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He rode up that way on a 4-wheeler about 2:00 in the afternoon, and was over by the lake, when he saw a strange configuration of antlers protruding just a little above the grass. So he got off the 4-wheeler, loaded his gun, and started walking toward this confusing sight. Suddenly a deer jumped up in front of him, and dangling off the head of one deer was another deer!> Not exactly knowing what he was observing, Richard shot the deer, and then contemplated his problem.

It appears that two bucks had been dueling and, after the battle, were unable to unlock their locked horns. Previous to Richard's shot, one deer was dead, and one was alive.

Richard called home on the cell phone for Jim to come with the truck and HELP try to get these two deer separated. It's estimated that the "deadest" deer had been dead for one or two days. The bottom half of the deer was shredded and mangled, and there were drag marks and other sign around where the living deer had apparently been shaking the attached dead deer like a rag doll, trying to get their horns unlocked.

Jim and Richard tried for ten minutes to separate the two deer, and couldn't. So it seemed the only solution was to sever the body of the mangled deer from its head, thus leaving Richard with a two-headed deer!! The newly shot deer had 10 points, and the old, dead deer had 8 points. So does that mean Richard shot an 18 point deer?

Needless to say, things being quiet as they are in Eagle Harbor this time of the year, this event created a flurry of on-lookers and photographers. We have numerous snapshots (none developed) and some footage on home video. Richard took the deer back to Marquette yesterday (Sat.) to be butchered, and they have contacted a taxidermist who will preserve both heads "as is".

Sorry you missed the excitement. You would have chuckled at some of the comments and reactions.
Richard's "two headed" deer heads are now proudly displayed at the Eagle Harbor Inn.

"Lost Lake" by Paul Freshwater (01/04)
(Click picture to enlarge. Thanks to Neil Harri for this Christmas Day photo. "Lost Lake" is the white area at bottom left. Its isolated and marshy shore is a favorite stop for Sandhill cranes as the migrate from the tundra to the Gulf.)

An idea slowly takes shape in my tattered brain. Somewhere in the cedar swamp behind the new home we’re building down the road is a lost lake. Not a large lake ? perhaps a quarter mile from end to end ? but big enough to sport a fallen duck blind at one end. I had stumbled upon it two or three summers ago when exploring the dense and often swampy forest behind our current cottage. I had not returned because all approaches to the lake seem barricaded by mazes of wet bog and decades of dense windfalls. But yesterday good neighbor Neil Harri presented me with a handful of aerial photos of the harbor and our new home which he took on a Christmas Day flight. And from the air, not more than a hundred yards behind our new back yard, was revealed the large patch of glistening white, unbroken by cedar or tamarack, the lost lake of seasons past. Surely the swamp around it must be frozen solid by this week’s cold snap and a foot of snow cover. If indeed the lake is so close, might I blaze a trail to visit it regularly? Might I put a small boat there, far from the killer storms of Lake Superior? Might I sit on its shore to watch wild creatures ply their evening rounds? Might it contain a willing fish?

The short boreal day is fading fast as 4 PM passes. The Packers test my patience by allowing the game to slide into overtime. I go to the closet and dig out my deep-winter boots, then to the bedroom to find my long johns and turtleneck. I am fully dressed for a 15-degree evening when the Packers finally pick off a Seahawk pass to send Green Bay on to Philadelphia and Bret Favre’s fur-wrapped admirers into spasms of ecstacy. I stand up and tell Bobbie that I will be taking a walk in the swamp south of town. She utters one of those wifely reactions which hint at both devotion and contempt. I remind her that our good neighbor and town webmaster, George Hite, who holds the world record for cardiac operations, frequently strikes out through the snow on solo adventures, most of which he survives without broken bones.

The new back yard is deserted, except for the workmen’s portable toilet and a couple of lumps suggesting construction debris under the blanket of snow. The three-story structure which next year will become our home looks silently out to sea as I turn my attention to the swamp behind it. But where to attack this Gordian knot of tangled trees and brush? I choose a corner which looks the highest and push forward, sinking nearly to boot tops with each step and finding the ground not nearly as frozen as I had expected. I climb over the first fallen log. Beyond it another. And another. Soon I feel boxed in with the way back as daunting as the way ahead. A rabbit track passes underfoot, suggesting that at least one creature has found a way to negotiate this thicket. I press on over the next windfall. Then stand stupidly for a moment contemplating the next, ever glad that I had thought to bring along one of the sturdy Kentucky ironwood staffs carved in my previous life. Have I come even a hundred feet yet? Is there a hole in the trees ahead? Press on. And over. At last, a break in the tree canopy ahead. The lake is, indeed, directly behind my lot. But here the ground gives way to a lattice of fallen cedar logs laced with wet bog. My boot sinks past its top and I feel the first incursion of freezing water. Then the other boot as well. Oh, well, my quarry is in sight.

