Taking Time . . .

There is time – and that is often the hardest thing for me to acknowledge.

There is time today.

When I think I just have to vacuum up those dust elephants under the bed – there is time today instead to call and listen to the old stories my father has to tell one more time. To hear him recite the details of the history and traditions of our family and to come to understand where I fit on the family tree.

There is time today.

When I rush home done in after a doctor’s appointment – there is time instead to swing by the florist’s and pick the freshest, brightest bouquet of flowers for the dinner table.

There is time today.

And when I am so exhausted at the end of the day I want to just let Chloe’ out the back door to romp on her own – there is time instead to walk the short distance from our home to Angel Field where she can run full tilt up and down the hills “herding” robins. There is time for me to cheer her on and to catch her enthusiasm. To saunter across the lacrosse field, to sit on the bleachers and read a good book while the sun sets and to watch while she sniffs out and marks every corner.

There is time today.

When I think it would be faster to just do it myself, there is still enough time in the day to let my grandchildren enjoy working with me on the task at hand so they can feel useful and so I can remember just how vital they are and how much I have to learn from them.

There is time today.

And there is time to get to know those whose lives have touched mine and left such a print of friendship that I will never be the same. Those who may not be aware that just meeting them shaped my life much more than they will ever know.

Glenn Lahti’s name is on that list of friends I am indebted to. One of those I prefer not to forget because in some way he had a part in shaping things I do. His comments on the ditties I wrote for the Drummond Island Digest not only forced me to re-think what I had written, but also caused me to reflect on my perspective concerning the issue at hand. He was a great one for asking “Why Candis?” Glenn loved stirring the pot! More importantly he knew about taking time.

Unfortunately, I am often too worried about returning on time, finishing on time, running out of time that I forget it is time to take time.

Time to walk slower – to match my gait to the leisurely pace of those whose path crosses mine. To enjoy the sunlight, the sound of the breeze rustling through the trees, the sight of my puppy running head long into the next new adventure and the laughter of my grandchildren as they discover something for the very first time.

When it appears there is no more time, that I have only a few days and then only a few hours, and finally only a few minutes – I need to remember there is still time.

There is always enough time if I remember that the time is now.

“Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.”  - Will Rogers

Wild Harvest . . .

Fiddleheads emerge as miniature dervish dancers covering the forest floor and heralding in Spring like no other woodland plant. Tiny gray-green spirals reaching into the first really warm days. Each of them wearing their own little fur overcoat to protect them when it was chillier weather. Snapped up and eaten by whoever has the sense and taste to do it.

There isn’t anything that says spring as well as fiddleheads.  Just when I have had slightly more than enough of winter, this familiar and much-welcomed spiraled green, novel and tasty morsel appears.

The flavour of fiddleheads has been likened to asparagus, with a slightly nutty taste, and to artichoke and okra. I concur with those who describe the taste of fiddleheads as the taste of spring!

You can pick your own fiddleheads if you know where to look and when to catch them unawares at just the right moment in their growth.

• A tight coil and only an inch or two of stem beyond the coil
• The coil should be one to one and a half inches in diameter
• There may be brown papery chaff around the head. This is okay, much like an onion skin, you will remove it before cooking
• Choose firm, bright-green, tightly-curled fiddleheads; the little brown shells still intact. They should be crisp.
• Fiddleheads are best eaten fresh and don't store well even when refridgerated.

The flavor of fiddleheads goes well with cheeses, tomato sauce and oriental cuisine. Excellent with Hollandaise sauce. And truly delicious when combined with other spring foraged delicacies like wild leeks or morels.

The following is one of my favorite ways to prepare this Spring treat:

Steamed Fiddleheads With Wild Leek Greens

1 pound Fiddleheads cleaned

(CLEANING FIDDLEHEADS: If more than 2 inches of stem remains attached beyond the coiled part of the fiddlehead snap or cut it off. If any of the paper chaff remains on the fiddleheads you may rub it off by hand. Since the chaff is very light, you may want to clean off the chaff outdoors by fanning them or lightly shaking them in an open wire salad basket.

 After the chaff is removed wash the fiddleheads in several changes of cold water to remove any dirt or grit. Drain the fiddleheads completely. Use them fresh, and soon after harvest. They don't store well - only pick what you will eat that day.)

1/2 cup plain yogurt 1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste
3 teaspoons Dijon-style mustard
3 tablespoons finely chopped Wild Leek greens

Steam the fiddleheads over boiling water for 5 minutes,or until they are crisp-tender. Drain, then chill in a bowl of ice and cold water to stop the cooking. When they have cooled transfer to colander to drain.

In a small bowl whisk together the yogurt, mayonnaise, lemon juice, mustard, wild leek greens. Add salt and pepper to taste, whisking until the sauce is smooth. Serve the Fiddleheads topped with the sauce.

Serves 4 to 6

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well,
if one has not dined well."

'A Room of One's Own', Virginia Woolf, English novelist (1882-1941).

The Earth Laughs in Flowers . . .

Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words.

They are the hieroglyphics of angels,

loved by all men for the beauty of their character,

though few can decipher even fragments of their meaning.

~Lydia M. Child

*note: The title of today's Blog comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Hamatreya"

Taking a Mini Break!

The sun is shining, the air smells fresh and clean, and I lost my files to some cyber gremlins last night!

Time to just get out and play!

See you all back here tomorrow!

In Need of a Spring Tonic . . .

Thanks to being brought up around a Great-grandmother who held fast to the ways of the "old country" the memories of my childhood are sprinkled with rituals and traditions that are more fitting for someone from a generation before my time. Spring tonic is one of those recollections. The recipe might have varied greatly from one family to another back then but one thing remained constant, there was no getting around taking a dose of it.

