Dawn and Katie Inspired Us

My blogger friend Dawn and her sheltie princess were on a camping adventure when they stopped by the bookstore on Tuesday. How does Katie manage to look perfectly groomed on a camping trip? My little tomboy Sarah doesn’t stay groomed for as long as an hour! But the adventure part of their visit rang bells for me as I launched into a welcome day off on Wednesday. My goal for the day was – not to have any goals and not to set myself anything to accomplish.

I love a quiet, rainy morning, wherever I am and whatever the day holds, the sounds and smells of rain, peaceful drizzle or dramatic downpour, taking me back to dreamy days of childhood. And so, not bothering about raindrops, Sarah and I began our outdoor adventure on familiar ground, near home, where lovely long views over orchards to dunes and lake competed for my attention with roadside weeds.

There is always something to see on our neighborhood roads. But we did not stop there for long.

Stop! Then GO!

Did I have a book with me on our expedition? Yes, of course! Superior Land and the Story of Grand Marais, Michigan, by Karen A. Brzys, went very well with an apple bratwurst sandwich from Bunting’s Market in Cedar. What a great job Karen has done with this book! I love the way she begins the history of the Upper Peninsula with the glaciers – not surprising, I suppose, coming from the Agate Lady.

And the rain cleared away -- .

After picnic lunch in the middle of the county, I was able to gratify a long-held wish to photograph old St. Joseph’s on Bohemian Road, bright white against clouds and blue sky.

School Lake warranted a brief stop, but without a boat there wasn’t a lot of exploring we could do around its shoreline, so it was on west on Bohemian Road and across M-22, headed toward Lake Michigan. We did not go to the beach – another time -- but family will recognize these near-Lake scenes, and everyone should be able to recognize the absence of crowds. I love my quiet places!

Inviting two-track

Miniature landscape with hint of fall at center

Horsemint in knapweed with bracken background

Horsemint closeup

Ghosts of raindrops

Bracken shadow

Orienting Shot #1

Orienting Shot #2

Days of adventure can be tiring, but they are well worth the energy, as are busy summer bookstore days. My only complaint is that all the days go much too fast....

Water flowing toward the Big Lake, where all will merge

Want to Visit South Manitou Island Today?

Writing a letter to my sister the other day with pen and paper, I thought I'd transcribe the long pages about my current reading here to the blog, so that's today's topic.

We got outdoors this morning to snow on the ground in Leelanau County. We're on the cusp of winter, David says. Still bits of color in the orchards, while along the roadsides and in the woods predominant color is now brown, the toasty brown of oaks and beeches.

November 10, 2013

Northport, Michigan

Dear sister –

I’ve been reading a little book about life on South Manitou, back when there were still people farming on the island. There were 13 families in residence in 1870, and during 1917-18 there were 30 students enrolled in the school. Besides farm families, some of the Coast Guard men brought their families with them to live on the island. There were also two sawmills in operation in 1913. Timber had been the first reason for white men to stop on the island, as they needed wood to produce steam power for the lake boats.

Life on South Manitou Island around the time of World War I, according to descriptions in Isle of View: A History of South Manitou Island, by Charles M. Anderson, was in many ways very similar to life in remote Siberia today, as shown in that documentary about the trappers I was telling you about, “Happy People” [I had the title wrong before] -- for instance, skis made by hand, in the same manner, both on the island 100 years ago and in Siberia today. The book is really a memoir, not a history, but since the author came to the island with his family from Wisconsin when he was only five years old (1913) and lived there for 13 years, working on the family farm, going to school, exploring the island with his brothers, and finally going out on Lake Michigan with his father, there is a lot of detail about how the islanders lived. The author’s youngest brother was the last child born on South Manitou, in the year 1921. His oldest brother, age 21, died the same year, of diabetes.

Farming was all done with horses. Anderson writes that he could plow only 2 to 2-1/2 acres a day, using three horses, and after the field was plowed it had to be dragged and marked out for planting, which was done by “two people pulling a pole about 24 feet wide with 7 chains attached to the pole 30 inches apart.” The author adds, “The field had to be marked two ways, 30 inches apart, and then it was ready to plant. Pulling or pushing that marker, I believe, was one of the hardest jobs on the farm for a child of twelve years old, as I was at the time.” David liked the bits about the bull with the ring through his nose, led by a long stick attached to the ring. Also attached to the ring was a heavy chain that dragged on the ground. The idea was that if the bull wanted to run someone down, he would step on his own chain and stop himself, but the bull was smart and learned to straddle the chain so he wouldn’t trip on it.

