Tag Archives: upper peninsula

Porkies

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan is a land that fades gently into the wild. Culturally it has much in common with northern Minnesota, old mining and timber towns now enjoying the tourism burst of beautiful lakefronts, but it feels a step further from creature comforts, from big city money pouring north. Its towns are old, some them easing back into the woods, back into a Hemingway story and then out of time, like the ghost towns of the west but swallowed by maples and hemlocks and an undergrowth of ferns. These forests feel more capacious and less cloistered than the coniferous northern shores of Superior, less guarded in their secrets. The UP is an open book, no hidden agenda or ambitions: just some remote country surrounded by stunning lakes.

On an unseasonably warm September weekend, I head for the UP with my mom and her partner, Doug. Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, or the Porkies, is Michigan’s largest state park, and it clings to the south shore of Lake Superior not far from the Wisconsin border. There are roads down all the splashing waterfalls on the Presque Isle River on the west end and to Union Bay and Lake of the Clouds on the east end, and a long loop around them to the south, but the vast majority of the park is a wilderness, accessible only by foot.

We are in the Porkies for a five-day backpacking trip, but that comes with an asterisk on day one. Cotten cabin sits a mile from the trailhead, tucked in an idyllic maple grove along the lakefront beside a small stream. It is rustic but newly built, large and with two bedrooms extending back off the large great room with a wood-burning fireplace and ample counter space to prepare our freeze-dried meals. Dinner comes at a picnic table down by the lake, and the sunset is stellar. Owls hoot out their persistent questions off in the distance, and the lake sloshes gently, constant but never quite uniform in its rhythms. I write by candlelight and drift into the night, easing into adventure.

The second night brings more of the same. The hike here is a long one, over twelve miles, and while there are regular rises and falls around creeks and ravines, it traces the lakeshore nearly the whole way. Campsites are wedged between a low ridge and the shore, with the trail winding up and down to meet them. Campsite LS-18 is an absolute jewel, tucked away from the trail in the halls of a maple grove that lets just the right amount of light filter through to keep it both inviting and cool. A long stony beach pulls us to the lake, and the seating around the fire ring features a few stone thrones. We could have stayed here for days.

On the third day we have the rare backpacking joy of a leisurely morning, a luxury more accessible in the Midwest than the West: the temperature change will be moderate, there is no threat of afternoon thunderstorms building in the mountains, and our next campsite is guaranteed. We are free to sit on the rocks, swing in a hammock, and read a bit more. The backpacker’s paradox, fleetingly achieved but delectable when it comes, when off the trail and all the camp chores are done: the bliss of nothing to do. It is hard to stop lounging in the looming heat.

When we do get moving, the trail promptly climbs upward past small windows of lake view through ridgeline scrub oak. It is a still day, the air growing sticky, and a road walk from a parking lot to the Lake of the Clouds overlook is momentarily jarring, with motorcycles rumbling by and blaring music. The crowd at the Porkies’ most famous point on a Friday in September does not exactly exude physical fitness, either, but they are here to take in the commanding view over lonely Lake of the Clouds, hemmed in by the Porkies on three sides and emptying down the long river valley of the Big Carp to the west.

We lose the crowd when we descend and set up camp on the south shore, just back from the water in a hemlock grove. The occasional motorcycle rumble echoes downward and eventually some people at the camper cabin on the opposite shore clunk around in canoes on the lake, but no one passes our site all day. Seven swans are a-swimming in the lake, or rather bobbing up and down, showing us their rears as the seek out food. Instead of the long sunset over Lake Superior of the past two nights, dark comes quickly here behind the ridgeline, and we are content to let the daylight dictate our evening.

On day four we clamber up to the overlooks, drink in the view, and enjoy the upper reaches of the Big Carp River Trail, which tracks the ridgeline between its namesake’s valley as it feeds down from Lake of the Clouds and then makes a right turn into Lake Superior. From there our path sinks through a thick hemlock forest, twice fords the Big Carp, and then tumbles past a series of cascades on the way to the lake. Our site tonight is just far enough from the mouth of the Big Carp back east to be annoying, and although it is well-situated on the lakeshore, it is a bit overused by sloppy campers.

