Discard

I grew up in a home with a tool & die working father and a stay at home mother. My Dad liked me. My mother did not.

Every summer we'd visit my Great-Grandmother, and later my Grandmother on Drummond Island, MI. Both of them liked me a lot.

The island is where I found me.

Drummond has a history you can look up. Drummond Island is in USA because the locals got the British surveyor drunk and boated the mapping around the other side of the island. There was Maggie Walz, a feminist, who came to the island to train nurses. And be a socialist without critics. And my great-grandmother who came to the island not long after Maggie Walz as an illegal immigrant. And other early Finnish settlers that have become the inherited landowners who still do.

It was always about wilderness to me. My grandmother taught me to find wild strawberries as a young girl. To identify and harvest the medicinal plants. My great-grandmother's lover taught me to fish, find animals in the bush, just to watch. He didn't speak a word of English. I still understood. He laughed a lot. So did my great-grandmother and my grandmother.

My great-grandmother got by with trading her homemade bread for other things she needed to live. And by cooking. The best perch and walleye. You catch it, she cooked it. And traded that for fire wood, vegetables, yarn, other staples.

My grandmother taught me not to be a fool about men. She never approved of my great-grandmother's lover - she'd move out when he was in residence. (He got kicked out regularly.) But that's a story for another time.

I'm going to Drummond for what may be the last trip of my life. It's far. My matriarchal ancestors are buried there and I will tuck them in for the winter. My Dad is buried there among his womenfolk.

I thought all my life that one day I'd live in the cabin that my great-grandmother's lover built for her, but when my father died it was sold.

One of my brothers wanted to buy it from the trust. One of my brothers said it should be knocked down, and he'd rebuild it. He has loads of money. But both of these boys have children and they would like something to leave to their children. Except none of these children have any interest in Drummond Island. It's far. And lived history is different from spoken history.

I'm going to a place that has most of the waterfront (it's an island after all) bought by rich people who don't live there. Most not even built there. But there are cattle gates. Mine mine mine.

Tom Monaghan of Domino's Pizza started the rich blitz by insisting the airport accommodate his jet. He built an enclave for corporate ease. A house for the manager of the Detroit Tigers and the University of Michigan coach. That mess lasted a few years. It still languishes. That level of luxury doesn't work in remote wilderness always.

He didn't really start it. One of the guys who owned Johnson Motors lived there. He was famous for not ever buying a drink at any bar on the Island all the time he lived. Jim Northrup of Detroit Tigers semi-fame bought a piece of land there. And so it goes.

Private wealth is pandemic on Drummond Island now as it is probably anywhere in the world where pristine beauty lives on the waterfront.

One of the boys I grew up with was hunting on land he's hunted for 65 years when a massive pickup truck skidded to a halt, and the driver got out pointing a shotgun. Get off my land.

My favorite stomping grounds is around the old lumbering community of Johnswood. It is on the most beautiful cove. Scammon Cove. It's now for sale as FABULOUS!! beachfront lots with 60-90 feet of frontage and a stupid amount of pie wedge to an actual road. Driveways are in, but electricity not so much.

The first time I knew my trail to the Cove was going to be the next real estate bonanza, I looked down and saw the old railroad footing. Before I saw that, I faced off a coyote coming from the water to the road. We stared at each other. I told her I was there for the same reason she was. To see the water. To be with. She walked by me. 2 feet apart into history.

Drummond Island is now an ALL CAPS! real estate find.

I hope I can have a Drummond Island peace event. One more time. I already know I won't see the mammoth lone wolf maple in color at the 4 Corners intersection. It was cut down a decade ago. I am going there to discard this urban life. I'm staying at the rental the artist Sandy Ledy owns.

I confirmed my reservation yesterday, Sorry I'm late to confirm. No worries, her daughter said. Arrive any time Wednesday and stay as long as you like through Friday.

I'll never checkout of Drummond Island.