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....
I remember "heat lightning" -- childhood summer nights when there was more lightning than darkness -- the world outside my bedroom window lit with some eerie florescent bulb nearing its end.
Posted by: Peter | September 18, 2004 at 02:45 AM
Hi, Peter. If only it had been "heat lightning" my whole visit to L'Anse. As you'll see in future posts, the rain returns with a vengeance.
Posted by: Tom Montag | September 21, 2004 at 07:36 AM