eckermanmichigan.com Blog

   I went up to Eckerman with Don last week on our yearly February visit. Some years, Doug, B.B. or Jamie were there but it didn’t work out that way this year. We’d scheduled a couple different weekends where we could all go, but that’s hard to do with everyone having families. Finally, Don had had enough and asked me on a spur of the moment thing to run up, spend one night and come back the next day. He wanted to see someone about a load of wood for the cabin and watch Gunnar in a basketball playoff game.

   Gunnar had been on the J.V. team as a Freshman and was moved up to varsity for this game. He lives in St. Ignace and they were playing Manestique in Rudyard, which is only 30 miles away. 30 miles in the U.P. is like 5 miles in the L.P. Your nearest neighbor might be a mile down the road, but “he’s right next door”.

   We got to the cabin around 4 so we still had enough time to get the fire going before the sun disapeared behind the pines. No matter how cold it is during the day, once the sun gets near the tops of those trees, it gets worse fast. After opening the cabin up, I grabbed a scoop shovel and started digging my way out. To get in, I had to climb over a small glacier left from the snowplow operator. I haven’t figured out why he leaves a nice pile of snow there, but I’m not the one doing the work. The snow depth is lower this year than two years ago, but it’s still 3′ on the level which makes for some nice snow piles.

   After I’d cut a way into the cabin, I off loaded two tubs of firewood and split some up for Don. He’d used what was left in the cabin but we were going to need a lot more than that. No one is allowed to transport firewood across the bridge due to the Emarald Ash Borer, but we were using maple and kept it all in those tubs with the lid on. It turned out that it took two tubs for 24 hours heating. With the cabin heating up, Don and I headed over to Rudyard for his son’s basketball game.

   We figured that the game would start at 7 so we left around 6 figuring it would give us pleanty of time to get there and watch some warmups before the game. The roads were clear and dry with the snowbanks pushed way back, so we could see well into the tree line. There was a lot of evidence of snowmobile traffic but there were very few machines out and there wasn’t any game tracks. On the way up from Ann Arbor I saw many spots where herds of deer have crossed I75, but there wasn’t a one crossing M28. The road from 28 down to Rudyard was gravel in the summer and ice covered in spots that night. In between the ice spots, huge billowing clouds of claydust followed us down the road, but we didn’t know it at the time. It wasn’t till the ride back when we met on coming traffic and went blind for periods when we realized what was up. It turned out the game started at 6 instead of 7 and they were half way through the 3rd period when we arrived. We wern’t able to catch any of Gunnar’s playing and unfortunatly they lost the game.

   When we got back to the cabin, it was zero degrees. I looked everywhere and not a one was to be seen. The cabin was warm, 65 degrees warmer than it was outside and I almost gave the stove a hug. As much as I enjoy being warm, I enjoy it even more when it’s cold as hell outside and I’m not. We’d been told that the low would be around -10º and that turned out to be an underestimate. We were pleanty hungry when we got back from the game, so we both started getting out our goodies.

   Don brought along some sauerkraut and sausage, and I brought up some bourbon marinated meatballs. He’d been giving me crap about my dislike for kraut and I think he wanted to see if I was as bad as I said I was. He was right, I was wrong and the stuff is great! Must be mom added something that ignited my puke fuse, that Don doesn’t use. After dinner we sat at the kitchen table and talked about the cabin, and their plans for it.

   It’s being planned to remove the vestibule and replace it with a screened in porch. It would add half again it’s floor area and make the cabin accessable all year. You can get to the cabin year round, living there is another matter. I have yet to witness the conditions personally, but I’ve been West of there about the same time and know the effects. When you return home from one of these events, you carry reminders of it for days afterwards. For me, it was the hat line where the blackfly’s would gather and trade bodily fluids with me, leaving hard itching bumps behind.

   I was peeing in the Hiawatha National Forest one time when I looked down upon my manhood and saw a mosqueto having her way with me. The punch lines are endless and I’ll leave it at that.

   Anyway, the front porch will be a great addition to the cabin and I’m looking forward to help build it. As the evening progressed, we’d step outside to check the temp and take a leak. It’s nice being the male of the species, we don’t have to sit. Neither one of us had been back to the shithouse yet, but we knew it was gonna be cold when we got there. Every year I take a picture of the pretty crystals that seem to form around the ring and I planned on doing that in the morning. After all the pork I’d just eaten I knew my butt was going to be ploped upon it, first thing. It was -6º when we went to bed.

   It was -18º when we got up. While relieving myself, I looked straight up and saw light emmited 100 billion years ago, from a point in the sky. The MilkyWay was a solid cloud rather than specks of light and my piss was froze solid by the time I walked back in the cabin. Don had got up earlier and had a pot of coffee on, so I had a cup of coffee with me when I headed for the outhouse. With a small stove and a flashlight in one hand, and coffee in the other, I trudged back to see what delights that little building beheld this morning.

   It’s things like this that can create constipation and maybe even erectile dysfunction, but what’s a guy to do? It didn’t take long to clear the problem and having it that cold does have it’s benifits. (There won’t be a picture of that) I feel for the first person in there after the thaw though.

   After it got warm enough for me to stay outside longer than necessary, I got out my 10/22 and went looking for targets. I was looking for snow puffs to shoot when Don suggested a tree limb. One of the poplars in his yard is dying back and it needed some pruning. He picked out a particular spot and we started pecking away at it until it fell off and we worked our way back. There were woodchips and .22 casings everywhere and three nice limbs stuck in the snow below the tree. One more limb is still attatched with a nice hole drilled through it but I suspect it’ll be down by the time I get up there again.

   Around 11, Don fried up some pork loins that he’d been marinating in a vigenette all morning and the cabin once again took on that aroma. We cleaned up the cabin, and made a list of everything the cabin would need for the next trip and headed off to our next assignment. Last year while I was there, I picked up a load of firewood from a guy in Strongs and we were going to see if he’d deliver. He wasn’t there, he was off logging pine, but Don got three phone numbers from the store there in town. His wife and some friends of theirs are going to use the cabin in a couple weeks and they’re going to need it. They may want to take an extra heater for the outhouse too.