« November 2000 | Main | June 2002 »
December 01, 2001
Lake Michigan Phenomena
By Jane Greiner
Sun Nature Correspondent
Strange things happen from time to time on Lake Michigan. This year, for instance, we all noticed the alewives washing up by the millions along the shore. Kayakers coming into Glen Arbor reported that the lake was a foot deep in alewives as they paddled toward shore. I saw the alewives as glittering ribbons of froth about a hundred yards from shore as I looked down on miles of them from the Empire bluffs.
Other, stranger, things have happened on Lake Michigan. Years ago my mother was walking on the beach below her cottage near Saugatuck when she experienced a once in a lifetime event. Everything was completely normal until she noticed that the lake began to recede. It actually pulled back, almost as if a tide had gone out. Mom said it receded quite a ways out; fifty to a hundred feet of new sand and rock was exposed. There was no mistaking that something different was going on. It was so strange it scared her a little. But she continued to watch and after a few minutes the water all came back to its previous level.
Somehow we found out that what my mother had seen is a rare event called a "seiche." The Comptons on-line encyclopedia says that lake levels can be changed by various forces:
The amount of rain and snow causes the lake levels to vary. Winds and barometric pressures also heighten and depress them. As air pressure pushes down on one part of the lake, the water surface rises in another part. Waves, called a seiche, result. Tides occur on the Great Lakes but they are small.
Another web site, seagrant.umn.edu gives a more graphic description in an article by Ben Korgen called "Bonanza For Lake Superior: Seiches Do More Than Move Water"
“If you've ever experienced a large seiche (pronounced "saysh") on one of the Great Lakes, it's something you'll not soon forget. That so much water can be moved in a relatively short period of time is astounding. Before you know it you're either left high and dry or inundated with water. Whenever ice is not an inhibiting factor, wind or air pressure changes can cause the entire surface of a lake to rhythmically rock back and forth in the physical process that can form a seiche. According to David Schwab, a scientist with the Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab, "seiche" is a French word that means "to sway back and forth." It was first applied by a Swiss lake scientist, Francois-
Alphonse Forel in the late 1800s. Forel is also known as the founder of limnology, or the study of lakes.
In Lake Superior, small seiches occur almost continuously. These go largely unnoticed. However, the biggest seiches can bang ships together in harbors, snap their mooring lines, and buckle their plates.
On July 13, 1995, a big Lake Superior seiche left some boats hanging from the docks on their mooring lines when the lake water suddenly retreated. In that seiche, lake water went out and came back within fifteen to twenty minutes at Ashland, Wisconsin; Marquette and Point Iroquois, Michigan; and Rossport, Ontario. People who witnessed it were amazed. In just a few minutes, water levels
changed about three feet.”
I have never been so fortunate as to see a seiche, but I did witness something strange once. This occurred about twenty years ago when I was looking at the lake from my parents' cottage, high on a bluff south of Saugatuck. I saw something or some "things" moving up the coast just slightly offshore. From my viewpoint high above, it appeared to be a number of very large fish of some sort, swimming along with good sized fins sticking up out of the water. I was observing from about 60 feet above. Each animal appeared to be at least ten feet long because there was that much distance between two fins that seemed to belong to the same fish.
I couldn't actually see fish. All I saw were moving disturbances in the water, similar to those caused by the prow of a boat, followed closely by things sticking up out of the water. The things sticking up seemed to move in unison with the underwater disturbances, as if attached to a single creature. Imagine a dozen miniature submarines moving along just below the surface with only their conning towers showing. That is like what I saw. Only the indications were that the things were at least ten feet long. I whooped in excitement and ran along the bluff to follow the seemingly gigantic fish. Unfortunately I did not have field glasses with me to get a closer look and the phenomenon was soon out of sight moving steadily northward up the shoreline, moving slightly faster than I could run.
To this day I have no idea what I actually saw. A wild guess is that it might have been a school of salmon swimming in formation with upper fins exposed.
There must be many more strange Lake Michigan occurrences that people living along the lake here have observed. Wouldn't it be fun if they would share them with us? What interesting limnological phenomena have you observed?
If you care to share your weird Lake Michigan experiences, write me care of the Glen
Arbor Sun, P.O. Box 615 , Glen Arbor, MI 49636 or email me at
Posted by editor at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)
“The Birds Are Burning”: September 11, 2001
By Bronwyn Jones
Sun contributor
I walk to the island in my mind. I start in Leonia, New Jersey, the town I grew up in. At some point I am sixteen again and wearing heavy-duty hiking boots as I trudge up the stairs to the pedestrian walkway that leads across the massive, vibrating George Washington Bridge. The broad, serene Hudson River lies far below and the buildings of Manhattan stretch out to the distant lower end of the island. The World Trade Center isn’t there yet. I remember the feeling of space, and slight dizziness, suspended at such a great height; the exhilaration of crossing from one state to the next on foot.
