Read Waiter’s Rant on a recent business trip. Nothing like two sleepless four-hour flights within a few days of each other. Written by the guy who for a long time kept the Waiter’s Rant blog. He was a waiter/manager at a prominent restaurant in New York. Though he is careful to remain anonymous, the name of the restaurant, and the name of the author for that matter, are out there. I just can’t think of them at the moment.
There are some movies that would have worked beautifully as twenty-minute shorts, but sag hopelessly as feature-length films. This book is kind of like that. It would have worked better as a magazine article. Not to say that it isn’t entertaining – it is. Anthony Bourdain’s dust jacket blurb to the effect that the book is the front of the house version of his Kitchen Confidential is more or less spot-on. You start out really sympathizing with the guy. Losing his office job at 31 and needing money, he gets a job at a completely dysfunctional Italian restaurant in the ‘burbs thanks to his brother. Fast-forward seven years, and he is the manager of one of the most respected restaurants in New York – professional, loved by most his customers, expert at dealing with the difficult ones, and being the much needed buffer between the staff, who love him, and the semi-insane owner. Pulling down very decent money, too, and writing about it all with a great deal of wit. You really want to admire that at first.
But the book isn’t just about what goes on in the restaurant (it probably wouldn’t have been published if it was) – it’s about the author himself. He takes every opportunity to lament his predicament of being a waiter, and single, at 38. Of never having made anything of himself. He is completely infatuated with one of his waitresses – the twenty-three-year-old Beth – and that infatuation oozes from every page. He paints a convincing picture of his own burnout, but his downfall at his own restaurant just about makes you lose respect for him – you realize after a while that he is becoming the selfish jerk manager of the type he deplored in the early days of his restaurant career. His staff turns on him, and his exit is far from magnanimous. I suppose there is a point here, whether he makes it intentionally or not – the business will ruin anyone. In the grand American happy-ending tradition, however, he resurfaces at the end as someone who is finally doing something with himself – he is a writer now, you see, and is waiting tables at another restaurant, part time without any management responsibilities, to make ends meet. He even gets the phone number of a cute girl. How predictable. I was still pulling for him at the end, but only half-heartedly.
I don’t want to be too negative – the bulk of the book is worthwhile. It really does give you a sense of what you don’t see when you come to a gourmet restaurant for a meal. Moral of the story – if you lose your job and need money, drive a cab.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
W.G. Sebald
Finished W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants the other day. Very unusual book, perhaps the most unusual I have ever read. It was apparently his first major work. I didn’t really know what to expect; I picked it up after reading his On The Natural History of Destruction – I looked Sebald up and discovered that he was supposed to be known for the dreamy, slightly surreal and deeply melancholy quality of his fiction, all appealing qualities for me. Thing is, The Emigrants is not entirely fiction. It mostly is, I suspect, but it does not read as such. I say “I suspect” because it is not at all clear where memoir crosses over into invention.
The book is a collection of four stories, all written in the first person, and in all four the narrator is basically real-life Sebald himself – a German professor who moves to England to teach languages and translation. They all start out by recounting an ordinary experience – traveling to Manchester for a semester of research, looking for an apartment – exactly the way they would, and most likely did, happen to Sebald in real life. A memoir of the quotidian, if you will. In every story, however, the narrator eventually meets, or comes to relate how he once met, the central character, and here the line quickly blurs, though since factual elements persist, or so it seems to me at least, to the end of each story, there is no real line; it dissipates subtly into invention until the reader feels like he is simply reading a story.
What’s even more unusual is that the book is illustrated, if that is the right word, with a large number of photos depcting people and places in the stories, initially giving everything an imprimatur of absolute, documentary certainty. The vast majority of these, of course, were never intended to be illustrations. Sebald merely found images that fit, or, perhaps in some cases wrote prose to fit the images. The effect is curious but powerful – rationally we realize a particular segment of the story cannot be literally true, and the photo isn’t really of the thing being written about just then, yet the image and the text on the page together draw us in more strongly than either would do on its own.
One of the four stories – the one about the narrator’s elementary school teacher – I suspect is straight reminiscence. All the details match up neatly with Sebald’s life, down to the towns he mentions. Though he uses only the first letters, they are in fact the first letters of the names of German towns where Sebald grew up. The accompanying photos of schoolchildren are almost certainly of Sebald and his classmates. The rest of the stories are far less factual. Each central character is probably based on a real person to some extent – the reclusive doctor in the first story, especially, has a palpable believability about him – but the events of their lives Sebald eventually comes to recount are the locus of his message and creativity. All four are Jews of German origin. All four had their lives upended by the Holocaust, but all survived and none experienced deportations or concentration camps, though they certainly had family members who did. Sebald’s concern here isn’t with surviving the Holocaust directly. Rather, it is with the experience of being removed from one’s origins, first physically but eventually, through the passage of time, emotionally. There is no lesson here. It may seem at times that Sebald implies a disappointment with how much personal history his characters lost over the years, yet at the same time he makes them continue to do everything they can to distance themselves from their past further still. The pain of even an indirect experience is too much for them.
There is really only one bit about the book that made me raise my eyebrows briefly. The character of one of the stories – the longest and most fantastical of the bunch, it had something of Mann’s Magic Mountain about it – is Sebald’s great-uncle, making Sebald himself, according to this story at least, part Jewish. In real life, he was not. The whole book, of course, is Sebald’s answer to the imperative that every post-war German writer deals with the Holocaust. This is his way. But does one have to pretend to be that which one is writing about? Especially in a book designed to blur the line between memory and invention? Has he gone just a tad too far? I don’t know. Suffice it to say that even if you see this as a fault, it is a small price to pay for the melancholy fascination of The Emigrants.
The book is a collection of four stories, all written in the first person, and in all four the narrator is basically real-life Sebald himself – a German professor who moves to England to teach languages and translation. They all start out by recounting an ordinary experience – traveling to Manchester for a semester of research, looking for an apartment – exactly the way they would, and most likely did, happen to Sebald in real life. A memoir of the quotidian, if you will. In every story, however, the narrator eventually meets, or comes to relate how he once met, the central character, and here the line quickly blurs, though since factual elements persist, or so it seems to me at least, to the end of each story, there is no real line; it dissipates subtly into invention until the reader feels like he is simply reading a story.
What’s even more unusual is that the book is illustrated, if that is the right word, with a large number of photos depcting people and places in the stories, initially giving everything an imprimatur of absolute, documentary certainty. The vast majority of these, of course, were never intended to be illustrations. Sebald merely found images that fit, or, perhaps in some cases wrote prose to fit the images. The effect is curious but powerful – rationally we realize a particular segment of the story cannot be literally true, and the photo isn’t really of the thing being written about just then, yet the image and the text on the page together draw us in more strongly than either would do on its own.
One of the four stories – the one about the narrator’s elementary school teacher – I suspect is straight reminiscence. All the details match up neatly with Sebald’s life, down to the towns he mentions. Though he uses only the first letters, they are in fact the first letters of the names of German towns where Sebald grew up. The accompanying photos of schoolchildren are almost certainly of Sebald and his classmates. The rest of the stories are far less factual. Each central character is probably based on a real person to some extent – the reclusive doctor in the first story, especially, has a palpable believability about him – but the events of their lives Sebald eventually comes to recount are the locus of his message and creativity. All four are Jews of German origin. All four had their lives upended by the Holocaust, but all survived and none experienced deportations or concentration camps, though they certainly had family members who did. Sebald’s concern here isn’t with surviving the Holocaust directly. Rather, it is with the experience of being removed from one’s origins, first physically but eventually, through the passage of time, emotionally. There is no lesson here. It may seem at times that Sebald implies a disappointment with how much personal history his characters lost over the years, yet at the same time he makes them continue to do everything they can to distance themselves from their past further still. The pain of even an indirect experience is too much for them.
There is really only one bit about the book that made me raise my eyebrows briefly. The character of one of the stories – the longest and most fantastical of the bunch, it had something of Mann’s Magic Mountain about it – is Sebald’s great-uncle, making Sebald himself, according to this story at least, part Jewish. In real life, he was not. The whole book, of course, is Sebald’s answer to the imperative that every post-war German writer deals with the Holocaust. This is his way. But does one have to pretend to be that which one is writing about? Especially in a book designed to blur the line between memory and invention? Has he gone just a tad too far? I don’t know. Suffice it to say that even if you see this as a fault, it is a small price to pay for the melancholy fascination of The Emigrants.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tattoo
On a New Jersey Transit bus ride from Manhattan to Ft. Lee a few weeks ago, the man in the seat next to me – Asian, mid-twenties, sloppily dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a t-shirt, but otherwise clean-cut -- was idly paging through an issue of Tattoo magazine. I couldn’t help looking over. One two-page spread somewhere around the middle of the magazine featured images of tattoo designs, chosen presumably for their distinctiveness or skillfull execution. The image in the upper left-hand corner immediately caught my attention. It was a picture of a young woman from the waist up, dressed in a white tank top, leaning slightly to one side. Her stylishly bobbed hair was rendered in a convincing punky green, her nails raven-black. She was covering her mouth with her left hand. The image, at least as it appeared on the page, showed a stunning precision, but what caught my attention the most was the unbelievable expressiveness of the woman’s eyes and face. Her eyes – blue – were obviously on the verge of tears, and her faced registered an unmistakable shock. I could easily picture her mouth, behind that hand, to be partially open in a quiet gasp. She had a clear look of instant but major devastation. This wasn’t just a great tattoo, it was excellent art. Obviously someone’s private, and very deeply felt, tragedy, depicted on an unusual choice of canvas.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Weddings
I lost some friends recently. They didn’t die, they just stopped being my friends. I didn’t come to their wedding. When they first got engaged, they boasted that they hated traditional overblown and overpriced weddings and that theirs would be the opposite of that. Great, I thought. I can’t stand these obscenely expensive exercises in self-absorption for the bride and groom (really, mostly the bride) and their parents either. So I was looking forward to seeing what they would come up with.
