I lived in a house a block off campus at Michigan State. It was a great house; subdued, yet had great parties when the time was right. All the right stuff was available. We had a gigantic purple bean bag chair, the Grape, in front of the TV. It had to have been 8' in diameter. There were a couple couches and an entertainment center. The dining room was sparse with a table and 5 or 6 chairs. The kitchen was nicely done; good enough for 6 guys.
Past the kitchen, the wall into the garage had been knocked out and down a couple steps was a JennAir Indoor Grille set into a brick arch. The room had some barstools, exposed brick, a skylight and fake ferns. It was so 1970's, it looked like the set of a Porno Flick.
Just past the indoor grill on the way to the deck was a hot tub. I kissed my first wife, the first time, right here in the tub surrounded by steam and cedar carsiding. Just out the sliding glass door was a deck, the width of the house and 10 or 12' out into the backyard. That summer, I had a strange loopy sunburn on my chest from sitting on that deck with a guitar. I was jamming with a guy who had just chosen Med School over going on tour with Amy Grant. Fool!
From the front, the house was a plain looking colonial. Oh, but if the interior walls could talk.
A half dozen of us occupied the house. John, whose dad owned the house, was finishing up a Civil Engineering degree. And although he as the son of a suburban Detroit dentist, he drove a jeep and carried himself like the love child of Thoreau and some husky woman in a greasy tshirt who cooked at a lumber camp in the far north woods.
Loren was a photographer. I don't remember what he was studying but he left town shortly after I did. Last I knew, he was in the Canadian Rockies capturing images for National Geographic. We had a couple of Pre-Med students and Buck. Today, Buck would be called a Metrosexual. He was doing a marketing internship in town and plucked and preened like a supermodel. Whatever he was doing, however, seemed to work with the ladies.
Most of the housemates made a trip up to my parent's house in the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. Three or four piled into my Bronco II; the tailgate stuffed with gear. There were two or three more in another car. I'm not sure how we got away with imposing so much on my unsuspecting family.
We left East Lansing one afternoon and tore up the highway. US27 and then I75. Just as we crested the Mackinaw Bridge, the tollbooth came into view. We should have thought about that. And, really, the toll booth operator has little more power than a snow plow driver or the person at the counter of the Secretary of State Office, but it was a man in uniform. My truck was filled with smoke. Smoke we didn't want anyone in uniform to smell. "Tollbooth!" I screamed! Down came the windows; the sunroof popped open. If we hadn't been 100 feet over the water, we would have flapped the doors to fan it out. We must have looked like a car fire, rolling down to the tollbooth with smoke pouring out all the windows. In reality, I'm sure no one even noticed.
I don't remember stopping for the night. In my memory, we crossed the bridge at night but it could have been noon. I do remember later stopping at a roadside park; probably around Naubinway. We pulled into the rustic picnic stop, the parking area just an expanse of gravel trimmed with timbers. There were a couple picnic tables and some of those metal barbecues standing waist high on a pole. The view was amazing. We were on a bluff high above Lake Michigan. The southward gaze was broken by gnarled trees clinging for life at the precipice. To the west, the bluff curved inland marking the gorge where a river cascaded out into the lake. Across the gorge, more trees struggling against the wind and weather; eking out a beautiful life, treating us to the majestic beauty of their struggle.
It was just then that I heard the soft crunch and grind of gravel. I had bought the Bronco just a couple weeks before. My first, and last, new car. The manual transmission was not new to me but it had been a while. My beautiful dark blue truck, glistening in the starlight, was rolling toward the gorge; locked with no one inside. The only thing between the truck and an ignominious end at the bottom of the gorge, was the parking lot border. A timber, smaller than a 4x4; one of those landscape timbers with two flat sides and rounded edges. I could see the truck, with its four by four clearance, bouncing over the border. I saw the crumpled mess, the clothes and gear and tents and Loren's camera equipment bursting sadly on the rocks like a tomato against a wall.
I crab walked along side, stabbing my key at the moving target of a lock. I managed to open the door and step on the parking brake without getting in. The metallic grind and the sound of the spring on the parking brake snapped everyone out of their reverie. They all turned to see me in a clumsy pirouette, one hand on the door, the other on the roof and one foot stuck inside on the brake. They simultaneously let out a rasberry. The closed lip giggle of stoners and slackers everywhere. Pbbbtttt!
Somehow, we managed to make it to Mom and Dad's in Houghton. Mom kept us all fed and at night we sprawled on the living room floor. We used their house as a base camp to run around the Keweenaw Penninsula. It was a great trip.
John had wanted to try out a new wet suit. We parked along the shore somewhere between Eagle Harbor and Copper Harbor. The Keweenaw feels like Maine. The coast is exposed to all kinds of weather and is rough and rocky with beautiful outcroppings and pine forest. We stood around and made "helpful" comments as John stretched one leg and then the other into his "Farmer John." As he was pulling it onto his torso, a wave splashed on the rocks where he stood. He chuckled and looked out at the lake. "Bitch," he called to her. As he turned his attention back to tugging and zippering, a huge wave rolled in, almost over John's shoulders. He was soaked and we howled with laughter.
John and Loren, and perhaps a couple other of the guys, were keen to climb. West of Lansing is Grand Ledge which has . . . a ledge . . . on the Grand River. It is a small but popular rock climbing venue. Lots of climbers at MSU would make the short trip to climb and rappel over there. John and Loren were avid Ledge climbers.
My family had taken me to several waterfalls on the penninsula. Some aren't even marked. It is beautiful country up there. We pulled up to Douglas Houghton Falls. It is just a small gravel parking area on the side of a State Highway. No signs, no restrooms, no official anything. The guys looked at me skeptically. A small trailhead disappeared into the brush beside a creek.
