In Michigan, where I live, we are blessed with beautiful weather eight months of the year. Summers are sunny and warm, but the temperature rarely climbs above 90. At 43 degrees north latitude, our summer days can be almost an hour and a half longer than those in, say, Houston. Thunderstorms are infrequent and often occur at night: the remnants of behemoths which terrorized the northern plains the afternoon before.
Autumn is everyone’s favorite season. The skies remain sunny, temperatures are pleasantly crisp, and weekends are filled with trips to apple orchards or walks through scarlet and yellow woodlands. With luck, the weather holds through Halloween, then gradually cools until jackets and gloves are a requirement by early December. By then, we are repaying the long, sunny days of summer with darkness before 6.
This year is shaping up to be a bit more exciting here, as in most places. Heavy snow is predicted for later today, followed by gale-force winds off the lake. Early snow means wet snow, followed by salt and sand and slippery roads. We Michiganders and Michigangsters are hunkering down for the next four months.
Lake Michigan is the governor on the Michigan weather engine. We will see lots of snow until the lake surface is extensively frozen, which may not be until February. That kind of cold takes a while to dissipate; water temperatures are dangerously cold until at least mid-summer. Lake Michigan is a deceptively dangerous lake for several reasons. When the wind blows out of the northern plains, as it will tonight and tomorrow, the waves build into steep chop in a hurry. Sailing the Great Lakes is more difficult than sailing the broad swells of the ocean. They say there are hundreds, if not thousands of shipwrecks in Lake Michigan alone to prove the point.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the blue-collar workers of the Great Lakes were the Lakers: medium-sized, flat bottomed schooners with top-heavy sail plans. The Gallinipper was typical in every way except for its unusual name. Official records don’t say why it was named after a species of giant mosquito. It hauled lumber up and down the coast of Wisconsin, or over to the Michigan furniture factories in Holland and Grand Rapids. On July 7, 1851, she was heading north from Milwaukee to Escanaba to pick up a load of lumber. She was lightly loaded and no doubt enjoying the speed that comes with a broad reach against the westerly winds, when an unexpected summer squall caught her by surprise. With sails properly doused, the Gallinipper had undoubtedly survived many such storms in the past. But this one caught her with everything hanging out, capsizing the ship. The ship floated for a couple of days before sinking off Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The wreck is still there, well preserved in the oxygen-poor water at 210 feet. Fortunately, the Cleopatra was nearby and picked up the crew. The only injury was a broken leg suffered by a passenger.
We would not know this had not the passenger recorded it in his journal, passed down to his daughter. John Fine was a captain with the same company that owned the Gallinipper. After surviving the shipwreck, he moved to a farm near present-day Zeeland, Michigan, where he raised a family and made a good living as a marine surveyor. His limp only added to his character.
Why do we care? Because in that journal he attributes his survival to “the gift,” something he carried with him always. It was small, we can assume, as he kept it sewn into his clothing. And it was something he had acquired long before in his youth. John Fine mentions the gift over and over in his journal, never describing it in precise detail but only alluding to what it might be, such as this passage toward the end of his journal. And now I am old and have no use for money or for the fuss this thing would cause if discovered. Someone else can hold it and look into its blood red depths, dreaming of long-ago adventures, or adventures yet to come.
LHOSAWORLD 