BEACH ICE

Lake Michigan has over 80% ice cover. I was here on the beach last week on a warm, sunny day and I was comfortable as a spring afternoon. It’s supposed to be wet and wavy, even when it’s cold but the lake-scape is stiff and rigid, with hard, crunchy convolutions growing up out of the deep, stretching out as far as the eye can see. 

Yesterday was clear and cold, like it's supposed to be and the edge on the wind made you want to look away. In all the world, Duane Watson is my best friend and yesterday we went to see the ice. He teaches biology at Allendale High School, where I retired some 13 years ago. He took an impromptu survey among his students and none of them had been to the lake shore this winter to see the ice. He scolded them for it; it may be a long time before it freezes like this again. Then he realized that he hadn’t been either, so he invited me to go with him to check out the ice. He said he wasn’t going to go out on it, just look through the glass and marvel at nature’s handiwork. 

The view from the road was awful so he parked in the lot at Bil-Mar Restaurant. We had to get out; couldn’t see over the snow heaps and started down toward the water’s edge. I took a few photos and looked up; he was out on the ice, walking away. When I caught up I said, “I thought you weren’t going to walk out on the ice.” It was a no-brainer; how do you, not walk on the ice? Looking back, we could see the top few inches of snow fence, sticking out of the snow just a few feet from where waves lap up in July. “How deep do you think it is here?” he asked. I figured it would be 6 or 8 ft deep but crunchy snow on top of the ice made it feel like the beach. Another hundred meters and the ice turned up at a steep angle. 

That was when the lunar syndrome kicked in and I couldn’t miss the metaphor, “It’s like being on Mars.” Duane laughed and we made our way down the other side. It was a miniature mountain range, like the Andes of Chile, 150 meters off shore, created by ice and wave action.  You couldn’t see north of the lighthouse but you didn’t have to. The jagged, icy discontinuity ran all the way north to Mackinaw, 200 miles up the shore. “Ain’t it great?” he said, talking to himself. I took more photos and saw he was going out onto the broken ice. It was a jumble that had fractured, shifted and refrozen, like a boulder field of ice. Several crevices went down a few feet to clear ice. It looked like one might fall through so we pulled up a big chunk and slammed it down on the thin spot. It clunked like a concrete block on the driveway. Not to worry about falling through. 

It was cold and I wore the wrong hat. After all, we weren’t going out on the ice. Heading back we got a view seldom seen. It was the shore line from a quarter mile out in the lake. I asked Duane, “How long has it been since someone walked on water?” He didn’t know, thought maybe we were the first since JC but all the foot prints in the snow suggested it wasn’t special anymore. I’m heading off for South Korea next week. Next time I’m in Grand Haven we’ll all be bare-foot and shorts and the beach will be full of kite flyers. 

TURKEYS & LOONS

I drove all day yesterday; needed headlights the last half hour. The driveway was fresh plowed but in the meadow, snow is waist deep. Another inch or two of lake effect fell by bed time. This morning I disturbed two turkeys who were pecking in the driveway. They were between my truck and the barn and didn’t see me until I was close. If I’d bent over and pecked at the ground they might have let it pass. But there was a hurried set of muffled wing beats and they lifted off, up into the trees. Thirty feet up they perched, one in one tree, one in another, observing me as if I were the wild one. 

The drive into town was slippery, anti-lock brakes chattering at every stop, and I was careful. After paper work at the bank and a hair cut, I came outside under blue sky and sunlight. I realized I didn’t need the jacket and I noticed the sound of tires on wet streets and water in drains and gutters. I was going to head for the coffee shop but decided to go to the lake shore first. I’ve walked that beach and pier so many times you might think I’d get enough but it’s a place with many faces, it's always new and I never tire of it. 

Hundreds of people were exploring the beach with coats over their arms and cameras in hand. It’s been a cold, wet winter here and wave action piles ice up on the beach, then freeze creates more ice and it gets added to the stack. Up and down the beach, ice is piled up 20-25 feet above the water line and everything is frozen solid. Small, dark pools interrupt the icy white at the river’s mouth but it’s a quarter mile out, beyond the light house before you see stretches of open water. Walking on lake ice is safer than navigating the slippery pier so as far as you can see, down the beach and out toward Wisconsin, dark specks move around and over upheaved, freshwater icebergs, locked in place until something warm and enduring happens. 

I was up on the lighthouse deck, looking north across the channel to the jetty on the other side. A congregation of loons dotted the water of an open pool and I listened to see if I could hear them. Loons are among the oldest birds alive. Their history goes back 50 million years and they’re still singing their eerie, wonderful songs. They may sound like laughter or a wolf’s howl, even yodeling during mating season. Today it was just little whistles and chirps. I remember a Canadian fishing trip where there was an abundance of both, wolves and loons. Sitting on the dock in the wee hours, we would listen, look at each other and roll our eyes. “What do you think?” Well, I think it’s been a great day, being blessed with the presence of turkeys in the morning and loons in the afternoon.

