Feb 25 2007
Total Immersion Swimming
This is what you get for doing a blind search on Youtube for total immersion swimming.
I’ve been reading the book and giving it a whirl in the pool. Thought some video might help. I guess it helps…
No TagArchive for February, 2007
Feb 16 2007
Stop 1 South Manitou Island
MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY.
SMALL WAGES,
BITTER COLD,
LONG MONTHS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS,
CONSTANT DANGER, SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOR AND
RECOGNITION IN CASE OF SUCCESS.
Newspaper ad announcing Sir Ernest Shackleton’s trans-Antarctic Expedition
This was the newspaper ad for the Shackleton expedition to transect the Antarctic continent by dog sled and on foot if necessary. It has a ring of realism, sarcasm, and audacity that appeals to me. Because we set off in June of this year into the waiting arms of our beloved mother Lake Michigan, this is doubly poignant. We intend to tag no less than 10 Islands in the Beaver Island archipelago. It seems auspicious to mention that Shackleton brought all his men back alive. We hope to do the same.
In case you missed my other post, in the first week in June of 2007 myself and four other paddlers intend to paddle north from Good Harbor Bay and along the main islands of the Beaver Island archipelago.
I hope to outline each of the islands in the archipelago that we intend to at least touch terra firma upon, their history and their special appeal for the trip.
The first island we will visit is actually one of the most visited islands, and oddly one of the most interesting. I first landed on South Manitou on a day trip with the crew that ended up in This is The Sea II in 2005. To me it is a mystical place apart from time. There are endless sand dunes, shipwrecks, and ancient giant white cedar trees. If you wanted to walk off the map forever this is the place to haunt as a ghost. Based on this tourists flock to this isle more than North Manitou Island.
Indian legend, (Chippewa) tells us of a mother bear Mishe Mokwa, who fled a great forest fire in Wisconsin with her two cubs. Mishe Mokwa reached the Michigan shore and climbed a steep bluff to await her cubs. The cubs, exhausted by their long swim, never reached land. The mother bear waited day after day to no avail. Finally she died. The Great Spirit Manitou marked her resting place with the Sleeping Bear Dunes and raised North and South Manitou Islands from the spot where the cubs perished.
Is this the ghost on South Manitou? Don’t know?
American colonists came in the 1830’s in the hopes of lucrative lumber trade with ships passing through the Manitou Passage. These colonists started farms on the island and traded with merchant vessels. South Manitou Island has the only natural deep water passage along the northerly route for 220 miles, making it a hot spot for vessels to weather the frequent storms of the Great Lakes. It was not uncommon in the heyday of the mid 19th century to find up to fifty vessels crowded into the harbor. The little homesteads now stand all abandoned and in decay adding to the mystique.
Congress approved budget for the first lighthouse in the passage in July of 1839. After many years of mismanagement and decay another lighthouse was erected upon the sight of the first in 1858. This light served little better than the first two and by 1872 a third light of 100 feet was planned and constructed that is now the light that stands with its various outbuildings on South Manitou Island. (Anyone getting a Monty Python and the Holy Grail vibe on this?) The first castle it sank into the swamp, the second castle caught on fire and then sank into the swamp, but the third, the third one stayed up!
The history of Great Lakes light houses we will pass almost deserves several posts on their own, but I will bypass that in the sake of brevity.
Some of the more natural features of the island include a virgin stand of White Cedars that is eerily referred to as the Valley of the Giants. Thuja occidentalis is a massive white cedar not commonly found in Michigan anymore. They can grow to 34m tall and 175 cm at the base. Some trees have been known to live as long as 1500 years. The growth on South Manitou is dated around 5-600 years old. There is a story from the turn of the century where sailors in need of wood for a boiler tried to cut one down but due to either the large bulk of the trunk, or some divine intervention couldn’t cut through, thus saving the Valley of the Giants from extinction. I would like to think some spirit intervened on behalf of these amazing trees. It has a Hayo Miyazakish flair to the story. See Princess Mononoke.
The other main attraction of the island is the shipwrecks. The main one that is visible above water is the Francisco Morazon. This package freighter ran aground in the shallows on the leeward side of the island. It is now commonly referred to as Cormorant hotel by the paddlers who come to look. You can paddle right into the engine room as long as you can take the smell.
