Frankfort in September

This is the second year we have come to this stretch of Lake Michigan to meet a friend from California. She grew up here. Her brother and his wife are joining us. They lived in New Mexico for a while and then came back. Last year we stayed in Glen Arbor. This year it's Frankfort. There are a lot of small towns along this shore worth a visit. Our friend comes back every year, mostly for the arts festival at Interlochen. This year the festival was pushed back a week, so we will miss it. That leaves the town and the lake.

Frankfort sits on Lake Michigan, on the west side of the northern half of the lower peninsula. A long pier runs out from the beach to a small lighthouse at the end of the breakwater.

On our first full day I walked out to the end of it. My wife came part of the way. It was in the low sixties and the sun was out. It was quiet. Now and then a bird called. A boat came in between the piers. I stopped about a hundred feet short of the lighthouse and looked back at the town and the sand dunes behind it. In that light it could have been the Mediterranean. The sand here is finer than what I remember from Northern California.

This water is quieter than the Pacific, but it does the same thing for me. I don't swim and I don't plan to. I just want to be near it. I have never been able to say why.

Behind the lighthouse a man was fishing. He showed me two salmon he had caught, and he was proud of them. He is from Michigan and comes up a few times a year. He likes this time of year because the summer crowds are gone and nobody bothers him. He told me how he would cook the salmon that afternoon, almost a full recipe. We talked for a few minutes and I walked on.

On the way back I saw a large school of small fish in the water beside the pier. The fisherman had told me those are what the salmon eat. I was standing well above the water and our shadows fell on it. The school moved around the shadows. Wherever they fell, the fish got out of the way.

That afternoon we got bikes and rode the Betsie Valley Trail to Beulah, at the east end of Crystal Lake. I had not been on a bike in about a year. The beach at Beulah was empty except for one or two people. In the middle of summer it must be packed. Along the trail I saw a patch of horsetail, a plant somebody told me is very old and grows in wet ground. I did not expect to find it here.

It was about twenty miles there and back. On the porch afterward I had a shandy, and my legs told me what I had done. I have a different pair of legs now, more like noodles.

From the porch we look across the road to a small park on Betsie Bay. There is a tall cross there and a state historical marker for Father Jacques Marquette, the French Jesuit missionary and explorer. The marker says he died on this shore in 1675. Many American towns have little history of their own, so a thing like this counts for more here. I say that as someone who grew up in a town with nearly a thousand years of history.

The next morning I looked out at the lake. The waves were big. The day before, the water had been quiet. Now there was a warning out for high waves.

On our second evening we walked out to the lighthouse again. This time there were many fishermen. They told us the salmon are running. Last year I saw salmon in the creeks, going upstream. In the fall the big salmon leave the open lake and swim up the rivers to spawn.

Our friend keeps coming back here, and so does her family. I can see why. I would not go back to the Ruhr Valley to look at it. I am a little jealous.