Fall Makes an Early Arrival

Saturday was a typical humid summer day. But then a front came through bringing some heavy downpours and we woke up Sunday morning to a preview of fall. The air was cool and dry. The sun was still mid summer sun and hot when you were in it but the shade was marvelous.

Funny how even things like the weather have the ability to trigger certain memories and to transport me back to a different place and time.

My grandparents had a cottage near the shore of Lake Superior near Copper Harbor. If you don’t know where that is, it is the far north of Michigan. They spent summers there which was something my Grandmother continued to do after my Grandfather passed. In later years, she moved up there full time and had a house for the winter and the cottage for the summer.

Anyway, I can’t remember how many times we made the trip up there. I don’t think it was every year but it was certainly close. Now I grew up in Michigan but we lived in the southwest corner of the state so the trip still took an entire day even though Michigan isn’t that big compared to other states. It didn’t help that a lot of the roads were two lane so you could easily get stuck behind some slower traffic. Although we sometimes pulled a trailer on these trips which would make us the slow ones.

But the point I was trying to get to is that the weather yesterday and today really reminded me of what it was typically like on those trips. Why it takes me back there specifically is hard to say since I’ve certainly experienced that kind of weather many times. Just something about the dry air and the breeze that really puts me back up there walking through the woods behind her cabin with the wind blowing through the leaves.

The funny thing about those trips is that there really wasn’t a lot to do. Well there were things that could be done but we were never really a family that did outdoor stuff like canoeing and/or serious hiking. Yes, we were on the shore of a big lake but most the “beaches” were rocks and the lake itself was always COLD and not conducive for swimming.

But we always managed to find things to do. Maybe that was the best part about growing up before the invention of electronic babysitters. It just forced you to live in and experience the real world rather than getting lost in some screen. You made your own entertainment rather than having it fed to you.

Stuff that sounds boring like watching the big ore boats move by her cottage. They were close enough that you could see the ship name with binoculars. Later, a store moved in close to the cottage with an observation deck so we’d run over there whenever one came by. Does it sound fun? Probably not by today’s standards but we did it.

Over the years we were there, it seemed like the town never changed. We’d come back to the same collection of stores. Nothing really interesting but you could still kill time going from place to place just to look. There was at least one rock store so you’d go in to look at the polished rocks. I remember that because my grandfather was into rock tumbling and I’ve got a sheet of things he polished up.

The area was home to several copper mines and boomed when they were active. That meant you could drive by several abandoned places (ghost towns). That never got old.

And you had several places where the mines just dumped large piles of rocks that they dug out of the mines. In the early days, you could still find copper in those piles. I guess there was so much that they didn’t care if they got it all. Have a piece my grandfather found in one of those piles and we found a few as well from time to time. Again, you wouldn’t think that taking a rock hammer and trying to split open rocks would be good entertainment but it seemed fun to us at the time. I guess that’s also because we were younger with more energy.

Or you could just walk along the “beach” near the cabin and look for interesting rocks. The shores also were more rocky (think Maine) so you could walk across these giant rock formations and see how close to the waves you could get. Probably not something parents would encourage today but I think we had more freedom to be kids back in the day.

Which triggers another story. We were teenagers at this time. There was a “mountain” just outside of the town. Really more of a big hill but a mountain by Michigan standards. There was an overlook where you could look down at the town and then you could continue to drive to the top where there were good views and a little gift store. Anyway, my older brother got the bright idea that he wanted to climb down the hill from the overlook. My younger brother instantly went along and I joined in. For some reason, my parents said “sure” and just dropped us off and drove back to the motel.

Now, we really had no idea where we were going because there were no marked trails. It really wasn’t something that people were supposed to do but, then again, they didn’t say you couldn’t do it. It started out kind of easy with a gentle downward slope but then we hit a few really steep parts where it was basically running down the hill grabbing on to the little trees along the way to steady yourself. Made it down with no problems and ended up just outside of town so we walked back to the motel and kind of shocked our parents because they thought it would take us much longer. Hmm, were they trying to ditch us??

Never really knew why they agreed except maybe they didn’t want to argue with my older brother who was very much in his “teen anger” phase and kind of hated being seen on vacation with the rest of us.

All that from a simple change in the weather pattern.