Ask Me About the West Michigan Pike

We’ve got a lot of fall color left here Up North and a sunny Saturday forecast for tomorrow. It’s amazing there are leaves left on the trees at all, after several days of high winds, but leaves there are—red, yellow, brown, toast- and plum-colored and, yes, even green still--telling us that fall is not over by a long shot.

Speaking of shots, my leading photo image above was taken on one of my favorite back roads near home. Life in the slow lane is my chosen life, but what if all roads up from Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and downstate Michigan were nothing but “serpentine sand trails through barren wilderness, rutted dirt pathways and thin gravel-covered roads”? Try to imagine that, and then imagine the improvement in travel meant by the advent of a good gravel road from Chicago to the Straits!

A new book by M. Chrstine Byron and Thomas R. Wilson is a kind of scrapbook of those early days along Lake Michigan’s eastern shore, back when vacationing in a car was a new thing. The new way of travel was called motor touring, and it began before the advent of numbered highways or even what we think of as highways at all, so when the good road was built between Chicago and the Straits of Mackinac (there would be no bridge for several more decades), motorists had cause for celebration. Ernest Hemingway wrote from Horton Bay to his pals back in Evanston that they could expect to make the trip on the new good road in “less than three days”!

The new road, born without a number, had something better. It had a name. It was called the West Michigan Pike. Ask a dozen people if they know anything about the West Michigan Pike. Fewer people remember this name than know of the Old Dixie Highway, of which the West Michigan Pike became the northernmost stretch. (The section of the West Michigan Pike through Illinois is the road I grew up knowing as the Lincoln Highway.)

Imagine what an adventure it would have been to start out from Chicago and drive north along the shore of Lake Michigan in 1922! How many times would the driver expect to stop for a flat tire, do you suppose? In those days that meant taking the tire off the rim, patching it and remounting it, but the new road was probably easier on tires than the old rocky, sandy trails had been, and gas stations and repair garages quickly sprang up along its length. The subtitle, after all, of Vintage Views Along the West Michigan Pike, M. Christine Byron and Thomas R Wilson (a.k.a. Christine and Tom) is From Sand Trails to U.S. 31. Big difference!

The book shows familiar Lake Michigan resort towns in earlier days when Northport, I note, touted itself as “the niftiest town on the pike” and the “Friendly Town on the northeast tip.” A friend of mine from Spring Lake found one of the old concrete mileposts in a farmer’s field. All the illustrations from this Vintage Views book (one of Byron and Wilson’s earlier books was Vintage Views of Leelanau County) are taken from period postcards, travel posters and advertising circulars, each page inviting close scrutiny and lingering enjoyment. The vision behind the West Michigan Pike Association, all but forgotten, is made vivid and fascinating by Byron and Wilson’s newest work.

Good Reading Weather; Oasis; Sad Loss

Complaining about rain and cold would not bring warm sunshine, so I’m looking on the bright side of this week’s wet, dreary stretch. It is indeed good reading weather, and, as always, I have a lot of reading to do.

One book waiting on my bedside stack is Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna. A small reading group together for many years now chose that for our second book of the season, and the group meets right after Thanksgiving. But that gives me some time, right? I don’t have to get into this book immediately. I’m very curious and interested in it, however, as people I know who have read it—or part of it before bailing out—have had such very different responses. It seems to be a book readers either hate or love.

Recently I received an advance reading copy of The Book of Lost Fragrances, by M. J. Rose, and am devouring chapters of that whenever time permits this week. The publishers were not kidding when they described it as “a novel of suspense”! Set in Egypt, New York, Paris and the south of France, the story also ranges across time, from the French Revolution to our own day. Is Griffin’s reappearance in her life a dream come true for Jac, or does it portend nightmare? Are Jac’s visions psychotic episodes, memories of past lives, or is she merely extremely suggestible? Is she really (this is the point I reached in the story last night) going to search for her brother in the catacombs beneath the city of Paris, 100 feet below ground, long ago sealed off and illegal to explore? And what of the other mysterious young woman hoping to rise to a man’s position of power in the Triad by helping the Chinese nationalists frustrate Tibetans’ traditional manner of finding a successor to the Dalai Lama? There is that danger to Robbie lurking in the background, too. The plot is complex, but it is fast-moving and absorbing. One thing I haven’t mentioned at all is the search for an ancient and elusive perfume, a search that ties all the subplots together. And in keeping with the perfume theme is the way the author notes not only what the characters are seeing and hearing at any given moment but also what their sense of smell brings them, as well as the associations different aromas and odors bring. It is unusual for a novel to make so much of our oldest, strongest and most powerful sense, and I am enjoying this aspect of the story every bit as much as the settings and the suspense. Fragrance is the only part of this novel that would not translate to cinematic interpretation.

