Living on the edge

By Mike VanBuren
From the late February edition of The North Woods Call

    After several days of sub-zero temperatures and a couple feet of lake-effect snow, the thermometer reached a blistering 24 degrees.
     I had recently returned from Sunday morning worship services and it seemed like a good time to walk on water—frozen water, that is—so I pulled out the old Alaskan trapper snowshoes and took a hike  around the property.
    There’s nothing like a little fresh air and exercise to energize the body and soul.  Or so I thought.
      I wandered through the hillside pines behind The North Woods Call office, across an open meadow and down into the wetlands along Spring Brook.  Along the way, I followed the tracks of assorted woodland creatures that meandered back-and-forth across the surface of the snow.
     The field mice and cottontail rabbits seemed to have an easier time of it.  They stayed pretty much on top and ran from place-to-place without much impediment.  White-tailed deer, on the other hand—with their thin legs and sharp hooves—had sunken a foot or more beneath the crust as they waded between browses and the shelters they found under low-hanging pine boughs.
     I didn’t do much better, although my snowshoes only sank a few inches into the white powder.  After only about an hour of constant motion—stopping occasionally to snap a photograph of the pristine landscape—my lungs and leg muscles were beginning to complain and I was looking forward to a cup of hot tea beside the pellet stove.
     Maybe it’s the peril of advancing age, or perhaps I’m just a bit out-of-shape these days compared to the glory years of my youth.  Whatever the reason, I found myself contemplating previous generations of outdoorsman and lamenting the increasing softness of modern man.
     Take the voyageurs, for example.  These were tough men—mostly French Canadians who transported goods and supplies by canoe through the Great Lakes and northern wilderness during the fur-trade era of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  Unlike me—with the possible exception of the masonry work I did year-round during my late teens and early 20s—they lived a harsh life of toil.  Among other things, they had to carry at least two 90-pound bundles of fur over portages that were a half-mile, or longer, and some carried four or five bundles at a time.  Their wooden canoes were commonly 25 to 36 feet long and weighed 300 to 600 pounds empty.  On top of that, the vessels carried three tons of cargo.
     The men often rose as early as 2 or 3 a.m. to begin their typical day’s journey, and were expected to work 14 hours before bedtime  and paddle at a rate of 55 strokes per minute.  Danger was at every turn and not just because of exposure to outdoor living.  Drowning was common, along with broken limbs, compressed spines, hernias and rheumatism.  They did not have time to live off the land by hunting and fishing, so they carried their food with them, and often faced swams of annoying black flies and mosquitoes.
     Then there were those who took to the northern wilderness to seek their fortune in gold nuggets.  It is said that more than 100,000 people started off for the Klondike, but less than 30,000 actually made it to the gold fields in the Yukon Territory.  The difficulties of the Chilkoot and White Pass trails forced many to turn back.  Most found no gold at all, because—by the time they arrived—most of the good stakes had already been claimed.
     Jack London, of course, got several good stories out of the experience, but most others went home broke—if they went home at all—discouraged and defeated by the land they sought to tame.
     Such is often the fate of man against nature.
     Nature will ultimately be the victor, says a friend of mine, an outdoorsman and bush pilot in Alaska.  That’s why we must always work WITH her and not AGAINST her, he says.
     Yet, in this age of Kevlar canoes, lightweight camping gear and freeze-dried food, it’s tempting to believe that the odds are beginning to tilt in man’s favor.
     Some, of course, are better suited to hold their own in the great outdoors than others, but it’s still relatively easy to get into trouble if we forget our place when venturing into the wild.
     There really wasn’t much danger in a short snowshoe hike from my doorstep.  And it was indeed invigorating—for body and soul—to drink in the pure February air and warm my complacent muscles.
     But there were lessons to be learned, just the same, as I thought about advances in civilization and the great distance we have come from the earth that sustains us.