FOR THE BIRDS

Star Mississippi is easy to miss. If the light on the highway is green and you don’t have to slow down, you’d never know it was there. But I know. Just off U.S.49, behind the tall pines, the laid back, little community keeps right on ticking. I was there on Friday, last. I like to cut boards up and then put the pieces back together. When I get through I’ll have a cedar chest or a table, or maybe even a bird house. I make wren houses for my yard, my family and some of my friends. I think they are stylish and the birds love ‘em. That brings us to the Cypress connection. 

A furniture maker, friend from Livingston, Louisiana told me about Heartwood and Star, Mississippi. “You’re going to love the bird houses and it’s the best place I know to get good lumber. You can tell ‘em I sent you.” Heartwood is the business and their business is cypress birdhouses. With the office in an old silo, the shop and warehouse occupy one metal building with another, smaller one to keep cypress lumber out of the weather. Larry & Jerry Glass run the show and whatever they did before bird houses, they don’t have time for any more. There must be 30 or 40 different styles and designs and their creations are marketed all across America and around the world. 

I’m in Louisiana several times a year and lately I have reason to drive my truck. On my way back north, it’s a short side trip over to Heartwood and my friend was right; I love the bird houses and the lumber is tops. Larry gave me a tour and sent me over to sort through cypress boards, pick out what I wanted and settle up in the office. Last week was my third time through and I knew what I wanted. My lumber rack in the basement is nearly full of top grade cypress but I didn’t have one of their exotic bird houses. Now I do. 

LEON

Baton Rouge, LA: How often does a winter storm get a name? Hurricanes get names and they should. There was Camille in ’69 and Andrew in ’92. In ’04, Charlie, Francis and Ivan ripped through Florida, one after the other on a four week rampage. Then Katrina swamped New Orleans in ’05. Yeah, we remember them by name. But winter storms tend to drag everything down to a crawl or even a halt, then it clears up, warms up, you dig out and move on. Power outages from ice create problems but I can’t remember a winter storm that earned a name. 

I remember the “Blizzard of ’77.” My kids were little, I was teaching school, West Michigan, living a mile outside of town. We dismissed early on Friday, the 3rd week of January. Final exams were scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday of the next week. Over the weekend it dumped over 2 ft. of snow and the wind kicked up out of the west, a steady 25-30 mph. That Sunday night the temp. dropped to -20. No matter how often the snow plows ran, the north-south roads drifted in within a few hours and the only way from here to there was either bucking 6 to 8 ft. drifts or a good snowmobile. 

We missed ten consecutive school days. Over those two weeks the wind blew, average temp hovered near zero and we accumulated an additional 2 ft. of snow. Cabin fever was out of control by the middle of the first week and any excuse to bundle up and venture out was a welcomed diversion. But that’s in the snow belt, the Great Lakes. You know you’re going to get it sooner or later. When it comes, it comes. You have wood cut, candles, batteries and food in the pantry. 

The Gulf Coast is a far cry from snow country and cold weather here is not the norm. Freeze and snow here, even over night, even just a dusting sends responsible citizens into a panic. Traffic is mysteriously vectored into ditches and into each other, even before the wet streets freeze. I saw photos on line this morning of semi trucks on the interstate, gridlocked in both directions over a thin coat of sleet and snow. It’s easy to point fingers and be judgmental and I try seriously, not to go there. It’s not snow country and Midwesterners wouldn’t cope very well with deluge, tidal surges and 120 mph. sustained winds. 

This winter storm had a name this morning. LEON will cost tons of money in highway care, law enforcement and lost income. I’m hunkered down here in Baton Rouge and I’m not going out. It’s not like back in ’77, no reason to be out in it. But I wonder if, say in ten years, if people will remember LEON. When you allude to weather and frame it with a name, it’s assumed you have a hurricane in mind. LEON the frosty freeze, will generate some ice damage and certainly lots of discomfort, inconvenience and expense. I heard one explanation that makes sense. On the coast, insurance policies are loaded with language to discriminate between damage that is covered and damage that is not. Damage caused by wind, water; if by water, was it wind driven (tidal surge) or common flooding. In any case, people usually have to argue, after the fact, with their insurance company over their coverage. With tropical storms as the main threat, that language is biased in that direction. It seems, if a storm is named, being of greater intensity, the home/business owner is more likely to get a better settlement. That would be way-cool, if someone in the bureaucracy gave this cold blast a name, with policy holders in mind rather than the insurance company. I don’t know if that’s why LEON got his name but I’d like to believe.

