This is Forty Mile Point Lighthouse. It’s forty miles southeast of Old Mackinaw Point and forty miles northwest of Thunder Bay. So, an appropriately named lighthouse. It was completed in 1896 and has guided Lake Huron sailors since April of 1897. The tower is still an operational beacon. It’s lit by a 4th order fresnel lens set at three second intervals. The lens was built by Henry LePaute in 1872.

The lighthouse has recently been restored inside and out. Many of the rooms are furnished as if their original occupants had just run down to the water’s edge to check their fishing lines. Recently, the pilot house of the 1912 Steamer Calcite was relocated to the grounds. 

When you visit, be sure to walk down to the beach. One hundred and fifty feet of the shipwrecked Steamer Joseph S. Fay is visible. It was loaded with iron ore when it broke up on a sandbar in 1905. The lighthouse keeper’s log for October 20, 1905 reads: “At 8:30 p.m. last night the steamer, J. S. Fay, came ashore here in a sinking condition. She soon broke up. Most of the crew came ashore on the pilot house. Three men swam ashore, the mate was drowned.” The entry for December 4, 1905 reads: “The assistant found a dead man on the beach about 1 mile up. We think it is the mate of the Fay.” Many sailors lost their lives in Lake Huron’s violent storms. Fall could be especially treacherous.

One great way to find your way to the lighthouse is to follow the bike path out from Rogers City. If you want to shorten the route a bit, park at Seagull Point. You’ll have a great view of Lake Huron and won’t miss a bit of the most scenic sections of the path. The path ends at the lighthouse. Or use these GPS settings to guide you to the entrance: N 45 29.024; W 083 59.892.

Read more about the lighthouse here. As you enter the grounds, tune your radio to 107.3 FM to hear a bit about the history of the site.

Every living thing finds a way to make its house a home, but this group of hornets chose an eccentric building site. They constructed their home at the intersection of Sorenson Road and County Road 628. Literally.

I’m pretty sure this is a bald-faced hornet nest. The nest is basically paper. The queen’s daughter-workers chew wood fiber, mix it with the starch in their spit, and that’s how the nest is formed. One hornet mouthful at a time.

If you don’t mess with baldfaced hornets, they don’t mess with you. But if you do manage to disturb them, apparently there is almost no end to the number of times one of these hornets can sting you. And there can be several hundred hornets that call one nest a home.

The hornets freeze and die as cold temperatures move in. Nests are not re-used. The new queens hibernate outside the nest, waiting for the warmer weather to return. You can read more about Dolichovespula Maculata here.

If any readers are wasp/hornet knowledgeable, please let me know if you think I’ve identified this creature wrong. It is some other form of hornet?  Or maybe a paper wasp? The shape of the nest and the swirl construction made me decide otherwise.

For a few years we didn’t bring Hoover to Long Lake. Everyone knows, and is told, that cats don’t like change. They have their places and don’t welcome new ones. They don’t travel well. Upsetting their routine upsets them. We believed that was all likely true and for about three years Hoover stayed home, with daily visits from his cat sitter, while we frolicked at the lake.

Hmm. Then we let him give travel a try. He has a favorite blanket in his carrier (that doesn’t accompany him to the vet). Right from the get-go, Hoover was ready to get going. After several months of regular weekend visits, and longer visits too, he seems as comfortable at the lake as at home.

In warm weather, he moves from window perch to window perch, watching the birds and small mammals. Chipmunks, chipmunks are his favorite. He also finds the small red squirrels quite fascinating. In cold weather, he sits for long periods watching the area around the bird feeders. After awhile, he’ll find a cozy spot and fall asleep, no doubt dreaming feline dreams of the hunt.

And the best warm spot of all is by the fireside.

You have to look closely. It’s not a log. It’s not a a dog. It’s a white-tail deer, taking a swim late in October, when Long Lake was already very cold. An internet search (do deer swim) reveals what apparently everyone but me already knew, confirmed by many youtube videos. Yes, deer swim. They are quite expert at a “dog paddle” stroke. Hard to imagine how those long spindly legs work for swimming, but deer have been clocked swimming ten miles per hour. Apparently they typically take to the water to escape predators. Some believe they set out in search of better grazing, but I’m skeptical of that.

Some call ice fog “pogonip.” Pogonip is an adaption of the Shoshone word for cloud (pakenappah). That’s what The Old Farmer’s Almanc is referring to in December when it says: “Beware the pogonip.”

On a perfect spring or summer day, when everything is perky and bright anyway, rainbows are just the frosting on the cake. Very yummy but sort of more than you need. But once fall really gets going, it’s way different. It’s been raining for days and days now. You feel, in your bones, how cold it’s soon going to be. You are checking for cracks in every shell you live in trying to figure out how the cold will get at you.  Through the patio doors.  Through the electrical sockets. Through socks that have sprouted holes. Through a sweater that’s somehow not buttoning right anymore. You are bracing for the winter.

And then a rainbow like this happens. There is nothing better than a rainbow arched in a deep gray fall sky.

In a clearing off Sorenson Road, near Hillman’s Long Lake.  October 27, 2011.

Meet the lowly meadow vole. Microtus Pennsylvanicus. (And I have no idea what Pennsylvania has to do with it.) The meadow vole can birth up to fifteen litters a year. Litters average about seven pups. Female offspring are ready to birth their own litters in three weeks. (That “three” is not a typo.) A mother meadow vole has a postpartum estrus cycle that allows her to mate right after giving birth. With all the voles running around, I assume finding an interested male vole is probably not a problem. In captivity, voles can live for up to two years. In the wild, Wiki reports on studies estimating that 88% die within 30 days of being born.

With apologies to the tender-hearted, fortunately meadow voles are just about everybody’s favorite munchie. Snakes, birds of prey, dogs, coyotes, basically everything that lives (except squeamish us) eats voles whenever the opportunity arises. Otherwise, we’d be up to our eyeballs in meadow voles.

We have no idea why the meadow vole Steve photographed above was running in circles under our winter-ready row boat for about two hours on a cool sunny mid-October day. Maybe his behavior also shows why the most prolific mammal on the planet isn’t quite ready for prime time.

It’s drop dead beautiful here. The science of fall colors doesn’t seem to be much of a science. But wet weather followed by cold weather followed by very wet weather followed by very warm weather must have been the ticket.

This is just a taste of Montmorency County at its showiest. The maples are especially red this year. The birch are especially golden. And the steady green of the pines anchors the scene.

That’s me paddling with five, yes five, loons.

We had no loon chicks hatch on the lake this summer. Early rumor was one hatched, but we think not. We know at least one pair was nesting on Belly Button Island when a major tornado-like blow blew through. Shortly after, the nest was abandoned. It is so cool to watch the chicks grow to the point where they are ready to head south in early October, but it was not to be.

Instead, our lake seemed to be a loon party lake of some sort. We saw gatherings of 5 or 6 loons several times. They fished, chortled to one another, and sometimes did the vulture pose thing. But mostly they quietly swam around the lake, sticking pretty close together.

At the moment, we have one somewhat confused adolescent loon still living on Long Lake. He appeared about six weeks ago and still hasn’t left. We’ve seen the adolescent fly around so he shouldn’t be with us much longer now. He’s been flying north, but hopefully he gets it that those are just his practice flights. We wish him a safe passage. South.

In the right chair, especially on a chilly night, Hoover can be quite the knitting companion. Sometimes he drapes himself like a warm shawl collar around my neck. No wonder I need to inspect my knitting under a bright Ott-Lite to avoid the “knitting with cat hair” thing.