Satisfactory.

He watched them holding themselves with their noses into the current, many trout in deep, fast moving water, slightly distorted as he watched far down through the glassy convex surface of the pool, its surface pushing and swelling smooth against the resistance of the log-driven piles of the bridge. At the bottom of the pool were the big trout. Nick did not see them at first. Then he saw them at the bottom of the pool, big trout looking to hold themselves on the gravel bottom in a varying mist of gravel and sand, raised in spurts by the current.

Nick looked down into the pool from the bridge. It was a hot day. A kingfisher flew up the stream. It was a long time since Nick had looked into a stream and seen trout. They were very satisfactory. As the shadow of the kingfisher moved up the stream, a big trout shot upstream in a long angle, only his shadow marking the angle, then lost his shadow as he came through the surface of the water, caught the sun, and then, as he went back into the stream under the surface, his shadow seemed to float down the stream with the current, unresisting, to his post under the bridge where he tightened facing up into the current.

Nick's heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling.

He turned and looked down the stream. It stretched away, pebbly-bottomed with shallows and big boulders and a deep pool as it curved away around the foot of a bluff.

Nick walked back up the ties to where his pack lay in the cinders beside the railway track. He was happy. He adjusted the pack harness around the bundle, pulling straps tight, slung the pack on his back, got his arms through the shoulder straps and took some of the pull off his shoulders by leaning his forehead against the wide band of the tump-line. Still, it was too heavy. It was much too heavy. He had his leather rod-case in his hand and leaning forward to keep the weight of the pack high on his shoulders he walked along the road that paralleled the railway track, leaving the burned town behind in the heat, and then turned off around a hill with a high, fire-scarred hill on either side onto a road that went back into the country. He walked along the road feeling the ache from the pull of the heavy pack. The road climbed steadily. It was hard work walking up-hill. His muscles ached and the day was hot, but Nick felt happy. He felt he had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs. It was all back of him.

Ernest Hemingway, from "Big Two-Hearted River, Part One"

Conservation.

Iron Mountain Daily News on the last Forest Service nursery producing trees in Eastern Region ...

Toumey Nursery is one of eight locations managed by the USFS to provide seedlings and seeds for United States destinations both within and without Forest Service jurisdiction. The other growers are Ashe Seed Extractory in Mississippi, C. E. Bessey Nursery in Nebraska, Placerville Nursery in California, Lucky Peak Nursery and Coeur d’Alene Nursery in Idaho, and J. Herbert Stone Nursery and Bend Seed Extractory in Oregon.

Six of the facilities are financed nurseries, while two are seed extractories. They serve to “provide locally adapted plants and seed for reforestation projects, provide an assured source of desirable species and stock types for restoring native ecosystems, and maintain the (USFS)’s position as a conservation leader,” states usda.gov.

Toumey Nursery, in particular, has multiple services. In fields, 66 acres are available for planting. Species grown are primarily red pine, jack pine, white pine, spruces, tamarack, cedars, hemlock, oaks, maples and birches, according to their website. About 4 million seedlings are shipped out each year, and at full capacity, the fields may grow up to 12 million seedlings at a time. Trees are usually between 1 and 3 years old at time of relocation, depending on species.

Trees rule.  So do birds.  Birds in trees rule. 

True.

WHY GIANTS DON'T EXIST in the UPPER PENINSULA

A long time ago all this was very true.

Giants never rested here in the Porcupine Mountains,

mere inclines lined with trees existing only

for their idle amusement, toughened

as they chased each other, trampling pines

into mere shrubbery. They pealed laughs

louder than church bells clanging

throughout the land. Every single animal

fled in fear of their deathly footprints.

Then came the mating season of fee-fa-foo-fums,

the raw twills meant to deafen as the grounds

quaked violently from their consummations.

There was not a tree standing upright left.

Out of boredom, they up and left for the north,

plodding through the puddle of Lake Superior.

