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The road leading to the Lighthouse, from the point where we parked the car.

A trip to the Lighthouse

(The editor, on vacation in Northern Michigan, filed this report.)

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, Sept. 10 -- One of the various things a visitor -- or at least this visitor -- likes to do on Bois Blanc is visit the Lighthouse.

A former fully operational Lighthouse, it is a brick structure located on a peninsula on the north shore, ideally situated for alerting passing ships to the presence of land and, for that matter, shallow waters.

The building was turned years ago into a privately held vacation retreat, but seems to be vacant at all times now, though a garden hose in the yard and the recently maintained lawn indicates somebody is keeping it neat.

It no longer alerts the passing ships. A small, unmanned, cylindrical tower with a light atop it serves that purpose. The tower is located not far from the Lighthouse, around the rocky bend of shoreline.

Anyway, the route to the Lighthouse site took us along the Firetower Road, which cuts roughly south-to-north through the heart of the Island, and then onto a narrow, tree-hugged, bumpy road near the north shore, a road with roots seemingly reaching up every few yards to grab passersby. The best ways to traverse that road -- more a path, though just wide enough for a car if you don't mind scratches from overgrowth on your vehicle's sides and roof -- are on a 4-wheeler or in a rugged jeep.

Neither I nor my brother and his wife Gussie possess such a vehicle. We instead drove their car out there on that path -- crawled is more like it -- for about four miles, until reaching a point in the road where parking is possible just short of where the road offers a Y: a choice of another mile and a quarter to the lighthouse on an equally harrowing drive to the left, or a continuation of the original roadway to the right.

We parked there, and walked the last mile-plus to the Lighthouse. I had been there a couple of times in recent years, the last time using a bicycle, which was a mistake. The road does not cater to bikes: it has swales and sudden rises and places where the rainwater has gathered into small lakes, and the root system is particularly impassable. Without getting up a steady head of steam, there is no easy way to negotiate those grabbing claws.

******

The walk in on this visit was unremarkable, although a sign a few miles back had raised my antennae. It cautioned about the presence of bears. In truth, I had only heard of one bear on the Island in the past -- a fellow who had evidently swum over from the mainland. If there were now multiples, I assumed a mate had followed, and a family produced.

But I saw no bears in the woods adjoining our walkway, and no deer or anything else aside from gnats that swarmed periodically in the humidity. The air was still, the road covered as it was by a continuous canopy of trees.

We reached the Lighthouse in good time, and wandered around its perimeter. It was boarded up; there was no opportunity to even look inside, although an Island friend later told me there is not much to see -- that the place is virtually devoid of furnishings it once held.

We walked down a crumbling concrete walkway that led from the Lighthouse to the rocky beach, and along the beach until we had rounded a point bending almost 90 degreees to our left, and there gained a view of Mackinac Island in the distance. The walking was tricky, what with shifting mid-sized rocks underfoot, but I spotted a large walking stick -- a small tree branch with a hooked ending -- that I picked up and which helped me work my way back to the Lighthouse without falling. And I used the branch all the way back to the car, if for no other reason than it had seemed to call out to me when I had first seen it -- telling me it wanted no more to do with the harsh winds and waves and, not too far distant, a Straits of Mackinac shoreline winter.

******

Upon returning to the car, we pulled out of our parking space and followed the road to the right, and found more of the same -- overhanging growth scraping and scratching at the sides and top of the car, and roots reaching up and jostling the vehicle from left to right and right to left, putting us precariously close to trees, both intact and broken, that hugged in on either side.

"I'm glad you're driving," I told Gussie. "And I'm glad it's your car."

The journey through the woods seemed to take forever; and always hanging over us was the thought that another vehicle might be out there, traveling in the opposite direction. There were no places, save maybe one or two, that could serve as pull-offs. Fortunately no other vehicle appeared, and we were not put to the test.

Another challenge: Places in the road, appearing with some regularity, where the roots seemed to rise so high that they might rip out the car's underbody. But Gussie negotiated those slowly, and no evident damage was done.

There was also the fear that a fallen tree would block our progress. We saw many small, freshly cut trunks along the narrow road, just out of our path, presumably sawed and removed by drivers better equipped than we were, for we had no logging tools.

Finally, after struggling through a low-lying portion of road that had been filled with gravel -- so much of it that I thought we might sink into it -- we made it out to what by comparison was a superhighway, a wide dirt road that would take us to the eastern end of the island and then south and west, back around toward our cottage.

