I’m conflicted. I have one more week of solitude and cat sitting. I don’t want to waste a moment of it, yet I feel the gentle tug of home. Especially from my Katie-girl who must believe I’ve abandoned her forever.
Not true little girl, I’ll be home before you know it.
My husband has been up north with me this week. We took a bit of a side trip even further north, into the Upper Peninsula. For those of you that live far away and wonder what an Upper Peninsula is, check out a map of Michigan, we have two parts! The lower which is shaped like a mitten, and the upper which is connected to the lower by the 5 mile long Mackinaw Bridge.
I haven’t been in the UP in many years, and it felt a bit like going home to cross that bridge again. Originally we weren’t sure exactly where we were headed, and I suggested we just get in the car and see where we ended up. You know, an adventure! We ended up heading to Tahquamemon Falls, a series of waterfalls known for their root beer colored water. The redness in the water is caused by tannins leached from cedar swamps through which the river flows. The state park wasn’t officially open, but we parked where we could and hiked in to see the river. There are lower falls…
..which flow around an island, usually reached by park owned rowboats. This time of year the rowboats were stored, waiting patiently for spring and the tourists to arrive.
And the more dramatic upper falls…
We walked up and down hundreds of stairs and enjoyed having the park to ourselves.
After we finished our exploration of both falls we drove up to Whitefish Point, a place just about as far north as you can go in this part of the UP along the shores of Lake Superior. It was bitter cold and very windy, and we only stayed on the beach a few minutes. The waves were rolling in and it was beautiful. I’ll be back some summer when the weather is a bit more tolerable!
We had a really nice time and proved to ourselves once again that we’re not too old to enjoy a good adventure!
My rock collection:
God’s rock collection:
I went for an inland walk today, away from the mesmerizing lake into the sunlit woods looking for a bit of stillness. And of course photo opportunities. There were signs of spring everywhere, even way up here. I was surprised to realize the pussy willows are blooming already. The sun was shining, there was a light breeze. It was good to be outside after the past couple of cold windy days.
There was a faint smell of wood smoke hanging in the air which took me back to another life in another place where people heat with wood and life was simple. Funny how you look back at times in your life with nostalgia, refusing to remember the whole picture, like the 6 foot snowdrifts and the often lonely isolation. You remember instead the beauty of Lake Superior, the rolling mountains, the moose glimpsed from the highway.
So today I notice the robin eating last years wild grapes high in a tree, the way sun glints off of white birch, the fat chickadee swooping past.
There’s a land preserve down the road and I ventured in to see what was there. When I was a kid we used to play in the woods all the time, and this felt a bit like home to me. I found lots of signs of the impending spring, there was green everywhere. 
I sat on a log, trying to be quiet – trying to find the stillness inside of me. The log was cold. And bumpy. I put my gloves under me for padding and tried again to find the stillness inside. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in the woods and quiet on my own. It took a bit of time to settle in. Such quiet. I thought that I could still hear the lake which made no sense as it was quiet this morning. Then I realized I was hearing the bit of breeze blowing through millions of tree tops. It quietly rustled the dry leaves on the forest floor, and occasionally rattled last year’s dogwood leaves still on their branches. A squirrel chattered for a moment somewhere. Far away a bird drummed. Nearby a bluejay screamed. Then relative silence. 
Yet I couldn’t get my mind to settle down, to empty. Everywhere I saw photographs, shapes and color, texture and light. So tempting to get up and tramp around making noise, interrupting the natural way of things.
So I sat. “This is what the forest sounds like when I’m not here,” I thought. How interesting. How wonderful. How peaceful. And so I sat some more. Finally my mind emptied and I just enjoyed. And then I wandered back.
And on the way I wondered about the young man whose parents fought to keep this land preserved in his name. He must have been pretty special.
Sitting at the living room window, on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan I am watching the waves build up as a weather front passes. And then suddenly, from the hillside just to the left of me a huge bald eagle rises with a squirrel in his talons. He’s rising slowly, into the wind and I get a good long look. Then he sort of hovers just above the edge of the bluff, right in front of me for what seems like forever before he slowly turns and flies downwind.
It was amazing. Though I feel sorry for the squirrel.
I’ve been walking the beach here, looking for that Petoskey stone. Yesterday I didn’t need to go far before my fingers were freezing from dipping them into the cold waves, and my pockets were full.
