The "singing wilderness"

By Mike VanBuren
From the Late August 2013 North Woods Call

The spirit of the north woods lives in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northern Minnesota and the Algoma Country of northern Ontario.
  I haven’t actually seen the Boundary Waters—they’re on my  list of things to do—but I’ve read about them often in the writings of Sigurd Olson and others.
     Olson, a back country guide for more than 30 years and tireless advocate for protection of the wilderness, was influential in saving the Boundary Waters and helped draft the Wilderness Act of 1964.  President of The Wilderness Society from 1963 to 1971, he helped establish Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota,  the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and Point Reyes National Seashore in California.
     Olson called the Quetico-Superior country northwest of Lake Superior “The Singing Wilderness.”  It has to do, he said, with the calling of the loons, northern lights and the great silences of the land.  “It is concerned with the simple joys, the timelessness and perspective found in a way of life that is close to the past,” he wrote—noting that he has “heard the singing in many places.”
     I heard it for the first time myself nearly 40 summers ago when I accompanied three high school friends on a journey into the wilds north of Sault Ste. Marie.  It was supposed to be a quiet week-long canoe outing, but we found a bit more adventure than we had anticipated.
     To begin with, the drive north became somewhat less than melodious when the large Oldsmobile 88 in which we were riding flew over an embankment and into a stand of small trees at a dark, fog-shrouded T-intersection less than 50 miles from home.  We managed to extricate the car—with the help of a nearby resident and his tractor—and reattach the two canoes on top.  But the trip appeared doomed 20 miles later when all the motor oil had leaked out and the V-8 engine seized up.
     Not to be deterred, two of my companions hitch-hiked home to get other vehicles and we were again on our way several hours later.  We finally crossed the International Bridge into Canada and reached the Algoma Central Railroad station early the next morning.
     Although none of us were expert canoeists—me in particular—my friends wanted to challenge the  Batchawana River, which in Ojibwe means “turbulent waters.”  Fortunately, I read about the dangers that the Batchawana posed to inexperienced canoeists and talked them into the more serene Sand River—which is a good thing, given what came later.
     We loaded our canoes into a baggage car and settled in for the 140-mile train ride to Sand Lake.  Within a few hours, we launched the canoes into the large lake several yards from the railroad tracks.
     Ah, peace at last.
     We paddled effortlessly across the calm water in search of Sand River, but didn’t find it that afternoon.  Instead, we camped on a small rock formation—which someone had dubbed “Whiskey Island”—one of several such havens dotting the pristine lake.
  That’s when the wilderness began to sing, even though it was difficult to detect any audible sounds.  There was music in the silence itself, punctuated by the occasional call of a loon, splash of a fish, or unnatural cannonballs of four weary compadres jumping into the cool, fresh water.
     The next several days were like that—lots of silence, occasional banter between occupants of the two canoes, welcome physical activity and  the indignant snorts of moose that were surprised by human invaders while foraging along the Sand River.
     In many ways, it seemed like heaven on earth.  Plenty of time to paddle, portage, fish and fry up the day’s catch over an open fire.  Time to reflect on life, absorb the relaxing sounds of nature and scribble notes about things I wanted to remember.
     Sadly, the time came for my canoe mate and me to return to Central Michigan University for the start of fall classes, so we bid adieu our traveling companions, who had decided they wanted to follow the Sand River all the way to Lake Superior.  We paddled back upstream, across Sand Lake and flagged down the next train that passed by on the tracks to Sault Ste. Marie.
    Our erstwhile friends, meanwhile, pointed their canoe toward Gitchee Gumee. But instead of portaging around some of the dangerous whitewater further downstream, they decided to shoot the rapids, bending the aluminum Grumman around a large boulder and stranding themselves in the singing wilderness.  If not for a Canadian Forest Service helicopter happening by and discovering their plight, they might still be there today.
     But all is well that ends well and our search for the music goes on.  It may be in the soft guttering of an open fire, Olson said, or in the beat of rain on a tent.
     “It seems to be part of a hunger we all have for a time when we were closer to lakes and rivers—to mountains and meadows and forests—than we are today,” he wrote, “Because of our almost forgotten past, there is a restlessness within us, an impatience with things as they are, which modern life with its comforts and distractions does not seem to satisfy.”