We may not get to do much but stop overnight, but I would like to explore a little more on this island next time. Maybe walk a little more in the Valley of the Giants, snorkel a little on one of the other wrecks. And maybe see a ghost or two.
Please note the pictures here are from Derrick Mayoleth when we went to the Island in 2005 before the WMCKA symposium with Justine Curgenven.
No TagFeb 15 2007
Off the Map
It occurred to me I might be off the map. If this is the case, can anybody toss me a compass.
Sometimes you are part of the problem, sometimes you are part of the solution.
Today was my day to be part of the problem.
Tomorrow will be better.
No TagFeb 12 2007
Like I need a new hobby…Telemark?
I’ve been out skiing with Laura and the kids over the last few weeks. Gabriel and Isabella have taken to it pretty well. They are always really excited to go. I remember my Grandfather Keith Wikle and my own father teaching me to ski at Shawnee mountain in the Poconos when I was a kid. I loved every minute of it. The kids never seem to think it gets old. Gabriel has been twice but is already scooting down the slopes on his own. Isabella who is a little smaller is making rapid progress too. When my knees and thighs ache from snowplowing down the slope with her in front of me, I try to remind myself she won’t be six forever. She will soon be on her own like Gabe and I will have to track her down rather than take her down.
But I keep seeing telemark skiiers at the slope and my wild Wikle brain is going hmm, that looks like a challenge.
This quote from Hemingway in the Nick Adams stories does my literary imagination no good at all, and I smell a pair of telemark skis in my future if only to try it.
“Coming down the mountain in the telemark position, kneeling one leg for-ward and bent, the other trailing: his sticks hanging like some insect’s thin legs, kicking puffs of snow as they touched the surface and finally the whole kneeling, trailing figure coming around in a beautiful right curve, crouching, the legs shot forward and back, the body leaning out against the swing, the sticks accenting the curve like points of light all in a wild cloud of snow.” Ernest Hemingway.
Check out this telemark video for what an ideal powder day looks like,
No TagFeb 10 2007
Let’s call this the comeback, again
Ran 13 miles for the first time since the fifth 3rd 15 mile race in April 2005. Recovery from injury gets harder with every year. Not that I am an old man by any stretch. But I am not a 19 year old soccer hooligan anymore. If I fall it takes weeks to come back. I’ve been steadily increasing my mileage with the thought of doing a race sometime this spring. I was thinking maybe a marathon. Don’t know if I can squeeze it in, because I am actually more worried about my paddling fitness for the Islands of Lake Michigan trip.
Doing 13 Miles felt like my veins had been opened up fully again to let all the good drugs into my blood. No better word for it than purification. Want to feel like you earned your dinner? Put one foot in front of the other for thirteen miles!
Granted the stretching, the IT band massaging afterwards gets old, but it always seems so worth it.
No TagFeb 06 2007
How thick is your ice?
I was running last night in the dark. Led only by the dim blue glow of my headlamp my shoes crunched noisily into the snow. It was the kind of crunch that is painful to hear, because it is like stepping on dry chalk. I tried to run fast to warm up. I could feel my nose go numb within half a mile. After a mile, thick encasements of ice wrapped around my beard. Subtle movements of my face would shake a miniature snowstorm down the front of my jacket. I rounded back towards the car at 2.5 miles. My buns were starting to chill, literally freezing my arse off! The fact that they have limited range of movement in running my body probably decided my brain and my other core organs needed more blood than my buns. I spotted a light coming toward me on the trail. Two homeless guys on bikes. As I ran past one of them shouted, “you’re crazy!!!” I didn’t have a proper response ready to reparte with them, as this was the coldest night of winter thus far hitting -20 with wind-chill in Kalamazoo. I replied back that I was too stupid to know better. I know I have a problem, but I was enjoying myself.
In winter is everything relative? Someone on paddling.net asked, “How thick is your ice?”
Is the thickness relative to the layers of Dante’s L’Inferno? Am I in hell and I just don’t know it?
The above pic is the current state of my paddling opportunities. So one can see why I have turned to skiing and running. It’s just not happening.
No Tag