Slipping into Music City

By Mike VanBuren
From the early February edition of The North Woods Call

     You think winter’s tough in the north woods?
     Try getting around on snow and ice in the southern United States—say  Tennessee.
  My friend—a native of Nashville—calls it “Hillbillies on Ice.”  I call it weird.
     I learned about these challenges one strange February night on Interstate 40 in middle Tennessee.  My American Airlines flight had landed at Nashville’s International Airport around 8:30 p.m.  Temperatures were dropping fast and a drizzly rain began to fall as the big jet touched down and taxied to the terminal gate.
      No big deal.  I’m from Michigan.  I’m used to slick pavement and winter driving.  My biggest concern was finding the Holiday Inn and getting a good night’s sleep.  The next day would bring long hours in the edit suite at Elite Post on Music Row, putting the finishing touches on the Kellogg Foundation’s sustainable agriculture video.
      I stopped by the Avis desk and picked up a small rental car.  Then I threw my luggage into the trunk and headed out for the 20-minute drive into Music City, and a warm bed at the Holiday Inn.
    Traffic was light as I left the airport.  I was pleased to be keeping such a tight schedule.  At this rate, I’d have plenty of time to go over the edit script before turning in for the night.
     That’s when I saw it—up ahead in the westbound lanes of I-40.  The prettiest display of colored lights I’d seen since Christmas.  Flashing yellows.  Blinking reds.  Sparkling whites.  All accented by an icy glare on the road.  By the time I realized what I was getting into, I was far past the last exit ramp, rolling down a long incline toward a huge, six-lane parking lot.
      At least it looked like a parking lot.  There were cars, trucks, buses and vans everywhere—lined up like summer tourists at nearby Opryland.  I lifted my foot from the accelerator and pressed hard on the brake pedal, sliding to a not-so-graceful stop behind a pickup truck carrying two middle-aged men armed with open beer bottles.  I was relieved to stop before I rammed the vehicle, because it was one of those legendary trucks with a gun rack bolted over the rear window.
     At any rate, all three westbound lanes were clogged as far as I could see.  In a matter of seconds, I was imprisoned in the middle lane of a busy interstate highway, boxed in tighter than Carrie Underwood’s blue jeans by several other vehicles that came sliding in behind me.
    “Must be an accident,” I told myself, reaching to shut off the ignition.  “They’ll probably have it cleared in a few minutes.”
  I opened the car door and stepped outside.  It’s a good thing I had a tight grip on the metal doorframe, or I would have been stretched out on the cold, hard pavement with my feet wiggling in the air.  Several other people were also dancing around on the slippery blacktop, like clumsy Olympic figure skaters going for the gold in street shoes.
    I climbed back inside my car and started the engine.  The heat felt good on my chilled bones, so I let the motor run for 15 minutes or so.  Not being particularly interested in dying of carbon monoxide poisoning on a Tennessee highway, I eventually turned the motor off and waited until I started to shiver before switching it on again.
    After the first hour, I was getting a bit antsy.
     “What’s going on up there?” I asked the driver of the car parked next to mine, who seemed rather unconcerned with the delay.
      “Probably just the weather.”
   “A little ice on the road?  C’mon.  You’ve got to be kidding.”
       He wasn’t.  We sat for another hour.  Then another.  Then another.
   None of the other drivers seemed to think it was unusual to be sitting still on Interstate 40 in the middle of the night with no indication that the traffic would ever start moving again.  They just sat patiently in their cars and trucks and buses and vans—an apparently typical winter night on the Nashville freeway.
       After the fifth hour of starting and stopping and re-starting the car—too tired to stay awake and not wanting to fall asleep—I was sure I was either on Candid Camera, or lost in the Twilight Zone.  It was surreal.  I had been spinning the radio dial, listening to various news broadcasts and generally searching for a credible report about the huge traffic jam that had the city tied in knots.  Nothing.  Not a single mention of it on the airwaves.  And nobody but me seemed to think there was anything unusual about the information blackout.
     “Does this happen often?” I asked a young woman standing by the car behind me.
     “No.  It’s just the ice,” she said matter-of-factly.  “We’re not used to that down here, you know.”
      Oh, really?  As if they were used to spending the night on blocked freeways in sub-freezing temperatures.
     Along about 4:30 a.m., I leaned my seat back and was drifting in and out of a fitful slumber.  I don’t know how long I slept, but I was awakened with a start.  Bright lights were shining in my rear-view mirror and a loud air horn was rattling my car windows.  A huge salt truck had come weaving through the traffic behind me and the driver wanted us to move our cars out of the way so he could get through.
      Saved at last by a tardy truck driver and the blessed chloride that eats jagged holes in our automobiles.
      As the other cars edged off the road, I loitered between the middle and right lanes until the truck passed.  Then I moved in quickly behind the huge salt spreader and followed the yellow monster through a maze of stalled vehicles.  I nuzzled the back of the truck for about a mile-and-a-half —determined to hold my place—until we came to the first cars, parked smack in the middle of an open road.  No accident.  No barriers.  No pulling to the side of the road.  “Let’s just stop here, Jimmy—until spring.”
    I still don’t understand what happened that night.  I passed the salt truck on the three-lane stretch ahead and had no trouble moving about 35 miles-per-hour over the ice.  Within about 15 minutes, I was rolling into the Holiday Inn parking lot on West End Avenue, exhausted and bewildered.  It had been more than eight hours since I entered the traffic jam and I still had heard nothing on the radio indicating that there was a problem on the highway.
     I stumbled into the empty lobby and rang the bell to summon the desk clerk.  Within a few minutes, I was on the elevator to the seventh floor.  At the end of a long hallway, I slipped the key card into the slot and pushed open the door.  I was surprised when the door caught on the end of the security chain with a loud crash.
   “What the #%!?” I heard a sleepy, but startled man say from inside the darkened room.
    “Oops.  Sorry, “ I said, as I closed the door and made a hasty retreat to the elevator.  “Wrong room.”
    Back in the lobby, the desk clerk apologized repeatedly and set me up in a vacant suite on the fourth floor.  I climbed into the elevator once again and shuffled down another long hall to the replacement accommodations.  Inside, I threw my luggage on the floor and flopped onto the bed.  It was nearly 5:30 a.m. and I was scheduled to be at Elite Post in less than three hours.  I turned out the light and quickly fell into a hard sleep.
    It was going to be a rough day—one sure to make me long for a good ole Michigan winter.

