The Middlewesterner

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 5, 2004

It rained all day yesterday.

All day. My tent gave up trying to keep the water out. I slept in the car last night.

Tom Nordstrom, caretaker of the L'Anse Township Park and Campground, stopped at my site and I gave him my key. I'd packed up my tent and everything else by that point, and had showered. I'm ready to go. I'll interview Phil Latendresse in Tapiola at noon, then I'll head west for Redfield - I'll go as far as I get in an afternoon's drive, however much afternoon I have left at that point.

Tom Nordstrom said it was 44 degrees when he got up this morning. The high yesterday was 55 degrees. The waitress at Shabee's said it didn't feel like it was 55 degrees until you were out in it for a couple hours - then you got cold.

I had breakfast at Shabee's, yes. There was a car with Missouri plates parked in front of the cafe as I went in. I sat drinking my coffee. The radio was playing country music, as it usually does. Just over the wall, a white-haired woman was at a table with a man one assumes is her husband; she said, "I can't believe it - they play the exact same songs here as they do in Missouri."

The great leveling continues. More and more the nation becomes as generic as white bread, bland and uniform from place to place. When we are all the same, only those people who like the store-bought white bread will be happy. Those of us who like the home-made wheat will not be so happy. These regional differences are to be cherished; and so are the little differences within a region. I suppose there is comfort in knowing exactly what you are going to get anywhere in the country. Yet what adventure is there in that?

I'm sitting in the car overlooking Keweenaw Bay at the park in downtown L'Anse. Last night as I returned from Da Yoopers' show, you couldn't see across the bay from Baraga to L'Anse - the mist and rain was too heavy. No mist, no rain, no fog this morning. A grey and cloudy sky, grey and cloudy water in the bay.

*

I interview Phil Latendresse formally, with tape recorder, in his home at the end of a county road outside Tapiloa. It is 1:40 p.m. when I finish.

Now I am leaving the lush green and blue of the Upper Peninsula; and am leaving the lovely lilt of their talk behind. The day has warmed. The sky is still pretty much overcast, but like a good omen the sun shows through occasionally.

There are some open, grassy fields along Pelkie Road north of M-38. A farmyard with a big barn. Nothing gets harvested here now, I think, but trees, and sometimes, marshgrass. Birch, pines, hardwoods.

Here in the margin, where they know how to make do, this is where life evolves.

I am going to drive as far as I can towards Redfield this afternoon. I do not know how far that will be.

M-38. 2:00 p.m. Cows in a pasture. A hayfield. Farm tractors. A chopper for cutting hay.

A mother raccoon and six little ones cross M-38 in front of me. Actually, the adult stops, turns to face me, and glares. Then it moves the rest of the way across the road and into the tall grass. I have had to slow considerably to accommodate the raccoons' slow traipse. The turn to glare at me when I've slowed nearly to a stop - is it any wonder that people sometimes go bowling for raccoons? Cars far off behind me and on-coming pose no danger once the raccoons have gotten moving again.

2:10 p.m. The cloud cover has broken up. The sky shows its blue underpanties. I enter Ontonagon County. Oh, those Ontonagon Hills of Michigan....

I'm headed south on US 45 now, towards M-28. A lot of up and down wild scrubland. You wouldn't call it wilderness. There may have been big trees here once, where I cross the Ontonagon River, but they are not big trees now.

Ha, slack-jawed crow-boy, blue and black in the sun, you stand there at the edge of the road wondering what is going on. Go ahead - wonder! Are you quick enough a crow to catch on? You cannot stand off to the side, you have to leap in, commit yourself, give yourself to your obsessions.

This can't be the end of the world. There is traffic here. There are semis hauling loads other than timber.

Two deer at the edge of the road. They turn back. Just beyond them, an old house falling in on itself. Then a farmstead with small barn. I see only one tilled field. Oh, then there is another.

Fewer trees and more fields. A farmstead with silos. A golf course, for Chrissakes. A car dealership closed down at the edge of Bruce Crossing.

Along M-28 west of Bruce Crossing - you wouldn't call any of this farming. It's not farming for an Iowa farm boy until he sees the corn.

A couple of hayfields. A big farmstead with three silos, including a blue Harverstore, always a sign of success in my day. I don't understand the economics of farming up here. I know you have to take in more than you spend, but how do they do that farming up here? Cows? Do they feed them pasture in the summer and haylage the rest of the year?

Another small farmstead, cattle in a pasture. It has to be like ranching here, doesn't it? You turn the cows out to take care of themselves. You'd call that pine-fed beef....

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 4, 2004

Baraga's fireworks started about 10 p.m.

last night, at dusk, and dusk was right on schedule. Boom-BOOM the fireworks went. I went to sleep. Woke at midnight to a heavy downpour of rain and it has been raining since. Finally this morning the tent is starting to give up and let a little water through. It's not near as wet on the inside of the tent as it is outside, but it's getting wet. I've put my clothes, sleeping bag, blanket, towel, etc. up on a lawnchair in the center of the tent, to keep them dry. A couple dirty T-shirts and several days of the Mining-Gazette get put down to soak up water at the edge of things. Who knows what I'll find when I return.

I'm in the car now, which is dry on the inside, thankfully, and I'm stopped downtown at the waterfront park next to the marina. The rain is heavy enough that I can't see Baraga across the bay. Or if I see anything there, it's more imagination than reality.

Such a wet and chilly 4th of July is not going to kick off a late-starting tourist season, I'm afraid. In fact, one of the big motorhomes was pulling out of the L'Anse Township Campground as I was leaving this morning. A full Suburban with four or five bikes on the rack on the back drove through the campground, then drove away.

If this is such good weather for ducks, why don't we see any ducks?

*

I interviewed Nancy Besonen, a writer for the L'Anse Sentinel, and I sat down and did a formal, taped interview with Ray McDonald, whom I'd spoken with at Pettibone.

After I finished my interview with Ray McDonald, I thought I'd go out to the Baraga Airport where the lumberjack demonstrations were supposed to be taking place until 5:00 p.m. Nothing of the sort seemed to be going on. Oh, there was an ambulance out there, and fellows standing around in raincoats, but it wasn't a happening scene, as we used to say. I think Lumberjack Days has gotten rained out pretty hard.

I had expected to have supper out at the airport. I found the 4-Star Restaurant attached to the casino back in Baraga, and had their spaghetti and meatballs. Not bad food on a cold, rainy day.

It turns out that while Da Yoopers won't be playing out at the airport as scheduled, they will be playing at the Bingo Hall next to the casino. I could hear them doing a sound check as I went back to my car. I could see a hand-written sign with revised concert information on it taped to the door of the Bingo Hall.

All is not lost.

*

When I talked to Nancy Besonen earlier in the day, she expressed some concern about the "commodification" of the people of the Upper Peninsula, turning the people here into "Yoopers," and she was concerned about anyone making fun of the people who live here. Nancy was born and raised in Chicago and chose to live here because she has always loved the woods and water, fishing, the outdoors - she has loved everything that's wonderful about this north country, and she has been able to make a life here.

So I went to Da Yoopers' concert with her sensitivities in mind.

Yes, Da Yoopers present a caricature - in speech, in dress, in outlook, in cultural activities. There is some basis in reality for all the traits the members of the band ascribe to the people of the region: the people do talk that way, ay? And they do hunt deer and they fish and they drink beer. Perhaps their favorite beer actually is FREE BEER, about which Da Yoopers sang two songs. Yah, the people here ice fish. Sure, Da Yoopers sang two songs about farting - "Grandpa Farted and the Dog Died" and "She Loves to Fart." In fact, they've just released a CD of nothing but songs about farting. Perhaps the "Yooper Wedding Reception" is distinct enough that it requires a song of its own. Da Yoopers' Elvis imitator is called Elmo, and he shook his stuff as he sang his signature song, "Super Dooper Yooper Love Machine."

All through the show, there were "actors" coming onto the stage to "illustrate" the songs with their antics. I use the term "actors" and "illustrate" rather loosely. It was all John Falstaff broad humor, very broad humor, not so coarse that the children in the audience shouldn't hear it, not so bawdy that the grandparents were offended. The audience ranged in age from babes-in-arms to eighty years old. Most of the audience was local residents, I suppose, though some people were identifiably from some place else - Missouri or Illinois or Wisconsin. I had arrived at the very front of the crowd and was somewhat concerned that the hall might not fill up. The bulk of the audience arrived after 6:40 p.m. for the 7:00 p.m. show. What could have been a mob was a neat, orderly line of people paying their money and getting their wrist bands. If nothing else, these people are polite and courteous coming to a show.

None of them seem to be offended by Da Yoopers' characterization of them. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the humor. I suppose they were thinking "Yeah, we are a little like that." I suppose each of them thought of an uncle or a cousin who was a lot like that. And Da Yoopers were Yoopers; making fun of yourself, that's different than the fun others make of you.

As much as Da Yoopers tried to appear to be northwoods bumpkins, their musical abilities kept shining. They were a tight ensemble - bass, drums, keyboard, guitar, and front man. They imitated various musical styles rather deftly - heavy metal, country, reggae, Elivs/Elmo, and others. They gave themselves opportunity to show off some virtuosity on guitar and keyboards. As interested as they were in music, they were just as interested in having fun. And they had fun - two full hours of it.