Now it seems my whole life has been defined by the view from that bridge, the lifeline out of the suburbs to the culture and excitement of the big city. My father, an artist, painted that view over and over; before the lower deck was added, before Route 80 was completed, before the huge high rise apartments crowned the Jersey Palisades. One painting is a night time landscape looking up at the underside of the bridge and over to Manhattan, a complex, fiery string of lights reflected perfectly in the vast expanse of inky river water. It was, it is the island of my dreams, always.
By the time I was seventeen I had driven, bused, walked over the river countless times. From the Port Authority bus terminal at 175th Street, the number 5 bus took me on my daily journey through Spanish Harlem to my high school at West 91st Street, between West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. It was housed in an old brownstone. There was no dress code and we called the teachers by their first names. Instead of gym class, friends and I often walked south on Broadway to Lincoln Center. I remember the feel of the black, mica-flecked marble of the central fountain. I can feel its smooth sun-warmed surface beneath me and the cool spray from the water forced into gigantic plumes rising high into the air.
That summer I stayed with a friend who lived nearby on Riverside Drive. In the evening the two of us would wait outside the New York City Ballet Theater and often at intermission exiting patrons would give us their ticket stubs. We saw second halves of many ballets from perfect mezzanine seats.
My wisdom teeth were pulled that summer and I recuperated at my friend’s apartment. I remember her father taking pity on me one night and kindly trying to find something I could eat without too much pain. Back then I didn’t really understand what he did for a living. I saw him again for the first time in years on TV just days ago. A civil engineer and author of the book, “Why Buildings Fall Down: How Structures Fail”, he has been called upon by the media to explain to us all the structural mysteries of the two World Trade Center towers that we have watched fall over and over again on our TV screens.
New York City is not only a place I grew up in, lived in for years, it is my interior landscape and soul home. The memories blot out everything else. When I cook now, I smell the city’s garlic smell, overlaid with auto exhaust and the steamy, rank exhalations from manhole covers on the uneven streets. I see the buildings, hear the noises, feel the textures of the different neighborhoods, run hard through rush hour crowds to catch up with people I love.
After I graduated from high school, the Empire Szechuan restaurant up on Broadway and 99th Street became a favorite hang out. It was open late. I lived in a large apartment at West 98th Street with five female musician roommates, and after a concert at either Manhattan School of Music, where I was a harp student, or down at Lincoln Center where all my roommates were ushers, we ate bowls of hot and sour soup. They were deep, round bowls full of thick pieces of pork, tofu, tree ear mushrooms, with a slick of chili oil shining on the surface, lightly dusted with black pepper. We had long conversations over platters of freshly folded and fried dumplings, mounds of chicken and peanuts, shrimp still in their shells and thick with chopped garlic. We knew the waiters and it would be years before the restaurant became a citywide franchise.
These images and sensations have come back to me randomly and with urgency. They seem vivid and then fade as I try to touch them with language, even as neural pathways in my brain are shifting to accommodate the pictures of charred rubble, the pulverized concrete dust and entombed fragments of human beings. The newer images threaten me with a dark, vertiginous emptiness. The ache is a dry socket, white bone exposed. It is huge. Its thudding pulse pulls apart my sense of home.
We have all been stunned, and we mourn all over the country. Yet, if we were patient this horrible experience of loss could give us, so rich and privileged by comparison, a new understanding of the suffering elsewhere in the world, suffering we have glimpsed but so often taken for granted. We could begin to see and feel the ravaged landscapes of the Khan Goulis Palestinian refugee camp, we could peer into the homes of the women in Kabul who risk their lives holding clandestine schools for young Afghani girls, we could hear the anguished cries of the children of the Afghan woman who is led out onto the floor of the crowded stadium in Kabul and executed with shots from a Kalashnikov to the back of the head, we could look deep into the dulled eyes of Iraqi children dying from chronic dysentery. This empathic journey is the hard path toward every place on the globe where the ordinary dreams and hopes of human beings, the landscapes of place and community in their minds and hearts have been completely destroyed. Gone. And for all the children everywhere born with this enormous loss already etched into their young hearts, there may not be love and justice enough in their abbreviated lifetimes to approach healing, much less hope and the promise of fulfillment.
This is the door that opens to the tiny closet in Ursula LeGuin’s mythic story, “The Ones Who Walk Away >From Omelas”. It isn’t a stretch to see America from the perspective of someone living in deep poverty as the land of Omelas---a place of wealth, freedom, celebration, power, and imagination. In LeGuin’s story, Omelas is evoked as a pre-lapsarian world of handsome, athletic men, women and children; of festivals and beauty, kindness and expressions of love and generosity unencumbered by greed or manipulation. However, all that is good in this land depends for its existence upon one spot of pure misery. Omelas, in all its magnificence, would cease to be if it weren’t for the suffering of one child locked since birth in a dirty closet where it sits naked and shivering in its own excrement, never to know light, love or relationship. Periodically, citizens of Omelas take their own children and briefly look together in dismay upon this child.
