Meeting the Heaths

Wetland in Northern Michigan

Time in Michigan allowed me a chance to meet more of the Heath family.
Nope, not the people...the plants.
These members of Ericaceae, whose species number over 3300 worldwide, are primarily small shrubs, often with leathery or resinous evergreen leaves. And because they dislike limey soils, they’re not likely to be found where I spend most of my time hiking, the till plain of the southwestern Ohio River Basin.
Heaths prefer the cooler temperate regions—the acidic soil of primarily oak woods or the sphagnum mats of (acidic) bogs.

Sedge Wren beside a Wetland

Some are cultivated as ornamentals. You may have rhododendrons or azaleas in your yard. Others are prized for their delectable fruit. Blueberries and cranberries, the flavorful and antioxidant-rich "superfruits," are members of the Heath family, as well.

But I fell in love with bog rosemary and leatherleaf, whose creamy white urn-shaped flowers hung in clusters at the tip or along the stem of fine, scratchy branches beside a wetland in northern Michigan.

Leatherleaf,
Chamaedaphne calyculata

Bog Rosemary,
Andromeda polifolia

Bog Rosemary in flower

Bearberry,
Arctostaphylos uva-ursi

Bearberry in flower

Bearberry in fruit (autumn)

The small, round leaves of Bearberry were dried and smoked as tobacco by Native Americans.

Labrador Tea,
Ledum groenlandicum

Labrador Tea in flower

In the James Bay and Hudson Bay areas, the leaves of Labrador Tea were dried and brewed as tea.

Lowbush Blueberry,
Vaccinium angustifolium

Blueberry in flower

Do you see a family resemblance?

Heard Only

Lake Nettie in the Morning

I wake this morning to the sound of tree frogs.
Warm, heavy air has been spread over the Ohio River valley like a scratchy wool blanket that I would peel back and crawl out from underneath, if I could.
The weight is almost stifling—the dampness on my skin, constant.
But in the hush of dawn, those few brief moments before daylight brings the rustling of leaves and the chorus of songbirds to these woods, I recall the sounds of northern Michigan—the birds heard only, not seen.
And I remember in a dream the richness their simple song can bring to a cool and silent night.

Just beyond NettieBay Lodge, our home-base for a week of Birding & Botany in beautiful Presque Isle County, a narrow gravel lane draws a straight line north past woods that give way to water, then become woods once more. Thick and brushy, an undergrowth of alders rims the single-lane road. Peering past them, white cedars with buttressed bases can be seen standing in several inches of dark swamp water. As daylight fades, the dim woods become darker still.
The sounds from beyond the road’s edge are sharp and strong as we walk past—a veery’s strident call.
Soon, the distant song of a whip-poor-will is answered by another, much closer, who sings faster and stronger, from deep within the alder thicket. This narrow lane with its dimming light is the only opening in these very dense woods--the perfect place for the wide-gaped birds to wait and snatch some tasty moths drawn to this clearing in the brush.
High overhead, against what little faint blue remains, an almost imperceptible twitter betrays the dusk display of a woodcock. Around the sky he tumbles on whistling wings, then drops to the ground in a small, grassy clearing beside us to resume his courtship dance for the benefit of one we cannot see. We leave his persistent peent at the edge of the dark woods and wander further down the road.
The sound of frogs has grown loud and shrill. Spring peepers fill the wetland. Gray tree frogs’ calls resound all around. Here, amidst the foreign, I find the familiar—what I know so well of the warm spring nights spent beside my vernal pool. Yet, to listen for birds at this water’s edge, their calls are overpowering.
Stepping away, we wander slowly back to the car and roll softly down the lane, windows down, combing the night air, soaking in the sounds of northern Michigan. The whip-poor-wills are now perched at the road’s edge. In the moonlight, their red eyeshine eerily flashes in the headlights of our approaching car as they grab insects from their posts beside the road and cross in the beam of our light to the other side.
Lake Nettie is calm and still beyond the door of my cabin. Beneath a clouded moon, the mournful call of a pair of nesting loons spreads across the 278-acre lake. Perhaps more than any other sound, it is theirs that, to me, captures all that is wild and pure of the north woods.
A call, like the others of this night, that is rich and distinctive, revealing of its place.
A call that with it brings a cool breeze to a dream in an Ohio River valley summer night.

Lake Nettie
from NettieBay Lodge

Pure Michigan

a rustic trail on Michigan's northern lower peninsula

From a small and unpaved lot, a gravel trail winds off toward the Huron shore. Between the rough and lichen-covered stands of evergreens, in what would seem, to many, inhospitable ground, small plants thrive in the rocky limestone.
From beneath bent and weathered branches, delicate white flowers reach into spots of sunshine.

