Beaver Archipelago, Pt. 4: "The Lightkeeper Wonders"

May 2013.

RETURN to part 3

Day 2.
I awoke much later than planned, with the sun already above the horizon. It was after 8am and I lazily rolled out of the top rack to see that my food had happily not been devoured by vermin, and the weather was glorious, though still chilly. My provisions for this five-day excursion included a 24oz. wheel of sourdough bread, two bags of trail mix, three apples and three pears. I quickly kindled some twigs to make a cup of coffee, and sat proudly and contentedly on the porch sipping it while looking out to the bay where the sun was rising over Beaver Island.

I still had a few hours to investigate the area before Captain Bonadeo would arrive to pick me up. I retraced many of my steps in the House of David Village, finding one or two more structures I had missed yesterday. Another shot of the lumbermill smokestack:

Actually my main objective was to locate Lake Maria which had totally evaded me yesterday. The reason this bugged me is that I wanted to make sure I was in the right area to find the main bulk of the village, which sat right next to its shores. There had once been a trail around the lake but it is completely gone, replaced by a densely forested tangle that I had to fight through to eventually glimpse Maria's placid waters.

When I finally burst from the verge of the woods the same two bald eagles I had disturbed yesterday again greeted me when I entered their silent sanctuary:

After a few minutes I then bounced back out into the treeline again in search of ruins.

I found but one more dilapidated house before noticing the Liberty pulling slowly into the harbor at a few minutes after 10am.

Fred and Captain Bonadeo made land and helped me aboard with my pack.

We carefully tied up and transferred into the Liberty again, started the engines and were off to the second leg of my journey. We were scheduled to spend a few hours on Squaw Island, some eight or nine miles to the northeast, before continuing on to Garden Island where I would spend the next two days. The enigmatic humped silhouette of High Island receded into the distance above our wake, and the lake's blue haze began to mask it once again, casting it in that almost illusory appearance of maritime mirage.

Trout Island appears to the right in that photo (MAP).

My guides shared the leftovers of their venison barbeque dinner from last night as we bobbed to our destination, cheerily discussing island stuff. One thing that came up was the old airfield that had been on High Island near the first farm field--I had not found it. Granted all that remained was a clearing and a metal ring on an old knotty pine pole that once held the windsock, but I had been on the lookout for it. Jon explained that I had been very close. He also went on to say that all of the old air strips on these islands that were once maintained by the DNR had recently been rendered unusable. They did this on purpose by ploughing large ruts across them to prevent unauthorized people from landing there, for whatever reason. All three of us cursed the idiocy of this typically nitwitted governmental decision. So now pilots in distress must be forced to crash-land, or drop it in the drink? What happens when it's one of their own DNR planes that develops engine trouble in a storm?

Jon also mentioned that he was in fact a Detroiter, originally, having grown up at Evergreen & 7 Mile. Crazy--I would never have pegged this guy as being from around the way, but sure enough he spent the first half of his life there (granted it was a different city back then). He had scored a great-paying white collar job for an auto manufacturer at a young age and had been told that if he stuck with it, he was "set for life."  But around the time he turned 25 he decided he needed more than that out of life, and gathered up his wife and all the money he had earned so far, bought a boat and took up residence on Beaver Island, hoping to be able to cut it in the hard life of an islander. That was in May of 1978, exactly 35 years ago. Back then no one wanted to live way the hell out here, so island real estate was still dirt-cheap he said.

Jon found it easier to make a life on the island than he expected, and soon found himself at the helm of a rather lucrative construction business building cottages for the rich executive types he used to work for. He never looked back. In fact he has not been back to Detroit (or even really been back to the mainland much) since he left in 1978. He asked me what it was like back there these days, since he had been hearing so much talk of it in the media. "Is it really as bad as they're saying?"