We are there ourselves now, in a metaphoric sense, able to peer in and taste the despair, the wordless fear. But LeGuin’s story doesn’t end with those who shrink in horror at the plight of this child, yet go on with their lives. Her story ends with those who walk away from Omelas, unable to accept the contingency of their prosperity upon anyone’s abject misery, a child least of all.
Children everywhere will walk into the future we leave for them. Their young imaginations will try to transform what they can of the darkness and the tragedies.
A mother, rushing away from the burning World Trade Center towers, clutching the hand of her little boy, later tells a New York Times reporter that her son looked up, saw the falling bodies of people on fire and said to her, “The birds are burning.” But it is we, the adults, who must be the true alchemists, the peacemakers, the stewards of this planet for the next six generations. Right now we can make the choice to do no more harm. For all the children, everywhere, already on this earth, we can refuse to define justice in terms of retaliatory violence. We can feed our youngsters, hold them, love them, and bring the burning birds back: the phoenix, alive and strong, arcing upward out of the ashes.
Posted by editor at 10:58 PM | Comments (0)
TABLE TALK: The Thanksgiving Tradition
by Mary Sharry
Sun contributor
Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go, building tradition with ritual feasts, the memories warm us so. Our extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins would gather at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The certainty of the Thanksgiving dinner brought with it a measure of well-being. Then, all seemed right with the world.
The traditional meal was predictable from the carrots, celery, and olives in the relish tray, to the Parker House rolls, the Waldorf salad, and the pumpkin pie. There was the freshly ironed white linen tablecloth, lit candles in blue glass holders, and the Noritake china which Grandma brought out of the cabinet but once a year.
The memory lingers. What with aunts, uncles, and cousins to feed, the turkey weighed well over twenty pounds. Grandma began the process the night before when she baked pies and roasted the turkey. Never mind the food warnings of today. She kept the roasted turkey in the pantry off the kitchen. Perhaps in November it was cold enough back there to keep the dangerous bacteria from forming. I don’t recall anyone ever getting sick after our meal. I do remember how she would slip back there a time or two the night before, just to peek at the bird. I’d join her just for that delicious whiff when she raised the roaster lid.
By noon, on Thanksgiving Day, everyone had arrived. The eating arrangement put the adults in one room, children in the other. Extension leaves had been placed into the dining room table which was reserved for the adults. Grandpa, of course, would be at the head of that table where the carving knife and fork were laid out like artist’s tools. Around the corner in the kitchen my cousins and I would sit at the old oak table. It was a mark of adulthood when one of us was moved into the dining room.
I was thankful that my cousin Linda would be sitting with me. She was a year older than I, quite pretty, and, well, developed; her figure was enhanced by sophisticated clothes, an Angora sweater tucked inside the waistband of a pleated skirt. She tottered about on spike heels. I wore my one-inch heels, and even in those wobbled awkwardly. I treasured a girlfriend’s bra, outgrown and handed down to me, which I now wore, hoping my mother wouldn’t notice. I had stuffed it with Kleenex.
Everyone was summoned into the dining room. The uncles from the living room where they watched TV, switching channels from Macy’s to the J.L. Hudson parade. Linda and I had gone upstairs to show each other our latest ballet steps and poses. She let me look through her wallet which bulged with photos of high school classmates, and at the darkest secret of all – the Winston cigarette pack concealed beneath a cloth hair band. Someone hollered up the steps for us to come down. Two aunts who were on the side porch, probably discussing ways to eliminate their stretch marks (I’d heard their conversation the last Thanksgiving,) caught the children who ran outdoors and back inside every so often asking when dinner would be ready.
From the kitchen Grandma directed various family members to carry serving bowls into the dining room. There was the dish piled high with bread stuffing. You could smell the sage. In another bowl rivulets of butter ran like channels down the mound of mashed potatoes. Aunt Virginia brought in her corn casserole, creamy in texture and topped with delectable bread crumbs. There were green beans over which slivered almonds had been scattered, a dish of baked yellow squash, the gravy boat brimming , the rolls hot from the oven, and a sweetened cranberry relish chock full of walnut bits and tangy orange peel all ground together. These dishes and bowls were carried by the aunts into the dining room, and placed either on the buffet, or on the big table leaving room for the turkey.
