Lake Michigan Circle Tour

                                                               

 

 We see them from our bedroom window, the clouds rising from Lake Michigan.  They look like majestic mountains and their gravity pulls us into their orbit, into the Lake Michigan Circle Tour.

 

 

 

Rogue comets, we circle the lake and then, like  forgotten lighthouses, dissolve into mist.

Our Audi TTS roadster, imbued with a pressure cooker four pot, fat rubber and a rag top, makes us eager for roads winding and long.

We open the top and invite the spirit of the lake to ride along.


 

 





Lake Michigan invites us to be a dancing bear, a captured animal of time.  Its ceaseless motion laps against our foundations.  It gathers perceptions, reflects vertigo and ushers ambivalence onto shores strewn with keepsakes, of discarded choices, and of the cold mornings of our youth.  Drift with it, slacken in its sleep. Weep to its rhythm.  It remembers us as a geologic feather, as diamonds to a fault.

 

 

 

At the Manitowoc steam ferry, Mennonites wearing coal black hats issue into its gaping maw to begin their journey across the cold and incompressible lake. 

 

  

 As it slowly recedes, its coal stack smudges  the pale blue, oil painting sky.



 

 

 

In Door County, the last shreds of summer hang in the air: wisps of fish boils, faded kaleidoscopes of  scenery and the faint echoes of the promises whispered by young lovers on August's warm sand.

 

 

To capture the last of summer Fred and Fuzzy cover their lakeside bar with a striped canopy and encase it in a plastic shroud.  It's a  temporary camp, a souvenir of summer destined to disappear in the night like a traveling circus.    Already tables on the lakeside lawn are nearly deserted, the drunken boaters of summer are gone.  We arrive in time for the sunset.  A Romanian born server greets us like late arriving parishioners, and we joke of Transylvania.   

 

On this near solitude a chill settles and the lake reflects its colors back to the sky.  I order a margarita made with crushed local cherries.  In its sweetness I taste the myth of Door County.

The October sun, now hidden behind the headland, tosses light like Mardi Gras candy against the clouds, filling the sky with a pink and orange gauze.  I order another cherry myth and watch its colors fade.

Mackinac Island

Long ago Mackinac banished cars,  meaning only bicycles and horse drawn carriages ply its streets. We surrender our Audi to a smiling valet for a twelve dollar fee.  From the trunk we assemble a tornado wreckage of luggage to bring to the island. The crew gathers it all for its journey across the Straits of Mackinac.  In exchange for a fistful of claim checks, a stranger drives our roadster away.

 

Aboard the ferry,  the cast and crew  perform a practiced patter, a routine of courtesy and efficiency that conveys the wisdom and courtesy of a tip.

 

 

 

 

With the ferry loaded with the bicycles, strollers and tourists sipping their morning coffee we set out on Lake Huron and motor over steel blue water toward the Mackinac Bridge and Lake Michigan beyond.   Once under the bridge we linger gaping at its perspective of latticed ironwork stretching off to the distant haze.  In aspect the towers appear to bend and sway as we bob beneath them.  The captain recites his litany of bridge facts over the loudspeaker: length, tower height and depth of the water. He neglects to mention that some people are so afraid to cross the bridge that they hire someone to drive their car for them.   Nor does he mention unfortunate woman who lost her life when the gusting wind swept her Yugo over the rails. 

 

On the ferry's exposed upper deck the wind drives us deeper into our jackets as the journey becomes uncomfortable.  Finally, through tearing eyes, we see the light house of Mackinac Island.  As it grows larger, the captain resumes his narrative, pointing out the Grand Hotel, the Governors Mansion and Fort Mackinac all taking their place in history on the rocky hillsides above the harbor.

 

After we dock and walk down the pier
we're greeted by the sound of hoof falls
echoing on the cobblestones. 

Reflected in the horses' languid eyes,
this island is bridled by the
conjured harness
of nostalgia.

The old smells of horse breath
and dung waft on the breeze.
Ornate carriages

issue along Main street
then climb back to the Grand Hotel.
Like a intricate wind up toy the island moves in
a measured and repeated sequence.