Some time goes by, and I receive an e-mail telling me that they were selected by the Washington Post to be featured in an a wedding-themed issue. Theirs would be the anti-wedding. Interesting, I say, but don’t give it much thought. Eventually, an Evite arrives with the date and time, but no other information. I reply in the affirmative. Details begin to trickle in by e-mail. One of the messages says, attire: summer casual. I call to clarify. “Are you sure you want summer casual,” I ask, “to most people these days, that means shorts and flip-flops.” “We are absolutely sure,” comes the reply. Then the shoe drops. The wedding is going to be… a scavenger hunt. All guests show up at the bride and groom’s house in the morning, get introduced to their team mates, get handed Metro fare cards and are given hints on what to look for and photograph in this great city of ours. After a few hours of this, everyone meets back at the bride and groom’s house. I instantly recoil from the idea. My reaction is irrational at first. I just know that I will not participate in this, and not only because I find it a bit presumptuous to send people trekking all over DC by train and foot in heat and humidity of a late-June day. I call to say that J. and I would rather not participate in the scavenger hunt. The bride is instantly and deeply offended. “Is there still an opportunity to stop by afterwards and wish you guys a nice life?” I ask. “No,” she says.
Only later did I think about it enough to realize what it was that I found so repugnant about the idea. It reminded me of nothing so much as team-building exercises at company retreats, where you are forced to do things that make you uncomfortable with people you don’t know.
The wedding day came and went. J. and I sent a modest gift and enclosed a note to the effect that we hoped that it could serve as a token of our continuing friendship. We got a thank-you note in return, and even though in the note our friends said they were disappointed we weren’t there, I though there was hope. A few weeks later, I called. Clearly, their feeling have not changed. The gist of my friends’ opinion was that if I really couldn’t stomach the idea of participating, I should have told a white lie and said that something came up unexpectedly. “I didn’t want to be untruthful,” I said, “you know me well enough to know I hate lying no matter what the cause.” That because I made it clear that I simply didn’t want to participate, they felt judged. They felt that I was telling them that what they decided to do was somehow wrong. “Not wrong for you,” I insisted, “merely wrong for me.” It is amazing how many people take statements of individual opinion and preference personally. In fact, I would argue that everything anyone says is nothing but a personal opinion and should always be treated as such, but I digress. I was speaking, once again, to the bride, now wife, of the couple. She considered my reply for a moment and appeared to accept that I did not intend it as a personal affront, but clearly the bridge had been burned.
Perhaps, in retrospect, she was right. Perhaps it would have been a decent thing for me to do to tell a white lie and bow out without letting my feelings show. But what I could not fathom at the time was that participating in the scavenger hunt was the price of admission. I could not imagine that there wasn’t an opportunity to drop in at the reception later in the day, hug them, have a beer, and give them my best wishes. Isn’t it about sharing the special occasion in whatever capacity?
Turns out that there was much more to the day that I initially realized. I am not going to get into the details, because the Washington Post article has since been published, and you can read it here. After reading it, I was glad that I didn’t know everything from the beginning, for in all likelihood, it would have caused me to criticize the event even more. While the scavenger hunt in isolation was merely an unpleasant activity, the entire package came dangerously close in spirit to what my former friends set out to avoid – like a conventional white-gown-and-tiered-cake wedding, it was a circus. A lot less expensive, it’s true, and they deserve credit for that, but even while subverting what the article authors cleverly called the wedding-industrial complex, they managed to focus the attention unequivocally on themselves.
Some time goes by, and I receive an e-mail telling me that they were selected by the Washington Post to be featured in an a wedding-themed issue. Theirs would be the anti-wedding. Interesting, I say, but don’t give it much thought. Eventually, an Evite arrives with the date and time, but no other information. I reply in the affirmative. Details begin to trickle in by e-mail. One of the messages says, attire: summer casual. I call to clarify. “Are you sure you want summer casual,” I ask, “to most people these days, that means shorts and flip-flops.” “We are absolutely sure,” comes the reply. Then the shoe drops. The wedding is going to be… a scavenger hunt. All guests show up at the bride and groom’s house in the morning, get introduced to their team mates, get handed Metro fare cards and are given hints on what to look for and photograph in this great city of ours. After a few hours of this, everyone meets back at the bride and groom’s house. I instantly recoil from the idea. My reaction is irrational at first. I just know that I will not participate in this, and not only because I find it a bit presumptuous to send people trekking all over DC by train and foot in heat and humidity of a late-June day. I call to say that J. and I would rather not participate in the scavenger hunt. The bride is instantly and deeply offended. “Is there still an opportunity to stop by afterwards and wish you guys a nice life?” I ask. “No,” she says.
Only later did I think about it enough to realize what it was that I found so repugnant about the idea. It reminded me of nothing so much as team-building exercises at company retreats, where you are forced to do things that make you uncomfortable with people you don’t know.
The wedding day came and went. J. and I sent a modest gift and enclosed a note to the effect that we hoped that it could serve as a token of our continuing friendship. We got a thank-you note in return, and even though in the note our friends said they were disappointed we weren’t there, I though there was hope. A few weeks later, I called. Clearly, their feeling have not changed. The gist of my friends’ opinion was that if I really couldn’t stomach the idea of participating, I should have told a white lie and said that something came up unexpectedly. “I didn’t want to be untruthful,” I said, “you know me well enough to know I hate lying no matter what the cause.” That because I made it clear that I simply didn’t want to participate, they felt judged. They felt that I was telling them that what they decided to do was somehow wrong. “Not wrong for you,” I insisted, “merely wrong for me.” It is amazing how many people take statements of individual opinion and preference personally. In fact, I would argue that everything anyone says is nothing but a personal opinion and should always be treated as such, but I digress. I was speaking, once again, to the bride, now wife, of the couple. She considered my reply for a moment and appeared to accept that I did not intend it as a personal affront, but clearly the bridge had been burned.
Perhaps, in retrospect, she was right. Perhaps it would have been a decent thing for me to do to tell a white lie and bow out without letting my feelings show. But what I could not fathom at the time was that participating in the scavenger hunt was the price of admission. I could not imagine that there wasn’t an opportunity to drop in at the reception later in the day, hug them, have a beer, and give them my best wishes. Isn’t it about sharing the special occasion in whatever capacity?
Turns out that there was much more to the day that I initially realized. I am not going to get into the details, because the Washington Post article has since been published, and you can read it here. After reading it, I was glad that I didn’t know everything from the beginning, for in all likelihood, it would have caused me to criticize the event even more. While the scavenger hunt in isolation was merely an unpleasant activity, the entire package came dangerously close in spirit to what my former friends set out to avoid – like a conventional white-gown-and-tiered-cake wedding, it was a circus. A lot less expensive, it’s true, and they deserve credit for that, but even while subverting what the article authors cleverly called the wedding-industrial complex, they managed to focus the attention unequivocally on themselves.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Nabokov
I finally read Nabokov’s Lolita a few weeks ago. I wasn’t going to write anything at all about it – what can I possibly add to everything that has already been said about that book – but my friend S.G. asked me to trade comments, so I obliged.
It was a bit of an accident that I read it when I did. It had been on my list for years, but for some reason I just couldn’t get around to it. A couple of months ago, my father asked me whether I had ever read any Nabokov. He was rediscovering his Russian books then, and was absolutely blown away by the sheer artistry of his language. He asked me how his English prose compared. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be of any help. A little later, however, on the way to New York to visit my parents as a matter of fact, I left a book on a train, and ended up with nothing to read. So I walked down to the local Borders and picked up a copy of Lolita. If not now, then when, right?
It took a few pages to gain a full (as full as I could, anyhow) appreciation for Nabokov’s writing, but relatively quickly it became obvious that his English was every bit as idiosyncratic and brilliant as his Russian, at least on my father’s report. This was not just beautiful language, this was utterly unique, multilayered prose sparkling with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns that kept me marveling at how someone could come up with something like that. Here’s a mild example. Humbert has just been talking to Lolita’s mother, whom he cannot stand, but whom he pretends to love, and he goes to the refrigerator to make some drinks:
I couldn’t choose the most impressive of Nabokov’s linguistic devices, but if I had to, I might have to go with the pun. These are not the lame puns you and I would make (well, I would…). This is punning at stratospheric heights. My personal favorite, if indeed I could pick one, is probably Humbert’s casual statement that while traveling through rural Alabama, he and Lolita saw a museum of guns and violins. In a three-word pun, Nabokov encapsulates his entire view of the rural South.
This actually brings me to the one aspect of the novel that I feel I could say something about. It has been written that an important theme of Lolita is America seen through the eyes of a European. I would adjust that a bit by saying that it is the “inner,” for lack of a better word, America, the cultural heartland that needs not be in the heart. And the eyes need not be European. Those of an urban Northeasterner would suffice. Large chunks of the book are dedicated to two road trips around the country Humbert and Lolita take. Nabokov’s eye for the roadside tourist trap, the beyond-tacky gift shop, the small-town soda fountain, is razor-sharp. Thing is, I have seen plenty of these places personally. In Arizona, in rural Virginia, in Michigan, just about everywhere my travels have taken me over the last twenty years. The places certainly changed since the early 1950s, but not nearly as much as you might expect, and not in any ways that are germane to Nabokov’s observations. And let me tell you, the museum of guns and violins is no figment of his imagination. Not the idea of it, anyway. I do have to ding him for getting Phoenix streets wrong – Seventh and Central both run north-south and do not cross – but that’s just the nit-picker in me.
As amazing as the novel is, I did think the story sagged a bit towards the end, and turned noticeably darker (the amount of wit throughout most of the book was another shock to me) but the ending, both with respect to Lolita’s fate and Humbert’s final act, is priceless.
Another friends who recently read it said that though enjoyable, it did not carry a fundamental revelation about the human condition for him. I disagree vehemently. You cannot possess another human being, and the harder you try, the harder both you and the object of your attempted possession fall.
