Fresh from my humiliation over the State Record Muskie, I am preparing another crow pie. However, this one I’m going to put in the freezer until Norton Bretz gets back from Hong Kong, because he knows more about all this than I do anyway, and I cling to the hope that I’m not altogether wrong, just, probably, mostly wrong.

You will recall that I told you the Torch Lake Cribs were the remnants of the old lumbering era docks. Well . . . I have discovered that they might, in fact, be much more recent additions to the lake, built and sunk specially to provide places for fish to hide out. (Fish like giant, ferocious muskies, laughing their ventral fins off at my confusion.) I have been in touch with Chris Doyal, who has a wonderful website about wreck-diving and underwater photography and nautical archaeology. Chris has given me permission to publish these photos on Torch Lake Views–the better to rat myself out.

Torch Lake Cribs Diver - (c) Chris Doyal

Torch Lake Cribs - (c) Chris Doyal - The planks were inserted through the structure so that rocks could be piled on top, causing the whole thing to sink to the bottom.

Chris is careful.  He says the structures appear to be of more recent vintage.  He does not say AHH-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, you made a big fat mistake!  I appreciate that.  I added a link to his site in the Neighbors Around the Bay section, which I suppose makes it Neighbors Around and Under the Bay.  When Norton gets back I’ll ask him to help me pin down the remains of the lumber mill docks and distinguish them from the fish structures.  So many blogly duties.

While I was researching this whole thing I was distracted by some very interesting related sites:

• Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve
• About the Great Lakes – History

Once again shockwaves of violence out of Texas. What is it about Texas? Is that even a fair question? Neighbors around the world want to know what it is about us, the U.S. Not a fair question either, I think. What is it about people . . . why do we torture ourselves with hatred of our own kind?

Shortly after September 11, 2001, I was at a colloquium in Traverse City. A still-shaken Joe Vandermeulen opened the session with a reading: Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things. It is a fine poem, and you can read it at Poetry Foundation. It could be interpreted, I suppose, as an excuse to flee to the woods to escape from our troubles . . . but I have read a lot of Wendell Berry, and he seems to me above all to believe in personal responsibility, accountability for the choices we make, the virtue of doing the right thing and the obligation to seriously, without cynicism, study just what “the right thing” might be. I think the poem is an invitation to quiet our minds for a moment, “where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.” But only for a moment. Then it is time to rise and move forward, to do our work.

I’m going to work. I can’t think of anything else to do. Can you?

I can’t get Trick-or-Treaters to come to the Writing Studio and Bait Shop.  (Maybe they worry about what the treats might be.  Buzzbaits?  Crawlers?  Bad poetry?)  They go to the Eastport Market, though, and the Papparazza of Eastport was there.

Treats

Tiny Halloween kiss

Clowning around

Ballerina

Angela, Rosa and Kathy get into the spirit

I figure it’s never too late to decorate this place with pictures of cute little kids, not to mention cute big kids with a good attitude. Happy Halloween.