We all gathered around the table. The smallest children leaned from their parents arms and pointed toward the doorway. Grandma, still wearing an apron over her print dress, came in carrying the platter with the roasted turkey. She placed the bird, reheated and basted now to golden perfection, in front of Grandpa. He bowed his head.
We took our cue, and he began his prayer asking blessings on all who were there, those not, and for the bountiful food which we were about to receive. He considered the poor, the hungry, all creatures great and small. The prayer went on. Cousins looked across the table at each other. Making faces, our shoulders heaved with suppressed giggles. My mother turned to me, a smile behind the hushing finger she placed to her lips. Steam rose from the potatoes. Grandma cleared her throat, emphatically. Grandpa ended the prayer.
There would be a last minute scurry back to the kitchen for a forgotten spoon, say, or the gravy ladle. Grandpa began to carve. Uncle Maurice offered advice. Grandpa asked him if he would like to do the job. Everyone laughed. Dark meat went on one platter, white on another. A chorused m-m-m-m-m drifted across the table. The smallest children echoed the sound. Dishes were passed. Our plates, those of us eating in the kitchen, were filled first. Too bad for the child who didn’t want his food to touch any other food on the plate. It was hard to avoid overlaps. Did anyone really mind?
The two youngest children would probably play with their mashed potatoes. They refused to try the gravy, didn’t want white meat. The dressing had no appeal whatsoever. They made faces when Aunt Betty tried to spoon some onto their plates, and pointed to the colorful foods – red cranberries, green beans.
They sat at their very own table against the wall in the kitchen. Their drinking cups had handles on each side. Aunt Betty sat with them to help them eat. She tried to carry on a conversation through the kitchen wall with the adults on the other side, but gave up and asked us questions about school, clothes, and the latest dance craze.
Cousin, Kalynn, told her knock-knock joke.
“Knock-Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Banana.”
“Banana who?”
“Banana Split.”
“Knock-Knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Orange.”
“Orange Who?”
“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”
Seconds? That was part of the tradition. Going back for more. “Save room for dessert,” someone said. Aunt Irene had brought a cherry pie, Virginia, one of mince meat, another of apple laced heavily with cinnamon. Grandma had baked two pumpkin pies. Aunt Dorothy brought a Sanders cake. How could we eat dessert when we felt so full? We were Detroiters, right down to our Vernor’s Ginger Ale, and the uncles would pour glasses of it after dinner which was sure to bring forth enormous belches.
In the dining room the grown-ups discussed politics over scraps left on their plates. All day the sky had been gray. Now faint snow came down in the fading afternoon light. In the kitchen our jokes veered from the knock-knocks. We asked a younger child to spell gyp and then say funny. Grandma came to the kitchen doorway. “Bundle up. Go outside. Run around the house. Seven times,” she said. “You big girls, too. Take off those high-heeled shoes before you break your necks. I hope you brought something else to wear on your feet” She looked under the table where Linda and I sat, our ankles rolled to the sides like barroom floozies. “Go on,” she shooed. “Out.” We went.
The tables had been cleared by the time we came back indoors. Aunt Betty was washing off the silverware. Desserts were carried into the dining room, even a bowl of Jell-O, along with Grandma’s newest discovery -- Cool Whip.
Everyone had at least two slices of pie on their plates. The men began to converse in the language of football. It was suggested they carry their pie and coffee into the living room and turn on the TV.
The women were reluctant to leave the table; they invited me and Linda to joint them. It was time to catch up on conversation. They discussed past Thanksgivings, and remembered Uncle Earl who had died a few years before. He had been a tailor and made suits for the Ford and Fisher families of Grosse Pointe. Aunt Betty tapped at her pie crust and recalled the reason for Great Grandma Feighner’s flaky crusts. She used lard. Someone mentioned a new diet, one that really worked. Grapefruit. This was the language of tradition. This was how we learned our histories. We were secure in the knowledge that this feast would be repeated over and over.
Posted by editor at 09:00 PM | Comments (0)
Are Big Cats Back? On the Track of the Panther
By Jane Greiner
Nature Correspondent
A big cat was seen crossing the fairway on the Dunes Golf Course off highway 72, according to a customer at Cherry Republic this spring. He said that he knew that what he saw was "no ordinary cat." It was big and brown and "had a very long tail."
His description tallies with the Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mammals which says the Mountain Lion, also known as Cougar, Puma, or Catamount, is yellowish to tawny above, white or buff below, and unspotted. It has a long tail with a black tip. Their body length is 59-108 inches; tails are 21-36 inches, weight 75-275 pounds.
The man's sighting reminded me of stories we had been hearing of panther sightings near Cranberry Lake in the Adirondacks. On each visit for the last five years we have heard exciting stories of a Panther in the area.
