“Rather than
descend into the sump of neuroticisms that makes many of us what
we are I’d like to think that my eating and drinking comprise
a strenuous search for the genuine, that I am a voyager, an explorer,
an adventurer in the ordinary activity of what we do every day:
eat and drink.”
So writes Michigan writer Jim Harrison in the introduction to The
Raw and the Cooked, Adventures of a Roving Gourmand, a 2001
compilation of his food writing. I picked the book up only recently
on the advice of a friend who said the book changed his life. I
can see why. Harrison touches on travel and food, from the simple
to the exotic, in a way that seems grounded in a philosophy so down
to earth that it often makes me think differently or just laugh
out loud. It is at once something the reader can relate to and something
the reader wants to relate more to in the future—in my case,
by following in Harrison’s footsteps.
Because Harrison writes vividly about both food and northern Michigan,
it seemed appropriate that I was reading this book last month on
my first ever trip to the Upper Peninsula. Who would be better than
Jim Harrison to act as my spiritual guide on this trip to his old
stomping grounds for a weekend of eating, drinking and exploring?
Going north, going shopping
The plan was to meet up with several friends from downstate and
spend the weekend at a cabin up in Grand Marais, a beautiful town
on Lake Superior. From the very beginning, we had anticipated food
wars. That is, everyone trying to outdo each other to see who brought
the tastiest goodies. There was plenty of wine, and let’s
just say that no one went hungry.
But let me back up. The first stop on our vacation was Boyne Falls.
From there, we sailed to Charlevoix for the single purpose of grabbing
a pound of smoked trout from John Cross Fisheries. There, over a
small counter, a succulent selection of fresh, smoked and frozen
fish is available for takeaway. For other provisions, we stopped
briefly in Petoskey at Symons General Store, where I easily could’ve
spent the whole day. There we sifted through shelves of exciting
sauces and oils and a large selection of cheeses and wines, emerging
breathless with herbed Boursin, olive oil, crackers, capers, horseradish
sauce, mango-lime salsa, a sweet white summer wine and a nice 1995
Rioja. At prices comparable to downstate, the $50 we spent at Symons
was our most extravagant purchase on the trip.
Grand Marais
It took a few hours to drive from Petoskey to Grand Marais, and
when we got there we realized the directions to the cabin weren’t
making sense to us. We decided to go ponder them for about an hour
at the Dunes Saloon, a former Harrison haunt. (The writer lived
for years in Michigan, but now splits his time between Arizona and
Montana, where his children and grandchildren live.)
The Dunes Saloon, home of the Lake Superior Brewing Co., looked
a lot like I thought it would: dim and all wood, with the sun shining
through slices of geodes in the window. We asked a waitress about
Harrison, and she told us he was in about three months ago, but
she didn’t expect to see him again until bird season. This
time of year, Grand Marais is crammed with vacationers. “He
hates crowds,” she said.
I ordered up a Hematite Stout, which was fantastic. It turned out
to be light and surprisingly thirst-quenching, smelling of coffee
candy and tasting slightly of Indian tobacco. The Dunes also serves
up an excellent bitter called Cabin Fever.
After leaving the bar we found ourselves taken in by the town’s
beauty and decided to drive around for awhile. Eventually, we chanced
upon our cabin and found our friends whooping from the deck with
an excited anticipation that we figured was part fresh air and part
Labatt light. Inside the cabin, a feeding frenzy immediately ensued,
with us breaking out the trout, horseradish and capers, chips and
salsa, all around a rather curious centerpiece: a two-pound whitefish
that our friends decided to named Raoul, after a guy who didn’t
make it up for the weekend. Raoul, along with some tasty whitefish
sausage, was from Gustafson’s, a shop on U.S. 2 in Brevort,
one of many roadside stands and shops on the way to the U.P. that
sell Michigan treats including smoked fish, fudge, jerky and pasties.
