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.
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