Wow…this guy really didn't know, did he? He had managed to deftly sidestep the entire downfall of Detroit…he was completely insulated. Amazing. On the other hand, I had been born at the exact same time that he left, and ironically have only witnessed Detroit's demise in my lifetime. I took a deep breath and sighed before attempting to fill him in on the past three and a half decades of modern history as he sat and listened intently, a distant fascination on his face, though he seemed barely able to comprehend. It was like I was talking to someone who had just stepped out of a time machine wearing bellbottoms and a disco medallion, trying to explain to them how the vibrant, crowded neighborhoods of 1978 were gone and replaced by empty prairies full of wrack and ruin. He was the ultimate example of white flight. Incredible.

Seas were much calmer today in the passage, and we made good time. I could already tell today would be warmer. We passed a long sand spit extending out from Whiskey Island's tail, with waves breaking over it just off our port side:

There were a lot of hazards in these treacherous waters, and Captain Bonadeo kept the charts close at hand. In fact they were more often than not, in his hand. Even though he has been doing this for 35 years, one has to be on the ball. Especially with these drastically lower lake levels…where once something may have in the past been "doable," "a little touchy," or "almost too close for comfort," it was now serious business. The tolerances on your margins for error tighten up considerably.

Here we are, just off Whiskey Island, with Squaw Island coming up in the distance (MAP):

During my time in Jon's capable hands this week, I heard the warning buzzer on the depth gauge go off a couple times, and it was rare that I could not see the bottom unless we were in true deepwater. Depths in the archipelago range from an average of seven feet to 100 feet. We had problems approaching Squaw Island, which Jon predicted beforehand. Again, he had not been here since last season, but typically the bottom in the lee of Squaw is rock, and it's hard to get an anchor to set properly because it will want to skip around across the sheer surface.

As stated earlier, Fred was a total landlubber and by this point Jon had me take over his duties. The plan was to drop both anchors, let out more than the usual amount of line, pull them hard to test them, and hope they held. After 15 minutes we still could not get one to set. I had to raise them again, and have him circle back around with me hanging over the pulpit staring into the water to visually look for a rock big enough to put the anchors on. We didn't really find one, but eventually got them to set satisfactorily enough to where the Liberty would stay put at least long enough for us to putz around the island for a couple hours without finding it aground when we came back.

We had more trouble when we tried landing in our motorboat.

Where once he usually had no trouble beaching it right up on shore, we got stuck on the rocks continuously, having to use the oars to shove ourselves the last several yards toward the shore. With all three of us and my heavy pack, we were just pushing too much draft to make it all the way, so the 200lb Fred volunteered to take his shoes off and pull us in. Jon shook his head disdainfully at the changes in routine brought on by the unusual water levels.

After a brief sit on the pebble beach we cracked up into the cedar thicket in the direction of the lighthouse, whose lantern room had only momentarily been barely visible amongst the trees at a distance during our approach to the island.

Jon knew the way, though no specific trail really existed. This island is small enough and so seldom trafficked that no trail had developed, nor had one necessarily needed to. At a mere 75 acres, this island is a flyspeck, though it is wall-to-wall evergreens so unless you're up in the lighthouse tower, you can't really tell.

Also, the bugs were epic. Of biblical plague proportions. This was the stuff of early-1800s travelogue accounts of pioneers who forged into the untamed Great Lakes region when it was mostly swamp, bewailing the clouds of insects and other pests that made life on the frontier unbearable. I finally knew what they were talking about. But luckily these were just midges, not mosquitoes or black flies, as we were still a bit early in bug season. These guys while slightly bigger than mosquitoes did not come after us or want to bite…but they were in such sheer numbers that it was impossible not to have them getting up in every facial orifice at all times. We were literally in a dense cloud of swarming bugs, which made a collective siren-like hum from their wings. We forged ahead to the lighthouse.

…the graininess you see in the areas of sky in these photos is not due to digital noise; each of those millions of dark tiny pixels is a midge (click to enlarge photo).

