Revisiting the Past (Again)

 

Looking back or ahead? Hard to tell sometimes, isn't it?

Sunny Juliet and I didn't start out looking for times before she came into the world. We were content in a little park on Lake Leelanau, where morning sun gleamed on glassy waters. 

Would you have led off with this image instead of the rearview mirror?

But we had time before my first appointment of the day, and I felt called south to one of the few remaining (or so it seems) unpaved county roads.

Such magic in these old roads, sinking with time deeper into the earth!

Every now and then, a magic window opens to the distance.

Why this one? Do you wonder?

The apple tree, its branches heavy with fruit, wasn't the reason I stopped here. Do you see the two big old cedars behind it? Once an old log cabin stood here. "That's where Fred's grandmother was born," I told Sunny. "Or was it his mother?" Fred is gone now, along with his mother and grandmother, so there's no one left to ask, but they were immigrants from France, the cabin built in a style no doubt common in French Canada. When my husband and I drove this road thirty and forty years ago -- always very slowly, with many stops -- we would get out here and poke around the remains of the cabin. Now I don't go back to the cedars to see if any logs remain, but I stop and look at the trees and remember. 

Coming out of the woods, back to the present

When we came out of the second stretch of woods, a place I remembered walking a long-ago dog, Sunny let me know she would appreciate a chance to stretch her legs, and we walked a little way in the sun. Not a bright, blazing sun, but we are accustomed to clouds and don't let them keep us under the covers.

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.”

 

Chiricahua Closeups

Up at Massai Point, manzanita is flowering.

A depression in a rock held rainwater.

And someone was being remembered.

Do You Recognize This Place?

This is a recent photograph of a little old snapshot given to me some years ago by Jean Dame. The trees, the cars, and the Pepsi sign tell you that you're not seeing the corner of Mill and Nagonaba this winter.