When the music was done, the crowd lined up in a neat, orderly march to the exit. No one was in a big hurry to get in front of anyone else, and everybody kept moving. Three hundred people got out the double-door at the main entrance of the hall in just a few minutes. And they got out of the parking lot in just a few minutes too, in neat and orderly fashion, with people letting other cars in line ahead of them so that no one was stuck sitting and waiting.

Perhaps much of Da Yoopers' success lies in the fact that they make fun with the people of the region, rather than making fun of them. They are tickling the people of the Upper Peninsula, and tickling themselves, rather than "poking fun" at anyone. That's an important distinction.

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 3, 2004

I have gone over to Baraga for the community's Fourth of July Parade. This is the second and final part of my report on that event.

Eagle Radio WCUP's big pick-up truck

comes through the barriers onto the parade route. Hey, buddy, didn't ya see the barricade! He's bringing in some sound system, I think.

1:25 p.m. The Pettibone machines are moving. The small American flags on them flap in the breeze. It looks as if they are re-positioning. Oh, yes. The are out on the street now, and have parked right in front of me.

2:03 p.m. Ah, the Terex guys are here. The Terex machine is off-white and grey. Four of them roll in, different models and sizes, but they all look like rough terrain forklifts. They are parked across the street from where I am sitting with these Pettibone machines. If it gets ugly, it'll be the yellow and black monsters against the off-white and grey ones. The Terex machines look smaller, more spidery, almost sinister. The Pettibone machines look like they don't take much guff and would make short work of the competition. Fortunately, this is only going to be a parade.

2:15 p.m. Two fire trucks from L'Anse arrive and get headed in the right direction off up a side street, 5th.

2:25 p.m. The Baraga High School Band is warming up. The roll of drums. The whistle of the band director, a woman. The horns and the winds come in. Girls with flags are trying to coordinate their moves with each other and with the music. The band director's whistle again. She's over there instructing the girls with the flags. It's the middle of summer but the teaching is not done, the learning continues.

2:45 p.m. The Baraga fire trucks are rolled in to take their places. In the eternal competition between L'Anse and Baraga, who leads? who follows?

The parade is setting up. In front, veterans and their flags. Law enforcement lines up behind them: the Baraga Police, the Michigan State Police, the Keweenaw Bay Tribal Police, the County Sheriff, the Michigan Conservation Officer, the L'Anse Police.

Behind the police, the 1954 Graduates of Baraga High School organize themselves. Then the 2004 Lumberjack Days Queen and the first runner-up in a convertible, then the Queen's Court in two more convertibles. Even sitting still, they are moving too fast: you never want to hurry pretty girls.

3:02 p.m. Now the police lights are flashing. The veterans shoot their guns. Cars are revving their engines.

The Pettibones are started up. The Terex machines are started, their forks get adjusted as to height, angle.

The Shriners have their little go-carts going; they are warming up their driving tricks.

The "God Bless America" float rolls out. She's just a young thing with a big voice and big hair. And the big crepe American flag.

A float for the Baraga County Memorial Hospital. A fellow on in-line skates wearing a Bush mask. The float for the L'Anse Elementary Hoops. These are the boys and girls who were bouncing basketballs; they're still bouncing basketballs. One of the boys runs over to me with something icy in a plastic tube. It is not a frozen daiquiri.

3:08 p.m. The high school band starts up - BUMM-bumm, BUMM-bumm - they're coming out onto the street. They look hot in their uniforms.

3:10 p.m. Now the Pettibone machines are pulling into line, one, two, three. The Speed Swing is speed-swinging, the Extendo is extending.

A couple fellows on horses, a little jazz combo for a real estate company, a float with "bubbles and balloons will roam until the troops come home."

3:14 p.m. The Terex machines roll out onto the street. Floats for the credit union, the "Music Man from L'Anse," the Western U.P. Health Department, Rossi for Treasurer. That grey machine I'd seen earlier, it's a Ponsse Ergo. Soumis for Sheriff. Re-elect Kissel County Treasurer. A float with the Senior Citizens, followed by one with Keweenaw Bay Tribal Veterans; one of the fellows waves at me, a little flicker of his finger and his eyes. I wave back. St. Vincent de Paul. A float for BHK Preschool with the message "Thank You for Protecting Freedom."

"Do you want one of these," one of the women asks me.

"Look, I've already got a sucker and some M&Ms."

"Well, then you certainly need a tooth brush," she says, and she brings me one, and a pen, and information on the pre-school program, all in a little packet.

Eagle Radio.

The float for Woodland Lads and Lassies Kennel in Skanee, Michigan, has a large cage of puppies. A fellow with the walkie-talkie is talking into it - "I don't have any information on this Woodlands float. It's getting in line." The answer must be that it is alright, because he reports Linnar Bridal & Tux of L'Anse was next, in the L'A Limo.

Then a Batmobile. Sheet metal riveted to make the long, sleek, black car. Well, perhaps "sleek" is not exactly the right word. This is a Batmobile for Bruce Wayne's poor cousin, perhaps. There's a "For Sale" sign on the front of it. Behind, it's pulling a small, model-sized Batmobile down the street. What keeps this from being a car wreck are the two pretty girls riding in the back of it just like the Queen and the 1st Runner-up.

Women and girls walking in long dresses. I don't know who they are. If they had a sign identifying themselves, I've missed it.

Another Eagle Radio pick-up.

Those damn boys and their toys. The fire trucks, I mean, and their sirens. Baraga come first in line, then L'Anse, but they are still in competition with their sirens, to see who could make which sounds.

Two firemen walk ahead of three fire trucks from Pelkie. That is the end of the parade, The Pelkie trucks.

*

I walked up the sidewalk as the Pelkie fire trucks rolled up the street, until the sidewalk became a little crowded with spectators. Then I started climbing a side street back towards my car.

When I found one end of a sidewalk up there, the couple of cowboys on horses found the other end of it. I stepped off the cement onto rough lawn about the same time the horses did. Their riders were too much the gentlemen to hog the sidewalk, however; the cowboys nodded to me as we passed each other.

A girl was coming down the hill somewhat behind the horses. She had been in the marching band. A woman was coming up the hill behind me. She said something to the girl - "All done? Now you can go get a nap...." The girl laughed as if the woman had gotten it exactly right. It was a full-lipped laugh.

As I headed out of town, I passed the Armory parking lot. A lot of floats had made their way back to the starting place, via back streets. Things were being taken apart, signs were getting rolled up, flags were being put away. It was women, mostly women, I saw there at that moment, working in the hot sun, unsung, putting things back in order, remaking a workaday world. Yet I knew it wasn't the women only who'd been involved in making this celebration. It was the community, the whole community.

We do what we do because of who we are. We have to do it, it's our duty. We don't ask why.

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 3, 2004

Drove over to Baraga

for the parades today. The kids' parade at noon, the other at 3:00 p.m.

I drove off Highway 41 onto Superior Avenue, past the Pettibone plant. I wanted to park on a side street not too far from the action, but I found the side streets blocked off. There's not a single street that goes to the right and I couldn't turn left to get off what would be the parade route.

Nothing much was happening yet. It was still early, not even 11:00 a.m. When I got to the far end of Superior Avenue where it intersects with M-38, the street was barricaded. I had to head back the way I'd come to find a way off this merry-go-round.

The people were starting to gather in small clumps and one came out into street to yell at me - "Didn't ya see the barricade!" He didn't say it like it was a question.

Yeah, I saw the barricade, buddy, that's why I turned around. I didn't say that outloud. I just kept driving. Who died and left him king anyway?

When I finally did find a street into town that wasn't barricaded, the other end of Superior Avenue still had not been blocked off. People were still driving onto the parade route. I hope the fellow was yelling at them, too - "Hey, didn't ya see the barricade we haven't put up yet!"

Like a tourist I drove in the out drive at the Baraga School parking lot. "He's from Wisconsin," people might say, "give him plenty of room." Actually, I didn't see the "Exit Only" sign until I returned to my car several hours later.

Walked down to the Armory with my lawn chair and notebooks. This was where participants in the parade would gather, and where the parade would start. I set my chair up on the sidewalk and worked on my notes for a bit. It was a beautiful day for a parade - blue sky and bright sun. Everything you'd want. Nothing much was happening at the Armory, but I could see the big overhead door on this end of the Pettibone factory was open. I figured some fellows at Pettibone were getting equipment gathered up for the parade.

Walked back up Superior Avenue when it started getting to be time for the kids' parade.

The kids were gathering behind two of Baraga's fire trucks. It was a swarm of kids in the street. Every kid in town? Every grin? Every pieces of red, white, and blue fabric in a five-county area? Seemed like it.

I put my chair in the shade of a tree and sat down. "Who's this little knucklehead here?" said a fellow who looked to me to be Indian.

"That's my helper," said the other fellow, who also looked to me to be Indian. The kid did not.

When the parade started, there was plenty of siren involved, of course. The fun of fire-crackers is the flash-boom. The fun of a parade is the sirens.

Three or four men stretched a rope across the street behind the firetrucks, to keep the kids back from them. Kids filled in behind the firetrucks as wide as the street, more than a block long, more than two blocks, even. It was more a mobbing than a parade, I'd say, but then I'm Germanic about how people ought to line up.

Everything that goes up must soon come down, so soon enough those kids who'd been in the parade were coming back past me, in no particular hurry, in no particular order. On the way back, though, maybe Mom had to carry both the little bike and the small child who rode it in the parade. The small child carried a helium balloon.

