Thunder Bay Island

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:03][music] >> There's a lighthouse on an island in northern Michigan that the federal government spent 40 years [music] trying to forget. A handful of people decided not to let that happen. Nobody asked them to.

[00:00:15]>> [music] >> I'm Chuck. I'm Poppins. This is Restless Viking Radio where we peek behind the curtain of life one strange and worthwhile [music] place at a time.

[00:00:23]Today, we're going to Thunder Bay Island.

[00:00:28]>> [music] >> In less than 20 ft of water, the Monohansett rests just offshore of Thunder Bay Island. It didn't drift here quietly or wear out. It burned. Accounts vary on the details as they often do. A fire broke out on board the vessel, whether it was cargo, engine trouble, or a spark that found the wrong moment doesn't matter anymore.

[00:00:50]Fire at sea has a way of simplifying outcomes. Once the crew abandoned ship, the Monohansett floated for a time, still intact. It was very much a ship, but also a floating fire. Eventually, it settled into the lake where it remains today.

[00:01:04]From the surface, there's no drama. You have no idea it's there.

[00:01:09]But if you look hard enough, there's evidence.

[00:01:11]Looking down from the boat, parts of the hull resolved into view.

[00:01:15]Long dark lines that don't belong there.

[00:01:17]A curved edge where shoreline logic fails. Timbers lying too straight and deliberate to be natural. The lake bed rises and falls softly everywhere else.

[00:01:27]Here, it stops following that rule.

[00:01:29]The wreck doesn't look dead.

[00:01:31]It looks dormant.

[00:01:33]Like something large settled in, folding itself into the bottom, and decided to wait.

[00:01:38]It doesn't move or threaten. It's just present.

[00:01:41]The longer you look, the more you get the feeling that it might wake up.

[00:01:45]You know it won't wake up, but you get the feeling.

[00:01:48]Because it once lived in motion.

[00:01:50]The camera sharpens that feeling. Its charred structure and collapsed framing are all unmistakable order on something built by ships and undone by fire.

[00:02:00]Nothing is still happening here.

[00:02:02]Everything already has. Thunder Bay Island does not offer easy landings. The dock sits out in the water, narrow dock sections anchored just deep enough for boats, but still a long walk from shore.

[00:02:13]The Zodiac noses up to one of those half-committed docks. You get out, walk along the dock section, and then it ends, still 100 yd from dry land.

[00:02:21]You hoist your pack up, step down up to your knees. The sun presses down hard and bright. Having shorts on helps as your bare legs adjust quickly. The shock does what it always does.

[00:02:32]You are finally on Thunder Bay Island now. By the time dry ground appears, the bugs have already decided. They're small, light, and forever persistent.

[00:02:39]They hover, land, lift, and return.

[00:02:42]Poppins stops as the insects gather. She looks down at her shoulder and laughs.

[00:02:46]Not amused, not annoyed, she just decides to accept the terms.

[00:02:51]She pulls on her bug shirt and zips the hood tight while the air around her stays busy, offended by the sudden loss of access.

[00:02:57]Behind us, the wreck waits. Ahead, the island does the same.

[00:03:01]Then something announces itself before it appears.

[00:03:05]It doesn't do it all at once. It's just slow and patient. First, a soft pop somewhere off in the trees, then a faint uneven hum. At first, I'm not sure what I'm hearing. A lawnmower, maybe?

[00:03:15]That's my first guess. The sound has a certain scale. It's too small for a farm tractor and steady, not random. Sue told us to text her when we reached the island. We had. This was probably our ride.

[00:03:30]The heat starting to press down. She flips on her camera, holds it out in front of her, and talks to it while we walk.

[00:03:37]"In case you're wondering," she says, "this is the island of poison ivy." She pans the camera toward the trail, toward whatever future viewers might need to convince them. The engine keeps working its way closer. Every now and then it protests. It pops and revs, then settles again. What's strange is how long the sound comes before the machine. Then it finally comes into view. An old sun-baked Ford garden tractor. Bigger than a lawnmower, smaller than a farm tractor. A tractor my grandfather might have owned in the 1970s. Rust stains clinging to the hood, evidence of attachments that once were.

