Michigan

After the rivers connecting the Great Lakes froze, all lake traffic came to a halt. The keepers and their families settled in for the long cold winter. All painting and repairs to lighthouses was confined to interior areas. In the mornings, an hour before school started, my father would build a coal fire in the pot-bellied stove in our little school house. Weekends, the teacher would be driven across the ice to Brimley by car where she would take the train to the Soo.

We four children walked single file down the narrow rutted road. There was no moon, but the stars were bright in the cloudless sky. The circling beams from Point Iroquois lighthouse, our home, lit our path at regular intervals. The summer night was quiet except for the occasional lunatic yodeling of loons across the still water and the questioning calls of whip-poor-wills in the woods. We startled flocks of night hawks, whose red eyes flared as they swooped down for insects.

The glory of the north woods in autumn defies description. The scarlet and orange of maples, maroon oak leaves, and the yellow coin-like birch and aspen leaves blazed in the bright blue October days. Biologists can find no scientific reason for the leaves changing color in the Fall. I like to think that it is their last gallant good-bye to Summer.