If you spend too much time trying to figure out which people here look Indian, and which people do not, you might go crazy. If there is any message I'm getting today, it's that we are all the same - we are community, us. That it doesn't matter who looks like what. That it's not us and them. Not Finns and Norwegians. Not whites and Indians. Us.

By 1:00 p.m. there were already three Pettibone machines in the back of the Armory parking lot, waiting for a parade to start. The Cary-Lift was in the front, the Extendo, the Speed Swing - all of them as bright yellow as the sun.

At the front of the parking lot, another machine. I can't read the name on it from here, but I can tell it's too long for "Terex."

Someone is practicing a patriotic song on a float with a big American flag made of red, white, and blue crepe paper. The girl is singing "God Bless America," yes.

A car drives into the parking lot with a "Re-elect Kissel" sign on it, and flags and red, white, and blue bunting. Lest we forget that the 4th of July is custom-made for politicians.

I saw boys in camouflage dress and with make-shift guns walking towards the parking lot. There were girls bouncing basketballs in the gravel near a purple and white float. Those are girls? - oh, it's both boys and girls bouncing basketballs.

Then the boys in camo are talking to the girls with the basketballs; they are getting to that age where they are actually starting to like talking to one another. And we know that soon it will get to be more than just talking.

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 2, 1998

What I heard in the cafe:

"Nobody I've talked to voted for her. If nobody voted for her, how'd she get elected?"

*

I went to supper at the Shabee Cafe, thinking I'd go from there to the street dance in Baraga. The Shabee had their "Fish Fry" board out on the sidewalk in front; they were serving cod and wall-eye. I had the cod. It was good, but it wasn't Clay-and- Donna-Pameter-good, the old C&D, Fairwater, Wisconsin, and it wasn't Clay and Donna's tartar sauce. There was a salad bar with the fish - plain lettuce, the cardboard variety tomato, diced ham, diced hard-boiled egg. I took the house dressing - deep red in color and tasting like dressing used to taste.

A fellow and his wife were there; they weren't having the fish, but chicken and such. He likes to talk. They spend four months in Florida every year, north of Tampa. There's a big group of people from Baraga County who see each other down there every winter.

They were talking to the folks across the aisle from them, she with the oxygen tank and canula explaining she can't go to Florida for the winter any more - she's waiting for a lung transplant and has to stay within four to six hours of Ann Arbor.

"Wasn't that too bad about that young Lindemann?" said the fellow who likes to talk.

"It sure was," said the woman with the oxygen. Her husband doesn't say much. "Of course they are getting killed in Iraq - he could have been killed like one of them."

"Yeah," said the fellow who likes to talk. "When your time is up, your time is up."

"Where's your buddy?" the fellow who likes to talk called out to another man going to the salad bar. "I saw him at the bank. He said he had to get some moola."

"I saw him at the bank, too," the other fellow said. That's all he said. I wonder what it means. It seemed dismissive.

The couples across the aisle from each other have talked about how cold it has been here in May and June. The fellow who likes to talk said "They were saying it'd be in the 80s this week. Well, I haven't seen any temperatures like that. It has been cold."

I finished my cod dinner and stepped outside. There was a cold breeze coming off the bay. It took me about half the walk back to the car to decide I wasn't going to any street dance in Baraga. I was tired, for one thing, and it was cold.

There is no need for me to sit outside and shiver, watching other people drink beer and shake their booties. Instead, I've decided to go back to my tent, fall to sleep, and maybe dream of touching God again. Maybe.

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 2, 2004

Pieces of the wild world

continue to exist here. On my drive out to see Point Abbaye, a sandhill crane stands off at the edge of a meadow. A deer approaches the road across a field of mowed hay. A partridge squats at the edge of the road, in no hurry to move off. A hawk climbs from the road into its strength of trees. There is always water off through the trees; you know it, but you can't always see it.

At one place part-way out to the point I pull of the meager road and get out of the car, stand overlooking Keweenaw Bay and the Keweenaw Peninsula across the water from here. Out towards the open lake there is fog above the water. There is white chop on the surface. A recreational boat plies its way into the bay. I know it must be a big boat but the water makes it look small.

All this, here, overpowers everything. When you see just how beautiful the world is, all of a sudden it swallows you up and there is nothing left of you to send home. The place takes you and you're gone. All we can write are love letters or suicide notes.

Do you know how long you sit there watching the waves on the water? No. A moment or a hundred million years - it is all the same. The water rocks you again. There is no place you'd rather be.

Of course, eventually do you wake from this dream of watery eternity. You'll come back to yourself and do what you must; you're middle western and responsible.

From this point on, the road to the tip of the point gets smaller, narrower, less well-defined. Potholes full of water half-way across the road, or more. Someone has chain-sawed the downed trees out of the road, to make it passable.

Now I can see waves coming ashore against rock. The water is a lighter color, greener; the lake is shallower. Farther out, more - and more serious - white-caps. I get a glimpse of the Huron Islands.

At the end of the road I park the car and walk the trail out to the tip of the point. It is four-tenths of a mile from the car to the rock at the very tip of the point.

Waves splash water twelve feet back on the rocky tip. That water finds its way back to the lake. There is a dull roar, ebbing, flowing, the sound of a pleasure boat forcing its way out into the lake, headed toward the Huron Islands. The Hurons are small and tree-covered. Like swimmers sticking their bearded chins up out of the water, they are not much. For the moment, they are secure. For a few hundred thousand years, they might be secure. A few hundred thousand years is only a wink of God's eye. Even a quarter of eternity is not much consolation.

There is wind here, cold wind off the lake, the constant schurrr of waves, the tinkle of broken waves like shattered glass falling on rock. Grasses grow from the rock, here and there a flower does. Any moment all this shall evaporate. The lake seems eternal from this vantage point.

Then in a sudden instant a clunk of water against rock, a boom of it again like thunder. The fierce lake is just reminding me of its power. The sound like thunder rolling away, like a jet plane receding. Then here it comes again - the wax and wane of it; it comes and goes, comes and goes. You cannot possible stay to see how it all comes out. Even a quarter of eternity is not enough.

I look into the mossy green pools where water catches and stands. The backwater, so to speak. Alive with tadpoles. In this margin between water and rock, this is where live evolves. The world that will replace us will rise up from scum like this, from wigglers like these.

Out of the backwash of the universe comes the next wonder, whatever it will be.

Part-way back to the car, I hang my head and cry. I don't know why. I have touched something large, I know that. Have I overjuiced on God? Have I felt a tug of what it means to be part of the universe?

Have I just had a mystical experience?

Shall I never pass this way again?

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 2, 2004

Breakfast at the Shabee Cafe

again this morning. The "Morning Mix-up" and coffee again. I'm a predictable fellow. The less time you spend making choices, the more time you have for other things.

My contest this morning? How many spoken words do I need to hear in order to identify that someone is from this area? I start out thinking four words will do it. The waitress asks the two fellows in the next booth if they want more coffee. The one of them says, "Yes, this is my first cup." The fellow across the booth says "I think he's lying." I can do it in four words, those four words.

Later, she comes back around with the coffee pot. "More coffee?" "No, not me." I can do it in three words.

Later still, he relents when she brings more coffee. "Yah," he says. I can identify that local with just a single word.

"Yah," he said locally.

I like differences in speech, differences in expression, differences in outlook. Pop culture is creating a monolithic American reality that I not only find distasteful but somewhat sterile and emaciated compared to the local richness we once had. A messy variety would be a strength, as it is in an ecosystem; it is something to be nourished, something to be cherished. Each regional difference that is lost makes all of us that much poorer.

*

The sign says: "Little Mountain Hiking Trail - Property owned by Celotex Corp." There are purple flowers atop the thistles, some of the plants five and a half feet tall. There are flowers here with yellow blossoms, there with orange. Clover, too.

The trail is muddy from the rains. I keep watching for bears in the woods. It looks like the kind of place you should see a bear.

There are deer tracks in the mud of the trail, and tracks, too, of a 4-wheel ATV which has made ruts in places.

Nothing but trees as far as you can see: this is not exactly what the farm boy grew up with.

A little wooden bridge keeps me out of a low, wet place.

The climb up does not seem so steep as the climb back from Sturgeon Falls was. I hope my heavy breathing is from exertion, not from some secret claustrophobia in these woods.

There is an outcrop of rock, like a mother appearing suddenly, and broken rock all around like crying children.

There is always something holy about any hump of earth reaching to the sky; the sky of it is special for one more used to the swell and roll of open ground than the urgent prayer that mountains make.

An occasional blue diamond nailed to a tree marks my way. If I keep the blue diamond on my right, I'll be on the trail.

This outwelling of white stone where everything else around it is as grey as slate. I do not know enough about rocks and how they form. The white rock looks like a streak of marble dropped into a grey sea.

Great bare rock at the top of Little Mountain. Earth hardened to this high point of stone. A good and cooling breeze up here.

What's this? Clumps of artificial flowers stuck into dead and fallen trees - five clumps - two of pink carnations; one of purple and white morning glories; one is of roses, I suppose, and the other of dogwood perhaps. Someone has made a circle of stones here, too. A campfire.

From here I can see fog hanging above Keweenaw Bay along the L'Anse side of it. I can see L'Anse, and across the bay there is Baraga shining in the sun. Birds call - robins, and what else?

