Sat. May 19, 2018

SKANDIA, MI -- I forget authentic U.P. living exists so close to Marquette -- a short drive south on 41, turn right at the old orange-bricked Lutheran church steeple. There I found sprawling hills, thick, craggy woods, grassy fields of wildflowers, farmland, homesteads, hunting shacks, broken down cars and trailers dot the unkempt backyards. Chickens crossed the two lane highway freely; a red-combed black rooster clucked around some hens.  Also horses, goats, grouse, sheep in fenced-in fields along the countryside. Dean told Harlowe and I a story about buying manure from a reclusive neighbor who had flies coming out of his doors and windows; said the guy possibly spent all winter without heat after his homestead, left to disrepair, burned down.

Dean's house is a nice little wood cabin out in the wilderness there, with a work shed and greenhouse adjoined in the back. A nice little stone pathway walks out to various garden patches and raised vegetable beds. Piles and piles of chopped wood out back beyond that -- homestead-style -- against a backdrop of jack pines. We were driving down, the three of us, to Escanaba for a service project, and there was a chill in the air as morning dawned gray and dreary. Dean told about "Schmidty," an old-fashioned yooper who showed up with a case of beer the previous night on his way out smelt fishing. Intrigued, I learned that smelt spawn in springtime at night, that they make tasty fried treats yooper-style. The fishing is done easily enough for a novice, with buckets dipped into a stream after dusk. Max catch is two and half buckets, if anyone could eat that much smelt. By the end of the night, I had an offer to go smelt fishing with a teacher from school. Skandia and its backroads brought out the inner outdoorsmen in me, the would-be Alaskan homesteader paying homage to Alexander Supertramp.


Coffeed up following a short nap -- plan on writing all night. Working on the Konstantinov chapter. Watched hockey on NBC tonight: Lightning now up 3-2 in a series Washington has characteristically choked away. Listened to the Eastern Conference Finals on ESPN radio while writing, a Lebron victory, then caught the end of the Tigers game from Seattle, featuring another nuclear fallout from the perenially-inept Detroit bullpen. Also listened to several more hours of Hunter S. Thompson's The Great Shark Hunt, including illuminating details on his support for Jimmy Carter and "The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat," an account of the author's search for friend and accomplice Oscar Acosta, the Chicano lawyer who went missing in Mazatlan in 1974 -- trying to expand my mind and perhaps summon the ghost of Raoul Duke. Typing, listening to Kolton Moore, Kody West, Red Shahan, Read Southall. Is it alt-country or Texas country?

"One last call for midnight

Too early this don't feel right

Common sense done let me down again

One-eyed swervin' in both lanes

Half-hearted wishes for cocaine

Money well-spent for an hour or two at best"

- Red Shahan, "Never Turn Around"