Is It Over?

Labor Day is the traditional end of the summer vacation season, the day after which students return to school and tourist town streets turn empty. But this is 2020, the year of COVID-19, and who knows what fall 2020 will bring? Spring and summer were certainly not same-old, same-old!

 

With many students of all ages are taking classes online, and many parents are working from home, online or by phone, will that translate to more late-season vacationers? Or will cool air and grey skies send everyone back into their home bubbles for the duration?

 

This Is Not Social Media

 

I thought of using that subhead as my headline today. It probably isn’t as important to my readers as it is to me; however, it’s something I want to say. Facebook is social media. Twitter is social media. Instagram, I guess, and many other platforms with which I have no firsthand acquaintance are social media. On those platforms, people post (usually briefly), and others comment, and sometimes long threads “go viral,” resulting in (usual brief) fame or notoriety (infamy) for the person who posted and/or commenters.

 

A blog is something different. 

 

Blog posts – amazing the speed of change in our virtual world! – have already become “old-fashioned.” Though they may include links to other sites, they are generally original writings and longer than most social media posts. Moreover, if the blogger sticks with the blog, it can develop over the years a distinctive narrative voice. Or voices, plural. 

 

“Books in Northport” is sometimes casual, often discursive, at times meditative, and once in a while (I try to keep this to a minimum) a bit pugnacious, but it always comes directly from me. A blog, like a diary or journal, is a habit, albeit a publicly offered discipline, one to which the writer -- if no one else! -- returns again and again, essaying, seeking clarity, noting personal milestones, pinning down memories and thoughts. 

 

Here you find news from my bookstore in Northport, Michigan, and mention or sometimes reviews of books I’m reading, but also reports and photographs from my husband’s art world, from our travels (presently nonexistent), from the woods and fields and beaches of Michigan to the mountains and deserts of Arizona. Here are frequent images of our old dog, with now and then images of other people’s horses (since I have none of my own), however tenuous or nonexistent any link between those horses and my Northport book world.

In short, “Books in Northport” goes beyond books and far beyond Northport. It is my world – specific, particular, personal, idiosyncratic. Once in a while someone leaves a comment, and when that happens I try always to respond, but most of the time I’m the only one “speaking” here, and when you come to read my posts, we are not rallying with hundreds or thousands of other people and shouting at each other on some allegedly neutral ground. You are visiting my world -- and I thank you for spending time here with me! I truly appreciate it.

 

And now I’d like to close today with a few words from the journal and letters of Lieutenant James Allen. Allen accompanied Henry Rowe Schoolcraft on an expedition to the source of the Mississippi in 1832, and his writings are included as Appendix C in Schoolcraft’s Expedition to Lake Itasca, published by Michigan State University Press (1958; 1993):

 

June 9 …We passed Twin [Two-Hearted] river, twenty-four miles from Whitefish point. It is a small stream, and its mouth is so much filled with sand that it can only be entered by very light craft, and in smooth water. We have travelled to day forty-five miles.

 

June 10, (Sunday.)—This being the Sabbath, by a rule of Mr. Schoolcraft’s, we do not travel, though the weather is fine. The rule however is convenient in observance, as it gives the men time to wash, bake, etc., which they have but little time to do when travelling. We are lying in a beautiful little bay, called the Grand Marais, from its having once been a marsh, which, within the recollection of some old voyageurs, now present, has been washed away to its present state. It is a safe harbor for boats, and is important for its being the only one between Shelldrake river and Grand island, a distance of near one hundred miles. It is half a mile in depth, opens to the west, and is difficult to enter with a strong west wind and heavy sea, which drive right into it. Traders have met with serious accidents in attempting to run into it under such circumstances….

 

You see, while the Artist and I (and our dog) are not today, as in so many other years the day after Labor Day, on our way to Lake Superior, yet I can travel there in the pages of a book.

Where are you traveling today, on roads or pages or simply in the world of your own mind?

