The Bucket List
I’m chipping away at my bucket list. It’s not an official list. I haven’t written it out—yet. But I’ve always wanted to see Mackinac Island. A place without cars. What could be nicer?
I lived in Michigan for seven years, but never got to the island. It’s not my fault—I was a kid. At my parents’ mercy. Mack Island wasn’t on their bucket lists.
But I made it. Drove to Ann Arbor with an Arkansas pal, picked up my high school chum, then to the top of the “mitten” (the lower peninsula of Michigan), across the Mackinac Bridge to St. Ignace on the Upper Peninsula, where we parked the car.
We took a ferry to the island, crossing the rolling waters of Lake Huron. A horse and buggy took our luggage to the hotel while we strolled the main drag, careful not to step in horse droppings.
The whole downtown smells of chocolate. (The Island is famous for fudge.) The lake slaps at the shore all around. Gulls flit about, sometimes screaming so loudly I momentarily mistook their cries for injured children. The air was cool. And everybody got in their 10,000 steps a day.
Bicycles are everywhere on Mackinac Island. Thousands of them. And you don’t have to lock them when you stop in a store or a restaurant. The island is small—it would be pretty hard to steal a bike and get away with it. Dogs and children are plentiful as well—often seen in carts pulled by adults on bicycles.
Goods are carried to hotels, restaurants, and private homes in carts pulled either by bicycles or horses. The internal combustion engine has no place at all in the bustle of island commerce. No exhaust fumes. No car noises. Just the continual clop clop of horse hooves on pavement.
My friends and I rented a horse and cart one afternoon. My Arkansas pal was the designated driver, having spent much of her life around horses. I was the navigator and said “whoa” a lot as Teddy (our horsepower) wanted to trot a little fast for my taste. My Arkansas pal and I are used to singing together and we did some harmonizing on our buggy ride. Country Roads. The Tennessee Waltz. Teddy seemed calmer when we were singing, so I filled my lungs with that cool lake air and let loose.
For those who don’t have the stomach to hold the reins on their own, horse and buggy “taxis” abound on the island. You can make the trip with a professional driver. But either way, traveling around the perimeter of the island in an open air buggy pulled by a horse is definitely fit for a bucket list.And I can now cross that off.
Except I’d like to do it again. I’m thinking Eureka Springs should close its roads to cars and install some horses. And carts.And bicycles. (I saw folks walking bicycles uphill on the island. There were some inclines that definitely rival the steep hills of Eureka. It can work.) That would take care of the downtown parking problem. People can leave their cars at hotels or designated lots outside of town and take a horse taxi to dinner in Eureka Springs.
There will be jobs for poop scoopers, and the end product can be sold to local farmers who are growing greens and things for Eureka restaurants. And I might even get the courage to hold the reins myself, one day. Maybe I’ll put that on my bucket list.