A few minutes with ... a man who found a shipwreck

You see that cool photo? That's not the kind of treasure Mark Lindsay usually finds when he walks along the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

But back in 2012, walking along the sands of Michigan's northwestern Lower Peninsula, that's what he found. Lindsay, 47, of Kingsley was on one of his weekend photo hikes when he came across the hulking skeletal remains of the Jennie and Annie, a schooner that sunk in the perilous Manitou Passage in 1872.

Lindsay, when he's not working in a tire shop, trudges out to find his treasure in nature. Frigid winter is his favorite subject to shoot. His shipwreck find made news. Turns out the Jennie and Annie, along with other old shipwrecks, plays hide-and-seek along the protected Lake Michigan beaches.

When Lindsay found it in January three years ago on a remote section, he learned it was the first appearance since the 1980s. But last month, like an old friend, the wreck popped up again.

QUESTION: I can't really explain why, but I think, myself, if I ran into this ancient shipwreck, that had been there for a hundred-plus years, I think it might scare the bejeepers out of me.

ANSWER: Well, it made me think about the people who were lost on the boat. I think only three survived, seven or eight perished. And it was in like 1872.

Does that feeling consume you when you're looking at something like this? Do you have a moment of silence?

Oh, for sure. ... You can only think about the people that were on the boat. And it makes it real. It makes it more than just a piece of driftwood bouncin' around in the lakes. There's real stories of people who spent their lives in that Manitou Passage, just to and fro. Just to get from here to there. And they had to go in October. They had to go in November.

Yeah, man. Can you imagine?

Oh. I've been out on that lake going through the Manitou Passage to South Manitou Island, 5- to 8-foot waves. It's incredible. It is something. And that's with GPS. And that's with radar. Knowing what's comin' at ya. Back then, I mean, you're in a wooden schooner. Just floppin'.

It's such an odd thing, you know, this old shipwreck washing ashore. It's like a living museum almost.

Absolutely. And with the bottomlands and with the protections the way they are, I mean, that stuff needs to stay there. You cannot just go out and even move it. Like the historian — the museum people with the national park — can't even take it. … It's gotta stay there.

What's the nearest you can park to that?

It's about 45 minutes (on foot). It's about 2 miles. And that's if you walk along the shore. To go up and over the dune, to go up and over Sleeping Bear, it's very strenuous. Most people won't go that route.

Why do you do all that walking? How much time do you spend doing it?

I spend as much time as I can. Again, in the tire business and what I do, my busy time is November-December, obviously. But once I get time to go out and do it, I'll go out and shoot six-eight hours. The more fierce the condition, the better. I love the lake, I love when it blows up.

Point Betsie, I get there and I get covered with ice and I always say to people my outer layer, hopefully, is an ice layer. Because once I'm frozen and once it freezes on me, it doesn't get me wet. So, 3 degrees below zero, with my Nikon, winds whipping up, one eight-thousandth of a second, all day long. I'm shootin' waves.

Sounds like you really enjoy it.

Oh, I enjoy it. There's a lot of people who have never known Lake Michigan until they started seeing some of the ice images we've been puttin' out in the last couple of years. It's phenomenal. It's a beautiful place. I mean, in the wintertime, it's just gorgeous.

Absolutely. We're pretty lucky.

We certainly are. … And with it being a national park, that whole shoreline is protected for us to use. ... It keeps it for us. For those who will run to it.

So what do you think should be done with that big hunk of wood?

I hope it goes back. I hope it goes back out into the water. Because that's where it belongs. ... I hope it recaptures it. ... The people who passed away and who perished. It's kind of like their burial ground out there, you know what I mean? It needs to stay out there with them. And there's so many in that passage that have went down.

You see it almost like sacred ground?

Absolutely. And it's treated that way. There's a lot of respect that lake commands and deserves. Even on the calmest of days. I mean, we love it with our kids, where we can take 'em out on the lake when it's flat. But I also love it when it just whips right up. You know what I mean?

There's a time you don't turn your back to that water. And that's then. Those guys who had to use that by ways and means of transportation, we didn't have roads then. There weren't the accesses like you have on the lakes. That's what they did. And they did it in October and November, which is the time you just don't dare get on that lake. But we know that now.

You can view more of Mark Lindsay's nature photos at www.facebook.com/pages/Mark-Lindsay-Photography/124338500979444

Contact Jim Schaefer: 313-223-4542 or jschaefer@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @DetroitReporter.