Modern environmental writing

An editorial from the late January 2014 North Woods Call

     In his introduction to the book, “American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau,” editor Bill McKibben cautions that the world is in a race between physics and metaphysics.
     Environmentalism, he says, can no longer confine itself to the narrow sphere it has long inhabited.  “If it isn’t as much about economics, sociology and pop culture as it about trees, mountains and animals,” McKibben says, “it won’t in the end matter.”
     Today’s environmental writing, he says, is concerned with the collision between people and the rest of the world, and asks questions about that collision.  Is it necessary?  What are its effects?  Might there be a better way?
     Unlike traditional nature writing, McKibben says, environmental writing seeks answers, as well as consolation—embracing controversy and sometimes sounding an alarm.
     Such discussions can sometimes make people—even dedicated conservationists—uncomfortable, especially if they don’t like the voices they hear, or don’t subscribe to the particular ideas being shared.  We sometimes see this even in the pages of The North Woods Call, which, as many of you know, has a rich variety of passionate and opinionated readers.
     That is a good thing.
     Even former U.S. Vice President Al Gore—who himself has at various times been vocally intolerant of divergent viewpoints—acknowledges our national tradition of free speech and the important need to debate the rights and responsibilities of each individual and of society as a whole.
     “Just as [19th Century author Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond]  could not shut out his neighbors, Americans cannot shut out one another—or the rest of the world—if we are to restore the balance between the natural and the man-made,” Gore said in the foreword he penned for “American Earth.”
     Let’s hope he means it.
    Such debates are regularly held in coffee shops, classrooms, gas stations, offices and on street corners—anywhere that passions surface and ideas collide .  And, yes, they are also found on talk radio, television networks, cable channels, and in the pages of books, magazines and newspapers.
     Those who would try to silence these discussions are doing a great disservice to the very idea of self-government.  Many great movements that made positive changes to our world began as an individual idea, or as a single essay or editorial in a book or newspaper.  And many real and would-be tyrants—not to mention ill-conceived laws—have been brought down by information shared freely in the light of public discourse.
      That’s why we need to embrace diversity of thought in all matters and see what we might learn from it.
    In the words of 18th century French writer, historian and philosopher Voltaire, “Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so, too.”