BLUE HIGHWAY

In 1982, William Least-Heat Moon wrote a book titled “Blue Highways.” At the time he was an English professor at the University of Missouri who had just been laid off. He spent the next year driving the blue highways, the back roads of his road atlas. “Blue Highways” was the story of that journey and it topped the New York Times best seller list for eight months. 

Yesterday I woke up in Ocala, FL with a date to keep in Pensacola last night. From south Florida my return trip north had been over the same boring interstate that I travelled heading south. So I took Least-Heat’s lead, dropped off I-75 and turned west toward the coast on a Blue Highway; I can’t remember its name.

Very quickly the grim interstate business of semi’s, billboards, lane changers and rumble strips was changed out for pasture land, dairy cows, fields of fresh baled hay and stands of slash pine. My Blue Highway was a two-lane ribbon that required attention to detail, not the auto-pilot driving that goes on, on the big highway. Unexpected intersections, nondescript side roads, oncoming traffic passing with inches of my door handle, tractors pulling hay wagons, passing between yellow lines; there was too much, too close, for a relaxing cruise. 

I hadn’t eaten breakfast. There was an apple and a small can of mixed nuts in the milk crate I keep on the passenger seat. But that’s not breakfast and I wanted breakfast. In the next town, I’d find a picturesque, local kitchen, rub shoulders with locals and find a story. I missed the city limits sign and the water tower didn’t have any identification either so I started looking for something with a name, and for a restaurant. The filling station had a Subway sandwich shop and another one had a Hardy’s but no real-deal, restaurant. The next town was the same. Twenty miles later I stopped at the Exxon. I asked the lady behind the counter if there was a restaurant where I could get breakfast. With an Indian or Pakistani accent, she told me there was a McDonalds up the street. I told her I didn’t want fast food and she gave me the palms turned up, wide eyed, “I don’t know” look. I was hungry for breakfast but I’d eat apples and nuts before I compromised myself to fast food. 

More miles, more double yellow lines, another dairy and another stand of slash pine; Mayo, Florida. I drove by the high school and up the main street, several blocks of well kept, old brick buildings. On the left I saw a storefront that was recessed back off the curb, with a neon “Open” sign in the window and a big sign over the door that read, Meme’s Diner; it looked good to me. Inside the floor was waxed concrete and the fixtures looked new. The walls were the freshly painted, old brick walls of the building next door. 

I sat down and while I was ordering, other people began to filter in. They knew each other and sat across the room at a round table. When the waitress pulled us all into a 3-way conversation I invited myself to the round table. Bertha had moved to Florida from upstate New York but she’s been here for a long time. Wayne’s kids had graduated from high school in Mayo. I asked if local kids moved off to big cities for excitement and better paying jobs or did they believe, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.” They reflected on it and after some discussion decided it was some of both. 

“What should I know about Mayo?” I asked. They liked their little town. When pressed, they couldn’t nail down anything in particular but it was clear in their language and their manner. They liked the schools, their leaders and Meme’s Diner for sure. Our breakfast came and we enjoyed that together. When I finished, I bid them well and thanked them for the hospitality. On the way out, I took a photo of Meme’s from across the street. A few blocks later the small town atmosphere dissolved and I was back into the pines and hay fields.

A few hours later, cresting the bridge and dropping down into Apalachicola, the atmosphere had changed considerably. No more dairies or hay fields, a sandy beach was all that separated my Blue Highway from the Gulf of Mexico. This place was about shrimp boats and tourism. I stopped long enough for a shrimp basket at the corner sea food grill and to pick up a jar of Tupelo Honey at a specialty store on Market Street. Tupelo trees in the swamps above Apalachicola bloom for just a few weeks in the spring. Bee keepers clean out their hives and relocate them to the swamp so the honey will be pure, from the tupelo. It is the standard by which all honey is measured. Once the blooms fall, the harvest is over and the bees are moved to work on another nectar source and it will be a year before there is more Tupelo honey.

At one time, along the Gulf of Mexico, Apalachicola ranked second as a sea port only to New Orleans. The river runs all the way to Atlanta and cotton warehouses lined both sides of Market street. Now days it’s fishing, shopping and the beach. The northern gulf still produces wild, yellow sponges and you can pick them up for a reasonable price as well. I didn’t have time to go wander around the boat landing on the river but maybe I’ll come back again, another day. It was dark, raining and cold when I reached Pensacola but I was on time and a familiar, friendly face was waiting there. 

CATERPILLARS

Hanging out in Sarasota, Florida with long time distanced, recently located friends. It’s really cold here, for the natives. It’s fresh for sure; something about the wind and humidity that makes moderate temperatures feel cold. We’ve been having a good time, seeing the sights and taking some photographs. Yesterday we went exploring and wound up at a public access beach on the bay. The sun was high and bright but you needed a jacket and I had long sleeves. 