The nice table arrangement didn’t last long as we right away
began feasting on the fish with a zeal that reminded of a Harrison
quote, “Life is too short for me to approach a meal with the
mincing steps of a Japanese prostitute.”
Note: the fish went well with King Shag, the reasonably-priced Sauvignon
Blanc we’d picked up at Trader Joe’s. Trout goes well
with horseradish and capers while the whitefish sausage lends itself
to stone-ground mustard.
At various points later in the evening we all ended up back at the
Dunes Saloon and became hungry again, a pang deftly snuffed by the
place’s excellent pizza. We polished one off just in time
to catch the Northern Lights as we made our way back to the cabin
along the beach. Aurora Borealis presented itself as a long turquoise
swath across the bell-clear sky, with occasional shooting spires
of light that danced in the heavens.
Earning Dinner
At some point I suppose I should mention this: That although I enlisted
Jim Harrison as my imaginary guide, I don’t mean to insinuate
that we ate what Harrison eats or would have eaten on this trip.
In The Raw and the Cooked, he tends toward wilder things,
such as grouse and woodcock—things we’re not quite ready
to stalk.
I woke up on Saturday with a bit of a sore head. Perhaps it was
the combination of drinks of night before (It hadn’t really
been that much, had it? I had tried to pace myself by drinking lots
of refreshing Grand Marais tap water.) I lamented that this was
how I felt on the day we’d chosen to visit Pictured Rocks
National Lakeshore, but a few aspirin, several cups of coffee and
a well-made omelet seemed to soothe me. We packed some water and
a light snack and piled into the car for an hour and a half drive
to the trailhead. From there we hiked three miles, threw ourselves
into Lake Superior for about half an hour of swimming and then hiked
back. Lake Superior was clean, fresh and cold. The terrain was up
and downhill. And by the time we were almost finished hiking, for
the first time since the beginning of the trip, I began to feel
hunger, and the hunger felt good.
In The Raw and The Cooked, Harrison writes of “earning”
dinner. In one of the essays, he even describes things he ate while
really hungry from some exertion. Likewise, as we trudged through
the forest, my mind turned to well-deserved meals in the past. After
hiking nine-plus miles through Island Lake park in Livingston County,
for instance, I sometimes indulge in one of the peerless cheeseburgers
served at Detroit’s Bronx Bar. There was also the Mexican
cornbread and crawfish etouffee the Louisiana cook prepared back
when I was attending LSU’s geology field camp in Colorado
years ago. There’s nothing quite like a big home-cooked meal
after a day of climbing all over big rocks.
Hours later, back at the cabin, we found that dinner was worth the
wait. Inspired by a story Harrison wrote about a simple meal he
had with some gardeners in Normandy, I cored some Michigan tomatoes
and stuffed them with the Boursin, roasted garlic and herbs before
baking them at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour. We also had
to finish Raoul, who had been evicted from the refrigerator on olfactory
grounds. As we watched the sun set over Lake Superior, we enjoyed
the melted cheese and tomatoes on hamburgers and on big hunks of
a southern Italian bread called pugliese. The Rioja, a 1995 Marques
de Caceres, went well with this part of the meal. This earthy wine
with a slight tannic finish provoked rather imaginative descriptions
from friends.
“I swear it smells like the bucket seats in a ’74 Mercury
Capri,” someone offered.
“Dragged through a forest floor with a few mushrooms caught
in the pouch,” another added.
The next morning we made it back to the Dunes Saloon for one last
beer. All but one car parked alongside the bar was unlocked or had
the windows rolled down. I knew it was going to be hard to leave
a place that inspires such trust, especially given the fresh air
and water, great beer, and daytime temperatures in the 70s. I can
see why Harrison keeps coming back.
September, by way, should be an excellent time to visit Grand Marais
– more fall colors and fewer tourists and horseflies. Should
you choose to go at this time, you might even bump into the man
himself.
Regardless, one might do well to keep in mind the writer’s
philosophy, that “eating well, however simply, is part of
a life fully lived.”
Email
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illustration
by Raul Pena
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