Ultima Thule, Pt. 10: “Withdrawal"

June, 2011.

RETURN to part 9

I woke with the dawn and silently left my shelter. Both my companions were still asleep. I cast good vibes over them as I shouldered my pack and hiked to the docks, the memory of the frightening incident last night still lingering in my mind. I set my gear down on a luggage cart except for what I was going to carry onto the boat with me. It was still way early, and the boat didn’t leave until 9am. I decided to go up to the Smithwick Mine, which I had somehow missed on all my other trips to Scoville Point.

While I was wandering Rock at this early hour I came across a couple fabulous things to photograph, namely this new flower, and a pretty wild moth. Seems there's never nothing to look at while on Isle Royale…

The site of the Smithwick was very much curated compared to the rest of the isle as it turns out, consisting of two open but flooded shafts sitting fenced off directly next to each other. There were interpretive signs here too. Smithwick Mine was started by James Smithwick in July 1843, pretty much right after the Ojibwe ceded the land, making it one of the oldest (of the white man’s mines, at least) in the state.

Click for full size

The sign read,

For two years…Cornelius G. Shaw and a small crew of miners worked Smithwick’s mine. They dug four shafts and built a blacksmith shop, root cellar, and several dwellings. The main shaft reached 96 feet deep. The upper 30 feet produced some copper, but lower down the vein “pinched out,” prompting Shaw to abandoned mining here.

It then went on to excerpt some of Shaw’s diary entries from 1847, illustrating the harshness and trials of life on Isle Royale in the 19th century:

Tuesday, June 22, “found a vein of copper…but was drove out of the woods by the black flies & was almost blind when I got home from their byte.”
Sunday, June 27, “Recd two letters from my wife all well…”
Thursday, July 8, “flies are leaving and musketoes take their place.”
Sunday, July 18, “…caught the largest trout I ever caught…”
Monday, July 19, “two men working…had a narrow escape by the explosion of a charge…that had misfired.”
Saturday, July 24, “I cut my foot on the great toe joint badly but managed to dress it myself by tearing my Shirt up for Bandages….”
Wednesday, August 25, “…have a tooth pulled out about 10 Oclk I was completely wild with pain….”

I didn’t take any pics since there was little left to see here. I went back and sat at the docks until it was time to leave.

I was happy to be on board the Ranger III once more, on my way home. A rush of feelings coursed through me as I manned the railing and gazed out at the shores that I was slowly leaving behind. I was so glad to be leaving but I had come to love this place indescribably…or maybe more like an admiration or guarded respect perhaps, than an open love.

It was the respect that one privately feels the first time he finally finds a rival who he cannot beat. Isle Royale was the first place that I had set out with intent to conquer but instead was conquered myself. I vowed grimly to return.

On our way toward the open waters we stopped for a supply drop at the park depot on Mott Island:

Underway once again, I spied the poor-rock pile of the Siskowit Mine on shore:

The morning had gone from hazy and gray to sunny. It looked like we were going to have a beautiful day for sailing. The report called for two-foot waves and clear skies. Over the immaculate waters of the harbor, we approached the Rock Harbor Light one last time before turning out into the waters of Superior:

Once beyond the garrison of the protected harbor waters, the captain opened up the engines and we were sailing.

This was the very same spot where on Wednesday morning I had seen 12-foot waves slamming into the rocks, while standing in misery upon the crest of Mt. Ojibwe:

Out aft, I watched the lighthouse diminish into a white speck nestled in a prickly sea of green conifers. A slight haze hung over the forest:

I kept watch off the starboard side as we cruised past Saginaw Point, eyeing the walls of the unpenetrated wilderness that I had originally thought about setting myself off into. I wondered what would have happened if I had gone that course. I squinted to study the coastline, to see if it looked navigable by foot, and indeed mostly what I saw were bare rock cliffs hemming the forest from the sea. Nonetheless I thought that perhaps conquest of this untamed sector of the isle might best be accomplished with a comrade, and a canoe. I looked for telltale poor-rock piles along the jagged coast, but saw none:

The mystical land mass that I had just come to know as Isle Royale began to recede back into the blue shroud of enwreathing mists from whence it came, to lie timelessly in wait for my eventual return. Out ahead was an undefined blur of blue-gray smudge, making it impossible to tell where sea stopped and sky began.