[00:04:11]Sitting on top of it is a gray-haired man. He doesn't look surprised or curious. He just drives down the trail.

[00:04:17]As he comes alongside, he slows, unhurried. He cuts the throttle and lets the engine pop and cough itself quiet.

[00:04:23]No smile, no introduction. He looks at me and waits, either letting silence do its work or simply taking his time. His face says only one thing. What?

[00:04:34]Finally, I break it.

[00:04:35]"That's an old tractor." "So am I," he says immediately, like he's been waiting for it. I ask a few questions, not rehearsed, not careful. Why the island?

[00:04:44]Why the work? Why keep coming back?

[00:04:47]Poppins adds a couple of her own. He answers sideways at first about teaching, the island, about work in general. It's not dramatic or rehearsed.

[00:04:55]Then he mentions his wife.

[00:04:58]His hands stay on the wheel as he turns toward us, shifting his weight like he's decided to stay a while.

[00:05:04]"She'd come home one day and told me she was going to a meeting about a lighthouse."

[00:05:08]He hadn't taken it seriously. A meeting about a lighthouse? That was how he put it. He figured she was going to socialize. She didn't like boats or remote places, and especially didn't like poison ivy.

[00:05:19]And anything involving a lighthouse on an uninhabited island would have been an automatic no.

[00:05:24]But when she came home, something had changed. He said she couldn't stop talking. She barely paused to breathe.

[00:05:30]There was an excitement in her voice he hadn't heard before.

[00:05:34]He shook his head a little, still amused by it. "She's the president now," he said simply.

[00:05:39]Then a pause.

[00:05:41]He lets out a small grunt followed by a smile. A little pride with a little disbelief.

[00:05:46]He fills in the rest, teaching the lighthouse group and the familiar perennial knot of kids today.

[00:05:51]But soon, it's time to go. He's got something to haul. The tractor sputters back to life. The belt strains, slips, then catches. Dave rolls away toward the shoreline. The machine carrying what it can because that's what it does. I turn on my camera and face it toward me.

[00:06:07]"Well," I announce as we turn back to the trail, "I guess that wasn't our ride." "He's got important to do," Poppins said flatly.

[00:06:15]We approached the lighthouse across a wide mowed lawn. It was neatly trimmed, deliberate. The keeper's quarters faced us, solid and square. Three volunteers sat at picnic tables off to the side talking quietly. They had tools and gears spread out between them. The look of people on a break that wouldn't last long. We came closer. They stopped talking and watched us. Not unfriendly, just measuring.

[00:06:41]We said hello and introduced ourselves.

[00:06:43]Two of them recognized Chuck from the channel. One of them had his arm in a sling. We chatted for a minute, light and unfinished. Then energy arrived from around the corner. Sue. She came in fast, already talking, mid-motion, grubby from work, her hair out of place, not just uncontained. Like she hadn't bothered checking it because there were more important things happening. Her hands moved as much as her words did. I met her where she was. Chuck stepped a few paces back, lifting a camera almost without thinking. He drifted toward the picnic tables, nodding to the volunteers, giving the conversation room to settle in without him. At the picnic table, I mentioned that I'd liked what I'd called the fairy forest on our walk in. Sue's eyes lit up immediately.

[00:07:32]"Three colors of forget-me-nots grow a foot high," she said, and her hand stretched the path in the air. "They cover the whole trail." She didn't pause. "An incredible woman," she went on, "the wife of the life-saving service keeper, Celia Persons. She grew extraordinary flowers out here." Sue leaned in like she was letting us in on something personal.

[00:07:59]"She was the first woman on the Great Lakes commissioned to command a steamer."

[00:08:05]Sue motioned toward the keeper's quarters. Upstairs, she led us straight down the hall without hesitation. The walls were stripped, and the bathroom still looked abandoned after the Coast Guard left. You could almost imagine the shaving kits still sitting on the sinks.

[00:08:21]Time had done its work, but the volunteers had started doing theirs.

[00:08:26]At the end of the hall, Sue led us into a bright room where one of the walls was turned into a glass display.

[00:08:32]"This is my heroine," she said simply.

