Independence Day 2012

Attention all stations:
Happy Fourth of July, Isle Royale!!!!!

For yet another day, the sun is shining, the day is warm, and life is good in Snug Harbor - perfect weather for celebrating our nation's birthday by eating a whole lot of delicious food. (Alternatives: jump off the Ranger III dock wrapped in red, white, and blue bunting; climb the Ojibwe fire tower and sing 'God Bless America' at the top of your lungs; drink a cold beer and sing country music to yourself whilst trolling up and down the channel and eating a hotdog; hold the world's first deep-woods baseball game; etc.)



The Ben East luna moth



In all actuality, this holiday is pretty quiet in Snug Harbor; it's a Wednesday, so there's no Queen IV, and the Ranger left hours ago this morning. There are just a few visitors hanging about the marina, and even the birds seem quiet. Later the Lodge will hold their traditional cookout and canoe race, but we did a lot of our celebrating last night, with a raucous potluck at the Ben East, well attended by guests from Mott and Davidson and, of course, Snug Harbor. There was a somewhat stunning amount of food and a rowdy game of B.S.



An ex-black-billed cuckoo.

Besides the excellent cameraderie of friends combined with food, we've had a lot of two awesome things here this week: one being lightning, the other luna moths, which for some reason are EVERYWHERE these past few days, their silken green wings relaxing nonchalantly on walls and decks and daisies all over the harbor. Practically every night there's one on the Ben East kitchen door, probably hoping to get inside and hang out with us. (Speaking of things wanting to get inside and hang out with us, a bird flew a little too recklessly into our kitchen window the other day and met his end on the sunny deck. I snapped his last photo before Zim gave him a boot into the shrubberies. We think it's a black-billed cuckoo - any confirmations of that?) The luna moths should be gone soon; the adults don't have mouths, and only live about a week. It's just as well we didn't invite Mr. Luna Moth to our potluck.

The lightning, on the other hand, was a one-night only deal. Another mind-boggling storm hit the night before last, dumping another inch and a half of rain and lacing the entire sky with stringy bolts of white-yellow lightning. Like reckless buffons, Alina, Erin, and I watched it all from the puddled surface of the Ranger III dock, relishing the enormous realization that we are tiny, tiny beings in this big and electric world.

Up on the ridge between Lookout Louise and the Lane Cove junction, with a view downhill of our water tower.