The waters were so calm today that it was like we were caught in a sargasso…as if there hadn’t already been enough eerie scenes on this trip:

After awhile I suddenly thought I saw something tall and white just barely standing out from the murk on the extreme horizon, and realized that it was the ruins of Menagerie Island Light. Even at full-zoom on my camera, it was only the faintest sliver of white lost in a swirling miasma, but I knew that’s what it was:

That’s all it could be. When it disappeared, I knew that now there’d be nothing left to look at out there for at least the next three hours when we would come within visual range of the Keweenaw. The boat ride this time was plane-smooth and almost mind numbing, like we were navigating on a starship through the heavens.

I began to get stir-crazy again and paced about the ship. Everyone else looked beat, and most found somewhere to nap. I sat and drank coffee at the snack bar, along with a much appreciated donut that I purchased with my last pocket change. It occurred to me that if I had bought Dramamine during the ride to the island, I would not have had quite enough to purchase these blessed rewards that I was currently cherishing. I gave myself an extra pat on the back for not being a pussy. I had not had caffeine in four days.

Well after we crossed the mid-point of the lake and entered the shipping lanes again, the airs cleared somewhat into something with more definition, and I spied the ghostly form of a freighter miraged on the horizon, still almost completely imperceptible:

I became tired of walking around the ship and sat at a table to read a copy of the 2011 Greenstone, the official publication of Isle Royale National Park. A particular excerpt from an article about prehistoric mining caught my eye…“And while archaeological surveys of mining sites have been conducted at Isle Royale since the 1870s, many of the sites and associated habitation areas remain largely uninvestigated.” Wow…I whistled the Indiana Jones theme to myself briefly. What a place.

Now deeply rapt in contemplations of the ancient history and deepest secrets of the isle, I again unfolded my piece of scratch notepaper that I had been jotting thoughts down on for the whole trip, and began to brainstorm. Eventually I got so anxious on the long boat crossing that I began to painstakingly draw out the doodles that I showed in an earlier episode of this saga depicting the geologic development of Isle Royale.

Joseph Papineau, who I quoted heavily for my Norwich Mine series, always wondered why so many copper tools are found at ancient mining pits, and disagrees with the commonly foisted theory that they are merely lost tools dropped there by miners. He thinks that it holds little merit because any tradesman knows that a tradesman keeps track of his tools—especially if he laboriously made them himself—and would not be so careless as to lose as many as are found left behind at these sites. The amount of them that are typically found on archaeological digs makes it seem like one day the workers just dematerialized in the midst of their work, the tools falling from their hands, to be left there undisturbed for millennia—a very unlikely scenario.

Papineau argues that the only possible explanation is one of economics—the very same reasons that we abandon our mines. Simply, the market for copper changed on these ancient miners over time; at one time it was so plentiful they could afford to make all kinds of tools out of it, and when the demand slowed and work stopped, the people moved on to other places and occupations. Either that, or tribal warfare could have driven them suddenly from their native lands. Naturally, since they carried everything on their back and since copper is heavy, they only took with them what they could carry, and selected their best tools, leaving the rest behind intentionally at the work site. The ancient copper mining era lasted about 1,000 years and by some guesses extracted 1.5 billion pounds of the red metal, miskwaabik.

The first white men arrived on Lake Superior in the 1630s and found a few of the Huron tribe who were making trips to Isle Royale to get copper for their personal use, but the Ojibwe themselves knew little or nothing of copper mining, Papineau says. The first white attempt at mining Michigan copper he says was by Frenchman Denis de la Ronde in 1727, and the Englishman Alexander Henry tried in 1771. It was not until the Americans arrived in the 1840s that successful large-scale mining for trade returned to this land for the first time since the ancients had done it millennia before. And with the use of explosive, they removed more copper in 50 years than the ancients had in 1,000. Though the first wave of white mining on Isle Royale in the 1840s faded quickly, there was a resurgence of interest in the 1870s, which was when the isle organized itself as a county. The last mine closed in 1883.

At long last we passed the markers for the Upper Portage Entrance, and I knew we were back in civilization. It was about another hour of sailing through this fjord-like inlet before we were passing under the Houghton Lift Bridge and coming in to port, precisely at 3pm. I wasted no time in getting back to my car (and finding my missing dry clothes, neatly folded in the backseat as suspected), before getting some lunch. The plan for the rest of today was to investigate a few more points of recent interest on the way home, mainly Silver Mountain and Sturgeon Gorge, and perhaps take another shot at finding the King Phillip Stamp Mill.