The Anderson family planted corn, rye, and oats, mostly for their livestock, and for themselves they also raised potatoes, carrots, beets, onions, cabbages and apples. Popular orchard varieties on the island were Greening, Northern Spy, and Wagoner apples. Many families made their own maple syrup (as they did on the mainland, as well), but you may be surprised to know that they also made a great quantity of hard cider from those apples. This was during Prohibition, but on the island no one cared about that, except to hide the evidence whenever there was a rumor that the Feds might be coming to look around. (No one ever did.) It sounds like the cider was for local social consumption, not for sale.

Another surprise crop (to me) was ginseng, which also grew wild on the island. When we drive to St. Paul, we see fields of ginseng in Wisconsin, under netting to protect it from the sun, and a lot of South Manitou islanders came from Wisconsin, so maybe that’s part of the explanation. Or maybe there was just a good ginseng market in those days. One farm wife left the farm, divorced her husband but stayed on the island, and opened up a little shop near the Coast Guard station. She sold chewing gum, candy, and wild ginseng, which she hunted herself. A couple times a week she took homemade bread to her former husband, and in return he supplied her with firewood. He had, by the way, a lot of cats, “about ten,” and that might have been all it took to drive his wife away from home. I think five cats would drive me away.

So marriage wasn’t always “forever” in that place and time, and that may be another surprise to some people reading the story today. One of the mail carrier’s sons was married and divorced five times! Another man, 65 years old, came to the island with his third wife to help the author’s father make cement blocks for the foundation of a new barn. When he arrived on the island, he had already fathered 25 children, and his twenty-sixth was born while he and his wife were on the job there. Yes, his wife was helping make the cement blocks, and perhaps the first and second wives had died after so much childbearing and work. The author doesn’t say. The twenty-sixth baby died shortly after birth.

Some islanders never married at all. One man farmed with his brother and died single at the age of 78. When he visited the author’s family in the evening, “he always sat in the same chair. Dad would ask him to sit in a chair near him, but he never would.” Can’t you just see it? Such a little detail makes the old bachelor farmer more than just another name.

Here’s another detail of island life that might not occur to us: they had no toothbrushes! The Anderson family did not even have their own well but had to haul all their water, for all purposes, from either Lake Florence (their source of ice, cut in winter and stored in sawdust to use during the summer) or from a neighbor’s well. If a tooth had to be pulled from man or beast, there was a man on the island to do it, but the author was 21 years old before he had his first toothbrush. I can imagine living without electricity and even without running water, but without a toothbrush?

The Andersons left the island to move to Frankfort when Charles was 18. By then he had already been sailing with his father for two years, carrying various cargos from one Lake Michigan port to another. Loading grapes from Benton Harbor to carry to Sheboygan and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, they learned of the House of David community near Benton Harbor. Charles Anderson says the whole family was glad to move to the mainland, but he went back to visit the island year after year and clearly loved it very much. At the close of his book, he laments the overgrowth of old paths and trails since the Park Service purchased the island. My impression is that the neglect he perceived has been remedied in years since.

It seems ridiculous that I lived for years in Leland and never managed to take the ferry over on a day trip and still live close enough to the ferry dock that it would seem a simple voyage to undertake. I always think I’ll do it in the fall. (Don’t want to face mosquitoes in spring or crowds in summer.) But the ferry season is over for another year now, and it’s another year I haven’t made the trip.

Maybe I should make that a priority for fall of 2014?

Anyone interested in reading about South Manitou Island online can find information here. 

Guest Book Review: SPARROW MIGRATIONS

SPARROW MIGRATIONS, by Cari Noga

Paperback, $14.95

Reviewed by Marilyn Zimmerman

When Canada geese take out both engines of a passenger plane -- not just one, as is usually the case -- the lives of three families impacted by the emergency landing on the Hudson River in January, 2009, change in ways they could never have imagined.  Cari Noga’s first novel, Sparrow Migrations, puts the reader on three intersecting life paths: on one of the rescue ferries with an autistic adolescent and his loving but often frustrated parents; on the wing of the plane where icy water creeps up the ankles of an infertile woman (infertility her biggest ongoing life challenge) while her husband stands next to her texting the lab where he works; and back on the ferry with a minister’s wife and her female lover, who have no idea the television cameras have captured their image and will broadcast it to the world. 

