Many years ago I was visiting a friend up in Northport, Michigan. We were out taking pictures, mostly in the woods and along the lake shore. But we also stopped in town where I noticed this interesting shop window and grabbed a shot without even leaving the car.
Can you find the reflection?
On my way up to the Pigeon River State Forest, three hours away from home, I drove through some of my favorite farm country. Both on the drive up and the drive home four days later I was lucky enough to witness clouds building above beautiful farm country.
I knew you’d want to see (who doesn’t want to look at barns, right?) so I put together a little slide show.
And even though I know these pink flowers are not native, and are in fact, invasive I couldn’t help but stop and grab a few photos because they’re just so darn pretty.
Pretty but invasive.
How can this be invasive?
We did score the best campsite in all of the Pigeon River Forest, nestled next to the river in all it’s gurgling glory. We could have sat there all day, but there was more to explore.
There’s a large elk heard residing in this park, with certain locations where you’re more likely to see them. We drove around one evening looking, but didn’t see any; I guess the elk hadn’t read the memo about where they were supposed to be. In 2014 we were luckier and saw three of them in almost exactly the spot where the map said they’d be. Now those elk knew how to follow directions!
This year I did see this guy, on our first day there, as we were driving to our campground on a narrow sandy road through the tall trees.
What you lookin at lady?
I caught a glimpse of him out of the corner of my eye and screeched to a halt. My friend, who was driving ahead of me, kept on going so she didn’t get to see him. I felt privileged to be able to snap his picture as he gazed somberly back at me.
Aside from the elk this state land is known for beautiful lakes and wonderful hiking trails. You can walk through varying topography and plant life, from wet bogs and reedy lake shores to hilly pine forests and open meadows.
Care to go for a walk?
We did all of that. We hiked around Pickerell Lake on a beautiful afternoon, the sky filled with white puffy clouds and the lake a beautiful blue.
It was a perfect day for a hike around a lake.
We climbed to the top of Inspiration Point, where the ranger said you can almost see from horizon to horizon. He was right.
Walking through the meadow on the way up the hill.
It would be a perfect place for star gazing if you’re there on a night when the full moon isn’t beating down on you.
You can see forever from here.
We walked along the river and looked up the names of all the wildflowers we could find. We were surprised by just how many there were when you stopped to really look.
I’ve already forgotten the name of this one. A variety of coneflower I think.
Mostly we just enjoyed being outside in a beautiful place during a beautiful weekend. Even when there was a bit of rain.
Walking through a misty rain.
And in the morning, when it was time to pack up and leave I felt sad, but happy too, that I got to spend time in this magical place. I know I’ll be back, likely on a dark night with no moon and clear skies. There are stars out there just begging to be photographed and I’d like to try.
The sky wasn’t dark enough with the full moon coming up behind me.
Until next time Pigeon River State Forest! It’s nice to know you’re up there waiting for us to stop by again.
Wonder what secrets the forest holds over there?
Until next time, Pigeon River.
I’m lucky to have such a wilderness so close to home, and I’m pleased to share it with all of you. If you’re ever this way, stop by and explore even a little of it.
You won’t be sorry you did.
All this and more is waiting for your visit!
Entering the magical Pigeon River Forest.
The perfect spot to spend a few days.
Of course we weren’t always sitting mesmerized by the river. We ate a lot too. But I don’t think it was typical camping fare. No, we didn’t have the burgers and dogs, didn’t roast marshmallows over the fire. Instead my friend brought along gourmet stuff like this kale and brussel sprout salad and bread baked the day before at a restaurant from her hometown. And that was just Friday’s lunch!
Very overexposed, but I thought it was cool so I’m using it anyway.
Friday evening this guy wandered by, moving slowly up the river. I heard him splashing up the river before I could see him and I swear I thought he was a bear. So I had my camera ready.
Going fishing on Friday night.
I’m sort of glad he wasn’t a bear. Though that would have been very cool.
In the morning my friend went fly fishing too. That’s what you do on a swift and shallow river like the Pigeon. First there was assembling of the rod and the attaching of the perfect fly.