 

 

 

Behind plate glass windows
candy makers spread, scrape 
and swirl batter
until a solid fudge emerges to be
sliced and sold,  chunks

milk fat and sugar that
converts to body heat

 

The thin veil of yesterday lures the tourists to explore this island outpost by bicycle, footpath or the steadily clopping horse.
The tourist trade supported bike rental shops, horse drawn taxi tours, fudge shops, antique stores, art galleries and of course bars. All colorful, all lively, all about to close for the season.

Drawn by four horses, drivers dressed in top hats, red tails and shiny black boots, the polished carriages are the emissaries of the Grand Hotel . With this livery the Grand Hotel makes itself pervasive.

 

 

Those not staying at the Grand Hotel are welcome to come in and, for a ten dollar fee, have a look around.
Today we a paying guests and explore every corner of this stationary cruise ship.  We pay particular attention the front porch that is so long its far end disappears in the distance.

Beneath the vast northern sky
The Straits of Mackinac 
bathe the sprawling porch of the Grand Hotel with
a light of silver and interstellar blue.
It falls upon the line of rocking chairs stretched out along the porch
making them a glow a heavenly white. 
 
In the distance, out beyond the Mackinac Bridge, 
clouds appear and soon all is obscured
by the approaching fog.   

 

 

 

 

 
 


Fort Mackinac

In the darkened block house

overlooking a fog shrouded
meadow and forest edge
A diorama depicts
the humiliation of surrender.


On a film loop shown
in the mess hall,
the Americans
fail to recapture
Fort Mackinac
every thirty minutes .

 

At the appointed time,
a replica cannon fires 
upon a memory of the enemy
and reminds us

of a war we won.

 

In the recreation hall a mannequin bartender
serves plastic beers to mannequins with
realistically depicted thirst.
Our genuine thirst compels us to end our tour.
A volunteer soldier points out
the narrow stairs down the cliff
to the harbor
and a friendly bar.

 

 

At the roadside fruit stand
 a jumbled pile of
pumpkins fluoresces
in the autumn sunlight

The gray asphalt
 along the edge of the road
was crumbling.
Our tires pick it up
as we drive off, spitting
staccato rocks in our
wheel wells.

With the rain shimmered tarmac
glowing through the windshield
we leave the bounty of Michigan
behind.










The Honey Crisp, Jonathon, and
 Red Delicious that

once hung patiently on trees,
now ripe, and packed in paper handled bags
foster traffic jams
in Charelvoix..

We join the throng.

Petoskey Stones

trace the small lives lived

a million years ago

under the sea.

 

Leland

So far from the ocean we had found a sea. Here were plaques dedicated to the fisherman who recanted their rights and gave in to the lake. They lived to plumb the depths and mine the shining fish. Under the lake's spell their backs were broken, their shells hardened, and their whiskey breath bleached the boards of their homes. Their sins, heaved to the depths, resurfaced in the Leland spillway
as great leaping salmon .

 

 

 

 

 

Sleeping Bear, where patches of grass sway in the wind.

Clinging to the shifting back of the sleeping bear, we climbed mountains of cake mix sand.  The children of Asia joined us in ignoring the CLOSED DUE TO FEDERAL SHUTDOWN signs.  We tiny pixels joined to form a massive planet of sand.

Past dead trees cast adrift on the dunes,
 past transitory foot prints, 
to an ascendant and ancient sea we climbed.

The sand dropped like soup from our heels
as we staggered skyward.
Always another barrier,
another dune to climb.
With each step the lake slid away.










With the ashen clouds parted
the sun cast light in solemn shafts upon
trees burned red and gold.
In this stage lit world we became artifacts,
a forgotten discovery,
petroglyphs painted by
the shifting dunes.
 

 

Our orbit concludes in
the crackling electricity of Chicago where the howling tires of the big rigs trumpet an overture of industry and commerce
and billboards project cold and fearful sex at
seventy miles an hour.

The the spirit
of the Lake has gone.
It's time to raise the top.