The sun shone down on my face from the peak of its daily ascent. I lay there, on some of the oldest rocks in the world with my feet dangling over the edge of the ridge, dozing in the mid-day heat and taking a break from my ritual of the day.
The ritual of meticulously placing my hiking pole in a spot that would support and balance me as I swung my foot up onto the rocky ridge in front of me, pushing myself forward on the stretch of trail that is routinely referred to as “the hardest trail in Michigan” only to catch myself as I picked my way down the rocks back into the boreal forest. The process would repeat itself less than a quarter mile later.
I lay there, along with the lichen, soaking up the late September sun and allowing it to turn the sweat on my brow into salt lines, giving me a faux aged look, until the call of a bull moose rang out from the wilderness below my feet spurred me up and onto my destination for the day, still a few hard miles on down the trail.
Modern History of Isle Royale
Isle Royale National Park is an island located in Lake Superior, the largest of the five Great Lakes. Gitche Gumee, as the Ojibwe tribe calls this body of water, is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area and third largest by volume. Isle Royale is the largest island on this lake, at 45 miles long and 9 miles wide.
Historically, the Ojibwa peoples used Isle Royale as a hunting ground. The British gained control of it and then gave it to the United States in 1783 and ceded control after the War of 1812. The Ojibwa people were coerced into ceding the island to the United States in a series of treaties and addendum during the 1840s.
Geology and Ecology of the Island
In terms of nature, Isle Royale is a fascinating place. In the past it was mined for iron and copper and the boreal forest was logged pretty much entirely. The forest has regenerated since the designation of National Park status in 1940 and includes a number of hardwood trees.
There are several lakes and streams that dot and criss-cross the island and a variety of creatures that call this place home, such as squirrels, foxes, jays and various birds of prey. But perhaps the most famous of the island’s residents are the moose and wolves that live there.
It is assumed the the moose swam the approximate 15 miles from the shores of Minnesota and Canada to the island and then later, in the mid 20th century wolves walked across an ice bridge to find a large population of moose. The relationship between these predators and prey has been a part of a study for about 60 years, the longest of its kind. Today, there are about 1250 moose on the island and three wolves and the fate of the presence of wolves is currently a part of a plan that is being addressed by Congress.
A Traverse of the Island
The call of the bull moose that awoke me from my afternoon doze on the rocks was a sound I heard a handful of times in my trek along the Minong Ridge Trail. I spent my nights in the backcountry at the North Lake Desor, Little Todd and McCargoe Cove campgrounds, which dot the 31-mile trail at distances easily covered by a reasonably fit person. There’s even Todd Harbor campground stuck in there as well if you want to stretch out your trip on this trail a bit more, and where I stopped for lunch on my third day on the trail.
I crossed the island past East Chickenbone campground, scanning Chickenbone Lake quickly for signs of the creatures whose calls I kept hearing, but without any luck, and made my way to Daisy Farm campground.
I chatted with other campers there and gazed out at the great lake’s waters that found stillness in the bay there and the loons that skimmed across it. Their laughter woke me up the next morning and the grey skies and cool weather of fall descended on the day, in case I had forgotten what time of year it was with the previous beautiful, warm days.
I made my way to Rock Harbor, my final destination, where I snuggled in my sleeping bag in a shelter feeling a sense of accomplishment while the rain began to sprinkle. And just as I began to drift off into my last dreams on the island, one of my four-legged friends, who had been calling to me for the past five days, stumbled through the brush in the descending darkness of the late twilight and in front of my home for the evening, on down to Gitche Gumee where she gulped down some of the same sacred waters that had hydrated me.