Scotch pines and newspapers

By Mike VanBuren
From the late January 2014 edition of The North Woods Call

     The scotch pines on the hillsides surrounding my home have been dying, rotting and toppling to earth for several years now.
     I guess that’s part of their life cycle.  They reach a certain age, then surrender to time, weather, insects and woodpeckers.
     Eventually, they fall—mostly into the woods, but sometimes across the yard and driveway.  That’s when I am called to practice some not-so-delicate surgery with my chain saw.
     We lost a few more of them during a wet and windy day last November.  One tree blocked the drive and was quickly removed—with large, heavy sections of the trunk dragged to the side—while three or four others now lean precariously against their neighbors  alongside our endangered barn.
     I’ve been threatening for years to cut them all out before one or more crashes into the vulnerable structure, but I always seem to find reasons not to do it.  Next spring it will have to become a priority job.
  I’m beginning to wonder if newspapers have a similar life cycle, thriving for a set number of years before dying and returning to the dust from which they came.
     The North Woods Call, for example, has a rich and vibrant history, and is now in its 61st year of publication.  With the right combination of resources and marketing, it would seem that the newspaper could remain a solid niche publication for many more years.
   Yet, for decades The Call has been slowly hemorrhaging subscribers and advertisers to the point where the business is nearly as unstable as the old scotch pines leaning over our barn.
     I’m not really sure how healthy  the ledgers were during Marguerite Gahagan’s 16-year tenure as publisher, though I suspect she had her economic challenges.
     I do know, however, that during the storied Glen Sheppard years, the subscriber base had declined by at least 77 percent from its one-time high to where it was when I first started talking to Shep back in the 1990s about taking over the publication.  And by the time of his death in early 2011, there had been an additional 27 percent drop in those figures.
     Makes you wonder why anyone would want to try to resurrect the publication after Shep was gone, doesn’t it?
     Call it a labor of love, or just plain craziness, but that’s exactly what we did—only to discover that less than 20 percent of Shep’s remaining subscribers cared to stay with the publication under new ownership and a much-needed price increase.
     We know some of them were already disgruntled before we even decided to reopen the newspaper,  because they had not been refunded their unused subscription money when Shep died.  Mary Lou Sheppard, of course, closed the operation and said she  didn’t have the cash reserves to give back all the money.  (Don’t worry, that won’t happen again on our watch).
   Thankfully, enough of The Call’s most loyal subscribers signed up—for either print or electronic editions—to pay the bills and allow us to continue publishing for the past 17 months.
     We’re still at it, of course, but examining the numbers gives us pause.  Although many of our own subscribers have renewed their commitments in the past few months—with a good number opting to turn their one-year subscriptions into two years—a significant number are apparently exercising their freedom of choice by dropping out of The Call community altogether.
     There are probably as many reasons for this as there are former subscribers.  Some, unfortunately, have passed away.  Others have aged to the point where their faltering eyesight no longer allows them to read.  Some may have decided that they couldn’t afford a subscription this year, while others may simply feel that The Call is not meeting their needs.
     We can’t know all the possible motivations—except in those handful of cases where folks have written to tell us such things—but this trend seems to follow the long-term trajectory of The Call and of newspapers in general.
     Many once-profitable newspapers and magazines have gone belly up in recent years, while others have been forced to cut back on business expenses, reduce their publication schedules, or convert to exclusively electronic editions.
     We don’t know yet what all this means for The Call.  We still think the publication meets a vital need and—with the right combination of resources and marketing expertise—could attract a new generation of readers and advertisers.
     But time will tell.
     Like the scotch pines hanging precariously over the VanBuren barn, we’d like to somehow prevent these financial doldrums from crashing down on us and wiping out the business structure.
     If we can just get our marketing chain saw running, maybe we can buzz these troubles away.