[00:08:35]She pointed to the case, a black and white photograph, a woman with a broad, knowing smile. "Celia commanded her own boat, the first woman on the Great Lakes to do it. That part mattered. But what stayed with Sue was the boat, the Florence C, the flower yacht. Taking it from this island into Alpena, flowers piled high on board, bringing them to friends." As Sue talked, it was clear that this wasn't admiration from a distance. This was recognition.

[00:09:08]"I always make sure that the Persons family grave has flowers on it," she said it matter-of-factly, like it didn't need explanation. Celia Persons had lived this place forward, and Sue was doing the same. Not reenacting history, continuing it.

[00:09:25]Upstairs, we stood in the wide hall, each of us paused in front of a bedroom door.

[00:09:29]Sue talked as she moved, filling the space with the story of work and the volunteers.

[00:09:34]They'd started with the roof to protect it first. Then came the paint. Finding the right paint, historically accurate, long-lasting, a special formula that might have been lost to time.

[00:09:44]The decisions you only make when you plan to be there a while.

[00:09:47]I noticed Dan standing nearby, listening as Sue answered our questions. He watched her talk, nodding now and then.

[00:09:53]His arm was in a black sling from a recent injury, and it hadn't stopped him from being the captain who brought everyone out that day.

[00:09:59]I I asked him why he volunteered. He didn't hesitate. "I wanted to be a part of the legacy." he said. "I'm pulling all these staples today." He pinched his fingers together carefully mimicking the motion, then gestured down the hall toward the walls, hundreds of staples.

[00:10:14]"It's not a big job." he said, "but it matters. It's a small contribution that makes me part of the history." We turned toward the stairs. Tools lay scattered across the floor. Dan picked one up and went back to pulling staples.

[00:10:26]Outside the tractor moved steadily across the lawn. Through a window I could see another volunteer painting a window frame.

[00:10:32]Sue kept talking as we went about the land transfer, federal bureaucracy, nearly a decade so far to try to sort it all out.

[00:10:40]I left them talking and climbed the tower alone. The spiral staircase was narrow. The iron steps worn smooth in the center from keepers making the climb. The air inside was cool and still, a sharp contrast to the heat circling outside.

[00:10:53]At the top I pushed open the hatch and stepped outside onto the gallery deck.

[00:10:57]The island opened up beneath me.

[00:11:00]From here you could see everything. The limestone shore stretching white and flat toward the water, the mowed lawn surrounding the keepers' quarters, a steady circle of order pressed into wilderness.

[00:11:11]I pulled out the 360 camera and held it as I started a slow walk around the lantern room, letting it capture the full sweep.

[00:11:18]To the east I could make out the faint outline where the old rail line had run, just a depression in the ground now, barely visible but straight. They used small carts to haul supplies from the shore to the lighthouse. There wasn't an engine on the cart, just pushing weight through the forest. To the north there was the point where the Coast Guard would launch rowboats. A small depression in the shoreline sheltered slightly.

[00:11:40]The land curved just enough to give a boat a fighting chance during storms.

[00:11:44]The wind pushed steady across the deck.

[00:11:46]It wasn't a strong wind, just persistent. I stood there longer than I needed to, filming more than we'd ever use, watching the island reveal itself in pieces.

[00:11:55]Then I went back down.

[00:11:56]The spiral staircase felt steeper on the descent. My knees registered each step with small sharp complaints. By the time I reached the bottom I could tell they were unhappy.

[00:12:06]Outside the sun pressed down and the bugs swirled like some sort of warm snow.

[00:12:11]We wove through the shoreline brush toward the limestone beach that seemed to stretch on forever.

[00:12:16]We walked for a couple of miles filming the flat white stone and the blue water reaching out without interruption.

[00:12:22]I turned once to look back. The lighthouse stood behind us, the work still unfinished. Further on we came across the shield carved in the limestone. I leaned over, my hands on my knees, and squinted.

[00:12:34]U S L H S the names of the crew who stayed on the island in the 1830s, almost 200 years earlier.

[00:12:44]I stood there baking in the sun, the hot breeze finally pushing the bugs away.