Happily, Squaw Island Light is not one of those cookie-cutter design ones, and has a bit of its own architectural uniqueness. Here, you can see the midges in much better focus:

This architectural uniqueness was one of the things that made me want to come check it out. For a long time it sat abandoned to the elements, but Jon told me it and the whole island had been bought up by the current owner for a mere $250k several years ago, and that he had unsuccessfully tried to convince his dad at the time that it was a worthy investment. Stabilization work had been done, and it was currently for sale again at around two million if I'm not mistaken. Whether it will sell for that or not remains to be seen.

Jon knew the guy to some extent, and has an agreement to come check on the place whenever he is here to make sure it is not vandalized, and to take people such as myself up inside for a look.

The island got its name because according to Anishinaabe folklore it had powers to ensure fertility in women. Squaw Island was first considered for a lighthouse in 1880, but it wasn't until 1887 that the Lighthouse Board decided it was time, noting,

The passage to the westward of Beaver Island is being generally used by steam-barges from Chicago and Milwaukee and other ports on the lakes, during fall and spring, when the northwest winds prevail. It would be used at all times but for the shoals and dangers on the north shore of Lake Michigan. An appropriation has already been made for a light at Pointe Seul Choix, and with another at Squaw Island the passage can be made at all times with greater safety.

Unfortunately Congress didn't come through with the money until 1891, and the station did not go in service until the end of the 1892 season. The cornerstone here faintly reads "1892":

The fourth-order Fresnel lens revolved to produce a red flash every fifteen seconds, and the steam whistle operated with five-second blasts followed by alternating intervals of 20 and 40 seconds of silence. The lens's rotation was powered by a dropping weight that had to be wound up every three hours and 40 minutes.

The sophisticated security system in use here involves a small iron hook attached to the door, which latches into another metal eyelet in the door frame. Jon looked relieved when I acknowledged that I was done taking my exterior photos, and we could proceed inside to escape the bugs.

Jon went right for the log book to record our visit and check to see who had been here last. I began to wander into the cool, dark shadowy interior of the boarded-up house. Not much serious work had been done yet, but then again, it was in pretty good shape to start with.

The stairs were awful nice.

During the thirty-seven years Squaw Island Lighthouse was in service, it only had two keepers, William Shields and Owen C. McCauley. On December 14th, 1900, Shields, his wife Mary, and Mary’s niece Lucy along with assistant keepers Owen McCauley, Lucien Morden and their dog packed up their 22-foot sailboat to head back to Beaver Island for the winter. 

During the trip back to Beaver a sudden squall kicked up and capsized their boat, sending all six occupants into the drink. Unable to right the boat by themselves, they were forced to lash themselves to the overturned hull and hope for rescue, all except for Morden that is, who refused to do so.

The dog, and both women had expired by nightfall, and a few hours later, Morden too succumbed to exposure and slipped into the lake. By morning the boat had drifted into the shipping lane, and the steamer Manhattan spotted it and came to Shields and MacCauley's rescue. They, and the two ice-covered women were hauled aboard and taken to Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Upstairs, a couple mostly-bare bedrooms lay cloaked in darkness, but for some creepy light filtering through the bare lath slats in the ceiling:

MacCauley was treated and returned to duty on Squaw Island by the next season, but Shields wasn't as lucky. Frostbite claimed his right leg, which had to be amputated. He fulfilled the rest of his career to the Lighthouse Service at the Charlevoix depot, while MacCauley stayed on post here at Squaw until this lighthouse was superseded in 1928 by the new Lansing Shoal Light, and deactivated.

A sort of balcony or atrium:

I somehow stumbled my way directly to the base of the tower.

When my two comrades caught up to me, we went straight to the top. A view from a staircase window in the tower:

The view was something else. Even with googolplexes of these f@#$%n bugs up in our grilles this was worth the price of admission and then some. We could see the entire circumference of the island from the lantern room here with no trouble.

Garden Island seen to the left, and Beaver Island to the right. MAP.

