Back to the Creek ... to the Meadow ... to the Big Lake

 

This is not the beginning.

Deciding which photo to put at the top of this post gave me pause. Finally I decided against chronological order for the opening image, because this view of Lake Michigan, with sun breaking through the clouds and creating a shining path across the water, seemed the most striking of my images. But Shalda Creek crossing Bohemian Road was really the beginning -- or the beginning of our (Sunny's and my) arrival at my chosen destination after I woke from a dreadful nightmare and needed the creek, the meadow, and the lake.

Shalda Creek coming from its road crossing...

...and continuing to Lake Michigan.

Queen Anne's-lace against out-of-focus running water was a contender for top image.

Sun filtered through trees this morning on Lake Michigan Road.

Is it one tree or two? Either way, bonded for life....

The old road through the meadow --

Reindeer moss, a lichen, thrives on poor soil and pure air.

Northern Michigan wants to be forest again

Sunny leads the way along the fading two-track.

A clearing in the distance catches the sun.

A glimpse of Shell Lake --

Muddy, narrow old access to Shell Lake --

Back on beautiful Lake Michigan Road, we are greeted by the sun.

Don't you love signs like this?

Do you see Sunny Juliet's ear?

There is the whole dog!

Bigger waves than we saw the last time --

She had to think it over....

We retreated briefly to consider our options.

But she decided to be a brave girl!

The excitement made her frisky! She did a balance beam act!

She really did walk the log its full length. She is a natural athlete and has the balance of youth. 

We were both wet and sandy and windblown and happy. Taking a morning vacation was a very good idea! The only thing that would have made it better would have been not being leash-bound -- but leash is the rule at the Lakeshore.

On the way home, coming back down to ordinary time and life, I stopped for a moment by the pond on Alpers Road, a spot David and I almost never drove by without stopping, and told Sunny once more how much her daddy and I loved that place.

The Woods, the Meadow, the Lake

Make time before time gets away!

We woke up early, in the dark, Sunny and I. Reluctantly, I got organized for the drive out to the highway with a red bag for the weekly morning garbage pickup. (I don’t put a bag out every week but don’t like to skip more than one or two.) The sky before sunrise was lovely with soft pink clouds, and quickly I came to an executive decision: Sunny and I deserved a vacation! I could still open the bookstore on time in Northport after having most of the morning for adventures, and Shalda Creek was calling my name.

Magic in every mood --

It might have seemed natural to go straight to the beach, but I always have other priorities south of Bohemian Road. First, a slow drive down washboard almost to the end of Lake Michigan Road and then a walk to and beyond the very end. The road didn’t used to end there, I told Sunny. She isn’t always the most eager listener, but she tolerates my irrelevant musings and reminiscences.

Then the meadow. 

That big old sentinel maple --

If the soil were better, the meadow would have completely filled in with trees by now, but instead there are only, still, plenty of waist-high bracken, colonies of horsemint, stands of black-eyed Susans, and of course northern Michigan’s ubiquitous bladder campion. With no driving permitted on it any more, the old two-lane grows fainter every year. 

This is the first place I ever identified horsemint.

Now I have a thing for it.

Green lake of bracken fern --

The last time the Artist and I walked the meadow was with our Peasy on Labor Day of 2021. Though we had no premonition that such would be the case, it was the end of our last summer together, so now that walk – I am so glad we went to the meadow that day! – is especially poignant for me, and as my feet follow the old road I relive not only that beautiful day but summer days of long ago, when the Artist’s famous “house in the woods” stood at the far end of the long, winding two-track. No trace of the house remains, except in memories of those who loved it.

She got her feet wet.

Finally I did take Sunny Juliet to the beach. It was only her second experience with Lake Michigan, but she waded in with considerably less skepticism this time, comfortable getting her feet wet. The lake was beautiful. Subtle. Rain is coming this afternoon, maybe even thunderstorms, but we had a morning of summer vacation, rich in memories for me and in novel sensations for Sunny, and I tell her what the Artist said so often to me: “We live in a beautiful place.”

 

Winter Ice, Spring Birds, Country Views

On Saturday, May 3, tired as you may be of these frigid winter images, there was still plenty of ice out in the Manitou Passage. Only a little way inland, however, birds activity spoke of spring --  a male mallard on a temporary spring pond in Leelanau Township and a pair of common mergansers on Shalda Creek down in the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore.

Flowers are popping out, too, both indoors and out. The little branches of plum brought into the house after my belated pruning of the original plum tree burst into bloom on Sunday morning. As for the chinodoxa, I have some at home, and it's one of my very favorite spring garden flowers, the deep blue reminding me of blue glass, but these particular flowers are not mine but a clump in front of Trish's Dishes in Leland, formerly the home of Stone House Bread.

Yes, the color has been doctored on the two country views below. Both views are along a lovely curve that always pulls my truck over to the side of the road. Early evening on Saturday the prospect was enhanced by a low bank of dark clouds over distant hills.