'Locals' Summer' Comes 'Round Again

No, summer isn’t over!

‘Locals’ summer’ is what Up North residents, especially the non-retired, like to call September, these idyllic days when air and water are still warm enough to lure us to the beaches, and when the beaches themselves are much more sparsely populated than in July and August. For those with children back in school, even with college-age students gone off to begin classes, as well as for teachers and professors at all levels of instruction, September is the beginning of fall, but for those of us no longer returning to classrooms, this month of the first turning leaves is summer’s last hurrah.

Cathedral of trees

So it was that Tree Guy and Naughty Barker and I packed up the car and headed for the Mackinac Bridge the day after the annual Labor Day bridge walk. Tuesday found us stopping once more at Lehto’s for our dinner pasties, wrapping up the day with a long forest walk and a spell of quiet riverbank sitting before bedtime. 

Sunlight on the river

Tree Guy had important errands to accomplish in Marquette on Wednesday, which were taken care of with surprising and delightful ease, leaving time for a visit to Snowbound Books. Hurrah! Years ago—and for many years—Snowbound was an annual visit for me, and I hate to think how long it’s been since I was last there, so long that needed a brief tour to orient myself. Current inventory is about 70% new books and 30% used, which I judge is about the opposite of my own shop’s offerings.

How far to Dog Ears Books???

Bonnie at Snowbound Books

I’d have loved to linger twice as long … and to have time to stop in at Dead River Coffee, as well … but even with a shaded parking space, we didn’t want to leave Naughty Barker in the car too long, and we were as eager as the River Rat to get back to our "bijou riverside residence” for the rest of the gloriously summery September day.

Everywhere, goldenrod!

Only small pockets of fall color in the trees

Thursday we did little projects around the cabin, took more long forest walks, and made a short jaunt over to the famous Kitch-iti-kipi spring, not far from Manistique but challenging to locate (for us, at least), which I had somehow never seen before in all my U.P. travels. The spring is within the boundary of a state park, but though the parking lot and grounds were swarming with late-season tourists, a respectful hush fell over visitors as they neared, on foot, the destination spring. The hush surprised and pleased me. “Medicine Water” and “Mirror of Heaven,” Ojibwa names for the spring, express very well the sacred feeling of this North American freshwater cenote. 

Spring water's route to Indian Lake

The 10,000 gallons of water per minute that burble silently up from bedrock flow gently out via Indian Lake, six long, wide miles, the Indian River then flowing into the Manistique before entering Lake Michigan. The river has a peaceful look. We paused at the Bishop Baraga site (his first mission was at this location) and wondered about the path that had brought him to the spot.

Bishop Baraga's first mission: Indian Lake

A lot of cabin time is taken up with simple pleasures: watching water flow, walking in the forest, throwing tennis balls for Naughty Barker’s entertainment, reading, and observing wildlife. NB directed my attention to Mr. Toad. I was pleased that she did not harass him. Later she was surprised and puzzled by a garter snake. A bulge in the snake’s curves seemed to indicate a satisfying meal, and I hoped the meal had not been Mr. Toad. Surely the bulge would have been larger had she swallowed anything that big?

As for my reading, it was all over the map. A Dave Barry book from the privy had me in stitches, and after that I dove into Agatha Christie, first the book I’d gotten halfway through on our last visit to the cabin, A Holiday for Murder, and then a second Christie in my mini-binge, The Moving Finger, which may be (in my opinion, you understand) her best. Finally, then, my mind had had enough relaxation that I could get into Anatole France, The Gods Are A-Thirst, our reading circle’s selection for September. This one was—I should say is, as I have over half the book to read yet—anything but “escape reading,” as the politics of the French Revolution are both background and foreground to the story.

I learned to my great delight, in André Maurois's introduction to The Gods Are A-Thirst, that the author's father, François Noel Thibault was a bookseller, specializing in—guess what!—the French Revolution. 

In 1862, shortly after leaving the Collège Stanislas, his son had set to work in the family bookshop cataloguing the Comte de la Bédoyère's collection. Thus Anatole France had come to be on intimate terms with Robespierre, Marat and their clan down to its humblest members. 

It pleases me to think of the young Anatole France, not yet using the name under which he would become famous, busy in his father's shop on the Quai Malplaquais, 

hard at work over the correspondence and papers of revolutionaries of almost a century before. His novel's title, Les dieux ont soif, comes from a periodical article that got its editor beheaded in 1794 (pleas for moderation and freedom of the press not popular with the Tribunal) and supposedly comes from Aztec culture and justification for human sacrifice, the gods being “thirsty” for blood, a taste Anatole France did not share, I am happy too say, either in retrospect (in his views on the Revolution) or in his own time (his sympathies were with Dreyfus). 

Tree Guy is not a meandering kind of traveler—more “Point A to Point B”—but he was persuaded to take a 2-mile detour off our road back to the Bridge so I could visit another old favorite bookstore. The bookseller, my friend Mary, was off on a book adventure, but her daughter Holly took care of me. Again, it had been years since I had been inside this shop I used to visit on an annual basis, so it felt good to be able to make purchases there again.

That American flag hanging over the Mackinac Bridge — “Is that something new?” I asked as we drove over above the Straits (always a thrilling part of any trip from one peninsula to the other, as far as I am concerned). Was it because of 9/11? We had noticed other flags along the way at half-mast, and, when writing a check for my books at First Edition Too, I’d had to ask Holly the date. Twenty-five years. All of us remember that day, just as those of us my age remember the day President Kennedy was shot. Adam Kinzinger wrote something very moving about the 25th anniversary of 9/11. 

September continues, and we came back home.

September 12: A warm, open door day in Northport

Back in my shop on Saturday, I wasn’t sure if it felt as if I’d been for a long time or hardly any time at all, but on Sunday Tree Guy and I played tourist right here in Leelanau County, exploring roads north of the village of Northport and finding ourselves eventually at the Grand Traverse Lighthouse in Leelanau State Park, a place I hadn’t visited for many years, back when the first 1990s renovation was done and the public invited to celebrate. More work has been done since then, and there are further exhibits planned. It was good to be there, and a lot of what I felt had to do with local people connected both with the light itself and the preservation of its history. 

Grand Traverse Lighthouse

Library furnished to lighthouse keeper & family--
one of my favorite exhibits, of course!

Back at home and back at work after a rest and a long walk (in that order), Tree Guy got busy with black walnut brush, and I undertook the very necessary annual wild grapevine tear-out. Oh, yes! We are home again! And the good news is that it rained while we were gone, so nothing died in my gardens, not even the annuals in planters.

Bacopa's third blooming

Black petunia

Blue & black salvia with citronella

We are now halfway through September, with Leelanau UnCaged coming up just a week from this coming Saturday, the last Saturday in September, this year 9/26. Fall color is also yet to come. Summer ends, eventually, but reasons for being in Northport do not. 

Anticipating our big street festival!