Getting Back, Part 6

It wouldn't be that long before I set it up again, so instead of folding and packing the tent I wadded it into the car's trunk. I stowed the rest of my gear into whatever free spaces I could find there or in the seats, then motored out of the park and down to Newberry as fast as the state or the pocked asphalt allowed.

My ultimate destination was the Fox river near Seney, but before I could get back on the water I would have to either buy a new reel or have mine fixed, and the latter I figured was an unlikely prospect in those parts. But as I reached the outskirts of Newberry, an ad for a sporting goods store there came onto the radio, and among its offerings was fishing reel repair. The store wasn't hard to find (there isn't much room in Newberry for anything to hide), and after spending five minutes and two dollars there, I was Seney bound.

During the time I was a student at Northern Michigan, I passed over the Fox on M-28 often. Usually when I did, I thought idly of fishing there sometime, despite the fact my tackle had been gathering dust for a few years. It was, after all, the river Ernest Hemingway had actually fished on the trip that inspired the story "Big Two-Hearted River," which for an English major was enticement enough. I remember now too that I was reading the novel Laughing Whitefish by Robert Traver, the celebrated UP author and fisherman, on that trip. That book is itself set in the UP; I guess that in more than one sense I was putting myself in a storied landscape, though literary history was of peripheral concern on that trip. I was there to catch trout, the more the better.

At the state forest campground on the east branch of the Fox, I set up my camp within sight of the river. On the side of my tent opposite the river, maybe a hundred feet off, a flowing well spouted away. So on that part of the trip, whether I was fishing or in camp, I was almost never away from the sound of moving water. That was something of a comfort while I wrestled with my tent, an old nylon two-man model by Camel. It had steel poles at either end that were barely stouter than a radio antenna and I could almost never keep one of them erect while trying to set the other. Once I had them in place, I would stake the lines as tight as I could, though that was never enough to keep the tent from sagging. If I'd known what I was doing then, I'd have tied lines to trees in front of and behind the tent to hold it taut. Some mornings I awoke with not quite enough headroom in the tent to sit up. I was fortunate no rain fell during that week, sparing me any long confinement in the Camel.

Getting Back, Part 4

For the next day and a half, I continued fishing the main and east branches of the river, with modest success. I tire hiked most of the roads between High Bridge and Lake Superior passable with two wheel drive, and walked the dunes lining the big lake. And when Tuesday night came, I had a decision to make.

Looking though my trout stream guidebook, my appetite for angling whetted by the morsels of success I'd enjoyed so far, was like looking through the window of a pastry shop on a Sunday morning. So many sweet, enticing possibilities, and I wanted them all, or at least a bite of them all. To leave open the possibility of sampling some other rivers, I only paid to stay at Muskellonge Lake through Wednesday.

I had planned one more run at the east branch Wednesday morning, and as I headed to the river I still wasn't sure what I'd do. Despite the temptations of other waters, I was enjoying myself, and because I had an old, unwieldly tent, I wasn't especially eager to break and remake camp within the space of a couple hours. At the river, though, I received some none too subtle suggestions to move on.

First there was the dog. As I rigged up beside my car at the bridge over the east branch, I heard rustling in the woods. A tan, setterish mutt was slowly padding toward me. No collar, fur grime smeared and bedraggled. Its tail wasn't wagging, and while it wasn't obviously threatening, it seemed suspicious of me. When it got about twenty feet from me it stopped and fixed me with steady yellow eyes. My eyes went to its mouth. No lathering of saliva there, and no teeth bared, but no release into a friendly panting, either. Then it growled quietly and advanced again. "HEEEEEY!" I shouted at it. Usually a good bellow is enough to dissuade a strange dog. This one only stopped. I yelled again at it again and it held its ground, so I picked up the largest stick within reach and flung it at the animal. It turned and loped back a few yards before stopping and turning to stare at me once again. To drive home the message, I grabbed an egg sized rock, ran toward the dog and threw my projectile at it as hard as I could. I missed (and hitting the dog, it occurs to me, could well have compounded my problems), but the mutt bolted out of sight. I stood still for a few minutes. Then, having seen no shadows peeking from behind the spruces and heard no stirring in the forest duff, I went back to my car, finished rigging, and waded into the river.

After only about an hour, I was wading out. When I began reeling in after a cast, the reel's bail hung for a moment when it should have closed, a muffled clink sounded from the reel, then the bail flapped freely. Short of dapping a worm from line tied to the rod tip, I was done fishing. Correcting the situation would require driving out of the Two Hearted country, and as I waded back to the bridge, I considered again whether I should return.