We visit the Adirondacks annually to visit Lyn's parents at their "camp." (Camp is regional for what we would call a cottage.) The Adirondack Park is a huge area of northern New York state where everything within the imaginary blue line (park border) will be from now on "Forever Wild." They take that idea very seriously. There are few roads, few villages, and vast tracts of rough wilderness accessible only on foot or by boat.
Most of the terrain is tree-covered mountains and boulder strewn woods and hills. There are numerous lakes and fast moving rivers and streams. Bears are so common that many hikers wear bear bells when they take to the woods.
That same rough terrain which is good habitat for bears makes excellent panther range. Indeed in the old days there were plenty of panthers in the Adirondacks and all areas east of the Mississippi, including Michigan.
The little town of Cranberry Lake, where the camp is, sits at the northern tip of the 11
square mile Cranberry Lake with 55 miles of shoreline, most of which is state-owned and wild. There seems to be a mountain lion living there.
Several years ago friends reported that one morning a man had found very large cat tracks in the sand in the back of his pickup truck. Something had jumped in, walked across, and jumped out again. He believed it was a panther because no other animal could have left such large cat tracks.
The following year our friends reported that a panther had now been spotted. A New York State Trooper who lived up Columbian Road (a road which ran alongside Cranberry Lake) had seen a large cat cross the road in his headlights as he was leaving for work early one morning. It was crossing the road near a bridge at the inlet to the Oswegatchie River at the foot of Cranberry Lake.
The next year Lyn's folks reported that a number of cats and dogs had been lost along Columbia Road where their camp is. They were nervous about their toy poodles. This year the big cat had been confirmed. Lyn's art mentor, Jeannie Reynolds, 77, lifetime resident of Cranberry Lake, told us that a local man had recently seen the big cat in his headlights crossing the road near the river. Art Ploof, 63, real estate salesman of Cranberry Lake and long time resident, had told her the cat was big, had a very long tail, and seemed to be carrying something in its mouth. Ploof was reluctant to tell the story to anyone else for fear of being teased about it.
Reynolds and Ploof decided to go back to where he thought the cat had come from andsee if they could find its tracks. Luckily they were able to find some tracks in the sand and gravel of the riverbank.
Reynolds "took off in her car" searching for some Plaster of Paris to make a cast of the print. She tried several places and finally with unbelievable good luck she found the last box on a shelf in a small hardware store in Star Lake, 8 miles to the west.
Reynolds and Ploof returned to the site and were able to take a cast of the paw print. The cast is rough due to the stone and pebble in the riverbank, but it distinctly shows a round cat-like print, about the size of a woman's hand. It measured about 5" from heel pad to toe and there are four toes. The cast appears to match the prints shown in mammal books.
Art Ploof's wife Jan works in the community center in Cranberry Lake. Reynolds suggested that she might be able to give us more details. She also mentioned another eyewitness who had actually seen the panther, Susan McDonald, who lived up the street.
We were on the track of the cat.
McDonald was not at home but we did find Jan Ploof, Fine County Clerk, in her office.
She was happy to talk to us about her husband's experience. He had been hesitant to mention it to anyone for fear of being ridiculed because "they say" there are no panthers anymore in the Adirondacks. But she had encouraged him to tell people about it. Otherwise, she said, anybody else that saw one would be just as shy to speak up and the myth that there are no panthers would continue.
Jan Ploof confirmed that Art had seen the panther in his headlights at night as he turned off Route 3 onto Columbian Road. It was coming up onto the shoulder of the road and he thought it was carrying something. He had said it was by the guardrail. "It was very large," (she emphasized "large") and "very sleek" with a "longish tail."
Jan Ploof was willing to credit Art's story not only because he is her husband, but also because years ago she had seen a panther herself. About 15 years ago she and Art were hunting up at the far end of the lake. (It should be noted that the far end of the lake is untarnished wilderness, accessible only by boat or plane) She said she was sitting there watching the deer go by when she saw a black panther. It was there and gone again so fast she couldn't believe her eyes. But she "swears it was a panther."
We were able to catch up with the other eyewitness, Susan McDonald, by phone.
McDonald is also a longtime Cranberry Lake resident who lives with her husband on the west side of town. Her story was important because she saw the panther in broad daylight.
Around June 12, 2001, Susan was riding her bike at 5:15 one afternoon. She was heading east out of the village towards Star Lake. She saw a large black cat cross the road in front of her, about 30 feet away. Sue said the cat must have disturbed some crows because there was a crow chasing it and dive-bombing it. The cat "was so busy looking over its shoulder" at the crow that it seemed not to notice her at all.
"It was quite obvious what it was," Sue said. "I couldn't believe my eyes."
"It was beautiful," Sue said. It was smaller than she expected. But later she saw a wildlife show on TV which talked about the big cats out west. She learned that mountain lions there run between 50 and 150 pounds. This one, Sue estimated, "was just under 100 pounds."