These giants had been so long used to being the tallest

of all they’d ever seen, they’d never realized

the depths of death they could sink to

until it was too late. The chill froze their blood,

icing their last thoughts of that magical summer,

wild and crazy up in those tree-carpeted hills.

From the deep they’re still gasping for help,

grabbing at anything that floats above them.

That much is still true.

Raymond Luczak

Where.

Timothy Monger, from Great Lakes Myth Society, does "Across the Bridge" ...

Dark mellow rings around the moon

Rainy season in my room

Beaded glasses

Half-written passages

Dark mellow rings around the moon

Time writes a manual of strain

In every movement of my frame

Summer's heartbreak

Weeps in every lake

Time writes a catalog of rain

Beneath a radio of stars

On every band unravel cars

And in the distance

Old St. Ignace

Beneat a radio of stars

Across the bridge we'll take our kind

From every place and еvery time

Hiawatha

Escanaba

Across the bridgе we'll take our kind

If you don't know where we are

We'll light a lantern at the bar

And where the wind blows

Ask the scarecrow

If you don't know where we are

Comeuppance.

Chach gets his comeuppance ...

Not bad for a troll.

 

Laughing.

Hassell, Untitled, 2017

Guy de la Valdene remembers fishing with Harrison, Chatham, and McGuane ...

What I remember best about those decades was the laughter. Every time our group was together, we laughed and laughed, often to the point of hurting. Head-splitting, belly-heaving silliness at all times of day and night, in the boat, at the bar, during dinners, in Key West, in Montana, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in France. Everywhere and anywhere, we laughed and laughed and laughed, and I miss it.

CONNECT

Pleasure.

From the ground the quills he gathered,

All the little shining arrows,

Stained them red and blue and yellow,

With the juice of roots and berries;

Into his canoe he wrought them,

Round its waist a shining girdle,

Round its bows a gleaming necklace,

On its breast two stars resplendent.

  Thus the Birch Canoe was builded

In the valley, by the river,

In the bosom of the forest;

And the forest's life was in it,

All its mystery and its magic,

All the lightness of the birch-tree,

All the toughness of the cedar,

All the larch's supple sinews;

And it floated on the river

Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,

Like a yellow water-lily.

  Paddles none had Hiawatha,

Paddles none he had or needed,

For his thoughts as paddles served him,

And his wishes served to guide him;

Swift or slow at will he glided,

Veered to right or left at pleasure.

  Then he called aloud to Kwasind,

To his friend, the strong man, Kwasind,

Saying, "Help me clear this river

Of its sunken logs and sand-bars."

  Straight into the river Kwasind

Plunged as if he were an otter,

Dived as if he were a beaver,

Stood up to his waist in water,

To his arm-pits in the river,

Swam and shouted in the river,

Tugged at sunken logs and branches,

With his hands he scooped the sand-bars,

With his feet the ooze and tangle.

  And thus sailed my Hiawatha

Down the rushing Taquamenaw,

Sailed through all its bends and windings,

Sailed through all its deeps and shallows,

While his friend, the strong man, Kwasind,

Swam the deeps, the shallows waded.

  Up and down the river went they,

In and out among its islands,

Cleared its bed of root and sand-bar,

Dragged the dead trees from its channel,

Made its passage safe and certain,

Made a pathway for the people,

From its springs among the mountains,

To the waters of Pauwating,

To the bay of Taquamenaw.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, from "The Song of Hiawatha"

Undisturbed.

Jim Harrison on the U.P. ...

While camping I would study maps to try to figure out where I was other than within a cloud of mosquitoes and black flies, that irritating species that depends on clean water, of which there is a great deal in the U.P. There is little or no industry; therefore you could drink the water directly from Lake Superior — at least I always did on my long beach walks. There was a place near Grand Marais of nearly 60 miles of undisturbed beach, no people, no dwellings, just beach and water.

CONNECT

Yah.

Escanaba.

Smelt.

Minneapolis.

The Minneapolis Shoal Light ...

CONNECT

More HERE.

Hiawatha.