September Song

I'm back in Seymour, but oh, my heart is in the forest.  Yesterday morning, as Gary and I ate our breakfasts beside the open fire, I looked up at the green of the maple trees and noticed the beginnings of that orange tint that forecasts fall.

Gary and I have known each other for about 35 years and have been a couple for almost 30.  As we grow older together, my love for him deepens and I think of how few years we have left. Autumn is the most joyful of the seasons for me, but it also makes me grow misty.

The night before, I took a walk down to the pier with our hostess, Anita Joy, and told her that the words to "September Song"  (Anderson/Weill) keep going through my mind these days.

"Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game.

"Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I'll spend with you
These precious days I'll spend with you."

Sure enough, Anita, who lost her beloved Sully, knew what I meant and knew all the words, too.  We sang them together as we walked through the beginning of autumn.

Schmaltz, I know, but I can't help myself.  

Anita Joy

We spend at least a week at Lake Ottawa each year.  One of the big draws is the camp host, Anita Joy Ruohomaki.  Anita first came to the campground with her husband Sully, a Lutheran minister.  When he died, she kept right on hosting.

Besides taking care of the toilets with a broom, plunger and packages of toilet paper, she tends her flock.  She stops by to ask campers if they would like to stop by for a cup of tea and sit by her campfire for a chat. Often, one of her five children are there to lend a hand.

Anita's site is filled with pots of flowers and placards, many of them donated by her fans. "Welcome to the Lake!"  one reads.  An official of the national forest (the kind carrying a clipboard) showed up one day and told Anita all of her decorations had to go.  Campers rose up and took her side.  The official doesn't stop by any more and all her stuff remains.

This year Anita got a surprise when she went down to the pavilion to check on things and found her friends and family celebrating her 80th birthday.  Gary was there (I was in Seymour) and commented that this is also the 80th anniversary of the Ottawa National Forest.  "I guess I'm as old as the trees," she said.

This is Anita's 28th year as host.  She wants to finish off 30 years so I guess we will see her again next year for a cup of tea and a good gossip session.

Mergansers and Firelight

The flames were leaping out of the fire pit. We'd eaten our supper. We had no plans other than to read our books and stay warm. Then Gary hear a splashing on the shoreline and went to take a look.

What he saw was an entire family playing in the water. A family of common mergansers. There were seven of them, red heads flashing in the setting sun as they fished in the shallows.

One of them came up with a sizable pan fish. The others went after the catch and they all fought about it. They weren't starving, they were healthy looking birds, but it's what they do.The mergansers are common only in that there are more of them than the other varieties of mergansers.  They are pretty impressive birds.  Unlike most birds, the females wear fancier feathers than the males.  The males have smooth green heads.  The females have a red crested head.  Sorry, I couldn't get any closer and the sun was setting so the picture is what it is.

Gary says the mergansers usually hang out on the eastern shore of the lake, he sees them over there when he paddles his canoe around the lake. Now that most of the campers are gone, they feel free to come over here.

We watched for a while then went back to our warming and reading. The sun went down and the stars came out, brilliant and sparkling as they never are in the city. Gary lit the propane lantern. We stayed by the fire for another hour or so.

These forest nights are so precious to us.

Bennam Lake

The various national forests vary, not only in topography but in the way they are managed.  One big difference is in the handouts they provide.

The Chequamagon-Nicolet National Forests provide lovely little booklets, one each about campgrounds, trails, and sites to visit.  The campground guides give a run down of what each place has to offer, a map and road instructions, opening and closing dates, and photos.  The trail guides give the difficulty, the distances, and things to watch for, and again, photos.

The Ottawa National Forest has only a one sheet listing of the campgrounds with not much more information.  There are no directions, no photos.  There are no trail instructions at all.

Instead, at each trail head there is a metal sign with a map.  The benefit is that these signs are durable, good for several decades.  Such is the Ge Che trail sign which serves for hikers and cross country skiers..

The upside is that the sign replaces paper maps, saving trees.  The downside is that hikers who don't have long memories (like me) forget just what the metal plate said when they are several yards down the trail.  I've solved that by taking a digital photo of the map before I set off.  But there is another downside. A metal plate map can soon be out of date.  This map, for instance, shows a short cut on the Bennam Lake trail.  It doesn't exist any more, yet that sign has years to go.  I've hiked the entire Ge-Che from Hagerman Lake to Lake Ottawa, and there are places the path simply disappears.  That can be a bit scary.