I started off down the trail, ducking through the bush and saplings. The others, wondering, followed. The trail switched sides with the creek several times. The creek was on your left, then a tree or some thick underbrush would appear. The trail jumped the creek to the other side to continue.
About a hundred yards in, the brush began to thin out. The creek began to splash across more rock than creek bed. The horizon began to look odd. Something was different but it was difficult to discern. Just then, we walked out on a flat section of rock. The growth was gone but for a lone weathered tree trunk. The edge of a cliff ran out right and left in a broad arc. Like the crescendo of a massive symphony, the horizon clarifed itself as your view catapulted outward. Right there with no warning, but the earlier unease, the creek disappeared over the edge and you were looking over the entire penninsula.
Everyone grew giddy from the magnitude of the beauty. The rock climbers broke out their gear. Loren hiked around to aim his camera across at the climbers' descents. John tied a 150' line to the tree and pitched it over the edge. We all watched silently as it gracefully untangled and ran down the cliff. When it landed, all but eight or ten feet was vertical. John looked at the small tail of line sprawled flat by the creek like a sunning snake. "That's a big cliff, boys! It must be 100 feet vertical."
As the day wore on, we all tried rappelling on John's line. It was very cool. Awesomely fun in the most adrenaline soaked way. The gear was simple. It was a long piece of nylon webbing and a metal figure eight bracket, There were no premade harnesses you stepped into and buckled up. John patiently instructed each of us "Wrap this end around your thigh, then your waist, then the other thigh," etc. The rope slipped around the figure eight. That and the line wrapped around your hip to one side was your brake.
The moment of truth. I can't describe the nature of what you learn about yourself, but there is something new. I stood with my back to the glorious view, my heels at the cliff's edge. Around my waist and thighs was a harness I just tied myself. The line from the tree truck is slack. It dipped lazily from the tree to the ground and back up to the figure eight on my harness. Behind me, the remaining line is vertical for 100 feet. I can see all 100 of those feet by looking over my shoulder. Courage, trust, and sheer madness has to be mustered to lean back. The harness and the line will be slack until I do. The braking action of the figure eight only works with tension on it. That tension will only come when I let my center of gravity slip over the edge.
It takes what seems like several minutes. I have to do it. The guys staring at me . . . waiting. When will I ever get to do this again. I suck some air into my lungs in lieu of a stiff drink and lean back. There is that sick lurch, that long moment of zero gravity, and then the line tugs againt the tree, the figure eight grabs, the harness pulls around me, and I'm hanging. What a rush! And I've just started. I can see 100 feet, between my ankles. This, my friends, is cool!
After some tentative steps down to the first ledge, I get the hang of jumping away from the cliff, extending my arm and the line, falling, then bringing the line back in and landing against the cliff again. Each leap, the rappell is longer and more fun. It is the closest thing to flying I have ever come. I don't mean in a plane, assisted; I mean, as Douglas Adams said, "throwing yourself at the ground and missing." John is very generous and we each get 5 or 6 rappels. Loren got some great color slides.
After hitting the bottom on my last rappel, I did some free climbing; no rope. Yes, I am an idiot. At the bottom of the cliff on one side of the creek was a pile of rubble; former cliff parts. I climbed up the rubble to the foot of the cliff. I got a good ways up the face. Carefully keeping 3 points of contact. Move a hand, hold, move a foot, hold, move another hand, etc. I must have been 30 feet or so when I started to tire. My legs started to "sewing machine." If I held my weight on one leg too long, it would involuntarily start pumping up and down. Switching legs, the other would shake too.
Looking up, I knew going higher was not a good idea. Down is less than ideal but the bottom was closer and down, at that point, was safer. Feeling my way down, I'm doing the same three points of contact; feel my way lower with a foot, hold, move a hand, hold, feel with the other foot, etc. The hands were easy, I could see them.
I'm feeling better making my way down when a lump of rock came up between my legs. I almost sat on it. I'm stuck. Pushing my hips away from the rock face, I try to get out and around it. I can't safely get past the lump. It has me pinned. The only solution is to climb up again, spider my way to one side and then start descending again. When I get back to the rubble, I am spent. Across the creek and around to one side is a reasonable slope and a trail back to the top. When I get back to the guys, they tell me they were yelling instructions to me. I couldn't hear them over the falls.
Not so surprising, the Douglas Houghton Falls are now closed to the public. You're welcome.
We knocked around town and the pennisula for a couple days and then returned to campus. Loren had slides made for all of us. The house never had many problems, but this trip seemed to tighten us up. We were a cohesive clan after that weekend.
Some weeks later, my Mom and brother were in an outdoor store downtown. The store had camping stuff as well as climbing gear. Mom mentioned our climbing. "Where'd you say they were?" the guy asked.
It turns out the cliff we were on is comprised of Jefferson Sandstone. A common vein between layers of real rock. However, it is very soft and not suitable for climbing. You cannot always rely on a handhold or your footing as it can break right off! Apparently, this guy, a climbing guide, wouldn't have even trusted the tree as it was too close to the edge.
We can be so trusting of our so-called experts; especially the self proclaimed ones. I not only trusted these guys to teach me to tie my own harness but unabashedly trusted their site selection. I had brought them there, but claimed no knowledge of the sport. They threw the line over and started climbing without even looking at or evaluating the rock. It was just rock to them. I had a great time; the guys were good guys, but we were lucky no one got hurt.
Question Authority. Occasionally, your life might even depend on it.
