Back Up North

By Donald Holmes Lewis

Published in the January-February 2012 issue of The Mackinac Journal, the Monthly Magazine of the Straits.

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It was an odd morning in the middle of February last year when I awoke in the early morning in our cottage on Mullett Lake in Cheboygan County. The baseboard heaters were silent as ghosts. Without a whisper of wind the house was warm like springtime. I got out of bed without disturbing Sal or our aging Jack Russell terrier who sleeps between us most nights. I checked the thermometer at the side of the kitchen door as I poured a big cup of coffee. It was 48 degrees. The last month we’d seen record cold, highs in the teens most days, but winter had turned on a dime during the night.

As I flipped on the back yard lights to look for Maizie coming back for her morning meal, I saw a drizzly dreary fog and it was raining.

In two hours I was scheduled to meet the regional TV people over in St. Ignace along with a crew from the Weather Channel who were coming up from Atlanta to capture some pre-tournament film about one of the largest hockey tournaments in North America. It’s played on almost 30 rinks constructed on Moran Bay right on Lake Huron. My heart sank like a stone thrown from the end of the dock in summer. The ice is melting, I thought. The ice is melting.

I grabbed my bag of full of notes for the shoot and my laptop. I pulled my mittens out in disgust. I slogged my way to the truck. The snowy yard steamed around me. I checked my iPhone weather app as I settled behind the wheel… warm through tomorrow then back to pretty cold again. The tournament was scheduled to begin in 24 hours.

Driving west on Riggsvile Road, I was nearly blind in the grey gloom. On the interstate highway it wasn’t much better. It took me an hour to crawl through the soup to the bridge. “Why now?’ I kept saying as I inched the truck over the Straits. At mid-point of my crossing I broke through the endless cloud and the rain stopped but then I descended into the mist again.

I hid my worries all morning and into the early afternoon as TV crews interviewed the tournament Director, toured the Labatt’s headquarters tent, and filmed the small “chalet” built on the ice as deluxe accommodations for one of the teams from Canada. I watched as the last cameraman was driven out to a complex network of rinks shrouded by the deepening fog.

“It’ll freeze good tonight,” said a voice from behind me. I turned and shook the hand of a middle aged man in a Red Wings jacket I’d never met before. He’d just arrived from downstate with his team, one of 160 scheduled for the first round of games in the morning. “Don’t look so worried. This kind of stuff doesn’t last long.”

“I know. I’m just the worrying type.”

I told him about my efforts to get more press coverage of the tournament, how I’d been thinking that the beauty of the St. Ignace harbor in winter, the majesty of the Straits of Mackinac, and the awesome spread of hockey rinks wouldn’t look like much on TV because of the weather.

“Who cares? It’s all about hockey. It’s about our love for playing the game, the old way. You know, the way the game started on neighborhood ponds a long time ago.”

The man asked me to join his teammates at the Driftwood Bar for a beer and I accepted. I sat with them in a booth for a couple of hours and listened to their stories about the tournament the year before, how it was barely zero outside, and how they played through a whiteout blizzard on top of the cold. They lost every game they played.

For the first time in ages I recounted my best moment playing hockey, a weekend series playing against the National Champs in Madison, Wisconsin where I played every other shift at defense. I told my new found friends how even though we lost both those games not a goal was scored while I was on the ice. I did watch a couple go in from the penalty box.

That night back home, as Sal and I got ready for bed, our house creaked with the sudden drop in temperature. I lay in bed for a while unable to sleep. When I got up to make a fire in the wood burning stove, I saw stars shining over the lake and their reflections sparkling on the ice. A crescent sliver moon rose above the eastern horizon three miles across.

The next morning was the most beautiful cold day of mid-winter you could possibly imagine. The weatherman had been wrong once again. The bitter air from the artic had arrived earlier than expected. At the hockey championship, I watched players battle and shoot pucks on the best ice surfaces they’d ever dreamed of, with a bright blue sky and powerless sun overhead. The rinks that were puddles the day before were now smooth as glass and hard as granite. It was a perfect day for a game of hockey.

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By Donald Holmes Lewis

Published in December 2011 issue of The Mackinac Journal, Monthly Magazine of the Straits.