I force myself through the last barrier of small saplings to the marge of the snow-covered lake. Across its smooth surface the trails of small animals criss cross as a record of their wanderings. I take a step closer to gauge whether the east end of the lake might be more easily reached through the forest behind our cottage down the road. The ice gives way with a crack. I find myself several feet beyond the shore and now up to my wallet in frozen water. What a chilling sensation! The headline on George’s website flashes before my eyes: "Neighbor disappears in wake of Packer victory, grieving widow mourns with hot fudge sundae." I lean forward on my belly and slowly crawl toward vegetation as my wet legs hit frigid air. Again each boot finds a watery hole before I scramble onto the relative safety of a fallen log. Where are my footprints? I’m not going that way again! I climb over two or three more windfalls and fall flat on my face. Did my toe snag something or is my strength failing? "Spring thaw reveals neighbor as meal for roving coyotes." Two more falls and my numbing legs bring me within sight of the backs of cottages. In the dimming light, I stumble toward Neil’s, he of the aerial photos, and find that he has neatly plowed a mountain of snow to the back of his property which I must climb over. I do so on hands and knees, finding that the legs of my jeans now have the consistency of sheet metal.

I pick my way through the deserted back yards to the one behind my soon-to-be home, pausing at the neighbor’s tree line to admire the shapely metal roof and cedar walls from this unaccustomed vantage point. Cedar shakes don’t yet cover the Tyvek behind the garage because the family that makes them by hand in the Traprock Valley took a month off for hunting. Hunting season is a time-honored Yooper tradition, much like August vacations in Europe when no-one can find a grocer or doctor. I admire how our mechanical subcontractor has cleverly hidden the exhaust flues for three fireplaces, and I imagine how warm it would feel at this moment to be standing before a blazing one. A hot shower will have to do. These laces are frozen solid. I’m sorry about the puddle in the boot room. Yes, my dear, I know I’m an idiot.

"The Art of Rink Building" by Ross Freshwater (12/03)
(Click picture to enlarge. Old photo, but I never miss an opportunity to get Abby in the act.)

Welcome to Eagle Harbor; Population 50; Christmas time; 200. The store my great-great grandfather built still sits by the entrance to town, ghost still wandering benevolently around the attic. Just about every other Irish person around this place shares his name, among the other descendants of numerous Finns, Italians, Swedes, Germans, and the slew of other European stock that hit these shores to mine copper lodes worth more than even California’s gold.

So tonight's task; a hockey rink; an annual escapade; full of stupid human tricks, and a duty really. When your world is frozen for five solid months and the biggest building in town is the fire hall, the only communal respite from cabin fever is indeed a keen slab of ice, ten sticks, and a puck. Building the perfect rink, however, is not attained through a sloppy flood. Quite to the contrary, it is an art that requires patience, subtle craftsmanship, respect for the passage of time, a fire hose, at least four hearty men, a hearty truck, and above all, copious amounts of booze.

My compadres have already been busy at work for an hour. Now lacking in creative fluids, my punishment for not showing up exactly six minutes after greeting my parents, following my nine hour drive from Chicago, is to stock our crew with needed libations. This requires pulling up to the house of a forty-something from which us thirty-somethings have inherited this civic honor. While the particular forty-something saws logs upstairs and the teenage cause of their welcome rest watches late-night movies in the living room, it is the designated bar backs job to slip through the back door, past all defenses, to the liquor cabinet. At our first stop, Mikey Kukuk’s, I find a twelver of Negra Modelo just inside the back porch door. Will he ever learn? Perhaps it is an anonymous donation.

On to the fire hall, where behind, the industrial strength utility lamp perched on a portable goal post illuminates the sheen of the night’s first few layers. Off to the side, the fire hose spurts out a freeze foiling mist from its resting-place on a snow mound. “I’ll take this one boys,” as beers are cracked open and Rodney positions the hose between the knees of his snow pants, gaining the needed leverage to rocket eighty pounds of water pressure fifty feet into the air.