I took my new collection back to the house to see what I had. Look! Aren’t they beautiful? And the rock at the 6:00 location on the plate? A Petoskey stone!
At this rate of accumulation I’ll need to rent a U-Haul to drag them all home. So I think I need to put a limit on how many I can collect a day. Or maybe the limit should be per week…like two stones a week? But at that rate I’m all done for my entire time here.
Later in the day I drove down to a small village and had lunch. Plus I bought an owl. OK, so it’s a ROCK that was carved into an owl. Another stone to take home. Guess that means I’m done.
Puttering is a learned skill. So is relaxing. You’d think I’d have those down, given I’m not working at the moment. No job related stress to distract me from enjoying life. But during a walk today I figured out that I haven’t really learned to relax. Not totally.
I’m cat sitting for a friend, living in her home on the shores of a Great Lake. What a joy to look out the windows and see one of my favorite lakes. This morning as the sun was coming up it made a white freighter out on the horizon glow. I went outside and realized I could here it chugging way out there on the curve of the earth. Trying to take a picture of something so far away and small was hard, but here’s a couple of pictures, one of me reflected in the house windows, with the ship reflected near my head.
In just 24 hours I’ve seen countless shades of blue, green and gray in the water. I could sit and watch it for hours. But of course I don’t. I’ve gone to the grocery store and made spaghetti sauce, I’ve played with the cat, I’ve checked emails. I’ve even started my “up north” exercise regime, to replace the mall walking I’ve been doing at home. My plan was to walk up and down the stairs to the beach for ten minutes today, working up to 30 minutes in a few days. Right. This morning after six round trips I gave up…five minutes after I began. But tomorrow is another day.
When my legs could stand the work I went down to the beach for a walk. I hope to find a Petoskey stone while I’m here. That’s a grey stone with specific shapes within it. They are actually fossils from about 360 million years ago, when this area was part of a coral reef under a sea. They appear on the beach along this shore of the lake, but everyone wants to find one, so we’ll see. You can see a picture of one and read a little bit about them here: http://www.statefossils.com/mi/mistone.html
On this walk I found a cool smooth brown stone with parallel lines running through it. Very peaceful and zen-like. It made me slow down and realize I couldn’t walk the beach like I walked the mall…fast… and still find the elusive Petosky stone. And that for today finding the smooth brown stone was good enough. Because if I remember to slow down, I have tomorrow to look again.
When I was a kid I thought that I wanted to grow up and have no permanent home, to travel the country, maybe the world, living nowhere and everywhere, free to move about as I wanted. I’ve always kept that idea tucked in the back of my mind, thinking that someday maybe I’d hit the road permanently. But after spending a week alone in DC I have to say I may need to reevaluate that concept of freedom.
On one hand it’s a wonderful experience that everyone should have, days and days without agenda, no responsibilities, sleeping as late as you like, eating when you like, what you like, visiting sites you’re interested in, leaving them if they don’t hold your attention. On the other hand there is no one to discuss the sites with, no one to catch a meal with, no one to wake up to the next morning. And as I wandered the city in my one pair of jeans, wearing my beige coat, purse over my shoulder I began to feel invisible. People working the museums, the train, the national monuments saw me, I’m sure, but I’m equally sure they won’t remember me. People taking my meal orders at restaurants smile blithely but wouldn’t be able to describe me the next day if they were asked. Often my food orders were prepared in error, people didn’t seem to hear me, or maybe they just weren’t listening. I thought that perhaps this is the way homeless people feel. Invisible.
Each day I’d go out and explore some new venue. I’d fill my day until it got dark and then I’d scurry home to the hotel. I was grateful I had the hotel to retreat to and I wondered about other people that wandered as I did but didn’t have that luxury. It was a funny feeling to belong nowhere; to attempt to fill my days, plotting where I could go to get warm, or to sit down for awhile. There aren’t so many places you can just sit for very long without arousing suspicion. I even wandered into the downtown DC public library and read a whole book one morning, when I arrived at an art museum several hours before it opened.
It’s an eye opener to be “homeless” for a week. To not be noticed by anyone. When I was a kid I thought that being invisible might be fun. Now I think maybe not so much.
There were volunteers out at Arlington today putting wreaths on the grave markers. The combination of miles of white markers and the red and green of the wreaths was overwhelming. There are so many it’s hard to remember they are individuals, each with their own family and history. Each left people behind. So many families left behind.
Change Is Hard 