Smart environmental policy

An editorial from the Late August 2013 North Woods Call:

     A friend of ours once wrote a song based on the old saying, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.”
     We feel that way about many so-called “progressive” environmental policies that often seem to cause more harm than good.
     After all, what did the “Cash for Clunkers” program really accomplish, other than waste taxpayer dollars, remove from the market vehicles that a considerable amount of energy was expended to make, drive up the prices of used cars and deprive low-income people of access to affordable transportation?
     What good does it do to spend billions funding “green energy” companies with no viable customer base that will be bankrupt in a few months when there are no buyers for their far-too-expensive products?
    And why try to destroy the fossil fuel industry before we have the appropriate technology to replace it with something equally effective at powering the nation’s economy?
   Then there are those new-fangled light bulbs—the ones that cost many times what we have spent on Thomas Edison’s old incandescent variety, but aren’t nearly as bright and contain hazardous mercury that can’t be disposed by conventional means.
   We’re all for innovation and finding new and more energy-efficient ways to do things.  And we agree that ongoing research and development into these areas is necessary and appropriate.
    But there must be a more efficient and cost-effective way to go about it.  Far too much money is going into the pockets of politicians and their business cronies (ie. financial donors) under the guise of protecting the environment, and far too little into legitimate pursuit of technologies and products that will better serve the needs of mankind at prices we can afford.
    We want a cleaner, safer environment as much as anyone and concede that some past environmental policies have helped bring that about.  But we could do much better if we kept the greedy bandits away from our public treasury and let market forces play a more substantial role in solving our energy problems.
    A lot of viable solutions are probably being overlooked because the short-sighted power brokers in control of the money can’t figure out how to enrich themselves and still find cheaper and better sources of energy.
   We need solid answers that benefit us all—not just those with enough green in their pockets to buy the American dream.

Pigeon River lessons

By Mike VanBuren
From the Early August 2013 edition of The North Woods Call

   I returned to school in mid-July, but it wasn’t the typical classroom  setting with textbooks and a course syllabus.
   This was experiential learning and hands-on tutoring in the Pigeon River Country, located near Vanderbilt in Michigan’s northern Lower Peninsula.
    The “professor” was Gaylord-area resident Doug Mummert, a seasoned woodsman, hunter and fisherman. Doug and his wife Judy had invited me to their home to talk natural resources conservation—a subject about which they are as passionate as anybody I’ve ever known.
     The discussion began as soon as I arrived Thursday afternoon at their secluded home southeast of town.  It continued over dinner and well into the evening, then resumed early the following morning during a hearty breakfast that Judy had prepared.
     There was much to learn about the Pigeon River Country—one of the more remote areas in the Lower Peninsula—and the Mummerts generously shared their knowledge and wisdom until I reluctantly drove away at 4:30 p.m. Friday to return home.
   The highlight of this crash course in all things Pigeon was a day-long tour of the state forest known as “The Big Wild”—nearly 100,000 acres of trees, wetlands, hills, meadows, rivers, streams, lakes, trails, wildlife and solitude set aside for preservation and the public benefit.
    Home to some of author Ernest Hemingway’s favorite Michigan rivers—the Sturgeon, the Black and the Pigeon—the area has been Doug Mummert’s “sandbox” and all-season playground for some 60 years, he said.  Since the early 1950s—when Mummert first visited as a teen-ager—he has hunted, fished, snowshoed, canoed, hiked, ran hound dogs, communed with “Ma Nature,” and generally absorbed the quiet and healthy spirit of the land.
     That’s precisely why he is determined to see it protected from developers, big oil interests, politicians, bureaucrats and others who would exploit the resource for temporary and short-term advantage.
    The threats have been many and varied over the years and Mummert has been among those in the trenches who have fought long and hard against exploitation.
     One of the biggest threats came during the 1970s, when fuel shortages were causing long lines at gas pumps, and oil companies were eager to tap huge reserves of oil and natural gas under the forest.  Opponents claimed that oil drilling activity would harm the Pigeon River Country’s abundant wildlife—particularly the only substantial wild elk herd east of the Mississippi River.
     For nearly 10 years, the two sides engaged in a series of lawsuits, consent orders, legislation and compromises until a 1979 landmark Michigan Supreme Court case offered guidance on the type of harm that would justify relief under the Michigan Environmental Protection Act and led to an agreement between the state government, oil industry and environmental groups. The ruling allowed tightly regulated drilling in the southern one-third of the forest under the watchful eye of the Pigeon River Advisory Council and set standards for future oil drilling in Michigan.
     Today, the forest is a special management unit in parts of four counties that is administered by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) under a unique “Concept of Management” that carefully outlines what is allowed and what is not.  Given that, the Pigeon River Country should be a model for resource conservation.
     But there are still many threats, Mummert said, including conflicts among user groups, ongoing pressure to commercialize state natural resources and the continued deterioration of Michigan’s once-vaunted “conservation system” in favor of political interests.
     “We’re losing our conservation system,” Mummert said.  “It seems like the legislature wants to run it, rather than the DNR, and they’re catering to special and commercial interests.”
     Pure water will soon be our most precious natural resource, Mummert said, if it isn’t already.  Northern Michigan and the Pigeon River Country are great examples of that, he said, and act as somewhat of a “sponge” to collect and filter fresh water.
     “Everyone should agree that it’s proper to have pure water,” Mummert said, and no activities should be allowed that threaten that—including the quest for more oil and gas resources.
     In addition, wildlife is an indicator of a healthy environment.  “If we manage for the most sensitive creatures out there, everything else will benefit, too,” Mummert said.
     That means you can’t be all things to all people, he said.  Some user activities—dirt bikes, four-wheelers, snowmobiles and other “fast movers”—have much greater impact on the resource than others.  They need to be carefully managed—even prohibited—because smaller  individual footprints mean better and more long-term resource protection.
   Viewing the forest panorama from Inspiration Point above the old Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the Pigeon River Country, Mummert quietly reflected on past efforts to save the forest.
    “What we’re looking at now is here because of what we did before,” he said.
    A DNR official once told Mummert that he had destroyed his credibility by saying “no to everything.”  Yet, Mummert doesn’t consider himself to be a “preservationist,” and even chaffs at the label “environmentalist.”
   “I’m a traditionalist,” he said, “and a conservationist. You have to believe in something and center your life around it.  Otherwise, you won’t do it.”
    That’s a good lesson for us all.