Another book I began reading on Tuesday begs not to have its pages turned too quickly. The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel, creates for the reader a wondrous island of thoughtful calm, beginning on the very first page. The essential difference between time and space brings Henri Bergson’s philosophy to my mind. Bergson would have appreciated this book, I know.

The primitive mind finds it hard to realize an idea without the aid of imagination, and it is the realm of space where imagination wields its sway.

...

We are all infatuated with the splendor of space, with the grandeur of things in space. Thing is a category that lies heavy on our minds, tyrannizing all our thoughts....

Indeed, we know what to do with space but do not know what to do about time, except to make it subservient to space. Most of us seem to labor for the sake of things of space. As a result we suffer from a deeply rooted dread of time and stand aghast when compelled to look into its face.

Even our thinking of time, as Bergson famously observed and as Heschel is well aware, is deformed by being spatialized. The purpose of the Sabbath, Heschel tells us, is to leave behind our obsession with the things of space and to build a palace in time where we can become attuned to holiness in time. The word that comes to my mind here is oasis. If you prefer to identify your oasis in the desert of space as meditation rather than the Sabbath, a daily rather than a weekly shift from schedule to eternity—if this better fits your system of belief and practice, it is doubtless better to have the oasis than not. Another appropriate word is harbor.

In the tempestuous oceans of time and toil there are islands of stillness where man may enter a harbor and reclaim his dignity.

For days I have been struggling with how to acknowledge and recognize the loss of someone many in Northport remember. Jay Farr ventured outside the protected harbor in the terrible winds on Saturday to move his anchored sailboat closer to shore. He succeeded in his objective but did not regain the shore safely. He was one of three boaters in our area lost to recent waves. Everyone who shops at Tom’s Market in Northport remembers Jay. He had a ready smile and a cheery greeting for all.

And now I think I’ll wait until another day to tell you about new books in my bookstore. Today doesn’t seem like the right day for that. Please remain safely in harbor, friends, as our autumn gales continue! Do not go out on Lake Michigan today!

Windy Weekend

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the day the horses came to town, and the morning began bitterly cold, with driving rain and gale-force winds. The horses came, anyway, all the way up from Mesick. That's Jade next to the trailer, with Pearl in the foreground.


These beautiful Percherons came to grace the streets of Northport from the stables of Abraham's Carriage Service.



As far as I'm concerned, there is no perfume the equal of the smell of horses and no sound sweeter than the clopping of their hooves and jingling of their harness. Bertie, the driver, told me she would start out and go as long as the weather permitted. As things turned out, the rain dried up, and the wagon made many tours through the village. Rather than leaving early, Bertie was even persuaded to make one last tour after the official four o'clock ending time. Here they are starting out in the cold morning--but don't they look fine?


The sun showed its welcome face on Sunday (in time for the second day of Haunted Lighthouse), but many strollers in the village of Northport were looking downward rather than up into the bright fall leaves. Here's part of the gang visiting our house for the weekend, after breakfast at the North End and a visit to the Wright Gallery, hanging their heads over the bridge next to Barb's Bakery, eyes on Northport Creek below.


What could be going on? If you live Up North, you probably already know. If you live away from the lakeshore, the answer lies in the photos below: we were all watching salmon, driven by blind instinct, thrashing and struggling to make their way upstream.



The lives of wild fish seem as different from the lives of domesticated draft animals as if the two species evolved on different planets. But both are beautiful in movement, and something tells me that fish and horses both appreciate the sun's rays.

The Speech I Should Have Given

On October 7, author Jerry Dennis and artist Glenn Wolff came to Dog Ears Books for the Leelanau County launch of Jerry’s ninth book, The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes. I decided almost at the last minute to combine the book signing with a birthday celebration for Dog Ears. (The bookstore turned 18 on July 4, but there was no time to stop for a bookstore birthday party in the middle of summer.) After the event, Jerry asked if I was pleased, and I realized I was only disappointed in myself, for not giving a gracious speech introducing my guests of honor and reflecting briefly on my bookstore’s long life. So here it is now, the speech I should have given.