The physics of building a stellar rink is rather simple, yet highly delicate. The higher you shoot the water into the air and the better mist you achieve with it, the higher the probability the moon’s freezing rays will solidify that stuff just as it lands in an enamel blanket over the past minutes’ labors. Aim too low, and you’ll tear up your rink. Easy enough, but sometime just try angling eighty pounds of water in the right direction from an arc fifty feet up almost directly over you head. Pray for an agreeable wind, and wear Gore-Tex. While the hose helmsman is hard at work, also be prepared as assistants to engage in the busy task of snowball throwing, friend throwing, and the masterful art of North Woods BS.

As Rodney finishes up his rotation, Rich’s expert eye determines it’s a thick one. This will need a good half-hour to dry. What other service opportunities could pass the time? The four of us pile into Rich’s truck. His massive plow is the answer to the town’s other greatest need. With 250 inches of annual snow, there are few Yooper souls who don’t appreciate a courtesy plow-by; even if it is two o’clock in the morn. Watching Rich blaze that shovel within a graceful inch of every tree, box, and house in our path is every bit as fun as any other activity four guys might watch lined up on a bench akin to a living room couch. Just don’t let Jeff, the Florida bartender, near the remote.

On to the next dousing; another thick one; another half-hour to kill time. Back to the truck for a meander around town. While the forty-somethings saw logs, we spy a few fifty somethings watching a late night movie, perhaps powered by the fact that their own offspring have shipped off to college. We conveniently position the cab by their living room window, launch into a Silent Night rendition appropriate for the hour, and pull away to appreciative smirks. But not before steeling away their twenty-one year old son for his apprenticeship training.

Next dousing complete, we find we’re out of booze. Onto Phil’s house for another round of plunder. This time, the teenage sons are watching their movie by the only available door. In this situation there is but one option; a flagrant attack. Door swinging, we burst in bellowing “we’re here for your whiskey!” as I make a b-line for the kitchen cabinet. It’s dark. Two gallon bottles stand out among the lot. I swipe one and make for the door. As we tear off in a rooster tail of snow, Phil’s 6’4” frame comes lumbering down the stairs. “What the heck’s goin on down here?” “They pillaged the liquor cabinet dad.” A passive shrug as dad meanders his way back up the stairs.

I look down at my bounty as we cruise along in our bouncing rig. I grabbed the brandy. Good Grief. Two days later Phil will inform me that my punishment is to finish the bottle. Another dousing and another half-hour to kill. “Tomorrow is Lucy’s baptism guys, and I can’t settle for just water from the harbor, I need it from the big lake.” On to the marina, where the lava rock beach of exposed Superior sits just a hundred yards through the bush. “It sure would be nice to reach that lake tomorrow without snow in my boots.” Rodney’s wish is greeted with an acknowledging drop of the plow and an eight cylinder push through a powder white tunnel to the waves beyond.

The final dousing is in my hands. It is indeed a subtle art to send a geyser of water fifty-feet high yet inches just beyond your nose. I’ve never been much of an artist. Factor in the steady north wind and by application’s end I’m an icicle colony. It’s 5:00 AM. Shift’s done. Home to a hot shower that drains the water heater and a base-board heated bed. There’s something about a night’s sleep under your parent’s roof. It rests in a soundness like no other. So sound that when I lift my head to gaze at my watch, it’s two o’clock. For a teacher that normally rises at 5:30 this is an impressive feat. And gives me just enough time to eat my breakfast before I stand in church.

Aggrieved Party Responds "I need to make comment on the obstreperous remarks of Fresh Rosswater made in his unfactual report of the ice rink. First, I appreciate the compliment – forty something my butt – fiftysomething is the truth. And, as far as sneaking around “borrowing” my negra modelo – a couple of miscommunications must be addressed. Gail (the woman who suffers my antics) was trying to surprise me with a cold 12 box of mi mas Buena cerveza – Negra Modelo. So, as the owners of the Eagle Harbor Store have been extremely flexible, she called Dick to order the beer, to be delivered upon our arrival. However, when Mikie (Kuk Junior) and I stopped by the Delaware Cutoff Road to extract young Boggio and his snowsled from the ditch, Dick was already there assisting but claimed no knowledge of any beer order. He graciously volunteered to get the beer ASAP and I thanked him. I mentioned this to Ginny and Doug Schubert the next morning and she commented that Rich Probst had gotten an odd telephone call from Gail ordering beer “just like she had done last summer”. (note – everyone in Eagle Harbor knows everything – youngbloods be aware that you will never get away with anything). Rich, being the great guy that he is, of course had the order on hand. Dick, also being the nice guy that he is, also got the beer for me. Sooo, I ended up con muchas Negra Modelo. And, the ice rats minus Fresh Rosswater had previously been to my house celebrating the 20th birthday of Mel AND had already raided the Kuk booze cellar, drank Negra, AND had an invitation to help themselves later. So, if Ross thinks he pulled a fast one on the ol’ Kuk, forgetaboutit. I was (and will always be) willing to contribute to the opportunities for harbor festivities." Mike Kukuk