A learning opportunity

An observation from the Early June 2013 North Woods Call

    Everyone seems to have an opinion these days and, naturally, most people think their own ideas are correct.  Unfortunately, modern notions blow like tumbleweeds in the political winds and few people can hear other voices above the atmospheric roar.
     As a result, we tend to make life-changing decisions based on misinformation spewed by self-serving demagogues—skilled at manipulating the masses—rather than on our own knowledge of the facts.  And, too often, we filter everything through whatever political philosophy captures our personal fancy, thumbing our noses at alternative ideas and philosophies.
     Because few of us have ever been—or ever will be—politicians, we think it would be useful if Americans stopped viewing every discussion as “political”—worthy of attention if it comes from “our side” and contemptible if it comes from the other.  Why not begin looking at the thoughts of our fellow citizens as simply ideas worth considering?  After all, we supposedly all love liberty and justice, and want to hand the best nation possible down to our children and grandchildren.
     Most of us would probably agree that understanding our collective history and having accurate information on which to base our civic debate is vital to a free society.  Without it, we can’t make the best decisions going forward.
     Hillsdale College in southern Michigan is attempting to address this need by offering free online courses in American history and the U.S. Constitution.  We currently are participating in some of these courses, and are impressed by the thoroughness and relative objectivity with which the information is  presented.
      There are video lectures, supplemental readings, question-and-answer sessions and quizzes to test your knowledge.  And it’s all free of charge.
     College officials say they want to help citizens understand the differences between the constitutional republic bequeathed to us by our founders and the now-dominant administrative bureaucracy that has come from 100-plus years of so-called “progressive” thought and policy.
     “We’re living right now in one of the key moments of American history—one of the pivots,” said Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn.  “We’re going to go one way, or the other.  [Abraham] Lincoln said that a house divided against itself cannot stand.  We’ve got a house that can’t continue being organized in two different ways.  It won’t stand.”
     The key to good decision-making, he said, is knowing what’s true, as well as the consequences and alternatives to our actions.
     “How are you going to figure out what the right way is?” Arnn asked.  “The answer is, learn the story of the country, and learn the principles and institutions that have guided that story, and emerge from it.  That’s a critical thing for people in America to be doing right now, because, if they’re going to exercise choice over what becomes of them, they’re going to need to know.”
     We couldn’t agree more and encourage others to explore this wonderful learning opportunity from one of the premier private liberal arts colleges in the country.  All it takes is an open mind, a desire to learn and a little time.
     Each of us has a duty to be an informed citizen and these Hillsdale College courses are well worth the minimal investment required. (For information: www.online.hillsdale.edu)..