Welcome, friends, on one of the most beautiful fall afternoons ever in northern Michigan, and thank you for joining us indoors on this occasion. I know it isn’t easy to come inside on a day like today! I do, however, offer you the best of reasons, and that is to welcome as guests to Dog Ears Books author Jerry Dennis and artist Glenn Wolff from Traverse City. Our primary reason for gathering here today is to celebrate, honor and welcome Jerry’s ninth book, The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes, illustrated by Glenn Wolff. Jerry and Glenn will be happy to sign books for you, with personal inscriptions if you like, and we also have prints of Glenn’s illustrations on hand available for purchase. It is so exciting to have them here! Three cheers for Jerry Dennis and Glenn Wolff!

A second cause for celebration is that Dog Ears Books turned 18 years old this past summer. I’d like Dog Ears to get to 20 years and beyond, but why wait to celebrate? We’re here now! And as the man says, “Life is uncertain--have dessert first!” I hope you will have a generous piece of birthday cake--chocolate or coconut or both--made by David Chrobak of the Old Mill Pond Inn.

People ask me all the time what I think about the future of books and bookselling, but no one knows the future ahead of time. Will electronic reading devices kill books? Somehow I doubt it. Will Internet selling kill bookstores? I don’t think so. But then, on this lovely October day in 2011, no one knows what future years will bring.

When newspapers first appeared in the 1600s, London booksellers feared that newspapers would put them out of business. It didn’t happen. When television took over the United States in the 1950s, many people predicted the end of reading. That end didn’t come about.

I could go on for a long time about printed, bound books and e-readers, but this is a party, and we have guests of honor, and I want you to spend the evening visiting with them. I do want to say that eighteen years ago, in the little shed down Waukazoo Street next to Woody’s Settling Inn--the shed now completely gone, as Woody’s is also completely gone—I never imagined, in my wildest dreams, that Dog Ears would grow and flourish as it has. I never imagined having as guests in my bookstore writers and artists of the stature of Jerry Dennis and Glenn Wolff and others I have had this year and in recent years. The generosity of creative people overwhelms me, and the public response gratifies me.

And as I thank you all for being here today and thank Jerry and Glenn for coming to Northport, there are two other people who deserve very special thanks. One is my husband, artist David Grath. He has been, in his own words, a “donkey for literature” for all the years Dog Ears Books has been in existence. He has schlepped and hammered and advised on decor and arrangement and done whatever needed to be done. This bookstore would never have been born in the first place without his “perfervid imagination” and hard work. So three cheers for David!

The other angel of Dog Ears Books, for well over a decade now, is Bruce Balas. Bruce began volunteering in the bookstore back on the corner of Mill and Nagonaba. He and my son, Ian, helped David and me move from the corner into 102 Nagonaba, now the home of Dolls and More. He is a reader, a book collector, a tireless and unfailingly cheerful assistant, and without him I would never have a day off all summer long. As David always says, “What would we do without Bruce?” So three cheers for Bruce Balas!

Steve Jobs wasn’t around to give me advice 18 years ago, but somehow I must have intuited the advice he would have given, which boils down to “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” Bookselling has not given me wealth, but it has given me a very rich and rewarding life. Dog Ears Books has been very, very good to me.

Thank you all again for being here.

This was to be my one-thousandth post of Books in Northport, but for some reason the number is now at 999. Whatever! I am calling this Post #1000 and give thanks to anyone reading it for visiting. Thanks for regular followers for reading and commenting since 2007. Sarah would thank you, too, if she knew how. If she had the concept. If she had a clue.

If I Were a Luddite, Would I Be Blogging?

Someone else said it, so I don’t have to. It seems that kids who see parents reading bound, printed books see them as doing something different from reading on a screen. The kids respond differently, too. This does kind of shoot a hole in my poster idea: “READING IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT.” Maybe it is, after all.

But there are reasons to be online and good stuff to read, watch and listen to. For example, if you haven’t watched and listened to the Steve Jobs commencement speech video yet, get with it. How many videos do I watch online a year? Fewer than a dozen, I assure you, but this one is top of my recommendation list.