Victorian America believed in spring tonics: medicines to eliminate poison from the blood and tissues, purifying the system of all leftover infelicities of winter, and rehabilitating the body for the rest of the year. The practice endured well into the mid-20th century: and my Great-grandmother was an ardent believer in tonics. She once forcibly dosed me with a mixture of sulphur and molasses to cleanse my blood of something that ailed me.

But Dandelion wine was Great-grandma's special Spring Tonic. I believed it was bottled sunshine, the rows of jars gleaming in the dim light of the cellar.

I am in need of a spring tonic this year. I need something that will make me feel alive and full of energy, something that will melt all the excess fat off my body and something that will take away the lines of stress and pain on my face. Do you think someone makes Dandelion wine for the retail market?

"Dandelion Wine. The words were summer on the tongue. The wine was summer caught and stoppered...Hold summer in your hand, pour summer in a glass, a tiny glass of course, the smallest tingling sip for children; change the season in your veins by raising glass to lip and tilting summer in."  - Ray Bradbury

The Lumber Boom of Scammon Cove . . .

Kreetan Co. - successor to H C Johnson

Circa 1915 Two Engines - a Davenport and a Heisler

shown with their crews

In the fall of 1883 a large lumbering operation began in the small village known then as Scammon Cove. It was the genesis of what was eventually the largest sawmill on Drummond Island. Hitchcock and Foster, Chicago were the principal owners of the Island Cedar Company. Although the Island Cedar Company moved to Detour (DeTour) in 1890, Harold Johnson inherited the Island property and formed the H. C. Johnson Company at the Scammon Cove location.

            Map scanned and shared by Coni Craig

As the lumbering business was booming, so was the town of Scammon Cove - soon to be renamed Kreetan after one of it's most famous residents, none other than Maggie Walz (Kreeta [Margareeta] Kontra.

The H C Johnson company was eventually  acquired by Charles H. Wood, a prominent manufacturer of piano keys and actions with plants in Buffalo, NY and Rockford, IL. The company was re-named Kreetan Company with Charles H. Wood, president in 1916. The town was re-named John's Wood (Johnswood) during this same period - Maggie having disassociated herself from the town when a group of socialists took it over in 1914.

The sawmill poured out lumber ten hours a day, six days a week. The mill produced, in an average ten hour day, forty thousand board feet of hardwood lumber and sixty thousand in softwood, the “boxmill” production was in addition to that. There were numerous (8-20) lumber camps cutting 8, 12, and 16 foot logs for transport to the mill, and twenty to thirty miles of narrow gauge railroad was laid to transport the logs.

Photo courtesy of the MSU archives - Michigan narrow gauge lumber railsystems

The main railroad line went northeast toward Glen Cove with several spurs that went up north of Dry Lake, east to Marble Head and south, nearly to Bass Cove, to haul logs out to Scammon Cove. These logs were sawed into lumber at the mill in Johnswood and shipped out on sailing boats. In its heyday, Johnswood had a mill working two 10-hour shifts, a company store, a boarding house, a row of two-story houses, a row of one-story houses, a clubhouse, a silent-picture theater, a small hospital and was served by telegraph, a school, a post office and the above mentioned railroad.

Steamer J C Ford often hauled lumber on the Great Lakes

The mill caught fire in 1920 and by 1925 the Johnswood operations were shut down. Many of the settlers dismantled their homes to rebuild them in more fertile parts of the Island.

The Bent Trees of Glen Cove . . .

We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

- T.S. Eliot

What began as a simple question posted on Facebook has somehow morphed into a passionate search for answers, plenty of *OMG* moments, and the beginning of a new quest.

"Does anyone know the true history of the "bent trees" on the way to Glen Cove?"

It was Coni Craig's simple question that ultimately lead me to several research projects involved with the identification of "Trail Trees" throughout the United States.

While most participating in these projects presume that the Trail Trees were made and used by the Native Americans, that doesn't seem to be the question that the skeptics raise. Their question is more like "What makes you think they're man-made? We think they're just a variant of nature."

So what does make the researchers think these trees were shaped by human beings rather than Mother Nature?

Intuition: Almost everyone involved in these projects are people who came upon the trees in their wanderings in the woods and thought they were very "different." They intuitively concluded that they were man-made. A few of the researchers are serious "tree watchers." They concluded the trees just don't "look natural."

Uniformity: All were surprised at how similar the examples are, despite being found in different locations.
 

Morphology: The trees have a number of characteristic features that suggest man-made "wounds." The bumps, particularly the ones that seem to be aligned, the characteristic "mouths" or "noses," and some have those striking horizontal indentations that look like "tie-downs" were used to shape the trees.
 

 
Shape: The trees typically have a right angle bend in the trunk [with no evidence of a break to explain it] - something just not seen in other trees.
 
Density: The trees are often found in relatively close proximity with one another, in clumps in a few places, or in lines in others.
 
 

 

Proximity: The trees are all found in areas known to be inhabited by earlier cultures of people. In the places where they've been mapped like North Georgia, they seem to connect known settlements or in Arkansas where they cluster in the Cherokee Lands.
 

Age: While the scientific dating of these trees has been spotty, they are usually quite old, much older than they look.

So how do the *bent trees* of Drummond Island figure into all of this?

One of my passions is preserving the rich historical tapestry of the Upper Peninsula. Wouldn't it be great if we could engage as many people as possible to locate, map and submit the trees to the geographic database to see if they do mark routes that are clear, and correlate their distribution with earlier settlements?

If, like me, you are interested in learning more about *Trail Trees* and/or documenting the *Bent Trees* of Drummond Island - here are a few resources to check out:

Indian Trail Tree

Witness Trees

Mountain Stewards 

Great Lakes Trail Tree Society


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Go where there is no path and leave a trail.

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson