High Summer
This is it. High Summer. Michigan days take on a hazy glow as all it’s vast water is slowly baked out of it in the hot July Sun. The humidity is rising and everywhere the gardens, a spring ritual born of a cold damp desire to forget winter, are maturing. At any one time there is an isolated thunderstorm coming off one of the lakes, pouring rain to replenish the water table and nourish growing fields. Elsewhere in the state it ranges from hot and humid with blue skies to a wind swept threatening front of cool blue clouds. All give way to the enchantment of a Michigan Summer night. Where the heat lightning illuminates patches of clouds and the wilderness hums with the song of insects too numerous and plentiful to measure. There is no better time to be outside. Camping in the high summer takes on a metaphysical quality; where the very air is charged with an energy all its own, scented with the exhalation of trees such as white pine, spruce, and cedar. The insects are carried on the night air and the bats are busy above making a feast on them.
Tonight, I walk along the banks of the river where a stream enters it. The elated song of a cold stream rolling down the clay banks is reverently hushed just before its entrance to the river, as if it has paused to contemplate it’s long sojourn from deep in the Earth.
Like the stream I pause too. Fly rod in hand I let the orchestra of night wash its music over me. I am reborn each time I ply these banks, here along the river. I sit down on a log and just let myself feel. I feel the river with all its deep secret places and the life that dwells in it. With my mind I silently probe it’s quiet depths. I mentally transverse its course as it turns and carves its way through the Northern Michigan wilderness. It can be any river up here. They are all special. The Manistee, Au Sable, PM. The Little Man or the Pine. They are all part of my summer pilgrimage of fishing and fight among themselves, sometimes viciously, for my top favor. But no matter what, I will visit them all, and others, throughout the season. You see, we are very particular about our water here in Michigan.
The Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow because it is so prevalent and important in their lives. So it is with water and Michigander’s. From the cold deep trout lakes in the Upper Peninsula to the Lilly encircled bass ponds of Southern Michigan. And all the small medium and large bodies of water in between. We love them all. We love our streams too. Those silver ribbon remnants of the great glaciers from the last ice age. Our state is drained by some of the most revered trout streams in the lower 48. The Pigeon, Sturgeon and Black. The Fox and the Boardman. These are the backbone of some of Michigan’s great legends. Hemingway county. And before our time these rivers were the great Highways of the Michigan natives, whose songs can still be heard as wind in the deep forest. All the Ghosts of Michigan’s past still haunt the night in the wild places.
As I sit here on the banks with my feet in the water I can almost feel them. I imagine a flotilla of canoes pulling hard against the current. In my mind, they pass me as I sit. They are hard men of the Northern Fur Company, and they will row all night long before a break. They are bent to their work and their muscles bulge through animal skin shirts. Across the river I see an encampment of Chippewa. The smoke slowly rises from their skin tent houses. I imagine the men walking the river bank in darkness checking their fish traps. The sound of a feeding trout knocks me out of my contemplation. The river runs by smoothly in front of me and I turn on my headlamp to gaze through a cloud of bugs at the stream. I must select a fly quickly or risk being overcome by the swarming masses. That is not difficult however, for I am fishing only one pattern this evening, the Giant Michigan Mayfly. The Hexegenia Limbata hatches only at night when the heat of the day has passed on to the cooler night. It is ghost fishing for the most part because you are casting to noise and presenting with instinct. It is the time when the giant browns come up from the deep haunts to gorge. My heart is singing in anticipation of my drag doing the same.
For me the question “Is there a better place to be than on a Northern Michigan stream at night in high summer?” has only one answer: Not until the next trip.
