One of the perks available at the Beach Comber level of our IndieGoGo campaign is a set of beach stones collected by Kevin Gauthier of Korner Gem in Traverse City. Kevin literally wrote the book on beach combing Lake Huron, so we approached him to put together an authentic collection of stones that are different enough from each other to be used as pawns and scoring markers in the game.

He did a great job. The collection includes 17 pieces: 2 quartz pebbles, 2 basalt pebbles, 2 granite pebbles, 2 limestone pebbles, 2 dolomite pebbles and 2 each of green, blue and brown beach glass.  And, we included a polished Petoskey Stone to use as a season marker.

Of course we know that you can't find Petoskey Stones on Mackinac Island, but it is Michigan's State Stone (pdf) after all.

There’s something different about being on an Island.  Perhaps you’ve felt it, too.  Is it the fact that you’re surrounded by water?  That you can’t really get lost?  That you’re one of a select few folks that can make it there? Maybe all those things.

My first experience with an Island was the summer I spent building trails on Apple Island in Orchard Lake when I was in High School.  We’d fill trash cans with wood chips, load them on a pontoon boat, drive them to the Island, and spread them out.  There was plenty of time to wander, and I remember that first magical feeling of being in a place with finite boundaries, but many stories.

Several families had homesteaded on Apple Island, and it was fun to imagine being in a place all your own, away from civilization.  It is much like the feeling you get when backpacking: You carry your house with you, like a turtle, and all you need to do is worry about living through the day and enjoying the scenery.

Barbara and I spent a honeymoon of sorts on South Manitou Island in Lake Michigan, and have been back several times since.  Being a wilderness area of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, there you are truly on your own, but with the ghosts of the former residents and with current wonders around every turn.

On Mackinac Island (pictured above), we get that same feeling, but with the comforts of a bed and breakfast or condo.  You can wander in the park and pretend like civilization is a long way away, or what it would be like to be the first one to discover a new place.

The Island setting was helpful, too, when designing Mackinac Island Treasure Hunt, because it makes it easy to contain where players can move and what information to focus on.  Other games have figured this out, as our game collection can attest: Settlers of Catan, Forbidden Island, and even Risk are a few that use Islands as theme constraints.

Islands have power, and though no person is an Island, it has always fascinated me that many heroes of power in fiction are orphans, separate from the human mainland as it were.  Frodo, Harry Potter, James Bond, Lyra Belaqua, etc. all have the ability to put everything on the line for their fellows because they have no physical connection to the world.

These characters, like the Islands I have known in Michigan’s waters, are quiet, full of intricacies and nuance, and worth exploring.

Yesterday we were out on our standard dog walk when we came out on a high place overlooking the land east of Traverse City. Everything had been coated with frost during the night, it was clear and the sun was bright, so the entire landscape sparkled like someone had thrown tinsel over everything. This is known as hoarfrost, which forms when the air is moist and the temperature drops quickly at night. This quick cooling causes the trees and things to be colder than the air, so the moisture in the air goes straight from water vapor to ice crystals, making beautiful patterns.

We have been treated to lots of interesting phenomena during this cold, cold winter. Several days ago it was sun dogs, those chunks of rainbows that appear on either side of the sun when the air has ice crystals suspended in it. Two nights ago, there was a pillar of fire as the sun set (cheesy cell-phone photo to the right), probably due to similar icy circumstances. All the Great Lakes are frozen, possibly causing our current below-zero temperatures.

Which has got me thinking about how the wild animals can handle this winter. Deer were especially on my mind, as the deep snow and cold temperatures must make their lives difficult. It sounds like it has been difficult for them, but perhaps that’s not a bad thing, biologically speaking. The strong will survive. And this weather may be good for smaller animals, as their predators find them harder to find.

The folks on Mackinac Island have been hosting deer and coyotes this winter. It is amazing how quickly the animals take advantage of the ice cover to check out new places. The posts I’ve seen have been celebrating deer on the Island.  But if they're still there in the spring, I’m wondering if they'll eat the wildflowers. When you visit North and South Manitou Islands, you immediately notice how open the forest is on North Manitou, with much less undergrowth than South Manitou.  There are deer only on North Manitou.

But the light is changing.  The crows are cawing loudly, and the woodpeckers are drumming. Hopefully we can all hang in there until spring!