It was "much more sleek" than she had expected, and "so graceful."
"When he moved, it was like a wave," she said, "He just seemed to glide across the road." Although she said, "he," Sue said she really didn't know if it was a male or female. The cat Sue saw was "totally black" and seemed to be about "two feet tall at the shoulder and about three feet long" of body, "plus the long tail."
"They say it's a once in a lifetime experience," Sue said, "I think I'm lucky. Of course they also say there aren't any panthers around here anymore," Sue said that it was not long after her sighting that Jeannie and Art got the footprint.
McDougal said, "despite what 'they say,'" the panthers are here." She said hers is not the only sighting. Besides Art's sighting, Sue mentioned that a big cat walked through the village of Wanakena about five years ago. Wanakena is a small village further up the lake on the edge of the wilderness. It is about seven miles from Cranberry Lake.
A panther had also been seen near the about ten miles south of Cranberry Lake on Tooley Pond Road near Windfall.
After taking photographs of the panther track and the area where it was found, Lyn and I left the Adirondacks excited to know that the big cats really are making a comeback in the Adirondacks and feeling encouraged that sightings in our own Leelanau area could just as well be real.
Although not nearly as large as the Adirondack Park, The Sleeping Bear Lakeshore is similar in some ways to it. It is a region with lots of state and national park around it with thousands of acres of wilderness nearby. We know that some large mammals such as bears, coyotes, deer, and beaver are here. Like the Adirondack residents, the people of the Leelanau area tend to love the wildlife around them. We treasure the undeveloped land and try to protect as much of it as possible from being spoiled by man. It is part o f the reason so many of us choose to live here.
Back in Glen Arbor, I continued to follow the track of the panther. I needed more information on the big cats. The Audubon book said, "The most widely distributed cat in the Americas, the mountain lion is a solitary, strongly territorial hunting species that requires isolated or undisturbed game-rich wilderness; it has therefore declined or become extinct in much of the habitat where it once thrived. Usually silent, it has many kinds of calls, including screams, hisses and growls. It also utters a shrill, piercing whistle, evidently an alarm. The bloodcurdling mating call has been likened to a woman's scream."
I was unable to track down the man who saw a big cat at the golf course. But I got several leads on other area eyewitnesses.
Paula Bowmaster, 42, of Cedar, confirmed that they had seen a wild cat. Theirs however, turned out to be a Jaguarundi, a smaller, spotted wild cat native to South America. It was believed to have been brought into the area as a pet.
Paula referred me to Nancy Keilty, 46 also of Cedar. Keilty had indeed had a good look at a mountain lion about eight years ago. Keilty said she and five others were looking at their cattle when someone spotted a mountain lion "bounding across the neighbor's field."
Keilty said that her parents had a ranch out west so she had seen mountain lions out there and knows what they look like. They were common enough out there to have a bounty on them in the old days. She said this lion "bounded" through the tall grass with its long tail characteristically "all curled up." It was more like the color of a deer, she said, "not the Cedar Black Panther that people keep talking about."
She said she was glad there were so many people with her who also saw the big cat.
There were plenty of witnesses, so she didn't feel embarrassed to talk about it. "It was
a treat," she said, to see one.
The Philip Hart Visitor Center referred me to Bill Herd, 55, Park Ranger-Naturalist.
Herd said that for the last ten years people have been coming in with sightings of a mountain lion. He guessed he had heard or seen 75-100 reported sightings in that time. "We get so many reports," he said, "some people have measured tracks, and folks who seemed knowledgeable of wildlife have seen it." In his mind there isn't any doubt there is a mountain lion out there.
Herd said most of the sightings occur near Platt Lake. He himself saw a big cat on two occasions last winter while driving home from work. It was dark and he saw it in his headlights crossing M22 south of the Platte River. He said it was gray and had a long tail. He described it as "long, scrawny, and sinewy." He said it was definitely not a bobcat because it had a long tail. He said it was "a little bigger than a collie, but skinny and lanky."
He said there have also been good sightings farther north. A few years ago a cook at Innisfree (now Camp Kohana) watched a big cat for half an hour around 5:30 a.m. one morning. She had seen mountain lions before and thus was certain of what she saw.
Herd confirmed that the range of the big cats is huge. One living near the Platte River could easily range as far north as Port Oneida.
Herd did not offer an opinion as to the color of the cats. His sighting was gray, sort of deer-like, he said. Whether or not a black panther is around is unknown. His reference book described the big cats as beige or gray, often darker on top and lighter below.
Ranger Tom Huntington, also of the Visitor Center, said, "all I know is people have been seeing a large cat and the description fits a cougar." He said someone saw one at the Platte River picnic area about 8:00 a.m. and described it as "bigger than his golden retriever and with a long tail and tan in color," which Huntington called "a classic description" of a mountain lion. Huntington said the cat has been seen frequently, especially between Lake Michigan Road and Bookeloo Road.
