For Traverse City’s Bob Otwell, part of Michigan’s allure is its abundance of special places, and primary among them is the Upper Peninsula’s “wild and isolated” Two Hearted River watershed.
That’s where Otwell and family have had a cabin called “Boggy’s Camp” for over 30 years.
In a newly released book, The Real Two Hearted: Life, Love, and Lore Along Michigan’s Most Iconic River, Otwell chronicles his decades of paddling, hiking and mountain-biking along the Two Hearted and meshes those activities with raising a family along the way. In addition to the personal vignettes, the book contains analyses of the river, its watershed, threats to the pristine surroundings and a forward look to the Two Hearted in 2050.
Great Lakes Now recently spoke with Otwell, a civil engineer and hydrologist, on the book’s release. First, a spoiler alert: while Otwell gives due mention to Ernest Hemingway’s Two Hearted book, and the beer by the same name, his book is about neither.
“Wilderness river”
In addition to the personal vignettes, the book contains analyses of the river, its watershed and threats to the pristine surroundings. (Photo courtesy of Bob Otwell)
Michigan has 300 named rivers with a combined length of 51,000 miles. But only the Two Hearted has an official “wilderness river” designation. That could be because, according to Otwell, the Two Hearted only has one paved road that’s plowed in the Winter that goes across the watershed. It’s remote in that sense.
“There’s a quote that says It’s hard to destroy a wilderness without roads. Roads provide access to special places we want to visit but the wilderness may be better off without us. Or at least without our vehicles,” he said.
Otwell speculated that there may be areas of the Two Hearted where no person has ever walked.
“When you’re out there you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere,” Otwell told Great Lakes Now.
Practicality
Otwell talks about the Two Hearted being the most “undammed, undeveloped and unpopulated river” on the U.S. side of the Great Lakes watershed, but that wasn’t the driving force when selecting a site for a getaway cabin.
Otwell wanted a site near a river that was canoeable and much of the Two Hearted main branch is, he said. And for practical logistical reasons, the cabin site had to be a reasonable drive from Traverse City so with its eastern Upper Peninsula location, it fit the bill.
Off road vehicles
In a section titled Access and Development, Otwell says for thousands of years, Indigenous people had camps near the river and accessed it on foot or by canoe. It wasn’t until the 1840’s that state of Michigan surveyors started to define townships and sections.
Fast forward to the 1950’s and the emerging popularity of snowmobiles that were then a tolerable nuisance. But now in the modern era, there is no shortage of off road and sport utility vehicles (SUV’s) and Otwell is concerned.
When it was just snowmobiles, the impact was just for a few months of the year, and it was relatively minor. However, according to Otwell, now there are 12 months of noise in the watershed.
And it’s not only the noise, the vehicle activity has changed the nature of the roads from grassy and mossy two tracks to just sand. Otwell says the DNR has tried to limit the access of off-road vehicles but it’s hard and “most people now move around the watershed in motorized vehicles.”
Concern for groundwater
Given his hydrology credentials, Great Lakes Now asked Otwell about the status of Michigan’s groundwater, at times known as the 6th Great Lake because of its volume.
Otwell said he looked into Ottawa County’s groundwater issues. The state of Michigan is a basin and some of the deeper aquifers are salty from past geology, which is a real concern. In Ottawa County, for example, the deeper wells are drawing water and are creating significant drawdowns and the saltier groundwater from inland is moving into those areas and it’s affecting not only drinking water crops. There have been studies on the issue but the outcome is just more studies, according to Otwell.
“It is interesting that when Lake Michigan’s level was at an all-time high in 2019, the beachfront folks were concerned about too much water and a few miles away people were overusing groundwater,” said Otwell.
“Lip service and inertia”
Throughout the interview Otwell spoke in measured tones, but that changed when the topic was climate change. Great Lakes Now pointed out that in the book that Otwell said “our society pays lip service to climate change.”
Asked to elaborate, Otwell said in the U.S. we’re bound by inertia.
“We like what we have and our society is set up to travel by car and it’s hard to change people,” said Otwell.
Otwell and his wife, Laura, have been longtime advocates for increased bike transportation in Traverse City. According to Otwell, it’s hard to get people to think about it given Michigan’s long history and continuing relationship with cars. “But you’re healthier and the community is safer when people travel by bikes,” Otwell said.
2050
Otwell closes the book with a look forward to 2050 and what he’d like to see.
“I hope that we value natural resources more than we do now,” he said, referring to the idea that a standing tree has a value, but we don’t value it until we cut it down and saw it into boards.
Otwell would also like to see more emphasis placed on the values of Indigenous peoples who talk about natural resources like a river as a relative, a part of their family.
As the interview ended Otwell shared a message about “special places” like the Two Hearted and said it’s important to get to know these locations, and they don’t have to be as remote or well known as the Two Hearted, they may just be a park or preserve near you home, said Otwell.
These special places are something we need to cherish, preserve and not pave over, Otwell said.
“And there are a lot of beautiful, special places in Michigan and all over the Great Lakes area,” he said.
More about Otwell’s Two Hearted book can be found at Mission Point Press.
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Featured image: Photo courtesy of Bob Otwell