The building was the principal structure of the Eagle Harbor Life-Saving Station. Constructed between 1910 and 1912 by the U.S. Life-Saving Service, the boat house remained in service until shortly after World War II. Now used by the MI DNR for storage, it is the lone on-site survivor of the several structures that housed the men and boats of one of the Great Lakes' most renowned life saving stations. (Several of the other structures were moved across the bay when the station closed, including the two keeper's houses at the lighthouse. Charlotte Barber provided this old post card photo of the original station. Click to enlarge.)

Because of the important role the Eagle Harbor Life-Saving Station played in the development of shipping and recreational boating in the Superior waters around Keweenaw, the Keweenaw County Historical Society plans to obtain the boat house when the DNR finds other storage facilities (in the works), and establish a Life-Saving Station museum within the building. The Society's 36' Coast Guard motor life boat, now parked out front, will be fully restored and placed inside on the still existing launch railway. Several Keweenaw and Harbor families have ancestors who served at this station.

In watching this crew of young Michigan men and women take on this assignment, it's obvious that they appreciate the history and beauty of this Harbor landmark. They are doing a terrific job. Housed at Ft. Wilkens during the week, they return to the Michigan Civilian Conservation Corps camp in Alberta on weekends. (Yes, our Harbor crew is from the same group that has done such a splendid job in restoring that famous old "Ford" town.) Like most AmeriCorps crew members, they sign up for six to twelve months service. They receive modest pay. The big incentive is the college scholarship they are awarded after meeting service thresholds. After 900 hours of service they earn a $2,300 scholarship, and after 1700 hours the award is a $4,300 scholarship.

In chatting with these young people, I also sense their attraction to the "service" aspect of their work. They all could probably be flipping hamburgers or stuffing grocery bags, but have instead opted for someone more useful to society - something offering them the joy of accomplishment. A public hiking trail cleared, a park shelter constructed, an historic site or building restored - all tangible and useful evidence of their labor and dedication. A couple of them mentioned career hopes with the DNR or other public service. This is a good program. We are fortunate to have them among us.

Pictured from left-to-right (click to enlarge), are crew leader Jason Larson from Marquette; Steve Kinnunen, Baraga; Jessica Dove, Lanse; Dave Bryant, Grand Ledge; and Christine Nancarrow, Roseville.

If you are in the area, stop by the marina and tell them how much you appreciate their service. They will probably be scraping, priming and painting until early October.

That was the highlight of the winter of '29 in our family. There were no roads to Cat Harbor then, but I was 9 and brother was 10 and abuzz with the talk around the Sacred Heart of Laurium about who got what from the wreck....we bugged and pestered our parents to get some of the goodies. Remember,this was May and still winter and it was the huge squall that beached the Bud.

I remember my dad, Wilmer Harvey, coming home with the back seat of the Chrysler full of butter and bacon slabs wrapped in a blanket. He had just landed at Eagle Harbor after he and Paul Pawler and gang went out in the MARION, Pawlers cruiser, to the site and in a rowboat went on the beach and scooped up the butter and bacon rolling in and out in the surf, so my dad said. Not many had a boat access in May as the winter was still running on. Many people came in to the shoreline by foot and filled their backpacks.

The butter and bacon when I got my hands on it, Dad must have brought back 20lbs of each, was wrapped in very liteweight wax paper and it just was as hard as a brick from being in that cold water. We shared much of it with our relatives, the Eddys, Thouins, Mihelich families and it was 'manna from heaven' added to our larder. Mother could not afford to buy that much butter and bacon in a year.

I'm working on my 80th year and was happy to send and share this anecdote that came to mind telling how the wreck touched our family.

You can hear the voices of your ancestors, ancient and not so distant, as they speak to you in winds that run their fingers through the boughs of the pines.

They are telling you why they came, why you come, why you keep it in your soul.

It is a collective spirit that often gently caresses your heart, but sometimes squeezes hard, making you weep with sorrow, sadness, loss.

It is the strength of the spirit as forceful as waves that move rock and as bright as the full moon reflection on driven snow.

It is peace at summer dawn when the Lake becomes ripples against the soft sand, singing you awake slowly, carefully, so as not to startle your senses.

It is joy, laughter, and love, when the ghosts show your their colors of Fall and shout to you through your eyes that you must never leave.

To read the full text click Superior Dad