The assistant keeper's house was the one with scaffolding. There was also a chapel built here by the keepers at one time, but after the station was abandoned it was looted of its fixtures, which included stained glass.

As you can see, the catwalk railings were coated in midges too:

The dauntless mariner himself:

To the southwest, Whiskey Island was in our immediate view, with High Island behind it, and smaller Trout Island off to the right:

In an even more zoomed view, you can barely make out the silhouette of Gull Island to the right of Trout Island:

To the north, the coastline of Michigan's Upper Peninsula was visible:

Off in the distance stood the hazy shape of Lansing Shoal Light, which is still active and serves the purpose that Squaw Island Light used to, once upon a time, in a more romantic era:

Crazy that we could so easily descry the entire surface of this miniscule island from up here.

If not for the bugs we could have stayed up here much longer.

Finally, in the interest of time, we came back downstairs to the kitchen.

Fred spent some more time perusing old entries in the log book to see who had come here from where, while Jon read over his shoulder making wisecracks at his expense.

I also checked out the basement cursorily while they were reading, but there was nothing of note.

It was now time to venture over toward the old fog signal building, most of which Jon noted was in excellent condition for having never been repointed in its entire life.

I offered my usual theory that the thinner mortar joints used between bricks back then was the cause, and Jon, being a contractor himself immediately verified this, saying that the fatter mortar joints of our modern times are indeed more prone to decay, and are the product of builders trying to save a course or two of bricks by making the mortar joints wider.

Inside, the old boiler had long been scrapped out and melted down into a battleship or something back in WWII. Two lone pieces of Gilded Age mechanism remained--he explained they were part of a timing system that dictated the intervals of when the fog signal would sound.

CLICK for part 5

References:
Great Lakes Lighthouses Encyclopedia, by Larry & Patricia Wright, p. 335
http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=712

Beaver Archipelago, Pt. 3: "Coyote Hungry"

May 2013.

RETURN to part 2

I continued investigating the House of David village. Most of the other cabins here have not fared as well as the first couple I had found however, as I could tell many had suffered fires by the fact that I would be walking through the woods and suddenly find myself surrounded by an accumulation of metal items--the only things that would survive a fire in a wooden house--many of them distorted from extreme heat.

These usually included the aforementioned cookware, cast iron stoves, and bedsteads. Whether the fires were set by vandals, by crackhead scrappers, by lightning, or by Viking raiders is unclear.

This bedstead was actually inside of a yew bush, almost completely cloaked from sight:

The rest of these metallic survivors I believe remain visible on the surface in defiance of the decades only thanks to the odd passerby such as myself spotting them half buried in leaves or soil, and lifting them up out of the dirt for a better look, cleaning them off for a photo, then setting them back down on top again.

If not for the occasional explorer doing this once every couple years, they would have sunk below the surface long ago I think.

Mmmm, how many batches of venison stew do you think were whipped up in this bad boy?

Trick question--none! The Israelites were friggin' vegans. They prolly made a bunch of onion soup in there.

I had probably explored an area several acres in size by now.

Huh, this next thing had a leaf spring on it, but did not look like a motor vehicle. Maybe went to a wooden wagon or a sleigh:

I lifted it out of the ground and leaned it against the tree for others to find.

More bedsteads:

Somebody's fallen front door, with a birch tree busting through the window:

Note the hand-made wooden peg action:

This one finally succumbed to its last winter gale:

Some plaster still evident on the lath wall:

A few shakes left on the exterior too:

A little ways away some more debris:

A distinct depression, one of many that I found:

…undoubtedly a root cellar, or basement.

