Sarah at the Cliffs

Sarah enjoying a snowshoe in the cliffs.
The lovely Sarah -- who you may have heard of -- went snowshoeing with me, up to the cliffs, a few weekends ago. We had a lovely time, especially when I discovered how much she likes to stand under big pine trees and shake them until all the snow falls down on her!

Here she is, just after one of those silly tree-shakings, as lovely as ever!

Cliff Swamp, Try 2

The Cliffs, in Black and White
Thanks to all for the help with the last incarnation of this photo. I've given it a high-contrast black-and-white treatment -- I really like this version much more than the highly colorful version before. Enjoy!

Cliff Swamp

The West Branch of the Eagle River
Officially this is a branch of the Eagle River, as it flows past the base of the Cliffs and into the main Eagle River. However, it's really just a swamp with a bit of a current!

I'm not sure what to do with this photo, so I'm hoping that you, my Horde of Readers, might have some suggestions. The colors in this photo are genuine -- no post-processing except for basic levels/curves in Gimp! They look so bright as to be unreal to me. Feel free to leave comments or ideas!

Four graves in one

A headstone at the Cliff Catholic cemetery
The Cliff cemeteries are beautiful any time of year -- they've been overgrown with beautiful trees which keep them shady and cool. But they're even more beautiful in the winter, when everything is covered with a layer of snow. Here is one of the headstones, under a spreading pine tree. It's actually four headstones all at once: three young children and a wife. As much as I would have loved to have seen the Keweenaw back when the mines were still going strong, I'm also very glad not to live in times when life was this hard.

Winter Leaves

Orange leaves at the Cliffs.

It's -11 this morning before the wind chill. Just thought you should know.

I found these on my first snowshoe outing of the year -- up the North American gap at the Cliffs. The colors are almost exactly as they were in the original -- bright orange leaves, wonderfully blue snow behind them.

I love getting out and snowshoeing through the midst of the woods -- absolutely silent and isolated, with a little breeze and some snow falling from the high branches of the trees. I can't wait to get out again...

First Snow

Hang on!If you like my photos, you might like a print on your wall!
Winter finally started this weekend. Down here in the valley, the snow started on Friday night and didn't stop until late on Sunday. We got about 2-3 inches in the end, and it's actually stuck around for a few days.

To enjoy the snow, I made a trip up to the cliffs on Saturday. There's nothing quite like standing in a quiet forest with snow coming down all around you. While I was there, I found this leaf just barely hanging on to an otherwise bare tree.

It looks like the snow will melt this week -- it never really sticks until Thanksgiving. But until then I'll enjoy the remains of the first snow.

And now some silliness:

I'm singin' in the snow
Just singin' in the snow!
What a glorious feeling,
it's 20 below...
-- Garrison Keillor

The Prayer Tree

A mystery tree at the cliffs.
If you've ever looked around the cliffs near the old Cliff mine, you've certainly noticed the big rock pile coming right down the cliff face from the top of the cliffs. That old rock pile comes from the Cliff #3 shaft, which is right on top of the cliffs. It's also a fun place to hike and get a good view. (Mike's got a good article about this part of the mine -- the first photo has the rock pile on the far left side.)

I'd never actually climbed up to that part of the cliffs before, so a couple weekends ago I thought I'd go straight up the rock pile and see what I could see. The pile is very steep, but not impossible to climb. Making it harder, however, were the apple cores raining down upon me from above! A boy scout troop happened to be having a picnic up at the top, and they were throwing their cores to see how far they would go -- apparently my bright purple jacket and blaze orange hat weren't visible among the trees at the bottom. I kindly informed them of my presence.

Up at the top, I rested and enjoyed a lovely view (possibly surpassing the cliff lookout). The rock pile is pretty wide at the top, and very overgrown with trees and weeds. Wandering along the cliff face for a while, I found this tree right on the edge of the cliffs. The photo shows the basic idea: it was covered in post cards, scraps of paper with poems, random messages, and prayer flags. I have no idea what it was or who put it there, except that it was absolutely amazing to find it hidden up there, hidden in an overgrown wilderness.

