beach – I dream of sumac and milkweed (and other wild things)

let there be green things

April 21, 2024 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

We planted plugs of dune grass at the bottom of our still-too-naked bluff last fall. A hopeful gesture to be sure, because there is no guarantee that the plugs will take or that they will not be buried by the shifting sands over the windy winter. Still, for the cost of $75 it wasn’t much of a risk. And, even buried they provide much needed stability to the bluff.

We weren’t at the cottage as much over this winter as we had been in the past few years. I’m not even certain why, as the winter was mild. Busy? Always. Tired? That too. But as I sit here today before I need to head home, and then ready myself for a week long work trip, there are undeniable signs of spring.

Spring comes later along the lake shore. But the neighbor’s daffodils along their drive are the first cheerful yellow here. The dune grasses—even those we planted, that did get nearly buried by drifting sand—have sent up fresh green shoots. The lilac bush that is uncontrollably wild and glorious and has taken over the space between our cottage and the neighbor’s is preparing its riotous blooms. I can’t wait to be back when they open, to bury my face in them, to sit on the side deck and watch (and hear!) the bees as they work to gather the nectar and pollen.

The bluff and the beach, which four years ago I worried relentlessly over, are beginning to stabilize. That’s how it works, I know, but the drama of it can be overwhelming. At the bottom of our stairs that we built last year there is a post that 1) marks the high water of 2020 and 2) I relentlessly complained about being too tall. I couldn’t reach high enough to put a towel on its top, or toss an inner tube over it. Today the top of the post barely reaches my waist. And this year there is a line of new dune grass sprouting up halfway between the bottom of the bluff and the water’s edge. This is how the foredunes develop.

I know that soon enough the bluff will be covered with grasses and plants. The foredune, forming now, will be covered and provide a haven for the snakes and spiders that make for interesting surprises as you’re walking back up to the house after a swim or paddle. I don’t remember paying attention to this process when last it happened, but now I am fully attuned.

But this is how it works. The landscape here is constantly changing. I hope to never experience what we did in 2020 and 2021, but there is no taming, or reasoning with, the nature of this lake. So for today I’ll just delight in the sunshine, the singing birds, the green shoots of dune grass before I head home.

mid-February and I’m procrastinating

February 10, 2024 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Maybe what’s required here is a simple mindset shift, but I can’t help but feel like January, February, and dare I say it March are the longest months of the year. Taken together they feel entirely too long, like a whole year on their own, and being smack in the middle of this chunk of what feels like extended time is making me think too much.

(Who am I kidding, I always think too much.)

Nonetheless, winter is all gray and bleached and lacking in color and it feels a bit rough right now. I want to jump ahead a few months to longer days, a hint of warmth.

*neighbor’s beach stairs being swallowed by sand*

It’s not just the weather and the lack of color, though. In January, the company I’ve worked for for nearly 10 years was bought. Not that I haven’t seen a rollercoaster of change in those 10 years already—I have. But this change is different. Suddenly we’re much bigger. I considered myself a medium-sized fish in a small but growing pond. Now, I’m a tiny fish in what feels like a large and unfamiliar pond. I’m not completely sure what’s next.

I don’t hate change, and I love to learn new things, but I’m still craving some familiarity, grasping at a little something that makes me feel like I’m still in my element. Maybe I’m being dramatic here (probably I’m being dramatic here). I still get to do what I love and am good at every day. Maybe that’s all the security anyone is entitled to in this ever-shifting environment of “work”? But this change has also made me think. Have I invested too much of my identity in what I do rather than who I am? Do I even know how to answer the question of who I am these days?

I keep saying I’ll devote time to things (art, writing, cooking, organizing, friendships) when I’m done with school, which thankfully is this summer. But, has school been a way to put off creating an identity for myself at this stage in my life? Um… maybe.

Anyway, I am on the lake for the weekend attempting to focus on a paper I need to write and turn in tomorrow, and my brain is having none of it. Instead, it’s roiling with ideas, all unrelated to the task at hand.

I was in full stall mode earlier this afternoon regarding the paper that’s due tomorrow, which made me think I should bundle up and take a walk on the beach, which I did, and while it may not have set me straight for getting to work on the paper I realize now it was exactly the thing I needed. And guess what I found? A cold and windy beach, yes, but something interesting, something I’ve never seen before.

