152 years on the job and still counting

My column in today's Door County Advocate:

’Tis the season called Sunshine Week, when the news media likes to pat itself on the back and perform exercises in government transparency and write columns about our important role as watchdog. And of course there will come the inevitable observations that the watchdog is a little too much of a lapdog in its old age, is barking up certain wrong trees, and has missed more than its share of instances where the government (or some other institution accountable to the public) has fallen down on the job or misused its power.

This week also brings the 152nd anniversary of the first edition of the Door County Advocate, which legend says Joseph Harris started largely because he wanted a platform to advocate for carving a canal through the narrow isthmus that separated the waters of Sturgeon Bay from Lake Michigan.

Country roads call to the old warriors

Gibraltar Bluff Road now

The first time I ever noticed Door County, I was living far from here and heard about people unhappy with plans to remove grand old trees from the edges of state highways in Northern Door. That discussion has reached the town roads now, 25 years later.

Wally and Rita Brandt loaned me a framed photograph they have of a path through a woods. It’s a dirt road, barely more than a one-lane driveway with a little grass growing between the ruts left by tires.

It’s a beautiful photo, but my breath was really taken away when Rita said, “That’s Isle View Road before they paved it.”

Isle View Road then

I suddenly understood what led Norb Blei to write an ode to Isle View, “The Death of a Country Road,” which begins, “It was the kind of road one came upon unexpectedly, and because there was a quietness to it, a mystery, you followed it wherever it might lead.”

Isle View Road, of course, recently got a repaving all these years later, after literally years of discussion and arguments about whether to make the asphalt ribbon 18 feet or 20 feet wide, and how big the shoulders should be, and the “clear zone” on either side of the roadway.

I drove Isle View again last month after the gravel was down, but not the pavement, and found myself thinking that the 18-or-20 debate seemed like splitting hairs.

That same day I introduced myself to Garrett Bay Road, which the town of Liberty Grove is tackling next. It’s a modest, pleasant road, through open fields, up and down hills, through forested land, and of course along Garrett Bay. Once, I understand, it was the main road between Ellison Bay and Gills Rock. It’s still peaceful and quiet.

The Liberty Grove Town Board seems to have learned from the acrimony of the Isle View Road debate and is listening carefully to residents’ concerns. As a casual observer and lover of old stuff, I frankly didn’t see any real need to repave Garrett Bay Road, let alone widen any of it, but I was there to enjoy the ride, not study the wear of the asphalt.

The threat to country roads seems to have migrated south, where it sounds like a dug-in Gibraltar Town Board on July 3 mostly dismissed the pleas of property owners unhappy with the 42-foot-wide swath that Gibraltar Bluff Road now wanders through, with rustic Cottage Row Road now in the sights of the clear-cutters.

These clear zones along the road allow you to drive faster and see deer and other potential obstacles well in advance. But why would you want to drive faster along these roads, except in an emergency, and do you build a road for every day or for the rare emergency?

Red and I had a discussion after the Fish Creek fireworks after I opted for “the road less traveled” getting home and took Cottage Row Road. We crept through a crowd of people as they walked to their cars parked along the road, which wasn’t built with a parking lane.

There was barely room for a car to get by, and newly started cars pointed north had to wait for the line of southbound cars to clear before they could make much progress. It was very slow going.

If there had been an emergency, it could have been a disaster. But there was no emergency. The road eventually cleared. And Cottage Row Road became Cottage Row Road again.

Red saw the clogged traffic and the mob and thought it might be prudent to find a way to “modernize” the roadway while preserving its character. I saw the old stone walls and the big trees and thought how lovely a country road is, just as it is.

After the July 3 meeting Alan Stover, a Gibraltar property owner from Brookfield whose family has been paying taxes on a bit of Gibraltar Bluff Road since 1935, wrote a letter to the board as a member of the original ownership that established the southern half of that road.

“The area was heavily wooded and we wanted that canopy of trees to remain,” Stover said. “We wanted a scenic path that followed the contour of the land with a certain meandering style adding to the beauty of the ‘subdivision.’”

Stover noted the board’s response that the clear zone “doesn’t look that bad” and observed, “That answer shows even they concede it’s ugly.”

And he recalled the fight back in 1988 when 10,000 signatures asked Gov. Tommy Thompson to scale back the Wisconsin 42 project: “Where are the old warriors that stood against dumb ideas?”

The Stovers can’t vote in the town of Gibraltar, but say “it is not a reason to disrespect our views.” I don’t vote there either – my own stake in Door County is not far from the welcome sign along Wisconsin 57 – but I can and do advocate for a little sanity in protecting the lovely back country roads that bring so many people here in the first place.

Cross-posted to Door County Advocate

One memorable Independence Day

We found the best place to watch the Fish Creek fireworks Saturday night, but it’ll probably never be quite the best place ever again. That’s the funny thing – and the fun thing – about life: Each experience is a mixture of elements that will never quite mix the same way again, because of the infinite variety of ingredients.

