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

fall, skies, October

October 14, 2024October 14, 2024 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Up until a storm came through yesterday, we were still enjoying unseasonably warm weather in west Michigan, a strange and lucky extension of uncharacteristic fall mildness, or maybe it’s not that at all but an absence of what normally comes in October, which is days on end of moody skies, wild Lake Michigan waves, and rainy days that can send even a rainy-day lover at least a little bit into the blues. Yesterday’s storm ushered that in, though, with heavy rain, a bit of hail, a whipped up lake, October chill.

The past two weeks, most nights the sunset offered so little variation that one day’s sunset looked exactly like the ones before it (calm lake, no clouds). Not to be ungrateful, because every sunset over a large body of water (especially that I get to see with my own eyes) is indeed a gift. But clouds that light up and change the mood and the shape and the tone of the sunset, maybe taking your breath away a bit in the viewing, are a gift wrapped in fancy paper and a bow.

Last week, I drove an hour to the nearest city and finally upgraded a very old but still working fine iPhone, because it was time but also because while I really love my film cameras and am committed to capturing most everything with them, my phone is what I end up using to photograph sunsets, clouds, and quickly changing skies, and my old iPhone’s camera was tired.

So lucky, lucky me, to be here on the lake when the sun experienced a major solar storm (a “burp,” I’ve read) that created colorful waves and ripples in the sky above our heads and north and west across the lake on Thursday night in a display that is still filling me with awe and delight several days later. The colors weren’t this bright as we watched them, but the reds and greens were definitely visible, and the waves and formations were like nothing I’d been lucky enough to see before.

And then Saturday night, as I watched a storm move east towards the beach I witnessed a streaky cloud formation, something I’ve also never seen before and don’t quite know how to explain… dark clouds, lightning on the far horizon, a bright spot within this mass with wispy streaks in it that floated over my head, more streaky cloud formations behind it. I can only offer photos to show as I have no words to explain.

This beauty in the midst of a week where a second hurricane brought more destruction to the south, where people I know hunkered down and hoped for the best. Sometimes I don’t know how to reckon with the devastation amidst the wonder, weather-wise and otherwise.

The obvious other changes of season are in full swing, like the grasses beginning their shift from green to gold, the trees dropping their (not yet colorful) leaves, the milkweed opening its pods and wispy umbrellas carrying seeds off on windy gusts, the sumac gone a deep magenta. As I’ve said, every season here has magic.

I feel less and less a social being the more time I spend here.

To combat my tendency toward hermitism (maybe not an official word, but I’m using it), we invited the neighbors for dinner last night. I ran out for a few things and then spent a few hours making a roasted butternut squash soup, a big salad, and what turned out to be a bit too dense apple pecan bread (no one complained and only a sliver is left this morning). I surprised some sleeping kittens when I went to my favorite farm market to get butternut squash for the soup (they were happy to wake up, let me scratch them, then followed me around for a few minutes before they curled right back up and fell back to sleep).

I also have taken today off, just for me, because even though I start each year promising myself I’ll use my (generous, unlimited) PTO, I never do (I’ll keep trying). So today I’ll drive into town to meet a friend for coffee, maybe do some painting, finish a book, walk or hike somewhere, take a film camera out and see if I can capture some of the fall colors, that is if the clouds clear up. This sounds just right for today.

what’s next?

July 16, 2024 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I have a bad case of the now what’s, what’s next’s, where do I go from here’s.

I am two and a half weeks away from being a graduate. At my age! (I say at my age full of irony and mischief, by the way—I’m a firm believer in the idea that no one is too old for bikinis, degrees, art, doing your thing, whatever that thing may be.) But in what feels like the strangest time ever, everything feels so off… I don’t even have words to describe the weirdness of our political, civil, climate outlook. It’s dismal. But the ultimate act of hope is just living, right? Finding some joy and some beauty anyway? Loving the people in our lives, despite all of it.

In the spirit of that hope, I am currently finishing my last assignment as a graduate student. Over these two years of reading about employment laws, learning how to understand case law and statute and legal theory, and writing hundreds of pages of responses to hypotheticals and essay tests and my fellow classmates, and now culminating in a research paper that has been varying parts excitement, fun, dread, and horror, I have learned a few things.

One is that I cannot wait to read again (not school books), and I am sorting my stacks of already-owned books in order of how I loosely plan to read them, and have also ordered a handful of new books to add to that list. I am hungry in this respect. I have a mix of books in line—biography, nature, poetry, fiction, essay, short story. Another hunger is that I have to write. Writing brings me ultimate joy. I love it, and I intend to do more of it professionally and personally.

I have also missed my cameras, and while film and developing got more expensive over the several years I’ve mostly not been doing it, I have to incorporate it again into what I do to find joy in these tumultuous times. Beyond that, painting and art-making of whatever sort using the supplies I have. More of this. More of these things.

*Little Sable Point Light, early spring*

Lastly, I’ve been negligent in nurturing relationships over these two years. I might have been a little selfish, even. If I can spend the rest of the summer making time to sit and talk, making phone calls again, letting people know I love them, I will do these things.

