Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Tuesday, 10 Nov 1992 00:28:42 CST
From: <U56503@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.great-lakes
Distribution: usa
Subject: Door County--Recent Experience

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                            DOOR COUNTY

We rented a small cottage right next to this area called The Ridges, which
is a preserve of the Nature Conservacy.  This area is millenia old and
consists of prehistoric swails and ridges from Lake Michigan.  If you
look closely now at the bottom of the lake, you can see current ridges
(sand bars) and low points (swails) under the water as well.  The
Ridges extends west of the lake about a mile.  Someone in 1937 was going
to build a trailer park there! and nature lovers snarfed up the land and
managed to save it.

One can walk out the door of the cottage and down a path right into the
woods.  There are marked trials back and forth on different ridges
with wooden bridges over the swails.  What with one trail and another,
you can be in there all day.  Eastward, there is also an historic range light
that ships used to use and then the woods open up onto a harbor of the lake on
the beachfront.  We spent one entire day in there.  We saw several nonpoisonous
snakes sunning themselves on the trails.  They wriggled off as we
approached, but I managed to get a few good photos of one of the red-belly
ones snaking lazily into the bushes.

At night, we walked back into the woods with a flashlight.  We sat down on a
bench in the middle of one of the trails, and turned off the light.
It was darker than anything short of a cave in there, yet one felt cozy
and safe, protected by the woods.  There were a million
stars glittering through the trees above and twinking off and on
as the wind blew the branches about.  One cannot see the stars
in Chicago like one can see them in Door County.  Most Chicagoans
simply do not know that such stars exist.  (Once we saw the Northern
Lights up there as well, as it is just about half way to the North Pole
at that latitude.)  We sat quietly on a bench and listened to the wind
rustling and whispering in the trees and the waves tumbling on the beach a few
hundred feet off to the east.  We watched the heavens and it *was*
Heaven!  We were one with nature and a part of nature for that time.
Why, you could wander out there in your PJs if you wanted to!  No one to
disturb the perfect unison with nature.  It was all yours and yours alone
to enjoy and savor at your leisure and in your own way.  Sounds, smells,
sights were magnified into epiphanies by the mood of the night.

The next day we spent at an equally beautiful place called Toft's Point,
or as I call it, Miss Emma's Woods.  It was owned by Emma Toft who
died last year and willed the land in perpetuity to the U of Wisc.
so that it remains virgin timber forever.  These woods are a primeval
boreal forest (never been touched) and are over 2000 years old.
You take nothing in and you bring nothing out!

They abut on a rocky shoreline of The Lake interspersed with
marshy bays.  There are little trails in the woods and along the
shore, but otherwise it is completely and grandiosely primitive
and unspoiled.  We walked in these woods all day as well.  Our dog
came with us here and got to run free in the forest.  She said it
was the best day of her life except for the day we got her from
the animal shelter and brought her home.

Anyway, she would run ahead about 40 feet and then stop and look
back for us to make sure we were coming along.  I found it adorable
that she was so bonded to us when she was free to run anywhere she
wanted to run in a primeval forest.  When you got some distance into the
woods, you were completely surrounded on all four sides by
identical foliage.  You needed to locate the sun, listen to the
waves, or look for that moss on the north side of the trees to
get any sense of direction, the envelopment was so complete.  It was
a feeling of being one with nature and being gently surrounded
with comfort and peace.  If it were not for the trail you would
not be able to tell one direction from the other without the above
aids.

We got lost in it last year before we found the trail and
barely found our way out, tramping through the thick underbrush and
finding a road just before darkness descended.  We saw deer in the
middle of the day in the forest bounding off as we approached.  We
would stop and marvel at the deer and then continue to panic that
we were surrounded by virgin woods where no one had been before,
with only the sun's direction to guide us in general to the road as
the light inexorably faded away.

If you sit on a log, many times it gives way underneath you due
to the wood rotting away over the millennia.  Birds twitter and small animals
are seen romping around as well.  The trees (mostly evergreens) are so
thick that you can only see the sunlight as little rays shining
and poking through here and there through holes in the forest canopy.

It felt like going back to the womb in a soothing sort of
way of being enveloped in nature and comforted by the sounds and
smells of the wilderness.  Smells always are big with me.  My
olfactory sense is extremely acute.  I am always talking about how
something smells, as in, "doesn't it smell like a glorious day."
Where as we often do not notice smells in daily life, here the smells
take on a major significance in one's enjoyment of the experience.

You can also walk out from the woods onto the rocky beach and bask in the sun,
watching and listening to the waves lapping rhythmically on the boulders.
Our dog even jumped off the lower rocks to fetch a stick in the
water which was so clear you could see the webbing in her feet
stretching out as she paddled casually back, thrilled to be in a
Labrador's native environment at last.

There is also a deserted house and a few cabins there that used to
be Miss Emma's retreat lodge when she was younger.  You can see the
ghosts and spirits of all the visitors frolicking around the open
grass where the cabins and meeting house still stand.  You can see the
lovers on the paths and the guests lazing about.  The water pump still
works!  The area is alive with the past.  You begin to wonder who all
came there and what wonderful things transpired at this cozy hideaway over
the decades that Miss Emma ran it.

There is moss growing and lichens.  The balsam firs are sprouting baby
trees in circles all around them.  There is no man-made noise . . . none!
The fragrance and the quiet are indescribably exquisite; yet one feels secure.
You have to walk a mile down a barely-existent road to get there.  Deer
leaped across the road in front of us as we walked back out near sunset.
We tied a kerchief around our dog's tags so she would not give our approach
away.  If it weren't for the fact that it gets so dark at night and you need
to eat and sleep, we would have never left this perfection of nature.

One night we also had a fire on the beach in this little town on
the lake where I use to stay with my family as a kid and as an adult too.
I could see them walking up and down the beach and talking in the cottage in my
mind.  I could see my daughter romping in the sand and playing in the waves.
She was only 7 months old the first time we took her to Door County.
She used to love the fires on the beach and would beg to sleep by
the big fireplace inside at night.  We always let her.  ;))  I guess this time
it was a spiritual family reunion to be up there where we had
good times with relatives.  It was a magical place where everyone got along.
Now they are all grown/deceased/or off to other places, but in memory and
spirit they are still all there in Door County each time I return.

My wife and I sat on the beach by the open fire, gazed at the brilliant
sky packed thick with bright stars, and talked for hours.  The gentle
waves lapped at the shoreline 25 feet in front of us.  The warm fire
kept us toasty though the air temperature was in the sixties (F).
It was such bliss.  We talked about our childhoods and times we had
shared together in Door County in the past.  Here too there were no sounds
save the pop-crackle of the logs and the gentle slipping in of the tide.  It
was an evening frozen in time.  I didn't want it to end but, as all evenings
do, it did.  But, we'll be back again, and we'll do it all over again too.
Door County is always there waiting for us to return.

If you choose to visit, there are two rules:  1) Take nothing in and
take nothing out; and 2) be prepared for bliss.

=-=-=-=-Brady Woodward PhD=-=U56503@UICVM=-=u56503@uicvm.uic.edu=-=-=-=-=
  SATAN to NEW-COMER: The trouble with you Chicago people is that you
  think that you are the best people down here, whereas you are merely
  the most mumerous. --Mark Twain  (All other thoughts are mine alone.)
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