In this case, those ingredients involved a car leaving its parking space two blocks from the water just as we drove up, so after a short walk we had blundered into nearly a front-row seat for the big show.

After what has seemed like weeks if not months of weekend work on our new house and yard, Red and I chose to spend a few hours enjoying Door County, which was the ultimate purpose of building here in the first place. We dined in Baileys Harbor, where the temperature along Lake Michigan was a good 15 degrees cooler than our hot bayside yard, and then went over to catch Fish Creek’s famous Venetian Boat Parade and festival-ending fireworks.

From our vantage point we could see a group of young ladies in dark suits, which appeared to have electric lights built into them, clamber into a boat decorated with Christmas lights. With a whoop and a holler, they pulled out of the slip and headed toward the parade staging area.

We could see the lighted boats gathering in the harbor as the fireworks barge was slowly pushed from the shore. When the time came for the parade through the harbor, we could see the dark-suited ladies, or more precisely we saw the lights, which made them appear to be stick figures dancing in the night. Bringing up the rear was a stately yacht decked out in lights, including U.S. flags on the bow and a fully lighted Christmas tree on the stern, with a powerful sound system booming “America the Beautiful” over the water.

Promptly at 10 p.m. the fireworks began. And it was quite a display for the next 20 minutes or so.

What most made it memorable was a bit of serendipity. We happened to have camped our yard chairs near a young couple who just loved fireworks. Loved them. The woman especially was delighted by every red glare of the rockets and every bomb bursting in air.

It was like having a color commentator describing the show: “Oooh. Crinklies. Cracklers. I like those – and those. That one’s like a bow tie. Oh, a perfect circle, or maybe it’s more of an oval. Whooo! Here comes a big, big one. Oh! Waterfalls! I like the bright sparklies. Ooh, nice: Boom! Ooh! A little surprise at the end there.”

She seemed to react to every explosion and appreciate each blast of light. Her companion punctuated her enthusiastic chatter with an occasional “More! More like that!” or “Oh, that one’s coming all the way down to the water.” 

This was, indeed, one terrific fireworks show. The grand finale was as grand as independence itself, a crescendo of sight and sound that kept coming and kept coming until it flamed itself out to a hearty roar that seemed to come from every nook and cranny along the shore. The pyrotechnicians even launched a few extra fireworks at the end, as an encore. Beautiful!

The ingredients mixed perfectly. It was a beautiful, calm evening along the water; the crowd was big but not oppressively so; the fireworks display was spectacular; and we had an entertaining narration from a truly appreciative narrator. I should have turned around and told her how much she had enhanced the show, but as crowds do everyone melted away into the night so quickly.

We hope to return another Independence Day weekend and do it again, but it’s hard to imagine the ingredients mixing so perfectly again. That’s why memories are so precious.

Cross-posted to Door County Advocate

Finding the joys of the summer solstice

May may be the Festival of Blossoms, but June is when Door County really starts to blossom.

The spring and beginning of summer brings the artists out in full bloom. Door is a natural gem — woods and fields surrounded by glorious water, with maritime imagery everywhere: lighthouses, cliffs and crashing waves, ferries, sailboats, ships, all of it inspiring an artist colony full of folks creating images in paint and clay and pixels and words and music and theater — and food!

We took part in a “beer pairing” at Mojo Rosa’s in Egg Harbor the other night and experienced pork chops and tostados and nachos prepared in delightful ways we’d never experienced before — the artistry of the chef enhancing the artistry of the brewmaster.

And that was just a tiny fraction of the artistry available and on display all the time and everywhere during a Door County summer. From the American Folklore Theatre to Peninsula Players, from Birch Creek to Midsummer’s Music, from Door Shakespeare to the Peninsula Music Festival, you can’t swing a cherry branch without hitting sublime artistry somewhere on this gorgeous rock.

There is high art on the stages. There is high art in the galleries and the wineries. There is high art in the whoooosh of a fish boilover. High art is being prepared in kitchens in every community in this county, and in the shipyards and the farm fields. I believe it’s inspired by the high art the water has carved from the rock.

Beauty needs to be shared, of course. I remember when after years of telling my 80-something dad he had to hear the big band faculty at Birch Creek Music Performance Center, he finally made it out from New Jersey and settled into a chair in the big barn.

This is a connoisseur who was raised on Benny Goodman and Harry James and Lionel Hampton, who raised swing to a high art form, so I confess to being jittery whether the Birch Creek folks could live up to his standards.

When, a few seconds into the opening number, the lead trumpeter stood up and tore into a solo, my dad broke into a broad, delighted smile and said, “Oh, my!” My jitters vanished, and I realized I should have known better. This is summer in Door County, where delights are everyday occurrences.

Thank God for the summer solstice — only the longest days can hold all of the possibilities here. I have only scratched the surface; this space is not sufficient to list all of the many choices for so many tastes.

Explore. Don’t limit yourself to these suggestions; find the ones that suit your palette. But don’t let a Door summer pass without exploring the wonders around you.

Cross posted to Door County Advocate