Pigeon River Country: A Michigan Forest

Introduction

Introduction We think we hold it within us, this place we call Pigeon River Country. But when we stand there again what is happening now does not translate to memories. And when this is over, the next time will be the only one. The moon, the birds, the air, the wind are never in the same place, providing the same songs, feeling just like this, moving quite this way. And the clouds move on. Yet many things about the Pigeon River Country can be written down, remembered, related. This book is about what can be told and what can be evoked by this journey. The easiest way to talk about the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is to show the palm of our right hand. There it is, thumb and all. The lower half is civilization as most Americans know it. The upper half consists of stretches of woodland, hills, and cool temperatures. Most people see only the edges of this world as they travel on highways from town to town or take a back road to some dwelling in a clearing. There are many clearings— and more every day. When we look for the forest, we are looking for places where there are few people or dwellings. As we gain familiarity with the woods, we think even the cabin is separate from the real forest. Appreciation of these remote places is like a ‹nely honed, doubleedged sword. The more joy we ‹nd the more sadness lurks over the chance that somebody will ruin it. When my wife and I moved to northern Michigan, there were wild raspberries across the dirt road in a sunny patch about 50 feet long. Soon an enormous resort home was built on the property . The owners, who lived in southern Michigan, arrived to experience the woods and promptly uprooted every wild berry bush because, we were told, they harbor bugs. After half a dozen years and a dozen visits, they put 3 the house up for sale, then dispatched a crew of men to cut down most of the vegetation, including about one hundred trees, because the house was cold. On what I call my jogging path is an ancient stump that has been weathered into what looks like a cathedral. Sometimes I ignore that stump because I don’t want to be disappointed if someone breaks it apart on a whim. What is so dif‹cult about these things is that one edge of the sword brings enormous ful‹llment, frees our spirit, helps us laugh, and makes us vulnerable to hurt from the other, mean-spirited side. It makes one philosophical as they say. For, if we watch these things and remain clear about them, what seems to be happening is that we grow and advance from these experiences to somewhat more admirable ground. That is part of what the Pigeon River story is about. It is tied up with oil and gas development, with logging, with the passenger pigeon. All of these parts of the story have an edge of poignancy. Yet as we tell them they add to our human experience, making us wiser in dealing with these dif‹cult decisions of life. North of Bay City on I-75, the traveler crosses the boundary between two major ecological zones that traverse North America, Europe, and Asia. The line runs east-west across Michigan just below the Thumb. To the south is the temperate zone, with largely agricultural soil, broad-leaved trees, and 75 percent of Michigan’s population. To the north lie the conifer and northern hardwood forests. On our right palm, the line runs along the base of the ‹ngers. Ninety miles north, between the two knuckles of the middle ‹nger, is the Pigeon River Country. It’s about 12 miles wide and 20 miles long, half the size of New York City and one-third the size of Los Angeles. Yet it is the largest contiguous block of undeveloped state land in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula . Until recently, it was the home of the only substantial wild elk herd east of the Mississippi. What we see traveling north is not wilderness. There are wide stretches of scrubby jack pines. The other pines and the broad-leaved trees are thin and short compared with the forests of the East and West. Northern Michigan is cutover, burned-over land dotted with stumps that, even when hidden in 100 years of new growth, dwarf their surroundings with the idea of what...