Neebish Island, Little Gem of The St. Marys River

If you drive north through Michigan, across the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula, you will still have another hour of driving ahead of you before you reach the ferry to the island. The ferry boat dock juts out of the tiny town of Barbeau, Michigan, pointing out into the narrow but turbulent downbound channel of the St. Marys River. The St. Marys connects Lake Huron and Lake Superior, and it is packed with little islands that fit next to each other like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Big Neebish and its tinier partner Raines Island are two rugged fragments among the many.

A friend who was raised there once described the Upper Peninsula to me as "the land that time forgot". He didn't mean it as a compliment. For myself, I do like the way time seems to behave when I am at Neebish. It doesn't proceed in a straight line as it usually does, but it seems more to eddy through past and future and present in a wandering, curving way. This can take a little getting used to.

We go there in the summers -- my husband's family has had summer houses there since the turn of the previous century, when summer houses were mostly birch bark lodges. Even in summer, Neebish is not a busy place by any standard, and in winter only a handful of resident families remain. There is one tiny store. There was never more than one, and during some decades, there was no store at all. There is one church -- Presbyterian, as it happens, but the sign out front makes it clear that absolutely anyone can attend. Although there is a firehouse, fire is always a threat. The ingress to some cottages amounts to no more than a footpath that no firetruck could hope to negotiate. It's wise to scratch out a two-rutted road for your house and build by the river, or next to the soggy creek that separates Big Neebish from Raines Island. That way, the pumper truck can throw its hose into the water nearby. If one's place somehow catches fire in the winter when everything is frozen, there's truly not a thing to be done.

There is no gas station on the island, either.

This list of inconveniences makes sweet Neebish unattractive to many people, but it makes it very dear to me. It also makes it dear to any number of other races of beings that populate our planet, and I am freer there to enjoy their company than anywhere else on earth.

Migratory birds nest and sing in the cedars, and there are other birds that one can rarely spy elsewhere. They are the transients, passing through on their way to nesting grounds still further to the north, where there are no trees to sing in. I think it causes me to feel I have something particularly in common with them. LV
This is just one in a series of articles and photograph portfolios of Neebish Island. You're invited to subscribe to The NewsFEATHER (see the navigation bar, above left), so you won't miss the wildlife, the riverscapes, or the freighters.