River Notes: May 24, 2024
Over coffee at the kitchen table, I read Walknotes , the brilliant blog from U.K. writer and designer Densise Wilton, which is the direct inspiration (via Russell Davies' Do Interesting book) for my own Weeknotes series. Having taken a week off from my own writing, I'm enjoying a carefree Saturday morning on a long holiday weekend. As I'm about to click on her link to a New Yorker article titled "How To Live Forever," I see my name poking out from a bullet point below. Not only have I received a shoutout from one of my heroes, but it's for my blog and not my music. I'm speechless. What an unexpected honor. Thank you, Denise!
Instead of my weekly digest, I offer a special edition spinoff. Observations, some history, and a bit of hard data from my first river paddle of the season.
Friday, May 24
10:50 A.M. - I finish strapping my kayak onto the roof rack of my little hatchback which looks very sporty in summer mode. When I install them in the spring, the distinctive Yakima JayHooks poke up just enough to help me locate my car in grocery store parking lots. I also like to imagine they add an air of mystery or at least suggest to passersby that the person who drives this economy car is still sporty and adventurous even if they no longer own a Jeep.
10:56 A.M. - I live close enough to the river that I can just see the impression of its valley behind an old warehouse, but far enough away that it would be a slog to portage a small boat from my house. The drive to Peninsular Park would probably take three minutes if not for all the one way streets in my neighborhood.
11:00 A.M. - I'm on the water ten minutes after leaving my driveway. The floating plastic-topped dock next to the old paper mill is in rough shape, warped and bubbled. The nearby dam, originally built in 1867 by the Peninsular Paper Company, has deteriorated to the point of danger and no longer serves any practical purpose. Now owned by the city, Pen Dam (as it's known locally) is scheduled for removal, a lengthy process that will take several years to complete. I will welcome this change; I can't wait to see the Huron resume its natural flow. For now, though, I enjoy the easy currents of a dammed up waterway. I nod to a man fiddling with his bike at a nearby picnic table and receive a suspicious glare in return. Stowing my small cooler in the front deck elastics I shove off into the algae and lily pads and head upstream.
11:10 A.M. - I consider the river in sections. Last year I noted that the first section, from the Pen Dam dock to the first railroad bridge, takes ten minutes at a steady paddle. After the low railroad bridge, with its darting swallows and reflected sun-shimmer, the river widens considerably. To the south, behind a tall bluff, Huron River Dr. runs parallel to the water. I pass a tiny island where a mallard stands looking bored, his partner sitting a few feet away. This section only takes five minutes to paddle.
11:15 A.M. - The Superior St. Bridge is part of my regular running route. I ran across it yesterday and now paddle beneath it into one of my favorite sections. This is where the river starts to get pretty, as we leave the more residential areas behind. To my left a blue heron perches on a half submerged log. To my right is a small beach where two upturned cream-colored canoes rest. Just past it is a vast-lawned, boxy modernist home where I once went to an estate sale. I found it rather dreadful inside. On each end of the waterfront property, presumably to scare away geese, are two unidentifiable animal-shaped statues which from this distance resemble either wild boars or gray dogs taking a crap. In between them sits a family of geese.
11:25 A.M. - Paddling around the bend, I interrupt a kingfisher who flees at my approach. The cottonwoods on both banks emit copious amounts of fluff which lays like dander across the water's smooth surface. In the distance is the Superior Dam.
11:30 A.M. - I make the dam 30 minutes after launching. Every sluice is open, though the upstream current is remarkably calm. I feel little resistance as I cruise onto the small stony beach where a mild fug of fish stench greets me. The portage to the top winds along a well maintained wooded trail of pea gravel, a kernel of which lodges under my right flip flop. It's just far enough that I have to stop and rest twice. I pause to eat a banana at the small dock on the other side. It's in better shape than the Pen Dam dock, but its placement in a stagnant little cove feels like an afterthought. I’ve never seen another paddler up here.
