Undeveloped Land

Films set in the American west usually feature dramatic settings of canyons, cliffs, and raging rivers, but more often than not, they also get set on a backdrop of wide open spaces.  While your average North American urban dweller might disagree with the statement, there are still many such places on the continent.  In northern Mexico, western United States, or much of Canada, one can go miles without seeing so much as even an animal amounting to more than a squirrel.  While we humans tend to dominate the scene even in places as remote as Antarctica and our moon, one can still easily run out of cellular reception in such places, the only trace of our reach being in the GPS signal which seems to reach us just about anywhere.  Here and there, too, one might encounter a road:

This messy picture was taken along lonely Utah 24, at dusk and with bugs on the windshield.  This is somewhere between I-70 and Hanksville, looking south, and yes, there are no bathrooms in sight.  

Of course, this would be the limit of our development in these places.  A road, after all, is a passage meant to take someone someplace else, and roads such as these are mainly just there to get people away from there.

Beyond that, we have plants and the local geology.  While the areas lacking population, which usually tend to be deserts and grasslands, are perhaps the best places to get lost in such quiet reaches, the truth is that they can be found in any abandoned field, undeveloped woodland, or swampy area.  We have the luxury of having more of these than in most other parts of the world, at least as far as having them close enough to where we live is the case.  Every morning on the way to work, I pass by one of the few remaining Tamarack bogs in southeastern Michigan.  The land is otherwise surrounded by development, but in one marvelous little stretch, we get a glimpse of something older than us.  Again, sometimes even the other creatures of the earth settle down and leave the place quiet; on cold mornings such as these, not a chirp or rustle can be heard, nothing but a breeze moving through the branches and the sun breaking away the fog.

Various religions make usage of simple images to help quiet rather than stimulate the mind.  The icons of some Christian traditions are examples of this.  While some practitioners use them as instruments of prayer and veneration, they are more so meant to invite the viewer into something of a staring contest, helping to quiet distracting thoughts and direct one to a different layer of reality.  So it is with our bits and pieces of undeveloped land, things we have built around and left behind.  Nature can be quite good at giving us breathtaking moments of awe, but it can be just as good at reducing our activity to something more primordial.  That tree or pile of rocks sitting across the street, that field that they sit in?  It might be labeled an undeveloped plot, and it might not be as remarkable as a great vista in a national park, but in some ways it is just as valuable.

Wednesday Filler: That Can't Be There?!

Mountain Press has a series of books covering the geology of various states.  As usual, Michigan has been left missing, but what might come as a bit of a surprise to many is that states not otherwise known for being particularly rocky have made the cut.  Indiana, Nebraska, Florida... each have their own little "roadside geology" books.  So far, I have read the New York and Ohio selections with the intention of making a series of posts on what lies beneath the feet in North America.  Anyway, plans aside, I mention such things because we tend to have misconceptions about what an area has to offer.

Take the below picture, for example:

Now where would we think this is?

Perhaps somewhere out west, in the Rockies, or maybe even in the Adirondacks or some such place.  Certainly it is a mountain scene with all the trappings of something passably northern.

No, this is Big Bear Lake, in none other than heavily urbanized, hot and dusty Southern California.  They have mountains there, you see, with substantial enough elevation to produce climactic zones ranging from the hot and dusty to the nearly Arctic.  The lake sits nicely at about 6,800 feet above sea level, meaning the winter gets regular snowfalls and the summers are lovely, resting in the 70's.

Le Retour de la Neige

Apparently a year has gone by since American Voyages has come into existence, and the thought only really occurred to me because we had our first snow of the year here in southeastern Michigan, the same thing last year being the inspiration for the blog.  In this time, the focus of the blog has shifted a bit from the natural world to a bit more history and politics than I had intended to cover, but the best intellectual constructs in human culture are usually the result of organic development.  History and geography, of course, are very much interrelated.  While people have migrated, fought wars, and developed cultures over ideas, more often than not they settled, sued for peace, and changed cultures because of "background" things like geology, zoology, and botany.  Yes, the Puritans came to New England because they wanted religious freedom, but they really showed up there because the New World really was new.  Our continent contained, and contains, many unique wonders that made them consider settlement here.  I firmly believe that our shared drive as humans, despite cultural differences, is a desire for exploration and growth.  This blog is, and will remain, dedicated to this thrill of discovery regarding our new world that is still new after 500 years.

That said, I still get the odd question over e-mail, most of which get tossed my way when I say something provocative about history and politics.  Here's one:

Q: Just where do you stand politically?  I could take your ideas a bit better if I knew where they were coming from.

