Blue Highways: Midland, Michigan

Unfolding the Map

Traveling past the huge Dow Chemical plant in Midland, William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) notes it and moves on toward the Thumb of Michigan.  I'll reflect a little on chemicals that have become, like it or not, a part of our society and a part of us.  Trace a chemical path to the map to see where Midland is located.

Book Quote

"On a map, lower Michigan looks like a mitten with the squatty peninsula between Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron forming the Thumb.  A region distinctive enough to have a name was the only lure I needed, but also it didn't hurt to have towns with fine, unpronounceable names like Quanicassee, Sebewaing, Wahjamega, or other names like Pigeon, Bad Axe, Pinnebog, Rescue, Snover, and - what may be the worst town name in the nation - Freidberger.  People of the the Thumb have come from many places, but Germans and Poles predominate.

"I headed due east across the flat country, past the great industrial pile of Dow Chemical at Midland..."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 15

Dow Chemical in Midland, Michigan. Photo by Bill Puglianno/Getty Images and seen at the Britannica website. Click on photo to go to host page.

Midland, Michigan

In the quote above, LHM references the Dow Chemical plant in Midland, Michigan.  In fact, the chemical giant was actually founded there in the late 1800s.  Throughout the 20th century, Dow Chemical and others like it led a revolution that ultimately helped bring about great advances in humanity's way of life.  There was even a time when it was "sexy" to be in the chemical industry, as this Dow commercial from the 1980s shows.

Or so that's what we've been told.  As we move into the 21st century, we more and more often see the dark side of the chemical revolution.  Cancers and other types of illnesses are on the increase, some linked to chemicals invented in the 20th century and into which we put our trust.  That which we create sometimes comes back to bite us.

I was thinking about our uneasy relationship with chemicals earlier today, before I started writing.  Today is Easter, a day of resurrection and hope in the Christian tradition.  I was in the shower and looking up to where some mold was growing on the ceiling thanks to the condensation that settles there day in and day out, and thinking that I need to wipe it down with a mold killer.  The mold killer is, of course, a chemical.  That chemical is potent enough that the instructions warn users to only utilize the product if the room is ventilated lest they breathe in and be overcome by fumes.  That got me to thinking about how many chemicals I use to clean the bathroom.  I use sprays to clean the toilet, sink and bathtub surfaces.  I use a toilet bowl cleaner with a brush to clean the inside of the toilet.  I use a floor soap with solvents in it to clean the bathroom floor tile.

That got me wondering about how many chemicals I use to clean the kitchen.  Surface cleaners, stove cleaners, scrubbing chemicals for the kitchen sink, and soap with solvents for the floor.  All of these chemicals near where I prepare my food and therefore, am probably ingesting.

But there's more.  The food I eat is often pumped with chemicals to help preserve it.  Farm-grown salmon, and many processed foods, are pumped with dyes to give them a correct and pleasing hue.  Processed foods are laced with chemicals for all kinds of things.  Not only food, but stuff I put on - the shampoos and soaps I use, the lotions that my wife uses, the sunscreen that I don't wear enough of - all has chemicals.  We take some clothes to the dry cleaner so that they can be cleaned with all kinds of chemicals.

The water we drink is loaded up with chemicals, some intentional and some not.  Fluoride, a chemical to help protect teeth is intentional.  The chemicals that leech into water tables from farms and sewage are not.  Agriculture uses chemicals for everything from re-energizing soils to killing weeds.  These are poured willy-nilly over commercial farms and thus leech into the soil and then into us.  Factories are supposed to properly dispose of used chemicals, but in the developing world they often don't, adding a whole new list of compounds into the environment that can pose short and long-term dangers.

I'm not trying to necessarily be anti-chemical.  Our basic body functions such as the conversion of food and oxygen into energy is a chemical reaction.  I've often heard that our basic emotions are complex chemical reactions that take place within our brains.  Love, sadness, depression, joy are all chemistry within the individual human laboratory that is our unique bodies.  We depend on chemicals to make us what we are.  It may even have been a chemical reaction that started the chain of events that led to all life on earth.

