Originally posted on Septmber 20, 2008 on www.myspace.com/bowyer512
It’s a little before 7 p.m. and I’m back in my motel room after a day of adventure, sadness and partial closure.
After traveling a little over two hours from Sault Ste. Marie I arrived at the mouth of the Two Hearted River. Let me tell you, it is in the middle of nowhere. I had to travel over fourteen miles on washboard dirt roads watching for idiots driving way too fast and stirring up dust.
I finally arrived at the Rainbow Lodge and turned down the road to the Two Hearted River campground.
I got out and began to gather my things. Two young guys came walking up after fly fishing at the mouth of the river. We struck up a conversation and I found out they are both going to college in the UP and one of them was from Greenville near Grand Rapids and the other from Kalamazoo. They asked me what brought me up there and I briefly told them my story. The discussion quickly turned to fishing and they were excited that I lived in Frankfort since both of them had fished the Betsie River. The Two Hearted River is known for some world class fishing, but the water was moving too slow, so they decided to go up river and see if the fish had moved since last night’s rain.
We said our goodbyes and I set out down the trail towards the mouth of the river. The wind was blowing off Lake Superior which was refreshing after being in the Jeep on dusty roads.
After climbing over logs and being careful not to fall in the river, I stepped onto the beach and started walking. I got to mouth where the river meets the lake and sat my backpack on a nearby log. I took a few pictures of the area and gather a few rocks.
My plan is to keep a rock or something from each place I scatter Kristine’s remains and write the date and location on it. Maybe the kids will like to have them and then Kristine’s future grand kids when they are older will know where their grandmother is? My grandfather did kind of the same thing during WWII in the South Pacific to remind him of where he was.
I opened up the small sack of Kris’s ashes and took three scoops of her remains and tossed them to the wind. I said a few word and cried a bit. I felt sad, but it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I really felt a little relieved that this was the start of some closure for me. I makes me want to travel and continue to spread her ashes.
I put everything back in my back pack and took a couple more pictures. As I stood by the water a man began to approach me from down the beach. He was dressed in military attire and had a regulation army haircut. We said hello to each other and we started up a conversation. I found out he was in the National Guard and had returned from Iraq about 3 months ago. He was up with his father setting up a tree stand on their property nearby since hunting season is coming up. He told me it had been years since he had been to the mouth of the river. He said he was about 8 or 9 the last time he was there. I told him why I was there and he gave me his condolences. He asked me Kristine’s name and said that he would pray for her and shook my hand.
After he walked away I stood and stared out onto Lake Superior and began to cry. I imagined Kris as a child running on the beach with her grandmother hunting for stones. Just then an older woman approached me. I asked her if she would take my picture and she gladly did. She told me she was hunting for flat stones that she will make into a totem. She said she had been coming there for over thirty years and had found a few small agates and she showed them to me. She said her goodbyes and I began to make my way back to the Jeep.
I began to drive away from the beach back down the dusty road. About nine miles or so down the road a bridge crosses the river and there on the banks were the two college students and the National Guardsman fishing. I stopped on the bridge and all three of them shouted up at me that the fishing sucked and for me to have a nice trip back. I found it strange that I saw all three of them together miles down the road?
