MOONSCAPE LAKE - PART ONE

MOONSCAPE – Part one
By: Ray Hansen

The scene was something like you might have seen on the 50’s television show “Death Valley Days”. Maybe that is before your time. Compare it to one of the desolate planets Spock and Captain Kirk visited before Kirk returned to Earth, retired from space exploration, and got a job as a partner in a law firm on Boston Legal (and James Spader took Spock’s place.

Vast open stretches of bare dirt spread out for thousands of yards in all directions. Strangely, it is lined with deep cracks as though it was a desert even though until recently it held millions of gallons of water. Sprinkled here and there are the skeletons of huge trees, whitened and split by exposure to the sun after many years submerged beneath the tannic stained water. Massive stumps squat silently in all directions, their roots spiraling off in a circle like so many octopi sitting on the ocean floor.

The site I’m describing is the reservoir formerly backed up behind the Boney Falls Dam, on the Escanaba River some miles upstream from my home. Now drained of water, it contains just a single thin river channel running through its center like a main artery snaking through a parched skeleton. The water level has been lowered so necessary repairs can be made to the dam that normally holds the river back.

The bottom of the reservoir – now exposed to the sun and wind for the first time in many years – holds traces of its history for those who can read the clues. Wearing high-top rubber boots and poking through the ruins, Kate and I find the remnants of a very old wicker basket style fishing creel. This is a kind of basket with a long shoulder strap that trout anglers once used to keep their catch fresh. Wet moss was placed in the container and fish placed on it. Cooling by evaporation helped keep them from spoiling. Indian tribes in this area also made baskets for various purposes, but theirs were fashioned from intricately woven and intertwined willow branches. The piece of basket we found was made of flat wooden strips. In any case, I’m certain the owner despaired losing it.

Signs of the old logging days lay settled into the drying sediment all around us. Big pine logs with hand-hewn notches near the cut ends spoke of smoky cook shacks dimly lit by oil lanterns. A pine pole with a neat row of branches, each cut cleanly at three inches, whispered that big, black cast iron skillets had been hung there through holes in the handles. A big horseshoe, rusted and thinned by so many seasons under water gave silent witness that three-quarter ton draft horses once stabled here. Look closer and maybe two faint lines would reveal the course of a logging trail etched into the ground by clydesdales, morgans, percherons, and belgiums straining against leather collars. These massively muscled horses pulled drays filled with logs so big two lumberjacks could not encircle them with their arms outstretched.

An old boat wedged between two big pine stumps drew our attention. It’s not ancient, but is a very early aluminum model in a long, narrow “johnboat” style. Vintage 1950’s I’d say. We wonder how it got here? It’s upside down. Does it speak of tragedy? The transom shows no evidence that an old green Johnson Sea Horse outboard motor was ever clamped there, so it must have been used as a rowboat.

Was it tethered to a small dock with an old hemp rope that gave way in a storm? Is there a skeleton in the mud beneath it? Did the wild wind and relentless river current push it against the stumps until it tipped enough to fill with water and slip beneath the surface? Well… at this point it is just the Escanaba River version of the Edmund Fitzgerald that was lost on nearby Lake Superior. The hull has been found but the story of its sinking remains a mystery.

End of part one – come back tomorrow for the conclusion of this blog. Thanks for reading!

Copyright Ray Hansen, 2008