There seem to be shining paths across the surface of the bay far out, like tracks across snow, like open water where the ice is breaking up. I can't imagine what forms those images on the water. Something to do with wind and temperatures, I suppose.

Green trees roll away in all directions. From here, you can almost believe the forests are fields waiting to be harvested.

There are enough fallen trees here to make you realize death doesn't miss the high places; and enough new green trees that you understand life comes here too.

A pile of deer droppings. A deer has stood here and defecated. There is a metaphor in that, perhaps -
deer droppings here at the top of Little Mountain. To say that this is part of something else, something larger. I am here. I am here, yes, but in the great scheme of things I am not much more than my shadow.

Then I am going down the mountain like a bluesman going low to sing his sorrow.

Someone might ask "What did you see up there?"

"I saw myself," I'd say.

I suppose if the mountain did not want me, it could always shrug me off. And yet it does not. It holds me instead, with love or indifference, it's hard to say.

In that battle between water and rock, water always wins. Some of the pieces of rock look like nothing so much as broken pieces of blackboard.

Lost in my own thoughts, I walk off the trail and part-way down into a ravine. The mountain says suddenly "What are you doing, boy?" and coughs me back to where I belong.

I am quiet and pay attention the rest of the way down.

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 1, 2004

This is the fifth and final part of the report of my visit Pettibone Manufacturing in Baraga, Michigan. I have been talking with Ray McDonald and Phil Latendresse, a couple of the company's engineers.

"When I was younger,"

Ray said, "it would take weeks before an Elvis song popular in the cities would come up here. Now it's instantaneous. There used to be a lag. We were a bit isolated. We weren't raised by other influences, we were raised by parents who drove us as hard as they were driven. But that is certainly starting to change now."

There has always been intense competition between L'Anse and Baraga, Ray told me. The pre-eminence in the schools goes back and forth from one side of the bay to the other.

Ray's mother was part of the large McMann family from Baraga. Her brothers got distraught when the McDonald children in L'Anse were having success in athletics - Ray himself set some records in track; his younger brother was outstanding in football.

Ray said: "Uncle Jim ('Horse') would say 'That's Baraga blood!'"

Schools in Michigan the size of the schools in L'Anse and Baraga have been consolidating, Ray indicated, "but that couldn't happen here. Neither side would agree to have their kids go to the other school."

Pettibone has a competitor in Baraga. Back during Pettibone's bankruptcy turmoil during the 1980s, Jim Mayo, a vice president and general manager at Pettibone, left the company and started in business for himself, Baraga Products, Inc. He took a project engineer from Pettibone with him. He thought Pettibone was going to go under, and was counting on all the sub-contractors in the area to make parts for him. You can make a competing machine, so long as you don't infringe on patent rights. Technology for the extendable boom is not protected by patent, so as many as twenty manufacturers are producing them. Baraga Products was bought by Terex.

Yeah, there was a little friction between the competitors in the beginning, Ray said, "but that's pretty much gone now. There'll be a little ribbing when people see each other in the bar is about all."

"My little brother runs the production line there," Ray said, "and I spent a little over two years there as chief engineer. Jim Mayo found me and brought me up here. Unfortunately, it was at the same time he sold to Terex, and the Terex business model wasn't one I wanted to do as an engineer."

"My father was beside himself when he realized I was interviewing for a job with that spin-off," Ray said. "He's certainly much happier now that I'm sitting in his old chair."

Phil said his father had worked at BPI for a while too.

Does it feel like you're completing a circle? I asked Phil.

He was nodding in agreement.

Are you going to design a new machine to propel Pettibone to another level? I asked.

Before he could answer, Ray did.

"It's in his job description," Ray said.

"I'll speak for both of us," Ray said. "We did not return home with our tails between our legs. We had accomplishments in other places."

"Well, if Pettibone has three established and successful product lines, what does an engineer at the company have to do? I wondered.

"We do continuous improvement," Ray said. We are constantly upgrading our products. We don't want to be also-rans; we want to be the leaders."

"The customers for Cary-Lift and Speed Swing continually require changes in function and capacity," Ray said. The customer asks 'Can you make it do this?' and these engineers are the guys who figure it out."

"We have a very difficult time saying 'no' to those customers," Ray said. "Other manufacturers thrive on a high rate of production, and economy. Our design responsiveness is kind of unique."

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 1, 2004

I have been touring Pettibone Manufacturing in Baraga, Michigan. After walking me through the plant, Kevin Walsh, president of the company, had me sit down with Ray McDonald and Phil Latendresse, a couple of Pettibone's engineers. This is part four of my report of the visit at Pettibone.

The entire engineering staff at Pettibone

was schooled at Michigan Tech, Ray said. "They are all Michigan Tech alumni. Why? It has a reputation as one of the finest engineering schools in the country and it's only thirty miles from here, that's why."

Phil Latendresse had gone to work for Oshkosh Truck straight out of college. How had he heard about the opening on the engineering staff at Pettibone? "From a vendor of Oshkosh Truck's, who also supplied Pettibone, who is married to my wife's cousin, he told me," Phil said.

"When I got his resume," Ray said, "I put him on my 'Must Call' list and did some local checking on him. I got all good reports."

The return to Baraga County was a homecoming for Phil's wife, too, as she was originally from the area. "I would have tried to come back sooner," Phil said, "except my wife was in training in radiology at Mercy in Oshkosh."

Phil had left for Oshkosh with no intention of coming back to this area - "We were grinning as we left the U.P.," he said.

Much of Ray's career was elsewhere as well. He, too, was "absolutely not coming back. We had a family get-together in Arizona and talked about it. We said there was no way in hell we'd go back to L'Anse. Those were the words that came out of our mouths, but they didn't come from the heart." Ray's wife is a L'Anse native.

Then why did he come back?

Ray explained: "When we leave here, even in disgust, we leave a piece of ourselves here. We don't feel whole until we come back and get it."

"I just hired a product designer from Hancock who had worked in Lower Michigan for twenty years," Ray said. "The pull of home. I think it's unique."

What brought Phil back?

"Our son was growing up in a larger town, that's not the same as growing up in the U.P.," he said.

"He was missing the chance to grow up a Yooper," Ray added.

"The economics of living here doesn't match what we've experienced elsewhere," Ray said. "On the surface there is no economic drive to come here. It doesn't add up to come back."

But then he talks about "the cost of expectations."

In strictly economic terms, Ray said, "it's very difficult to keep up with the Joneses. It's very easy to keep up with the Murtomakis. You could use any Finnish name. When I say that around here, people know what I mean. People are happy here with a comfortable three-bedroom home and a five-year-old pick-up with a snowmobile on the back."

Phil said: "Landscapers don't get a lot of business around here."

Ray said: "Landscaping is turning trees into stumps."

"If you move into this area expecting to spend $200,000 on a home, you'd be hard-pressed to find one," Ray said. "If you go to Oshkosh expecting to spend $49,000 on a home, you'd be hard-pressed to find one."

"That's not violating city code," Phil added.

"You might think it sounds hill-billy, but I'd take exception to that," Ray said. "The schools and the academic opportunities here are as good as any place. The northern Europeans who settled this area had high scholastic standards and they brought them here. When we take our students other places, they're on a par with those students. When people from elsewhere come to Michigan Tech, they have to struggle just like we do."

"The first time I left here," Ray said, "I joined the Navy. When I came back from the Navy, I had a drive to go off and better myself. I went down to Winneconne, Wisconsin, and worked for J.I. Case. It's Ingersoll now. Back then engineering worked out of a storefront on Main Street. The guy who ran things down there, Bill Schoepman had to come over their and meet this new fellow from the U.P. He shook my hand and said "People from up there can make do."

People from up there can make do. "The deeper you think about it," Ray said, "the more it defines us."

"There was a reputation," Ray said. "If you left L'Anse or Baraga and needed a job, say you went to Detroit to one of the Big Three, they'd hire you. They knew you were educated; they knew you'd work your ass off; they knew you wouldn't complain."

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 1, 2004

I have been touring Pettibone Manufacturing in Baraga, Michigan, with Kevin Walsh, president of the company. This is part three of my report of that visit.

What's the life span of a piece of their equipment?

"There are Cary-Lifts build in the 1960s that are still running," Kevin said. "They're like tanks. We get calls for parts. We still have the parts available, or we can upgrade them to a newer part they can use."

Local dealers generally can handle technical problems in the field, Kevin indicated. If necessary, Pettibone will send out a technician from the assembly plant, "or we take phone calls. Jerry here will talk them through it, or one of the fellows from the floor. We say we bleed yellow," the corporate color, Kevin said. "Everybody here cares."

Before we left his office, Jerry talked again about the challenge he faces on the floor - "to make sure we're efficient in our production," he said. "We want to keep improving productivity, to be as productive as possible." And he noted again that the switch from cell assembly to an assembly line made production much more efficient.

Kevin took me upstairs to meet some of Pettibone's engineers. One was chief engineer Ray McDonald, who has been with Pettibone two years "this time." He had worked here while going to college in the 1960s. "Worked for my father, also Ray McDonald, who was also the chief engineer here from 1953 to 1988. He started out with Latendresse Manufacturing."

I'm introduced to the younger fellow who comes into the room; he is blonde-headed, looks like he should play tight-end for somebody. Kevin has a conference call scheduled; he has to go do that. He leaves me with the two engineers.