The speed limit was suddenly up to 25 miles an hour, which seemed fast after crawling through a jungle.

******

Back at the cottage, I embraced the pleasures of a restful vacation, reading the newspaper and a novel, and watching some sports on TV. We had resisted turning on the television here for two weeks, but finally relented. After the nerve-racking trip to the Lighthouse, it seemed a great luxury.

Now, as I write this, the days here are waning. I leave on the ferry on Friday morning, and should be back in Schuyler County late that night. And probably the whole way home, I'll be thinking about how and when I will manage my next visit to Bois Blanc Island -- presumably a stay without a trip to the Lighthouse.

Unless I get my hands on a 4-wheeler or a rugged Jeep.

Photos in text: The Lighthouse, the bear-warning sign, and a sign that adorns the front of the Lighthouse.

A Lighthouse sign is affixed to a tree leaning at an angle. This is at the point where the roadway in the forest splits, with this being the path to the left.

******

And earlier:

A sailboat and a freighter with a crane ply the waters of the Straits of Mackinac.

Deer, birds and friends

(The editor, on vacation in Northern Michigan, filed this report.)

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, Sept. 2 -- It was like a scene from a Disney cartoon.

There were deer in the background, grazing, while a black squirrel and then a tan one feasted at a bird feeder. Between and after the squirrels' visits, bluejays, chickadees, hummingbirds and goldfinches plucked out the bird seed.

It was all so idyllic, I could almost hear Disney Cinderella music, and halfway expected the creatures to start creating a dress from nature's threads for the movie's heroine.

This was the backyard of the Monson cottage, populated during August and part of September by Marilyn and Joel Monson of St. Louis. Marilyn has been visiting the Island during summers all her life, which now has passed 70 years. Her late mother, Mary Babler, was up here something like 90 summers.

The cottage is one that Marilyn's grandmother and Mary's mother Lila Blome once inhabited, back when I was a kid summering here, back when I first knew Marilyn. After Mrs. Blome passed, the cottage fell to another daughter, Annette Blome, who served as my father's secretary in a United States Shoe Corporation office in Detroit in the 1960s.

It was Mary Babler and her husband Wayne who got my parents to visit Bois Blanc in the first place, back in the early 1950s. They had been neighbors in Manhasset, on Long Island, just before my Dad hooked on as a traveling salesman for U.S. Shoe and moved to Detroit, downstate a few hours from the Island. And it was through the Bablers that Dad met and hired Annette.

In other words, the Haeffners and Bablers go way back, and used to mean quite a lot to one another. As chance would have it, though, the relationships of the succeeding generation have been a bit more tenuous. But that doesn't mean we aren't delighted when we do link up.

As my brother Bob and I knocked on the Monson porch door Monday, I heard Marilyn's voice from within yelling "Just a minute" before she came into sight from the rear of the cottage -- probably the kitchen. She was looking hard through the open front door and the screened porch door to see who it might be, and failing in the effort.

"The Haeffner boys have come calling," I yelled out to help her, and with that she stopped and clapped her hands, said "Ohmigod," and hurried to let us in, giving us big hugs. I hadn't seen her, I suspect, in a dozen years, and marveled at how young she still seems. She had been on the Island each of those 12 years, and so had I, but never at the same time. With my delayed rental this summer, our vacations coincided -- and thus the visit to her cottage.

We got caught up with one another. She's a semi-retired appraiser of personal goods, the sort of expert needed, I suppose, when wills are contested or marriages fail. After a while, she asked me point-blank: "Did you remarry?" I .hadn't been sure she had known about my wife's passing 10 years ago, but clearly she had heard.

"No," I answered.

"I'm surprised," she said.

I shrugged and smiled. "Me, too," I answered.

Then she showed us the cottage, upgraded over the past 15 years and expanded. It now has a fully modern and bright kitchen, and it was from there, through a window looking onto the backyard, that I spotted the two deer and the squirrels and the birds.

"There are actually five deer that come around. They visit the cottages all along here," Marilyn said, explaining that the cottagers leave food for them, such as apples. The pair out there didn't seem too skittish, although they looked in the direction of the window every so often.

