| June 30th presented Beaver Island with a pleasant enough but somewhat misty evening. The low haze turned the setting sun a bright red, long before it was absorbed by the horizon. The wind came up, raising waves at McCauley's Point, the rocky tip at the south end of Donegal Bay for which the Port of St. James Property Owners' Association has provided an access path -- to both the beach and the north end of the Kuebler Trail. South of the Point is a flat, windblown plain of grit-scarred rocks that one imagines a fox tip-toeing across, bonzai cedar formations on isolated Badlands-style buttes, and towering sand dunes that fall off into an untouched hardwood forest on the state land behind. In wetter years this plateau has held shallow, frog-filled spring-and-summer ponds, but this year it's as dry as dry ice.
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