The Wolverine State

I like Michigan a great deal. A friend pointed out there are some strange people in the state, people jailed for planning to kidnap the governor. But I am an optimist looking for good as I travel and I find normal people in Michigan who seem to be abnormally cheerful. Of failed kidnappers I have met none, but perhaps my obviously unsuitable status as a hostage got in the way of strange encounters. 

I like the tidiness and order you see everywhere in the Wolverine State. Farms look like they have just been primped for a magazine photo shoot. Gardens are filled with neat flower beds and homes look like they just got painted. 

I fear I may be betraying a rather shallow side to my nature but I enjoy the orderliness of lower Michigan.

Driving through Petosky, a town with a few neatly bordered up stores I noticed this innovation which they could use on North Roosevelt in Key West instead of the pedestrian lights that confuse drivers:

My eagle eyed navigator came across a farmer’s market and it really is located in an actual village, known as Bliss. We stopped and found tomatoes and onions and corn and squash and zucchini bread and neighbors discussing neighborly things while selling Michigan maple syrup and candles and oven mitts and chatting about whatever thing was going on. We landed in their midst as Florida aliens. I was pondering the latest hurricane maps in the Atlantic, they were remarking on the heavy rain the night before that kept me awake trying to cheer up Rusty. A much more immediate concern than Tropical Storm Earl ever might be in this wandering life. 

I’d like to live in Bliss and find myself blended in to a world of lawnmowers and pruning and weather speculation but I know I would fail. I’d say something iconoclastic or inappropriate or simply annoying and my neighbors would wonder why I had nothing better to say. We retreated to a forest wild camp where I pulled out the heavy paperback I bought at Pompey’s Pillar, Stephen Ambrose’s dissection of the Corps of  Discovery and Meriwether Lewis. We are off the Lewis and Clark trail now but the miles of signposts along our way sparked my need to know. 

Zucchini bread, hot tea while reading and this making my own discoveries of the meticulous preparations made to explore the Missouri and Columbia rivers two hundred years ago…a perfect afternoon in the woods. 

As we crossed the great bridge leaving the Upper Peninsula we found ourselves admiring a long line of cars waiting to pay the toll northbound, all stuck waiting to reach their Labor Day wilderness camps.

We stopped to buy souvenir supplies before we left the peninsula and Layne learned they expected 30,000 holiday visitors, enough to cram every hotel room and campground with reservations. Layne wondered at the draw of underpopulated forests of the famous Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to view the Upper Peninsula as a last wedge of wilderness surrounded by worthy enterprises like farming and accountancy. The Upper Peninsula cuts down trees, hunts fish and is home to ticks and bears and rumors of Sasquatch. 

I can see why the U.P. is such a draw. The residents are polite but not outgoing, most of them, at least not to us. They use monosyllables and look away. Fair enough but in the southern reaches of the state, where flower boxes rule…

…and farms celebrate a hundred years of continuous ownership in one family, this is where Michigan is part of that patchwork quilt of good cheer we’ve found across the Great Plains. Its Mr  Rogers’ neighborhood. People are really nice. 

I have never seen Adirondack chairs at bus stops, for instance, or I hadn’t until we got to Traverse City. And there they were with the backs cut in a silhouette of the state. Wait for your clean state of the art public transit in comfort and style. 

We stopped to buy some fruit and vegetables and I checked out their portapotties. Not only were they immaculately clean, they had mirrors and spare paper - not stolen- along with a stylish basket with hand sanitizer and a trash can. I’ve seen a lot of roadside toilets and these are the nicest I’ve encountered! In Michigan of course where civility rules. 

I was chatting with a young man who fell in love with Rusty the Perfect Dog. As he petted my companion we talked about life in Michigan which is the only life he knows. This place is easy to love in summer, as easy as loving Rusty, but in winter? In my head that question always lurks. In winter? he said looking surprised by my question. “As long as it snows winter is great.” Apparently you have to have snow to justify sub zero temperatures. Then the fun begins with all those snowmobile road signs I keep seeing. Not the tractor crossing signs which refer to work. 

I am no proud to note I spotted the worlds largest cherry pie pan, not my indolent navigator.  It is in Charleroix Township where their water town crowned with communication antennae celebrates the French fur trapper heritage not the usual German place names of later immigrants. 

A young couple riding a fully dressed Indian chief were taking selfies at the spot “riding the worlds largest motorcycle” I joked.  We listed the largest roadside things we’ve seen, teapot, gavel, cuckoo clock and basket came to mind. They told us of the worlds largest chest of draws in North Carolina which we noted and will visit hopefully next month, after New England. 

We spent a night as guests at a family farm outside Petosky and after all the holidaying families went home for the night we had the stars to ourselves with Winery 1914’s pomegranate cider in a growler we bought. In the morning I put my Oaxaca poncho on to take Rusty for a sunrise walk through the orchards. 

It was not the spectacular scene of the night before as the sun set, but it was a neat tidy sunrise, slowly warming the day.  The fruit was harvested, the orchards were mown and everything was in its place, as it should be in this very reassuringly enjoyable state.