I’d need a magnifying glass to do this!
Then there were a few practice casts in the road.
Practice makes perfect.
And then she was off into the water!
Come on in, the water’s perfect!
I think she had a great time, though I don’t pretend to understand it all. No fish were caught, but she got to get into the river and I got to take pictures. So we were both happy.
Here fishy, fishy!
We saw a few other people in the water, notably a couple of brothers floating by on tubes.
Looks like so much fun!
I was jealous and the entire three days I was there I considered putting on my swimsuit and my water shoes and going upstream a bit and floating back to camp. I didn’t need a tube, I care my flotation devise on my person at all times. (Smile.) For some reason I just didn’t do it. That would probably be my only regret from this trip.
So this post is all about the river
The river moves on past me to it’s own destination.
But there are acres and acres of woods to explore, elk herds to find, stars to watch. What about those?
Light plays.
Guess you’ll have to stay tuned.
The old man in the woods.
I need to catch up as I’ve been traveling again, this time to a state forest campground in central Michigan. As soon as I saw this bench at the top of Inspiration Point in the middle of the Pigeon River Forest, I knew it would work for Cee’s challenge.
You could see for miles.
The pond at my park this morning!
You and I know the truth, though. It’s all about me.
I am the princess of the family and a princess needs her soap box to stand on once in awhile. Wait. I think that’s wrong. I don’t need a soap box! I need a big box of treats to stand on! Yea! That’s it. Let me write that down so I can remind mama….one moment please.
OK. I’m back. Literally actually, I’m back from an extended vacation with mama and daddy to Alabama. Mama and I drove down near the beginning of June and daddy and I drove back up this week!
Me and my Alabama air conditioning vent.
Whew!! That was a long time to be away from my castle. But of course I just made the lake house my castle, and as it had a royal air conditioning vent for me to sleep on, it was just fine.
Anyway, I’m back in Michigan now and guess what? Mama took me to check out my park this morning!
Waiting for my mama to get done goofing off with her camera.
I haven’t been there in forever! I was so excited! Mama said we needed to go early in the morning before it got too hot.
Mama spent way too much time trying to take a picture of this grass.
We messed that up cause mama was sleeping. So we didn’t get out there till a little after 9 and it was already too hot! I let mama know by laying down every time she stopped to take pictures of stuff.
Really mama? More pictures of not me??
Which was a lot.
I don’t understand mama. We’re at my park and she’s busy taking pictures of stuff that is not me. Inconceivable! Who wants to look at pictures of not me?
Nature’s lace.
Mama noticed that I was laying down a lot. She said it broke her heart, and she decided we wouldn’t walk very far. And she was very careful to make sure I had shade when she was busy with her little camera, but sometimes I swear she forgot I was even there. One time I got mad at her so I lay down with my back to her.
This is a total waste of a perfectly good walk in my park mama!
And you know what she did? She went around the corner when I wasn’t looking and she waited to see what I would do! Well! As soon as I noticed she wasn’t there anymore I took off running to find her.
Mama!!!!
I don’t think it was very nice of her to laugh at me.
After that I didn’t ignore her as much, cause I had learned she can be a sneaky mama. She found some beautiful flowers on the way back to the car.
Look! It’s an outdoor bouquet!
I didn’t mind sitting near them for her. I sort of thought they smelled good, but mama said they didn’t really smell at all.
These smell like bacon!
Not for her maybe, but for a sheltie-girl they smelled real good.
Anyway, I sort of had fun even though it was hot and mama was distracted, and worst of all she forgot my treats! On the way back we saw a green heron standing on a picnic table and some really cool turtles. But mama didn’t have her big camera so there aren’t any pictures of that.
Such a pretty morning.
I told mama that was OK, you guys have good imaginations, you know what stuff looks like, right? Mama just sighed and said every time she goes out without her big camera she regrets it and then she said something about coming over to the park some morning without me.
We’re a team mama.
WHAT???? Mama! It’s called KATIE’S PARK for a reason. You better not try to visit it without me, cause I’ll know. Shelties are super smart and we know things.
