Otter Creek & Otter Lake

 

If you’ve been to Esch Beach you know Otter Creek empties out into the big lake there. The mouth of the creek is always beautiful and never the same. It’s a crucible of many natural forces conspicuously at work and it’s nearly impossible to discern the series of events that aligned to create the exact shape of sand, water, and stone at the mouth. Did wave action trump water currents and wind? At what point did flowing water and erosion take over and carve this specific channel through the beach?

I’ve always loved Esch Beach, it’s easy to love, but I’d also been curious about what lies upstream of Otter Creek’s mouth for a long time. If you are curious as well and want to know a bit more about where the water that trickles into Lake Michigan comes from, there is a 4.6 mile loop, part of the Platte Plains Trail System, that will take you back to Otter Lake and beyond toward the creek’s headwaters. The trail skirts a cedar swamp, which is a hub for innumerable deer highways, and meanders through pine plantations, hardwood forests, open fields, and eventually circles around Otter Lake. The lake is surprisingly large and only a couple folks were out ice-fishing on it, probably because it’s pretty hard to get to with a vehicle.

I snowshoed the loop and it was a nice way to travel because I could easily go off the track and look at “shiny objects” as I wished, but I followed a group on skis and they seemed to be having a great time as well. I’ve never done this trail in the summer, but I imagine it would be an amazing trail run and hope to try it out. Let me know what you think about this place and enjoy!

 

Traverse City Winter Comedy Arts Fest 2013

Photo by Nate Richardson

This weekend, courtesy of the Winter Comedy Arts Fest, there is free ice skating, sledding, Ferris wheel rides, music, and dancing on Front Street.  Hours and details here.  Interested in some laughs? Check out the lineup.

Proposed Timbers Recreation Area

TimbersEntrance

 

One common thread for us here in northern Michigan is our love of the outdoors. Folks who live in and care about this area have chosen to protect and preserve natural lands for their awe-inspiring beauty, ecological value, and amazing recreation opportunities. We walk our dogs, watch birds, exercise, rejuvenate & breath in these places and they are woven tightly into the fabric of our northern lives. Less than ten miles west of Traverse City there is a place that promises to be another gorgeous thread in our public land tapestry.

The Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy (GTRLC) is actively working on behalf of Long Lake Township to protect the +/- 250-acre former Timbers Girl Scout Camp.  The property is situated on the north end of Long Lake and includes 2,000 feet of undeveloped shoreline on Long Lake, an entire 20-acre lake within its boundary called Fern Lake,  and roughly 2,400 feet on Page Lake. The rest of the property is a combination of forest, fields and wetlands. The diverse landscape has a network of two-tracks and trails throughout, with great potential for further trail development. More information is available in a GTRLC press release and project description.

If you’d like to take this place for a test drive and learn more about the project, consider attending a Conservancy-hosted event this Saturday at 1pm that will include skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, a warm fire, beautiful scenery, probably a laugh or two, and of course hot chocolate. It promises to be a good time and you will likely come away understanding what a wonderful opportunity protecting this place is for all of us.

Disclaimer: If you do choose to head out be warned the place is crawling with Snoa Constrictors! (see photo).

 

 

 

 

 

Valley of the Giants

Photo by Nate Richardson

Valley of the Giants: If your inner child is even remotely still with you, a mystical title like that should evoke imagery from the worlds of Harry Potter, Narnia, Lord of the Rings,  King Arthur’s Camelot, or perhaps the vacant lot in your childhood neighborhood. The local realm of these mythically-large fellows is a deep dark forest valley with a babbling brook and a secret entrance that only the most intrepid can find and enter. Our giants are massive White Pines who have observed and recorded the passage of time in this area for centuries.  Their size, silence, and amazing home cast an air of reverence over most everyone who enters.

The path through the Valley is a piece of  The North Country Trail maintained locally by the Grand Traverse Hiking Club. The footway is well maintained and respectfully wanders through sensitive wetland and riparian areas associated with 22 Mile Creek, an amazingly beautiful tributary to the Boardman River.

Is the Valley entrance really secret? Well, the Valley is close to home (located in the Traverse City State Forest Area southeast of Traverse City), but it isn’t super easy to get to using information available on the web. But there is no mistaking the entrance once discovered, it is conspicuously marked by a hand-painted sign which hangs, in what seems to be, the middle of nowhere. It’s remote enough that whoever took the time to make, schlep, and hang the sign is definitely on your mind. Over the holidays I spent three consecutive days attempting to get to the Valley of the Giants: one day I didn’t make it, the next I just barely made it, and the last, made it there in about 15 minutes. So I’m torn. I feel as though maybe the giants are telling me something.  I want to share this place and could easily drop a pin on a map and post it so anyone could make it a quick afternoon hike. But should I rob folks of the hours of “backyard” exploration, the conversations had along the way, the euphoria felt upon finding it at long last?  Here’s the deal I cut with the giants – if you wish to visit the Valley and care enough to leave a comment I’ll send you the map!

 

 

Squirrel Stories

 

Photo by: Kim Schwaiger

 

#1
Loud rustling up in an oak tree at the park turned out to be a squirrel tugging at leaves and tucking them under his arm for another layer of insulation. On his way from the oak to his home pine he came close enough to me that I could hear him muttering something about wildly fluctuating weather patterns, carbon footprints, and is it winter for real this time or what?

#2
Walking through a parking lot I came around the corner of a car to see two black squirrels perched on top of two consecutive posts of a split rail fence. They were both staring directly at me pretending to eat or otherwise fiddle with something in their hands. When I lingered too long and went for the camera in my pocket they got spooked, let off a warning and high tailed it out of there… at the same time two gray squirrels shot out from the wheel well of the parked car. My analysis of the situation? The two black squirrels were lookouts for the two gray squirrels who were trying to hot wire the car and head south for some warmer climes. I really wish I hadn’t messed things up for them.

Even northern Michigan stalwarts wrestle with the cold from time to time.

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