Huron: The Seasons of a Great Lake

Front Cover
Wayne State University Press, 1999 - Biography & Autobiography - 268 pages

Napier Shelton takes us on a journey as he spends a year at his family's cottage on the lake. Having visited Lake Huron for over thirty years, Shelton weaves family memories into his evocative and informed account of the seasons on this great lake. In 1995, Shelton spent a year at the cottage more fully exploring Lake Huron and its varied shores. He writes about Native American fishing rights, small towns, the fearsome ice, and the migration of birds. He follows the seasonal changes of life in the water. We accompany him on commercial fishing boats, a research vessel studying lake trout, and a Coast Guard icebreaker. We experience the travels and tragedies of venturers on Lake Huron over the past four centuries.

Huron is pleasurable reading for any student of natural history or the Great Lakes region, or for anyone who has ever spent time at a summer cottage or wished to do so.

 

Contents

Preface
9
What Lies Beyond the Summer?
13
The Cottage
15
Port Sanilac
21
Up North
29
Ice
39
Fish and Birds in Winter
53
Avian Highways
63
Restoring the Lake
135
June Shores
151
Colonial Waterbirds
175
The Summer Pause
187
Small Boats Long Journeys
193
Fall Comes Down the Lake
207
Big Boats Killer Storms
223
Birds at Christmas
235

The Base of the Pyramid
77
Fishing for a Living
83
Managing the Fisheries
105
Lake Trout and Lampreys
121
Closing Up
247
Common
253
Principal Published Sources
263
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

Napier Shelton is a retired technical writer for the National Park Service and the author of several books on natural history. He lives in Washington, D.C.