When Smoke Grows Into a Flame

Prairie Smoke on the Maxton Plains, Drummond Island, Michigan | 06.24.25

Memory deceives me and time eludes me to find the photos that would determine the exact year when I first went out to the Maxton Plains. What I do remember clearly is the question the kind woman at the tourist office had asked me, a decade or so ago.

"Have you been out to the Maxton Plains and seen the Prairie Smoke? It's blooming right now."

My answer to both questions was "no" but my curiosity was a firm "yes" -- heightened when none of my extended family that was on Drummond Island, Michigan, for a reunion had even heard of the Maxton Plains. My husband and his brothers and cousins had been coming to Drummond Island during the summer since early childhood, and their grandfather had started the medical clinic there. That I had learned about something new was nothing short of remarkable, particularly in that family lore had frequently recited my father-in-law's description of this small, remote place in the Upper Peninsula. "It's 23 miles long by 5 miles wide."

Piling into a 16-passenger van, we soon found out that the Maxton Plains were at the very end of those 23 miles.

The Maxton Plains are part of an alvar. According to The Nature Conservancy website, an alvar is "a Swedish term used to describe a limestone pavement" with only "a thin layer of soil on the limestone bedrock" -- the last glaciers having removed the soil thousands of years ago. Also according to that page, "The alvars found on Drummond Island are the largest remaining high-quality alvars in North America."

Indeed, the alvar plains were remarkable. They truly looked like pavement, as stated in the description. The quiet of the landscape, and the quiet vision of Prairie Smoke, however, were what stayed with me.

So when we planned to return to Drummond Island this past June for another Thompson reunion, one of the questions my husband (Jay) asked me was, "Besides having time with family, what are you hoping to do at Drummond?"

That was easy; there were many things. But at the top of the list were kayaking in the early morning, and going back to the Maxton Plains -- particularly if the Prairie Smoke was in bloom.

I was not disappointed.

Once again, as I turned to the left where the information signs first welcome visitors to the Maxton Plains, I was greeted with the quiet beauty of prairie grasses.

Driving slowly on the gravel and dirt road, I then noticed something else...a movement in the grasses and among the bushes and trees. It was two Sandhill Cranes, those birds I've grown to love and that I also first saw on Drummond Island.

I wondered if it was too late in the season for the Prairie Smoke this time, though I was greatly enjoying all the other wildflowers that were in bloom. But then, before my hope gave out, I came upon another open field, and there they were.

Their pinkish-gray wisps were catching the sunlight, a dancing glow in the afternoon breeze that immediately caught my heart.

This type of landscape with these species of birds and flowers is not something familiar from my childhood. The opportunity to be some place so quiet and so full of wonder, though, resonates from my earliest days. Perhaps discovering more of the off-road places of Drummond Island is how this island went from being a family tradition to a personal sense-of-place. Perhaps that is why it resonated once again as I drove down that dirt road and sat along its edge to be heart-to-bloom among the grasses and wildflowers of the Maxton Plains.

Perhaps that is why, when next we return to Drummond Island, I'll find myself on that dirt road again.

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