[00:12:48]The distant tower rose beyond the trees, steady and unchanging.

[00:12:52]Sound flattened. Our voices disappeared into it.

[00:12:56]The lake held itself just offshore.

[00:12:58]I caught the smell of baked limestone.

[00:13:01]My shirt was soaked. The heat had taken what energy I'd brought.

[00:13:05]We turned back.

[00:13:06]We came back around to the lighthouse.

[00:13:08]The back door sat in a shed-like addition throwing a small shadow across the low stoop. Small, but it was shade.

[00:13:17]Chuck sat down with his back against the wall. I could see the pain he was avoiding, old injuries making themselves known. He drank water trying to recharge. I was flushed and overheating.

[00:13:28]The shade helped, but not enough. Sue stepped out through the doorway from inside. Dave came quietly around the corner from outside. Chuck asked what they needed most. I wasn't sure what he was getting at. We usually don't ask questions like that. Dave was looking at the ground. He rested his hand on the tractor's fender. Sue looked at him, waiting.

[00:13:51]"A new tractor." she finally said. Dave nodded, looking down. "The drive belt slips." he said quietly, "especially in the water when we're pulling in gear and portage ons in from the boats." He wasn't complaining, just stating it the way you talk about something you've worked around for so long that it's become part of the day.

[00:14:12]Sue stood there already thinking ahead.

[00:14:16]Dave stayed where he was. We walked down the mowed lawn toward the old path waving goodbye. I took a bite of one of the cookies Sue had just given us. We waited through water back to the dock sitting in the middle of the water. The Zodiac started up. I clicked it in the gear and idled back.

[00:14:32]As we idled out onto the big water I watched as another load was brought out by tractor.

[00:14:37]Back home we put a video together. The old tractor, the volunteers, Dave talking about the belt slipping, Sue standing at Celia's glass case.

[00:14:45]At the end we told people what they needed, a new tractor.

[00:14:49]We put up a link.

[00:14:51]What came back surprised us.

[00:14:53]Back home we watched it unfold from a distance, messages, quiet notes, small donations at first, then more. People we didn't know helping people they would never meet for a place that they may never see.

[00:15:08]It wasn't loud. It wasn't a performance.

[00:15:11]No one made speeches or declarations.

[00:15:14]Just a steady response like the work itself. What stayed with me wasn't the number, it was the way it happened, the same way everything on this island happened, one person noticing, one person doing what they could, then another.

[00:15:28]It didn't feel dramatic or heroic, more familiar, just human.

[00:15:34]And somehow [music] that was enough.

[00:15:40]Places [music] like Thunder Bay Island don't survive because someone writes a plan and convinces the world to follow it. They survive because people step into something [music] unfinished and stay.

[00:15:50]Dave didn't talk about legacy. He talked about the belt that slips. Sue didn't talk about recognition. [music] She talked about what comes next.

[00:15:58]Neither of them was trying to become anything. They were already there.

[00:16:01]>> [music] >> It took me a while to realize what part of the day had stayed with me. It wasn't the volunteers or the history or even the lighthouse.

[00:16:08]We saw people authoring their lives in the quiet way by accepting responsibility without knowing the outcome, by choosing the work instead of the story, by staying when it would have been [music] easier to leave.

[00:16:20]Sometimes we don't have to write our own story. We just have to step into the unknown and stay.

[00:16:25]Most of us spend a lot of time thinking about the story we want to tell.

[00:16:29]The story doesn't happen while we're telling it. It begins when you stop needing to.

[00:16:36]I think about those guys a lot, the tractor, what seems like an impossible goal and yet they moved one [music] step closer every year.

[00:16:43]There's a version of a meaningful life that looks exactly like that, >> [music] >> unglamorous, unannounced, just someone deciding that a thing worth doing is worth doing today.

[00:16:53]Next week, Poppins is standing knee-deep in a trail in the Canadian wilderness, knee shot, done. And I make a promise I have absolutely no business [music] making. It turns out promises made in the wilderness don't care about your comfort. They just sit there, patient, waiting to see if you meant it.

[00:17:12]That's the cruise, next week on Restless Viking Radio.

[00:17:16]We'll see you out there.