Before We Get Started

Straits of Mackinac -- water, water everywhere --

If a story is told backwards, from the end to the beginning, so that both writer and reader finish where it started, maybe -- this is what I’m thinking – it will remain in reading minds with everything yet to come, anticipated rather than left behind, and that way nothing in the story will end. Because with today July 1, the first official open day of 2020 for Dog Ears Books (very late this year, and with many cautionary measures in place – please see here), I am loathe to say good-by to our little, all-too-short, pre-season road trip to the Upper Peninsula.

My favorite!

Our last stop on the way back south to the Mackinac Bridge was Lehto’s Pasties, where we got one “hot one” to share for lunch and two frozen to take home. No, that wasn’t the very last stop, though, because half a mile or so down the highway is a rest area, and that was where we ate our lunch at a picnic table high over the Straits of Mackinac.

Mary's magical garden

Back up the way apiece, we had stopped at my friend Mary’s country bookshop, First Edition Too on Worth Road, where the Artist enjoyed Mary’s magical garden setting and visited with her husband while I shopped for books (a Frank Waters; a biography of Cochise; another copy of Parnassus on Wheels; and a paperback study of Max Weber), caught up with Mary, and was introduced to her beautiful chickens. I never leave First Edition Too empty-handed but always carry away treasures, and the day could not have been lovelier, the garden pleasanter, the bookshop more inviting, or our peaceful welcome more satisfying.

Entrance to a wonderland

Bookseller behind plexiglass

Chickens behind chickenwire

Handsome master of the harem

Coming down from Lake Superior, as we’d passed through Seney on M-28 before following an assortment of inland roads down to Epoufette, I’d been delighted to see a pair of sandhill cranes by the side of the road. Lovely, rich color they were, the stately birds we have known over the years from southeast Arizona to the southern coast of Ontario. I was also still marveling at the waving sweeps of daisies and islands of orange and yellow hawkweed everywhere, wildflowers I associate with my Leelanau home and never realized were also in the U.P., since our visits there are generally fall getaways or, longer in the past, winter treks to Minnesota. At the motel where we stayed in Grand Marais, I was charmed to note that the management (did John do the mowing, as well as check-in?), when keeping the lawn neatly trimmed, had mowed around the colonies of flowering hawkweed, just as I do at home. And of course the bright, brilliant, floridly perfumed roses – at any time of year, they capture my attention.

At home in Leelanau County, sunrise is over the woods, sunset over Lake Michigan, straight across. In Grand Marais, the sun comes up at one “end,” as it seems, of Lake Superior and sets at the other, never touching the far northern horizon. I slept late, for me, but was up in time to see sunrise and read a while and go for a walk with Sarah before the bank opened and I could take care of the business that had occasioned the trip.

Sunrise, June 29, 2020

To our eyes, unaccustomed to the bustle of summer’s longest days on Lake Superior, the town seemed very full of people. (ATVs, I noted, are the snowmobiles of summer.) More people picnicking this year, naturally, with only one restaurant/bar open (and too packed for us to brave the crowd there). The campground was full to overflowing, and one enterprising entrepreneur has opened a little espresso coffee shop in a beautifully restored VW bus on the same street as the campground entrance. She had just closed up shop for the night when we walked past on our Sunday evening promenade.

Espresso! In Grand Marais!

Our friends at the West Bay Diner are not yet open for the season, still working on figuring out how they will manage this year for COVID-19 safety and without regular help, but Ellen and I had a nice visit on the shady end of the deck Sunday afternoon, where Rick joined us for a while, also. Such hard-working people! Though I’m impatient to have Ellen’s fourth novel in my hands -- to sell it as well as to read it, her books being such a delight to share with my own bookstore public -- I’m glad for her sake that publication has been put off until 2021, as this is a very difficult year for authors with new work coming out.

“Is the town busier than usual this summer?” I asked Ellen. “Are there more people coming north this year?”

No, she said – things are relatively quiet this year. In a normal year, it would be “crazy busy” at this time. This isn't crazy-busy? We didn’t know. In prior years, for over a quarter-century, we have been too busy in Leelanau to take time to drive to the U.P. at the end of June.

But yes, we got a room, where Sarah was welcome, also. Right on the ground floor, with all amenities and comforts, looking right out at the pretty little harbor. 