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Early in the morning last week Maizie scooted out the kitchen door and stopped with her paws in three inches of new snow. The temperature had fallen close to zero overnight and it was still pitch dark outside. I could tell she was not pleased one little bit about real winter arriving without much notice.

I peered through the glass at her frozen statue body along the lake shore. Small wave after small beat on the rocks below her. She refused to move an inch with one painful front foreleg held high in protest. The falling powder gathered on her back.

I wondered what she’d been thinking about when she hid the last few weeks in the bedroom closet on top of Sal’s shoes, shivering and yelping for us to come upstairs.

Where did all my dog pals go?

Why didn’t we go with them?

I loaded the wood burning stove with the first maple logs of the season and went back out for more. I’d been hesitant to start the ritual. I bought less wood this year, betting on a mild fall. I had been right but now I had no choice.

Maizie followed me back inside and I put out her food. She ignored it and stared at the staircase, listening for Sal’s first steps.

I poured a second cup of coffee and did what I always do after stuffing logs and lighting the fire. I stared out the picture window, out across the lake from my chair at the dining room table. I imagined the snow covered ice between our place and Dodge Point, the way it would be in another month or so, with fishing shanties gathered near the sand bar. I dreamed of sled tracks. I conjured the endless wilderness of an eastern snowstorm.

A silver dawn scratched the edge of the horizon as I finished my coffee. A seagull flew by in the semidarkness. A kingfisher rested for a second on a branch hanging over the water, and then took off into the wind. The waves grew. The breeze shook snow from the cedar at the corner of the cottage.

Maizie sprinted up the stairs, leaving her bowl untouched.

I put my elbows on the table and my chin in the palms of my hands. As the base board heaters creaked to life, the rooms of our cottage seemed smaller than the day before.

Only seven days until Christmas. Why was my holiday spirit lagging so terribly?

Wasn’t I the same person who relished every snow filled day of December three years before when we moved to Cheboygan? Wasn’t I the dad who hummed Christmas carols all year, driving my entire family bonkers? Wasn’t I the young man who went from friend’s home to friend’s home in the snow with my brother, spreading a little cheer, making Bloody Marys? Wasn’t I the young boy from Minnesota who counted down the days ‘til Christmas Day in quarter hours from Thanksgiving?

I showered, changed into my work clothes, and trudged through the light snow to the truck. As I started for town through the woods along the shore, I saw a man standing in my neighbor’s yard down by the lake, hands in the pockets of his long winter coat. He wore a black wool cap with flaps down over his ears.  When he heard my engine, he turned and waved and started walking towards me. I stopped on the road and powered down the passenger window.

“Can I help you?’ I asked, turning down the heater fan to hear his reply. From a distance he’d seemed suspicious, maybe a burglar scoping out the homes along Silver Beach Road for empty ones, easy targets in the off season. Up close he looked harmless. He looked lonely and cold.

“No, I’m fine,” he said as he wiped his nose. “I was just looking at the lake.”

I noticed a small package tucked under his arm inside his coat. I could see it was a Christmas present wrapped in gold paper with a shiny red bow.

“My dad used to do all the lawns around here for the summer people,” the man said. “I used to help him. I think this is the most beautiful place on earth. You’re lucky to live here.”

“Get in the truck. You look cold.”

When I pulled up next to his snow covered van, he stared straight ahead and rubbed his hands over the defroster vents. He told me the name of every owner of every cottage along the shoreline. He knew my name.

Then he told me about driving all the way from North Dakota, about going to his ex-wife’s house, how he was going to surprise his daughter with an early Christmas gift, and when he got there they were gone. He didn’t even know they had moved.

“I’m really sorry. Did you find out where they are?”

“Sure. They live in town now. Everything’s okay. I’m going to take my daughter to the movies tonight.”

As the man drove off, I decided to head back to the cottage. Sal would be up. There’d be more coffee. I’d take Maizie for a walk along the shore. When you keep her company, she doesn’t mind the cold so much.

I’d hang Christmas lights over the front step. I’d make a big breakfast and think about giving presents and family coming for the holidays. I’d take the afternoon off as well, ignore my office, and walk the snowy streets downtown and buy a few things.