The younger fellow is Phil Latendresse, grandson of the fellow who invented the Cary-Lift and sold manufacturing and marketing rights to Pettibone. It's not a case of nepotism, as Ray tells it.

"An engineer resigned and I had a position to fill," he said. "I turned on my computer one morning and there's a resume from Phil Latendresse. Phil was making his own way in the world. He worked at Oshkosh Truck in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, at the time. He'd learned of an opportunity to maybe come back home and had sent a resume."

"In 1952," Ray said, "Phil Latendresse hired Ray McDonald. Fifty years later, Ray McDonald hired Phil Latendresse."

Phil's father had worked at Pettibone until the early 1980s, when he left the company.

"Ray's grandfather and my great-grandfather cut steel here," Phil said. "How far back do you want to go? My great-grandfather worked here until he was eighty-five years old." Phil has a photo of the very first machine the company built, with his grandfather, his great-grandfather, and a great uncle sitting in the bucket of it.

When Phil had to step out of the room to take care of some business, Ray told me that patent rights for the Cary-Lift had been sold "with the provision that it be built here."

"But Kevin told me he can't find any evidence of that in the papers from the sale."

"Gentlemen shook hands back then," Ray said. "They would build it here as long as they could make money doing so."

Before bankruptcy troubles in the 1980s, Pettibone had been a force to be reckoned with, a large company that competed with the best of them. Now, what's left? Pettibone in Baraga. Another company in Superior, Wisconsin - it doesn't carry the Pettibone name. And there is a company that still sells parts for Pettibone equipment. And that's it - that's what's left of a once mighty company.

"We'd be in trouble today if we hadn't made these improvements," Ray said. "It's a good mind-set to have, constant improvement."

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 1, 2004

I have been touring Pettibone Manufacturing in Baraga, Michigan, with Kevin Walsh, president of the company. This is part two of my report of that visit.

After we'd walked the length of the production lines,

we came back and poked into an office near the work floor. "This is Jerry Niemi," Kevin said. "He's our plant manager. He's been here for forty-three years."

Latendresse had started the company in a little garage in L'Anse, which burned. The business moved to Baraga, got bought by Pettibone, and in 1958 there was another fire at a different location in town. That plant burned to the ground. Jerry had photos of the aftermath in his desk - printed in the margin of the photo, "March 1958." They were old black and white photos starting to go grey the way old photos do, showing burned machines against a dusting of snow, stark black and white, looking a lot like the end of things. The company regrouped and rebuilt.

Why so many fires? "We did a lot of our own welding back then," Jerry said. "Those were wooden buildings."

What's Jerry's challenge managing the plant? "The toughest thing," he said, "is making sure it runs like a well-oiled machine. That everything is coming in as it's needed and the men have something to build."

The company currently ships thirty to forty machines per month, Kevin told me, "but we're picking up. We have the capacity to build sixty to eighty per month." To do that, of course, they'd need to put on more employees.

"That's our goal," Kevin said, "to employ a few more people. To improve the local economy. We feel a duty to grow the business to support the local economy, a personal mission to grow the town."

Jerry said he has seen a lot of changes over the years, improvements. "The most remarkable," he said, "was the institution of the production line." Before that, there were several "cells," each building a complete machine. This change was made in 2000. When they decided that was the direction to go, Jerry said, "I could hardly sleep, thinking about what we might do."

Pettibone calls its continuous improvement KAIZEN. "The idea is to get lean and reduce waste," Kevin said. "We're not perfect, we want to get better."

Was KAIZEN hard to sell to employees? I asked.

"It's a forum and a format for their ideas to be heard and incorporated into how we do things," Kevin said. "They see that things are more organized now, everything flows better."

"We ask them to think, rather than just come in and turn a wrench," Kevin said. "They LIKE to think."

Kevin said that during some paving around the factory, the employees had to go back to hanging booms the old way for a couple of days. "Boy, do I like the way we do it now," one of the fellows said afterwards.

"If the employees are frustrated, that's a sign that something is inefficient," Kevin said. "How can we reduce that inefficiency and waste and reduce the frustration?"

KAIZEN applies not only to the Pettibone plant, but to all the fabrication and machine shops that supply Pettibone's assembly lines. "We're partners," Kevin said, "we're in it together. We meet formally a couple times a year. Some suppliers are in here every day."

Jerry is originally from the area, but Kevin is a transplant from Washington, D.C. How did you get here, I asked him.

"I was just lucky," he said. "Banished to Baraga, Michigan, some say. No way. It's a gold mine we've got here. We shouldn't even tell you what a wonderful place it is, everyone will want to come and the place will change. Yesterday, as an example. On my way to work, a bear ran in front of the car. In the afternoon, an eagle circled over the plant."

Pettibone's business had slowed two or three years ago, Kevin said, first because the economy slowed down generally; and, secondly, because "this industry had significant overcapacity."

"There has been a huge consolidation in the industry," Kevin said. The four largest businesses in the industry consolidated and now own sixty percent of the market. "Don't give them any publicity."

Pettibone has "a little less than ten percent of the market," he said.

By way of example, Kevin point out that in 2000, 13,000 rough terrain forklifts were sold in the United States, by twenty manufacturers. Sales have been in the range of 7,000 per year the past couple years.

The reason for the overcapacity and the sudden decline in sales?

"Rental companies had to fill their pipelines with equipment when they started growing all over the world," Kevin said. Manufacturers who sold to rental companies had to increase production to keep pace with demand. Then, when the rental companies had all the equipment they needed, orders fell off.

"We don't sell to those rental companies," Kevin said. "We sell to dealers who take care of customers. We focus on customer service."

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 1, 2004

When Tracey Barrett put me in touch

with Kevin Walsh at Pettibone, to set up an interview, I didn't know he was the president of the company. I didn't know he was president of the company until I had my safety glasses on and we were ready to step onto the production floor of the Pettibone plant on Superior Avenue in Baraga. It was the "so, what do you do here" sort of question I asked that got me the "I'm the president of the company" answer. Kevin's eyes twinkled a bit as he said it, I think; he's a personable fellow and probably was mischievous as a boy - he wears that kind of smile.

Phil Latendresse of L'Anse, Michigan, invented the Cary-Lift, Pettibone's flagship product. In 1951 he sold manufacturing and marketing rights for the Cary-Lift to the Pettibone Corporation. Contrary to what I've heard int he community, Kevin said there was no stipulation in the agreement that the Cary-Lift had to be built in Baraga County. "That's just rumor," Kevin said. "There's nothing I find anywhere on paper that says that."

Kevin said the Pettibone story is not the story of just one plant on Superior Avenue in Baraga, but of thirteen steel fabricators and machine shoes that supply materials to Pettibone; all those shops but one are in Baraga County.

"Some of those shops," Kevin said, "are on their second generation of ownership. Pettibone sells to dealers, and some of those dealers are in their second generation."

"We talk about the Pettibone family," Kevin said. "It's not just this plant. We think of ourselves as a family with an extended family."

Kevin introduced me to Bill Poe as he passed us. "P-O-E," Bill said, "just like Edgar Allan." Bill and Kevin discussed when the building we were standing in might have been built. "The date it was built is supposed to be stamped on one of the beams somewhere," Bill said.

Kevin went on to explain Pettibone's three product lines to me. One is the Cary-Lift, Phil Latendresse's invention, the original machine that got a business going here in the first place. The Cary-Lift can be used to pick up logs, pipes, poles, scrap bales, and so forth.

The second product line is a rough terrain forklift, which is used in construction primarily; it has a telescopic boom to lift materials to high levels on rough job site terrain. Pettibone calls its model the Extendo. While it was not designed by Phil Latendresse, Kevin supposed in creating it Pettibone had learned something from Phil Latendresse's design.

The third product is called the Speed Swing, which is used for maintenance on railroad tracks and ties in "pick and lay re-railing operations," for instance. The boom of the crane is adaptable - with a large magnet there, it is used to pick up scattered spikes from the road bed. The Speed Swing has big rubber tires just like the Cary-Lift and the Extendo, but it also has steel wheels just like a rail car. To move the Speed Swing down the tracks, power gets transferred from the rubber tires to the steel wheels. The boom of the Speed Swing rotates on a large bearing; the boom can swivel side to side while the unit is headed straight down the track.

The machines are built in two assembly lines - the Cary-Lifts and the Speed Swings down the right-hand side of the building as we walk away from the office, the Extendo down the left-hand side.

Kevin showed me one of the Speed Swings up close. "This one is being readied for the 4th of July parade in town," he said.

"Watch yourselves, gentlemen," a worker coming up behind us called out, "wet paint there." He was the fellow getting the machine set to go.

Pettibone has nearly a hundred employees currently, "some of them with twenty, thirty, forty years of experience," Kevin said. "Our purchasing manager just retired after forty-two years here."

The machining and fabrication for all the machine parts in Pettibone's equipment are done in the "sub" shops we'd already talked about, Kevin explained, "and this plant is an assembly plant." Those "sub" shops employ two hundred fifty people at the busiest times.

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JULY 1, 2004

As I woke this morning,

the call of a loon out on Keweenaw Bay. Ancient. Sorrowful. Lovely.

Then the sound of crows, squirrels, chipmunks, working out their morning harmonies.

The loon does not need their company. It is remote, distant, alone by choice.

