4 June: Ann Arbor to Houghton. I drive, Mr t deejays. This is how I discover he has two versions of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” on his Iphone.
5 June: Houghton to Rock Harbor. The Ranger III has 70 passengers, an outstanding retro vibe, and safety features I dearly hope are never put to the test.
The passengers include a botany class sponsored by the Isle Royale and Keweenaw Parks Association. During the passage, one of their leaders commandeers the large screen tv in the main passenger lounge to deliver a presentation on the bunchberry dogwood, a ubiquitous little white flower that is also (it turns out) an exceedingly violent vegetable. Each one harbors at its delicate heart a teeny mechanism constructed of spring-loaded stamens. When triggered by a passing insect, the contraption catapults a cloud of pollen a meter into the air, plastering the unsuspecting insect and any friends it has in the vicinity with pollen grains. They carry on to distribute the pollen far and wide. This explosive pollen launch happens close to instantaneously—so fast that the leader and her team needed a camera that took 1000 pictures a second to analyze it. I add exploding flowers to my growing list of things to worry about.
After getting established in our lodge room, we take the Stoll trail around Scoville point. Just short of the Smithwick Mine, we encounter a snow shoe hare, which scampers off when we all hear rustling in the underbrush. We creep toward the rustling, in heady anticipation of our first moose encounter. Instead, the bushes near the mine pit eject a guy in red flannel shirt, who wordlessly strides across the trail and into the bushes on the other side.
Animals: hare; irritated moose impersonator
6 June: Rock Harbor and environs. We attempt a backwoods biathlon: canoeing to Hidden Lake and hiking from there. On the paddle over, we realize that our canoe is very mildly defective. My seat has come unmoored from one of its anchor points. It seems like something that a swiss army knife and a little ingenuity could fix. Unfortunately, all I have is a swiss army knife. Braving the attentions of a menacing hummingbird, we land and walk up to Lookout Louise--- a very sweet and fun section of trail. Its lower reaches feature a broad boardwalk winding through a decorative bog. Higher up, it switchbacks through a rock garden one of whose formations (Monument Rock?) towers above the surrounding forest.
From Lookout Louise, we admire Canada. Instead of returning directly to the canoe, we dart a mile or so out and back on the Greenstone Ridge Trail, just in case there are moose there. Almost certainly there are, but we don't see them.
For the return canoe trip, I kneel on my life preserver. Just in case there’s something to eponymy, we check out Moose Point and Moose Island. We see a flotilla of duck and their ilk, but no moose.
We’ve been issued a ground floor lodge room, which comes with its own little deck, overlooking Snug Harbor and outfitted with two pieces of furniture I call Adirondack chairs and Mr t calls Ganonoque chairs. Having read The Magic Mountain at an impressionable age, Mr t can’t resist the urge to spend the afternoon on the deck bundled in his sleeping quilt, reading and looking at the water. I visit Suzy’s cave and look, futilely, for otters in Tobin harbor.
Animals: hare; hummingbird; various ducks; leviathan-scale lake trout.
7 June: Voyageur to Chippewa Harbor, walk to McCargoe Cove. It’s sunny, calm, and borderline warm, which makes the boat trip incredibly pleasant. We stop at Daisy Farm to deliver supplies for the ranger, and its friendly denizens give us a kickline sendoff.
Loon-laced Chippewa Harbor is lovely. We drop by Lake Mason, then take the Indian Portage trail toward Lake Ritchie. I’d been expecting it to be wooded, but it surprises me by following a ridge, complete with rock outcrops and open views, while it parallels Chippewa Harbor. Once it swings north, it undulates through woods. We encounter three kayakers 10% through a brutal portage and a pair of sand hill cranes. Although both parties seem entitled to emit blood-curdling cries, only the cranes do.
The Lake Ritchie shoreline is teeming with turtles! We stop for lunch and chat with an Isle Royale veteran guiding his 11 year old companion (who is giddily fishing) on his first backpacking trip. They tell us we just missed a moose. Before saddling up, and thanks to the presence of a trail crew, I have the highly unusual wilderness experience of using a freshly-sanitized outhouse.
