Long Lake Yarns » Michigan’s “Up North”

Long Lake Wildflowers

Noreen — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:28:54 +0000

Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias Incarnata)

Smooth Rose, Meadow Rose (Rosa Blanda)

The small peninsula that helps frame our bay is filled with these beauties. I’m no gardener. And flower identification is not my skill. But I’m pretty sure that the top flower is swamp milkweed. Asclepias incarnata. They like to grow at the water’s edge, where this bunch is thriving. Their roots are especially adapted to living in wet soil that is oxygen starved.

Most varieties of milkweed are poisonous. They contain cardiac glycosides that can interfere with heart function. Some bugs love to munch on them anyway. Milkweed beetles. Milkweed bugs And the caterpillars that end up as Monarch butterflies. These bugs tolerate the poison and typically signal their poisonousness to birds by being colored yellow and black. You can learn a lot about swamp milkweed here and here. Birds use the hairs of the milkweed to line their nests. Oh, the flowers aren’t poisonous. Still, I would think it best not to toss them in your next salad.

The second beauty is Smooth Rose, a/k/a Meadow Rose. Fancy scientific name: Rosa Blanda. It grows to about three feet high. It likes moist soil. With Long Lake constantly lapping up onto the peninsula, it can’t get much more moist. And this year we’re going for the record on rainfall. The wildflowers are apparently lovin’ in.

Ice Out

Noreen — Sun, 04 Apr 2010 23:07:42 +0000

I was born and raised in Michigan, so it’s not like I know the day-to-day details of weather anywhere else. But to my taste, it doesn’t get any better than experiencing the changing of the seasons in my home state. These sunset photos were taken on April 2, 2010, about 30 minutes apart, just a week and a half after ice out, on a day when the temperatures soared to 82 degrees.

A Pileated Woodpecker visited our suet feeder. The loons are already back on the lake. The Canada Geese are paired up and cranky. The lake is alive with loon wails, geese honks, and Merganser quacks. The visiting Buffleheads are doing their goofy water skimming dances. This weekend we saw a good sized pike, probably getting his appetite worked up for a gosling or two, swimming over the big weed pile at the west end of Ghost Bay. Small mouth bass are moving through the shallows and circling Belly Button Island. We sat in our kayaks, taking it all in. Delicious!

Sno*Drift Rally

Noreen — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:54:35 +0000

It was a dark cold night. It was a dark cold very cold night. It was a dark very cold noisy night. It was a very dark very cold very noisy night in January in Montmorency County. Must be crazy people were once again driving cars over snowy slick roads at high speeds while spectators watched them slide fast around corners packed ten people deep. There were no published accounts of collisions with deer this year. No drivers were seriously hurt. Many cars were scathed, as in the opposite of unscathed. It was Sno*Drift (and that’s no asterisk it’s a snowflake). It’s the only winter rally in the national Rally America Championship series. The race is held on a Friday and Saturday in late January. It takes place completely on Montmorency County backroads. The last leg of the race, when Steve took these photos in 2009, is run in the dark. Yipes. The County has hosted the rally for 44 consecutive years. The event draws drivers with international reputations and backers, but also wannabes who come with a passion for the sport and a shoestring budget. If racing is your thing, this is a “do not miss” unusual “Pure Michigan” event.

Yes, that’s on ice and snow, on back roads, dodging deer, in January, partly in the dark.

Valentine’s Day Weekend on Fletcher Pond

Noreen — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 02:39:29 +0000

Fletcher’s Pond, with a surface area of 8,970 acres, is one of the largest inland lakes in Michigan. It is a flooding created in 1935 by the Alpena Power Company. The pond is shallow (no deeper than about 12 feet) and weedy–just the sort of lake where big bass and monster pike hang out. Every mid-February, anglers assemble to try to catch the biggest pike and the biggest perch and all the sizes in between. Carhartt Kid and his dad added a 28-incher to the well. Every colored ball is a pike on its own stringer. It was still early in the day and the biggest pike in the well was just over 32 inches. Last year’s winner was 40 inches.

This angler was intent on augering holes for his tip-ups, undeterred even though the front end of his truck was sinking through the ice. First things first, I guess. The ice was mostly about 20 inches thick, but he’d driven over an especially weedy section that hadn’t frozen solidly.