But those chemical reactions occurred and still occur naturally.  In a way, like we've done with other things, we came to see our ability to manipulate chemicals into helpful creations as a product of our genius.  We saw chemicals and our abilities with them as a hope of humanity, almost worshiping the idea of them in religious terms.  We could only see the upside of our efforts and many times, we didn't understand what the really long term consequences could be.  That carelessness and hubris led to toxic waste dumps, Love Canal, dioxins in the environment, the development of cancers in many individuals because of long-term exposure to chemicals in their workplace or environment.  Here's an example of what we didn't foresee - chemical resistant pests and weeds that have developed an immunity to the chemicals we dump on them, causing us to need to create stronger chemicals to fight them in a vicious circle.  In the early 1900s, most of our bodies were free of man-made chemicals.  Now, in 2012, we are saturated from chemicals that we ingest or which are absorbed through our skin.  Cancers and other illnesses have risen, possibly offsetting some of the gains in life expectancy that chemicals have bought us.

Like any tool, chemicals can be helpful but if we don't pay attention or don't quite understand how to use them, they can really hurt us.  As we learn about their benefits and costs, that knowledge helps but unfortunately, we often don't learn until we are exposed.  I think about when I was a kid, and my father and I would routinely throw plastic items on our campfires.  Of course, you can't help but breathe in the smoke from those campfires, now made toxic by burning plastic.  The place where we camped, at our property in Northern California, was near a railroad and we often took the old ties that were discarded by the railroad and burned them.  They burned really well and very hot and we sat around that fire and breathed in the smoke.  Those ties were treated with creosote, which may possibly have adverse health effects on people.

Dow Chemical is at the epicenter of what is possibly the worst tragedy associated with chemicals, the Union Carbide Bhopal, India disaster, when chemical and gas leaks from a pesticide plant killed at least 3,000 people instantly and perhaps another 8,000 from exposure.  Dow now owns Union Carbide and is responsible for the ongoing civil and criminal litigation.  We have used chemicals to build our society, and some of the seeds for that society were laid in Midland, Michigan.  We may celebrate our progress through chemical manipulation, but we also may yet rue what Dow, and other companies like it, have wrought for us.

Musical Interlude

This is a silly little ditty based on the periodic table of the elements, which lists all the chemicals known.  Since Tom Lehrer wrote this song, there have been other elements discovered, but it still gives you an idea of all the chemicals that are out there and, most likely, in you.

If you want to know more about Midland

City of Midland
MLive.com
Midland Chamber of Commerce
Midland Daily News (newspaper)
Midland Online
Midland Tomorrow
Northwood University
Wikipedia: Midland

Next up: Bay City, Michigan

Blue Highways: Mount Pleasant, Michigan

Unfolding the Map

Sometimes we need guidance - a little helping hand to get us where we need to go.  Often we seek guidance or signs but cannot find them.  Sometimes we don't recognize or even ignore signs we perceive and guidance we receive.  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) asks for guidance and gets it from a deaf woman in Mount Pleasant.  It will determine his next destination - the Thumb of Michigan.  To place Mount Pleasant on the mitten, put your fingers on the map.

Book Quote

"Across her T-shirt was SKI.  She leafed through Stalking the Wild Asparagus in the college bookstore.  I was in the middle of Michigan and looking for a place to go next, so I asked whether she lived in Mount Pleasant, but she didn't look up.  I tapped her arm.

"'I'm from Missouri.  Traveling.  I'd like to find a good place to visit in Michigan.'  She watched but said nothing.  'Maybe you know a nice spot.'  She just stared.  Northerners really carry taciturnity too far, I thought.

A clerk came up and said, 'She's deaf.  Probably having trouble reading your lips.'  He repeated what I'd asked.

"She said, 'Oh,' and put the book down.  Holding up her right hand as if to say 'How' in Hollywood Indian fashion, she said, 'Dumb.'

"'Dumb?' the clerk repeated.  I didn't know whether she meant me or herself.

"'Dumb Miss Ginn,' she said and wagged her right thumb.

"'Thumb of Michigan?' the clerk asked.