A gentle spirit flies away

By Mike VanBuren
From the Late December 2013 edition of The North Woods Call
     Back in August of 1999, I was part of a small writer’s group studying creative nonfiction during a conference at Goucher College in Baltimore.
     It was the second time I had been to the gathering and that year my study group was led by acclaimed nature writer and conservationist Terry Tempest Williams.  Eight years earlier, Williams had published a fine nonfiction work called Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place.
     The book interweaves memoir and natural history, explores Williams’ complicated relationship to Mormonism and recounts her mother’s diagnosis with ovarian cancer—along with the concurrent flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, a place special to the author since childhood.
     A profoundly moving piece of work, the book’s widely anthologized epilogue, “The Clan of One-Breasted Women,” explores whether a high incidence of cancer in her family might be due to living downwind during the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s above-ground nuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s.
   As a record of loss, healing grace and the search for a human place in nature’s design, Refuge has become somewhat of a classic essay on mortality and grieving.
   Sadly, I am grieving myself today, having come to know the heart-wrenching pain of losing my mother 14 days before Christmas.  She’s now on a migratory path of her own, thanks to complications of age, dementia and biological infection that took her down sooner than we expected, and stole her ability to walk, talk, eat and—ultimately—live.
     About a week before she drew her last breath at the Rose Arbor Hospice Care Residence in Kalamazoo, she was an in-patient at a local hospital and only slightly better able to communicate than she was at the end.  A woman of lifelong quiet faith, she said through nods and facial expressions that she was ready to transition into the presence of God and claim the promises of eternal life.
      I believe she was.
   It seems she knew she was dying long before I and other family members caught on.  We thought she was merely ill and that prayers, encouragement and modern medicine could somehow resurrect her in a form similar to the person we previously knew and loved.  But God had other plans for her.
     Looking back, the telltale signs of impending death were there even before she left home for the final time more than three weeks earlier.  She had lost interest in food and would soon reject water and other fluids.  She slept almost continually and efforts to communicate with us became fewer and farther between.
     She saw things that we couldn’t see and had no way to adequately describe them—images and celestial beings of various sizes in the high corners of the rooms; mysterious threads on the table, floors and walls; and sometimes people from her distant past beckoning her to come forth.  At times she attempted to rise and follow those calls—only to be stopped in her tracks by a concerned care giver asking where she was going, or by malfunctioning legs that would routinely collapse and fall.
    Like any good mother, she never stopped listening to me, even when she couldn’t verbally respond to questions or statements.  Instead, she briefly opened her eyes, raised her eyebrows, made a face, or simply smiled.
     The day before she died, I saw a hawk perched on a pole outside her room.  I wondered whether it was some kind of a sign.  Early the next afternoon, a similar raptor—perhaps the same one—flew repeatedly into the window and tarried for a while in the bushes outside.
     A mere hour-and-a-half later—as a layer of newly fallen lake-effect snow cloaked the ground in pure white—my mother awoke, opened her eyes and tried in vain to say something to those of us gathered at her bedside.
    I think it was simply, “I love you.”
    Then it was over.   Like someone had flipped a power switch.  No struggle or after effects.  Just complete stillness.
    Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, I was searching for my own refuge—a haven from the disrupting loss of her gentle spirit, from the frustration that we couldn’t save her and from the haunting fear that somehow we hadn’t been effective medical advocates when she needed us most.
     The family did the best it could, but to no avail.  Now all we can do, I suppose, is cling to her memory and to each other, and trust in the promise that we will one day be reunited.
     Looking back nearly 15 years to Goucher College, I remember the simple and poetic inscription Terry Tempest Williams wrote in my personal copy of Refuge:

     “For you, Mike.
       In the name of shared days in search of stories.
       Refuge.
       In the land.
       In each other.
       Blessings.”