The story follows these three families beginning on that dramatic day. For the autistic boy, the bird strike becomes a connection with his father and a window out of which he can view the world; the infertile wife learns that her sister has a rare genetic disease and must then make her own decision about genetic testing and in vitro fertilization; while the minister’s wife must wrestle with her own truth and what its exposure does to her family.  As these diverse characters struggle with deceit, infidelity, and issues of communication, their lives change, and they come ever closer to encountering one another again, this time in quite a different setting,. The common feature in the second intersection is, once again, birds.

The author’s bio tells us that Cari Noga is the mother of an autistic son, and her experience with the subtleties of that condition resonate clearly in this well-written story.  Images of Robby with the hood of his Detroit Lions sweatshirt pulled tight around his face, his noise-muffling headphones underneath, his annoyance with his well-meaning parents, his obsession with numbers (of the geese in the river, their flight speed, the outside temperature, and later, counting birds for the local Audubon chapter), and his need to be in control of his environment, stayed with me long after I had finished the novel.  Noga’s insights about this boy’s mind and his view of the world ring true and leave the reader with a sense of what it must be like to live with this kind of autism.  She gives the reader a poignant gift with the character of Robby Palmer. 

Noga’s other characters in Sparrow Migrations learn lessons about difficult and unsought choices parents must face.  Besides the obvious challenges of raising an autistic child, the idea of giving birth to a child who could carry a disabling genetic condition, as well as the balance between living one’s own most authentic life or giving it up for a child -- or something in between -- are all explored with insight and realism. 

Like sparrows, ordinary birds we might easily fail to notice but each one, we are told in Scripture, important to God, the seemingly ordinary parents in Noga’s graceful book learn to cope with the changes life brings their way, and, through their struggles and insights, each character becomes significant to the reader.

Marilyn Zimmerman is a former elementary school teacher, a retired attorney, a lover of books, and a writer.  She lives on a farm outside Northport with her husband and their very spoiled cat named Marmalade.

*  *  *  *  *

Bookseller's Postscript: Cari Noga, whose Road Biking Michigan was published in 2005, this time around has self-published Sparrow Migrations, her first novel, but she has also done something I’ve never seen done before: In addition to the novel, she has also self-published an excerpt from it as a stand-alone book, this shorter story titled Plover Pilgrimage. Glenn Wolf did the cover illustration. Slightly over 40 pages, Plover Pilgrimage contains the story of the visit Robby and his parents make to Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore in plover nesting season. Sparrow Migrations is $14.95 in paperback, Plover Pilgrimage only $4.95. It’s interesting to me how many people decide to buy both, even knowing that the smaller book is an excerpt of the complete novel. They buy the complete novel for themselves and the shorter story to send to friends. Thus Plover Pilgrimage will introduce new readers to Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore and to the fiction of Cari Noga at the same time. Clever author! - pj

Mini-Vacation: July

Sarah is a wader, not a swimmer. She likes her feet firmly on Mother Earth. We didn't force the issue (too far). After a couple of reluctant dog paddles and reassurance from her dog mom, she was happy to remain in shallow water with the dog dad (photographer of the event) while I took my first swim of the season. It was glorious! Thank you, rain, for holding off!


You can catch a glimpse of my regular workaday world on my other blog today.

Two Sisters Take to the High Ground

My sister had never been to the Leelanau “ghost town” of Isadore, and I have never seen it livelier! One of the old barns is actually getting a new metal roof!


Then, when my sister wanted to get a closer look at the church we saw the priest going in. There were people praying, the scent of candles in the air, and it was obvious that a mass was in preparation at Holy Rosary. On Saturday evening there will be a music program in the auditorium.



Across the road is a sweet little place that can be rented by the week. Vacationing in Isadore would be peaceful and intriguingly different.


Next we sought out another formerly busy settlement, Port Oneida. Here is my sister, taking in the view from the top of the Basch Road hill. At our feet the first asters were blooming. The long, meandering road downhill through the forest was like drifting beneath the surface of a quiet, green sea.




We had a picnic on another bit of high ground along Pierce Stocking Drive. My pear twisted its neck in astonishment. Or something!





After viewing North Bar Lake and Pyramid Point from a gull's perspective, we came down to earth and strolled along the sidewalks of Empire through a light sprinkle, but I know my sister will be taking her husband back to Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, where there is a whole world of nature and history to explore.