It was a bit of an accident that I read it when I did. It had been on my list for years, but for some reason I just couldn’t get around to it. A couple of months ago, my father asked me whether I had ever read any Nabokov. He was rediscovering his Russian books then, and was absolutely blown away by the sheer artistry of his language. He asked me how his English prose compared. Unfortunately, I couldn’t be of any help. A little later, however, on the way to New York to visit my parents as a matter of fact, I left a book on a train, and ended up with nothing to read. So I walked down to the local Borders and picked up a copy of Lolita. If not now, then when, right?
It took a few pages to gain a full (as full as I could, anyhow) appreciation for Nabokov’s writing, but relatively quickly it became obvious that his English was every bit as idiosyncratic and brilliant as his Russian, at least on my father’s report. This was not just beautiful language, this was utterly unique, multilayered prose sparkling with all sorts of unexpected twists and turns that kept me marveling at how someone could come up with something like that. Here’s a mild example. Humbert has just been talking to Lolita’s mother, whom he cannot stand, but whom he pretends to love, and he goes to the refrigerator to make some drinks:
I set out two glasses… and opened the refrigerator. It roared at me viciously while I removed the ice from its heart. (p. 102)
I couldn’t choose the most impressive of Nabokov’s linguistic devices, but if I had to, I might have to go with the pun. These are not the lame puns you and I would make (well, I would…). This is punning at stratospheric heights. My personal favorite, if indeed I could pick one, is probably Humbert’s casual statement that while traveling through rural Alabama, he and Lolita saw a museum of guns and violins. In a three-word pun, Nabokov encapsulates his entire view of the rural South.
This actually brings me to the one aspect of the novel that I feel I could say something about. It has been written that an important theme of Lolita is America seen through the eyes of a European. I would adjust that a bit by saying that it is the “inner,” for lack of a better word, America, the cultural heartland that needs not be in the heart. And the eyes need not be European. Those of an urban Northeasterner would suffice. Large chunks of the book are dedicated to two road trips around the country Humbert and Lolita take. Nabokov’s eye for the roadside tourist trap, the beyond-tacky gift shop, the small-town soda fountain, is razor-sharp. Thing is, I have seen plenty of these places personally. In Arizona, in rural Virginia, in Michigan, just about everywhere my travels have taken me over the last twenty years. The places certainly changed since the early 1950s, but not nearly as much as you might expect, and not in any ways that are germane to Nabokov’s observations. And let me tell you, the museum of guns and violins is no figment of his imagination. Not the idea of it, anyway. I do have to ding him for getting Phoenix streets wrong – Seventh and Central both run north-south and do not cross – but that’s just the nit-picker in me.
As amazing as the novel is, I did think the story sagged a bit towards the end, and turned noticeably darker (the amount of wit throughout most of the book was another shock to me) but the ending, both with respect to Lolita’s fate and Humbert’s final act, is priceless.
Another friends who recently read it said that though enjoyable, it did not carry a fundamental revelation about the human condition for him. I disagree vehemently. You cannot possess another human being, and the harder you try, the harder both you and the object of your attempted possession fall.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Michigan, The Rest
For the next four days, we J. and I visited with G.&N. The details are of no interest to the general public, so I will not get into them here. Suffice it to say that happily, it was much like previous visits, and we did everything I've come to love so much about these trips – used book shops, Ashley's, Zola, the Arboretum (“Putting the 'Arb' in Ann Arbor since 1907”), 
late-night dinners on the porch, G.'s creative cocktails and delicious wines, lazy mornings outside reading, drinking coffee and watching the groundhogs (apologies for the excessive digital zoom in the photo -- he was a skittish critter).
One brilliant idea of G.'s that's worth mentioning was what he termed the upscale pub crawl. The idea was to visit three, possibly four local restaurants, having a drink and an appetizer or small plate at each. We made it to two – West End Grill and Vinology – before we realized that it was getting late, and more food and drink would be good neither for our stomachs nor our ability to drive home. But the idea was fantastic nevertheless and I hope to repeat it.
We left Monday morning. I for one, would have happily abused our friends' hospitality longer, but politeness and jobs, both theirs and ours, called. We actually drove West, back to Kalamazoo, where we were determined to visit another place I had been trying to get to for several years now – the Gilmore Car Museum. Gilmore is a private museum located in five or so large barns in the middle of rural Kalamazoo County. The collection focuses on American cars, with just a handful of classic European models thrown in for contrast. We went through the exhibits fairly quickly, not wanting to get home too late, but got something out of the visit nevertheless. Highlights included an entire pavilion dedicated to Pierce-Arrow (headquartered in Buffalo, NY, which I had not known), several immaculate Duesenbergs, an example of the DeSoto Suburban (no relation to the modern Chevy Suburban, but in essence America's first minivan, with three rows of reconfigurable seats), a Chrysler Airflow (the first American car developed in a wind tunnel), a Bantam (inspiration for clown cars everywhere), and the last Buick to feature wooden wheel rims, made in 1928. One of the things Gilmore likes to advertise is their muscle car exhibit, which I found good, though not overwhelmingly fascinating. 
My favorite, improbably, was the 1970 Chrysler 300, not so much a classic muscle car, which were small for their day, but a souped-up luxury dreadnought, absolutely enormous in size and so rare that I have never seen one anywhere else. Most of the cars on display were owned by the museum, but one barn's worth belonged to the Classic Car Club of America, an organization of owners of cars built between 1925 and 1948. It was here that we saw most of the Europeans. My favorites were an immaculate late-1930s Delahaye with custom white-on-red coachwork and a 1938 Mercedes 540K, arguably the most beautiful Mercedes ever designed (toss-up with the 1950s 300SL, I suppose), buried by its German owner during WWII and not discovered until almost 40 years later. We even saw an Auburn Speedster driving around the grounds of the museum. On the way out, I came across a brochure for this outfit. Pricey, but something I absolutely must do before I die.
late-night dinners on the porch, G.'s creative cocktails and delicious wines, lazy mornings outside reading, drinking coffee and watching the groundhogs (apologies for the excessive digital zoom in the photo -- he was a skittish critter).One brilliant idea of G.'s that's worth mentioning was what he termed the upscale pub crawl. The idea was to visit three, possibly four local restaurants, having a drink and an appetizer or small plate at each. We made it to two – West End Grill and Vinology – before we realized that it was getting late, and more food and drink would be good neither for our stomachs nor our ability to drive home. But the idea was fantastic nevertheless and I hope to repeat it.
We left Monday morning. I for one, would have happily abused our friends' hospitality longer, but politeness and jobs, both theirs and ours, called. We actually drove West, back to Kalamazoo, where we were determined to visit another place I had been trying to get to for several years now – the Gilmore Car Museum. Gilmore is a private museum located in five or so large barns in the middle of rural Kalamazoo County. The collection focuses on American cars, with just a handful of classic European models thrown in for contrast. We went through the exhibits fairly quickly, not wanting to get home too late, but got something out of the visit nevertheless. Highlights included an entire pavilion dedicated to Pierce-Arrow (headquartered in Buffalo, NY, which I had not known), several immaculate Duesenbergs, an example of the DeSoto Suburban (no relation to the modern Chevy Suburban, but in essence America's first minivan, with three rows of reconfigurable seats), a Chrysler Airflow (the first American car developed in a wind tunnel), a Bantam (inspiration for clown cars everywhere), and the last Buick to feature wooden wheel rims, made in 1928. One of the things Gilmore likes to advertise is their muscle car exhibit, which I found good, though not overwhelmingly fascinating. 
My favorite, improbably, was the 1970 Chrysler 300, not so much a classic muscle car, which were small for their day, but a souped-up luxury dreadnought, absolutely enormous in size and so rare that I have never seen one anywhere else. Most of the cars on display were owned by the museum, but one barn's worth belonged to the Classic Car Club of America, an organization of owners of cars built between 1925 and 1948. It was here that we saw most of the Europeans. My favorites were an immaculate late-1930s Delahaye with custom white-on-red coachwork and a 1938 Mercedes 540K, arguably the most beautiful Mercedes ever designed (toss-up with the 1950s 300SL, I suppose), buried by its German owner during WWII and not discovered until almost 40 years later. We even saw an Auburn Speedster driving around the grounds of the museum. On the way out, I came across a brochure for this outfit. Pricey, but something I absolutely must do before I die.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Michigan, Day Six
On day six, we left the UP. We hit the road early and drove south, then west, much of it once again through dense fog and some of the most otherworldly views of scraggly, distinctly Northern-looking pines menacing us from the side of the road, bathed in the diffuse light of the rising sun. Around Seney National Wildlife Refuge, we saw two sandhill cranes again. I would like to think they were the same ones we saw on the way up and that they came out to say good-bye. We stopped to take a good look, and they stood there for us, unfazed by the presence of a car a scant few feet away. After about three hours, we were over the Mackinaw Bridge and back on the lower peninsula.
We got off the interstate almost immediately and made our way west to the coast of Lake Michigan. Two years ago, I had an entire day to drive what would normally be about a five-hour drive, so I glanced at the map, saw the dots of an official AAA scenic drive along Route 119 and decided to check it out. The spur of the moment decision proved serendipitous – it was one of the most distinctive roads I’ve ever driven. This year, I was looking forward to sharing it with J. The signs along the road read “Canopy of Trees” and it was literally that – the narrow, unmarked strip of tarmac wound gently through giant, extremely dense trees, so dense and close together that the branches intertwined high above the roadway, blocking out the sunlight and giving the road a very cinematic feel. Eventually, the outrageous houses of Harbor Springs begin to appear on the side of the road. I believe they are summer, or at least weekend, homes, not full-time residences, but the vast majority is exceptionally large, meticulously kept up and visibly expensive. I must admit that most of the designs are infinitely more interesting, in a rustic sort of way, than a typical exurban McMansion. Two years ago in Ann Arbor, I briefly met someone whose family hailed from the Harbor Springs area, but she was unable, or unwilling, to tell me where all that money comes from up there.