    My mother’s life was a constant blessing to me and many others.  Her love never failed and her faith in God never wavered.
     In the days following her death, I have come across many things that I wanted to tell her.  But we’re no longer connected in that way.
     Yet I think she sees me from her exalted position on high and continues to bless me with her prayers.
       I cherish that thought and will think of her each time I see freshly fallen snow, or a soaring hawk against a bright blue sky.

Isle Royale wolves and moose

Editorial from the early December 2013 North Woods Call

    There’s a classic struggle for survival on Isle Royale.
    As previously reported in The North Woods Call, the wolves and moose living on the remote Lake Superior wilderness island are dependent on each other and both are threatened by a variety of factors.
     The wolf population has been in decline and may eventually die-out—due largely to reproductive challenges, disease, and a lack of genetic diversity caused by decades of inbreeding. Moose, meanwhile, may be faced with a similar fate—not only on Isle Royale, but across North America.  There have been preferential food shortages and a warmer climate in recent years has produced more parasites—especially ticks, which consume the flesh of animals and make them more susceptible to anemia and infections.  Ticks also bite off the hair of moose, exposing them to hypothermia in cold weather.
     On Isle Royale, wolves and moose have a unique predator-prey relationship.  Wolves are the only predator of the moose and the moose are almost exclusively the only prey for wolves.  It is essential to keep their respective populations in balance for a healthy ecosystem.
    Consequently, a debate currently rages over whether humans should intervene in this natural cycle and, if so, what the results might be.
   As one of our readers recently pointed out, the conundrum is this:  If you artificially boost the wolf population and their main diet—moose—are dying out, the wolves will starve to death.  If, however, the wolves die out, moose will—for a short time, at least—grow in numbers.  Then they will overeat the fauna, devastate the island ecosystem and either die out by starvation, or succumb to the tick infestation.
    What’s the National Park Service to do?  Though we prefer to let nature govern itself, the agency will probably have to err on the side of intervention.
   Population biologist John Vucetich and wildlife ecologist Rolf Peterson, who have studied Isle Royale’s wolves and moose, say a healthy ecosystem depends on the presence of top predators like wolves when large herbivores such as moose are present.
   Without this balance, prey tend to become overabundant and decimate plants and trees that many species of birds, mammals and insects depend upon. Top predators also maintain the diversity of rare plants and insects that depend on those plants.
    In addition, the loss of top predators may disturb the nutrient cycling of entire ecosystems, according to Vucetich and Peterson.  And wolves are a boon to foxes, eagles, ravens and other species that scavenge from carcasses that wolves provide, they said.
    Although wilderness is typically viewed as a place where nature should be allowed to take its course free from human interference, we lean toward the experts who say the ecology of Isle Royale would best be served if the National Park Service initiates a genetic rescue by introducing new wolves to the island.
    After all, Vucetich and Peterson said in a New York Times op-ed piece, “there’s no place on the planet that is untouched by humans.  We have already altered nature’s course everywhere.  Our future relationship with nature will be more complicated.  Stepping in will sometimes be wise, but not always. ... Navigating that complexity without hubris will be a great challenge.”

Healthy truth in advertising

Editorial from the early December 2013 North Woods Call

    Now we all know.
    The nation’s controversial “Affordable Health Care Act” is apparently not so affordable.
    Not only are individual and family insurance policies going to be much more expensive to purchase, but millions of Americans are already losing the coverage that they wanted to keep.
    This, despite assurances by proponents of the legislation that coverage would be less expensive and “if you like your current plan, you can keep it.”
    Turns out these assurances were bald-faced lies, told repeatedly to deceive the voting public.
    That’s the problem with unchecked bureaucratic socialism and power-hungry demagogues who insist on having their way despite the heavy costs to society and freedom.
     At least two things now need to happen.
     We should insist that this poorly conceived law be repealed and demand that those who perpetrated this wanton fraud on the American people be held accountable.
     Only then can we hope to find workable solutions to society’s problems—whether in health care or natural resources conservation—and foster the truth in advertising that we deserve from those in public office.
      If this kind of thing happened in the private sector, criminal charges would already have been filed.