Michigan, My Michigan

I love Michigan. There are other beautiful states in our union, but I was born here, have lived here all my life and will probably continue to live in Michigan. My matriarchal ancestors are buried here (all on Drummond Island) and my paternal ancestors one generation past are buried here. The other folks are in England and Finland. I am second generation American, and second generation Michiganian. Michigan enjoys four true seasons. Well, except for this winter which has been not great for snowshoeing. My mom had a tshirt that, among other joke traditions, reported that summer in Michigan is two weeks of bad sledding. And you can get sunburned and frostbit in the same week. And you might be from Michigan if you think alkaline is a Tiger right fielder. Michigan has the most bowling alleys and consumes the most potato chips. Michigan was home to dozens of film actors, writers, and hopefully will return to being a film industry destination. Michigan has the largest alvar plain in North America (Maxton Plains on Drummond Island). We have many nationally designated wild and scenic rivers, an honorific that will keep our rivers beautiful and pristine. I commissioned this dual-peninsula Michigan pin to be made long ago by James Avery Jewelry in Kerrville, TX. If JA still has the mold, you can get the pins there even now. Notice that Drummond Island is happily floating in its channel to the right of the U.P. There are State of Michigan maps that do not include Drummond, but it is a Michigan island. Anecdotal history reports that it missed being Canadian because the survey team got the British captain drunk and sailed him through the false channel. You can read about the British on Drummond from 1815-1828. Michigan has great stories to share. Michigan has my heart.

Scott in Big Shoal Bay

Work done before 2 p.m. each day so that Scott could go swimming in Big Shoal Bay. I sat on the diving rock, keeping him safe, watching the joy. Once in a while, he would time out, losing tether to where he was, I think, and he'd stall, bobbing in the water. I'd say to myself "please bring back his blessing," and soon he'd be doing strokes, somersaults and smiling. I'd say "thank you." Lots of tears splashed on that ol' no-longer-submerged diving rock; some grief heated, more warmed with love.

Backyard Buddy

This little guy was hopping in the grass under the birch tree at the cabin on Drummond Island. He thought he had an excellent hiding place because his eyes were under a leaf, but I had to scoot him along after I took his picture so the dog wouldn't harass him. He might be a Northern Leopard frog (Grass, Meadow frog) but he might be another critter altogether.

A Three Story Life in One Story

We went to Drummond Island for a couple weeks this year. We left August 11. I chose that date because I thought it was a Monday. Jane and I tried to schedule dinner before we left. "How about Monday, August 8?" Jane asked. I said, "The 8th can't be a Monday because the 11th is." So I found out not a Monday. It's that kind of summer. The packing was the usual - garbage bags and paper bags and stuff stuffed in the holes. I tried to not mind, and succeeded. There's plenty of time to think on a 365 mile trip, and I thought. My biggest challenge is trying not to mind. My therapist told me, just walk past [insert: dirt, underwear, shoes, dishes, food blobs, dirty laundry, doggie dollops] and say "whatever." I say that enough, and sometimes out loud, Dad will growl "what do you mean by that?" but I don't answer. Once he said "huh?" and I said, "I'm just talking to myself" and Dad asked "what did you say?" and I said, "I don't know, I wasn't listening." So here we three + dog were in a 600 square foot cabin. No escape. No three story divisions - just one story. Oy. The only privacy is out in nature, which is fine with me. I was so private, I walked 4 miles each morning. I chopped wood, moved rocks in a wheelbarrow, transplanted trees, painted shed, waterlocked the sauna. No internet, TV, or cellphones so we were crammed in face to face. If I moved outside, the guys moved. If I moved inside, ditto. And after 16 days, I really didn't mind. While I wielded a shovel and a wheelbarrow, Dad pulled up a chair. "Who knew watching your daughter work was a spectator sport?" I didn't, but I didn't mind. Dad pulled up a chair to watch me scrape, then paint the shed. After a couple of "duh" glances in his direction, he even let me do it the way he taught me to do it 50 years ago. This all reminded me that the physical labor work I can do, the manual skills I have, my Dad taught me. I can repair fancy schmancy wet plaster molding. I can drywall, paint, split wood, shovel, transplant trees, do minor plumbing and electrical repairs because my Dad taught me. Having him watch now is part of the pride in my work he can enjoy. Me, too.