Silver Mountain was a very steep bluff, deep in the Ottawa National Forest that was pocked with a few old silver mines that--like the Norwich Hill--had lain largely untouched. Obviously I did not have the proper amount of time to conduct the kind of investigation that a locale of this caliber deserved, but I wanted to at least do a quick pre-expedition shakedown. This was another one that had come well-recommended by ROC, the guy who gave me the scoop on Norwich two years ago. Sturgeon Gorge is very nearby, sometimes called “The Grand Canyon of Michigan,” because it is one of the more scenic spots in the state. There are a few waterfalls in the vicinity too.

CLICK for the final part.

References:
Norwich Mine, An Historical Journey Across Time, by Joseph R. Papineau

Ultima Thule, Pt. 9: “Who Are You?”

June, 2011.

RETURN to part 8
Click for trail MAP

The trail bounded down past some concrete footings that I found out were the ruins of an early radiophone communication tower:

It was one of a pair of twins that I believe had a wire strung between the two; as you can see the other tower is still standing.

Passage Island was once almost purchased from the US government by Canada. The Canadians petitioned US Congress in 1871 for appropriations to put a lighthouse here, but Congress was not interested, since such a light would have served mostly Canadian ships and there would be little benefit to Americans. In 1875 US Congress was finally persuaded to build a light on Passage Island if the Canadian government would reciprocate by building a lighthouse marking the dangerous Colchester Reef in Canadian waters of Lake Erie. Still no action had been taken by the Americans in 1879, so the Canadian Prime Minister tried to convey the urgency of the situation by offering to buy the island. Initial steps for lighthouses at both Colchester Reef and Passage Island finally began in 1880.

There was a helipad, which is still used I imagine by the Coast Guard, seeing as the Passage Island Light is still an active aid to navigation:

The lighthouse was automated via solar panels in 1978, and has received little maintenance since then. In fact, most of the time it is Captain Ron who is roped into sailing out there to do repairs on the functioning radio antenna. He mentioned that the outhouse had one of its walls blown completely off last week from another storm.

What a lonely outpost of civilization….

The lighthouse itself was built of the black basaltic stone hewn from the nearby cliffs and is as formidable a fortress as you will find on the Great Lakes. Its Norman Gothic architectural style lends even more to the austere appearance. Personally, it might be my favorite…if I had my choice of any ten buildings in the state that I could choose to own or live in, this lighthouse would be on the list for sure. The date stone above the door denotes the year construction was begun. It was not completed until 1882:

I would have helped myself to this opening on the basement window, but the ranger stayed nearby the whole time:

Passage now also functions as a remote weather monitoring station for the lake (National Buoy Data Center Station PILM4), hence all the doodads and implementia on the catwalk of the lantern room. I walked out to the point across the jagged rocks at the foot of the light. Here you can see some more storm damage:

The "Eye of the Needle" passage is notorious for fog. In December 1933, the lightkeepers received a commendation for their service when the fog horn failed during a sub-zero blizzard. They braved the storm to repair it, but in the process one of them received severe frostbite to his face.

The land mass you can see in the distance here is the tip of Isle Royale itself:

Jeez-o-Pete’s--an abandoned two-holer, eh:

The Canadian passenger ship Monarch wrecked at Blake Point on the northern end of Isle Royale in December 1906, and the Passage Island lightkeepers assisted in rescuing them. In December of 1919, the ice was so bad that the Coast Guard boat sent to pick up the keepers of this light could not make it through, and they had to be rescued by a Canadian icebreaker.

This old tram system was installed to make the work on the fog signal easier; it was moved by a steam powered winch.

The wheels are stamped as manufactured by the Russell Wheel & Foundry, Detroit:

Russell Wheel specialized in making railroad cars for the logging industry as well as structural steel for lighthouses, but they also provided ironwork in a few cases for downtown Detroit skyscrapers, such as the Hammond Building and the Farwell Building.

The ruins of the radio tower footings again:

I personally think this is one of the handsomest light stations on the Great Lakes:

Finally it was time to head back to the MV Sandy.

View from another cliff:

The Sleeping Giant again:

The sun was now out in full force, and I was very much put at ease by this.