The ranger referred me to the DNR to find out whether the panthers are protected. Mike Borkovich, DNR Conservation Officer based in Traverse City, told me that the cougars, if they exist, are protected because "there is no hunting season for them so you can't go out and shoot one." Borkovich however does not believe that there are any cougars in this area. He said that he "tracks people for a living" and has been on many hunts out west and knows what cougars look like and the signs of their presence such as their tracks, their scat, and their screams. He believes that if any were in our area, someone would have better evidence of it. He said he has tracked down so many mistaken claims that he feels certain the big cats are not making a come back. Mostly he says, it's a dog, a coyote, or a bobcat that people catch a glimpse of and mistake for a panther.
If you print the stories of sightings, he said, people will panic and they will have another "hundred phone calls to the office a day." People are scared of wolves, bears and mountain lions, he said, mountain lions most of all. And with some reason. Two women joggers were killed recently in Banff Park (in the Canadian Rockies) by mountain lions, according to Borkovich. Mountain lions do kill deer and are "capable of taking down" a person.
Borkovich said that if people want to see a real cougar, the Traverse City zoo has two on display. A Leelanau resident had them as pets but they became too dangerous for his kids. There is big "alpha male" and a smaller female, he said. The officer sometimes takes deer carcasses in for them as deer is their primary food. A cougar needs about one deer a week, he estimated.
If someone can document a mountain lion, he said, we would be happy to go out and confirm it and manage it. Right now, "since there are no panthers here, we do not manage them." Furthermore, Borkovich said, if there was one wandering out there, it must be one someone has let go. It would probably be de-clawed, like the two in the zoo.
I took Borkovich's advice and visited Clinch Park Zoo to see the mountain lions. There is a big female and an even bigger "alpha male." I watched them for about twenty minutes and took pictures. The female paced silently all over the enclosure, climbing up and down the rocks, never settling down. Her movement, despite a sore front foot, flowed like water in a stream.
The male stayed in a cave most of the time but occasionally came out, paced around, growled and yowled. His growl sounded like a metal brush scraping over Venetian blinds. It was low and ratchety. The yowl, one big "Rowww," was louder and frightening. At one point he stood on his hind legs and reached up the enclosure. He seemed to be at eye level with me and could reach way up above my head. The mountain lions were impressive animals. It was painful to think that these marvelous creatures are nearly extinct in the eastern United States.
I checked the Internet for information on panthers, particularly regarding the possibility of them making a comeback. In an article called, "Cat of God" Lisa Hutchins says the mountain lion is known by as many as 50 other names including cougar, puma, panther, wild cat, catamount, painter, devil cat, screamer, ghost cat etc. She says the cats ranged all over this country before European settlement. "But the fear the animal inspired, and its occasional predation of livestock, made the mountain lion an early target for extermination in settled areas. Massive habitat destruction and decimation of the deer population also doomed the big cat. By the end of the nineteenth century, the mountain lion was virtually wiped out east of the Mississippi except for a tiny population of Florida subspecies in the Everglades."
Hutchins says "Today the mountain lion is found only in the western United States and Canada. The eastern species is listed in absentia on the Endangered Species List. The highly endangered Florida panther, with only 50 animals left, is hopelessly inbred and teetering on the brink of extinction."
In "The Return of the Wild," by John Jahoda, an article from December 1999 Bridgewater Review, Jahoda says, "There is evidence, much of it unsupported and circumstantial, that suggests that the two animals that were historically the top carnivores in the Northern Forest may be staging a comeback. There are rumors, which have become more frequent and more reliable in recent years, that both the wolf and the mountain lion may be back." Jahoda believes that the return of the deer population plus changes in logging practices and many farms being abandoned have improved the habitat for moose which are definitely making a comeback, as well as for wolves and mountain lions.
Chris Bolgiano, in "Mountain Lion, An Unnatural History of Pumas and People," said that the mountain lion is regarded by the Hopis as the "strongest and most fearless animal and the greatest of hunters." The Navaho's ceremonial name for it translates to, "Walking Silently among the Rocks."
In "Panther Pandemonium" by Ron Schaffner, the author listed alleged sightings of big cats in the eastern United States from 1984-1987. These include sightings in Manchester, Michigan (near Detroit) of a black panther. There were also sightings in 1984 near Wixom, Michigan. In one case a man loading a truck saw a large cat roaming through the property, run across a driveway, and make an "easy leap over an eight-foot fence." On the following night, a Police Sergeant saw a five-foot long cat. Schaffner attempts to reconcile the many sightings with official views. "Wildlife authorities are no different from cryptozoologists ˆ They constantly disagree over theories, origins, and methodology. This is just the case when it comes to trying to explain the "phantom feline" enigma. Not one agency seems to agree on anything, except, perhaps the escaped pet theory." He says, "Considering all the above mentioned theories still leaves us with some unanswered questions. How come these animals are hardly ever captured? Why do the reports come in waves? Why are there separate incidents in different states over the same time frame? It would seem improbable that there is an on-going conspiracy to release pet panthers in the U.S."