So don’t even think about it!
You wouldn’t leave me behind…would you mama?
Saturday a bit of a pain in my back became worse and associated pains in my chest began to bother me. I couldn’t assume any longer that picking up the dog was the problem, so I headed for a local emergency room.
I didn’t really think it was much of anything, figured they’d run some tests, tell me it wasn’t a heart attack, that perhaps I had strained something. I thought they’d send me on my way after a few hours.
Instead they admitted me for observation.
The view wasn’t stellar.
Far from home and my own doctor, in a town near our lake house and with no family nearby, I began to stress. Katie was home alone and I was stuck in an ER, about to be wheeled upstairs to a hospital.
I called one of my neighbors who sprang into action, checking on Katie and arranging for her to have a sleep over with them and their dog Dixey. Katie enjoyed her sleep away from home with one of her best doggy friends.
Mama, on the other hand, got no sleep at all.
I’d had an EKG, a chest xray and blood drawn down in Emergency. They did more blood drawing upstairs, hooked me up to a heart monitor and left me alone for awhile with instructions not to get out of bed.
Eventually a doctor showed up and asked all the same questions they’d asked downstairs, but in more detail. She asked how my parents had died and I explained about my mom. She asked about dad and I told her the short version of dad’s truck crash death. She got quiet.
Then she said 4 years ago her daughter and her ex-husband and his girlfriend were in a bad crash. The girlfriend died, and her daughter sustained a traumatic brain injury. She showed me her 10 year old daughter’s picture, attached to the back of her hospital ID. We talked about the long road ahead of a brain injury patient. We looked each other in the eyes as we both spoke of our fear of being on the road these days. Then she said – “Do you hear that cricket?” I did. She investigated my bathroom, and said she thought it was in the shower drain. I said there could be worse things in a shower drain and we laughed and she left.
Around 10:30 I asked if the big light above my head could be turned off so that I could get some sleep. An aide came and turned off the light and I tried to settle down. Minutes later a LP showed up to take my vitals. Blood pressure, temp, heart rate. Did I need anything? No…just some sleep. She asked if I wanted her to take away the dinner tray which contained a pile of unknown shredded meat and a completely round scoop of white supposed to be mashed potatoes.
No thank you.
I said please do, adding that I ate the carrots. She said she’d note that and added that when she gave birth to her daughter at this hospital the food was so terrible that her mother-in-law brought her three meals a day from outside. We laughed
Someone came in for more blood. She said she was called the vampire ad said I had nice veins. We laughed. Then she asked if I had a cricket in the room? I said yes, she was keeping me company.
Sleep was elusive as I worried what all this meant.
Just after midnight the RN came in to check on me. We talked about shelties, her mom used to raise them. We talked about how smart they were. I said I was looking forward to sleeping past 4 a.m. because my sheltie was having a sleepover at the neighbors.
Twenty minutes later someone was in to do vitals again. My back continued to ache, the chest too. I couldn’t get comfortable in the narrow bed, wired to the heart monitor. I was worried about my dog. Feeling lonely.
I listened to the cricket singing in the bathroom and wished I was back at the lake.
12:30 a.m., maybe 1, a young man showed up for yet more blood. He turned on the bright light, but that was OK, I was still awake. He asked if I was from Alex City, I said no, I was from Michigan. He said, “Oh, you’re my mom’s age so I thought maybe you knew her.” He couldn’t get any blood the first two times he tried….he apologized for the bruise I was going to have. Then he tried my hand and got barely enough. I said that was the third blood draw, and I’d been told there would be three as they tested for enzymes indicating a heart attack. He said he was sorry, but he’d be back for more around 3:30 or 4.
Great.
I settled back to try to sleep. The cricket continued to sing. The RN came in to see how I was. Not so good. She went and got a nitro patch for my chest pain. A side effect, she said, was headache. Twenty minutes later my head was throbbing so bad that it hurt to touch the pillow.
I rang the bell for help.