The darkness of my mood had begun to melt away entirely.

Leaving the protective cove to head back into the open seas of Superior.

Passing the light station again, on the way back to Isle Royale:

Looking back one last time:

Though I have just said that Passage Island is Michigan’s northernmost point, I must confess that there is yet another place further out in Michigan waters that is more northerly, the Gull Islands (another VIEW). Consisting of little else than lichen and bird crap-covered rocks barely poking above the water’s surface, the Gull Islands are Michigan’s literal “northernmost point,” though they are not habitable, and are not reachable unless you have your own boat or seaplane. They do not lie anywhere near a shipping lane, and as such are not a navigational hazard, so there is no lighthouse there. The coordinates are 48.26209 N by 88.26479 W. As the bow of the MV Sandy nosed toward home port leaving Passage Island behind, we could barely see the dark, low silhouettes of the Gull Islands out across the fantail, looming on the horizon just to the right of Passage. For now, this was as close as I would ever get to reaching Ultima Thule.

It was a beautiful evening on the water as we came back along the string of islets leading into Isle Royale.

Upon landing at Rock Harbor again, I felt myself in such a good mood, and so ready for real food again that I would break down and have dinner at the Rock Harbor Lodge. I sat right at the bar and ordered a Gay Miner Beer (two, actually), and a big fat hamburger. While I was there I ran into the drenched chick from Calumet again, only this time she was dry and drinking there with her family who I surmised were staying at the lodge. She recognized me and came over to thank me for giving up my shelter. I barely had anything to say between ravenous bites of my meal however.

I finished up and came back outside, now nicely buzzed off of two beers, seeing as my tolerance had gone down and my metabolism had gone up from being out here. I noticed with some satisfaction that the Ranger III was now also sitting nicely at moor, waiting to take me home in the morning:

The evening sun was so beautiful and warm that I set out on a short hike up along Tobin Harbor.

The waters of Tobin were so perfectly quieted that it caused an almost disorienting mirror-effect.

The weather was absolutely perfect right now. Even without the slightest breeze, I was completely comfortable and moved at a fair clip across the trail. My pants were now dry, and my boots were nearly enough so to fool me into thinking they were.

The strange calls of the many rare birds in the motionless boughs echoed through the woodland for miles.

I heard more loon calls as well. Still hadn’t seen any moose or wolves, though I kept having to step over moose crap.

At the Suzy’s Cave trail, I crossed back over and looped back to Rock Harbor. Before I came to the actual Suzy’s Cave however, I noticed something that took me aback for a moment--it was another cave:

I snapped a few shots and crawled in...

It led out to the mouth of yet another cave--and then it dawned on me--I was in Suzy’s Cave….

I hadn’t bothered to explore the actual cave the first time I was here, because I assumed it led nowhere. Oops!

Continuing back along the shore to camp, I looked out across the becalmed Rock Harbor and the outer fence of islands:

The horizon was still lost in a haze but all else was perfectly clear. It was like the string of islands was hanging weightlessly in the clouds….

I returned to my shelter a little tired from all the walking I’d done today, but not quite willing to call it an early night in such heavenly weather. God dammit, I came all the way here and this is my only nice day, so I am going to get my money’s worth out of it.

As I sat there chatting with my newfound shelter-mates and momentarily airing my feet out, I got the idea, “hey, why not walk out to Scoville Point one more time and wait for the stars to come out?” That could be incredible. I could only imagine the insane brilliance of the night sky out here. My Illinoisan companions wished me luck, and I split.

By the time I got all the way to the point the twilight was still deepening, and I had lots of time to sit and think, while enjoying the amazing beauty of the isle when it is not frowning at me and pissing rain on my head. The natural beauty here is every bit as gorgeous as you will find in the better-known national parks out west, such as Yellowstone.

As the sun set I snapped a few 15-second exposures of the scattered coastal islands floating in a deep blue abyss, like a belt of asteroids in outer space.

Unfortunately the grand celestial display of stars that I was hoping for did not pan out, and was lost in the haze of the lake’s moist air. I slowly groped my way back through the dark for the two miles to Rock Harbor to call it a night. My Illinoisan shelter-mates were already snoring. I crawled into my bag, very happy for once. All my gear was already mostly packed in readiness for a quick departure tomorrow morning.

