FIELD GUIDE Exploring Michigan: Tips, trends, and tidbits
NEW TRAIL TOWNS: Big Rapids, Cadillac, and Elk Rapids were recently named Pure Michigan Trail Towns by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Travel Michigan. Big Rapids has developed a wayfinding signage system for local trails. Cadillac is a year-round destination that continues to invest in its many trail activities. Elk Rapids has formed a trail alliance to assist in supporting trail networks in the area. That community soon will be connected with Traverse City and Charlevoix via the Nakwema Trail. Search for trails at michigan.gov/dnr. WATERY MISFORTUNES: A new book published by History Press, “Death & Lighthouses on the Great Lakes,” written by Gaylord author and frequent Michigan Blue magazine contributor Dianna Higgs Stampfler, blends maritime tales with true crime stories. Stampfler details how losing one’s life while tending the navigational beacons wasn’t such an uncommon experience. arcadiapublishing.com PATHWAY OPENS: Half of the six-mile Ralph Wilson Gateway and Trail around Belle Isle in Detroit opened this spring along the eastern end of the island. It’s the official southern trailhead for Michigan’s Iron Belle Trail, a 2,000-mile route (almost 70 percent complete) that connects the island to Ironwood in the Upper Peninsula via two separate trails for hikers and bikers. The Wilson Gateway has a park/trail kiosk, picnic area, a new glass-and-steel sculpture, and more. michigan.gov/ironbelle – Compiled by Ron Garbinski
Have news that pertains to Michigan travel and exploration? Send a note to MSwoyer@Hour-Media.com. MICHIGAN BLUE
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A Personal Remembrance The Mason Tract provides wilderness solitude and fantastic fly fishing along the fabled Au Sable’s riverbanks Story and Photos By Bill Semion
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first came to the Mason Tract near Roscommon with a long-ago and now recently gone friend. Sleeping in a VW Beetle, my pal Dale in the front seats, me in the back, was something we did happily. We drove through the empty streets of Roscommon and arrived beside the river after midnight, and quickly walked through the Canoe Harbor State Forest campground. We could only see a little way through a mist. Owls called in the woods. The South Branch of the Au Sable River flowed out of the inky darkness. We approached it, not yet friends. It would become a lifelong friendship from that moment on. A few years later, I was in the midst of a frustrating search for a secluded fishing spot. I found it at High Banks, and it’s now as familiar as my hand. In a few more years, five friends — Dale included — bought land bordering the tract, a few false casts from the South Branch’s bank. It became our camping rendezvous.
All that and more is why the state preserved 4,400-plus acres encapsulating this stretch of one of America’s most famous trout streams. Auto magnate George Mason, one-time chairman of the defunct Nash-Kelvinator and American Motors Corp., was among several people who owned land along this 11-mile stretch in the early 20th century. Others, such as the Durants, one of the founding families of General Motors, built a riverside palace so opulent — the foundation is all that’s left after a fire — that the remains are still called Durant’s Castle. Eventually, Mason acquired 1,500 riverside acres. He died in 1954 and left it to the State of Michigan. The state added other nearby amenities, including Canoe Harbor at the tract’s north end. With a house nearby on the same fabled South Branch of the Au Sable River, just outside the tiny community of Roscommon, I now can enjoy it every season.And throughout the year, it’s a different impressionist painting.
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