*

The drive to Mt. Arvon, the highest point in all of Michigan. I'm heading out on Skanee Road. The trees create a green chute. Blue sky above. Such lush greenness here differs from what I'll see next week in Redfield, South Dakota, I expect - that'll be a tawnier openness.

Sun and shadow, thrum of things alive and growing. At one point I look up and see Huron Bay in the rear view mirror. Flowers - pink ones, white ones, purple, yellow. Everything in bloom, ablaze. In the roadside ditches, ferns and grass so green, green.

Then it's a dirt road I'm on. Mt. Arvon is so far off the beaten track you can't hear the sound of the beat. The trees make a canopy over the road. I've just driven right through a gravel pit where the road looked like everything else and I steered for the place where the road went out the other side.

All of a sudden, I have to slow to cross a small and very open wooden bridge. I've only seen two others like it, one north out of Lynn Lake, Manitoba, the other in the scrub of the Laurentines in Quebec. The part of the bridge that I drive on is nothing more than two planks atop the wooden scaffold, one plank for each set of tires and not much but air between.

The roads are rock and mud and roll. The brochure on Mt. Arvon says these roads "are often unfit for passenger cars," which just might be Yooper understatement, hey. It gets worse by degrees, a little at a time, like a frog boiled to death in bath water. I'm committed, or maybe I should be committed - I go on. If it's a contest to see if my 2002 Saturn will last longer than my wife's exact same copy, it's hands down she's the winner. I need four-wheel drive.

No, folks, I need a little boat. I'm so close to the end of the road that I can smell it. Yet there's a pond of water across the whole roadway. The better part of valor, sometimes, is to turn and run away. I don't know how deep the water is, nor how soft the mud beneath it. I don't want to be stuck here trying to dig myself out when I should be at my 1:30 appointment at Pettibone. The sun just shines and the trees just keep turning sunshine into food. The whole sky is lit, the world is screaming green, and I'm turning back.

I could be in the far reach of Canada and might not know the difference. I apologize for anything I might have said about the country roads around Smith Center, Kansas, when I was there a few weeks ago. They have good roads by comparison; they were true speedways. Probably somewhere some Yooper is spying on me, having a good laugh, yah.

You don't know how far you've climbed until you realize you don't need to put power to the wheels for more than a mile on the way down. You steer, you apply brake when you need to, dodge rocks and potholes, descend.

Shadows look like potholes. The potholes look like shadows. I can't dodge them all. BAM-B-BAMM.

I'm out past the bridge again, and past the gravel pit. There's a haze of dust above the road, as if someone is leading the way out, ahead of me just far enough that I can't see him. I can see the dust of him. That's us, isn't it - humankind. We go through the universe leaving a vaporous trail of who we were and where we've been. We think we're so important, we're the stars n our own movie. Just dust dissipating in the breeze. Forever is a long-time gone.

I stop at the Roland Lake access on my way back. When I walk out onto the pier at the boat launch, a great blue heron takes flight from off to my right, its wings shoving the heavy air. Those magnificent wings flap, then the bird glides. Flap and glide. Flap and glide in a long circle around the lake. It swings wide away and comes back, back to this end of the lake, across the water from me, and sets down gracefully, the way a gymnast sticks her landing. The heron turns to look at me. One sharp "Wuk" is all it says.

I recognize this isn't virgin wilderness. What it is, back off the beaten path, is a wild scruffiness. And yet I love that this blue magnificent bird is here, even if it has nothing much to say to me. The heart of wildness still beats in its breast. "Wuk" to you, too, fella.

*

When I get back to L'Anse, I have time for lunch at the Shabee Cafe downtown. Woman says "I think I'm gonna have me an Oriental chicken salad." I know right away she's from around here by the way she says it. I know it's English she's speaking but I have to work the words to find the meaning. It's not only the way they turn the vowels here, it's also the rhythm of the sentences as they speak them. They accent the hard syllables with a question mark more than anything.

I'd teased Tracey Barrett about her accent a bit the other day, and for a bit that made her self-conscious about how she speaks. I said "No, no - you're supposed to talk like that. You don't want to stop. We don't all want to be the same."

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JUNE 30, 2004 continued

I stop at the Bear's Den Overlook

and walk the quarter-mile out to see the view. Woo-hoo, it is worth the walk. The earth is a great green cup here - forested, intense, yet calm and eternal. It is some several hundred feet to the green floor below, a great shadowed broadness across. Oh, if one could fly!

The earth here doesn't need me. As I return to the car, a brown frog crosses my path. It is no bigger than my thumbnail. It doesn't need me either.

*

On the trail to Sturgeon Falls, I realize the pines actually sing one note, the hardwoods another. And I suppose if one listened carefully, each tree has its own note, eh?

Through the trees, a sheet of water in the distance like a face.

How am I different when I travel by myself, compared to when I travel with someone else? When I'm by myself, I can hear what my blood is saying. Yes, too, I am more open to what's out there around me. I'm not so focused on some other, so much as on the all-ness of everything - a big ol' frog coughing far off, cicadas in the trees, these shiny green bugs, the way the heat of the sun feels barred in the pattern of shadow and light, light and dark on my skin.

The path is so steep that the front of my knees hurt from the downhill pull. Amazing. We'll have to make a few decompression stops on the way up, I think.

A great storm of water. Rapids and chutes and falls and foam. Pound of the water, the sound of it. Higher pitch, lower pitch. Louder, softer. Does the water really do that, or do I only imagine it?

Then - down and down - the big falls. Rocks tear the terrible water. Water tears the terrible rocks. The viciousness throws off the spray. The sun goes behind a cloud and everything changes color. The color comes back when the sun comes out. The water looks dark as oil, except where the river has torn it. Downstream, a great, smooth sadness. Watching the river, I drip sweat just standing still; my shirt is soaked through.

I stand, hypnotized. We are powerless in the face of such water, such awesome power.

I drink from the container of water I've brought with me. The river and I are connected in essence - we are both water.

It is only when I turn away from the river that I feel the spray - the backs of my legs are sensitive enough to register the kiss of it.

I turn again and climb for home, climb away from that sea we came out of, back to the rich middle western delta of some long gone glacier. This is good work for an old man, if you can get it.

One should walk like this all the time, placing each step as if you mean it. Focused on this moment, climbing back to the world's surface.

The whole way back up, I hear a distant pounding like a motor trying to start, but it can't. I suppose it's my heart, working for me as hard as I'm working to gain this sense of who we are.

Up on the flatness, I can almost catch my breath, yet the view from here wants to take my breath away again. I like to think it's the view, not the hard walking.

I am back at the car. So exceptional has been my exertion that even my arms hurt from the walk back to this world; even my teeth hurt; my fingernails.

On the backroads back to L'Anse, you've got to watch your driving, Tom - the holes are big enough you can fall off the edge of the earth, where the rain has washed out gullies. It's a slow, lazy day - take a slow, lazy drive. Have another drink of water. Downshift to third gear and relax.

The clouds are racing me back to L'Anse, and they are winning. I don't care. Now I'm not driving the road, the road is driving me. That's enough.

I've got my breath.

*

I stop in and talk with Tracey Barrett at the Information Center. She hasn't heard anything back from BPB regarding a possible tour. We'll try again tomorrow.

*

God, strike me dead if I ever try to buy a travel camper or motor home. I think owning one must do something to your head. Last night a pick-up with a camper on came into the grounds and circled the whole place a couple times before deciding on the best possible site. Nearly all the sites were available. Heaven save us from so many choices. This evening, a van pulling a pop-up camper drove up and down, back and forth, over and back, before selecting a site - a site that looks unremarkably like all the rest. WHAT am I failing to see?

*

Almost 6:00 p.m. local time. A fierce rush of wind from the west-northwest. I batten down the tent, then leave to pick up a few supplies in town. A chop of white caps on the bay. The water has turned dark. The car radio warns of severe thunderstorms and 60-70 miles an hour winds up the Keweenaw Peninsula from Houghton to Chassell. While I'm in the store, rain starts falling here, slowly at first, big drops. Then as I get to the car the pace picks up, the drops get bigger - they crack on the windshield like gunshots. Then the rain stops for a brief interval. I park along Front Street near the park downtown and watch the sky over the bay darken with big rain coming at us. The rain arrives. The water in the bay is still choppy but the whitecaps are gone. To the west-northwest, brightness now through the rain, as if the sun is breaking through behind everything. The rain slows, it picks up, comes to a stop. A duck flies low along the shore, from as far as I can see to the left to as far as I can see to the right. It stays down low, as if hiding in a bunker. I'd say it was probably a female mallard, but I'm not a duck person.

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JUNE 30, 2004 continued

When you walk down to Canyon Falls

on the Sturgeon River off Highway 41 just south of Alberta, you walk down the temperature curve. You walk down to coolness and ferns.

You wonder if what you hear is the sound of distant water falls, of wind in the trees, or of the creek beside you. It seems to be water talking to rock in the creek where I cross a bridge on the path. Yet, farther on, the sound clearly belongs to the trees.

The path here is graveled where the ground is firm. Where there is not firm ground, there is wooden walkway two and a half inches thick, eight inches wide, four foot long.

Farther on, the river runs its rapids. I can step out onto rocks and watch the river do its business. The water is dark with tannin.