The RN returned, listened to my complaint and said she’d see if she could give me a Tylenol for the headache. The night shift doctor showed up and asked me more questions, then prescribed an extra strength ibuprofen to be administered through my IV. The RN brought that in about 2 a.m.
Heaven.
I curled up and fell into a deep sleep which lasted until almost 3:30. I was so disappointed when I woke, the sleep had been so warm and good. I tried to will myself back to sleep. But the blood guy was taping on my door. So I gave him more blood and we discussed why they needed so much, and why there was a cricket singing in my bathroom. I said the cricket was now my friend, and we laughed. Ten minutes later he was done and I curled back up again, attempting sleep.
It wasn’t two more minutes when someone else was knocking on the door and wheeling in another cart. She was a perky lady, dressed in pink who sing-songed her “Good Morning!” brightly to me. I grunted and glared at her. She was here to do another EKG; this one would be my ticket out of the hospital if it was good, so I didn’t want to be rude and send her away. But seriously? Who thinks that 3:45 a.m. is a good time to do an EKG? She said she had 5 of them to do that morning and I was the first one.
Lucky me.
I asked her if she tag-teamed the blood guy and knew that I was already awake, and she said, “Oh no dear, I have to cover this whole hospital, I can’t be following him around.” And then she said “Hey…do you hear a cricket?”
Once she had her test done and had merrily danced away the young woman doing vitals, who hated the hospital food, arrived to take my blood pressure and temp again. Now near the end of her shift she was much less talkative, but she did mention that she heard a cricket.
Later the RN checked in on me asking how I was feeling. I said the back and chest pain were gone and the headache had been reduced to a more manageable pain. Mostly due to lack of sleep. She said she’d leave me alone. It was almost 5:00. Light was beginning to seep through the fog outside my window.
I gave up and turned on the TV to watch the news.
Looks like a good day to get some answers.
My friend the cricket wasn’t singing anymore. I guess her work keeping me company was done and she was settling in to get a good day’s sleep. I wished her well. Because I now knew something she probably already knew. There’s no sleeping if you’re spending the night at a hospital.
And what caused all that pain? We don’t know. I didn’t have a heart attack, but there are many questions left unanswered. There are probably questions I don’t even know to ask yet. But I will. I’m headed north to see my doctor, and I’m packing all those test results with me.
I hate leaving the lake, but it will be here for me when I return. And I’m grateful to wonderful neighbors on both sides of us that took care of me and my dog when I needed help. That’s the South for you. Even in the hospital people shared their lives and laughed with me. Every one of them cared about me and each was concerned that I was away from home.
I appreciate them all. Especially my best friend the singing cricket in the drain. I hope she’s comforting whoever is in that room tonight.
I bet she is.
I’ll be back.
Four years ago we were in Maine, waiting for the 4th of July fireworks in a downpour. Frankly I was cold even though it was July.
Swimming in the rain.
But this little guy insisted on swimming in the park fountain.
Yes it’s peaceful here on the lake. You might even say it’s tranquil. Nothing to do but watch the weather move overhead.
A summer storm blows through almost every afternoon.
Perhaps take a morning paddle.
Headed out to the mountains.
Maybe toward evening take the ski boat out to the big waters to see the sunset.
This particular evening there were many facets of a single setting sun.
If you go way out there you need to sit awhile and soak it all in.
The other side of the lake had less color but just as much drama.
But mostly you putter around close to the house, perhaps exploring just up the creek in the canoe.
Let’s go see what’s over there.
And sometimes, if all your siblings and their significant others show up at the same time…well…you just need to goof off.
Having fun on the lake one warm evening.
No matter what advanced age you achieve…when you’re all together you can still be kids.
One…two…three…JUMP!
And that’s what I’ve been up to this week after the 4th of July. Katie and I will be heading north soon. She says she likes the lake house and wouldn’t mind staying here the rest of the summer. But I remind her that we have camping (and weeding) to do and so she says she’s OK with going home too. As long as the northern house has an air conditioning vent for her to sleep on she’s not so particular.
Stay tuned as our adventure continues.
One of my favorite spots.
Change Is Hard 