11:39 A.M. - Back on the water above the Superior Dam, it's about a three minute paddle to the next railroad bridge, after which the river widens even more into a tranquil reservoir of quiet luxury. This is where moneyed elite live in secret riverfront extravagance. The roads that lead to these properties are private and subtly camouflaged. Public boat access is very limited on this part of the river. One must, as I did, paddle upstream from a rundown Ypsilanti park or make a lengthier downstream paddle from the Ann Arbor side at Gallup Park or the Geddes Dam. I catch a glimpse of a spacious, elegantly appointed barn that could double as a private theater. A minute later its accompanying villa comes into view. Further up the river bends around a sleepy point a mile or so behind St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and is accessed by a private road called Stark Strasse. Near the tip of the bend is a wooded estate containing a majestic lodge built atop one of Harry Bennett’s cabins. Bennett was Henry Ford's ruthless chief of security in the 1920s and ‘30s and made enough enemies that most of his properties contained tunnels, secret passageways, and other defensive features. It has also been suggested they were used for smuggling during prohibition.
In 2007 we played a show here which is how I learned of this area's existence. With a name like Great Lakes Myth Society and songs referencing regional locales, we often fell into unlikely bookings from well-meaning environmentalists groups who presumed we were more educational than roguish. We once played a stiff boardroom dinner meeting for the Great Lakes Commission surrounded by educational displays of sea lamprey and other invasive threats. In the case of the Bennett property we were hired as the house band for Suds on the River, an annual fundraiser for the Huron River Watershed Council. Each year a different riverfront home hosts the event which is catered by local breweries and restaurants. After receiving explicit directions that never actually revealed its address, we were admitted along with the other service crews into a muted hubbub of faded Northwoods grandeur. We stood around in our ragged suits eating hors d'oeuvres and trying not to get too drunk, then played two unplugged sets of background music, feeling all the while like gatecrashers at Gatsby’s. I'd assumed I'd never again see this hidden utopia until last summer when by chance I paddled right past it.
11:50 P.M. - The stretch beyond the Bennett cabin is new territory for me. I hug the left bank where under the overhanging trees violent splashing indicates some spawning fish. Far across on the opposite bank a landscaping crew is at work on a sloping palatial lawn of such enormity I can't even see the house above it. I learn later that this is Bennett Castle, the secret fortress Harry Bennett built in the 1930s which contained not only secret passageways and a gun turret, but lions. I vow to investigate further on a future paddle.
12:00 P.M. - One full hour on the water and I've forgotten to bring sunblock. I gauge how painful a burn I'll endure when I tack on the hour-long return trip and decide to head back. I'm now facing a headwind and gain little assistance from the downstream current.
12:20 P.M. - Back at the Superior Dam I leave my boat on the deserted dock and walk up the path I discovered last year leading to the hospital grounds. The uphill trail winds through a dense wood and deposits me at a forbidding cement block building. Tucked away at the rear of the hospital's property, its design is so crude it looks unfinished. Only the office knick knacks in the windows give any indication it's occupied. The midday heat and vigorous paddling has worn me out and I sit for a spell on a shaded bench at one end of a dilapidated shuffleboard court. A tennis court of similar vintage lays to my right emitting a clinical convalescent sadness. I drink a La Croix and watch three kids walk down the trail with fishing rods. Where did they come from? There is no housing out here. Children of hostpital staff, maybe? I give them a few minutes head start then follow them down to the dock.
12:40 P.M. - On my return portage I try carrying my boat over my head. I find the right balance, but my arms are so weak from paddling, they turn to jelly and I almost collapse. I'm glad the young fishermen aren't around to see it. I float past them on a little spit of land just past the dam, and make sure to avoid their lines.
12:50 P.M. - Approaching the railroad bridge from the downstream side I see a pale shape with a distinctive black mark in the distance up by the tracks. The way it’s positioned I can’t tell what I'm looking at. An animal of some sort? When I'm about 50 yards away it suddenly stands up to reveal itself: a young woman in a scant black bikini. I wave a blushing eyes-semi-averted hello as I pass beneath her, sunbathing and talking into her phone.
1:00 P.M. - After exactly two hours, my adventure terminates back at the Pen Dam dock.