Eventually, the trees parted, the road widened somewhat and picked up some traffic, and around 11:00 a.m. we entered downtown Harbor Springs. It was an idyllic few blocks along the water, with upscale boutiques and gourmet sandwich shops, the masts of sailboats, owned, no doubt, by the people in the big houses, swaying in the background. We considered stopping for coffee but decided to press on to Traverse City. The next town of consequence along the coastal drive was Petoskey, and that was where I realized that my memory was playing the worst trick of my life on me. I remembered the town – similar to Harbor Springs but on a slightly larger scale and just a tad less upscale – well, and thought it would make a great lunch spot. However, I also quite simply forgot that it existed, and was convinced that what I was remembering was Traverse City. In reality, I had never been to Traverse City, and two years ago, cut back into the interior and onto a major highway immediately after passing through Petoskey. So now we were in uncharted territory.
We did reach Traverse City a little while later, and were glad we did. It opens up with a strip of lakeside resort hotels – a curious mixture of old-school motor lodges and snazzy new chains. The downtown, however, is lovely – clean and attractive, full of shops and restaurants and, most importantly, in mid-afternoon on a Thursday, foot traffic. We parked the car and had lunch at North Peaks Brewing Company, where I had an excellent fried calamari salad and their seasonal spiced summer ale whose name escapes me but whose flavor was delicious – slightly hoppier than a typical summer seasonal, with a pronounced flavor of citrus and coriander. Afterwards, we checked out a few shops, bought souvenirs for a couple of friends back home, got in touch with our friends in Ann Arbor, whose house was our ultimate destination that night, and got back on the road.
We headed south on US-131 and sometime around 6:00 or 7:00 reached Grand Rapids. The sky was clouding over throughout the afternoon; the day was hot to begin with but became more humid as we traveled south. Now it was oppressive. The contrast between Grand Rapids and the UP was striking – gray, tree-less, stewing in the humidity and muck of an unseasonably hot late August evening, filled with decaying brick factory buildings, mile-long warehouses and rusting rail yards, it was a shock to our systems that have not yet restored their defenses against this hyper-urban onslaught. After some reflection, I realized that Grand Rapids looked like a classic steel belt city, decaying but also probably attempting to reinvent itself, along the lines of Pittsburgh and even Buffalo, and surely urban gems were hiding in its depths – funky neighborhoods, distinctive coffee shops and bars, local lore. From the highway, however, it was little more than a reminder that we were back to civilization of the sort we weren’t necessarily ready to confront.
We continued south to Kalamazoo, where I insisted to stopping to visit Bell’s, the pub of the legendary Kalamazoo-area microbrewery of the same name. It is somewhat of a pilgrimage spot for beer geeks and I had been wanting to go ever since I started making my yearly trips to Ann Arbor five years ago. Kalamazoo was all warehouses and rail yards too, smaller than Grand Rapids, with a few none-too-friendly-looking neighborhoods we drove through on the way downtown. Downtown itself was attractive enough, but small, and completely dead though it was only about 8:00 p.m. We found Bell’s on its edge, and it proved to be a smaller operation than I expected. Not a full-blown restaurant, it was instead a large hall, with a handful of tables but largely empty, and a small window in a corner where you could order food that you would then have to pick up yourself. Their claim to fame, besides the beer of course, is their beer garden, but by the time we got there a band was setting up, and in order to drink out there, the beer had to be in plastic cups. We had a light snack – surprisingly good given the barebones kitchen – and I tried the McGinness Spiced Stout, a half-pint since I had more driving ahead of me. It was excellent, with a pronounced spicy character. I neglected to write down my tasting notes, unfortunately. Afterwards, we bought a few bottles of their limited edition beers at the gift shops and hit the road.
A little over an hour later, we were in Ann Arbor, at the house of our dear friends G. & N. Drinks, stories, jokes – all the stuff I look forward to so much every year. J., tired from the road, turned in shortly after we arrived, but I stayed up a while, catching up with G. and N., who are complete night owls, knowing that there was little danger of an early start the following day.
We got off the interstate almost immediately and made our way west to the coast of Lake Michigan. Two years ago, I had an entire day to drive what would normally be about a five-hour drive, so I glanced at the map, saw the dots of an official AAA scenic drive along Route 119 and decided to check it out. The spur of the moment decision proved serendipitous – it was one of the most distinctive roads I’ve ever driven. This year, I was looking forward to sharing it with J. The signs along the road read “Canopy of Trees” and it was literally that – the narrow, unmarked strip of tarmac wound gently through giant, extremely dense trees, so dense and close together that the branches intertwined high above the roadway, blocking out the sunlight and giving the road a very cinematic feel. Eventually, the outrageous houses of Harbor Springs begin to appear on the side of the road. I believe they are summer, or at least weekend, homes, not full-time residences, but the vast majority is exceptionally large, meticulously kept up and visibly expensive. I must admit that most of the designs are infinitely more interesting, in a rustic sort of way, than a typical exurban McMansion. Two years ago in Ann Arbor, I briefly met someone whose family hailed from the Harbor Springs area, but she was unable, or unwilling, to tell me where all that money comes from up there.
Eventually, the trees parted, the road widened somewhat and picked up some traffic, and around 11:00 a.m. we entered downtown Harbor Springs. It was an idyllic few blocks along the water, with upscale boutiques and gourmet sandwich shops, the masts of sailboats, owned, no doubt, by the people in the big houses, swaying in the background. We considered stopping for coffee but decided to press on to Traverse City. The next town of consequence along the coastal drive was Petoskey, and that was where I realized that my memory was playing the worst trick of my life on me. I remembered the town – similar to Harbor Springs but on a slightly larger scale and just a tad less upscale – well, and thought it would make a great lunch spot. However, I also quite simply forgot that it existed, and was convinced that what I was remembering was Traverse City. In reality, I had never been to Traverse City, and two years ago, cut back into the interior and onto a major highway immediately after passing through Petoskey. So now we were in uncharted territory.
We did reach Traverse City a little while later, and were glad we did. It opens up with a strip of lakeside resort hotels – a curious mixture of old-school motor lodges and snazzy new chains. The downtown, however, is lovely – clean and attractive, full of shops and restaurants and, most importantly, in mid-afternoon on a Thursday, foot traffic. We parked the car and had lunch at North Peaks Brewing Company, where I had an excellent fried calamari salad and their seasonal spiced summer ale whose name escapes me but whose flavor was delicious – slightly hoppier than a typical summer seasonal, with a pronounced flavor of citrus and coriander. Afterwards, we checked out a few shops, bought souvenirs for a couple of friends back home, got in touch with our friends in Ann Arbor, whose house was our ultimate destination that night, and got back on the road.
We headed south on US-131 and sometime around 6:00 or 7:00 reached Grand Rapids. The sky was clouding over throughout the afternoon; the day was hot to begin with but became more humid as we traveled south. Now it was oppressive. The contrast between Grand Rapids and the UP was striking – gray, tree-less, stewing in the humidity and muck of an unseasonably hot late August evening, filled with decaying brick factory buildings, mile-long warehouses and rusting rail yards, it was a shock to our systems that have not yet restored their defenses against this hyper-urban onslaught. After some reflection, I realized that Grand Rapids looked like a classic steel belt city, decaying but also probably attempting to reinvent itself, along the lines of Pittsburgh and even Buffalo, and surely urban gems were hiding in its depths – funky neighborhoods, distinctive coffee shops and bars, local lore. From the highway, however, it was little more than a reminder that we were back to civilization of the sort we weren’t necessarily ready to confront.
We continued south to Kalamazoo, where I insisted to stopping to visit Bell’s, the pub of the legendary Kalamazoo-area microbrewery of the same name. It is somewhat of a pilgrimage spot for beer geeks and I had been wanting to go ever since I started making my yearly trips to Ann Arbor five years ago. Kalamazoo was all warehouses and rail yards too, smaller than Grand Rapids, with a few none-too-friendly-looking neighborhoods we drove through on the way downtown. Downtown itself was attractive enough, but small, and completely dead though it was only about 8:00 p.m. We found Bell’s on its edge, and it proved to be a smaller operation than I expected. Not a full-blown restaurant, it was instead a large hall, with a handful of tables but largely empty, and a small window in a corner where you could order food that you would then have to pick up yourself. Their claim to fame, besides the beer of course, is their beer garden, but by the time we got there a band was setting up, and in order to drink out there, the beer had to be in plastic cups. We had a light snack – surprisingly good given the barebones kitchen – and I tried the McGinness Spiced Stout, a half-pint since I had more driving ahead of me. It was excellent, with a pronounced spicy character. I neglected to write down my tasting notes, unfortunately. Afterwards, we bought a few bottles of their limited edition beers at the gift shops and hit the road.
A little over an hour later, we were in Ann Arbor, at the house of our dear friends G. & N. Drinks, stories, jokes – all the stuff I look forward to so much every year. J., tired from the road, turned in shortly after we arrived, but I stayed up a while, catching up with G. and N., who are complete night owls, knowing that there was little danger of an early start the following day.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Michigan, Day Five
Our original plans for Day Five called for hiking another section of Pictured Rocks in the morning, then driving down the scenic coast of Lake Michigan, through Harbor Springs and Traverse City, and lodging in Grand Rapids for the night with the intention of visiting the Grand Rapids Art Museum the following day.
We started the day at the aforementioned Falling Rocks Cafe, where I had a smoked whitefish sandwich for breakfast. It consisted of smoked whitefish, cream cheese and a slice of tomato served on a toasted bagel. On the one hand, makes total sense, right? We eat lox like that, and in fact whitefish, though probably not caught in Lake Superior, is an important part of New York Jewish cuisine. On the other hand, Munising, MI is about as far from New York, culturally and gastronomically, as possible, so it was a little shocking that someone up there came up with the whitefish sandwich. What was even more shocking was that it was absolutely delicious. Not just good, but really, really excellent. Even the bagel tasted like the real thing. No, not quite like what I used to get on Queens Blvd. in Rego Park back in the day, but it was a hell of a lot better than all but a handful of bagels I can get in DC. I asked the young woman at the counter whether they made them on site, she said they didn't but did not elaborate.
