Water all up in your metaphor, your lake, and your...house: The Apostle Islands

Today, we ran into our first bout of inevitable road-weary syndrome. A sure sign of this is the disintegration of conceptualizing time in its standardized fashion. For example, it seems like I haven't posted on this thing forever when in reality, it was two days ago.

We were probably road-weary before today but the constant motion as we tried to get through all of the sites and experiences we wanted to kept us in sweet disillusionment. Then last night, we retired in Miles City where mother got to catch up with her grad school friend MarieElaine whom she had not seen in 35 years. This marked a sort of pause in our filled-to-the-brim days and gave us today to move leisurely through Montana to make it to Glacier National Park by tomorrow.

It also made us realize: Damn, we have been on the move.

A few things happen
- Decision-making capabilities plummet drastically.
-You start to wiggle around on the road
-If you're the passenger, your trust of the driver plummets dramatically
-every nuance becomes quantified and suddenly more noticeable: you lost something again? you just lost it five minutes ago! No, I don't want to look at the map again! we just made a plan! Why don't you ever hear anything I say? Why am I always repeating myself? 
-You get headaches and you don't know if they are coming from the elevation change, the coffee, the lack of coffee or the fact that you are reaching wits end with one another's nuances

Then finally, you hit the bottom and you sort of just drift until some undercurrent sweeps you up, stirs up momentum and you are on the surface again, bobbing and floating and drifting. The best part is, once this happens once and you realize your buoyancy, you become okay with the drifting and even the periodic sinking. You are like a sputtering child suddenly realizing they are swimming and they don't have to move so franticly. Back on the surface, those depths and nuances look more like interesting sea creatures that you discovered on a dive. They become stories, characteristics that color the trip, an armory of playful jabs you have for the future ("yeah, watch out when you travel with this one...") They become endearing.

Bobbing along now, through Big Sky Country bound for big mountains, we felt our hearts and voices open a little more calmly to one another. We humored ourselves with Country music that sings about all things trite with intense passion and Pop music that sings about all things trite in contrived, superficial sniveling. We shared admiration for the vast and varied cloud formations surrounding us having until then, coveted those feelings for ourselves. And in that moment, I let go of drawing parallel lines between my years of journeying this route. I had been somehow expecting each leg of the trip to compete with how I connected with this land two years ago. But two years ago, that connection was different because it was the closest thing I had to connect to. This time, mother was the connection.

But I am jumping ahead of myself. Like I said, these past few days feel like weeks and that is because we have jammed a lot into these days. I left you all back in Michigan in the Porkies and there is still swaths of site-seeing to do before you get to see mountains...well, I'll give you a preview:

If I have my cloud names right, i believe these are a mild manna cloud formation

Big Cumulostratus storm clouds and sweeping Virga rain strokes

But the next stop after the Porcupine Mountains was a place filled with stories. And after a long road-weary day, curled up in PJs what better than some bedtime stories?

The day after our surprise 12-mile trek, we traded in our hiking boots and sweaty foreheads for warm layers and sunscreen and boarded The Superior Princess to tour the 22 Apostle Islands of the National Lakeshore of the shore of Bayfield, WI (well, only 21 are protected by the National Parks because when they were added to the system in the 70's, Madeline Island - the largest - was already way more developed with a population of 1,600.)

                                   

As much as I don't care for swimming. I absolutely love being on or by or wading in water. The tour was wonderful and we were graced with intriguing narrations of each of the islands unique characteristics by a very mono-toned but humorous and knowledgeable captain. He explained to us in such a tone, that the Apostle Islands were named such because they were first discovered around the 1600s by Jesuits and they tended to like to name everything religiously whether or not it made sense to. So even though there are only 12 apostles, they named these 22 islands the Apostle Islands. They were even called the Twelve Apostles on early maps. 

Our route

Remnants of the quarried brownstone

The first of the Islands, Basswood and Hermit held most of their history in the era of Brownstone architecture. Back in the 1880's after the great Chicago Fire, an abundance of Brownstone was discovered there and because of its soft, workable composition, became very appealing for rebuilding. And so up until about 1910, the islands had many quarries mined for Brownstone that got shipped around the country. Then when steel became popular around that time, Brownstone was quickly abandoned because it wasn't sturdy enough to build tall. The quarry work ended so abruptly that shipments of brownstone were left on the shore where boats would pick it up. We got to cruise past these piles and see just how big they were - blocks of 4x4x8 feet! Brownstone wasn't the only resource in abundance here. Basswood island also had a lot of Basswood trees (surprise) and was thoroughly logged off. Hermit Island however, has a story that is a bit more involved. Apparently, on Madeline Island there once lived a power-hungry dude names John Bell who fancied himself a king and tried to dictate all. This "cooper" (barrelsmith) named Wilson (I find those names to be respectively suiting in a very quintessentially Hollywoodesque way) decided to try and go up against Bell and, in a not so Hollywoodesque way, eventually lost. He was basically ostracized from the Island and took a little boat off to one of the nearby islands, set up a house and lived off the land for the rest of his life. While now known as Hermit Island, locals tend to refer to it as "Wilson's Island" (anyone else here Tom Hank's voice screaming desperately in their head?)