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By Donald Holmes Lewis

Published in the October 2011 Issue of the Mackinac Journal, Magazine of the Straits.

With this issue, Back Up North has moved from the Cheboygan Daily Tribune as a weekly column to the Mackinac Journal, Magazine of the Straits.  Don’s book Back Up North featuring his Tribune columns from 2009-2010 is available at the Log Mark Bookstore in downtown Cheboygan, other bookstores, and at Amazon. Don can be reached at dlewis@northernlightscm.com

The Bridge of My Dreams

On Friday after Labor Day I awoke from another in a long series of midnight dreams about the Mackinac Bridge. In those dreams bursts of sunlight would poke me from my stupor and then I’d fall back along the shoreline on either side of the bridge looking for someone who could tell me the way home. The smell of campfire smoke wafted through every minute of every dream.

As I got out of bed, the morning rose in shock blue. I dressed for work in the little bedroom upstairs in our cottage on Mullett Lake. Out the window on the surface of the water, laces of silky fog drifted in their early fall dance, the air now colder than the deep.

I slipped a blue collared shirt over my shoulders and tightened a silver tie to my neck. At the bottom of our pine wood stairs Sal passed me with a hot cup of coffee in her hand. We kissed. We didn’t say a word.

It had been almost three years since we moved to the Land Below the Bridge. Getting through the winter had proven no less easy each year in our old place meant for only summer visitors. Now autumn whispered to us again, saying those words like ants to grasshoppers. Begin your preparations.

On my way to the truck I called my wood guy with an order for ten face cords. By the time I reached the highway I’d arranged for our winter storage space, the plumbing and power cutoffs, and confirmed my trip to Minnesota for duck hunting with my brother.

My day at the office in downtown Cheboygan was a crucible of deadlines but my team got everything done for our clients with time to spare. At noon they told me to go home. They had everything covered.

A crystal clear afternoon was suddenly mine for doing what I wanted. It felt like a letter from a long lost friend. I drove north on Main Street then northwest on Old 23. As I passed the outskirts of town, the shadow of an eagle crossed the asphalt. Pine trees swayed in the stirring breeze. As I passed Point Nipigon, the soft rolling waters of the South Straits Channel on Huron summoned a familiar image. I’d passed this spot with these little log cabins in the first hazy dream a month before.

Lovers Alone in Mac City

Next thing I knew I was in Mackinaw City. I drove down the center of town in slow motion. I pulled into the lot of the historic park directly under the great structure. A couple from Iowa smiled and held hands with their kids as they unloaded some gear and headed for the visitor center. I walked to the stones on the beach.

Two lovers sat on a shore bench with the lighthouse off to the southeast. Though early afternoon, the sun cast shadows into the water. A Star Line ferry sprayed a tail of white gold on its way to the Island.

A Greek Temple

In the shade under the great expanse, I looked across the Straits through the superstructure. I recognized a picture that had twice startled me from sleep. It was the face of an ancient god staring at me, eyes far apart from inside the gates of a Greek temple. I shook my head and slipped around the end of the fence to the beach by the fort.

The bay was quiet. No gulls, no cormorants, no pleasure boats, not a single person walking the coast. Cars and trucks hummed and shook the section of bridge immediately over my head. A miniature toy footfall floated past the giant pylons. A great lakes barge nosed around McGulpin Point in the distance.

I picked up a perfectly round granite stone and hurled it as far as I could into what I figured on that side of the bridge was Lake Michigan. Even though a breeze kicked at my back, the waters remained calm. The sun curled across the sand hills to the south. The fort looked exactly like it did two hundred years ago. Its turrets and graying logs seemed solid and ready for what would come.

Deserted Below the Fort

My dreams, I knew, would not return for another year.

As I walked back to my truck, thoughts of grouse and duck hunting filled my head. I conjured bursting amber and yellow in the trees. I imagined big racked bucks slipping past and some in my cross-hairs. I smelled the earth of the forest floor. I saw great formations of Canada geese like an air force, cupping their wings and covering the water in front of the cottage back home.