The black squirrel, meanwhile, hogged the bird feeder for about ten minutes. Then the tan squirrel replaced him. When he left, the birds returned in force. The jays, meanwhile, were alighting on a table where Marilyn had placed some sort of food -- I couldn't tell what.

"Amazing," I said.

"Yes, isn't it?" she said -- although it's not always sunshine and Disney scenes. She said a deer had been killed on her property during a recent hunting season, and that a bullet had penetrated her cottage.

She hadn't been there, but seemed no less annoyed than if she had been..

But that aside, all was well with her and hers, and we ended the visit with a promise to get back in touch, certainly before another decade has passed.

******

It took me a few days to get into the rhythm of the Island, but now I'm coasting. I've watched a couple of films I had neglected -- The Wolf of Wall Street and Dallas Buyers Club -- and polished off five novels -- by Larry McMurtry and Kurt Vonnegut (two of my favorite authors), Michael Connelly (gaining fast), Isabel Allende and the great 1930s author James Hilton.

I've taken walks and naps, and eaten an occasional meal at Hawk's Landing -- where I met a couple of charming young ladies who work there, close friends Misty and Sarah, the latter a sister of the restaurant's new owner, Austin Sims. Misty and her husband Brandon live year-round on the Island, and have invited me back for a few days in the winter, just so I can see what it's like. I'd like to try it. Crazy, I guess, considering they had snow piled 13 feet high along the roadway last winter.

Anyway, I'm about halfway through my vacation, and thinking how restful and peaceful it is. Before long, though, I will be back in the thick of Schuyler County happenings.

From the top: Behind the Monson cottage were deer, bluejays, a woodpecker and squirrels.

A goldfinch and a chickadee share the bird feeder.

My brother Bob.

Left: The two deer behind the Monson cottage. Right: The Top of the Rock, which my brother Bob, his wife Gussie and I are occupying.

*****

And earlier:

Sunset on Bois Blanc, looking west toward the Main Dock.

Real estate, hawk and wolf

(The editor, on vacation in Northern Michigan, filed this report.)

By Charlie Haeffner

Bois Blanc Island, Michigan, Aug. 29 -- Real estate seems to be the chief topic of conversation this summer on the Island.

There is a notable property for sale, a large New England-styled home on the southwest point of Bois Blanc, on what used to be forested terrain intercut by a sidewalk (still there) that was known as Lovers' Lane.

The owner family raised the ire of traditional islanders about 15 years ago when it bought and cleared the land, and erected what is, in truth, an attractive home, built to be used year-round, if desired. It is also designed for a crowd, containing six bedrooms and (I think) six bathrooms.

Alas, circumstance has prompted a sale of the home, asking price at the outset being $775,000. That wasn't getting any nibbles, and now it's down to $397,000.

That's still a little steep for me, but consider the Insel Haus bed and breakfast along the southern shore, maybe four miles from the aforementioned dwelling. The Insel Haus is a lovely place, a refurbished cottage enlarged and enhanced by an elderly couple who would like now to sell it. They've already unloaded something like 125 acres of surrounding land. The building -- with nine bedrooms and nine bathrooms, a kitchen, living room, fireplace, office, and Great Room for meetings -- is priced at just $900,000. The price includes about 25 acres.

Tempting ... if I had about $850,000 more than I do.

*****

Having lost our usual rental -- a ramshackle cottage that could sleep seven comfortably, but which was sold to a family that doesn't want renters, and is in fact renovating the entire structure -- my brother Bob, his wife Gussie, and I have landed in a three-story, log-cabin-styled rental east of the Insel Haus B&B by about a mile.

It has plenty of sleeping space -- we could handle three or four more people easily -- and plenty of privacy, when that's what we crave. The building is set back from the road a couple of hundred yards, and thus clear of the usual dust kicked up by passing vehicles, and clear of most of the engine noise.

Reading has been a primary occupation in the first week here, although we are now embracing walks, including one Thursday in which I spotted a large blur with wings launching from the ground under a fir tree enroute to the lower branches of another tree.

"What was that?" I asked, but I had been the only one to see it. Before long it took flight again, though, and Gussie said "Hawk!" -- which indeed it was, and quite a large one.

"Did you see that, Bob?" I asked, turning to my brother. But he, having sustained some vision problems of late, hadn't spotted it. So I cautioned him, throwing my arms wide to the side.

"It's dangerous, man," I said. "It had a wingspan of, like, twelve feet."

