Richard Treks: BALM: Week 2 Day 3

Ask people what they know of October 8, 1871, and more than a few will mention the Great Chicago Fire that burned for two days and took a few hundred lives. Largely forgotten and rarely mentioned in history outside of Wisconsin is the Great Peshtigo Fire, which also burned on October 8, 1871, but took anywhere between 1500 and 2500 lives, most of whom burned alive, but hundreds who drowned or died of hypothermia in wells and the Peshtigo River where they sought safety.

I was thinking of this as I rode through Peshtigo and later along the shores of the Bay of Green Bay, looking far across at the Door Peninsula, which also burned that day when winds blew sparks across the bay.

But there were more pleasant moments! In Menominee, MI, a glove fell from my bike without me knowing it. A woman stopped in a busy highway, recovered the glove, and gave it back to me in a McDonald's parking lot. Such small acts affirm the goodness and kind spirits of most people.

Past Menominee, whenever Gary and I were riding along the bay, we could see a chain of islands that extend north of the Door Peninsula to Big Bay de Noc in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. That's still two days away. We'll then have biked the perimeter of Green Bay and we'll be back on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Today, as planned, we left George behind in Oconto. Though she had small problems with a sore butt, she was a great biking companion, always good humored and always laughing. She says the next time Gary and I tour, she wants to go the entire distance.

Gary and I have a beautiful camp site on the bay at JW Wells State Park just south of Cedar River. It's raining, as it has been most of the day. But our tents are dry and we had a hot meal. I'm listening to the rain as it plops on the fly of my tent and to Of Monsters and Men. It's dark, and my candle lantern hangs from the warm center of my tent. Everything inside is glowing. Or, as Terrence Malik would say, all things shining.