The Sounding-pod of Point au Sable

Point au Sable is got to on foot and grudgingly. I went down the creek the whole way, stinging nettle, devil’s beggartick, and the snapping turtles that hold the channel like tollkeepers, and came out where the creek loses itself in the sand and the marsh, and the bay opens flat and grey.

It came out of the mist the way a boat does before you hear it, and I had my pencil going before I had decided it was real. A pod the size of a bushel basket, ribbed and scaled like a wasp-comb or a great closed cone, held up off the water by nothing I could see, walking on a fringe of red legs. Beneath it, on threads, a dozen weights hung down and just touched the surface. Plumb-bobs, lead-lines, the sort of thing a lakeman drops to read the depth. It was sounding the shallows. It was reading the bottom the way I was reading it.

I have set the working parts in the corners as I understood them, the way you would diagram an engine you were not allowed to open: the gas-body above, the ballast below, the mite of it drawn small for scale. Whether it is one animal, or a craft that some smaller thing is sailing, I could not say before the mist took it back. The waterfowl did not startle at it. Only I did.

---

An earlier telling of this plate, recovered with it. Kept as found.

I trailed the creek, tracing its serpentine course toward the expansive waters, grappling with the stinging nettle, devil’s beggartick, and the ever-present snapping turtles that seemed determined to thwart my journey. Amid the challenges, I pressed on, driven by a curiosity that eclipsed the obstacles in my path. As the creek widened its embrace, demanding a nimble dance along the sandy shore to evade the treacherous muck and marsh, the formidable Point Au Sable loomed in our path.

And then, like a spectral waltz emerging from the mist, it materialized. There it was, a manifestation seemingly conjured from the ethereal realms, beckoning with an enchanting allure. My artist’s soul quickened, and I feverishly sketched its visage, fearing it might vanish like a sprite into the hazy sand bar, where waterfowl mingled with the whispering spirits of the mud-laden soil.

In that fleeting moment, surrounded by the symphony of nature and the dance of unseen guardian spirits, I immortalized the apparition on paper, a testament to the mystical encounter between the mortal and magical realms that unfolded in the heart of the marshy landscape.