Looking back from Coast Guard Point to our motel in town

Naubinway

The only other stop we made on our way to Grand Marais had been the quiet fishing harbor at Naubinway. I love a working harbor with serious fishing boats, serious and workmanlike even on their day off, a quiet Sunday. It was good to enjoy that calm oasis before rejoining traffic on U.S. 2.

I’d been concerned all the way up about our chances of getting a room for the night, as vehicular traffic seemed very heavy to us. So many people parked along U.S. 2, families enjoying the beach there at the top of Lake Michigan! Never had we seen so many people there! Just as, earlier, passing through Oden, we had been shocked at the line of vehicles towing and waiting to launch boats, as well as trucks and empty boat trailers lining the highway past the launch site. Not the quiet little lake I’d always thought, apparently. But then, September is a world apart from summer’s longest days.

Not all is hustle and bustle in and on the way to the Upper Peninsula, however. It is still possible to find relative peace and quiet in little lost-time islands along the way, and we are hoping that September 2020 brings us another few such days, as the couple we had passed all too quickly. Too quickly but very, very happily.

Open? I don't think so....

We Came Back Early

A week or so before we left, we thought of going somewhere different this September, but when the time came we were too tired for adventures, and it seemed the wiser course to steer for the Mackinac Bridge, as usual, and “do the things we always do,” as David put it. 

And so our first stop was Bentley’s Cafe in St. Ignace. Nothing has changed at Bentley’s, thank heaven! The malts are as thick and delicious as ever and still served in the tall chrome container in which they’re mixed, and our Finnish waitress is as teasing and funny as the last time we were there. In a world of rapid, mind-bending, swirling storms of novelty and obsolescence, it’s reassuring to find an anchor here and there.

Another reassuring anchor over near Brevort is friend Mary Carney’s bookstore on Worth Road, First Edition, but the shop was locked, and Mary and Warren nowhere in sight. I left a note. They’d only gone out for tacos, we learned the next day, but they could have been in Petoskey, appraising a private library, for all we knew, so we missed visiting Mary’s shelves this trip.

But we stayed on Worth Road, angling back northeast (wrong direction) until an intersection presented itself and then wandered and zig-zagged pleasantly along back roads, happy to be away from truck traffic on U.S. 2, until we reached M28, the other main east-west highway, and soon we were in Seney and turning north to Grand Marais.

A friend of mine took her children to the U.P. once, many years ago (a trip they never repeated), and reported to me in exasperation that it was “nothing but trees!” I see it very differently, terrain and plant life changing from mile to mile, with stretches so beautiful they break my heart. Also, after decades on these same roads, David and I “see” numerous milestones along the way that are invisible to other travelers: There is the place where that beautiful trailer was for sale. Remember? There’s the shack that once had a yard sale where I bought a pair of boots. Another yard sale, there where the old motel used to be, produced a cool pair of vintage sunglasses. We spent a long, claustrophobic but memorable hour or so tucked into a two-track, right there, during a rain so hard we couldn’t see to drive -- and it was just lucky that my old truck did not break down then but waited until we reached Grand Marais! A tiny river explored with the old dog ... another river captured in one of David’s dreamlike paintings ... the rest stop where the chatty ranger held us captive with tales of his life ... another yard sale, the one where I bought a pair of bookends the old man had made himself back in high school shop class ... the two-track leading off to an old pond (dam and pond no longer there), the only place we’ve ever seen a lynx ... the stretch of road where I spotted the bear -- and would never tell the guys around the coffee table in G.M. where I’d seen it. We “see” all these memories along the way, and so the road is rich and full, and time goes quickly.

Every year we find a few changes in Grand Marais but never – so far – too many. Rick G. and Ellen are still at the West Bay Diner, and Rick C. and Mary have taken over the Superior Hotel since Bessie’s passing, and the Dunes Saloon rocks on under its new name, Lake Superior Brewing Company (but always and forever the Dunes Saloon to us). The grocery store and hardware store are still in business, bank and post office still going strong, and our picnic table out on Coast Guard Point is right where we left it, though it was too windy there for the picnic we planned the next day, and we decamped to the more sheltered shore of Grand Sable Lake, where I did not this year, emerging from a terrible head cold, go for my usual September swim. Also, the pair of birds we wanted to see as loons turned out to be cormorants. But we were not complaining. Everything that was, was as it should be.