It turns out, the facility is the access where Sarasota High School’s Rowing Team practices. When we got to the beach there were oars lined up neatly against a low wall, lots and lots of oars, and teenagers were all over the place, stretching, jogging and, you know, being teenagers. Then, from up the hill, under the trees there comes a caterpillar-like apparition with a 40 ft. long, shiny body and lots of legs, inching its way down the walk. Out the narrow walk-way it creeped, to a low platform just above the water. On command, the legs raised up the body and half a dozen young ladies appear. They turned the boat on its side, then right side up and ease it down into the water. The caterpillar was boat and crew and they were going out in the wind and cold, for fun.

SHS Rowing Team won the National Championship last year and their enthusiasm reflected that mentality. Up the hill, two more caterpillars were making progress down the path. There was a rack just up the beach that looked like something a giant would keep his shoes in, in his giant closet. Square framing with slots three deep and four wide, big enough to hold small, flat bottom, aluminum boats with their motor-lower units hanging out the end. Other kids attacked the motor boats like ants on an apple core. The drug them out and into the water, out along the walk-way and tied them off. 

The guys with bigger, longer legs were coming and any doubts about what was going on were dispelled. Before the last boat was in the water, the first girl crew was off the point, getting oriented into the wind and making way. The motor boats were for coaches and for safety and it looked like a military operation. I was on top of an observation platform, telling myself I was a hearty, mid-westerner and this breeze wasn’t cold, no I wasn’t cold, not at all. 

Shutter-shutter, snap, click; shutter-shutter, snap click, my camera was going strong. I remember football and wrestling practices back in another century and there was an element of that atmosphere. I know a lady who was a rower in college and I understand how brutal the training and conditioning is, if you want to excel at rowing. Pulling on that oar requires every muscle group in the body to exert an all out effort, time after time, every stroke. The wind and water wouldn’t let them overheat so the only thing that would require a lesser effort would be a change of heart or exhaustion. I love ‘em. Go get ‘em guys. I’ll not know your names when championships come around this year I’ll remember the caterpillars. I think that should be your mascot nam,The SHS Caterpillars.

CORKSCREW SWAMP

Yesterday was the last day of my stay with friends in Estero, FL. But we were up early and off in the dark to visit the Wildlife Sanctuary at Corkscrew Swamp, east of Naples. With 2.5 miles of boardwalk through marsh and swamp, it’s a great place to get some exercise and be away from concrete and plastic. 

It was overcast, trying to rain but it couldn’t quite make rain drops; enough I kept my camera in its case but didn’t put on a rain coat. The boards creaked under our feet and daylight was leaking through clouds but no sunshine. Rick had camera troubles and that spoiled his hopes but we did the walk anyway. Sometimes you just have to go and do, take your chances and make the best of whatever shakes. The dark water, vegetation and shades of gray were not what I was looking for but that’s what I had and I started taking photographs.

About the time you get used to the calm and still, there was motion down close to the water and there was color; white, behind the trees and brush. Big birds were slowly but surely, working their way from right to left, harvesting the bounty of the swamp. They are hunter-gatherers; no agriculture or animal husbandry for them, no hanging around waiting for crops to ripen. The birds simply go where the food is and they eat as they go. They seem to get along with each other, no fussing or fighting. Maybe they find more food in a group than one can by itself. Now and then there was a deep throated squawk and someone would flap their way up and around a tree but they were serious about worms, snails and other little macro invertebrates on the swamp floor. While I took photographs, Rick counted about fifty birds. Several other bird watchers with cameras materialized. The clicking of cameras seemed as invasive and obtrusive at the time as horns honking in the gridlock, just a few miles away. The big question was, what were they? I knew I saw an egret’s long, straight bill but somebody else said they saw the pink, curved beak of an ibis. 

There were more birds along the walk, anhingas, storks, woodpeckers, waxwings, but they were to far to get good photos. At the nature center, we made a stop at the gift shop and come out into sunshine. My best photo of the morning was simply, water droplets leaving rings on the still water. My time was short. The people behind us got the good light and we did the best with what we had. I had to get on the road by noon. 

This morning I’m at Starbuck’s in Sarasota. I’ll meet up with an old high school amigo in a couple of hours; we haven’t seen each other in in over 50 years. He’s well and busy, as am I; can’t ask for any more. As I edit my photos from yesterday I see there were both egrets and ibis in that swamp-flock. I always wonder why people who are supposed to be not only intelligent but wise, who are no more different than the ibis from the egret, feel the need to kill each other in the name of God or patriotism. But I’m just an old man who would rather go out in the swamp in the rain than sleep in.