We hit the trail around 9:00. It was another beautiful day, a little too warm if anything. Unfortunately, the hike proved to be just a tad disappointing. Two years ago, I had hiked west from Twelve-Mile Beach, where I camped, and saw some of the most unbelievable cliffs, some of the same ones we saw from the kayak the previous day, but from the top. It was that hike, in fact, that made me resolve to kayak the Rocks before I died – I saw kayakers directly underneath me, paddling right up to the cliffs. I was hoping that we could reach the same area coming from Miner's Castle, but my estimates were off, and most of our hike actually took us through the woods with only occasional glimpses at the lake, much like the hike we did two days earlier. We hiked as far as Mosquito Beach, about five miles away. The name is well-deserved, I should point out – we were all but devoured on the last mile. I guess I should have expected this – they don't call mosquitoes “Michigan Air Force” for nothing – but two years ago I didn't get a single bite, and I was there a week earlier in the season, so I figured they'd be gone by now. Anyway, by the time we reached Mosquito Beach we were tired and sweaty. We went for a leisurely swim, and had a lunch of protein bars and trail mix. By then, it was getting close to 1:00 p.m., and J. pointed out that there is no way we would have time to get back to the car, make it back to Mackinaw Bridge, and drive half-way down the coast on winding lakeside roads. At best, we could go straight for the interstate and gun it to Grand Rapids, arriving close to midnight for a few inadequate hours of sleep. And, while the Art Museum was no doubt very nice for its host city, and its reputation for unique energy-efficient architecture well-deserved, it was probably not essential viewing for someone with easy access to DC and New York museums. I had to concede that she was absolutely right. Once the decision was made to remain in Munising for one more night, the sense of urgency disappeared, we hiked back to Miner's Castle at a sane pace and went for another swim before driving back into town and getting a room at the Munising Days Inn next door to Sydney's.
The upside of staying, besides not having to rush, was that we could now take a cruise of Pictured Rocks. They offered several sailings throughout the day, but the last voyage, which left at 6:15 p.m., was what they called their sunset cruise, with the boat still on the lake when the sun set. We booked two spots by telephone from the hotel, and went next door to Sydney's for a not-quite-lunch, not-quite-dinner, the trail mix having worn off long ago. While I could have probably happily eaten more whitefish, both J. and I opted for the other UP specialty – the pasty. Most people think of it as an English thing – in the UK, the full name is “cornish pasty” -- but up here for some reason it is associated with Finnish immigrants who came to log the place in the mid- to late-1800s. Anyway, it is an oblong pie stuffed with diced root vegetables -- traditionally, rutabaga, potatoes and carrots -- and shredded beef. I had had one on my first visit at a roadside joint on US-2 not far from the Mackinaw Bridge, and it was not good. But J. insisted on trying one, and Sydney's appeared to be rather proud of theirs, so I figured I'd give it another shot. I can report that while it was far better than the first version I had had, it was still not an experience I would be eager to repeat. Dry, heavy and starchy to the extreme, it was only partially redeemed by Sydney's delicious coleslaw and gobs of ketchup. It was very light on the meat – probably authentic, what with poor immigrants a century ago needing to stretch expensive ingredients as far as possible, but disappointing in modern times. A pint of Edmund Fitzgerald helped.
A few minutes before six we showed up at the dock, picked up our tickets and boarded the boat. The crowd was sizable – other than paddling, this is the way to see Pictured Rocks – but we managed to get seats on the upper, open, deck, and were off. The narrator made way too many really lame jokes, but we did learn a few interesting facts about Lake Superior (deepest and cleanest of the Great Lakes, in addition to largest, and the largest surface area in the world, plus kids' stuff like “if it were as deep as a swimming pool, it would cover all of South America, etc.”) It is here that we learned the alternative explanation for the Pictured Rocks name. Apparently, early explorers saw all kinds of images of actual things in the colors, hence the name. I doubt the Ojibwa smoked peyote, it being a cactus, but whatever they used to achieve the same effect they must have shared generously with these explorers. We saw no images. We did, however, see several amazing rock formations that we either didn't reach or were too close in to see in the kayak.
Indian Head is probably the one that looks the most like its namesake, but there were sterns of ships, birds, and all kinds of other things. Overall, seeing the Rocks from a larger boat was a nice foil to the experience of the previous day – you get a more holistic, though slightly less involved, feel for the cliffs. You see more at once, and get a panorama rather than a zoomed-in view we had when floating a few feet away from the towering sandstone.
We covered about twelve miles of coastline. On the way back, the sun was low enough that the cliffs achieved a beautiful, deep golden glow. The timing of the cruise was impeccable – the sun set right as we were leaving Lake Superior proper and entering Munising Bay. The noise of the motors and the commotion on deck didn't allow for a meditative experience, but it was gorgeous nonetheless, especially since we knew it was our last unobstructed sunset of the trip.
We started the day at the aforementioned Falling Rocks Cafe, where I had a smoked whitefish sandwich for breakfast. It consisted of smoked whitefish, cream cheese and a slice of tomato served on a toasted bagel. On the one hand, makes total sense, right? We eat lox like that, and in fact whitefish, though probably not caught in Lake Superior, is an important part of New York Jewish cuisine. On the other hand, Munising, MI is about as far from New York, culturally and gastronomically, as possible, so it was a little shocking that someone up there came up with the whitefish sandwich. What was even more shocking was that it was absolutely delicious. Not just good, but really, really excellent. Even the bagel tasted like the real thing. No, not quite like what I used to get on Queens Blvd. in Rego Park back in the day, but it was a hell of a lot better than all but a handful of bagels I can get in DC. I asked the young woman at the counter whether they made them on site, she said they didn't but did not elaborate.
We hit the trail around 9:00. It was another beautiful day, a little too warm if anything. Unfortunately, the hike proved to be just a tad disappointing. Two years ago, I had hiked west from Twelve-Mile Beach, where I camped, and saw some of the most unbelievable cliffs, some of the same ones we saw from the kayak the previous day, but from the top. It was that hike, in fact, that made me resolve to kayak the Rocks before I died – I saw kayakers directly underneath me, paddling right up to the cliffs. I was hoping that we could reach the same area coming from Miner's Castle, but my estimates were off, and most of our hike actually took us through the woods with only occasional glimpses at the lake, much like the hike we did two days earlier. We hiked as far as Mosquito Beach, about five miles away. The name is well-deserved, I should point out – we were all but devoured on the last mile. I guess I should have expected this – they don't call mosquitoes “Michigan Air Force” for nothing – but two years ago I didn't get a single bite, and I was there a week earlier in the season, so I figured they'd be gone by now. Anyway, by the time we reached Mosquito Beach we were tired and sweaty. We went for a leisurely swim, and had a lunch of protein bars and trail mix. By then, it was getting close to 1:00 p.m., and J. pointed out that there is no way we would have time to get back to the car, make it back to Mackinaw Bridge, and drive half-way down the coast on winding lakeside roads. At best, we could go straight for the interstate and gun it to Grand Rapids, arriving close to midnight for a few inadequate hours of sleep. And, while the Art Museum was no doubt very nice for its host city, and its reputation for unique energy-efficient architecture well-deserved, it was probably not essential viewing for someone with easy access to DC and New York museums. I had to concede that she was absolutely right. Once the decision was made to remain in Munising for one more night, the sense of urgency disappeared, we hiked back to Miner's Castle at a sane pace and went for another swim before driving back into town and getting a room at the Munising Days Inn next door to Sydney's.
The upside of staying, besides not having to rush, was that we could now take a cruise of Pictured Rocks. They offered several sailings throughout the day, but the last voyage, which left at 6:15 p.m., was what they called their sunset cruise, with the boat still on the lake when the sun set. We booked two spots by telephone from the hotel, and went next door to Sydney's for a not-quite-lunch, not-quite-dinner, the trail mix having worn off long ago. While I could have probably happily eaten more whitefish, both J. and I opted for the other UP specialty – the pasty. Most people think of it as an English thing – in the UK, the full name is “cornish pasty” -- but up here for some reason it is associated with Finnish immigrants who came to log the place in the mid- to late-1800s. Anyway, it is an oblong pie stuffed with diced root vegetables -- traditionally, rutabaga, potatoes and carrots -- and shredded beef. I had had one on my first visit at a roadside joint on US-2 not far from the Mackinaw Bridge, and it was not good. But J. insisted on trying one, and Sydney's appeared to be rather proud of theirs, so I figured I'd give it another shot. I can report that while it was far better than the first version I had had, it was still not an experience I would be eager to repeat. Dry, heavy and starchy to the extreme, it was only partially redeemed by Sydney's delicious coleslaw and gobs of ketchup. It was very light on the meat – probably authentic, what with poor immigrants a century ago needing to stretch expensive ingredients as far as possible, but disappointing in modern times. A pint of Edmund Fitzgerald helped.
A few minutes before six we showed up at the dock, picked up our tickets and boarded the boat. The crowd was sizable – other than paddling, this is the way to see Pictured Rocks – but we managed to get seats on the upper, open, deck, and were off. The narrator made way too many really lame jokes, but we did learn a few interesting facts about Lake Superior (deepest and cleanest of the Great Lakes, in addition to largest, and the largest surface area in the world, plus kids' stuff like “if it were as deep as a swimming pool, it would cover all of South America, etc.”) It is here that we learned the alternative explanation for the Pictured Rocks name. Apparently, early explorers saw all kinds of images of actual things in the colors, hence the name. I doubt the Ojibwa smoked peyote, it being a cactus, but whatever they used to achieve the same effect they must have shared generously with these explorers. We saw no images. We did, however, see several amazing rock formations that we either didn't reach or were too close in to see in the kayak.
Indian Head is probably the one that looks the most like its namesake, but there were sterns of ships, birds, and all kinds of other things. Overall, seeing the Rocks from a larger boat was a nice foil to the experience of the previous day – you get a more holistic, though slightly less involved, feel for the cliffs. You see more at once, and get a panorama rather than a zoomed-in view we had when floating a few feet away from the towering sandstone.
