There was a sliver of moon on the final leg at dawn the other day with coffee and a quiet highway ahead astride that motel far up enough to feel free of the taint of full spring in trees, of course Birmingham first then ticking off in verdant splendour Nashville, Louisville and finally ending here as if traveling backward in nature’s season but early May and the characteristic maples showing only faint hint of red in their stick branches, a cold steel rain had greeted us at the end but still the promise of Spring not lost on those gathered in the diner the morning i crossed the bridge into the Upper Peninsula. Thursday.
How this the 4th year of a certain pilgrimage materialised is the intent of this dramatically italicised forward usually reserved for sexual confessionals, youthful if playful diversions bent on feeding on the past like the two dogs are gnawing just now on the bones of an unfortunate deer abandoned to the deprivations of winter in the quiet field across the dirt road, one rarely traveled in front of my “home” and where wolf tracks are not uncommon. And oddly when you cross the Tennessee river above Birmingham near Huntsville that first day and early yet the Panhandle receding and the load felt and the various goodbye gatherings cradled close with affection and never an end because my southern home only rented but still…and the reality of 2 dogs, the new family, their dependence on you and jockeying for position next to you in the bucket seat as you pick off 18 wheelers after vowing to spare the Toyota’s tranny and you remember how this all started with a wander-lust motorcycle ride up into Alabama, Tuscaloosa then Tupelo, Muscle Shoals and all on side roads and of 10 days as covid receded 3 years ago in cheap motels and food and conversation and discovery which led to Shiloh. I have a fascination for this country’s history, our country a long suffering proud and bold one, the beacon we shall not let die. All countries actually but this is the one i inherited by birth and by heart and my politics while radical in a way only being 13 in 1970 and perceiving lunacy of Vietnam, inequity laid bare and horror too and chomping at bit to get into the fray and music as the soul’s muse and took some faint hope that Trump had been dusted temporarily and the Civil War battlefields, the few i have explored but intensely always kept shit in perspective. I won’t go all Shelby Foote on the War here but to say as i crossed the river which downstream lies astride that hallowed battleground the first glimpse of the gravestones set in unwavering rows white in the amber afternoon light was a beautiful thing and powerful as the first glimpse of a Michigan trout river a month later where i camped on the Pere Marquette and began the several year Odyssey which brings us here and now.
I had loved so much and from that first time 3 years ago coming into a Michigan virgin to me then and now sensing her alluring curves blind but still never failing to surprise, delight and then it was the straight camping, fishing , exploring cedar hung lonely streams a pre-seduction staring into fires at night that beguiled, keen only on wild cold trout water, solitude within limits and the location of vault toilets, stores for cigarettes, wood, toilet paper, ice. Later into that autumn having found the luck and the off grid trailer and perched directly on the vast Lake with views to the peninsula i would one day live at the base of i would shiver into a mid-November and drive south with the throb and pulse of Michigan ringing in my veins like the violent lurching drag on reel of leaping steelhead. I wouldn’t let this dream break me off like that fish did and the next year i came back prepared to bid on my future and that summer was hard-lived too and into the fall the property in hand and the gritty job of clearing it of its massed trash and building an entry deck and planting the first of many personal markers so that the third year coming back with a vengeance and commuting from Lanse along the Lake to reclaim it and now in my bloodstream, its history lurking in nearby Huron Mt. wilderness, the Ojibwe and priests and trappers, settlers ghosts and i dont mean an auction bought roofed-over barely 55 ft. older mobile home. I was reclaiming something i needed for myself, my own history somehow buried in the humidity of 20 years in the South.
That final leg Thursday of a 1400 mile drive loaded with the 3 guitars, 2 dogs, one large amp, a canoe, a 600 lb. motorcycle the tools and ladders which enable a life which reads the books and wears the clothes also included and of course: the fly rods, that last stretch alone past the Pigeon River country adored by Hemingway and then across the bridge which gives access while defending against and into the open fields after skirting lonely desolate shores of Lake Michigan’s northern extremity licking at the Upper in gentle sand-washed stark sips and all the makings of an epic day in all its bi-polarity if i can only relax long enough, free from the magnetism of “self” to let it flow the way it happened and not obscure with knee-jerk side-tracks geared to i suppose elicit even more of the love, respect, even fear i feel i have ever deserved as a player in this game, challenge of descriptive accuracy. A soul.