The river falls in steps. It's not a grand rush all at once, but a drop of a foot here, then a couple feet. Fifty yards farther, water runs off a ledge or table. The ledge is so sharp and straight as to seem man-made. But no - this rock breaks in sharp, straight pieces, large ones. Another stream comes in along the other bank. Where the waters meet, they discuss their differences for a bit, then get along.

Forty yards on, another drop, V-shaped. The water is two or three feet closer to sea-level.

I get back to the trail and move on. Here the trees have made friends with the rocks. I hear another rush of rapids. The sound of water and rock. Or is that me, talking to myself? Alongside the trail there's a boulder big as a Buick. Even back from the river's edge, a little cooling breeze.

Water falls over rock and water and rock, falls another few feet towards sea level, falls off another small table in sunlight. The sheen of the water, the shimmer and shine. The water cannot collect itself before it has to fall again, two feet more. You feel yourself being pulled downriver by the rush of the water, its urgency. The sound of the rapids grabs you and wants to take you along.

Where the river narrows, the sloosh and rush of another drop. The water turns back on itself momentarily, as if heading back upstream. What will be is inevitable, however, and it moves on. I am standing on a quarter-acre slab of rock just a foot from the water. Perhaps "quarter-acre" is a bit of an exaggeration, but they've got rock here, that's what I'm trying to say.

As it approaches the falls, the water looks like a curtain in the breeze - ruffled, hesitant. From this vantage, it looks so gentle.

I move on and see the falls from the other angle. The water drops fifteen or twenty feet. It has a kind of terrible power, raw and unforgiving. It looks gilded as it comes over the lip of the falls, then spun and beaten and foamed and fiercen'd heading towards the thirty-foot rock wall across the way. Between here and there - the roar. Cry of the river's pain. Beneath the sound of it, a deep bass note, like the earth's moan. Oh, what a world we inhabit!

There is another drop of a few feet at the narrow point ahead. The water takes itself serious there. It pushes on.

"Trail Ends," the sign says. The water pushes on.

Some might say, "If you've seen one water fall, you've seen them all." I might say, "If you've seen one water fall, you ain't seen nothing yet." The earth is a modest woman, keeps her clothes on, suggests more by its absence.

Oh, the tumble and roar of the falls could tell us more if we lived with it through all its seasons and moods. For now, I listen to the variation in pitch - half a pitch in the high range where the water sings; nearly a full pitch in the bass notes, BOOM boom BOOM boom, rhythmic, like a bluegrass bassist keeping time to a song you can't hear the words to.

The river doesn't say "Run away." It says "Embrace me."

I enjoy the spray of sound. I am in no hurry to go away.

*

It's never as far back as it is coming in. Why is that? It happens even when we know it.

Now I can hear the distinct notes - the wind in the trees, the babble of brook, the roar of the falls. Here, near the bridge again, I can hear each distinctly. I have gained a certain knowledge.

Heading back up the trail I again cross what looks like an old logging road. Then I remember - this is the snowmobile trail I rode with Tom Larson last February when he groomed it. Yes, we crossed the trail to the falls here, just before the snowmobile trail passes beneath Highway 41.

*

"You cannot take this with you," the river says. "All you can take is a tinny reproduction in words. Words, ha! They are insufficient to the meaning of water and rock.

*

Duh! The reason they call it Prison Camp Road is that there's been a prison camp along it. It is no longer used to house prisoners, yet the tall fence around it is still topped with razor wire. I should buy the camp and turn it into a poets' retreat. Poets would understand the razor wire.

*

THAT'S how they get the logs on those log trucks to look as if they have been loaded with such care! I see a fellow atop his load, sawing the logs to an even length along the driver's side.

If my wife were with me, I suppose she'd say "I knew they did that." Well, I didn't know. She understands the world far better than I do. I think when poets like me are born, they're not given the same program that everyone else gets. We don't get a program coming in; we don't get a score card; hell, they don't even tell us what the game is.

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JUNE 30, 2004 continued

I have been touring Alberta Village

south of L'Anse, and the Ford sawmill located there. This is the third and final part of the visit.

Sign: A hundred board feet could be sawed in three or four minutes. Ten logs would produce about a thousand board feet in thirty minutes. Yes, in an eight hour day, then, they would produce 1600 board feet. You'd use twenty logs an hour, which would total one hundred sixty logs a day, which means a two day supply in the log pond would be three hundred twenty logs, not two hundred as we've been told previously.

Or perhaps it's an efficiency issue, Henry. Perhaps the saw can cut ten logs every half hour, but doesn't. Then to produce 1600 board feet a day the mill would have to run longer hours.

Of course, if you want to double your output, saw boards that are two inches thick. Heck, quadruple it - saw beams four inches thick.

Ford came to the U.P. for wood because he thought he had to "safeguard his company from dependence on outside sources of material for manufacturing automobiles in order to control mark-ups on supplier products." Ford's principal forest product plant was at Iron Mountain, Michigan. It was run by Edward Kingsford and produced parts for the Ford Station Wagons nicknamed "Woodies."

After the board has been sawed, it is sent to the edger. It's The Tower 42" Edger, to be exact, made in Greenville, Michigan. There are four circular saw blades in it, adjusted for the width of the boards you want to cut out of the big board coming from the head sawyer. "It was the edgerman's responsibility to optimize the volume and grade of lumber from the board," we're told.

Slab wood continues down a conveyor where a swing saw cuts across it to produce pieces sixteen to forty-eight inches long. The slab shack outside is accessible by a walkway from this floor of the sawmill.

From the edger, the boards went to the trimmer. "The trimmerman took boards from the edger," we're told, "determined the number and location of cuts to maximize the value of the lumber, set the saws, and processed them [the boards] through the trimmer." He also had to pick up edging strips and toss them onto the conveyor that went to the swing saw and then to the slab bin.

The cut lumber was sent downstairs on the green chain, past the lumber grader who examined both sides of every board - hence the need for a lumber turner. The lumber grader assigned one of six hardwood grades to the board and recorded the production volume for each grade on the daily records. "The value of the best lumber grade averaged about six times greater than the poorest." The chain took the board out of the mill, then, where they got piled "according to tree species, lumber grade, and thickness."

I'm standing at the window overlooking the green chain and reading of the disappointment that "Alberta never grew to the point where the town was self-sustaining. That didn't matter too much to the frequent visitors to the town, however." Some 3,000 people were reported to have visited Alberta in August of 1938 alone.

I need to stop yet at the filing station "where the second most important person worked," the fellow who sharpened the band saw blades. You might need to change the blade in the head saw as often as every two hours. "This man could sharpen a blade in 30 minutes and change a blade in 10 minutes. It took two men to change a blade." It took a Hanchett filing machine, made in Big Rapids, Mich., USA, to sharpen the saw, with its spinning file stone which was swung down into each notch of the saw blade to give the best angle for the steel to attack the wood. I can almost hear the steel sing as it is sharpened. I can almost hear the wood cry as it is sawed.

The last and most fitting thing to see, now that I've made nearly a circular walk of this floor of the sawmill: "This is where the head sawyer used to stand," the sign says without blinking. "(In Ford times, no one was allowed to sit.)"

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JUNE 30, 2004 continued

I have been touring Alberta Village

south of L'Anse, and the Ford sawmill located there. This is Part Two of the visit.

The sawmill in Alberta. As you enter it, you see the tool crib to your right. You see a cant hook and a peavey; the tools look so much alike I cannot discern why they'd have different names. Anyone, help me? They were used for moving logs.

There is a broad axe on display; it was used for hewing cross ties and squaring timbers. An adz, used for shaping timbers. A double-bit axe. A pickaroon for handling pulp wood. A board turner - "a quick flip with this hook," the sign says, "saved wear and tear on the lumber grader's hands." A draw-shave for peeling bark. A sling with steel cables for loading logs. A bucksaw and a two-man crosscut saw ("the woodsman's real tool - each man sharpened his own saw by hand"). A log scale stick, used to measure the lumber yield expected from logs of the standard lengths. Log tongs.

Here is the main bandsaw motor. Its one hundred horsepower drove the bandsaw upstairs where the logs were cut. The band saw was originally powered by steam but after Ford gave the Alberta mill and townsite to Michigan Technological University in 1954, the electric motor was installed. "Danger - Do Not Start" warns the yellow tag.

There is a 1925 Model T Huckster "Depot Hack" on this floor of the sawmill. All the wood of it is oak except for some decorative bird's eye maple. The vehicle was restored by Lawrence Erickson of Skanee, and donated by his wife Ansel after her husband's death. A couple of steamer trunks make the start of a load in the bed of the hack.

Running down through the building are chutes from the floor above, that drop saw dust onto a conveyor in the basement. The belt of the conveyor moves the saw dust to the fire box of the steam boiler. Ash was shipped to Kingsford to be made into charcoal.

The steam boiler created steam that was distributed throughout the plant and drove the equipment. Steam could be vented out the smokestack that extended well above the roof-line - another fifteen or twenty feet above the roof-line, in fact. Or it could be vented out a pipe coming up through the surface of the pond some twenty-five yards from the sawmill.

Slabwood and edgings were also conveyed down from upstairs into the slab bin next door. This waste was used as firewood in workers' homes.

Pay attention and you'll notice that the main timbers in the sawmill are 12" x 12". The smaller crossbeams are 4" x 12".

"This key cabinet was used to store all the keys needed in the sawmill and surrounding town," the sign says. "This cabinet once contained a key to Henry Ford's rowboat that was kept on Lake Plumbago."

