The Works of Man

Rachel Maddow spoke last night about the juxtaposition of not retiring the Bush tax cuts while laying off policemen, cutting school days, browning-out fire crews, shutting off city streetlights and unpaving roads. WSJ wrote about this road phenomena in July. 38 counties of 83 in Michigan have done this; either pulling up asphalt to be recycled elsewhere, or returning the roads to ground-up asphalt or gravel. Cost difference: maintaining an asphalt road = $75,000/mile. Maintaining a chewed road = $2,600/mile. Residents interviewed in S. Dakota do not want taxes raised to maintain the roads. Neither do they want the roads chewed. Reality checking is apparently someone else's job. Probably the same in MI, although I can't find anything on the internet about which 38 counties have experienced the un-roading.

Roads and cities emerged from the lumbering, mining and industry in Michigan. When the lumber was gone (one baron thought it would last forever, having never set foot in Michigan himself) by 1890, the cities were ghosts. In the 20 year timber boom from 1870 to 1890, logging roads were laid as fast as the trees were downed. The picture here is of the lumber town at Scammon Cove on Drummond Island. A narrow-gauge train track hauled logs right out into the water to be loaded on ships. There is little evidence of the town now. Drummond Island has trees again - and the logging trucks once more face you down coming from Glen Cove on a newly asphalted road.

Scammon Cove is for sale. It is beautiful, one of the finest views I've seen. The Stone House is for sale, too, as one piece with the Cove, although there are private homes between the House and the Cove acres. If you walk the grass track to the Cove where the railroad pilings stare crookedly at the sky, and look down in the water, you can see the metal railroad footings. But Mother Nature has taken the land back. There are no tall trees there - the great pine of Michigan's Upper Peninsula was taken away, but the birds sing, and the wind whispers in the scrub, and the bear, deer and young coyote who faced me down on the path don't miss the works of man. Not a bit.