A: Everyone has a bias when coming to a conclusion about something.  While objective truth does indeed exist, we also have to remember that we view it through an imperfect lens of human experience.  When we debate politics and culture, it would be wise to remember this, and not just label the "other side" as stupid or responsible for bringing about the apocalypse.  In the wake of the recent American election, we are seeing this in spades from every camp out there.  In some ways, this is good.  Such camps are a sign that democracy is functioning as it should, and that free development of ideas and attempts at self and societal improvements are flowing around without the need for tyrannical oversight.  We have a free society in the United States, Canada, and even, despite what everyone might think, Mexico.  On the other hand... "If we do not hang together, we shall all hang separately. "  Benjamin Franklin said that when he noticed that the other founding fathers were being diverse to the point of polarization.

Anyway, where is my camp?

My camp is anywhere where all life, human or otherwise, is properly respected.  My camp is where individuals have the right to self-determination inasmuch as it does not negatively impact the lives of others in the same regard.  You can pretty much guess where I stand on a lot of issues from those two statements, but if I need to be more specific, I am not best labeled as either conservative or liberal.  Being a Canadian, I could not vote last week, but I would have been hard pressed to favor either presidential candidate.  Both have skewed ideas about what the above statements mean, and exist largely to curry favor with private interest groups or their own agendas.

I do find the present political climate hopeful though; now that Mr. Obama can no longer run again for president (term limits are a very, very good thing), both he and his opposition can more freely find the common ground they need to find to keep us walking in the right direction.  As a result, I am very interested and following very closely the current path of John Boehner.  He and the president, as respective men of repute and importance in their parties, have the chance to do remarkable things in American politics.  Likewise, in my home state of Michigan, I wish I could somehow merge the drives and agendas of the current governor, Rick Snyder, with those of the former, Jennifer Granholm.  The best of both of these leaders have been very good things for Michigan, in my opinion far outweighing the worst of them.  In Canada, I am finding growing respect for Mr. Harper, while I am positively giddy about the prospect of a Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, because if he is even half the man his father was, he will rank among the best world leaders we have ever had.  In Mexico, well, let's just say I hope that the PRI learns to grow up, and that no one is making deals with the cartels.  Really, I just hope we can stop buying drugs here north of the border, because brother is it ever screwing with things south of it.

In short, I am hopeful for the future.  I truly believe that we have a beautiful continent full of beautiful people, and I don't give a damn whether they say si, yes, or oui to what I think.  I prefer being able to do all three!

Bring on the new day!

The Most Powerful Lake in the World

On this day in 1975 a freighter sank to the bottom of Lake Superior, taking with it a huge load of taconite and the lives of 29 crew members.  The Edmund Fitzgerald was an amazing ship that people living along the various rivers of the St. Lawrence seaway would run to go see.  Her captain and crew were no strangers to the fact that even the largest of ships could be taken by an aggressive sea, and were perhaps on edge for some of the journey so late into the fall in such an expanse of water so far north.  They radioed that they had difficulty on the trip from Duluth that was meant for Detroit and Toledo, but gave no indication of being in mortal danger either.  Only minutes before she sank, Captain McSorley radioed that his crew was holding its own despite the great waves and winds of Gichigami giving him a hard time.  Then there was nothing.  No bodies were ever found, and the ship lay broken 530 feet below the surface.  Some have suggested that the ship hit an unmarked shoal, others suggested that a rogue wave broke the vessel in two.  Still others have claimed that a design flaw was responsible.

Whatever the truth of the matter might be, the fact remains that she was sailing on Lake Superior, a body of water that more than rivals some of the most dangerous parts of the oceans in sheer ferocity.  Superior does have shoals, some of which suddenly rise to within feet of the surface even while they are surrounded by well over hundreds of feet of water.  Gitchigami (Gitchee Gumee), as the Ojibwe call Superior, is the powerful remains of the North American ice sheet embraced and cradled by some of the oldest rock in the world, parts of the Canadian Shield rippling with muscles of iron and granite that have withstood over a billion years of erosion.  She bears hurricane force winds that blow with all the force of a Sandy or Katrina.  She rolls along waves that can engulf entire ships.  She is blue and gray and bitterly cold even after a hot summer.  She makes her own weather, and both moderates and intensifies the local climate of her shores.  She is home to some of the mightiest Lake Trout (Salvelinus Namaycush) on the planet, weighing over a hundred pounds.  However, she is also gentle...

Taken at Pictured Rocks National Seashore, Miner's Beach.  