Well it seemed like I had probably found as much as there was to find here, though mysteriously I had not yet seen any sign of Lake Maria, or a trail going there, so I was not sure if I had indeed found all the remains of the Israelite village. I certainly hadn't located the "House of Virgins" yet either, heh. For tonight though I wanted to make sure I had enough time to make it out to the west side of the island to climb the big dune, which would be the most time-consuming activity of my visit. I could finish investigating the village tomorrow morning while waiting for Captain Bonadeo to pick me up. I expected it to take at least an hour to walk to the west shore of the island, so I started off to the trail to ensure that I had enough time to make it back before dark.

The other outhouse back by the Alpha cabin marked the head of the Top of the World Trail:

The trail cut through a sharp dune-shaped berm in the forest floor, and started a gentle ascent that would continue for almost the entire journey to the western side of the island.

There are no deer on High Island today, so there is plenty of dense undergrowth and different types of vegetation that would normally be denuded by such herds. There are a few coyotes however, as Jon explained a few inevitably get stranded here every spring when the ice breaks up, and are forced to survive the summer on the island scrounging what they can find, sometimes resorting to cannibalism. He joked that they get pretty hungry and might resort to going after a human if they got the chance, seeing as they would be awfully desperate. He was actually only half joking. "They prolly won't go after ya, but they'll definitely follow you around, and check you out after you leave."

It wasn't long before I came to the first of three old reclaimed farm fields that had belonged to the House of David colony. You can identify old farms by the fact that the forest opens up and suddenly you're in a clearing with old fruit trees, and yew or juniper bushes.

The frame of an old (1940s?) auto sat overturned at the edge of the field, though it also looked to have a tongue on it, so I don't know if it had been modified into a trailer or what. According to my readings in Ruchhoft's book and the map I had xeroxed out of it, this was the first of three large abandoned fields that I would have to pass through before coming to the dunes. It also meant that I had already passed Lake Maria somewhere to the south of me.

Fruit tree:

From there I was plunged back into a dense, dark cedar grove where the trail started to get extremely faint. I noticed however that someone must have been out here at some point in the very recent past with a hatchet to remove the saplings that were growing up in the path, and to tie little pink ribbons on boughs every so often to mark the trail. Or perhaps it was a government field biologist delineating a wetland boundary?

The steeply-cut saplings still had sap moist on their stumps; whoever did it was here very recently. When I later informed Captain Bonadeo of this, he said he had no knowledge of who it could be. There were also some intentionally snapped boughs you can see on the tree to the left in this photo:

Leaving the cedars and entering a spruce and pine area, I suddenly saw an old farm implement from the 1800s with a large tree growing up out of it!

Ruchhoft had mentioned finding one or two farm implements including a McCormick mower, but this was definitely not one of the ones he mentioned seeing. Bonus!

I marveled at how old it was and at how big the tree was that had been growing up through its middle, and at how the level of the ground was now up past the hubs of the machine's wheels.

This thing had clearly been sitting here for a very long time. Well, at least 90 years to be precise, since the Israelites had abandoned their island commune permanently by 1927.

Crazy.

In about 150 years, this tree is going to engulf most of the machine, and it will look like a robotic steampunk tree with random gears sticking out of it...

This looked more like a baler or harvester or something…? My city-boy eyes are not expert enough to make a positive ID.

The House of David were not the only whites to try to settle High Island; as early as 1850 King James' Strangites came here looking to set up a satellite of the mother kingdom. But this didn't fly too well because unfortunately for the Strangites, by this time the all-Ottawa population of High Island had already been converted to catholicism by the missionaries, and were not keen whatsoever on these Mormon goofballs encroaching on their fisheries, so that was pretty much the end of that idea.

The strictly vegetarian Israelites got along with the Ottawa much better, and in fact often traveled to Garden Island in the summer to have picnics, and of course spread their "teachings."

I came to the Field #2, which sort of also blends together with Field #3, where I found another archaic farm implement. A hay rake, I believe.

There was also supposed to be the ruined frame of a barn just inside the woods at the corner of Field #2, but I never saw it.

I also started to find several cairns of fieldstones, piled up on the edges of the field from when it was originally cleared for ploughing by the Israelites over a century ago.