In some years past, we have made lengthy forays out from our base camp at the Superior Hotel, sometimes as far west as the Keweenaw or north all the way to Wawa, Ontario. Not this year. David was coming down with the cold from which I was emerging, and R&R was our self-prescription -- not Rest & Recreation, either, this time around so much as Rest & Recuperation. As darkness fell, David could be found taking in the Ken Burns special on Vietnam down in the hotel parlor, while I stretched out upstairs with my book.

We did make one small expedition over to Munising, after fortifying ourselves with biscuits and gravy at the Diner. In the old days, before H58 was paved, taking the shoreline road to Munising was an exciting and somewhat hair-raising safari. Blowing and windblown sand between the dunes on Lake Superior and Grand Sable Lake were only the beginning. Farther into the forest, wide, rain-filled potholes awaited, sometimes stretching the width of the road, with no indication how deep they might be. Reaching the paved stretch beginning around Melstrand felt like hard-won victory!

Now the road is paved all the way, and it’s smooth cruising. David loves it. My own feelings are mixed. I appreciate it, and I realize how important it is for those living and working along the Big Lake and needing to make regular trips back and forth, and yet I miss the adventure of the old road, too. Well, okay. I’m glad I have the memories of the way it used to be. Regardless of road surface, H58 still goes to Munising by way of beautiful Kingston Lake and my beloved Kingston Plains (above), and that makes me happy.

One year we took the boat cruise along the Pictured Rocks, and I always recommend it to others traveling north from Leelanau County, but our own sight-seeing in Munising this year was tamer, and it began with the post office. I thought I remembered a big W.P.A. mural. Apparently I was thinking of a different U.P. post office, but it was a happy error, because by going inside we were able to visit another W.P.A.-era instance of public art, a relief sculpture by Ohio-born artist Hugo Robus. The pleasant woman behind the counter sold me postcard stamps and gave us an information handout on the art.

Familiar with the artist’s name, David hoped to learn more about the material and process, but the handout said nothing of that. There was one brief paragraph about the artist’s background, and the rest of the two pages explained the legend that had inspired Mr. Robus.

The main figure in the sculpture is the Nanabozsho, “scattering the mud which the beaver has brought up from the bottom of the lake” to create the three offshore islands, of which Grand Island, or Gitche Menesing (as Robert Wright spelled it), is the most important. Since my vacation reading was Windigo Moon, with many chapters set on Kitchi-Minissing (as Robert Downes spells it), I appreciated the art work all the more on that account, while David speculated that the material used was probably Portland cement, sealed with wax. We both liked very much the explanation of the most important animal depicted: “The beaver who succeeded in his attempt to bring mud from the lake’s bottom lies upon his side exhausted.” That beaver did look worn out!

Another bit of sight-seeing perhaps peculiar to us was the roofless remains of an old building stretching back to a quiet alley. What did it used to be? What could it become? A patio restaurant and outdoor sculpture gallery? Our fevered imaginations could readily see it transformed. 

As always, for me, the little details were captivating. But, as the old Greek said, We came, we saw, we went away again.

And I was happy to get back to Grand Marais before the West Bay Diner closed at 6 o’clock for a piece of Ellen’s raspberry pie and visit with her. Friday we enjoyed our third morning coffee with Rick at the hotel but agreed it felt like time to go home. A couple of pasties from Lehto’s before the Bridge made a satisfying lunch, and a quick stop to cool our traveling feet at Elk Rapids reminded us how beautiful our own home corner of Michigan is, too.

A migraine hit me that evening at home and kept me laid low all the next day, but I think it was Nature’s way of telling me, Oh, no! You are still on vacation! No going back to work this weekend! David’s cold was telling him the same thing, and the unseasonably warm temperatures underlined the warning. Okay, we’ll rest some more! We did work hard all summer, and it’s going to be a busy fall, too.