We covered about twelve miles of coastline. On the way back, the sun was low enough that the cliffs achieved a beautiful, deep golden glow. The timing of the cruise was impeccable – the sun set right as we were leaving Lake Superior proper and entering Munising Bay. The noise of the motors and the commotion on deck didn't allow for a meditative experience, but it was gorgeous nonetheless, especially since we knew it was our last unobstructed sunset of the trip.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Michigan, Day Four
We would spend Tuesday kayaking along Pictured Rocks, but I had done some poor planning, and while we spent the night in Grand Marais, we had to make a 9:00 a.m. departure in Munising, sixty-five miles away. So we left Grand Marais at the crack of dawn and drove along deserted Northern Michigan roads, through some of the densest fog I have ever seen, with two enormous sandhill cranes along the side of the road as our only witnesses. We arrived in plenty of time (I had been kicking myself for not arranging things better, and compensated by getting on the road at six a.m.) and had a mediocre breakfast at a cheerfully decorated and, thankfully, well-heated (it was 52 degrees outside) place called The Dogpatch in downtown Munising. A few minutes before nine, we arrived at Northern Waters Adventures on the edge of town.
Northern Waters was little more than a giant barn, most of it filled with junk that seemed to have only remote relevance to kayaking. We checked in with Linda, who behaved like she was the owner, though did not introduce herself as such, then met with the rest of what would be our group – a friendly, talkative man from Wisconsin with his two daughters, a high-schooler and a tween, and a quiet couple in their forties, from Ohio if memory serves. Our guide was a tall, lanky fellow named Meir who spoke with the unmistakable monotone of someone whose lack of enthusiasm for anything that goes on around him was induced by many years of regular marijuana smoking. Actually, I don’t even know if that was how his name was spelled. Even though Meir looked too young to have been born in the sixties, I could easily imagine a pair of pot-smoking pinko hippies naming their son “Mir” back in the day. We had already signed a bunch of forms absolving the outfit and its guides from responsibility for all kinds of terrible things that were sure to happen to us once we were out on the water, and I was beginning to wonder whether I should have been more worried than I was.
I have to give credit where credit is due, however – Meir sure knew his boats and his paddling. Once we got to our put-in point at Miner’s Beach, he gave us a much longer and far more detailed primer on kayaking on open water than we ever got on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick last year, though that outfit seemed more professional and better organized in every way. Meir gave us detailed instructions on what to do if the boat flips, why it was not a good idea to push the paddle too far back in the water, how to give the paddle extra momentum by executing a punching movement with your airborne hand, and dozens of other useful tips. Just from that half-hour or so on Miner’s Beach, I feel like I am a better paddler.
Evidently, there had been some conflicting marine forecasts earlier that morning, but by the time we were finally on the water, the weather could not have been more perfect. There was not a shred of cloud in the sky, there was only a slightest hint of a breeze, and the water was a deep, bright and amazingly clear turquoise. Bizarre though the comparison may seem, it reminded me the most of a photograph an old friend showed me many years ago of her vacation to the Cayman Islands.
Once we were on the water, we first paddled west to Miner’s Castle, one of the most prominent rock formations in Pictured Rocks, a rough stone pillar of sorts sticking up from a high outcropping that buts out into the lake. Near the pillar, a hundred feet away or so, there is a flat platform. Another, similar pillar had once stood there, but it collapsed into the lake a dozen or so years ago. You can still buy postcards in town that show both of them.
After seeing Miner’s Castle, we turned around and paddled east, where most of the otherworldly rock formations of Pictured Rocks were. The cliffs of Pictured Rocks themselves are predominantly sandstone, but the soil of the surrounding area is rich in a great variety of minerals, and since sandstone is very porous, the many underground streams and rivers carry the minerals to the surface, where they oxidize, creating a staggering variety of the most unusual colors. In fact, this was the first explanation for the name “Pictured” Rocks (Colored Rocks would have been more precise) I had heard on my first visit two years ago. We would hear an alternative one the following day, as well as having the unplanned opportunity to see them from a slightly different vantage point.
In the meantime, we were paddling right under the towering cliffs, following the jagged coastline. The wind had picked up a bit, but the paddling was still relatively easy and our loose group was making decent progress. Attempting to describe the rocks in detail would be futile, and photographing them, which I would do the following day, only slightly less so. Suffice it to say that they are overwhelming. Imagine plopping the Red Rocks of Sedona, AZ into Lake Superior and you’ll begin to get the general idea.
A little over an hour into the trip, we stopped for lunch at the end of a beach, and Meir, in a long-winded version liberally sprinkled with “and stuff like that” told us the story of the Ojibwa Indians, specifically the pacifist offshoot on Grand Island, which we could see to the northwest; the story which, through the diaries of Henry Schoolcraft eventually made it into Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. After lunch, we spent almost three more hours on the water, seeing more gorgeous cliffs and beautiful weather, though the wind continued to kick up steadily through the day. By the last half-hour, we were starting to feel the day’s work in our arms and back. We took out well after three, the group helped Meir load the boats onto the trailer, and broke up in the parking lot with smiles and handshakes. J. and I stayed on the beach for another hour or so, swimming in a bracing but wonderfully refreshing and shockingly clean water.
Our lodging for the night was Sunset Motel, another minimalist establishment. It was a little further from the center of town than I had hoped, and not walking distance to anything, but it was spotless, and true to its name – every room looked directly out onto Munising Bay and Grand Island beyond, with benches and picnic tables placed in the front with the express purpose of allowing guests to watch the sunset. Strangely, it also proved to have one of the most comfortable mattresses I have ever slept on, orders of magnitude better than any other hotel, and even better than our very decent one at home.
We had dinner at the improbably named Sydney’s Shark Bay Bar. Located right on the main drag just before downtown Munising proper starts, it is probably the best known restaurant in town, or at least the most written-about. I had seen several mentions. The owner, apparently, has a life-long fascination with Australia, and though she has never been there, she decided to give her restaurant an Australian theme, complete with kangaroo crossing signs and old license plates from New South Wales. The main dining room had a decidedly institutional, cafeteria-like feel, but the bar area was cozy and inviting, with a real oak bar that curved around one side of the room, seventies-vintage faux leather captain’s chairs instead of stools, and several candle-lit booths around the perimeter, into one of which we settled. The menu was extensive, mostly standard pub grub, but several varieties of local fish – they had walleye and lake perch in addition to whitefish – were featured prominently. On our waitress’s recommendation, we stuck with whitefish – apparently, it had been pulled out of the lake a scant few hours earlier. J., who was starting to get tired of road food, made the mistake of ordering hers broiled – it was overcooked and dry – but I went with fried, and it was delicious. It wasn’t heavily breaded fish-n-chips style, being lightly dusted with cornmeal instead, and I finally got a good idea of whitefish’s flavor. It is a mild fish, not particularly complex, but when it is as fresh as it was on my plate, it had a pleasant, clean taste reminiscent of cod, and had a distinct scent of a Lake Superior breeze. A very different animal than it is in smoked form.
Our evening’s beverage was also one of the more satisfying of the trip – the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, made by the Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland. Sydney’s had it on tap and advertised it with large posters depicting the beer’s namesake. The Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the best-known bits of local lore. It was the last ship to have wrecked on Lake Superior to date, in November of 1975, killing all 29 people on board. At just under 800 ft., it was also the largest ship on the lake at the time of its launch. On the night of November 10, 1975 off the coast of Canada, it encountered thirty-five-foot waves and 60+ mph winds, took on water, broke in two and sank just fifteen miles from Whitefish Bay which would have provided sufficient shelter for the ship to wait out the storm. Gordon Lightfoot recorded a song about the wreck a couple of years later. Today, the story is told often as the closing (hopefully) chapter of a long history of shipwrecks on Lake Superior, as well as a reminder of the savagery the lake is capable of – something that I admit was a little hard to imagine as we paddled along Pictured Rocks in light breeze and bright sunlight earlier in the day. The beer named after the ship was delicious – pitch-dark, thick and robust, it had a faint malty sweetness around its very porter-like bitter core, but also had more hoppy notes on top than a typical English porter. We enjoyed it thoroughly.
After dinner, unable to stay indoors on another of Michigan’s interminable evenings, we wandered downtown, largely dead, but home to the least expected and most welcome establishments in Munising – the Falling Rocks Café. A coffeehouse-cum-bookstore, it served delicious coffee roasted somewhere in the general area, a good selection of books, and lots of comfortable chairs and tables at which to sip and read. We resolved to come back for breakfast.
Upon our return to the motel, we watched the sunset – I finally realized my dream of having J. see one. Though it set over Grand Island rather than directly over the water, it was still beautiful, and the relative lack of wind, though it took something away from the previous night’s drama, helped J. to stay warm long enough to see the entire thing.
Northern Waters was little more than a giant barn, most of it filled with junk that seemed to have only remote relevance to kayaking. We checked in with Linda, who behaved like she was the owner, though did not introduce herself as such, then met with the rest of what would be our group – a friendly, talkative man from Wisconsin with his two daughters, a high-schooler and a tween, and a quiet couple in their forties, from Ohio if memory serves. Our guide was a tall, lanky fellow named Meir who spoke with the unmistakable monotone of someone whose lack of enthusiasm for anything that goes on around him was induced by many years of regular marijuana smoking. Actually, I don’t even know if that was how his name was spelled. Even though Meir looked too young to have been born in the sixties, I could easily imagine a pair of pot-smoking pinko hippies naming their son “Mir” back in the day. We had already signed a bunch of forms absolving the outfit and its guides from responsibility for all kinds of terrible things that were sure to happen to us once we were out on the water, and I was beginning to wonder whether I should have been more worried than I was.
I have to give credit where credit is due, however – Meir sure knew his boats and his paddling. Once we got to our put-in point at Miner’s Beach, he gave us a much longer and far more detailed primer on kayaking on open water than we ever got on the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick last year, though that outfit seemed more professional and better organized in every way. Meir gave us detailed instructions on what to do if the boat flips, why it was not a good idea to push the paddle too far back in the water, how to give the paddle extra momentum by executing a punching movement with your airborne hand, and dozens of other useful tips. Just from that half-hour or so on Miner’s Beach, I feel like I am a better paddler.