"The girl smiled, wagged her thumb again, and nodded.  'Berry bootful.'

''It's very beautiful,' the clerk translated.

"Looking at her SKI T-shirt, I said, 'Do you ski on the Thumb?'

"'Dumbs due plat.  By dames car water ski.'

"'Thumb's too flat to ski,' the clerk said.  'Her name's Karworski.'"

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 15

Reflections of Mount Pleasant. Photo by Tom Kimball and hoted on the MtPleasant.com website. Click on photo to go to host site.

Mount Pleasant, Michigan

Sometimes, we need a guide, and we can't find one.  We cast about, looking for the right way or the right path, and no matter what we do, we can't distinguish which way to go.  We even ask those we see around us what way might be the right way.  Sometimes they are just as lost as we are, and we are frustrated because we want the answer.  Sometimes they appear to know exactly where they are going and what they are doing, and we are frustrated because we feel we should know.

For example, my wife has been looking for a sign or a guidepost or an actual guide to give her some indication as to what path her life should take in her middle age.   It has been very hard for her.  No stroke of inspiration, no accidental dropping of words that gives her a great idea, no light shining out of the grayness of the clouds that illuminates the forest path down which she should tread.  She often feels on her own.

In a way, waiting for a sign or a guide to step forward is like waiting for lottery ticket numbers to come up with the multi-million dollar winner.  Lightning will strike very few of us, and flashes of inspiration and insight will come infrequently.  A guide will step out of the trees only once in awhile.  Mostly we are on our own and have to make our own way through the world, relying on our own senses to get us where we need to go.

That's small consolation when you're waiting for that guiding hand.  Humans have created religion to provide us with direction, and over the millenia we've prayed to a myriad of gods to provide us with what we need, and we wait.  And wait.  And wait.  We go to psychotherapy in search of the answers, and are frustrated when the therapist asks us a simple question:  "What do you think you ought to do?"  If you're like me, your first response is often just as direct:  "Aren't I paying you to tell me?"

There's a joke I heard once about a man stuck on a roof as flood waters rise about him.  He is a deeply religious man, and he begins to pray.  After a while, a man comes by in a rowboat, and asks if he needs help.  The man on the roof says "Don't worry about me, God will provide."  Later, as the water is rising higher, another boat comes by the praying man, and the rower asks him if he wants to get in.  "God will provide," says the man.  As the man continues to pray, the water rises until it is almost covering the roof.  Another boat comes by, and they really want to pull the man in but he resists, strongly saying "God will provide!"  They go away and by and by the man drowns.  As he is being conducted by St. Peter through the pearly gates, he exclaims "I don't understand.  I'm a pious man.  I pray every day.  I prayed throughout the flood knowing that God will provide.  Why didn't he save me."  St. Peter turns and says, "Well, God sent you three boats.  What else were you looking for?"

I'm learning that inspiration and guideposts must come from within as well as without.  Here's my theory.  Inspiration and guidance consist of two things: action and recognition.

Nothing will happen if the person seeking guidance doesn't take action.  This could be choosing a path or asking for help.  Robert Frost provides an example in his great poem The Road Not Taken.  He chooses the road less traveled, which has made all the difference, knowing that he may lament not taking the other road.  However, this involves action.  If we come to a crossroads, and there are no signs, we have to choose or we will remain stuck.  Who knows - the signs may be over the next hill, but we have to keep traveling down the road.

We also have to recognize signs and guidance when it is being offered.  How many times have I blown off somebody's advice, because I knew better, only to learn later that the advice was correct?  How many times have I ignored what my conscience or gut feeling was telling me, only to pay later for ignoring my instincts?  Sometimes guidance comes from people or things we don't expect.  Literature is rife with people ignoring advice or signs at their peril.  Shakespeare made the fool an important part of many plays, and his heroes that didn't pay attention to their seemingly foolish but challenging and wise words often suffered.  I think that in most cases, we instinctively know what is true and right but we don't trust ourselves enough to follow our senses and ultimately be our own guides.