Long Lake Sounds Like a Synthesized Ruffed Grouse

Noreen — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 01:52:53 +0000

Click here to listen at the Cornell ornithology site for the drumming of a ruffed grouse. Click here to listen to what the lake was doing today. As the ice cracks, especially with temperature changes when the sound isn’t muffled by a lot of snow, the entire surface of Long Lake becomes an acoustic membrane. The lake sounds today didn’t suddenly start rat-a-tatting super fast, like the grouse at the end of his drumming. And the linked lake recording by sound artist Andreas Bick was made through a hole in the ice that amplified the “boinging.” So, Long Lake wasn’t sounding as much like Han Solo’s light saber as in Bick’s recording. But every few minutes the ice was singing in low, amplified burps of sound. Eerie. Beautiful. A little like ruffed grouse. A little like Star Wars. A little like whale song. A little like nothing I ever heard before.

Summer Remembered

Noreen — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 01:54:49 +0000

It hasn’t been a rough winter so far. No extremes of temperature. Less than the usual amount of snow. But it is still late January and there are months of wintry weather behind and ahead. The lake is beautiful, in its wintry ways. Somehow the snow pulls both sides of the lake more toward the middle and distances seem collapsed. The wind blows the snow into drifts that leave ribbons of clear ice. Last weekend a mini-murder of crows walked around the ice as if they were looking for something. Somehow it set me to remembering summer.

Snow Days

Noreen — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:26:49 +0000

The woods stuffed full of snow. The heavy wet snow that sticks to everything. The sides of trees. Your boots. If you laid down to make a snow angel you would sink about ten inches. If you made a snowball, leftover snowball would tangle in the wool of your mittens and dangle in clumps. Animal tracks get all elongated, like the animals are dragging their feet. The two-track almost disappears. This is December.

Thunder Bay River

Noreen — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 02:11:35 +0000

This is a section of the north branch of Thunder Bay River, just northwest of Long Lake, north of County Road 628. But I didn’t tell you that. It’s way too pretty a place for many people to know about. A rickety wood plank bridge is the only way to get over the river at that point. Probably no one should drive a car over it. Probably it’s best no one even walks on it. In fact, you shouldn’t even come near it. This was December 12th, after a ten inch snowfall. The river is just beginning to ice. Tree branches heavy with snow bend into the river. Then the river grabs them and holds them fast. It is tempting to free a few.

Wild Turkeys

Noreen — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:19:17 +0000

Walking on a two-track, on state land near Sorenson Road, we came upon these Wild Turkey tracks in the sand. Wild Turkeys were nearly eliminated from their habitat by the early 1900’s. Paradoxically, hunters helped save them. In 1973, the National Wild Turkey Federation was formed. It is both a hunting organization and a conservation group . Estimates then were that about 1.3 million turkeys remained in the wild in the United States. Today, the population has grown to about seven million. Hunting seasons have been established in 49 states, including Michigan. Montmorency County is not exactly teeming with the birds. But we have seen quite a few hens in fields. We’ve seen hens and their poults scratching alongside roads. The toms, with their long beards, are very infrequently seen. Steve has hunted tom turkeys for three seasons now. So far, the turkeys are winning. But it must have been a monster turkey that moved along this trail. Here is their gobble, which Steve practices using all sort of odd shaped wood and plastic small contraptions. If Benjamin Franklin had his way, the Wild Turkey would have been our national symbol. Would that mean we’d be eating eagle for Thanksgiving?

Oh yes, this fine turkey parts drawing (my name for the piece) by Michigan’s own, Glenn Wolff, was published originally in the New York Times. I was able to purchase the original “Mature Male.” It hangs at the lake house, where hopefully no dead tom’s beard will ever hang. Wolff’s prints, illustrations, and original oils capture our state and its creatures. He’s reproducing some of his pieces on T-shirts, tiles, mugs and notecards these days. Click here to learn more.

Ocqueoc Falls

Noreen — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 17:31:50 +0000

Ocqueoc Falls is just about the only honest-to-goodness, rootin’ tootin’ waterfall in Michigan’s lower peninsula. The total descent is about five feet. Downstream from the main part of the falls, the rock walls are about 20 feet high. And it is only about 35 miles from Hillman. We’re not talking Tahquamenon here, but this mini-waterfall is beautiful in a quiet non-Upper Peninsular way. In the fall, salmon make their way upstream for spawning. Haven’t seen that yet. Children who are good swimmers with about 8 years of height on them love to play in the pool at the base of the falls. I’m (probably) too much of a grown-up to enjoy that. I might slip on the slick rocks and skin my knee. I might trip on the boulders getting to the base of the falls and end up needing stitches on my noggin. I might…I might try it some time. When no kids are around to laugh at my timidity.