By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Zombie Fish
“Zombie” fish swim with fellow siscowet lake trout, in cold depths of Lake Superior, per the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
The part-living salmon swim ice-water mansions with plumper kin as if reborn from the sunken Edmund Fitzgerald’s 29 good shipping crew, but in fact are the true ones doomed.
Organized Abstractions
I was first in Paradise to eyeball and write about the Tahqua Trail Marathon within sight of where the 730-foot-long “Queen of the Great Lakes” iron ore bearing freighter had sunk 40 years earlier.
Except Capt. Carter “The Camel” Sherline — so named as he carried tons of gear in the back of the latest junk van he’d borrowed so he would be ready for occasions that never happened but still yet might be the Second Coming, those moments a shooter otherwise might miss — and I, Kaptain Kopter, reborn from my deejay ID on “Wonderful WRFL” ID “from the Bottom of the Basement in Shreve Hall!” I’d yodel that Purdue U. could here campus-wide when no other dorm vied for time on the main network — but in fact Carter, who had packed at least one drone, would do aerials while I laid low.
We were booked for what looked like the unincorporated settlement’s only 2-story building, a lemon cream stucco structure that stuck out right on the Bay looking east through limpid skies to far Ontario shores.
Strewn around were liquor stores, bars, a mini-gas station cum general store and smoke shop where snowmobilers flocked winters to escape their solitude. These were hardcore Yoopers. I ventured forth to study them study me like what brought this alien specimen. What we shared was … Paradise?
Turns out this was the night of the Summer Solstice; stars were so bright the year’s shortest night you could taste them at 4 a.m. sunrise with coffee, bagels. The water was mirror.
Humans Race
But our work was ahead. The Drone Ranger would shoot from the sky when he could were he couldn’t runner stills to hopefully sell later back on earth.
I would pile in race creator, director and choreographer Jeff Crumbaugh’s Jeep and first skip the falls to set up in a remote clearing his starting and finishing gear, which was portable to do both.
What did I have to also pack in while we bounced and jounced over what for all I knew were rocks, tundra, deep green woods, straggly shrubs grasses, many insect species but no bears or elks this time, past long-unused shelters for what I could only guess? A cheap tripod, its tradeoff for being light flimsy, still cumbersome to unfold, then again make compact as I could, to lug to the next shot but there was less: Jeff and I had split and I’d driven another runner’s car, which she’d mistakenly driven behind his Jeep to the start, so I’d promised her I would take it back to the finish. In the meantime I’d learn to drive this strange feminine-packed wagon while following Jeff back to M-123 aka the Tahquamenon Scenic Byway, the only paved road with lanes between Paradise and Whitefish Point some 20 miles northwest. At a fork you might turn east to Shell Drake Lake and Almost Paradise, and excursion I didn’t have time to make, or North Doe Lake Road to West Wildcat and God help me beyond that. So I’d turn onto other dead ends running up alongside the course camel-like hauling all that claptrap into primeval forests with carnivorous skeeter clouds devouring me until, by the time I’d mounted the camera on the slanted top plate, the animated, vivid and colorfully-dressed woman runner eye candy I had hoped to snap was long passed and I was left waiting for some schlump but at least he might let me lather up my bare limbs up with the Cutter bug repellant he at least had made sure to bring.
Then to the finish, where fellow MR talking head/videographer/1984 Olympic race walker Gary Morgan, and old pal of Jeff’s, go figure, showed up to join me and titular production assistant Carter — Publisher Art McCafferty would do edits in the relative comfort of his Ypsilanti home, which to me had grown stale and repetitive but he was our father/genius behind it all, but that would be after we drove my videos, with Carter and Gary’s digital memory cards, back — to cut interviews, maybe with that chick I had missed, she couldn’t have been over 50, with tape I had left for said purpose, then with Jeff break down everything and regale each other at the second-year Tahquamenon Brewery & Pub which sold souvenirs too — postcards, t-shirts, snow globes, balsam fir scented mini pillows within roaring distance of the Upper Falls, What a place for sweating runners to drink in the spray and mists.
‘Zombie’ Fish Redux
I ran before any of this began, in my 40s from the Naples (Fla.) Daily News Half Marathon (1:26:03) to the full Boston Marathon (3:29.15) to the Utica Boilermaker 15K (one hour plus change, I forgot in the heat of the Saranac Brewery at the finish when Air Force jets flew over) but not as far east as the oldest nation in the world, Iran as just one word.
It is largely desert with precious oil — Liquidity with viscosity, what could be more slippery? — and an ancient culture there my country, led by President Donald Trump, is attacking. You can only fend off Muslim terrorists is by becoming Christian/Jewish terrorists ourselves. In the interim, Gulf of Hormuz “zombie” fish become petrified.
I’m too old now to be a soldier, runner or politician any longer either. I wasn’t when my country’s Vietnam War raged for 20 years before we got out with 60,000 of our own dead people just older than me, plus and estimated 3 million Vietnamese fighting for their own jungle ways of life plus 300,000 neighbor Cambodians and some 50,000 Laotians. My 1973 draft lottery number was 007; I would have been one of the first to go. Then the draft ended. Iran is more ancient yet, much drier and less Buddhist.
Liquid Days
I love the land of my birth and liberty to disagree with sundry duly-elected leaders by our own votes. Our people and world have many flags; I respect them all.
The shot above was of a boy dressed as Capt. American in Saugatuck’s Fourth of July parade 10 years ago, color-aged to reflect what he might look like as a dark warrior a decade later.
As such, sanctimony wears thin on me. I ran not for office, nor hobble now because of it, for anyone but myself.