Still the  Bennam Lake section is still well worth doing.  The forest is deep and even when the path grows faint, I can still follow it from memory...and from the deer and bear scat, for the forest animals use human trails, too. 

 

The one mile trail (as the crow flies, not in real miles) should take me around 45 minutes, but one has to check out the rat-a-tatting of the black backed woodpecker, have a serious conversation with the chickadees, and check out the scat for age.  Fresh bear scat and I break into song to let Bruin know I am coming.

The lake is cool and refreshing, not a soul in sight. 

Is it any wonder that by the time I returned,two hours later, Gary was getting ready to send out a search party?

Exploring

When we woke to a cold, cold morning, we decided to spend the day checking out some of the other Ottawa National Forest campgrounds. We've enjoyed each of the places we've stayed over the years but would like to try some others next summer.

We headed west on Highway 2.

The first was Imp Lake, a little lake way off the beaten track. It has 22 sites, but I liked site no. 15 the best because of the lake access and also because smack dab on the tent pad was a pile of bear scat.

My kind of place, isolated and wild, critters a bonus. Gary suggested suggested that my criteria isn't like those of normal people.

Marion Lake is much bigger, with 37 campsites. There are private homes on this lake, which means that motorized boats are allowed. This one would be much busier in the summer.

We stopped at the Ottawa Visitor Center in Watsersmeet. There we met ranger Steve, who turned out to be an amateur storyteller who this summer did a session at the Lake Ottawa at our host's campsite. Anita Joy told me how much everyone enjoyed the event and wondered if I would be interested next year. We'll work something out, I'm sure.

Gary insisted on buying us caps. His is for the Sylvania Wilderness, mine is the Ottawa National Forest, which matches my Nicolet-Chequamagon hat.

We liked Pomeroy Lake, really isolated on a rough road. We could host there at site no. 7 but we would have no cellphone or internet access and the closest grocery shopping would be over thirty mils away at Bessemer. Bobcat Lake would be closer to civilization, but there would be so many more people around.

We would make great campground hosts. Gary has an environmental degree. He knows all about flora and fauna. As an ex-hardware guy at Menard's (a home improvement place) could repair anything. I can tell campfire stories to entertain children. Both of us know the area and can give great advice about camping in general. 

But do we really want to tie ourselves down for a summer?  Time will tell.

Cold Weather

Fall is settling in here at Lake Ottawa, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I left Seymour in warmth and returned to Gary and the forest in cold rain. Last night, temperatures dropped to the low 40's which put the damper on some of the Labor Day weekend partying going on in a nearby campsite. It bothered us not a whit.

I had been having some trouble sleeping in Seymour because of the heat and humidity. Not so in a cold trailer. Gone were the night sweats as I snuggled under the quilt, a knit hat on my head and my body encased in long underwear.

There's more cold weather today and a frost warning for tonight, which should drive the last of the fair weather campers away. Then tomorrow and all the rest of the week we'll have Indian summer, which means warm days and cold nights. This will bring on the autumn colors. We will be hiking and canoeing through glory in orange, gold and red.

It will be ours and ours alone.

Sunday Morning Music

We had a fine turnout at choir practice this morning, a half dozen people eager to pick out music.  We worked out what our anthems will be all the way into December and agreed upon an Advent Concert.  If we weren't sure about the selections (we have four four-drawer filing cabinets with music) I played through them. If we didn't like the melody, we rejected a song right then and there.  

Then during the church service, Deb Marsh and I played duets for the hymns, offertory and communion.  She does the melody on the organ and I do what I can only describe as fooling around on the piano.  I usually do arpeggios, but sometimes throw in a waltz or march beat.

We began doing this when the pastor picked out songs the congregation didn't know.  I played the melody line loudly so everyone could follow. People seemed to enjoy this so much we expanded to all the hymns, even the old time songs everyone knew.

It doesn't take any practice.  We consult ten minutes before the service, jot down the numbers of the hymns and we're off and running.  

The United Methodists love music, so I seem to be in the right church.