NORTHERN NOTES

Tuesday, 27 May, in Northern Michigan.

We are not under canvas, as we would have been forty years ago, but we are in camp, and the North is bright and refreshing and charming, AND it is COLD.
Yesterday the temp reached 80+ degrees.
Last night the temp dropped to 40+ degrees.
Frost warnings are posted for tonight and for tomorrow night.

It is Michigan! What more can one say.

I have a t-shirt from Copper Harbor that warns, in so many words: if you are
too wimpy to take it, go on back home. We’ll go, but not quite yet.

Three boat poles are in now at the dock. One to go. I had set the third one yesterday just as the wind picked up and the temp started to dip. Waves picked up and water spilled down the waders.
We’ll go for the fourth one today.

Maybe the boat can go in tomorrow. Winds today are expected to hit 15-20 mph. That’s too strong for this mariner.

Many of our neighbors have returned ‘downstate’. The work week has begun anew; school is still in session; and it is cold.

How often what we think we see or know is not really the real story.

This morning we learn that the sea researcher Robert Ballard [hope first name is right], the Woods Hole fella who found the Titanic wreck, was really on a secret mission searching for info on sunken nuclear subs. That the Titanic find was just a delightful plus.
And that that the loss of some of these nuclear boats might have been the result of ‘combat incidents’.
And that Mr. Ballard was/is really a reserve US Naval officer. Neat!

And so many ‘natural’ or environmental negatives are crossing the ‘radar’: the earthquake aftermaths in the prc; the storms out in the West; the Olympic pollution concerns in the prc; and the droughts and floods and hurricanes in various other parts of the world.

All of this is not even to mention the diplomatic and political goings-on which are so full of promise and/or threats for the future.

All of which brings to mind the old saying: life is what happens whilst we make our plans.