Our final morning is an eighty-degree day, a strange mid-September occurrence that has us baking as we retrace steps back out toward the parking lot. Unseasonable weather aside, this has been a satisfying end to a summer of travel bookended by walks with both of my parents. (As my mom and I toured the Porkies, my dad was somewhere on the opposite side of Superior, undertaking the second half of the Superior Hiking Trail through-hike he began last fall.) It is the first time my mom and I have backpacked together, and while a few moments on this hike call back to her fondness of a childhood family hike at Sleeping Giant in Canada, we also fall back into memories of our earliest camping trips. Sometime very early on she and I camped in Beaver Creek Valley in southern Minnesota (all I remember is mud), and I vividly remember a visit to Rock Island off Door County in Wisconsin, in which I first surveyed the depths of a pit toilet and declared that I would withhold expelling any waste until we got home days later. Whatever form they take, these retreats into the woods are part of who we are.

Perhaps the greatest joy of this trip, however, comes from the logbook in Cotten cabin. Many of the entries are the typical rhapsodies of cabin visitors, but here, the younger authors have taken the genre to a new level. In a trend started by a 16-year-old Leah, many have illustrated their cast of characters for their weekend, with drawing of each actor’s head along with basic descriptors such as their ages or “my best friend” or “needs a haircut.” (In my contribution, our descriptors are “oldest,” “old,” and “younger, but increasingly old.”) There are rival perspectives from dueling siblings and artistic masterpieces devoted to the mice who apparently populate the cabin. (I also add an owl.) “50% annoying, 50% OK, 100% brother,” one kid judges his younger sibling; Ian, meanwhile, recounts how he made a figure out of candle wax that looks like something his mom will not let him name in writing, though the tadpole-like illustration does rather convey the point.

Where do all these gems go when the journal fills up, I wonder. I hope the parents have snapped pictures of a few of these ephemera, these jolts of life in a place and time, moments that can pierce through any forthcoming teenage moods or young adult anxieties. This is the beauty of the written word: to observe life and to leave a record of it, to write a history of what is good in one’s world: honest, insightful, good-natured even when frustrated, to take what might otherwise fade into vague memory and give it narrative form. Here is to all of those memories hikers can make when they head into worlds far from home and daily obligation, to the stories they write that they will forever carry with them, whether faithfully recorded in a logbook or stashed away in a corner of the mind. These journals show exactly why we do this.

Two Hearted Travel

Few cities summon someone who studies cities quite like Detroit. It is emblematic of both the triumph of American industry and the horror story of its demise. Its northern border, Eight Mile Road, is the starkest divide one can find between modern suburban reality and a collapsed America that came before. This is where unions and Henry Ford’s wages created paths to the middle class and people of all races could find jobs; this is where the collapse of manufacturing left large swaths of a city in literal ruins, and where a series of events created one of the most segregated metros in America. Detroit gave us Motown and the most memorable Super Bowl commercial of all time, and it gave us tales of race riots and emergence from the ashes. Most anyone can use it to justify a particular version of American history, the good and the ill.

I’m in Detroit for a cousin’s wedding, and stay at a hotel downtown and near the venue, just next to the respective homes of the Tigers and Lions, Comerica Park and Ford Field. Downtown Detroit is alive, with GM’s Renaissance Center and some stunning gothic architecture looming over the city. As I watch from the window after checking in, a light rail and a pedal pub both roll by; immediately, any rumors of Detroit’s demise seem exaggerated. The partying outside our hotel late into the night does little to dispel this notion, as do my own ventures out to bars and a brewery and a distillery with my extended family. Even in this supposed wreck of a city, one can have a festive weekend and have no idea of the forces that have buffeted it over the past half century.

