People sometimes ask whether the name of the island could be changed to something else–you know, anything. We’re not really sure of the answer. There is probably a state office that could be called upon but it hasn’t been sought after by any means. As a matter of state record on road maps and historical nautical charts the island is named Traverse Island. We call it Rabbit Island, however, because this is what many of the locals we know call it, including Rob’s 100 year old grandfather. Plus we think it has a nice ring. Over the years there has been a bit of back and forth on the issue depending on with whom one speaks. On one hand there is a community of people who live on Little Traverse Bay and look out at the island from a sandy shore a bit to the northwest on the mainland. To them the island is clearly Traverse Island. The people of Rabbit Bay, located due west of the island, however, look out on the same horizon from a slightly different perspective and consider the same piece of land Rabbit Island. For the most part it seems that the Traverse Bay camps had been given the upper hand in nomenclature considering the precedents on historical paper maps. Until today that is, when we noticed that the island’s name had been officially changed to Rabbit Island on Google Maps. Have a look for yourself. As for future debate, it would seem the matter is now settled. (Meanwhile, as a satellite snapped the above photo from space and as google engineers changed the name of the island in their algorithms, sitting at their desks in either Silicon Valley or on 8th Avenue, and as word spread a bit over the internet, nothing at all changed on the island. This is the best part).
things are not always easy on an island. for example, this is what a capsized boat looks like. after boat number one, the marsal, lost its engine compression (i.e. the handsome older model boat we purchased with a portion of the rabbit island residency kickstarter funding) and boat number two, the leakin’ leana, lost its engine compression as well a few days later (what terrible luck), andrew was left with boat number three, a small, borrowed, unnamed, rowboat with a trusty older model outboard engine.
with number three in service everything was again well on the bay until about a week later when a storm came up suddenly and the lake kicked up. andrew was on the far eastern side of the island and by the time he realized heavy weather was coming from the west the boat had been partially filled with water. the scene he came upon as he arrived back at camp was chaotic. the wind was strong and loud in the trees. the boat was bouncing up and down on the mooring line which jerked and then went slack with each forthcoming crest. every time the nose dipped between capping waves it scooped a gallon or so of water which ran aft and pooled, further lowering the boat's freeboard. andrew scrambled to throw on a wetsuit and for the next hour bailed furiously as the lake continued to fill the boat one wave at a time. at times he tried to balance/move the boat from the bow and would be lifted off his feet about 8-9 feet from the lake bottom and then come crashing down with the boat, nearly under the bow. unfortunately, you can see for yourself the outcome of the match. he said it was a pretty hairy two hours.
after capsizing was inevitable he was able to rescue the gas tank, lifejackets, bilge pump, and oar and got them to shore before the boat went completely over. the boat remained partially afloat even when upside-down because of an air pocket that was trapped beneath it and due to the foam flotation under the bench seats. the engine, however, did not float and fell off, sinking promptly to the lake bottom in about 4 feet of water. andrew hauled it to shore with successive squat lifts using his arms and back. the boat remained like this for the next 24 hours, bobbing upside-down on the mooring line.
the following narrative is the now classic commentary as recorded on the facebook wall of scott hannula. scott lives in a cottage on the shore of the adjacent rabbit bay and has been one of our main sources of mainland support, troubleshooting, local knowledge, chainsaw know-how, and much more. his brother mark had lent us the boat in the wake of our previous boat troubles. they have experience with the island and surrounding waters spanning decades.
Recent Radio call from Rabbit Island
Radio rings…….
Rabbit Bay: “Rabbit Bay here, go ahead.”
Rabbit Island: "Rabbit Ray, this is Rabbit Island…..we have like 5 footers out here.“
Rabbit Bay: "Copy that… 5 footers, we have a bad storm headed this way.”
Rabbit Island: “Ah… I have a problem”
Rabbit Bay: “What is it?”
Rabbit Island: “The boat is sinking…”
young eagle massacre. this is still a mystery. natural selection has obviously taken place on rabbit island. it happened sometime while we were there though we did not witness the event. a few days before we found this adolescent eagle carcass, hung up on a small branch at about chest level, andrew had seen a young eagle (similar to this one… perhaps this one.) chasing a mature eagle a few hundred yards above the eastern shoreline. the two seemed to be fighting, flying back and forth, diving and bobbing. we wonder if the young eagle had outgrown its welcome within the pecking order of the hunting grounds or if there was an altercation involving a fish, rabbit or other food-staple. we will likely never know what happened. a few days earlier andrew had been in the same spot in the woods and this wasn’t there (late august). if anyone knows somebody with expertise in eagle behavior and life cycle we would like to forward this image and narrative to find out whether this fits a known pattern of behavior or if this sort of thing has been documented well before. please contact us. robgorski@gmail.com
We’re working on a Rabbit Island mixtape for our Kickstarter supporters this afternoon and found a nice tune by a band that takes its name from a country road on the mainland a bit north of the island. It is raining in New York today and this sounds about right. The band is called Gratiot Lake Road. Their first album is called Seasons. It can be downloaded for free on Bandcamp.
Gratiot Lake Road itself connects the main highway of the peninsula, US 41, to a small inland lake about halfway up the Keweenaw as it stretches north and then east to Copper Harbor. Past Calumet the land starts to really show its color and it is about here where ‘god’s country’ is said to start.