Evidently, there had been some conflicting marine forecasts earlier that morning, but by the time we were finally on the water, the weather could not have been more perfect. There was not a shred of cloud in the sky, there was only a slightest hint of a breeze, and the water was a deep, bright and amazingly clear turquoise. Bizarre though the comparison may seem, it reminded me the most of a photograph an old friend showed me many years ago of her vacation to the Cayman Islands.
Once we were on the water, we first paddled west to Miner’s Castle, one of the most prominent rock formations in Pictured Rocks, a rough stone pillar of sorts sticking up from a high outcropping that buts out into the lake. Near the pillar, a hundred feet away or so, there is a flat platform. Another, similar pillar had once stood there, but it collapsed into the lake a dozen or so years ago. You can still buy postcards in town that show both of them.
After seeing Miner’s Castle, we turned around and paddled east, where most of the otherworldly rock formations of Pictured Rocks were. The cliffs of Pictured Rocks themselves are predominantly sandstone, but the soil of the surrounding area is rich in a great variety of minerals, and since sandstone is very porous, the many underground streams and rivers carry the minerals to the surface, where they oxidize, creating a staggering variety of the most unusual colors. In fact, this was the first explanation for the name “Pictured” Rocks (Colored Rocks would have been more precise) I had heard on my first visit two years ago. We would hear an alternative one the following day, as well as having the unplanned opportunity to see them from a slightly different vantage point.In the meantime, we were paddling right under the towering cliffs, following the jagged coastline. The wind had picked up a bit, but the paddling was still relatively easy and our loose group was making decent progress. Attempting to describe the rocks in detail would be futile, and photographing them, which I would do the following day, only slightly less so. Suffice it to say that they are overwhelming. Imagine plopping the Red Rocks of Sedona, AZ into Lake Superior and you’ll begin to get the general idea.
A little over an hour into the trip, we stopped for lunch at the end of a beach, and Meir, in a long-winded version liberally sprinkled with “and stuff like that” told us the story of the Ojibwa Indians, specifically the pacifist offshoot on Grand Island, which we could see to the northwest; the story which, through the diaries of Henry Schoolcraft eventually made it into Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha. After lunch, we spent almost three more hours on the water, seeing more gorgeous cliffs and beautiful weather, though the wind continued to kick up steadily through the day. By the last half-hour, we were starting to feel the day’s work in our arms and back. We took out well after three, the group helped Meir load the boats onto the trailer, and broke up in the parking lot with smiles and handshakes. J. and I stayed on the beach for another hour or so, swimming in a bracing but wonderfully refreshing and shockingly clean water.Our lodging for the night was Sunset Motel, another minimalist establishment. It was a little further from the center of town than I had hoped, and not walking distance to anything, but it was spotless, and true to its name – every room looked directly out onto Munising Bay and Grand Island beyond, with benches and picnic tables placed in the front with the express purpose of allowing guests to watch the sunset. Strangely, it also proved to have one of the most comfortable mattresses I have ever slept on, orders of magnitude better than any other hotel, and even better than our very decent one at home.
We had dinner at the improbably named Sydney’s Shark Bay Bar. Located right on the main drag just before downtown Munising proper starts, it is probably the best known restaurant in town, or at least the most written-about. I had seen several mentions. The owner, apparently, has a life-long fascination with Australia, and though she has never been there, she decided to give her restaurant an Australian theme, complete with kangaroo crossing signs and old license plates from New South Wales. The main dining room had a decidedly institutional, cafeteria-like feel, but the bar area was cozy and inviting, with a real oak bar that curved around one side of the room, seventies-vintage faux leather captain’s chairs instead of stools, and several candle-lit booths around the perimeter, into one of which we settled. The menu was extensive, mostly standard pub grub, but several varieties of local fish – they had walleye and lake perch in addition to whitefish – were featured prominently. On our waitress’s recommendation, we stuck with whitefish – apparently, it had been pulled out of the lake a scant few hours earlier. J., who was starting to get tired of road food, made the mistake of ordering hers broiled – it was overcooked and dry – but I went with fried, and it was delicious. It wasn’t heavily breaded fish-n-chips style, being lightly dusted with cornmeal instead, and I finally got a good idea of whitefish’s flavor. It is a mild fish, not particularly complex, but when it is as fresh as it was on my plate, it had a pleasant, clean taste reminiscent of cod, and had a distinct scent of a Lake Superior breeze. A very different animal than it is in smoked form.
Our evening’s beverage was also one of the more satisfying of the trip – the Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, made by the Great Lakes Brewing Company in Cleveland. Sydney’s had it on tap and advertised it with large posters depicting the beer’s namesake. The Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the best-known bits of local lore. It was the last ship to have wrecked on Lake Superior to date, in November of 1975, killing all 29 people on board. At just under 800 ft., it was also the largest ship on the lake at the time of its launch. On the night of November 10, 1975 off the coast of Canada, it encountered thirty-five-foot waves and 60+ mph winds, took on water, broke in two and sank just fifteen miles from Whitefish Bay which would have provided sufficient shelter for the ship to wait out the storm. Gordon Lightfoot recorded a song about the wreck a couple of years later. Today, the story is told often as the closing (hopefully) chapter of a long history of shipwrecks on Lake Superior, as well as a reminder of the savagery the lake is capable of – something that I admit was a little hard to imagine as we paddled along Pictured Rocks in light breeze and bright sunlight earlier in the day. The beer named after the ship was delicious – pitch-dark, thick and robust, it had a faint malty sweetness around its very porter-like bitter core, but also had more hoppy notes on top than a typical English porter. We enjoyed it thoroughly.
After dinner, unable to stay indoors on another of Michigan’s interminable evenings, we wandered downtown, largely dead, but home to the least expected and most welcome establishments in Munising – the Falling Rocks Café. A coffeehouse-cum-bookstore, it served delicious coffee roasted somewhere in the general area, a good selection of books, and lots of comfortable chairs and tables at which to sip and read. We resolved to come back for breakfast.
Upon our return to the motel, we watched the sunset – I finally realized my dream of having J. see one. Though it set over Grand Island rather than directly over the water, it was still beautiful, and the relative lack of wind, though it took something away from the previous night’s drama, helped J. to stay warm long enough to see the entire thing.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Michigan, Day Three
In the interest of time, we started the following day with a breakfast at our hotel, which was included in our room rate. It was terrible – cold, gloppy and greasy, washed down with weak lukewarm coffee. It was also a bit surreal, held as it was in the hotel’s enormous, oak-paneled formal dining room, with a few guests eating in silence, no doubt oppressed by the unnecessary gravitas of the space, and one of John Coltrane’s less listenable recordings being piped in through the PA. I was really ready to leave Mackinac Island. Once again we caught the 9:00 a.m. ferry back to the mainland.
Our destination that day was the town Grand Marais, on the Eastern end of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. With every road in Michigan seemingly under a permanent state of construction, we finally arrived around 1:00, wolfed down a quick lunch of protein bars and trail mix and headed for the trail. The Eastern end of Pictured Rocks is home to Grand Sable Dunes, some of the largest in North America. We started at Log Slide, once really a slide that lumberjacks used to send freshly cut logs down to the waiting barges moored in Lake Superior. All of what is today’s Pictured Rocks, and in fact a majority of the entire UP, had been clear-cut in the mid- to late-1800s. It is said that UP timber made most Midwestern cities possible.
The trail wound its way along the edge of the dunes, mostly covered by a canopy of trees but with regular openings onto some of the most breathtaking views of the lake and the sand bluffs below us. The day had started out sunny and quiet, but by early afternoon a solid cloud cover had rolled in and a strong wind had picked up. The surface of the lake was covered with serious-looking white crowns. Every time we stepped through a break in the trees, the cold North-Easterly wind hit us in the face. Standing on one of those precipices high above the water, looking out at the turbulent lake, with not a boat in sight, really made us feel like we were at the edge of the world. We hiked to the Au Sable Lighthouse about two and a half miles away before turning back.
The lighthouse, which I had hiked to from the opposite direction two years ago, is exceptionally well preserved and is still in operation. Originally built in 1874 and powered by burning oil, it was converted to electric power by the Coast Guard in 1958 and completely automated. The original keeper’s quarters are occasionally open for tours, but were closed when we got there.
We returned to the car and drove back into Grand Marais. With a permanent population of about 200, twice that in the summer, it is a real backwater – perhaps the most remote place I have ever stayed, not counting the Twelve-Mile Beach campground, reached by 22 miles of dirt roads, where I camped two years ago. Tourism, such as it is, is Grand Marais’ only means of income. There is a large private campground with RV hookups in the middle of town along with two or three motels and a public dock. In the winter, it is a major center for snowmobiling. All this is not enough to give the town a sense of self-worth, however. It appears out of nowhere when you drive up to it – Michigan Rt. 77 simply ends, and all of a sudden you’re in the middle of a town, and before you even get out of the car you realize that it is a place that has stopped caring about how it looks to visitors. Decrepit, though large, houses, line the main street, kids’ bikes and old chairs strewn about on lawns, a rusty trailer with a pair of old snowmobiles ogling the street with their gaping headlights. The sole gas station’s pumps still have rotary dials.
Our lodging for the night was the Beach Park Motel – a gray, barrack-like two-story building a block away from the center. Curiously, even though there are no telephones in the rooms, it claims to offer wi-fi. When we walked into our room upon check-in, we quickly discovered that it had not been cleaned. Thankfully for us, vacancy was plentiful, and Andy, the proprietors’ son who was on duty that evening quickly moved us to another room. Showered and changed, we left in search of dinner.