Those forces began with redlining and riots in the middle of the century, but culminated around the financial crisis a decade ago: two-thirds of the population gone, two humiliating automaker bailouts, a remarkably felonious mayor, and a municipal bankruptcy that had the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) seriously considering selling off some of its works to survive. Saner heads prevailed in that crisis and the priceless collection is intact, so a visit is in order. Its crown jewel is the Diego Rivera industry murals, which line four sides of a court in the center of the museum. I’ve seen my share of Rivera murals in my Mexican travels, but this one rivals them all in its cohesion across all four walls. As usual, Rivera captures a slice of everything here, with the complete cast of characters in 1930s Detroit united in fresco form. We see the drudgery and misery of factory work, the wealth it generates, the awesome power of human creation and industry, and hints of a dream that all this scientific progress could lead to a just and prosperous society. History has not proven kind to these dreams, at least not without significant collateral damage. The evidence is just outside the DIA’s doors.

Detroiters, understandably, aren’t too fond of tourists going in search of “ruin porn,” but as someone who’s become numbed to the pleasures of mere decline porn, my appetite for such smut is too large to resist. I’ve picked out a few of Detroit’s more iconic ruins to visit, including Michigan Central Station and an old Packard manufacturing plant. These are a few scattered relics, though; even thriving cities have a few such eyesores or white elephants. What makes Detroit shocking are its vast tracts beyond downtown that are now in ruin, an American Rome in its monuments to greatness lost, or perhaps a Palenque bursting out of the jungle. In some places the urban forest has swallowed up the decay; in others, just vacant grassy fields remain. Here and there some homes straggle on, their roofs in tatters and their windows in boards but still home to someone. Block by block, one never knows what one will find: total wreckage, declining but inhabitable structures, the occasional incongruous and immaculate home or business. Broad avenues, built to accommodate Detroit’s great export, sit in desolation, only the occasional car crawling up and down. Even around an active GM facility in Hamtramck, things seem more dead than alive.

Love springs eternal amid all this porn, however: as we visit Michigan Central, a couple is in the midst of its wedding photos out front, finding beauty plus a venue where they can get away with downing a couple of Pacificos around noon. Carefully tended roses sit behind the barbed wire, an American flag makes an attempt at a resolute stand, and the current owner has rehabbed all the windows. Someday, someone will find a use for this thing. The parking lot outside the Packard plant is full, and we can see a group of people in white construction helmets congregating in one part of the wreck; signage informs us that artists have grand plans for its rehabilitation. Occasional gardens and greenhouses dot the vacant lots, turning emptiness to good use. New roots in literal and figurative forms.

My traveling party and I decided to make a road trip out of our trek to Detroit, and took the slightly longer but infinitely prettier route from Duluth across Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and then across the Mackinac Bridge and straight south to the Motor City. The Great Lakes in autumn make for a lovely drive, but the UP, too, has seen its share of ups and downs. Some of its towns, such as Marquette and Munising and St. Ignace, have quaint lakeside downtowns bustling with tourists. Some, like Ishpeming and Negaunee, hang on to their old extractive industries. Others, old mining or logging towns whose anchors have long since moved on, look like they could be blocks somewhere in Detroit. When this happens in a metropolitan area, it’s a powerful story of civilizational decline; out here, it’s a much quieter decay, a tale of towns forgotten by time.

On the return leg, we make camp at the mouth of the Two Hearted River, a fast-moving trout stream that pours into Lake Superior just west of Whitefish Bay. It’s the namesake for the Bell’s India Pale Ale, so of course I have some of that along, and it also gave its name to a short story in Ernest Hemingway’s first published collection. I consume that tale in short order as well, following Nick Adams as he seeks solitude with his fishing line after the First World War. Hemingway’s prose has always been hit-or-miss for me, but when it comes to fishing, he is a master at his craft, and the simple elegance captures Nick’s singular mind out in the wilderness, cleared of any concern beyond his little camp along the Big Two Hearted.

Away from the lakes, the leaves approach fall peak and usher in perhaps my favorite season. Autumn is a fitting time for a journey through contradictory places. It carries an inherent dualism; something two-hearted, perhaps, as it clings to summer beauty and reminds us that none of it will last. Fitting, I suppose, for someone who at once craves the center of an endless party in a cultured city and escapes to solitude amid natural beauty. The end result was something akin to sensory overload, as I ruminated on old wounds that don’t always heal and a churning world that forces a new sense of urgency. But if I withdrew to make sense of all of that, it is now time to head back out, a cycle renewed yet again.