Her irons and granites are complimented by amethysts, agates, and various other lovely rocks and minerals.  Her shores are adorned by the southern boreal forest, a peppering of birches, pines, spruces, and fir.  Her waters remain pure, a lovely piece of art left to us by nature these thousands of years after her birth from the glaciers.

She serves as a reminder to us that while we may indeed be fertile, multiply, and come to have dominion over the earth, we are never her ultimate masters.  Fortunately, though such lessons are learned painfully when disaster strikes as in the case of the loss of a great ship, Gichigami tends to inspire more than frighten.  The first born living among her figured she was a divine spirit.  The first French folk, including some Jesuits, who came to see her beating upon the ancient rocks for the first time with their astonished eyes were awestruck.  These days, there are exploiters who want to channel her to the arid western reaches of the continent, most of whom have never even seen her in a photograph.  That said, there are just as many people who have seen her that would just as soon die before letting her be channeled away.  Gichigami, it seems, continues to have a powerful effect on those who would love her... or even come to fear her.

What is "Le Nord"?

Every now and then I label my posts with particular labels that might not necessarily be self-explanatory at first glance.  Whenever I speak about French-Canadians, Canada, or the parts of the United States that pass for Canada (another such label), I usually mark such posts with "Le Nord".  Le Nord is French for "The North", and as with most geographical labels that place culture ahead of actual geography, the designation can be somewhat misleading.  What is "north" to an Ontarian or a Michigander might be a joke to some Cree fellow from far northern Quebec.  What would the opposite of north be?  South?  Would some fellow from Biloxi not consider someone from Louisville to be nearly a "northerner"?  Fortunately for such brazen label lords such as myself, cultural regions are only part of a greater recipe that can make geographical soup.

An area's landscape, its geology, flora, fauna, climate, and all such things conspiring to make the familiar smells and sensations of what is unique to every environment on earth have as much to do with what makes a place a place as its history, culture, and residents.  Le Nord, as such, is a place that combines the rugged majesty of the Canadian Shield, with its black lakes, boreal forests, sandy soils, and cold, dry air with English, French, Cree, and Algonquin speaking people who mostly live in Canada, with a few being found in the United States as well.  I thought about making a map to delineate where such a region would be, but as labels usually fall under the category of several logical fallacies, and since there are exceptions to geographical definitions, a map fell out of the question.  Instead, where you can find the below landscape, you can usually find "Le Nord".

Now, pictured there we have one of those black lakes, a shoreline peppered with granitic boulders, and lovely balsam fir and eastern white pine.  You can find this sort of scenery in the Adirondacks, northern Michigan through Minnesota, Manitoba, Ontario, and points eastward, a pretty diverse set of places.  Yet in nearly each of them you can find little towns that look like this:

That was taken in Mattawa, Ontario, a small town which looks a bit like Munising, Michigan, or Madawaska, Maine.  Sure, two of the four have pretty significant French-Canadian populations, but the cultural association is pretty much just incidental to the fact that most of the boreal parts of the world have long since been passed over as favorable for agriculture, large cities, and the other trappings of modern civilization.  French-Canadian culture has endured because it happened to be concentrated in such environments.  In 1763, Britain had a choice of getting Canada or Guadeloupe, a Caribbean island that at the time was worth more than all of France's North American possessions.  For numerous reasons, Canada was the prize that Britain settled for.  This would have normally meant mass deportations of all the French inhabitants of such lands, but owing to the need to keep the 13 colonies to the south bounded in, and because the land was not exactly a prize in the eyes of colonial settlers, French-Canadian culture remained, except on suitable land in the St. Lawrence valley further upstream where they had not yet settled in large numbers.  Again, Canada is what Britain simply settled for.  The real crowns of the empire were in the 13 colonies, Caribbean, and India.

In the next two centuries, French and First Born alike would be joined by other immigrants looking to reap the riches of an otherwise rugged land.  In keeping with their predecessors, though, these newcomers never really mowed over as much of the landscape as those further south did.  Yes, people farm in Le Nord, but that is only because a farm is one of many choices of a living in this place.  Many harvest the bounty of the land in mineral, timber, and other natural resources.  Large corporations do exploit the land here, but more than often the majority of people in these places are in it for themselves.  Much of the land still looks a bit wild and natural as a result.  That's what Le Nord is, really.  A place where some people live for living, where resources could be exploited by tend to get ignored for easier circumstances elsewhere, and where life continues largely unaffected by a modern pace of consumption and life.  Mattawa has fast food, wifi, and is not entirely off the beaten path away from larger cities with big box stores and huge malls, but it, and places like it, is not dominated by such things as much as it is set in a backdrop of a land where it is easy to remember that environment is more than just the most visible things.