Getting back to books, though, here’s what absorbed me for an hour or two the other day:

Mary Wollstonecraft and Percy Bysshe Shelley married in 1816 after his first wife, Harriet, died a suicide by drowning. Percy and Harriet had been estranged for two years prior to her death, but Harriet’s suicide took place only after her husband had run away with the 17-year-old Mary.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is famous as the author of classic horror novel, Frankenstein, which appeared in 1818, subtitled The Modern Prometheus. In this story, faithful to the original, young Frankenstein steals not mere fire as in the Greek myth but life itself, cobbling together a monster from purloined body parts stolen from morgues and graveyards and bringing his creation to life with “galvanism” (which Webster’s defines as “a direct current of electricity esp. when produced by chemical action”). Everyone knows what became of Frankenstein’s monster. Here is the story as given in The Reader’s Encyclopedia, by William Rose Benet:

Longing for sympathy and shunned by everyone, the creature ultimately turns to evil and brings dreadful retribution on the student for usurping the Creator’s prerogative, finally destroying him.

But then in 1820 came Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, a drama in which Prometheus is released from the mountain where he was chained by Zeus as a punishment for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to human beings. Reunited with his true love, he is vindicated in having gone against Zeus, and a new Golden Age ensues. Down with the gods, up with the humans! seemed to be Shelley’s message. Quite a different message from that of the myth and of Mary’s story.

Following their marriage, Mary and Percy Shelley lost three infant children before having a daughter who survived. Mary suffered, understandably, from depression. Percy sought consolation with other women. The bloom was off the rose. Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned (an accident, apparently, rather than a suicide) in 1822 while still a young man. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley lived on until 1851.

What would either of them make of today’s experimentation with cloning and genetic engineering? In hindsight, what fate would they think Prometheus deserved? Did Mary come to wish Percy had felt himself more bound (to her), not quite so free to overthrow convention and tradition, once the shoe was on the other foot and the consequences come home to roost?

So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein—more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.

Leaves of Leaves (Really)

Yes, the leaves are turning in northern Michigan (beautiful color this year!), and I'm still turning the leaves of books, indoors and out, but the other day I turned leaves in a book of trees, appreciating colorful images of leaves on leaves.


An Introduction to Trees, by John Kieran, was published by Hanover House in 1954 and illustrated in beautiful, big, full oolor by Michael H. Bevans.



Too large to be a field guide, this book’s illustrations would not leave identification in doubt. Flowers, seeds, nuts, bark and fall color are all shown.



I love to turn the pages and look at these pictures--then go outside and look at living trees (see previous post).

A Couple of Locals Take Time for a Leelanau Color Tour

We couldn’t resist. Not that there isn’t plenty of color between our house and Northport, There's plenty in my own yard and along the driveway and within walking distance of the house.




But in October I am always greedy for more. Monochromatic months lie ahead of us, you know, and now is the time to gorge on color. So after closing my bookstore at 5 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, David and Sarah and I took a long, meandering path that led eventually to Glen Arbor, where we stopped for picnic supplies before turning back northward to stop at Good Harbor beach for our al fresco supper.





What a day! Spectacular! Every modest little corner a blaze of bright hues! This is Fat Tuesday for the Seasonal Soul facing a long winter fast.




Last year’s color, while lovely, was nothing on this year’s. This is one for the record books. But for the really spectacular view, check out Gerry's blog! And if you want a color tour at footpath pace, see my photo blog post.

"Thank God I Am a Bookseller!"

The day dawned bright and clear. Even fallen leaves on ground looked warm and happy. It was the day of our celebration of The Windward Shore and 18 successful years of Dog Ears Books. Hours later, after much preparation and what seemed like endless waiting, a little before five o'clock the guests began to arrive.


And then--hooray!--our guests of honor, author Jerry Dennis and artist Glenn Wolff! What an honor to have them in Northport!


Okay, I confess. I almost forgot to take pictures at all. I had completely forgotten to plan out a little speech ahead of time and flubbed that royally, and once again I failed to ask anyone to take a picture of me with the guests, so I can look back and know that I was there. Still, I did get a few shots. Here are a couple that particularly please me. The first is of Jerry Dennis chatting with artist Char Bickel.


Char has a show going on right now at the Watershed Center in Greilickville, by the way. Don't miss that!

And here's Glenn Wolff adding a priceless sketch to the title page of Jerry's book, which he illustrated.



There were other writers and artists in the crowd, some all the way up from Traverse City. Very gratifying! Thanks to everyone who joined us, whether from down the block or around the Bay!

This morning I had an e-mail from Jerry, saying that he and Glenn had driven back to Traverse City last night in a "nice glow from the warmth, welcome, and compliments extended by so many of your friends and customers" and that he hoped we could do the same thing "again and again" and that Dog Ears will have many more birthdays. I have to say that I am overwhelmed by the genuine generosity of artists and writers, the support they show for one another, the concern they have for the public (including their bookseller friends), and the dedication they bring to their work. My life has been immeasurably enriched by such contacts, thanks in large part to my bookstore.

