Five solo canoes and six kayaks set off Sunday morning for a late summer run down the upper-most navigable water of the Manistee River. Lois Goldstein and John Heiam led the group that included Pam and Harold Lassers, Tracie Lord, Marlene and Marv Puska, Michael Roberts, Judy and Fred Swartz, and Jocelyn Trepte, accompanied by Max the dog. The launch was from what is known locally as Deward North or the upper Deward access, located a mile south of the Mancelona Road off Manistee River Road, the first of a half dozen fishing access sites which feature steps or staircases to prevent erosion.
Much of the early part of the trip was through the Deward Tract, a 4,700-acre section of special management state land, a mix of pine forests, dense tag alder and cattail marsh, and low-lying river sections of cedar and balsam fir. The Deward area – and the former village of Deward, named for David E. Ward -- was the site of one of the largest sawmills of the early 20th century, which could cut 200,000 feet of pine in 20 hours. Deward also had a rail line that carried the tons of cut lumber to East Jordan, sparing the river here of the damaging log drives common further down stream. Paddling the narrow river here for the first hour involved tight turns, low-hanging boughs, and old log wing dams and platforms installed during the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps to improve river flow and trout habitat. The dry summer has left river levels unusually low, resulting in an early series of gravel-bar groundings and cross-stream log encounters. But after about an hour, Frenchman’s Creek joins the flow and the river widens into a series of sweeping bends and winding runs down among logs, stumps, brush piles, and more wing dams. “Manistee” is the English version of the Indian name, Manistiqweita, which means, “crooked river.” And wind it does. Small trout rose to a late morning hatch of Blue Wing Olives and deer snorted in the tag alder. The paddlers pushed several irritated ducks downstream, probably resting at the start of the winter migration. Lunch was at another of the Deward access sites, this one known as Observation Point (look for the sign with binoculars out by the two-track heading west from Manistee River Road).
From here on through the rest of the trip, down through the last of the Deward Tract, past the first cabins, on past Cameron Bridge, and finally the takeout at 612 Bridge, the river continues to wind and sparkle. Late summer blooms were starting to fade; thistle seeds in their puffy white thread parachutes tumbled over the surface of the water; brown ferns were scattered among the green. Fully summer, but a touch of fall at the edges on the river.
Report by Michael Roberts Photos by John Heiam