Once I heard the growling, my mind was made up. Still in waders, packing gear into the trunk of my Cutlass, I heard a rasping whuff from the woods, followed by a quiet, even growl, like someone's chainsaw idling in the distance. It trailed off, and though I'd heard more distrust than menace in that growl, I still believed the dog might rush me at any moment. It was less than forty feet away, and I was about to make myself extremely vulnerable by pulling off my waders. It's hard to run (or kick) while tugging on a wader boot that's hung up on your heel, or with one leg in the waders and one out. The dog took a step toward me, and stopped when I yelled at it, but didn't retreat. I wasn't going to make myself an easy target, so I opened the car door and hopped in still wearing waders. As I drove off, the dog didn't chase me, but in my rearview mirror I could see it standing in the middle of the road, watching me go.

In the mythology of the Anishinabe, who have inhabited that area for centuries, bodies of water are inhabited by spirits, manitous, which can threaten people who enter their domain. Crossing waters, on foot, by swimming, or by boat required propitiating these spirits. After encountering that dog at the bridge over the east branch of the Two Hearted, that is an idea I can appreciate. If I had known something of the old ways, I might have been able to reach an understanding with it, and wade in peace.

Fighting the Good Fight

In southeast Michigan musters a new platoon of conservation commandos. I'm not using the military argot for dramatic effect.

Michigan's Land Rescue Team is an organization of self-described "Soldiers of Preservation." The members gather at sites on public land to clean up garbage left behind by slobbish visitors.

It's a great cause, of course, though the martial motif is a little over the top, as in this description of upcoming deployment:


OUR NEXT TARGET:
Chenango Lake Public Access
This public access site is off E. Schafer Rd. in Livingston County and is part of the Brighton State Recreation Area. On tour, one of our soldiers reported back to us that this site was in desperate need of a full on assault by our Soldiers of Preservation.

THE BATTLE PLAN:
We are currently in contact with the DNR. They have informed us that a dumpster will be available when we need it. Our forces are combat ready, unfortunately, with the snow fall, this is going to be postponed a week or two so we can ensure the task at hand can will be completed, we do not want to miss anything. A date will be scheduled soon, stay tuned.

Perhaps as the organization grows, ski troops will be in order.

Like I said, I'm all for these kinds of efforts, though the work strikes me less as battle (the enemy, such as it is, has long left the field) than as tending wounds. But if sabre rattling inspires people to take action on behalf our public lands, I won't quibble over metaphors.

Getting Back, Part 3

My first look at the east branch was encouraging. The river offered the smaller water I felt at home on, and was loaded with brush that I just knew concealed legions of brook trout. The current was gentle, but the river's channel grew deep enough in some places to nearly top my waders. I had to crawl over some logjams that spanned the river. I tried to exit the river to walk around them, but dense alders or steep, unstable banks made that impossible. When that happened I actually found myself missing the suburban stream I grew up on. If you didn't like one spot, you just moseyed across someone's smooth, open lawn to the next.

I waded upstream, fishing worms around the edges of the logs or under overhanging alders. I got a few nips, but nothing that stayed on the line. When I turned around to fish back to the bridge, I finally connected. I had several more short strikes, but three small, legal trout inhaled my nightcrawler when I let it wash beneath logjams and held on. They went in my creel.

Catching them wasn't much more of an accomplishment than landing those few trout on Pine creek on my trip to Manistee a month earlier, but the satisfaction it brought was pure and unconflicted. My slight success at the end of that outing didn't wipe out the disappointment brought by a week of lucklessly flailing the water. But this trip was just beginning. Those trout didn't leave me with much meat when I fileted them, but they were substance enough to nourish hopes for the days ahead.

Getting Back, Part 2

Early June, 1991

My intention the next morning was to seek out the west branch again. After a coffeeless breakfast I drove south and turned left onto the road just short of High Bridge which, my map lead me to believe, would put me only one more left turn from the river. That road was sandy and narrow but relatively open. I could have passed an oncoming car with room to spare. The left turn I thought would take me to the river put me onto a two track with barely enough room for my side mirrors to clear the jackpine trunks lining it. Occasionally I did brush protruding limbs, and I held my breath as I rolled over few downed limbs thorny with the sharp bases of twigs that had snapped off. This was the last place I'd want to blow a tire.

If I could choose my mishaps though, I'd rather have had a flat than torn up the oil pan or destroyed the suspension lumbering through deep ruts and over protruding stumplets. How would I explain to my employer why I'd ruined the company car on a two track road a hundred miles from my nearest account, during a time when I wouldn't have been making sales calls anywhere?

(My 78 Malibu died just after I got hired and I didn't buy my own car for another two years. I even drove the Cutlass to Utah later that summer. The company had to pay Hertz $1200 for excess mileage when they returned it. The national sales manager burned the ears of my manager over this, though he gave me only a mild admonition. I was doing well that year.)

