A couple times a week I take the long way home and make the circuit that takes me down to Pere Marquette park by the Lake Michigan shoreline. We'd just dropped my wife off at her store, my youngest was in his car seat still dozing, and a couple of inches of snow had fallen during the night, so the roads were clean and soft looking before the traffic came out. A beautiful morning, and nobody in the back was protesting so I took the long way.
The long way, as it turns out, passes by the old paper mill, which once employed over 700 people at a time until recently. The massive, sprawling Sappi paper mill along the coast of Muskegon Lake. After about over century of operating in Muskegon, it closed its doors forever two years ago. Now the occasional local news paper article comes out sever times a year about somebody's ideas for the old Sappi paper mill property. The articles typically promise prosperity and fresh industry in the region where U6 unemployment has been in the double digits for over two years.
A fisherman, followed by two children bundled in red, trudged out across the snow and ice to the clusters of shanties about a quarter mile off on Muskegon Lake.
Just beyond the shuttered paper mill, the marinas. The chain link and barbed wire guarded lot full of massive, winterized sail boats, shrink wrapped in thick blue plastic for the winter. Boats with their vertical masts standing tall, and the riggings clinking rhythmically against the hollow metal masts in the wind,waiting for the weather to warm and the waters to thaw. Ice sailing boats with colorful sails skid across the lake on winter weekends, moving in and out of the marinas.
More morning fishermen were found braving the pier leading out to the light house, casting their lines far beyond the enormous limestone breakwater boulders that line the pier. Large icy chunks bobbed in the gentle, dark waves, pieces broken from the broad ice shelf during warmer weather.
A puffy snow is still falling. It's added another four inches to the ground today.