On the drive down I-75 I powered down the windows. I reached for the radio dials but thought better of it. I listened to the hum of the tires and the power of the winds pouring in from all sides.

I’d been to the bridge. I’d stood where I needed to stand.

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By Donald Holmes Lewis

Published on August 6, 2011 in the Cheboygan Daily Tribune.

Waiting for Dinner

Last week Sal and I crossed the Upper Peninsula on our way to Duluth to see my parents, my brother, my sister, and 250 Lewis relatives at the big reunion. Clear blue skies carried us west over endless miles of single lane blacktop. We saw a dead moose along the road, something I had never seen before. We saw mysterious blue boxes hanging from trees every few miles. We saw a thousand abandoned cottages and motels longing for families to return.

He hugged the southern Superior shore where hundreds of people stood in the breaking surf. We bit our nails and passed slow moving trucks and RVs along the way and skirted Marquette to make better time. By the time we found ourselves in Wisconsin I started thinking about something I had to share with Sal.

“I think I’ve written my last column for the Tribune for a while.”

“Maybe you should take a rest.”

“I think I’ve said what I have to say this summer.”

“Then it’s okay. Take a break.”

On Sunday night, with all the big get-togethers behind us, we had dinner to celebrate Sal’s birthday at the lake cabin where I spent my summers as a kid. My dad arrived in his four-wheeler, slumped at the wheel with Parkinson’s disease but smiling at the fact he’d made his famous entrance nonetheless. His caregiver gave me a look that said my dad was doing fine, that he had my dad under control, and that my dad had to do this because he wanted me to see he was still strong. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My brother grilled salmon. Fresh sweet corn boiled on the stove. My mom pointed to a bald eagle circling overhead. We all watched the great bird come closer and closer and perch itself high in the pine just across the yard. We put Maizie, our faithful little Jack Russell terrier, in the house in case the great bird had ideas about snatching a canine dinner.

Before we knew it morning burst in our bedroom window and Sal and I were back on the road. All the way home I kept thinking about the eagle, how it seemed old and tired but proud and ready for another meal.

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By Donald Holmes Lewis

Published on July 23, 2011 in the Cheboygan Daily Tribune.

A Summer Storm of Dreams

 Last Sunday night was the first hot heavy night of summer. The air refused to move. The lake barely whispered. An orange moon rose over the other side of Mullett Lake and disappeared in the growing darkness overhead.

My son Max and his friends had arrived the day before, escaping from the record heat in the Ohio Valley. As I set the fan next to our bed, I heard everyone at the end of the dock laughing and enjoying the outdoors for the first time since the earth turned to face the sun a month before. Our weather did not feel hot to them.

I heard Sal implore them to jump in the water and join her in a late night swim. It was the last thing I remember hearing as I lay on the bed with the rattle and hum of spinning blades drowning out the sounds coming through the bedroom window. I thought about our strange day in the burning sun.

We spent most of the afternoon out on the water in the speed boat. Coolers of cold beverages and a plastic tub of sandwiches and snacks crowded the deck and seats.  We cruised to the entrance to Indian River and then north through choppy waves along the opposite shore. For some reason no one said a word on the trip, everyone content to listen to the wind and let spray after spray cool us off.

We threw our anchor into the sand at the mouth of the Cheboygan River and stood in the water. We climbed back in the boat, back in the water, and back in the boat again. We passed sun block around until the bottle was empty.

An hour passed before we decided to head back to the cottage. It had been a perfect day; the kind you dream about in January.

A small seaplane circled overhead as we stowed our gear for going home. I knew as I watched it approach for landing on the lake that something terrible was going to happen.

“Hey, guys. He’s going to land. He’s got his wheels down. He shouldn’t have his wheels down!”

We helplessly watched the seaplane touch the surface 60 yards away. It flipped over in a violent, slow motion, silent summersault. It came to rest upside down with the cabin underwater.

The nearest swimmers and boats rushed through waist deep water to rescue the man, but before anyone could reach the plane the pilot crawled out and stood on the wing. He threw his arms in the air to signal he was all right.

Back on our dock an hour later, we’d talked about what we had seen as the great south wind disappeared, replaced by the kind of suffocating humidity I’d forgotten was part of summer in northern Michigan.