In a town like Grand Marais, needless to say, choices were slim, but Hunt’s Guide (an indispensable resource if you're thinking of going) claimed that there was an actual brew pub in town, the Lake Superior Brewing Company (no relation to the commercial micro-brewery of the same name in Duluth, MN). This proved to be a large house at the lake end of the main drag. It did not look like a restaurant, but a faded sign above the door claimed that it was, and once we stepped inside we were pleasantly surprised to find a clean and cheerful, in a rustic sort of way, dining room, with a long bar running down one side and a good number of customers seated around several tables made out of old pickle barrels. We sat at the bar whose décor was a bizarre combination of taxidermied minks and 80s-chic backlit glass tiles. The bartender, a dead ringer for Willie Nelson, informed us that despite the town’s sad appearance, the previous weekend witnessed an unexpected onslaught of tourists, causing them to run out of several things, including whitefish and all but two of their beers. Not all was lost, however, as their stout was still available, and with the temperature outside quickly dipping into the low fifties and the wind showing no sign of subsiding, it would have been my choice anyway. It looked and tasted home-made – yeasty and young, but deliciously fresh and clean – and both J. and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Whitefish being unavailable, we risked pizza, and were pleasantly surprised. It had too much bad cheese and too little of everything else on it, of course, but the crust was very decent and actually tasted like pizza, not flattened Wonderbread.
Looking about, I was not sure whether most of the clientele were locals or tourists, but eventually concluded that it being Monday, it was mostly the former. A pint of the local stuff was poured now and again, but the big seller seemed to be cans of Miller Lite. To our right, two men in trucker's caps, on a first-name basis with the bartender, drank Seagrams VO on the rocks and played cribbage (!). To our left, three thirty-something women, incongruently well-attired in dresses or slacks, kept up a lively chatter among themselves and with a steady stream of far less impressive-looking guys wandering in and out of the bar. By the time we left around eight, it was freezing-cold outside, but, it being the UP, still light. J. returned to the motel to keep warm while I wondered onto the wind-swept beach to watch the sunset.
I would venture a guess that most of us urban and suburban dwellers have not seen a sunset – a real sunset, where you see the sun descend over the horizon, not behind a highrise – in so long that we forget they exist. I was reminded of this two years ago right there in Pictured Rocks, when right from my campsite I watched the sun set over Lake Superior on a perfectly clear evening. The last time before that was when I was about ten. When I walked out onto the beach in Grand Marais, the sun was still high enough and bright enough that I could not so much as glance at it directly, even with sunglasses on. The wind was steady and strong, the surf making the lake sound just like the ocean. The sky had cleared up over the course of the evening, but there was still a thin layer of grayish-purple clouds hanging low over the water, adding to the drama. The sunlight refracted as it passed through them and acquired a spectral quality, forming a deep pink halo around the fireball. The sun itself was a deep but intensely glowing orange – imagine a slice of smoked salmon draped over a floodlight. When its bottom edge hit the water, for a few moments it still looked perfectly round, as if it would ooze over the surface of the lake instead of disappearing behind it. By the time it was a quarter of the way gone, I could look directly at it through a pair of twelve-dollar Target sunglasses. After the bottom half had disappeared, I could watch it growing steadily smaller and see the Earth's rotation in real time. When it was all gone, the sky retained the glow that to me was more heart-rending than the sight of the setting sun itself. Same color, but many degrees less intense, at the lake's surface, it morphed into the steely gray of the twilit sky through an infinity of intermediate colors that I am convinced have no names in the English, or any other, language. Walking away from the beach, I glanced at the house closest to the water -- shutters drawn, no lights inside -- and wondered whether the overwhelming experience of seeing what I had just seen would eventually dull if I could simply walk out onto my deck on any given night and casually glance at a sunset. In the parking lot, two middle-aged gentlemen in expensive hiking gear were perched on the hood of their car, enjoying the spectacle, with two goblets of red wine, the oversized Riedel kind, in their hands.
Our destination that day was the town Grand Marais, on the Eastern end of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. With every road in Michigan seemingly under a permanent state of construction, we finally arrived around 1:00, wolfed down a quick lunch of protein bars and trail mix and headed for the trail. The Eastern end of Pictured Rocks is home to Grand Sable Dunes, some of the largest in North America. We started at Log Slide, once really a slide that lumberjacks used to send freshly cut logs down to the waiting barges moored in Lake Superior. All of what is today’s Pictured Rocks, and in fact a majority of the entire UP, had been clear-cut in the mid- to late-1800s. It is said that UP timber made most Midwestern cities possible.
The trail wound its way along the edge of the dunes, mostly covered by a canopy of trees but with regular openings onto some of the most breathtaking views of the lake and the sand bluffs below us. The day had started out sunny and quiet, but by early afternoon a solid cloud cover had rolled in and a strong wind had picked up. The surface of the lake was covered with serious-looking white crowns. Every time we stepped through a break in the trees, the cold North-Easterly wind hit us in the face. Standing on one of those precipices high above the water, looking out at the turbulent lake, with not a boat in sight, really made us feel like we were at the edge of the world. We hiked to the Au Sable Lighthouse about two and a half miles away before turning back.
The lighthouse, which I had hiked to from the opposite direction two years ago, is exceptionally well preserved and is still in operation. Originally built in 1874 and powered by burning oil, it was converted to electric power by the Coast Guard in 1958 and completely automated. The original keeper’s quarters are occasionally open for tours, but were closed when we got there.We returned to the car and drove back into Grand Marais. With a permanent population of about 200, twice that in the summer, it is a real backwater – perhaps the most remote place I have ever stayed, not counting the Twelve-Mile Beach campground, reached by 22 miles of dirt roads, where I camped two years ago. Tourism, such as it is, is Grand Marais’ only means of income. There is a large private campground with RV hookups in the middle of town along with two or three motels and a public dock. In the winter, it is a major center for snowmobiling. All this is not enough to give the town a sense of self-worth, however. It appears out of nowhere when you drive up to it – Michigan Rt. 77 simply ends, and all of a sudden you’re in the middle of a town, and before you even get out of the car you realize that it is a place that has stopped caring about how it looks to visitors. Decrepit, though large, houses, line the main street, kids’ bikes and old chairs strewn about on lawns, a rusty trailer with a pair of old snowmobiles ogling the street with their gaping headlights. The sole gas station’s pumps still have rotary dials.
Our lodging for the night was the Beach Park Motel – a gray, barrack-like two-story building a block away from the center. Curiously, even though there are no telephones in the rooms, it claims to offer wi-fi. When we walked into our room upon check-in, we quickly discovered that it had not been cleaned. Thankfully for us, vacancy was plentiful, and Andy, the proprietors’ son who was on duty that evening quickly moved us to another room. Showered and changed, we left in search of dinner.
In a town like Grand Marais, needless to say, choices were slim, but Hunt’s Guide (an indispensable resource if you're thinking of going) claimed that there was an actual brew pub in town, the Lake Superior Brewing Company (no relation to the commercial micro-brewery of the same name in Duluth, MN). This proved to be a large house at the lake end of the main drag. It did not look like a restaurant, but a faded sign above the door claimed that it was, and once we stepped inside we were pleasantly surprised to find a clean and cheerful, in a rustic sort of way, dining room, with a long bar running down one side and a good number of customers seated around several tables made out of old pickle barrels. We sat at the bar whose décor was a bizarre combination of taxidermied minks and 80s-chic backlit glass tiles. The bartender, a dead ringer for Willie Nelson, informed us that despite the town’s sad appearance, the previous weekend witnessed an unexpected onslaught of tourists, causing them to run out of several things, including whitefish and all but two of their beers. Not all was lost, however, as their stout was still available, and with the temperature outside quickly dipping into the low fifties and the wind showing no sign of subsiding, it would have been my choice anyway. It looked and tasted home-made – yeasty and young, but deliciously fresh and clean – and both J. and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Whitefish being unavailable, we risked pizza, and were pleasantly surprised. It had too much bad cheese and too little of everything else on it, of course, but the crust was very decent and actually tasted like pizza, not flattened Wonderbread.
Looking about, I was not sure whether most of the clientele were locals or tourists, but eventually concluded that it being Monday, it was mostly the former. A pint of the local stuff was poured now and again, but the big seller seemed to be cans of Miller Lite. To our right, two men in trucker's caps, on a first-name basis with the bartender, drank Seagrams VO on the rocks and played cribbage (!). To our left, three thirty-something women, incongruently well-attired in dresses or slacks, kept up a lively chatter among themselves and with a steady stream of far less impressive-looking guys wandering in and out of the bar. By the time we left around eight, it was freezing-cold outside, but, it being the UP, still light. J. returned to the motel to keep warm while I wondered onto the wind-swept beach to watch the sunset.
I would venture a guess that most of us urban and suburban dwellers have not seen a sunset – a real sunset, where you see the sun descend over the horizon, not behind a highrise – in so long that we forget they exist. I was reminded of this two years ago right there in Pictured Rocks, when right from my campsite I watched the sun set over Lake Superior on a perfectly clear evening. The last time before that was when I was about ten. When I walked out onto the beach in Grand Marais, the sun was still high enough and bright enough that I could not so much as glance at it directly, even with sunglasses on. The wind was steady and strong, the surf making the lake sound just like the ocean. The sky had cleared up over the course of the evening, but there was still a thin layer of grayish-purple clouds hanging low over the water, adding to the drama. The sunlight refracted as it passed through them and acquired a spectral quality, forming a deep pink halo around the fireball. The sun itself was a deep but intensely glowing orange – imagine a slice of smoked salmon draped over a floodlight. When its bottom edge hit the water, for a few moments it still looked perfectly round, as if it would ooze over the surface of the lake instead of disappearing behind it. By the time it was a quarter of the way gone, I could look directly at it through a pair of twelve-dollar Target sunglasses. After the bottom half had disappeared, I could watch it growing steadily smaller and see the Earth's rotation in real time. When it was all gone, the sky retained the glow that to me was more heart-rending than the sight of the setting sun itself. Same color, but many degrees less intense, at the lake's surface, it morphed into the steely gray of the twilit sky through an infinity of intermediate colors that I am convinced have no names in the English, or any other, language. Walking away from the beach, I glanced at the house closest to the water -- shutters drawn, no lights inside -- and wondered whether the overwhelming experience of seeing what I had just seen would eventually dull if I could simply walk out onto my deck on any given night and casually glance at a sunset. In the parking lot, two middle-aged gentlemen in expensive hiking gear were perched on the hood of their car, enjoying the spectacle, with two goblets of red wine, the oversized Riedel kind, in their hands.
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