In the end, signs can point us to things, but we move past them.  Guides usually are with us a short way along our journeys, but not throughout life.  They may point out a path or a place we should go, or they may accompany us a short way.  Virgil served as Dante's guide through The Inferno, but after the tour was over, Dante had to move on.  Our lives are our own, and ultimately, we are responsible for our paths.

LHM ends up on the Thumb of Michigan because he takes action and asks for some advice from a young woman.  She was his guide for a short moment in time, and he followed her advice.  Occasionally, guidance comes, sometimes even in the form of a young but friendly deaf woman in a bookstore in Mount Pleasant.  We just have to recognize the signs.

Musical Interlude

This Ace of Base song, The Sign, is probably one of the last true pop songs to which I paid some attention.  It wasn't long after this came out that I stopped listening to pop music entirely.  I know I've probably missed a few signs, but I believe I've gained in understanding by broadening my musical knowledge base.  That being said, this catchy tune is about recognizing signs and going with it.  The best line, if a little grammatically awkward, is "No one's gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong."

If you want to know more about Mount Pleasant

Central Michigan Life (student newspaper)
Central Michigan University
City of Mount Pleasant
Downtown Mount Pleasant (blog)
Isabella County
The Morning Sun (newspaper)
Mount Pleasant Convention and Visitors Bureau
Wikipedia: Mount Pleasant

Next up: Midland, Michigan

Blue Highways: Elberta, Michigan

Unfolding the Map

Big sand dunes can be found at the shoreline of northeastern Lake Michigan.  I will relate my own experiences there, and my impressions of sand dunes in general.  Sounds like a rockin' time, doesn't it?  Perhaps you'll find it interesting, perhaps not, but in any event it's our first Blue Highways stop in Michigan.  To see where William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) disembarks, take some steps to the map.

Book Quote

"The sandy dunes of Michigan glowed pink in the late sun, and at the mouth of the Elberta Harbor, there was a marvelous sight: little slivers of silver jigged on their tails over the blue water.  They were alewives looking for all the world like dancing spoons.  These were the fish that had washed ashore to foul beaches in the days of high pollution.

"The Viking let loose with her horns, the crew tied up and sprinted across the dock and into cars and roared off to supper, and I wished the Viking were sailing all the way to the Atlantic."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 13

Lakeshore beach at Elberta, Michigan. Photo by mr56k and hosted at Flickriver. Click on photo to go to host site.Elberta, Michigan

Sand dunes, or rather one big sand dune, is a big memory of the times I spent in Michigan.

When I was just out of college, I joined an organization called the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.  While I was placed as a volunteer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin we had an opening retreat in Benton Harbor, Michigan so that we could meet the other volunteers in the region - some of whom would be my housemates for a year - and get into the mission of the volunteer organization.  At the end of the year, the organization hosted a final retreat in Traverse City, Michigan so that we could wind down, say goodbye to our housemates and the other volunteers, and move on into the rest of our lives.

The thing I loved about the eastern side of Lake Michigan is that, of all the other places I've visited in the U.S., it most reminded me of my oceanside hometown in Northern California.  Of course, in the summer the weather was much warmer, and the lake waves were much smaller compared to the roaring surf of the Pacific Ocean.  In other respects, however, they were very similar.  The shore along Lake Michigan has the same feel, the sun set over the lake waters, and the sand dunes blown up by the prevailing western winds were very reminiscent of the dunes in places along the Northern California coast.  I would consider living there as a substitute for the west coast of the United States.

It was while at my first retreat in Traverse City that I first visited Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, which is a mere half hour away from where LHM disembarked from The Viking in Elberta.  Since he mentions sand dunes in his quote, it is a shame that he didn't visit the place.  This particular set of dunes rises 150 feet high from the lake and has an interesting story.  The Ojibwe believed that a mother bear and her cubs, fleeing from a forest fire on the west side of Lake Michigan, started swimming across the lake.  The mother bear reached the eastern shore and waited for the cubs.  The cubs however, too exhausted, drowned within sight of the shore.  The two islands in sight of the dunes, North and South Manitou Islands, are believed to be the cubs.  The mother bear, who continued to wait for the cubs, fell asleep and eventually was covered by the sands.  Under the Sleeping Bear Dunes she continues sleep and wait.

