Bob Mackreth: Park Ranger, Historian, And Writer

Glastonbury Tor Outer Island Lighthouse Sequoia National Park Little Sand Bay, Lake Superior Fire Island Beach Great Western Divide, Sequoia National Park Old Michigan Island Lighthouse, Lake Superior On The Beach At Fire Island Harpers Ferry, WV Blydenburgh County Park, Smithtown, NY Three Rivers, CA, 1977 Filmstrip Border

Apostle Islands, Lake Superior

Bob Mackreth is a writer and historian living in the Lake Superior country. With more than thirty years of experience as a park ranger, he takes a special interest in National Park Service issues.

Special Preview

Mom and Pups

Two excerpts from

The Thanksgiving Puppies

To be released in early 2008... the true story of a mother dog, her puppies, and a battle to save them.

Chapter One:

"There's A Puppy!"

Chapter Ten:

There's Something About Mary, Indeed

An Old Favorite

Michigan Island Lighthouse

The Apostle Islands Scrapbook

Historic tales of the Lake Superior archipelago, back on-line by popular demand.

Recent Writing:

O.K. Hall's First Day At Work

The difficult early days of the Outer Island Lighthouse: excerpt from a forthcoming book.

PEER Strikes Out

A fringe group makes an outlandish charge, and brings discredit to the entire environmental movement.

The Saddest Place

Reflections on a visit to a French cemetery.

The Chip In The Rim

A moment of discovery in an English village church.

Cultural Resources In Wilderness: Still At Risk

The keynote speaker at an NPS conference says there's no real need to protect the historic resources in the Wilderness portions of the Apostles Islands. He's wrong, of course, but what does it portend that the agency asked him to speak?

Big Ole: Xtreme Boatman of the Apostle Islands

Paul Bunyan wasn't the only larger-than-life character in the north country... but Big Ole was real.

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
General Management Plan

"Options For Management,"
or Instrument Of Surrender?

An examination of the in-progress
Apostle Islands General Management Plan.

Guest Commentary

Concerning the Options For Future Management of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, one reader emailed:

My biggest problem with the way the Apostle Islands General Management Plan is being proposed is that all the options assume the downward spiral of never-enough-funding is going to continue indefinitely. It's as though the only visions the writers have are worst-case-- "no money, no staff, no public support" -- into the indefinite future. They're calling this "realism;" I think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I've seen Resource Stewardship Plans for other parks, part of the exercise has always been to think about what could be done if money weren't an issue. Here, when they come out with "options," they're not options at all; they're the management equivalent of throwing one's hands in the air and exclaiming, "We're screwed!"

More Guest Commentary:

"Dave O," on his excellent Lake Superior kayaking blog, wrote,

...a hearing on the Apostles Islands Management Plan that I attended in Minneapolis last year reminded me of those car seats that were around when I was a kid. They were unsafe as hell but had a little plastic steering wheel that let you pretend you were driving. Every once in awhile the car would turn in the same direction that you turned the wheel and it gave you the illusion that you were driving. But you weren't and you knew very well who was in the drivers seat. I think that meeting was much more of a 'here's what we're gonna do' rather than a 'please tell us your ideas and concerns' type of scenario.

Read more on the Options For Future Management...

... or visit the official National Park Service page on the Apostle Islands planning process.

Contact:

bobmack@charter.net

Greatest Hits

A Winter's Tale of Fire Island (New York Times, 1988)

Ghosts of the Apostle Islands (Lake Superior, 2004)

Lighthouses of the Apostle Islands (Lake Superior, 2002)

Dad, Uncle Bud, and 1508 (TRAINS, 2007; PDF)

Traces In The Forest (Lake Superior, 2007)

Speaking Schedule

Where I'll be appearing in the near future.

Web Design

Washburn, Wisconsin, municipal site: "a little town on the Big Lake."

Fish Tugs of the Greatest Lake: the hard-working fishing boats of Lake Superior.

Nourse's Sport Fishing: sport fishing in the waters of Wisconsin's fabled Apostle Islands.

Some of My Friends

Terry Pepper: the best lighthouse page on the Web, bar none.

Ann Reed: supremely talented singer-songwriter.

Kevin Allman: my favorite contemporary social critic.

Organizations

Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association

American Lighthouse Coordinating Committee

Coalition of National Park Service Retirees

Last updated December 12, 2007

All content copyright Bob Mackreth, unless otherwise noted.