And so, in closing today, here are the words that writer Christopher Morley put into the mouth of his unforgettable character, Roger Mufflin, proprietor of the Haunted Bookshop in Morley’s novel of the same name:

Thank God I am a bookseller, trafficking in the dreams and beauties and curiosities of humanity rather than some mere huckster of merchandise.

Amen!

Turning Leaves, Turning Leaves

Aspects of the fall landscape keep surprising me. Sumac, for instance, is already past its color prime (frost sweetening the berries), while other, larger trees are still primarily green. There’s a lot of variety from one maple to another, the maples by no means all on the same fall schedule—good to know, since it means lots of color still ahead. Birch leaves are going golden, poplars not yet. All the ash leaves are beautiful in their quiet, subtle way. [If you're looking for a post offering a fall color tour, see this one next.]

Last night a friend asked what I’d been reading lately, and the question overwhelmed me. So much, so much! Turning leaves so rapidly at times that they almost created a breeze! I took several books with me to the U.P. but ended up spending most of my vacation reading time with J. B. Priestley’s Lost Empires, a novel of bygone traveling “variety” stage shows. Reading it, I was almost convinced the book was a memoir. Coming home I plunged into Howard Norman’s What Is Left the Daughter, a novel set in Nova Scotia; Gregory Bates’s Tattoos on the Heart, which I highly recommend, about his work with gang kids in Los Angeles; and John Mortimer’s amusing memoir, Clinging to the Wreckage. A friend loaned me Wild Comfort, by Kathleen Dean Moore (and was shocked at how quickly I read it, although I told her sincerely that I will be re-reading it for years to come), a book about nature and grieving that seemed so important and pertinent to lives I know that I immediately ordered copies for my bookstore, and then I needed something light and easy and treated myself to another of the Botswana novels featuring the delightful Mma Ramotswe, this time The Full Cupboard of Life. Isn’t that a wonderful title?

One bit of assigned reading that I finished bare hours before the deadline (the group reading it together was coming to my bookstore for a discussion )was Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Yes, more turning leaves. A couple people in the group were unpersuaded that reading this work all at once, from start to finish, was the best way to approach it; instead, they advocated the “dipping in” method. Well, I began at the beginning and left a bookmark in place for my next session, but in another sense it was a “dipping-in” experience for me, since I set the book aside so many times to turn to others, often having four going at the same time. This is the way I usually read—a book for the bedroom, a book for the porch, a book for the bathroom, a book for the car. Doesn’t everyone? No, not everyone, but I know I’m not alone, either.

Since joining the American Booksellers Association, I have been receiving a box of advance reading copies (ARCs) of selected titles every month. Who does the selecting—or how—I have no idea. Bruce read one of the books and reviewed it for me, and subsequently a customer ordered it, but many of the titles seem to fall into the category called “chick-lit,” books neither of us would ever choose for ourselves and books I would not order for the store except by special request. From the most recent box, though, one book wouldn’t stop nagging me to read it.

All Fall Down, by Megan Hart, had the cover look of a murder mystery, but that’s not what it was at all. Told in third person throughout, the story alternates between two points of view, one that of a childless married woman nearing 40 (Liesel), the other of a 20-year-old mother of three (Sunshine). The younger woman is the daughter of the older woman’s husband (Chris), but he has never known his child or even that the child his pregnant first wife was carrying when she left him for another man was his. If this isn’t complicated enough, the younger woman lands on her father’s doorstep seeking refuge. At her mother’s insistence, she has escaped the fenced cult compound in which her entire life has been lived, and shortly after her escape everyone inside, including her mother and the fathers of her children, committed mass suicide.

The story sounds sensational, but the author’s telling of it is not overwrought or “thrilling.” The unexpected does occur in life. Unbelievable events do take place, shattering complacency and habit. Moreover, the answers to our prayers--Liesel has been wanting children before Sunshine and her brood arrive—usually do bring unanticipated consequences. Any married person who has gone through a stretch of “This isn’t working!” and come out the other side still married, as well as any parent who knows the exhaustion of dealing with children 24 hours a day, will recognize the truths in this story. Hope and faith ebb and flow. Despair visits from time to time. Then you get up and go on.