*lotus seed detritus on Lake Michigan beach*

I mean, I’ve seen lotus seed pods before. Over the last several years, they have been washing up on the shoreline, just a random one or two at a time. And I still today only saw a handful of the actual pods over the half mile stretch of beach I walked. But what is really unusual is that the shoreline is absolutely littered with the seeds from these pods. Where did they come from? Some inland lake, I imagine, as I don’t think lotus plants actually grow in Lake Michigan. So how did these they wash up here? It’s a mystery to me, and I want to know.

Aren’t they gorgeous, though? The stark black of the pod against the pale sand. The seeds that look like smooth, shiny pebbles until you pick one up and realize they’re smooshy in a way a pebble just isn’t.

I can’t say the walk or the seeds or the pods have inspired me to work on this paper, but I’m going to get to it, really. Just as soon as I can make myself stop procrastinating.

imposters, bears, deer, feathers

December 2, 2023December 4, 2023 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Oh and a hospital and a hotel, too.

I meant to get back here sooner, really. But oh my, this school term, and this last month in particular. Sometimes I wonder if this is the right thing for me, being a student at this time in my life.

Just this week in one of the live classes my professor started class by first asking if we knew what “imposter syndrome” is (why yes) and if any of us ever feel it. I raised my hand, maybe too quickly, as did some others. It led to an enlightening discussion and the professor admitting that she also has felt like an imposter sometimes (brilliant human, many degrees, law professor, writer, speaker, mother). I see her as confident, brilliant, funny, prone to some most excellent tangents in class—the opposite of an imposter. She tried to set some of us straight but also called us out on our perfectionism. Double whammy.

This coming week I am wrapping up my fourth out of six terms in this masters program. I’m still swoony over the program in general, but would be lying if I said this term did not utterly kick my ass. It did. Add on top of it a health crisis for my father, and my own self-imposed perfection as I try to be a good employee and manager, parent to my adult kids, decent partner, caring daughter… well, I’m not doing any of it all that well at the moment.

After a long week sleeping in a hotel room and spending the day in a hospital with my brother hovering over our father, I’m back at the cottage for the weekend and trying to be gentle on myself. Letting my husband take care of me, trying to remember to tell him know how much I appreciate him during all of this.

A few years ago, a neighbor saw a bear on our community road, less than a half mile from our cottage. She had a photo to prove it, and the community was buzzing about this bear as it was seen and photographed in other places nearby. This week, a different neighbor thinks they saw two bears on the beach in front of their cottage. They posted a photo of what looks (to me) like human footprints, but what do I know? Bears are somewhat new around here, I think.

That said, I walked the beach tonight and last night on high alert for bears. I only saw clear evidence of humans, dogs, birds, and deer. More deer prints on the beach than I can recall in other years, which makes me think there is a healthy deer population around here right now. While I’m out for a dusk beach walk, I’ll much rather see a cascade of deer coming down the dune to drink from the lake than a pair of bears, thankyouverymuch.

I also love feathers, which there is never any shortage of here on the beach. Mostly seagull feathers, which for some reason I love the feel of in hand on a walk, particularly if it’s windy. A seagull feather is strong and won’t let you hold it any old way in the wind. Just try to hold it against the wind… it pushes back until you turn it sideways. It feels like a feat of perfect engineering, a miracle of strength that’s literally light as a feather.

I saw these small feathers as I walked tonight, washed up from the water, some soaked and sandy and some mostly dry. I’m not sure what kind of bird these are from, but the shading was striking.

*small feathers (anyone know what kind of bird?)*

I am reminding myself to breathe this weekend. To slow down, too. To not rush through everything just to get it done and behind me. To be patient with the things that aren’t mine to control. To drop a little of the perfectionism, too, and trust that I’m where I belong. I’m not entirely sure where the feathers and bears and deer come in here but maybe I should not be so worried about bears on the beach (but aware, of course) and remember to marvel in the beauty of feathers and watching deer come down to drink.

random evening musings

June 28, 2023June 28, 2023 sumacandmilkweed3 Comments

I drove into town yesterday to mail three rolls of film to the lab back in the city. It took so long to finish the last roll I don’t remember where or when I started it, or what might be on any of them save for the last dozen shots I finished on the beach and on the blooming things around the cottage.