When you stand at the top of the dunes, the lake looks very far beneath you.  You start down and gravity just tugs at you.  When I scrambled down, I realized that once you get going, you start taking big leaps and bounds, covering 15 feet per step.  It's almost like being on the moon, except that the slope is about 60-75 degrees.  Of course, sand gets into your shoes, but it's so fun getting down you don't care. 

However, if you go, I must caution you that it can be dangerous to get going too fast.  Gravity, the attraction that two bodies have for each other (in this case you and Earth) and inertia, the property of bodies to remain in either a state of motion or rest, work together to make it very difficult to stop if you get going too fast.  Your loss of balance will make your moving body collide with the sand at a fast rate of speed and if you're lucky you won't be hurt.  I knew a young woman who lost control on her way down and cracked her head on a rock buried under the dune's sands.  She split her head open and had to be accompanied back up by paramedics.  So be careful when you do your moon-bounding thing on Sleeping Bear Dunes!

Coming back up, however, is a real difficulty.  Climbing a 150 foot, 60-75 degree-sloped sand dune really gets your breath going in short gasps, your leg muscles sore, and your heart pumping so hard it feels like it might burst out of your ribcage.  What took you five minutes to get down takes fifteen to get back up, if you add in the stops for rest.  At the top, you almost feel like you've run five miles in that combination of exhiliration that you made it and extreme tiredness.

To me, dunes represent the same type of wave action that governs water except on an infinitely slower pace.  A time lapse photo of the dunes of the Sahara Desert, sped up to normal time, would resemble waves of an ocean in their windswept journey.  The edges of the dunes would lap at, and sometimes inundate and then retreat from, the areas at the edge of the desert borders.  If you stand at the top of a dune, you are really on the crest of a giant sand wave that is slowly, infinitesimally, moving and cresting.  It is a beautiful contrast between the liquid wave motion of water and slow, particulate wave motion of sand or other materials.

I write "other materials" because dunes are not just waves of sand.  The beautiful white dunes of White Sands National Monument in New Mexico are composed of gypsum particles, not sand.  A dune, no matter what it is made of, can cover a lot of ground in its slow movement.  The 600 foot high Sand Mountain in Nevada, a previous subject in the Blue Highways posts, has apparently moved back and forth across the desert floor for some generations, following the whims of the prevailing winds.  It also "sings" due to the shape of its sands.  There are other singing dunes too, as this fascinating video by Stephane Douady demonstrates.

Wherever there is wind and small particles, you'll find dunes.  They have helped create some of the great rock formations that we see in the western United States.  They are also otherworldly.  Giant dunes exist on Mars, and Venus and Saturn's moon Titan also have named dune fields.  I used to see dunes as being iconic symbols of the desert, and we still tend to associate them with desert areas.  They are much more than that, however, and their achingly slow, shifting, and relentless march across all regions of the world, past and present, make them an ever-present part of external and internal landscapes.

Musical Interlude

I know some other good reasons for dunes.  "If you like making love at midnight, in the dunes on the cape," then this song is for you.   Get a little "Escape" with Rupert Holmes.  (By the way, this song has more words on Wikipedia than some Beatles songs).

If you want to know more about Elberta

Benzie County Record Patriot (newspaper)
Frankfort-Elberta Chamber of Commerce
Village of Elberta
Wikipedia: Elberta

Next up: Mount Pleasant, Michigan

Blue Highways: Somewhere on Lake Michigan

Unfolding the Map

On the high seas...or at least the high lakes!  William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) takes the ferry from Kewaunee to Elberta, and we're on deck with him, watching Wisconsin grow more distant in the early afternoon.  I'm putting us right square equidistant between Michigan and Wisconsin, so get your soundings at the map.

Book Quote

"On the aft deck I took a seat and watched Wisconsin get smaller.  I had long wondered whether all shorelines disappear on a clear day in the middle of Lake Michigan (the name means 'big water').  I would soon find out."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 13

The Ann Arbor No. 7, later renamed Viking, transported William Least Heat-Moon (LHM) across Lake Michigan from Kewaunee, Wisconsin to Elberta, Michigan shortly before it stopped running for good. Photo at the the Gallery at Pasty.com. Click on photo to go to host site.