Limber Honeysuckle, Lonicera dioica

A well-mannered native honeysuckle sends forth its first tentative growth of spring.
These woods are yet unspoiled.

Starry False Solomon's-Seal, Smilacina stellata

As much as many see the vast expanse of blue,

or wild and untamed land, the cobbled shore,
I see that the small, white flowers grow here--
still.

Starflower, Trientalis borealis

Dwarf Lake Iris, Iris lacustris, forma albiflora (white form),
found only in Great Lakes region

Bird's-eye Primrose, Primula mistassinica



Bearberry, Arctostaphylos uva-ursi
presumed extirpated from OH

Bunchberry, Cornus canadensis
endangered in OH



Bastard Toadflax, Comandra umbellata

Labrador-tea, Ledum groenlandicum
endangered in OH

More discoveries to come from along the trail of the Birds and Botany weekend hosted by NettieBay Lodge.

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The Hungry Lake

Twelve-mile Beach,
Lake Superior

Waves tugging at the sand beside the broad blue of Superior, with great effort she lifted herself-- each labored step, dragging her clumsy body a bit further, beyond their reach onto the otherwise empty, windblown edge of Michigan’s Twelve-mile Beach.
Knocked off the breeze carrying her in carefree flight above its lapping waters by a long, curling tongue of this hungry lake, she’d escaped a watery death.
But, wings now heavy with droplets, she could not rise from the smooth, wet sand.

Green Darner dragonfly, female

As the grains dissolved from beneath each tiny, clawed foot, I stooped and lifted her onto my finger and walked with her, while the wind dried her transparent wings.
I left her to rest on a strand of beach grass beside the great lake, which boasts of many victories--having devoured so many, so great.
While her insatiable hunger goes on, I stole this dragonfly from her plate.

windswept sand

(click to enlarge)

Twelve-mile Beach

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In Hiawatha's Footsteps

Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan

the Upper Falls from the platform

The Tahquamenon River (rhymes with phenomenon) flows north into Lake Superior, after winding nearly 100 miles through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to empty into Whitefish Bay. From swamps lined with hemlock and spruce, their tannins having stained its rushing waters brown, it passes here, over the Upper Falls in Tahquamenon State Park, falling 50 feet from a magnificent rocky bed, 200 feet across.
A viewing platform holds visitors from the edge and steers them along a partially paved, intermittently boarded walkway, scattered with signs and heavily treed with birch and dense evergreen.
Years ago, the Ojibwa walked these woods—traveling this river in their birch bark canoes, hunting these woods from its shore.

the Lower Falls,
Tahquamenon State Park

We stepped from the boardwalk, leaving the hollow footsteps of galloping children at the river’s edge, and entered the dark and quiet woods. A narrow, marked trail crossed a small feeder stream then climbed up a hill where patches of sunlight fed an assortment of ferns on its bank, and heavy moss grew soft on fallen logs beneath their shadow. Though still September, already the leaves of poplar and birch were fading and fallen—the winding trail, no more than an earthen path between them. And our footsteps, barely heard.




From behind a small hemlock, scurrying steps suddenly stopped. And we peeked beneath its lowest branch to see three dark birds, just off the trail, several feet in front of us. Not rising in the flurry of flapping wings as I would have expected, the small group of Ruffed Grouse barely moved, disappearing in their stillness against the shaded leaves. And as I sat squarely on the dirt, inching forward with my camera, they stayed, perched on the low branches, peeking back at me. Then in no hurry, stepped off and crossed to the other side of the trail, following the hillside past the patches of sunlit fern.
Here, on a quiet trail in the land of Tahquamenaw, it was as it could have been, in years past.
As if I walked in Hiawatha's footsteps.

Ruffed Grouse

From an assortment of sources, I have learned that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Song of Hiawatha, which was written based upon legends of the Ojibwa and other Native American peoples, refers to “the rushing Tahquamenaw,” a spelling variation coming from an Ojibwa word meaning “dark berry.”
Written in several forms, some dating back to Jesuit maps published in 1672, this word has varied in spelling from Outa koua minan to Otikwaminang, Outakwamenon, Tanguamanon, Toumequellen and Tahquamenaw.
From Wikipedia:
"The current name for the Tahquamenon River in the Ojibwa language is Adikamegong-ziibi, "River at where the Whitefish are found." This name is also the naming basis for the Whitefish Point and Whitefish Bay, both known earlier as Tahquamenaw."

Tansy

Pearly Everlasting

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