Dune protection

An editorial from the Early June 2013 North Woods Call

    With recent changes to Michigan’s 1989 Sand Dune Protection and Management Act that has many developers salivating for more lakeshore construction, the state’s fragile dune ecology is under attack.
     It’s imperative that conservation-minded citizens insist that these important natural areas be protected.
      Dune habitats feature highly specialized plants and animals, including numerous rare species, and some that are endangered.
       In addition to the general beauty of the dune landscape, these areas also play an important role in protecting the land against potential ravages by storm waves from the Great Lakes.
     While they may seem barren to the casual observer, dunes support a vibrant ecosystem, where plants interact with blowing sand to create sand formations and to stabilize them.  Sometimes the stabilization is only temporary, as the dunes often shift, migrate and re-form over time.
     The widespread expansion of human population has resulted in dune destruction through land development and recreational uses, as well as from alteration to prevent the encroachment of sand onto inhabited areas.
     If you’ve spent any time in the dunes along the coast of west Michigan, or walked over the amazing formations at the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in the northern Lower Peninsula, you can appreciate the value that these geographic land forms represent.
   We need to stand behind the citizens and communities currently fighting against the plans of developers who threaten their dunes.

"Expert" rule vs. the people

An editorial from the Early June 2013 North Woods Call

    We’ve mentioned this before and don’t want to beat a dead wolf over it, but we’re still uncomfortable with a state government that doesn’t think voters are smart enough to make informed choices over  policy issues.
     Michigan’s Public Act 21 of 2013—which empowers bureacrats to designate game species regardless of whether a majority of voters were to oppose such a designation in a proposed statewide referendum—is just the latest example of this.
     We respect state wildlife managers and believe they have the expertise to make sound judgements about wolf hunts and other such activities, but we don’t like to see intentional end-runs around Michigan citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights to place an issue on the general election ballot.
     It’s true that few of us are expert wildlife biologists, or schooled in other disciplines affecting the scientific stewardship of our natural resources.  We should always consult such experts when these decisions are to be made.  However, in a representative republic, the people’s voice is sacrosanct and should be heard.
     After all, do the “experts” always make the right decisions?
    Just  ask  the “anti-fracking” opponents of ongoing oil & gas lease sales—particularly in state parks, recreation areas and other publicly owned natural areas—for an answer to that one.

National Rifle Association

An editorial from the Late June 2013 North Woods Call

     We continue to scratch our heads over the antipathy we hear from some readers toward the National Rifle Association (NRA).
     Although we are not and have never been members of that organization—and are naturally wary of the money fueled power exercised by these types of lobbying groups—it seems to us that the NRA is legitimately representing the interests of hundreds of thousands of its members—and perhaps the general interests of a free society, as well.
     If not for the battle being waged by the NRA, there would likely be many more restraints on gun ownership than we have already seen—liberty suppressing regulations that do not honor the Second Amendment, or the U.S. Constitution.
     Argue if you must about the “craziness” of semi-automatic weapons in the hands of average citizens.  Our predecessor, Glen Sheppard, reportedly had little use for the NRA himself and would probably agree that prohibitions are necessary.
     But we believe the issue runs much deeper than that.  If we only could trust dishonest politicians and the cynical intentions of those agenda-driven special interests that are lobbying every bit as vehemently against gun ownership, we might have more sympathy for such arguments.
     As it is, we’re glad to see somebody standing up for these basic rights, however contentious they may be.
      Most gun owners—no matter what kind of weapons they possess—have never so much as entertained the idea of using them for ill-intent.  And we don’t believe that removing guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens will keep them, or some other equally effective killing device, out of the hands of those who wish to damage lives and create mayhem.
     The underlying moral conditions and mental health issues surrounding such actions are the real culprits, along with a general spiritual breakdown that didn’t plague earlier generations.
     Demonizing the NRA, or myriad other responsible gun owners who handle their weapons with care, will not lead us out of the dark and frightening place into which society has descended.