Somewhere on an Island, Maybe Today, Prairie Smoke is Blooming

One year ago yesterday I announced that I intended to hike to the far end of Drummond Island to finally see the fossil ledges.  This hike had been brewing in me for about five years, but despite my enthusiastic pitches, I had never been able to convince any of my co-vacationeers to come with me.   I'm happy to hike alone, but when you are on a vacation with your family and a hike like this will take at least half a day (ferry rides over to the island and a wonderful 30 minute drive on the Lake Huron shoreline in addition to crossing the island and the hike itself), you usually need at least some buy in from the family that is with you.   Otherwise they'll be stranded in the woods with no car for the entirety of your trip.   And who knows if you'll ever come back at all?  These are the kinds of thick wilderness woods where people disappear and never return. 

But one year ago yesterday, my dad said: Yes! I'll go with you.  We have, in our golden years, been hiking and walking everywhere together and since my mom and Jaelyn were happy to make plans of their own with the second car that my parents had bought, it seemed as though my years of dreaming and imagining this magical hike were about to come true. 

The drive along the coast and the ride on the ferry were all perfect.  My dad and I stopped at the tourist office to get a map to the ledges and any advice they'd have to offer.  

One of the things that feels more amplified when you're on an island?  Is that all facts can only be delivered through the bias of local knowledge.  Inside the tourist office, the two women who gave us wisdom and hints about our quest felt more like a conversation than a prepared script.   One of them would say something like:  What do you think?  Is there too much water and mud for them to make it back to the trail?  And the other would answer, well you know I drove up near there two days ago and it was still pretty wet.  And the first one turned to me and asked if I had a four wheel drive truck.  I glanced sheepishly through the window at my Honda Civic.   As much as this local knowledge is contingent upon weather, recent surveillance of the roads?  I knew that driving a Honda at least called into question my qualifications for the task at hand.  If not my manhood itself.

They exchanged a knowing glance. 

You can probably get within a couple of miles of the ledges in your Honda.   But the last two miles that you can drive, you'll be going 10 miles per hour. 

One of the things about being on an island, where all knowledge is contingent upon experience and weather and a quick conversation with another islander who has a similar field of experience?  Is that you hear sentences that you've never heard before. 

I have been given hundreds of different directions by hundreds of different people in hundreds of different places, but no one has ever promised nor warned me that in order to get to my destination I would spend two miles, driving 10 mph and then have to walk for the next two miles.  

I think the singularity of this experience produces various kinds of emotions: 

Curiosity - what kind of landscape, what kind of conditions, what kind of WORLD exists on the other side of this island? 

Doubt - should we be trying to pursue this quest?  given these new dimensions that we couldn't have imagined five minutes ago?  are we up to the unimaginable challenges? 

Thrill - if we do it -- if we brave these unnerving and strange obstacles -- we will experience something unlike any of the categories we've had before. 

Fear - we will probably fail and possibly die.  my honda will be left here in a sink hole or some other unnameable and unexpectable dire ending.

Wonder - These two women who are acting so casual and ordinary have experienced things that are unlike anything I know?  Is this true of all the Islanders?  They look ordinary enough when you first see them.  They speak my language, wear clothes similar to mine, but sometimes they drive for miles at 10 mph.  sometimes they take a back road because the front road is impassable.  the conditions that we label "adventure" are, to them, ordinary and not the stuff of legend. 

Also, she asked me, do you have another pair of boots or shoes or after the hike? 

My dad and I looked at each other.  More shoes? More boots? 

You'll just have to go through a foot or two of water for part of the hike as much or little as three miles depending.  

Once we were back outside getting into the Honda we discussed whether we shouldn't just postpone the whole thing until we had studied and prepared better for this adventure.  Wouldn't that be the more grown up thing? 

But the other woman had added a new twist to the story: 

Even if you don't make it out to the ledges, the Prairie Smoke are in bloom.  Heard they were really something this year. 

Apparently, according to the conversation that followed: Prairie Smoke are a rare wild flower that bloom for just a week in very few locations in the world.  The Maxton Plain Alvar is one of those places and people travel from all over for this annual event.  

Ultimately we decided that the Prairie Smoke made all the other possible obstacles worth confronting. 

The thing about facts and knowledge that is generated on an island?  Is that it reverberates with a kind of magic that is unforgettable.  

We drove across the island and everything they predicted was true.  The rocky tundra-like plain was barely driveable and we drive for as far as we could at 10 mph, and then we got out to walk.  We walked until we came to standing water and made the sad decision to postpone our hike to the ledges because we had no alternate footwear.  We drove the prescribed directions out onto the plains where the speed limit continued to be 10 mph and wondered if we would even recognize the Prairie Smoke when we saw it.  

You, dear reader, can answer at least that question.  The wispy tendrils that dance in the wind,  the mysterious cloud-likes smoke that seems impossibly contained and yet also set free by these tendrils.  The shocking and beautiful pink color punctuating the endless green of fields and forest.  We recognized it without question.   We couldn't have imagined how far the sprawl of this beautiful flower would spread and how severe the beauty of rocks and sky and fields and coniferous stands of trees could be.  (And I'm intentionally *not* sharing all the pictures I snapped because I want to protect the magic and cast a little of it's spell on you.  But only enough to entice you to set out on a pilgrimage.)

It's not the sort of experience that words can manage. 

But maybe that's the deeper truth of how knowledge and facts work their magic on an island.  These shared idiosyncratic experiences are as ephemeral as they are casual.  As splendid as they are ordinary.

Even though I can't be on Drummond Island this week.  A part of me will always be there on those plains and a part of those plains will always be here with me.