Just before I drifted off on the damp sheet, I heard a distant rumble of thunder.

In the middle of the night, Sal finally dragged me out of bed.

“You missed the whole thing. I’ve been scared witless. I haven’t slept a wink.”

“What?” I said half asleep.

“The storm. The worst storm I’ve ever seen. You slept right through it.”

“What?” I repeated.

“The maple by the dock is down. It crushed the picnic table. The boat hoist is mangled. The sound was terrible. I saw it all happen out the window. You could see like it was daylight. The lightning was endless.”

The moon reappeared as I got up and looked down at the dock. The boat was fine, tilted on its side a few degrees. The hoist, however, looked like an angry monster had torn it apart, the cover hanging by a single hook, draped over the sitting deck like a broken wing of a great bird.

“I couldn’t wake you up. I tried, but you snored your way through it.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s over now. Do we have insurance for something like this?”

“Yes we do.”

A few minutes later Sal finally got some sleep. I lay next to her with my eyes wide open until dawn. I thought about the man who survived the plane crash and wondered if he knew what was coming. I wondered the same about myself.

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By Donald Holmes Lewis

Published on July 9, 2011 in the Cheboygan Daily Tribune.

Only a single boat

When I slipped out of bed on Tuesday morning, only a single boat graced the grey blue water of Mullett Lake. Three guys were hard at walleye fishing out in the middle. The man in the white ball cap had one taught on his line. Ripples of silver darkness lapped at the stern of their aluminum boat. The other two men ignored the guy landing a real beauty.

The day after our great national holiday everyone in our cottage was still fast asleep. Everyone had sun burns.

I opened the back door and walked into the first morning heat of the year. I strolled out on our dock. Our two mallard parents who’d already sent their babies out into the world cupped their wings, gracefully skimmed the surface of our inlet, and set up shop for the day.

Over Dodge Point, over Harry’s place, the sun hung in the same place it had risen since right after the summer solstice. These were the glorious days of long, long summer.

I thought about Harry who’d brought us to this place by daring us to buy our cottage almost 20 years ago. He died a few short weeks ago. It seemed his ghost was leading me out over the stirring water.

On Sunday night we’d watched the wild wonderful fireworks over the lake. Stars of gold and brilliant purples and every color in the rainbow burst into globes of blinding light. Cracks of thunder filled the air. Rockets like machine gun fire traced the sky. On our beach by the fire my nephews screamed at the top of their lungs. Sal clapped mightily and so did her brother and sister.

As the last embers drifted down, a thousand fireflies began a migration home. It was the red and green running lights of hundreds of boats heading home in the new dark, scattering in all directions.

Now, in the dreamy morning, it was time to go to work but I could not move. I was utterly hypnotized by the swirling wind, odd and comforting, warm but from the north. The fishermen raised their poles as their boat came about.

I sat on the edge of the dock at the very end and watched the sun rise and hover like God held it by a spider’s silky thread. Gulls fell out of the clouds. A glaze of yellow and orange poured over the fishermen, taking their grey morning to a summer dance.

To the south, a man swam towards his buoy, touched it with the slap of his hand, and free styled back towards our shore. A small sailboat raised its colors to heaven.

Then, like clockwork, I heard an old familiar voice over my left shoulder. It was my conscience again.

“You should get going, Don.”

His deep voice was a fickle friend, I thought. His advice heaved from one side to the other like a whaling ship in a North Atlantic storm. “Really, I mean it. You’ve had three days off,” he continued. There was urgency in his tone I’d never heard before.

For ten minutes, I ignored his pleadings. Fact was I could barely hear him.

The north breeze got stronger and warmer. Our two swans paddled by.

“I’m staying right where I am,” I finally answered.

“I know I told you last time to give yourself a break and I meant that,” he said. “Now you have to get going.”

Behind me, I heard Sal let Maizie out the side door. Our little terrier saw me and started for the dock but thought better of it. She circled under the cedars. When she was done she tore back towards the kitchen where she knew her breakfast was waiting in the kitchen.

“I know you’ve got good intentions,” I said to my invisible friend. “But this is my call.”

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