Shedder and Shorts

It was difficult for me to appreciate on first reading Louise Dickinson Rich’s book “We Took to the Woods” (Down East Books, Camden, Maine, 1942,1970).  First published in 1942, “We Took to the Woods” is a memoir of Rich’s experiences living along the Rapid Rive in the remote, northwestern corner of Maine. It was a New York Times bestseller for a very long time and is a staple of New England-themed collections. When I first read it at 19, I had hoped Rich would have something misanthropic to say; I wanted a condemnation of society.

We Took to the Woods

That was a silly thing to hope for. I recently reread “We Took to the Woods” and came to the same conclusion Katherien Woods did when she called it “priceless,” “irresistably spontaneous,” “perspicacious,” and “hilariously funny,” in the New York Times. Throughout “We Took to the Woods,” Mrs. Rich offers a forthright explanation of the joys and hardships of living remotely, but does so with a sensitive selfawareness that never places her at odds with the folk lurking in the towns downriver.

“We Took to the Woods” is largely a collection of folk vignettes about life in northern Maine. There is less discussion of the flora and fauna of the area than there is description of the lifestyle adopted by the Richs and the characters living in the woods along with them. Mrs. Rich titles her chapters with questions she is often asked by people from outside (things like, “aren’t you ever frightened?” and “but how do you make a living?”). This device inserts the skepticism and judgment Mrs. Rich feels from the outside into her life in the woods. Rich is consistently comparing life in the woods to life on the outside, explaining that she keeps busy keeping house, is entertained by the motley characters with whom she shares the woods, and is intellectually stimulated by the majesty of her surroundings. For the greatest part, “We Took to the Woods” is a picture of how Mrs. Rich views her experience in the woods vis a vis the expectations of outsiders.

While many books about life in the woods amplify the solitude and elevate the narrator as a pivotal figure within his natural surroundings, Rich treats herself always as a visitor in the woods and describes the woods as a phenomenon she has had the opportunity to observe rather than the home and neighborhood in which she lives. In telling of an annual fishing trip to an especially remote pond she underscores the notion of humans as visitors in the woods.

There is that feeling of remoteness and calm and timelessness about it that makes the scramble of ordinary life seem like a half-forgotten and completely pointless dream. It just lies there in a fold in the hills, open to the sky and wind and weather. Ducks and loons breed in its coves, the gulls fly over it in great white arc, and the great fish go their secret ways in its dim depths. Once in a while, human beings, like Gerrish and me, invade its privacy, but we don’t make any impression on B Pond. I always have the impression that the whole valley in which it lies- the hillsides and the deer on the hills, the trees that grow down to the water and the birds that build in them, the pond itself with all its myriad life- simply waits for us to go. I always want to turn back, after we have entered the woods on our homeward trek, to see what enchanting things take place the minute our backs are turned. (281-282)

Rich's Winter House

Despite Mrs. Rich’s attempt to cast “We Took to the Woods” as a collection of responses to questions from the outside, she associates herself more closely to outside life than to woods. In blatant disregard for archetype, Rich never paints herself as having, “gone native.” She remains aware of her status as an unnatural presence in these woods, and acknowledges that the social trappings of the lives we share with each other are more hers to claim than the seasonal ebb and flow of the woods. In sharing her reaction to a day of berry-picking in Prospect, Mrs. Rich expresses her hopes that in death she by able to truly join the natural world in which she is merely a visitor in life.

At night, after being at Prospect, I lie in bed and see great clusters of berries slide by endlessly against my closed lids. They haunt me, there are so many of them yet unpicked, so many that never will be picked. The birds and bears and foxes will eat a few, but most of them will drop off at the first frost to return to the sparse soil of Prospect whatever of value they borrowed from it. Nature is strictly moral. There is no attempt to cheat the earth by means of steel vault or bronze coffin. I hope that when I die, I too may be permitted to pay at once my oldest outstanding debt, to restore promptly the minerals and salts that have been lent to me for the little while that I have use for blood and bone and flesh. (289)

When I first read “We Took to the Woods,” I was hoping for a condemnation of social behaviors and an auto-adoration of this figure who rejected civilization and gained favor in the natural world. This book instead gave me a depiction of the remote life as an analog to the urban one, and a portrayal of the narrator as always a part of the outside world intruding on the naturalness of the woods. As humans, we can never truly shake of that sense of “society,” nor can we ever live alone and truly naturally. Mrs. Rich’s argument seems to be that, nevertheless, we can still live simply and meaningfully, and be well entertained.

Had a big day planned and it turned out okay, but not great. The intention was to fish the Muskegon River east of Newaygo, then do some hiking in the southern end of the Manistee National Forest. The fishing on the river was a bust, mostly because the spot where I thought I have good access, off Thornapple Road, is a State Boating Access site. The first annoyance there was that my State Parks sticker doesn’t count at a Boating Access Site, so I had to pay the DNR another $24 for another sticker, even though I wasn’t boating. The second annoyance was that this spot is a popular staging area for folks to float down the river on tubes and rafts and things like this. They have a lot of fun, which I can appreciate, but in sections like this there are a lot of them and they remove any sense of remoteness from time spent of the river. There were no hiking trails here, just a poison ivy laden path 300 yards down the river. I fished for about 30 minutes and left in a funk.