Michigan Finnish Sauna Memories

My matriarchal ancestors are Finnish. Great-grandmother Mariah Matilda came from Finland with her four children. The women lived on Drummond Island in a house we still enjoy. The Kemppainens across the road had a sauna, and on Friday nights, baths were enjoyed in order of who could stand what heat level. Older women first, small children with their mothers, couples next, bachelors last. Mariah liked her sauna hot. She sat on the top bench with my grandmother and slapped herself with birch branches while my mother washed us. I can still hear the hiss of water poured on the stones again and again as my great-grandmother raised the temperature. I remember scrunching as close to the floor as possible with a cold washcloth over my face, wondering if I'd live long enough to run outside and watch the steam fly off my body, struggling to endure the heat longer than my brothers. All the women had baskets or wooden carryalls with their sauna supplies. I loved the smell of the sauna; the hot rocks with wood fired underneath, handmade soap, the steaming cedar walls and benches. The easy laughter. My mom opened the sauna door when I was an adult, and snapped a picture of me that looks like this Painometalli plaque from the 50s that hangs in our bathroom. Aunt Suoma got her mother and sister Saima an addition on the Drummond house that includes a sauna almost as big as the living room so the ladies wouldn't have to walk across the road to bathe. At South Lyon Farmers Market, I bought an exfoliating soap sack and a bar of sumptuous soap made by Cellar Door Soap Company, and today when I picked up the mitt, I smelled the childhood sauna of long ago, heard the women's laughter and felt the exuberant joy of carefree community with my family.

Man's Best Friend Is Who?

Sweetgrass Writers Group rendezvoused for a retreat at my matriarchal stronghold on Drummond Island the weekend of Sharon's birthday in 2009. It was a short trip, full of long lovely memories. At a rest area on the way up, I saw this scene on the dog run. The look on the dog's face! I laughed out loud. I could see the conversation balloon over his head "hey, hold up here - I'M the good boy!"

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.

Up North Weekend

The Sweetgrass Writers traveled to the Upper Peninsula last weekend, our first trip as a group, and - for many of us - the first Up North With The Girls excursion.

We had a special time. Friday was Sharon's birthday, and everyone but Rosemary forgot. We stopped at a roadside market, and Geri and Nancy had the owner make a birthday bouquet of sunflowers and cosmos that shared the table with us all weekend.

Friday lunch was shared at the park by the Mackinac Bridge under an azure sky with the sound of water slapping the shore, and bridge traffic humming nearby, while the seagulls squawked without success to be thrown some salmon.

We stopped at Timberdoodle Mercantile in Detour, MI and met Jan Kellis, author of "Bookworms Anonymous: A Non-Traditional Book Club for All Readers" and Jan agreed to swap her book for Chantepleure. "Bookworms Anonymous" stayed on the dining room table, and we picked it up, read, laughed and shared through the weekend.

A new fawn greeted us on the road to the cabin on Drummond Island, standing in the road, wondering what strange blue animal was in its path. We waited until she scampered away, off to enjoy her own weekend in the woods.

Saturday was a perfect late summer day, and we wandered around the Island after breakfast, journaled in the sun at Big Shoal Bay, visited the Old Cabin Gift Shop, walked around and took pictures of Uncle Tom's cabin (my grandmother's brother, Toivo). The cabin was constructed with dovetail joins. No nails involved, and it's still standing.

Nancy hadn't had a grilled meal all summer, so we planned to cook out on Saturday night. What luck that the IGA had seafood and steaks on sale. We dined on T-bones, corn on the cob, and crab legs with melted butter. Sharon brought wine from her niece's Michigan winery. Delicious!

Sunday we took turns driving back home, still laughing, relaxed and glad to have this beautiful State and terrific companions to share Up North Weekends.

Who Watches the Watchers?

My maternal grandmother waited until her children were married and had children of their own before she left my grandfather. I'm sure it was a long wait for her.

Grandma went to nursing school. She got her license, and cared for newborn infants in the hospital nursery until her hands got too bad to work with tiny bodies.

When she could no longer work with the newly-arrived, she nursed the soon-to-be departed.

She worked in her 50s and 60s as a live-in nurse for seniors preparing to move to the next plane of existence. She lived and worked in southeastern Michigan, near her children and grandchildren.

When her mother was ready for some company and caregiving, my grandmother moved back to Drummond Island to take care of her own.

Today I'm wondering if Grandma knew she would be the primary caregiver for Great-Grandma Tillie and that's why she got a nursing degree. My grandmother was the eldest daughter, and single, and remained single until she passed on in 1987 at 85 years old.

I wonder if she thought about what her future might hold when she was 47, and a nursing student, recently divorced. I wonder if she planned on the training, knowing she would care for her mother at the end of her life.

My great-grandmother Mariah, lived until she was 93 years old. The picture shown is at her home on Drummond Island in the summer before her birthday in 1969.

Isn't she beautiful?