He laughed, and mumbled something about how amusing it would be to see me carried away in the bird's talons.

I tried to get a photo of the hawk when it took off again, but had only my phone camera, and couldn't convey the bird's size with that small lens.

Anyway, that was just one of various creatures I've spotted so far. There have been several deer -- in the side yard of a cottage, in the road (as I rounded a bend, braking and then staring eye to eye with a fawn until it bolted), and in the parking lot at Hawk's Landing, the lone convenience store and one of two eateries on the Island.

And as we sat on our cottage's front porch, relaxing after a filling dinner one night, Gussie and I spotted what we thought at first was a fox, standing in the driveway about thirty yards away. But it was considerably larger than any foxes we have ever seen, so we decided that perhaps it was a wolf. It had wandered out of a field and was crossing to woods when it spotted us and stopped. I tried to pull my phone out of my pocket to snap a photo, but didn't have time. The animal, after looking nervously back toward the field and then toward us, skittered off into the woods ahead, easily the safest escape route.

"Didn't want his picture taken," I mused.

"Guess not," said Gussie.

*****

We got up here pretty late this summer, what with the rental switch, and so have missed most of "the season," which basically covers July and August.

I managed to get to the last Game Night of the season, held as always on a Tuesday night in the Coast Guard Chapel on the Island's east end, and upon walking in spotted a group of four men on one side of the room talking, and two tables to the left with women playing board games. I headed for one of the tables, pulled up a nearby empty chair, and sat down. I knew several of the women from previous years here, and nodded to them.

"Up here kind of late this year," one observed, the opening gambit in our first conversation in more than a year.

"Yep," I said. "Rental issues."

She nodded and resumed playing. And that was about it, until I encountered her and her sister the next day at Hawk's Landing. They were seated at a table with a couple of other Island residents, and their food was just being delivered to them. They nodded at me as I entered, and I joined them without preamble.

"New menu," said one, referring to an enlarged menu introduced by Hawk's new owner, a young man I have known since he was little more than knee high.

"What's good?" I asked.

"Oh, pretty much the same as before," she said, and so I ordered one of my old favorites, grilled ham and cheese with fries ... and wasn't disappointed.

*****

Temperatures have been moderate throughout the summer, and according to six-month-a-year resident Bruce McAfee, "water activities have been nonexistent. I haven't been out in the kayak at all, and nobody's been riding jet skis."

The Old Dock -- decades ago used as the main arrival and departure point for the local ferry, but now a recreation site -- has been largely quiet, although on my way back from visiting McAfee, I noted that a group of girls on the dock, overseen by their father, were jumping in the water, and screaming at the shock of it, for the water is not overly warm.

The ice from the winter was still evident in the Straits well into the spring, causing a delay in the start of the season at nearby Mackinac Island, for the ferries that are its lifeblood couldn't risk runs until the ice melted. It was, everyone says, the most incredibly cold winter here in years, a place used to bone-chilling winds. Access to the mainland was maintained for months across the ice by snowmobile -- normally a risky venture, but not this time. The ice was incredibly thick.

I've received mixed reviews from some of the 70 or so Bois Blanc residents who wintered here. "It was brutal," said one, but others saw it another way. Noted one: "It was the best winter here in ages. There was plenty of snow, lots of snowmobiling, and always something to do."

******

Daytime temperatures since we arrived have averaged in the 70s, didn't top 67 yesterday or this morning, but rose to 72 this afternoon after a rainstorm moved through. The nighttime low has been 45 -- an extra-blanket night.

Coming up: more rain. But I don't think I'll let it deter me from my walks. This place is 35 square miles of intrigue. There is always something new to see around the next corner.

Photos in text:

From top: Leaping in the water at the old dock; a butterfly that was flying around during one of the editor's walks; a winged visitor comes in for a landing on Bois Blanc Island's Old Dock; and an old, operational pump behind the Coast Guard Chapel, which is a summer place of worship on the Island's east end. The chapel is a converted Coast Guard boat house. Pumps like this are found in several locations on the Island.

Remains of an old auto graveyard, which figured in the plot of one of the editor's novels,
Island Nights. A pile of rusted automobiles were hauled from the shore on the Island's southwest corner by barge decades ago, but car parts still emerge periodically from beneath the beach rocks.

 

 

 

© The Odessa File 2014
Charles Haeffner
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Odessa, New York 14869

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