For the last two days, all I can smell is fire. The sun makes vague appearances through the day, turns an odd fluorescent orange as it begins its decent toward the horizon, and then disappears into the thicker haze that comes every evening over the lake. A pre-sunset sunset above the horizon. Poof, a quick vanish.

Inland was worse yesterday, the little town whose post office I like best choked with smoke. It’s strange, and while I can’t speak for a whole state, I’d venture to say we’re not used to this in Michigan. I walked the beach last evening in a wind so stiff it hurt my ears, but the air a bit fresher; cleared my mind a little.

Today was still haze-filled, but the smell of smoke has abated at least some here on the beach, where the horizon melted into the silvery lake just about all day. It’s disorienting to not see the horizon when you’re accustomed to it, but it didn’t matter much as work was busy today.

I’m in the living room as my husband cooks dinner, about to go down for a short walk, this time a windless beach, nearly flat lake. I need to feel the sand on my soles for at least a few minutes today.

We have a small brown sparrow of some type who’s nested in a round cable housing on the back of the cottage. We’ve gotten used to her chatter, and she is loud, as she chides us for going in and out of our shed or doing projects on the back deck too near her babies. She’s working hard to keep them fed, and we are attempting to be respectful. But yesterday I didn’t hear the babies all day and it put me in a funk. Each time I went back there, mama bird appeared with some food for the babies but she never went in, just sat on the roof or the shed or deck and chattered at me. Finally, by evening, I saw her go in and heard the babies respond (relief). I’m not sure how many there are, but at least two.

In any case, I’ll have photos to review in a few days and I’m excited, as they’ll be a surprise. And I got to spend last weekend with one of my kids; the other will come this weekend. And there’s a holiday coming up, so a few days off. I’m going to bake a little, too.

Lastly, and not in relation to a single thing. When I was little I pretended that the lines the waves left on the shore were mountain ranges. I don’t pretend this anymore, but I still think the lines look like mountain ranges. Don’t you?

I’m still here.

December 30, 2020 sumacandmilkweed6 Comments

Hi there. I’m still here–are you still here, too? Are we all okay? As okay as we can be, that is?

I’ve had so many feelings about this shitstorm of a year. And, mostly, I’ve felt not unable to write, but more of a sense of impropriety about writing. The horrors of living through a global pandemic are not even the issue at this point. It’s the maelstrom of what the virus has exposed. A world I don’t know or understand. People I no longer know how to connect with. Maybe I never understood, but I felt like I had more of a grip on things.

Being introspective about it here, on a public (although minimally-followed) blog feels indulgent, and just plain wrong. But, I started this blog and it’s been a way to remember events in my life, so… I don’t know. I’m navigating some things, like aging and menopause and working and creativity and family. These things continue, regardless. I miss writing my way through life’s complicated bits, selfish as it may be.

I do feel lucky, though. To not have gotten sick so far, that my family has not gotten sick so far, that mostly the people I love and care about are weathering this. I try not to get bogged down in what’s next and focus on this: I’m still here. I’m doing my best to stay here. I want to see this play out. I want to fly to Austin and visit my daughter and her two new kittens. I want to sit and have a beer with my son and talk about his life. I want to be so in love with the world again that I sing, alone in my car, loud enough and for long enough to make my voice hoarse. I want to see mountains and rocks jutting up from the ocean floor in places I’ve never been to. I want to skinny dip and lay in warm sand and get muddy in the woods. I want to have weird conversations with strangers.

So goodbye, 2020. You were awful, to say the least. I’ll admit you had a handful of bright spots, and I didn’t lose my ability to laugh or be caustic. You taught me a couple of lessons, too, about how much I really don’t (and conversely, do) need and how much better I want to be about nurturing relationships–including the relationship with myself.

I didn’t take very many photos this year, but here are my very favorites of the maybe 10 rolls of film that I shot. I really only shot with my two Minolta cameras this year and the two medium format Mamiya’s that were gifted to me by a friend’s dad, although my favorites here are from my go-to, the Minolta SRT-102. Next year I’ll have to put the other cameras in my stash to work. Maybe a project of one camera per month might get me moving in the right direction again..