Combining all the witnesses, accounts, and authorities, it makes sense to me that the big cats are slowly making a comeback where conditions are good for them. At least one panther lives near Cranberry Lake, New York. According to a good daylight sighting, that one appears to be black. And at least one of the traditional tawny lion color seems to live in the Platte Lake area. It is reasonable that they would return as the deer population, their chief food source, grows. Our deer have so few natural predators here that the population would be overwhelming its range were it not kept in check by hunting.
The return of the big cat is exciting news for any wildlife refuge area. It seems to indicate a slowing or reversal of the trend toward extinction of so many of the formerly plentiful wildlife. In "A Walk in the Woods," a book about hiking the Appalachian trail, the author Bill Bryson noted that so much of the wildlife along the trail is gone now that the "woods are a very silent place." It was a chilling reminder to me of how badly the environment has been damaged by man.
I hope that our woods here in the Lakeshore National Park will never be silent and that one day we can proudly say that our Park has provided a protected environment in which all of the wild creatures, including the panther, can again live free.
If anyone has seen a panther in this area, write me care of the Glen Arbor Sun or emailme at
Posted by editor at 08:02 PM | Comments (0)
Michigan, The Promised Land
by Linda Jo Scott
Sun staff writer
Growing up in the Chicago area, I always had the idea that Michigan was a kind of promised land, a place you got to go on vacation rather than a place where you actually lived.
I had always heard a lot of stories about Michigan from my father, for when he was a teenager and college student, living on the fringes of Hyde Park, on the south side of Chicago, he and some of his friends had jobs taking care of boys after school and Saturdays. They would each meet their own group of boys at their school at 3:00 and occupy them for the rest of the afternoon, playing ball, ice skating, swimming, running races, and other such activities. The groups were approximately the same size and would compete at various ball games and track events. Then on Saturdays they would do factory tours and other outings, carrying elaborate lunches cooked by the various Hyde Park families' servants.
The best part of this job, however, was the summers. Each June, the young people would be hired to come up to such places as Charlevoix, Cheboygan, and Petoskey with these same wealthy families to care for their kids. They would organize track meets, treasure hunts, beach picnics, and such, thus allowing the parents to have a child-free summer. Of course many of the fathers had to stay back in Chicago and work, so the young people were mostly supervised by mothers.
"We had fun with the kids, and then, when we got time off, we'd organize dances, beach parties, and dune hikes for ourselves," he explained. "One of the best parts was the food. The families would bring their cooks as well as child workers, and we'd get to know in no time which cooks made the best sandwiches, pies and cakes." My father came from a family who never got to take vacations, so his summers in Michigan seemed like paradise to him.
Later, I began to create my own myths about Michigan, the promised land, through coming here in the summers. The trip itself was a kind of divine comedy, for first we had to endure the infernos of the stockyards of the south side of Chicago and the steel mills of Hammond and Gary before we could reach the paradise of the beautiful dunes of northern Indiana and western Michigan.
For three or four summers, I came to Tower Hill Camp, near Sawyer, first for family camp, then high school youth group camp. Owned by the Illinois Congregational Churches, the camp was situated on the border of Warren Dunes, home of "Old Baldy." I can still get inspired just remembering lying in the grass looking up into enormous Michigan pines and contemplating the majesty of creation. I can still get misty eyed when I hear the harmonies of such dear old camp songs as "Tell Me Why the Stars Do
Shine."
Our family had friends who had a cottage north of Holland, and we were thrilled when they would invite us up for a week or two in the summers. Their cottage was a simple one, poised high on a bluff over the lake. Masters of inexpensive interior design, they had hung National Geographic maps over all of the old wooden walls and ceilings of the cottage, and I can still remember lying on those moldy cabin beds studying the depths of various parts of the ocean, the locations of various exotic islands.
How fortunate I felt in 1978 when I found a teaching job at Olivet College. "You mean I could actually live in Michigan all year long?" I asked myself. I've been here 23 years now, and the wonder of Michigan's beautiful dunes and lakes, her vineyards and cherry orchards, her one-of-a-kind lighthouses, her unique old wooden barns--all of her various marvels are still magical for me. We Michiganders truly see a beautiful peninsula every day simply by looking around us.
Posted by editor at 07:09 PM | Comments (0)