Somewhere on Lake Michigan

In the short list of things that terrify and fascinate me (spiders, certain types of heights), I'm going to add a couple more.  I know why I have one of these small phobias, but not the other.

Deep water terrifies and fascinates me, but only in a certain sense.  Have you ever been out on a lake or in an ocean, and you jump overboard for a swim, and you realize that your feet are simply dangling and you have no way of knowing where the bottom is?  It isn't the water that terrifies me, but the sudden realization that there's an unknown depth below and anything could be in that unknown depth.  For some reason, that just sends a chill up my spine.  I don't think that's a fear that is unexplainable.  Water is really not a human element, though our makeup is over three-quarters of the stuff.  To me, swimming in an unknown depth is like free-falling in slow motion, or being suspended over clouds off an unknown height where you cannot gauge how high you are.

The other thing that terrifies me, for reasons I cannot fathom (oh, that pun was so intended!), is the sides of ships.  But it's not just the side - if I look at a ship straight on or from a distance, I am fine.  No, the part that terrifies me is imagining that I might be in the water next to the side of a ship.  I think about being in the shadow of that huge thing, with my legs suspended and dangling over an unknown depth, before I'm sucked under the ship and into the propellors.

Mind you, I don't think about these things often.  They are not an obsessive phobia.  And they are not debilitating.  I will still jump off a boat in the middle of a lake to swim despite my uneasiness.  But when I do think about them, I get a shiver and that hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I bring this up because Lake Michigan is a huge, deep lake.  LHM wonders just how big it is and before he gets sidetracked by a story told by a fellow passenger on the ferry intends to put it to a test and see if the land disappears completely, leaving him surrounded by water.  There is something magical and forlorn in watching land disappear from the deck of a ship.  The only time I've experienced it is on the ferry from Le Havre, France to Rosslare, Ireland.  I was so excited and fearful of getting seasick (another slight phobia) that the uniqueness of my situation was lost on me at the time.  My imagination has filled in the gaps, though.  The land, the anchor to the world, dissolves into the horizon or perhaps mist off the water.  At that point, which I have experienced, the movement of the ship is betrayed only by the sound of the engines, the movement of air over the ship and the ship's wake.  Otherwise, like a lonely swimmer, you seem suspended between water and sky and often at the mercy of the water, until the farther shore materializes in front of you.

I believe I wrote this story before, about not realizing the size of Lake Michigan from a map.  On my first trip to the Midwest I had to take a puddle jumper from Chicago to Benton Harbor, Michigan.  I expected a short flight.  After all, it was only over a lake.  We took off from O'Hare Airport, flew out over downtown Chicago, and then out over the lake.  30 minutes later, we were still over the lake.  It was only my second flight and I began to wonder if we were lost when the land appeared below us and we touched down.  Later, when I lived in Milwaukee, I loved heading to the lakefront, because the vastness of the water reminded me of being on the ocean where I grew up.

The other theme in this passage is the ferry.  LHM might have been one of the last few people to take this ferry because it ceased running in 1982 after 90 years of service.  The ship, the Viking, was known originally as the Ann Arbor No. 7 and was renamed after it was rebuilt.  The Ann Arbor Railroad train ferries originally ran between Kewaunee, Wisconsin and Elberta, Michigan and expanded to other cities on upper Lake Michigan.

In the chapter, LHM remarks how small Ghost Dancing looks next to the boxcars on board, and when he hears some clanking down below hopes that the boxcar hasn't shifted in some way and crushed his van.  The boxcars were actually loaded onto the ferries, taken across the lake, and then disembarked onto tracks there to continue their railway journeys.  Without the ferries, the route would take much longer and therefore be much more expensive.  I did a quick Google Maps route and found that by car, getting from Kewaunee to Elberta would take about eight and a half hours.  By boat, that would be at least cut in half, and by the time LHM took the ferry, it might have been only 3 hours.

