A Memorial Day Weekend photo from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan…
This is Middle Island Point, pointing at… well… Middle Island I suppose. I really ought to work on my knowledge of place names… Anyway, this is one of the views from the top of Sugarloaf.
There’s a bit of personal history attached to that island out there. One year for my birthday (I think I was 14…) we went swimming on the beach just on the other side of that point and decided to explore the island.
Lake Superior has a kind of variable shoreline, depending on the water level. There’s a little strip of land between the end of the point and the beginning of the island. Usually it’s submerged, but one dry summer I saw a motorcycle parked about halfway between the island and the shore with only the rims of the tires gettting wet. Anyway, that year it was easy to wade across. I didn’t want my feet getting gouged up on the undergrowth while exploring, so I brought some of those plastic flip-flop sandals to wander around on the rocks with.
This wasn’t as good an idea as it sounds. The trees and such are only on the shore side of the island. The side that faces the lake is pretty barren and rocky. My friend Terrence and I were clambering around on the rocks on the lake side. He made an easy jump from one rock to another and then hopped down onto a lower area. I made the jump too, but when I landed the toes of my sandals came apart and my feet slid right out from under me. Terrence had turned around to see what the noise was and saw me bouncing down the rocks toward him… According to him I had my head tucked under my arm and it looked like my neck was broken. He shouted, “MATT!”
In mid-bounce, I shouted “WHAT?!?”
I was kind of busy falling… I didn’t really have time to carry on a conversation too.
I landed badly but, obviously, non-fatally. The worst injury was to my left leg where I had a big gouge out of the front of my knee, which was rapidly swelling. I managed to hobble back to the other side of the island and wade back to the beach. The party packed up and headed back to the house, and I spent the rest of the day with a cold pack wrapped around my knee.
One response to “Middle Island Point”