I wrote this trip first in my head and anyways compared to the more tepid dramas i’ve brung to the fore in past elevating them to more consequential meaning via a certain hyperbole, this trip was gonna be bad-ass chock-full of real doings, both physical and emotional and from the get-go. It was about re-locating geographically (with spiritual under-tones), in itself a loaded nervy chapter in any one life, but in this one also about enlarging the boundaries of what one might give and take as well and in the moment and maybe even sensing the heart valve expand if by increments, to accommodate, enlarge a pack which started with a pup here last autumn the shephard i named Huron to include the little feisty bitch of a gentle pit-bull Duchess who takes now her spot on the bed as birthright.
The above photo could be a goddamn painting.The NYC artist, you know, who did the diner at night and used his wife as a naked model and she was cool with it but seemed somehow subservient.Hopper I think. I’m stoned or at least while typing this part so give me a break and if you must, blame Isabel for encouraging me to write and the one or two curious followers (why? who tha fuck knows!!) who sign up each day to see what i might like and that really is community but that anonymous nudge of kindness nod of appreciation is addictive and i am not much of a group person nor easy in any way unless it is among those i trust and feel i cannot return the favors as much as i’d like but have tried nonetheless. We are all busy.
To cut to the chase it’s been A Week. I’d underline that if i knew how to but the truth is i am as barbaric when it comes to the techno-internet as i am with expressing or fuck receiving love or god forbid most affection but there am learning too and not to take too much rope as well.
Is it Friday? Really? The crazy thing is even amongst the craziness of a week, just another chaotic one of Trump trials and University demonstrations which prove youth is ready to disengage from the social media and take responsibility and this generalised expectation that somehow “Spring” may renew in all its bud-lets and sproutings and greenings and all the other and decent backdrop with all the Boston sports peaking so beloved to me a basically shallow person in some respects grasping at comfort levels, emotional life rafts, and my own decisions, as all ours are myriad and daily and in them we must be satisfied we did our best and if not forgive the transgressions.
I drifted on the highway and perhaps before Muncie Indiana past Indianapolis in the night pulled the truck behind a Dairy Queen off interstate next to a truck stop where the occasional headlights bore witness to the nest i had carved out in the U-Haul’s back.
The dogs had already proved loyal enough and i refuse to leash them, they must learn within limits how to survive and the little one had made a bid for this trip all thru the southern winter and that crucial decision with the blessings of her owners who saw her connection with my own dog didn’t come until the departure morning when i called her into cab and she jumped in naturally as she had on two previous testing runs to a nearby lake where i had introduced my own dog to swimming. They ran and swam like otters and i knew that decision had been made. Others were harder: what to take and empty of the home for the renter who would be funding the projects i have in mind for this northern home which is smaller, starker but wilder. Anyways that morning i engaged in 4 AM banter with gas store workers asking them of the area as i had with another the day before a black guy who sold me cheap bologna for dog treats in Tennessee at some fancy chain place attached to gas pumps and pulled out images of his own “fur babies” as he called them. The same words used yesterday by the beleaguered woman at the indian store here when i was enroute early to return U-Haul Houghton the cell phone on dash in case the plumbers called regarding the disaster i had found with the pipes which i had improperly prepared for winter.
But that next day’s journey to the motel in Michigan was an easy one and i would describe the landmarks to the dogs even stopping at a river above Lansing as one wishes to share like you would a new girlfriend places which resonate. With them i have that now and an easy rapport even in the lower part where that first summer i had camped: on the Pere Marquette first, then the Boardman near Travers city, the Jordan river next and then the Pigeon in a forest valley where elk bugled and a small stream held scores of eager spotted brook trout and i was fine being lone but now not sure it would be that sustaining and lucky to have the animals and at the town of Vanderbilt when the shared lunch with older ladies and then forays above Petosky revealed the influence of a Polish heritage of all things and just this week near the Au Sable in a family restaurant it was re-confirmed and different than the Swedish and Finnish whom had gravitated towards the Upper part, on sheltering Superior. This is a mass to un-entangle here and all at once and veers into too much reminiscence even as the two young plumbers finished up before noon yesterday and for first time in the sunshine i could unpack and sit on toilet of the small bathroom i had tiled the floor made a walk in shower last year and now could envision the finishing off of it with sink and small basin and shelves and sheetrock but that is all to come and the canoe now in the shade of the fir trees where the deer will graze with fawns soon. The envisioning part has become second nature. Part dream related i guess but crucial in the formation of steps forward, each particular and not to be second guessed too much even as they are articulated by instinct, experience and may end up counter to the desired result.
You shed things and pack them and head out and there is always a beginning and i want to remember that, too.
Defuniak Springs, Florida …. Monday Monday…..
An absolutely perfect ending…there is always a beginning!!’
The service station does have that Edward Hopper look to it, A.K.
It’s quite a trip you made!
Glad to see you back home in the U.P. Look forward to the next installment.