A suitably hermit-like nook off the end of Hermit Island

Later, Hermit Island attracted yet another Hermit-y type character. Frederick Prentice was a man largely involved in the Brownstone business for Hermit Island and around that boom, had hundreds of men working quarries for him. However, his life didn't extend much beyond the island. When he married his second wife, a 19 year-old socialite, he built her "Cedarbark Lodge" and presented it to her as a surprise, a gesture for her to come live on this wonderful secluded island with him and a hundred other men. Oddly enough, that didn't work out.

 Next, we passed Oak island - the highest, being 400 feet above sea level - and Stockton Island which boasts the interesting juxtaposition of being one of the most popular destinations for camping and hiking as well as the island with the highest Black Bear population. Weaving through these, we caught a glimpse of Michigan Island. Bet you can't guess why it has that name?

I believe that distant one is Michigan Island...

Entering into the waters around Manitoub, Chippewa for "Spirit Island", we also entered into another era of industry: Fishing. Manitoub's shore exhibits the last remaining fish camps from the 1950's. This business was quite a production. Workers had to be seriously committed, for most lived on the island year-round. The fishing business bought housing for them and worked out a system with businesses on land whereby they could have access to free saw dust from the saw mills. They would gather ice chunks from the lake in the winter and store it in Bayfield. In the spring, they would send the ice blocks through grinders into boxes insulated with the sawdust and ship it over to the men on the islands for their fish storage. Then, periodic boaters would make their rounds and collect the fish to go sell. The most abundant type of fish was and is Whitefish, which they would catch in droves with large nets. However, these nets would also draw in Lake Trout which was in short supply so fishers were provided with tags which they would have to use for each trout they kept and once the tags ran out, they could not keep any more.

The Fishing Camp includes hand-turned net drying reels (center-ish) to dry their cotton nets, an Ice house, a
storage shed,  a bunk house an outhouse and an ice fishing shack that they could move onto the ice for sport.

I took a break from my diligent listening which involved weathering the brisk winds of the upper level of the boat so I missed the highlights of Otter Island, Ironwood Island and North Twin Island. I ventured to the lower deck to watch the captain for a little while and when I went back up on deck, found the perfect position to be in to block the wind and stay toasty enough in the sun...toasty enough that I caught a bit of a nap.

Our Captain and narrator 

When I tuned back in, we were talking about the conversion to National Park status. It was quite a big deal for the islands because when Nixon decided to turn them over to the DNR in the 1970's there were already many families settled in some spots, particularly 'South Twin" Island. While the families were forced to turn over the land, there was an agreement made that any living relative thereon out would be able to lease the land from the government for use so to this day, there are still relatives of those first families using the land. There was one particular woman who owned Bear Island however, that would not comply so readily. Its said that she shot over the heads of anyone who approached her island.

Bear Island

Before turning back towards shore, we did a grand sweep of Devil's Island. Known by the Native Americans in this area as "Metch Manitoub Manis" or "eagle spirit island", it earned its name because of the great Island caves that line its edges. During the harsh storms common in this area, the winds would crash the water so loudly into the dugouts of these caves that the Natives considered it a great spirit voice. Visitors to the Islands can kayak out and venture into the depths of these caves "out of sight" as the captain said, which makes me wonder how far in they go...
    

































Our journey back took us around the other side of Raspberry Island which housed a large lighthouse first illuminated in 1863. This was apparently one of the last places Kennedy visited before his assassination. Major maintenance efforts have been put towards it, with 6 million dollars invested a few years ago and 10-12 years ago, the front of the bank was rebuild for fear that erosion would eventually suck it into the water. In addition, there is an annual garden-planting tradition. One of the things that kept lighthouse keepers entertained in the 30's was to compete for the most beautiful garden. And so volunteers come out to the lighthouse once a year and recreate what the garden once looked like.

While all of the Island's histories were fascinating, I found two of the most amusing tales of the area to be not of any particular island.

The first the captain explained on the trip back was that the Canadian side of Superior once kept German POWs during WWII. Since the area was so remote and the soldiers so disoriented, they didn't even bother with fences or anything. The guards even felt sorry for the men and began teaching them life skills. They got along so well that when the war was over and the men were allowed to return home, many just turned around and moved right back to be with the Canadians. 

The second story is called simply "the house story." A man was once transporting a piece of real estate stupidly across the frozen winter lake. He was doing fine until about 2/3 of the way across when the ice broke and the entire house and truck was lost. There was a real estate agent or something who had some fun with it and put an ad in the paper saying that he had a wonderful piece of real estate that boasted a 360 degree view of the lake with a sunk-in living room and that it would sell fast because he was only asking "rock bottom" price. However, since regulations considered this pollution the man responsible eventually had to pay out of pocket to lift it out of the water. Half came up in the first attempt but the first floor detached. In the remaining task set to scuba-geared men, photos were taken of the men pretending to watch tv under water on the couches etc. 

And just as I began this entry, what sinks always rises up eventually. 

Good night (eep, morning. So much for resting up)