The mixtape is coming together nicely and will include music that exemplifies the spirit of the Michigan north woods and the simplicity of island life. Stay tuned.
Cabin Porn is one of our favorite blogs about architecture in the woods. It is based in NYC and curated by Zach Klein and Jace Cooke, et al. We check it out regularly for rustic design inspiration and were super surprised and happy when we came across our Rabbit Island project on it a few days ago. Andrew Ranville, the first Rabbit Island artist in residence, also found his ongoing Pumaja treehouse installation featured today. Thanks guys.
This is the most recent update of life and work on the island as told by Andrew Ranville who is on the island until the end of August. The rest of the update can be found on Kickstarter here. The wind has been kicking up on the lake recently from both the east and the west and the seaworthy boat we purchased while attempting to use our Kickstarter funds judiciously ended up having a lemon of a motor. Our economy had backfired. This was very disheartening.
We have been struggling to find a local used engine that will push our boat but in rural northern Michigan such things are hard to find on short notice. The other small aluminum fishing boat we have at our disposal “thinks it can” on Lake Superior but in the end can’t always be safely relied upon, especially on days when the winds are above 15 knots.
Island life has thus not been without frustrations. Good progress has been made, however, in spite of a few misfortunes and lessons have been learned. Success and basic settlement, ultimately, will be all the sweeter when it is finished.
Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children’s children, and for all who come after you, as one of the great sights which every American if he can travel at all should see.
We have gotten past the stage, my fellow-citizens, when we are to be pardoned if we treat any part of our country as something to be skinned for two or three years for the use of the present generation, whether it is the forest, the water, the scenery. Whatever it is, handle it so that your children’s children will get the benefit of it.“
-Theodore Roosevelt, 1903
Fine quote Teddy. (And great job with the parks.) But what if you were born in a suburb a century after this advice was given? It becomes rather obvious that contemporary society has no organized political or economic mechanism to undo things that have divided nature into a grid on a ecologically meaningful scale from the modern American google earth mosaic. There is not even a direct antonym to the word subdivision in the english language. This is, of course, in spite of the facts. We have made large steps forward intellectually and now have reason/science telling us that our environment is compromised from an ecosystem perspective. The design of such a mechanism and the success of it politically and economically, we believe, is one of the next great wheels that must be shaped and turned in our society. It is not an unreasonable idea.
Our historical westward land grab vastly outpaced our rational understanding of externalities since Europe landed in America and perhaps now society must be open to the idea that mistakes were made, and the corrolary to this idea, that such mistakes can be fixed. This would not necessarily imply conserving only remnant open spaces (i.e. Nature Conservancy) that were passed over by wagon trains and developers for one reason or another–climate, prohibitive topography, lack of minerals, great distance from population centers–but consciously and systematically reclaiming prime lands guided by reasonable principles and socially acceptable time frames amidst the parcelization that has filled the space between Manhattan, Michigan and beyond. It makes simple sense that there exist a market mechanism for making parcels of land rejoin to form larger contiguous units of open space for the sake of our culture, historical precedent, and long term benefit. (The Department of Ecosystems, perhaps, or, alternatively, a new model of collective philanthropy?) Historically there has been nothing but an asymetrical non-equilibrium of land use rooted in the perspective of the individual, which, if extrapolated to a distant endpoint, leaves extensive damage as can be illustrated in it's adolescent stages by scrolling across the country. One form of American tradition, capitalism, has indeed eroded another pillar of Americana; frontier.
Peter Buchanan-Smith of Best Made Co. in Tribeca created this special edition axe for Rabbit Island. It arrived in the mail in Laurium and when we opened the box our eyes lit up. It is the most beautiful axe we’ve ever seen. Over the last two weeks we put it to work on various wood cutting tasks around camp, not the least of which was clearing some windfallen pines from a trail we made heading north from camp along the shore. Next will be chopping a narrow path across the island from west to east from our camp to a large boulder covered in yellow lichen on the eastern shore we call mustard seat. This would allow us to shelter a boat on the lee side of the island during a strong westerly blow as well as give us a fine location to watch the sunrise. Once the basics of settling are done we will then be able to put the axe to work on finer items such as posts for construction, traditional hand-hewn beams and various furniture projects. Decisions as to which trees to take and which trees to keep (such as our young white pines we hope to foster into towering trees) will be bolstered by the fact that our felling tool is respectful of itself for it’s own sake.
The axe is beautiful and functional but what we like best about it is that it maintains an intrinsic connection to functional simplicity. It is an object that is very few degrees separated from nature as given and leaves little behind that is damaging should its usefulness ever fade. This is likely why it commands such a visceral response and this is why we love it. There are fine and honorable uses of technology and there are simple and lasting basic goods. There is also the conflicted middle ground. This is illustrated everywhere and in all markets (suburbia and subdivision is likely the prime example of such muddling on a social scale, big box products might be on a commercial scale). In the end simple things like axes and elegant engineering achievements like solar cells must coexist in the context of our modern world. In many ways this is the ethic of Rabbit Island and the root of what we will think about out there. Things need to be organized neatly. Things need to be curated rationally. Cheers to Peter and company for celebrating the basics by elevating a fine symbol of traditional constitution to an art.
Peter also sent us away with some shapemaker blocks which are pretty basic and beautiful. They too convey creativity and industry in a fundamentally simple form that will stand the test of time. There is very little externality to these babies which makes their value only increase with time.