On a table, three photos. Says one: "One of the first Pettibone Cary-Lifts." On the second photo: "Cary-Lift invented in Baraga County." It's a 1975 model. The third photo: "Today." It shows the clamp of the Cary-Lift holding a dozen full-size logs.

In a cabinet beyond glass, a pay envelope for John H. Heltunen, for two weeks ending August 24, 1948. Social Security tax that was withheld came to $1.02. Net pay in cash - $100.98.

A Ford log brand has been embossed onto the end of a log. "F-9" means it came from Ford's Camp #9.

Yonder hangs a lumber handler's apron, very thick leather. Several cuts have been inscribed into it deeply. You'd be glad they were left in the apron rather than in your flesh.

Sign: Ford Charcoal Briquets - "Fuel of a Hundred Uses." We find that in the 1920s Henry Ford learned of a process for turning wood scrap into charcoal briquets. E.G. Kingsford, a relative of Henry Ford, was instrumental in selecting a site for the new charcoal manufacturing plant. Later, Ford Charcoal was re-named Kingsford in E.G.'s honor.

A photograph of a stack of fifty pine logs being pulled by two horses: "This is a picture of the World's Fair load from Baraga County."

I mount the stairs to the floor above now, the sawmill proper. First, the bull chain, which brings logs from the pond up to the log deck just to my left. The logs pass through a hood where high pressure spray "removed clinging dirt and loose bark."

The log deck is where the log scaler measured each log and recorded the expected yield from it onto the daily production sheet. From here the log was moved onto chains to the carriage.

The head saw in the mill was a five-foot Clark Brothers band saw operated by the head sawyer. The band saw was preferable to a circular saw because it was thinner and hence created less sawdust. "Every ounce of saw dust represented lost income from the log," the sign says. Henry Ford said it too, I imagine.

We're told that the head sawyer was the "most prestigious and important person in the mill, second only to the sawmill foreman. The head sawyer established the pace of the entire mill. His decisions determined both the volume and quality of lumber produced from each log." Lumber is measured in board feet. A board foot is 12" long, 12" wide, 1" thick.

You can see the log pond out the window from here. A two-day supply of logs was kept there ready for use, about two hundred logs. The pond had concrete edges. It was filled from Lake Plumbago across Highway 41. Remember the steam that got vented out a pipe through the surface of the pond? That kept the pond constantly heated in winter so it wouldn't freeze; and it thawed frozen logs, making them easier to saw.

The log loader/turner put the next log from the deck onto the carriage. It was operated by the head sawyer, who manipulated the log "until the desired faced was parallel to the saw blade."

The carriage held the log securely during sawing. The head sawyer guided the log into and past the saw blade. Each pass produced either a slab or a board. A couple fellows called "setters" rode the carriage to reposition the log for each cut. "Slabs" have only one flat side and hence cannot be used for lumber.

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JUNE 30, 2004 continued

There is an old Ford fire truck

out front at Alberta Village, near the pumphouse for the Henry Ford Sawmill. The truck is on loan to the Museum from the L'Anse Fire Department. Identification plates riveted to each side of the truck: "Pirsch Fire Equipment - Kenosha, Wisc. - 1-18-38."

Here is where Henry Ford established a sawmill and model community in 1936. The mill was operated by the Ford Motor Company until 1954.

The pumphouse is closer to Highway 41 than the mill is. It "was used to pump water from Lake Plumbago (across the highway) to the mill." It also provided water for fighting fires and is still used for the town's fire hydrants.

Immediately as you enter the pumphouse, there is a display case showing photos and mementos of the Ford Pequaming operation up along Keweenaw Bay. A photo of the mill crew looking surly or tired or both. A photo of rag-tag children "Homeward Bound from School." A photo of a group of men and women, boys and girls at "Potato Harvesting." All of them are in sweaters and caps and gloves. Some of them have potato forks. One of the women looks amazingly like our elder daughter, Jenifer, and I think of the tromp tromp of the generations. Our lives get spent; we are cogs in the great wheel's turning; nothing is lost - it comes back in some other form or the same form some other time. You look into the eyes of those potato diggers and understand at once both what has been lost and what these folks have built.

The pump. Ah, yes. Nearly eternal metal, a Dayton-Dowd Co. Centrifugal Fire Pump with a capacity of "500 gallons per minute against 100 pounds of pressure or 2 good 1.5 inch smooth nozzle fire streams." The diameter of the impeller is twelve inches. At full speed, the pump ran 2200 rpm. The sign promises it "never will fail to have ample power to drive pump at full capacity."

As I come out of the pumproom, I examine another display case across the way from that with Pequaming memorabilia. This one has a poster of Babe Ruth, "who shows how to use Louisville Slugger bats." Should we suppose the wood for those bats came from the U.P.? There's another poster, of a 1953 Ford tractor - the Golden Jubilee model. "Power that purrs when the going gets tough." That's not how I remember it. I grew up with a Ford tractor, it was a good little tractor, but I'd never say it purred. "Ford Farming," the poster says in those days before truth in advertising, "means less work - more income per acre." Compared to what, I wonder.

Then I cross the lawn to the sawmill itself. The lawns are being mowed by several men with several big mowers. They are working too hard to be government workers. When one of them turns his back to me, I see what we've got here: "AMF Prisoner" it says. I notice the black stripe down the outside of each pant leg. These fellows mean business; they work steady, without stopping. I do not know who is watching them.

I enter the sawmill, built to produce lumber for Ford's production of automobiles. "Ford required wood for car bodies, shipping crates, pallets, and building materials," a sign says. "You will see an interesting example of sawmill technology, community planning, and the power of one man's vision to create a better environment for his workers."

The community was named Alberta, to honor the daughter of F.G. Johnson, manager of Ford's Upper Peninsula operation. The mill employed up to twenty-two people producing as much as 16,000 board feet of lumber per day. The operation remained much smaller than Ford's plant at Pequaming. In 1923 Ford purchased the town of Pequaming and 40,000 acres of hardwood forest; this plant employed three hundred workers, virtually everyone in town. Ford also got his summer cottage with the purchase, although the home is really too elaborate to be called a "cottage." We're told that Ford used the cottage only a few days each summer - though if you hear the locals talk, they'll say he never slept a night in the place. Oh, to be so well off you can own a summer home you never use.

To be continued....

NOTES FROM THE VAGABOND JOURNAL: A VISIT TO L'ANSE, MICHIGAN JUNE 30, 2004

I left Fairwater yesterday about 10 a.m.

and drove for L'Anse without rushing, arrived about 3:30 p.m. central time, 4:30 p.m. local time. This portion of the Upper Peninsula is on Eastern Time. I stopped in to say hello to Tracey Barrett at the Information Center as you come into town. She is the director of the Baraga County Tourism and Recreation Association. I interviewed her when I was here in February. She is a quite a lively version of the native species. She will help me try to set up some factory tours this morning.

Tracey said there certainly would be space at the L'Anse Township Campground two miles east of town. The state campgrounds in the area have been reporting a 40-60% drop in occupancy, due perhaps to the wet, cold weather they've been having up here.

When Tom Nordstrom, the caretaker at the campground, arrived to take my registration about 7:45 p.m. last night, I think he said I was the first tent camper they've had this year. And they have had only a few motorhome and travel trailers. He said the temperature the other night got down to thirty-six degrees here. Imagine that - thirty-six degrees at the end of June. I said I'd have to put that in the book. He said rain was predicted by morning, and then it would be hot tomorrow. Hot being eighty degrees, I think; or did he say ninety degrees?

Rain did come by morning. One halacious thunderstorm rolled through about 3:10 a.m. The sky was bright with lightning so you could read in the dark, and the thunder seemed to circle overhead for a few minutes before moving on. Once the storm was gone, it was gone. Things are still wet this morning, but it looks like a pretty day. I've already showered and had my coffee. The world turns as it should.

I'm registered for my tent site through Monday night next week, leaving the morning of July 6th for Redfield, South Dakota. In the meantime, what can I learn here?

On the drive up yesterday, I was thinking how early into this project I still am. This is the second of seven or eight expected visits to L'Anse; it will be my second visit to Redfield as well. Sometimes I fear that you cannot know a place unless you live there a lifetime. I don't have twelve lifetimes to give to my focus communities, so I'll give what I can, seven or eight weeks apiece. As it is, usually by the time I'm in a community for forty-eight hours, I know more about certain aspects of it than many of the long-time residents do. That's because I'm looking and poking and asking. Most of us go about our daily lives, our day-to-day business, looking slightly above and beyond everything around us.

As an outsider and someone whom people feel they can trust and talk to, I have a special advantage. Just as fish cannot know water, inhabitants of a place are sometimes blind to their environment. And, being new to a place, I am ignorant enough that I don't know what you're not supposed to ask.

The disadvantage? Sometimes I don't know where to start. What a huge banquet of possibilities. Where, oh where is the end of the string?

*

Tracey Barrett put in a call to BPB in L'Anse to see if I could get a tour of the plant. The person she needed to talk to was not at her desk, so she left a message to call back. I asked Tracey to set a tour for any time on Thursday or Friday.

I'll spend my day visiting the Henry Ford Sawmill in Alberta, and hiking to Canyon Falls and Sturgeon Falls. It's supposed to be lovely and warm today.

To be continued....