This is where I began to lose the trail, and had to reckon my own path. Luckily the way was a constant true-westerly bearing, and I could begin to see the forested backs of the towering dunes looming in the distance. I cut a course in that direction, passing a few more cairns and silent, rusting field machines.

It was easy to conjure sepia-toned images in my mind of the faithful standing in a line passing large stones from one set of grubby hands to the next, slowly building these cairns so they could plough and sow.

I somewhat recognized this relic as one of those pictured in Ruchhoft's book:

I began to truly understand the feeling of timelessness and romanticism that Ruchhoft described when he hiked this island in 1988 and 1989. This place was a time capsule beyond reckoning. What I was seeing now was exactly identical to what is shown in the tiny black and white photographs he published in his book 23 years prior. Nothing had changed; time had literally stood still here. That was an eerie feeling…I don't think I've ever experienced a more purely literal example of a time capsule than this; it was like I was walking through the pages of the book.

One advantage I had over Ruchhoft was that I was here in early spring before leaf-out, whereas he came in summer when dense foliage obscures much of the island's lost relics. As a result I saw many things that he obviously missed, some of them right under his nose.

For what it's worth there is another photo book about life on High Island called Island Life, Island Toil: The House of David on High Island, by Ramon Nelson, but it is out of print and expensive. Nelson was one of the last Israelites to leave the island in 1927.

I found my way around back of what looked to be the tallest of the dunes, the "Top of the World," and began the incredibly steep ascent on the sandy near-vertical trail.

The climb made me huff and puff, but it wasn't long before I reached the top.

The 360-degree view is breathtaking, though I must say that I was quite bummed to find the sun had long since retreated behind a drab pall of gray, killing any hope of seeing the spectacular sunset I had come for.

Looking west:

Looking to the south, I could see, amazingly, North and South Fox Islands (to the right, with Beaver Island to the left):

Here is a closer zoomed view of the Fox Islands:

Looking out to the west again we see Gull Island, the smallest, and most isolated outpost of the archipelago:

When I originally contacted Captain Bonadeo about a trip back in spring of 2010, I had asked him about Gull Island. He does go out there sometimes to take bird researchers (maybe once a year), but because of the extra distance it is very expensive to go there. The island is completely barren and was never inhabited; the only structure is an automated steel lighthouse beacon that was built in the 1940s or '50s and has since been decommissioned. He described both it and the island as unremarkable.

Another of High Island's many peculiarities is that despite having had a population, there were never any observable cemeteries. The Ottawa people of course did all their burials on Garden Island, as was tradition. But since the Israelites were not supposed to die--lest it be a sign of sinfulness or omen of weakening faith--it was rumored that the bodies of those who did perish before the "chosen" time were secretly taken at night and interred on the tiny surrounding islands. For this reason, there has been thought that unmarked mass graves may exist on Gull Island or Whiskey Island, which are the closest ones to High Island.

The drab sky began to dampen my spirits, so I started back toward camp, deciding to have a small fire tonight while sipping on some whiskey.

When I arrived back at "Alpha," I rolled out my bed, dragged a chair over from "Omega," and made a small stick fire to brighten the gloomy evening that was descending upon the island. My mind drifted far as I sat and stared into the kindling oak twigs, clutching my flask until well after dark. This was a new experience for sure. I was the only human being on this entire island. Upon retiring, I closed the door of my cabin tightly, and slid the heavy kitchen table across behind it. Not sure why, but I didn't feel entirely alone. And I didn't want any of those stranded, starving coyotes coming in, heh.

When I suddenly jolted awake a few hours later, I told myself that the disturbing sound I had heard was not footsteps in the dry leaves outside the door, and that I should just go back to sleep as quickly as possible before I started thinking about it.

CLICK for part 4

References:
Exploring North Manitou, South Manitou, High and Garden Islands of the Lake Michigan Archipelago, by R.H. Ruchhoft