Isle Royale Remembered by Jerry Lang of Muskegon
I remember the first trip my wife and I took to Isle Royale
– my favorite Michigan wilderness. There is something mysterious about this
chunk of basaltic rock rubbed raw several times by glacial ice, periodically
submerged by ancient lakes, historically ravaged for it’s copper ore, and once
home to rugged seasonal fishermen.
As I gazed over the bow of the Ranger III at the 42-mile
long island rising out the icy waters of Lake Superior, I felt the cares of the
everyday world sinking into the wake behind us. A warm breeze carrying the
boreal fragrance of sun-warmed balsam fir and spruce wafted over us on approach
to the island. Despite an initial sunny welcome, we were fittingly ‘baptized’
into another world by a sudden summer rain shower just as we disembarked at
Rock Harbor.
Being the non-avid campers we are, my wife and I were
thankful for the Park Service’s Rock Harbor Lodge on the east end of Isle
Royale. By staying at the lodge, we were deprived of bragging rights about
enduring blisters, hiking in downpours, and being bitten by blackflies along
rugged portages. But we were still imbued by the wilderness feel of the place
during our daily daypack and paddle trips.
Our introductory canoe trip was
to the western end of Tobin Harbor. The
underwater panorama of sand, stones, sunken logs, and submerged plants changed
beneath us with each silent stoke of the paddle while we slowly traveled along
the wooded shoreline. We never glimpsed one of island’s resident moose nor
heard a wolf howl in the distance; but the enigmatic call of nesting loons
often echoed across the water.
We stopped on one of the many
‘boulder islands’ for lunch. It’s amazing how life clings to those granite
rocks. Multicolored lichens covered much of the surface with bluebells,
goldenrod, and even some small fir and spruce trees sprouting up in the cracks.
Our second short canoe trip took
us across Rock Harbor to nearby Raspberry Island. The boardwalk through a bog
on the island offered a close-up view of a variety of carnivorous ‘Little Shop
of Horrors plants’ like sundews and purple pitcher plants.
As an entomology graduate
student, I studied the tiny non-biting pitcher plant mosquito, Wyeomyia smithii, whose closest
relatives inhabit neotropical bromeliads. I’ve been known to use my wife’s
turkey baster to suck water out of pitcher plant leaves looking for mosquito
larvae. Luckily for my wife and the mosquitoes I had no baster handy on this
trip.
While Isle Royale is an
officially designated wilderness area, we were forcefully reminded that the
island is surrounded by the wildness of untamed Lake Superior. We encountered
gale-force winds with 14-foot high waves on the return trip to Houghton. As
most of the passengers gazed up from their barf bags at the mainland shoreline,
we all had a new appreciation for our smallness amidst the raw power of planet
earth’s wildness encountered right here in Michigan.
No comments:
Post a Comment