These concerns about the car chewed on me while I chased the river through a maze of seemingly ever tighter roads for the better part of an hour. Eventually, I gave up: I needed either some coffee or some trout. It only took me about twenty minutes to get to the pavement, though once there I didn't know where to make my next move. The map hadn't been my friend on this trip, but not being ready to ditch the trout in favor of coffee, I scanned it once again. The only places where access looked certain were at bridge crossings. On the mainstream there was only High Bridge and Reed and Green bridge a ways below. Farther east, another road crossed the east branch of the Two Hearted. Whether on account of my instinct toward the remote or from simple desire to see more of the country (if the two are distinguishable), I made for the last. I can't say that was a great decision, but it wasn't a bad one. It was actually the second best decision I'd make on the trip.

Getting Back, Part 1

Early June, 1991

I left on a Saturday evening, driving north under peach-skin twilight. Full darkness overtook me somewhere south of Grayling, and I arrived at the Mackinac bridge around ten o'clock. I stopped for the night at a motel near Brevort, and as I unpacked, I got the notion to take a moonlit walk along the Lake Michigan shoreline, since I didn't feel tired at all. I returned to the motel dead tired a bit after one and slept late the next day. After a breakfast of spongy pancakes at an Epoufette diner, I continued north through Newberry into the Two Hearted country.

I'd read some promising accounts of fishing on the Two Hearted river system in northern Luce county, but what really drew me there was what I saw on the map: lots of blank space lightly strewn with the black stitches marking primitive roads. From the very outset of my adult angling career, fishing was as much about the place as the fish. I wanted to see wilder parts of the UP than I'd known while I was in school. I wanted to go where you could drive half an hour without seeing another car or passing through a clearing. (Ironically, automobile travel provides my benchmark for wilderness--even in the northern lower, places where you can hike for hours without encountering civilization aren't that rare.)

At Muskellonge Lake state park I set up camp, and I must have struck the ranger as an unlikely visitor. Probably few people who declare they've arrived for a week of fishing the boonies show up driving an Olds Cutlass (company car) and wearing rainbow plaid surfer shorts. By then a wind blowing off of Lake Superior, less than a mile away, was making it too cold to wear shorts of any kind. While I unloaded the car, the ranger solemnly warned me not to keep food in my tent. "Of course," I responded, nodding, matching his tone. "Bears." "No, raccoons," he corrected me. "They'll claw their way into your tent even while you're sleeping." He had become irritated; probably he gave that speech to a lot of troll campers. My cluelessness must have stood out like buck teeth.

I left camp around five to go fish. Prompted by a guidebook, I set out for the west branch of the Two Hearted. I never made it. According to the map, a dirt county road turned west off the blacktop road coming up from Newberry which, after a few jogs, would hug the west branch for several miles. I turned west onto what I was sure was the road; I'm still certain it was, but I believe I got turned around on the jogs. I spent at least half an hour retracing my route, trying different trails that seemed to go in the direction I wanted, but I never found the route (an actual numbered road at that) I sought. I never saw the river.

My adventures are often guided by an instinct to get far from the accesses or the river stretches that attract large numbers of fishermen. On more than a few occasions though, including the one above, this brings me to a pass where I conclude I would have been better off following the crowd.

On that night there wasn't a crowd, or anyone actually, at the developed access at High Bridge, where the paved road crossed the Two Hearted's mainstream. The river is swift there, with rapids that attract steelhead in the spring. I remember wading over slippery rocks in water up to my waist at some points, bending into a current that seemed determined to make me swim. I cast along the edges of rocks and into the deeper runs with spinners and worms, but didn't get a bite all night---at least below the water. Above, hordes of mosquitos drilled away at my bare arms and neck in spite of the repellent I applied in increasing quantities though the night. They didn't seem to mind the deepening evening cool, which drove me from the water around sunset. They followed me diligently back to my car.

I feel like I need to stop here and apologize for telling what may be the most dismal, discouraging fishing story ever offered for public consideration. Be assured that things do get better. But not before they get worse.

(Just Good) News from the North

For the last several years, utilities in the Upper Peninsula have prompted controversy by selling lands along waterways where they maintain hydroelectric operations. Critics of the sales have feared a loss of recreational access and piecemeal development of large wilderness tracts. Some sales have gone ahead and development has begun, but the most recent sale ensures that some of the targeted lands will remain wild. The State of Michgan has acquired over 1,000 acres along the Sturgeon river in Dickinson county, a federally designated wild and scenic river. Details in today's Free Press.

News From the North

Good and bad news streaming out of the jackpine wonderland of Crawford County this weekend. The good news is that the plan to build the massive theme park outside Grayling is going down in flames.

The bad news is that Rusty Gates, owner of Gates' Lodge and a champion of conservation in the Au Sable watershed, has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Prayers and good wishes are in order.

You can follow his condition and leave your get-wells at Caringbridge.com. Search for "rustygates."