Also at the top, I found the ruins of an old hoist house, a boiler stack, and sure enough -- the old Cliff #3 shaft (filled but slowly coming open again as wind, rain, and snow take their toll).

I feel sort of compelled to go back and add something of my own to the tree... maybe a photo of this tree?

After the rain

Looking down Cliff Drive towards Centennial, after a late fall rain.
If you like this photo, you can order a print of it!

Saturdays are my one day off, so I try to make them count. I spent last Saturday enjoying some beautiful new sights up in the Keweenaw. One thing I noticed was this view heading south along Cliff drive -- with the old Centennial #6 headframe in the distance. We had had on-and-off rain all day, and the road was shimmering.

I also wandered around the old Phoenix mine rock pile for a while. There is a lot to see up there, including an nice view from the top of the pile -- and an amazing view from the top of the cliffs! Unfortunately, I tossed most of those photos into the big digital trash can. Perhaps I'll return on snowshoes this winter and try again.

I also visited a remote and (to me at least) unknown rocky bluff -- which I have claimed for my own. More photos from there soon!

Cliff Cemetery

Joseph Schick, 1884, at the Cliff Catholic Cemetery

Turns out there are two Cliff cemeteries -- a Catholic one and a Protestant one. I've been to the Protestant one many times, which is just off Cliff Drive, in the shadow of the cliffs, near the rest of the mine ruins.

However, on US-41 about a mile from the north intersection with Cliff Drive, there is a small sign on the side of the road which say "Cliff Cemetery". For years, I'd drive past it and think, "Boy, that sign sure is a long way away from the cemetery, it's not even on this road!" Then one day I actually stopped to look, and sure enough, just down from the sign there is a tiny little path going into the woods. It passes a tiny stream, past some huge old trees, and through a patch of thimbleberries. All of a sudden, the ground becomes covered entirely by some very low-growing dark green leafy shrub, through which very old headstones poke up. There's also a very old poor rock foundation, maybe from a small chapel, and a small stand of pines.

Edit (2/18/2009): Recently I had an email conversation with Mary Drew over at pasty.com. She had looked through my blog, found this post, and passed along this story about the grave in my photo:

I have an Adult Foster Care Home where I care for 6 residents, some elderly, others not so elderly, but just needing assistance to get through each day. One of our elderly residents up until she passed away at 96, was a sweet little lady named Irene. [The grave in this photo] is her Grandfather's grave and her Father and she, planted the flowering ground cover you see in the photo there around his grave, then it spread and started covering everywhere. I think it's called phlox. Up until the last couple years Irene lived with us, her nephew (who is 78) would take her up there to the Cliff Cemetery each summer and they would take the short hike in to visit her Grandfather's grave. My husband and I have been there several times since she passed away, just to pay our respects to Joseph and the others buried there.

What a wonderful story! (And now we know where that nifty ground cover came from.) I wish that I'd had a chance to talk to Irene about her memories. Mary also mentioned that, a few years back, some group of people was doing interviews with people who remembered the Italian hall disaster, for the purpose of making a documentary. Neither of us knows anything about that documentary though -- anyone out there have an idea?

I was there!

Lookout below!

Another (slightly) oldie from my "interesting" collection. You can't quite see it from here, but my snowshoe tracks are up there!

This is one of my favorite places along the Cliff range: The Lookout. Apparently different people have different lookouts, but this is what I think of as the Cliff Lookout.

It's a bit of a hike (no, you don't have to go straight up the side of the cliffs... but you can if you want), but the view is 100% worth it. You can even see the silhouettes of the Huron Mountains in the distance. The most amazing thing, to me, is that tree -- you can see it here. It's a big old pine growing straight up out of the rock, over the edge of the cliffs.

There's nothing quite like the solitude at the top of the lookout. When I snowshoed out to the lookout, there weren't any tracks at all on the trail to the lookout -- nor on the trail to the trail! It was one of those feelings which I love when I'm hiking up here -- that I'm the first person in years to set foot here and see these sights. It might not be true, but this is still one of my favorite places to go whenever I really need some time alone.