March 2020, Minolta SRT-102 and I think expired Kodak T-Max

June 2020, Minolta SRT-102, Lomochrome Purple

August 2020, Minolta SRT-102, Kodak Portra 160 (found doll head on beach–I did find, and photograph, two legs and one arm; these parts were all within a quarter mile of each other)

August 2020, Minolta SRT-102, Kodak Ektachrome

October 2020, Minolta SRT-102, Lomochrome Purple

frozen

January 18, 2020January 18, 2020 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I’m a little frozen, and not in the “it’s winter in Michigan sense” but in the sense of being overwhelmed with all that is life. This isn’t uncommon for me–I’m fairly easily overwhelmed outside of my professional life.

I’m not sure why, but work is the easy part. And, my work is busy–sometimes crazy busy–but it comes innately to me. Life is a different story. When I have too many balls in the air, so to speak, I have a hard time managing. I’ve had too many balls in the air for a few months now. Emotional balls, big life decision balls, money balls. I am realizing that I’m most content when things are humming comfortably along, with no crises to manage or fires to extinguish. I like comfort, probably too much. Being so drawn to it has made me near incapable of managing the zingers anymore.

Life lessons don’t fit into that comfort-seeking behavior, however, and here I am staring down the barrel of taking on the financial obligation of the cottage that I love so much. That part I’ve been ready for, the ownership and what comes with that. The part I was not prepared for, but that I feared was coming and is in fact here, is the expense of saving the house from becoming a victim to the rising lake.

I spent the summer stewing about this, worried and waiting for neighbors to catch up with me on the worry front. The very bottom section of our beach stairs, a temporary and cheap homemade build as the low bluff began to disappear and the first cliff appeared, needed to be pulled up as there was no safe place for it. The low stairs we built in the 1980s (after the record-high water level began to subside) appeared from beneath the sand and I hoped we could use those all winter. But the next storm in October swept those away. The next section of stairs disappeared in the wild waves later that month; a mid-section in November, and by late December the upper stairs were loose and then gone in January.

The platform that was the top of our beach stairs remains now, with nothing beneath it, in a lopsided half-hold, its last gasp.

I know about coming and going. I know about the Great Lakes and their interconnected nature, the ebb and the flow. I know about the Army Corps of Engineers and their monthly reports on the water levels. I know about the news stories and the houses that have fallen in, or are torn down just before they are about to plummet. The desperation of homeowners trying to subdue something that cannot be subdued.

The predictions for the lake levels are dire for 2020. Many cottages along the shoreline are in trouble. Did we court this by building so close to the water? Maybe. We tempted the lake, and in repayment for our enjoyment of her shoreline, she is knocking on our doors. Some are building seawalls, walls of cement, layers of giant boulders. I would rather get out of her way, and that’s where my decision leans. With such an unstable bluff, however, and not much room to spare, my hope is that we can hold on until spring, when a move can happen.

Even with the upheaval and the concerns about finances to pay for this move, a friend asked me to go with her to Sedona in the spring to hike and commune with nature, and I said yes to red rocks and desert air and sights I’ve never seen. This is something to look forward to. And my cameras have been a little lonely, so I’m excited to choose one or two to take with me.

I’m sending two rolls of film off to the lab on Monday and I can’t even remember what might be on one of them. The other I shot of beautiful ice formations on the beach last weekend. There is beauty even in the devastation, at least.

broken things

March 10, 2019 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Winter Walk
the gulls laugh at me
trudging, bundled on the beach
I can’t soar like them

I didn’t forget about you, blog. I’m just having a moment. A few moments, really.

I guess this blog has turned more into a place for me to post my photographs, and if I’m not photgraphing that much I wonder if I should write, and if I write, how much of my life do I actually offer up? I don’t know; social media is a wild west–a place where people offer up intimate details of their lives. That’s not really me.

But I’m having a tough winter. I don’t know if I’ve written about my vertigo here, but I have intermittent vertigo, the details of which are boring and it really just means that sometimes I look drunk when I’m not. The vertigo has been a companion of late. And just about two weeks ago some overzealous workouts conspired to tear my hip flexor. It hurt, bad, for a few days and then started to feel better; and then I did a couple of harder workouts and now I can’t ignore it. The pain is constant and, at times, too intense to function around.

I give. I’m paying attention.