Between Lake Ritchie and McCargoe cove, we see a half dozen backpackers, a garter snake, clouds of butterflies, flocks of dragonflies, a handful of gigantic trees felled (mostly) by beavers --- but no moose. McCargoe is deserted but for a yachtsman from MN. We claim shelter #4 – officially converting the 5 pounds of tent in my backpack to dead weight --- and head off to investigate the Minong Mine before we seize up. (Something Mr t carries that is not dead weight: one of those foam rollers so favored by creaky middle-aged people who exercise.) The mine is thrilling in the peculiar manner of industrial ruins being reclaimed by the landscape they’d interrupted. Rusting relics of this formerly bustling place are everywhere. Segments of track terminate in shafts where the stubborn remnants of last winter’s snow linger and remnants of mysterious gadgets litter the forest and the dunes of tailings that snake through it. We dart in many directions, but not so many that we can’t find our way back to McCargoe, where the yachtsman reports that we just missed a moose.
After dinner we hand out near the dock, hoping for moose ballet. A bald eagle flies by and we discover a snail (the McCargoe Escargot)---but no moose.
Animals: hare, sand hill cranes, turtles, snakes, yachtsman, grouse, McCargoe Escargot, bald eagle.
8 June: McCargoe to Rock Harbor. We breakfast on tang, instant coffee, and slightly careworn entenmann’s apple pies, then head down the path to East Chickenbone. This is a new trail to me. Its first half reminds me of the spur trail to Lane Cove: both cross a series of ripples whose troughs are marked by many degrees of beaver impact. The very first trough holds an active dam from which a beaver the size of a Shetland pony is lowering herself into the pond. My previous experience with Isle Royale beavers induces me to expect she’ll come over to tell us off in no uncertain turns --- but when she sees us, she turns tail and flees. Subsequent troughs abound in beaver evidence, but we don’t see additional instances of the actual creature.
On the awesome as always Greenstone Ridge, approaching the Ojibway fire tower, the moose finally appear. Mr t hears snuff snuffing and gestures in its general direction. 20 meters off, two perfectly still young moose are regarding us. Their coats blend so perfectly with the underbrush that only their dark eyes give them away. “They’re looking right at us,” I say. Realizing their cover is blown, they amble-sprint in opposite directions, mirror images in flight.
We admire Canada from Mt Franklin, then descend toward Tobin Harbor. The unnamed lake partway down is vast, and held in place by a beaver dam probably visible from space. We take the Tobin Harbor trail, vigilant as always for otter. Rounding the corner ahead of us, I spy a portly hiker in dark clothing, whom I assume (because we hadn’t seen him before) we’re overtaking. Only we don’t get any closer---he always seems to be disappearing round the next bend. Then we get to a long straightaway and I suddenly understand. The reason he is so adept at walking through the woods is that he is a moose. “We are following a moose down the trail,” I inform Mr t. His cover blown, the moose darts away into the underbrush.
Animals: beaver of prehistoric dimensions, moose and more moose!
9 June: Homeward bound. On the passage back to Houghton, random Ranger III passenger Rolf Peterson gives an update on the reintroduction of wolves to Isle Royale, as well as an overview of the game of musical megafauna various provincial and national authorities are playing with Lake Superior Islands. I’ll probably post more of what I remember to the animals forum. Other natural historical revelations from the trip home: there are now moose in the upper peninsula thanks to a 1980s “Mooselift” that helicoptered in a seed population from Ontario’s Algonquin Park. (We learned this from reading a boulder at Van Riper State Park, where we stopped to stretch our legs.) And the verge dividing 28 from the railway tracks between Munising and Sedey appears extremely popular with sand hill cranes. I counted 4 pair, and I was supposed to be paying attention to the road because I was driving!
. Did Mr t do OK on the backpacking pack, or is he "never again"? And did Rolf say anything about the timing for reintroduction?