Though the Kewaunee ferry has ended, I am happy to say that there is still ferry service on Lake Michigan from Wisconsin.  The Lake Express has been billed as American's first high speed ferry line, and it runs from Milwaukee to Muskegon, Michigan.  It appears to be one of those sleek, double hulled catamarans and the website says it does about 40 miles per hour (34 knots) during the 2 and one-half hour trip.  The ship has been sailing since 2004.  The Lake Michigan Carferry runs between Manitowoc, Wisconsin to Ludington, Michigan.  The ship, the S.S. Badger, appears to be more of a conventional style ferry that plied the Great Lakes.  The website touts her as the biggest ferry to ever sail the Great Lakes and did so from 1953 until 1990, when she was tied up in Michigan.  An entrepreneur bought her in 1991 and had her refurbished, and began running her again shortly afterward.  The cruise takes four hours.

A Great Lakes or ocean ferry is a great way to get a nautical experience without having to endure days at sea, and if you pick the route right, you can get a little of everything.  Sometimes there are big waves and big excitement, sometimes calm seas and relaxation.  Perhaps, if you're lucky, you'll catch that magical point just as the land disappears from view and you too are suspended between water and sky on your personal chariot between space and time.

Musical Interlude

You won't believe that there aren't many songs about ferries.  You would think that given their importance to our nation's history and growth, there'd be more written about these forms of transportation.  However, I was only able to find one fun song by Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters celebrating the the Black Ball Ferries. If you have any other suggestions, Littourati, let me know.

Black Ball Ferry Line

If you want to know more about Lake Michigan and the history of the railroad ferries

Carferry.com
Classic Trains Magazine: Lake Michigan Carferries
Great Lakes Information Network: Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan Circle Tour
Railroad History of Central Wisconsin: A Lifelong Love of Lake Michigan Railroad Car Ferries
RRHX: Railroad Car Ferries
Wikipedia: Ann Arbor Railroad
Wikipedia: Lake Michigan
Wikipedia: Train Ferry
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources: Lake Michigan

Next up: Elberta, Michigan

Blue Highways: Kewaunee, Wisconsin

Unfolding the Map

Kewaunee, on the shores of Lake Michigan, will technically be our last stop in Wisconsin with William Least Heat-Moon.  Today I opine on taciturnity, privacy and reticence.  In the United States, some regions might be more reserved than others, at least in their cultural norms.  To see where silence is a virtue, quietly tiptoe over to the map, and don't disturb anyone!

Book Quote

"Across the central North, conversations had been difficult to strike up.  The people were polite but reserved; often they seemed afraid of appearing too inquisitive, while at other times they were simply too taciturn to exchange the banalities and clichés necessary to find a base for conversation.

"When I walked the North towns, people, wondering who the outsider was, would look at me; but as soon as I nodded they looked down, up, left, right, or turned around as if summoned by an invisible caller.  'Stranger,' Whitman says, 'if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me?'  I even tried my old stratagem of taking a picture of a blank wall just to give a passerby an excuse to stop and ask what I could possibly be photographing.  Nothing breaks down suspicion about a stranger better than curiosity - except in the North; whatever works better there, I didn't discover.   The effect on me was that I felt more alone than I ever had in the desert.  I wished for the South where any topic is worth at least a brief exchange.  And so I went across the central North, seeing many people, but not often learning where our lives crossed common ground."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 13

Kewaunee Pierhead Lighthouse. This photo by JerichoHW is posted at the City-Data.com forum. Click on photo to go to host site.

Kewaunee, Wisconsin

I've touched on the taciturnity of the upper Midwest in previous posts at stops in Minnesota.  However, since LHM brings it up again, it is worth looking at the reticence one may find in various places once again.  LHM compares the North to the South, which he indicates is more outgoing.  As one who has lived in both places, this has been my experience also.

I'll repeat my experience visiting Wisconsin after years of living in Texas and in Louisiana.  In Texas, we got used to very nice, open and outspoken people who dressed in more vibrant colors and peppered their speech with the "isms" that Texas is known for.  My wife and I were two of what is fast becoming an endangered species in Texas - liberals.  We hung out with other liberals but also had occasion, either personally or through work, to rub elbows with those ideologically opposed to us.  Regardless of any of that, Texans put a premium on being social and on conversation.  People appeared, therefore, to be open to interaction with others.