Before the hip flexor, nearly three weeks ago I came to the cottage for a weekend and the inner pane of one of the front double pane windows was broken; cracks in all directions like wandering rivers. I taped the window up and worried, because I am good at worrying and because I know nothing about windows, thinking it might still fully shatter, break the outer pane, and expose the house to the elements. I bought a cheap webcam and pointed it at the window so I could watch it while I was gone (I checked the camera almost obsessively at first).

Of course the tape job held, a new window is on order and will be placed tomorrow, and all will be fine. Things get old and worn. Windows break. Hip flexors tear. I get dizzy; it goes away.

Anyway. We are on the beach now. We got iced in last night, but we had nowhere to go. My best friend was here working on her cottage just a few doors down from ours. I’m alternately heating and icing my hip, enjoying the fire that my husband keeps stoked in the fireplace, and walking the beach, carefully, gently, to try to get blood flowing to the torn muscle and inflamed fibers so that they begin to heal. I’m trying to be positive and treat myself gently, maybe even spoil myself a little. It’s a process, this healing, this fixing of broken things.

I’ll celebrate the little things, like today the sky stays light longer. I walked the beach this evening in a bold wind, hearing the lake roar but not seeing the wild waves because of the ice hills that have formed at the shoreline. I won’t say it was peaceful because the wind howled and pushed me around and the lake gnarled back at the wind. But the wildness itself was soothing. It always is.

Lake Michigan moods on Portra

July 22, 2018 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

I shot a roll of Portra 160 on the Bronica SQ-A over the course of one day last month, all of Lake Michigan, from atop the bluff in front of the cottage. The lake goes through many moods throughout each day and this one just seemed full of color, interest, and an odd wind coming from the west and pushing the lake away from the beach. Even on the grayest day I think she’s gorgeous, but I’m a bit biased.

Right now I have five rolls of film from July ready to develop, plus two rolls of film in two cameras that have just a few shots left. More lake pics. The wild rose bush on the side of the road that keeps expanding. The blooming milkweed. The lavender. All the things I love, plus test rolls from the point and shoot I picked up from the goodwill, and the camera given me by a neighbor.

This week I’ll leave the cottage for a few weeks in the city, and get back to the cottage just in time for the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. When we were kids, during the Perseids we’d set up sleeping bags and pillows and camp out on the deck for as much of the night as we could handle being soaked from the dew. They are one hell of a show if you have a nice dark sky from which to view them.

still waiting for spring

April 19, 2018 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

My best friend and I spent a few days getting the cottage ready for the summer season, which presumably is coming even though the weather is doing its very best not to comply. We drove across state in rain the whole way with the threat of snow, sleet and ice for the following day. We tempted fate by not bringing snow boots, because, you know, the forecast is sometimes wrong and it was mid-April, for heaven’s sake.

We ended up getting snowed/iced in. Well. I’d like to say that’ll teach us but I’m not prone to learning my lesson. We managed, it was adventurous, and we had fun. Isn’t that all that matters?

In a break from the precipitation, I did get a brief walk on the beach with the Bronica SQ-A loaded with Kodak Porta ISO 160, a new film for me. The colors that day were muted but lovely; golden grasses and sand, teal water, a dark freighter, white snow; the sun poked through the clouds just a few times, making the water sparkle. I think this film captured the colors and the mood accurately.

The beach really took a pounding this winter, leaving even more staircases stranded or worse, broken and many miles away from where they once lived. A huge tree trunk that I’ve been watching get sand-covered and uncovered for years, and that was a quarter mile north of my community, is now lodged on my neighbor’s beach (I think it’s beautiful). We will have to find creative ways (rappelling? installing a lift?) to get from the bluff to the water line this year.

I can only hope the water levels start to recede so the beach begins to rebuild. It’s all cyclical, we know this. But I so miss walks on a big beach.

Saint Joseph

March 22, 2018 sumacandmilkweed4 Comments

I spent a few days in a little town on the west side of Michigan called Saint Joseph. I was there a week ago, and I can’t go there without spending some time on the beach.

I like my beaches empty and windblown, moody, wild.

And I still can’t get enough of my Bronica SQ-A and the 6×6 medium format. The camera isn’t perfect; I’m getting some lines on my negatives that I can’t quite sort out how to get rid of. But, I’ve never been much for perfection anyway.

I used Kodak Ektar 100 ISO for these images. And I completely froze, although you’d never guess just how cold and windy it was from these photos.