One loose end (unless I simply missed something) was the identity of Sunshine’s third child, baby Bliss. The answer to that question would not have been terribly important, as the story of her second child’s father really served only to give a general idea of how babies were conceived within the “Family,” but when I finished the book it occurred to me to wonder. But another strength of this story, aside from its realism, is the way the author portrays different ways of life and beliefs as having different good and bad features. She does not oversimplify choices or judgments, as would have been so easy to do. The characters too were believable, struggling but essentially good and capable individuals.


The chief book of my life these fall days, however, is Jerry Dennis’s The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes. I get up in the morning and check and answer my e-mail and then sit down with a fresh cup of coffee and the Dennis book, treating myself to a chapter—or, on greedy mornings, more. The chapter called “A Good Winter Storm” (and in my mind I kept changing the word so that it was “A Great Winter Storm”) gave me an appetite for the season ahead. Yes! Winter! Delicious! “Reading Nature at Pine Hollow” had me almost jumping up and down, wanting to get my reading groups together to tell them, “He’s reading Ulysses! He’s reading Whitman!”

I love the way Dennis relates books to nature:

One reason we read books is to connect with other minds and find a universality of experience. They are life-lines we throw to one another so we can pull close enough to shout our amazement at the size of the ocean.

Isn’t that wonderful? Or here—

Just as water can be made into a more interesting beverage by filtering it through grapes, nature can be altered in interesting ways by filtering it through a consciousness.

Reading nature as filtered through this author’s consciousness is certainly a pleasure. It is also, I’m sure, an experience that will deepen my direct contacts with the natural world. (For a complete review of this book, see this week's Northern Express.) My reading this morning was the chapter “Fugue and Storm,” and I will close with a line from one of those leaves but first want to mention that when the author comes to Dog Ears Books this Friday, we will also have prints by artist Glenn Wolff, who illustrated this and many other Jerry Dennis books.

And now, take this thought with you into the day, out into the world. If you go out into the world with earbuds in place, the music should be Bach.

Perhaps any experience of nature, compressed into legible form, is shaped like a fugue.

By Popular Demand, Otters

You will have to picture in your mind the images to accompany this story.

Back in the days before there were big, expensive houses on Gills Pier Road, the place where Roaring Brook poured out into Lake Michigan was a good spot for fishing, and one family came regularly to make their summer home at the mouth of the creek. The father would fish, the mother (a medicine woman) would collect herbs and roots for healing, while the three children played happy in the creek with a couple of young otters.

When fall arrived and it was time to move to winter quarters, the otters sensed the family’s imminent departure, and on their last morning at Roaring Brook, the children found five freshly killed trout laid out in a row in front of their summer home. Surrounding the fish were otter tracks, running back and forth from the brook. The trout were a farewell gift to the family from the otters.

At least, that is the story David remembers hearing, and for a storybook it's a version that would certainly suffice. The woman who told my husband the story was one of the children in it. She grew up to be a teacher for years in the Leland Public School, known as Mrs. Peschel, although she had been taught by her mother to be a medicine woman herself before she went to college. Later in life, she went back to graduate school to earn a doctorate degree in ethnobotany at the University of Michigan. She spent summers then studying and gathering herbs and tending graves on Garden Island, one of the small islands in the Beaver Island archipelago and home to many Native American graves, and served as Lecturer of Ethnobotany and Philosophy of the Western Great Lakes Indian at the University of Wisconsin.

It was an honor to have known Keewaydinoquay Peschel even as slightly as I did. You can read about her life in the book Keewaydinoquay: Stories from My Youth, edited by Lee Boisvert, but there you will find a much longer, more detailed and rather different account of one child’s “Otter Summer.” Reading the story in the book, I see that the “Otter Summer” took place not at the family’s summer fishing camp but at what was at the time their permanent home. I can’t even tell for sure if the place the family was living then was Roaring Brook or somewhere north of Northport. There is only one child in the story. I need to read the whole book carefully from start to finish, and then, if I’m still unsure, maybe Paul Peschel, our county animal control officer and Dr. Peschel's son, can clear up the confusion.

Or maybe, if confusion remains, it won't matter. What, after all, is the heart of the otter story? Although I confess I like to picture children and otters playing together in Roaring Brook, so close to my home, it is the interspecies rapport and friendship that make this story one that could be translated around the world, the way I see it--the reminder that we share our world with many different kinds of creatures, all with their own valuable lives. But clearly, I am neither journalist, historian nor biographer. What do you think?