In Louisiana, we had similar experiences.  Of course, our experience of Louisiana was mostly New Orleans, where everyone just lets who they are hang right out there.  If anything, that openness and willingness to interact culminates each year in the explosion of color and celebration known as Mardi Gras.

In those states, anything you brought up was a topic fit for conversation.  How different, then, it was when we visited Wisconsin after a separation of a number of years.  With our friends, it was like old times where all kinds of issues were on the table.  But with people we didn't know, trying to make conversation on even non-political, safe topics like the Green Bay Packers was often met with one-word answers and awkward silences after.

I'm not saying that Wisconsinites are cold and rude.  Far from it.  The people I met and got to know intimately are generous and kind, and opened up once I got to know them.  I believe that the reserve and reticence is cultural.  I found the same type of reserve in Germany, which shares cultural roots with much of Wisconsin.  The dynamic, I think, is that it is not seen as polite to be overly curious about someone else's business, especially if you do not know them.  It is also not polite if someone inquires too deeply into your business.  What is left is an unwillingness to engage in small talk and to allow strangers glimpses into one's private business.  I also think that the harsh winters, so similar to those in northern Europe, separated and isolated people for a number of months.  That isolation probably left people tight-lipped and quiet.  This has filtered down as a cultural attribute.  It leaves a person like LHM in a kind of limbo - how can one pierce the walls surrounding people?  It's a Catch-22.  The more he tries, the less success he has.

There are benefits to the reserved nature of many in the upper Midwest.  Nobody knows your business, and by extension, your problems.  That privacy can be very important and very protective.  Unfortunately, my sense is that it can lead to isolation.  Growing up in a small town in a dysfunctional family, I know the harm that isolation and a lack of openness can breed.

However, contrast this with the openness that you often find in the South.  There is a lot to be said for it.  Yet, one can be overwhelmed with that openness.  Sometimes, that openness doesn't translate to a feeling that there is interest in what you have to say.  Sometimes it might seem that boundaries can be stretched.

I realize that I'm painting regions with a broad brush.  One finds very open people in the upper Midwest, just as one finds reticent and taciturn people in the South.  As for me, as I get older I tend to err on the side of openness.  I've had too much experience with the harm that can come from holding back, keeping secrets, and avoidance.  I would rather maintain an open demeanor and show my curiosity about people and the world.  Perhaps it might get me in trouble sometimes, but I feel that the rewards will outweigh any of the costs.  I also just simply like how it feels to be more open and less reticent.

The ultimate test of one's ability to deal with openness and lack of privacy often comes in overpopulated sections of the developing world.  In the late 1990s I traveled to Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and any illusions of privacy were shattered.  I was always in the midst of a crush of people, even in the rural areas.  Everything I did, regardless of if I was eating in a roadside restaurant, taking a walk, looking in a shop window, or looking at a landmark, was of such intense interest to everyone else that if I stopped for a certain amount of time I attracted a crowd.  At first it gave me an inflated sense of self-importance.  By the time I left, however, I was aching for that sense of personal privacy to be restored.  I often wonder, as populations grow around the world and global climate change makes some areas less easily inhabited, if more and more people will be forced to live closer and closer together and share resources.  Is it possible that personal privacy will become a true luxury, one that is unavailable to most?

Musical Interlude

I'm not exactly pleased with my music selection for this post as I wanted to see if I could capture the "taciturn" North.  But I couldn't find really anything that satisfied me.  So what you're left with is a song by Ultravox called Quiet Men.  It's a perfectly fine song, but doesn't set the mood I had in mind.  Oh well...sigh...

If you want to know more about Kewaunee

City of Kewaunee
Green Bay Press Gazette - Kewaunee County (newspaper)
Kewaunee Chamber of Commerce
Wikipedia: Kewaunee
Wistravel.com: Kewaunee

Next up:  Somewhere on Lake Michigan