Headed up past Newaygo into the national forest and parked at an unmarked lot 50 yards into the woods off 40th street. This is a North Country Trail head. I hiked south for about twenty minutes with traffic never out of earshot. Crossed state highway M37, some railroad tracks and a bunch of dirt roads, at which point the trail ended (this point is marked as a “temporary connector”on the map). Turned around and walked back to the car, then kept going north for another 20 minutes to a parking area at M37. Walked back to the car and left. If I ever decide to section hike the NCT, I will really appreciate having already completed this part.

Drove back down through Newaygo, which seems like a very nice place. If I had this to do over again, I bring Anna, hike some spots further into the forest, and get lunch in Newaygo. As it was, I just cut east and headed for home. Made a brief stop at at Marl Lake on M46 near Edmore. Lots of small bluegill in there, caught one. Saw a guy with a stringer of five/six fat bluegill and a nice looking kit-built kayak from Chesapeake Light Craft. Helped him load the kayak into his Econoline and then drove home.

Today’s plan was to go to Sleepy Hollow State Park, rent a boat and fish Lake Ovid. Things changed, tough, when I found that the boat rentals at the park were being handled by a party store on Round Lake in Laingsburg. Once I drove back down to Round Lake to rent the boat, a 12 ft. aluminum rowboat, I figured I might as well just fish there.

Round Lake is fairly small and lined with houses on about three sides. There scenery from the boat was not very pretty. I rented the boat from Don’s Party Store (sign says “beer, boats, bait and pizza”) and also bought some red worms. I liked this store a great deal, it reminded me of the markets in central Maine where I grew up. The weather was a bit grim, hot and humid and threatening to rain. I was on the water for two hours, fished worms, spoons, spinners, and twisters, and caught three fish, each on worms.

Bowfin

I wasn’t fishing for long when I hooked something large. I was using a worm and bobber rig, and after it hit the worm the fish surfaced. I had to work it for several minutes before I could get a look at it, at which point I realized I had no idea what kind of fish it was. It was about twenty inches long and had a very long dorsal fin. It fought pretty hard; when I had it close to the boat it would dive deep under the boat. As I was working it in, two guys in a Lund pulled alongside, offered to net it for me, got it under control and then gave me some education.

They said it was a dogfish. This was interesting to me, since in Maine a dogfish is a small shark. I think they call it a dogfish as a variant on catfish. They pointed out to me that there were no barbs like a catfish has on this fish. They also said it was an undesirable fish in the lake, as it outcompetes popular gamefish like bass and pike. Once home I found that a more accurate name is bowfin, and that it’s a prehistoric species, not generally valued as a gamefish. After the bowfin I caught the smallest bluegill I’ve ever seen, and then a good-sized largemouth. I decided to keep and eat the bass.

I hiked south along the North Country Trail in Manistee County and then crossed the Manistee River and hiked north along the Manistee River Trail. I spent one night backcountry camping. This is commonly listed as one of the best hikes in Michigan, especially in the lower peninsula.

I left Lansing on Saturday morning and got to the Seaton Creek campground south of Mesick at about 10:30 a.m. At the beginning of a long hike, I’m always kind of jittery and I want to make good time, so it’s usually pretty intense right off the bat. There’s no such thing as a leisurely first day of hiking for me. Within 30 minutes I’d arrived at the cable suspension bridge that connects the Manistee River Trail on the east side of the river and the North Country trail on the west side. In this area there were a lot of people, but I quickly found it easy to convince myself I was in wilderness as I headed south along the NCT (in the ten miles I hiked saturday, I saw only three groups of backpackers).

Manistee River

The terrain along the North Country Trail is really quite spectacular, with lots of topo, lush ravines, and alternating pine plantation and hardwood forests. There was none of the scrubby invasive understory that is so familiar in southern Michigan. There isn’t a lot of water on the trail, though (about seven dry miles between Red Bridge and Eddington Creek), and the three scenic vistas that Dufresne mentions are completely obscured by trees. Despite this, it’s really quite beautiful and offers a feeling of genuine wilderness. By 4pm it was threatening to rain, so I set up the tent on a ridge to the west of the trail. There were no mosquitoes, but there were huge black flies as I ate. Once the rain started I lay in the tent as it came down until it was time to sleep at 8pm. Adding the spur from Seaton Creek to the NCT trail, I had hiked 10 miles.

When I woke at 6am, it had stopped raining, but everything was still very very wet. I rolled up the tent, hoping the sun might come out later and give me a chance to dry it out. Then I started hiking. Within an hour I arrived at Red Bridge, where I ate breakfast at a Park Service picnic area and filled my water bottles. Then I started north on the east side of the river. The Manistee River Trail skirts high bluffs along the winding river, offering phenomenal views and ocassionally dipping down into ravines and crossing creeks. It’s really a beautiful trail, although obviously more well-traveled than the NCT across the river. There was drizzle off and on through the day, but no rain. It never got dry, but windy enough that when I stopped for lunch at an oxbow in the river I was able to get the tent dried out.

I had intended to stay a second night on the Manistee River Trail, but at 4pm I was just 2 miles from the car and it was looking like rain again. I figured I could spend three hours sitting in the tent in the rain, or I could make for the car and spend those three hours driving back to Lansing. I chose to head home, and the rain started just a few minutes after I’d started up the car and headed out of the campground.

In all, I didn’t see much wildlife on this trip. I saw some trout in the river, and a doe in the woods. There were some cranes I couldn’t identify as well. I also saw a very large burrow (about 10 inches across) that appeared to be abandoned.