I actually sat awake for some time, unable to sleep. There was something on my mind, like I was a little creeped out by the walk back from the woods or something; a feeling that I couldn’t shake. The father next to me was quite restless in his dreams, and I could hear him moving a bit. After a while I could tell he might be having a nightmare, and emitted a little whimper or moan every so often. Eventually I figured out that he was not just moaning, he was trying to say something…he was definitely dreaming; it sounded like he was running from something, or witnessing something too horrible, too spiritually troubling to describe. Suddenly, he let out the most bone-chilling sound that I have ever heard come from a human mouth--

“WHOOOO ARRRE YOUUUU…!”

My heart froze. It was just the way he said it--gutteral, almost growled--through his tears of helpless anger and fear. Not even William Shatner could’ve made it any more dramatic, but this guy wasn't acting. I had just heard the primal utterance of mortal terror that an imperiled creature emits from the core of its soul, when it realizes it is about to die. Whatever this guy was dreaming, it was certainly the absolute worst possible thing that he had the ability to conceive of. It was like an invisible phantom of the woods was hunting him, or some shadowy inhuman ghoul of pure galvanized evil was standing before him, methodically cutting his wife and kids into ribbons while he watched, paralyzed. I realized that if this guy’s dream was scary enough to make me shiver, then I had to wake him up just out of common decency.

Luckily his son had also been awakened by the horrible groan that had been loosed, and yelled “Dad! Wake up, you’re dreaming!” He had to kick him to get him to come out of it, and when he did he was blubbering like a baby…“Oh god…the most horrible dream…thank god….” The son asked him if he was okay, but he went on, “…it was bad…oh god…it was so bad…” and paused to compose himself before finally answering “Yes, I'm ok. Oh god…it was horrible…Kyle, come here,” and reached out to embrace his son for several seconds. I said nothing, pretending to still be asleep as I continued listening. Then the son said, “Dad, I had the same dream last night. It's okay, just go back to sleep.” There were a few more minutes of traumatized, shaky breathing from the other side of the shelter before I heard the father finally wind down and drift back to sleep.

I sat, shaken, and yet pondered with great curiosity that last surprising comment for quite some time. They had the same dream?

That was...strange. I had never witnessed anything like it. It’s kind of frightening to hear a grown-ass man shaking and in tears over a mere dream, so it must have been something incredibly momentous rearing its head from the deepest nadirs of the human psyche. I recalled how he had told me at breakfast this morning how this was his twenty-fourth visit to the isle. His son was on his eleventh. They had been out in the woods for a pretty long time before I came across them…and then for them to both be having the same dream? That’s f’d up, like genuinely unnerving…I mean, just the way he said it. “WHO ARE YOU”…? That is about the most messed up shit I ever heard.

They must have both experienced something pretty traumatic at some point in the past that was producing these dreams. I could only speculate as to what. Laying there pondering this in the dark as silence returned to the woods again, I began to postulate potential demons of my own that may have resulted in this sort of episode. Solitude, and the feeling of being at the mercy of the woods can really tinker with the human mind. I was afraid to guess at what the dream was about, but I kept drifting to thoughts of the windiigo and other such deep-seated fears of things that have menaced mankind from the dark bowers of the primordial forest since the dawn of time. There are thick, strong roots still holding human consciousness down to superstition of the unknown. It is a rare man who is very easily plagued by trouble from it, but it is an even rarer man who is not troubled at all by the blackness of the unknown.

Being out here forces you to be at odds with your psychological problems, like a boxer in a ring. Suddenly all the distractions of the city, and mental noise of one's daily routines are left behind, and the creeping terrors gnawing at your conscience are brought out into full view here, where you have nothing left to hide behind. If you are a strong person, or a person who does not quickly succumb to the loneliness of the woods, you may not have to put on those boxing gloves in your lifetime. But any man, if he spends enough time out in the wilds, I think he would eventually find himself in that ring, unable to escape, circling round and round with his demon in a one-on-one death bout. It’s just a question of how long it takes for you to succumb. And whether you are psychologically strong enough to prevail.

It was a long time before I could fall asleep.

CLICK for part 10.


References:
Great Lakes Lighthouses Encyclopedia, by Larry & Patricia Wright, p. 388-389
History of Wayne County and the City of Detroit, Michigan, by Clarence Monroe Burton