep 14 in comfort, and extends 85 feet tip to tip, with 65 deck feet. This sleek ship can sail oceans. My son-in-law, Peter, is one of her three crewmen. We could watch him work, and maybe even help raise the foresail when the time came! Oh, boy!
About twenty-five people, some elderly (good for them!), boarded, too. The captain ordered his crew to cast off on a perfect autumn afternoon.
Rather than sit on deck benches I stood at the slim railings as our schooner sliced through the water. Two huge drawbridges were raised, exactly timed to allow our schooner to pass underneath without pausing. After about 45 minutes traveling south we raised the giant foresail to turn her back again. I grasped the thick rope along with Peter and another man, and we pulled it higher and higher in rhythm ‘til my shoulders ached. A vast amount of vanilla-colored canvas rose skyward. We retraced our path, sailing with the river’s north-going current. (This is unusual: most rivers in the world flow south.)
During the trip everyone enjoyed hot cider and cornbread, served on deck, while the wind rearranged our hair. The experience offered a tantalizing glimpse into the pre-industrial age, when these sorts of ships routinely moved people and goods from continent to continent.
I was exhilarated for days.
Noting my enthusiasm Joe suggested we motor to Munising, in the UP, to hike with Bryn-dog around the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. Further, we’d sign up for a glass-boat exploration of three ships that sank in the late 17 and 1800s, off Grand Island near that little town.
We followed the huge lake from Grand Marias to Munising and our rural hotel, built on a hill overlooking Lake Superior. (Note: Holiday Inn Express hotels cater to pets.) I went out on our little balcony to take in the lovely autumnally flamed forests framing Grand Island, in the middle of Superior’s temporarily calm Munising Bay.
This lake affects me differently from the other Great Lakes, inspiring more- discomfiture. A few facts:
-It’s the highest, at 602 feet above sea level, coldest, deepest, largest fresh- water lake on earth. How much water? Well, it would cover North America to five feet deep, and, if one included South America, one foot of water would blanket both. Mind-boggling.
-Fifty-one foot waves were measured at Whitefish Point during one ferocious storm.
-Of the over 6,000 sunken vessels known to exist in all the Great Lakes, 3,000 rest on Superior’s ice-cold lake bottom.
-Nature completely recycles its water every 500 years.
At ten o’clock one perfect fall morning last week we boarded our ship, along with about twenty other people, and, for two hours, viewed three wrecks that lay from 25 to 40 feet beneath us. Even some ropes and rigging were still intact. We could clearly see prows, decks, hatches and masts, and even one captain’s 1864 bathtub and commode, still porcelain-white, still fine, sitting upright amid the ruins of his ship. It was eerie.
Bryn loved wandering the vast, empty lakeshore, with its white sand and fascinating flotsam. One huge, mostly buried ship plank lay partially exposed just out of the water on one beach, with a massive foot-long nail sticking up through it. The sight made us quiet.
The trip back to Traverse City was just as stunning, though not as nerve-racking. (The Mackinaw Bridge had posted high wind warnings going north, so we crawled across, but, on our return trip, they’d calmed.) The view from that massive structure was spectacular.
Some observations: The UP has so much wilderness! (84% is forest.) While possessing 29% of Michigan’s landmass, it holds just 3% of the population. And they’re tough folks. In Grand Marais, a friend who lives there pointed out the house next door. “Last winter that two-story building was completely buried, along with many others, by a mountain of snow. I’ve never experienced anything like last winter in all my 82 years. All landmarks had disappeared. It was an endurance contest just to keep warm and find food.”
‘Youpers’ (the nickname for UP residents) routinely see bears, coyotes, wolves, and even mountain lions hunting. He is a hunter. Bryn suddenly yelped and backed away from a giant Russian wolf’s pelt and head, draped over a sofa’s backrest. It looked alive.
“You never want to get lost out here. Especially in snowstorms, which can crop up at any time during our long, difficult winters. Visibility is often Zero. Even a few feet from your door it’s easy to become disoriented and die from exposure in minutes, or be stalked and taken by animals. It nearly happened to me.”
This from a man who’d hunted for forty years in Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, and Ukraine during their fearsome winters.
With its hilly beauty, vast forests, wild animal residents, violent electric storms and lake-effect snows, the Upper Peninsula is still frontier country.