Tomorrow, or the next day, I will tidy the cottage and leave it to my daughter for a few days. I worry about this old house, the tricky washing machine, the winds that pick up quickly and can send a deck umbrella flying, the ants that will find their way to food left on kitchen counters and the swarm of fruitflies that will gather if wine or fruit is left out on a hot, windless day. Mostly I just hate to be away, afraid I’ll miss that one perfect sunset, the best starry night, a fox visiting the deck, an eagle catching a fish just as I look out at the water. And then I remind myself that I already get more of these sightings than most people I know, and there’s more sweetness in sharing them.

Aside from this, here is what I’m finding joy in this week, in no particular order:

Local blueberries
Lake Michigan is warm enough for comfortable swimming
The five rolls of film I mailed off to California for developing reached their destination this week (I can’t wait to get the scans!)
I had the most lovely conversation with a coworker about the magic of film this week, and she shared some of her beautiful film images with me
I’m putting the finishing touches on my capstone paper

And so back to what’s next. Here’s what I have on tap for the rest of July and into August:

Tasking myself with learning how to and making jam next month (blueberry and peach, I think)
Reading some books
Painting (an art swap with a talented ceramicist is all the motivation I need to get my paints out)
Visiting with friends and relatives that will be renting cottages just a few doors away
Taking pictures of things I love
Taking just a minute to celebrate finishing something I worked hard on for two years
Reading about and planning to make jam blueberry or peach jam (or both), which brings me joy because my mom made jam every summer, but it also feels very daunting because it’s a bit of a process, right?
Upcoming visits from kids and friends

What are you finding joy in these days, or planning for the rest of your summer? Is there a book you’ve read recently (old or recent) that has particularly moved you? Any tips for jam making (I’m nervous about it!)?

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.

here we are, September

September 17, 2023 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Wow, August. You were a blur. A washout. A near total loss. I had high hopes for you! I had nearly a four-week break from classes and I had plans: a week with my kid and his partner, making peach and apple pies, a day-trip or two, long beach walks. Nope. I got Covid, or, more aptly, it got me. My first ever bout. Three and a half days off work (I should have taken more, but I’m stubborn), two nearly full weeks in bed (working), and five weeks later I still sound like I’m not quite right.

I’m just now getting back up to full throttle. Work is busy. My two classes are demanding. But the fog has cleared and I feel equipped to manage it all (mostly). But I completely missed the peaches, and I’m sad about it, because there’s not much better than a local peach that you’ve closed up in a paper bag to ripen, somehow protected it from the plethora of fruitflies that are the hallmark of a Michigan late summer, and then stood over the kitchen sink to eat while the drips run off your elbows.

Oh well. Next year, peaches. At least now there are apples! And hard squash! Oh, younger would me would be so shocked at my excitement over seasonal produce. There is a farm stand nearby that has the best honey crisp apples. I think I love honey crisp best… I buy them every year, but there are always new varieties to try. Whatever this apple seller has this year, I’ll branch out and try some other variety. Why not?

So, before the bout with Covid, I did get to spend a few days with my kid before I got sick (thankfully no one else caught it) just after that particularly spectacular lightning storm I wrote about in my last post. Those two days had their own magic. We laid under blankets on the deck watching the Perseid meteor shower at its peak, and the next day we anxiously checked, rechecked, then checked again so that we wouldn’t miss the monarch hatch from its chrysalis on our clothes line. Our vigilance paid off and we watched it push its way out of the chrysalis and unfurl its sloppy wings. What a show!

So, okay, August wasn’t a total wash. While still recovering, that very last morning of August I woke up early for no good reason, alone in the cottage, and like most mornings looked out over the lake. But this morning the full moon (a blue moon, no less) was setting over a slightly hazy, purple-pinkish horizon. It’s always pretty amazing to catch the moonset over the lake but usually it’s under the cover of night.

*August 31, morning moonset over Lake Michigan*

Anyway, we’re past the halfway mark of September as I write this on a hazy, warm, quiet morning on the lake. Besides apples and squash, September has given us a few rainbows, and I’ve seen plenty of snakes on my walks (all garter, I think). The woods are loaded with fungi, too. Other surprises and delights so far this month: a few days with my brother (who I don’t get to see nearly enough), and while my dad was here last weekend he agreed to let us help him down (and back up) the 36 stairs to the beach! He’s 94, and I don’t think he’s made that trek in at least 15 years. We all celebrated.

Today I’m doing homework, taking a pause to read in a hammock, walking the beach, and making a soup from the tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, zucchini, onion and garlic I bought from a local market stand on Friday. I’ve been slowly shooting my way through a roll of Lomochrome turquoise in my Minolta X700. Maybe I’ll try to finish that roll off today on a wander and get that off to the lab this week.

I think it’s going to be a good day.

summer, storm

August 12, 2023 sumacandmilkweed2 Comments

Somehow, we’re nearing the middle of August. Is it true anymore that anyone thinks of summer as days meant for lazing, reading books, naps, cloud-gazing? It that a thing of the past? (Or, was it a construct in the first place?) In any case, I have had little in the way of lazy days this summer.

I did spend my fair share of entire days with my nose in a book or naming the shapes that form as the clouds move across the sky, but those were days in my youth. Before I had to work, or pay a mortgage, or make meals for people, or replace broken appliances, or fret about maintaining old houses. Now we read about the health benefits of doing nothing (but rarely do we do just that); then, you got called a dreamer or a book-nerd. No wonder we’re confused and busy ourselves with gadgets and devices (and yes, I realize that statement makes me sound old—I am old).

A cousin and his family, kids and grandkids, love it here on Lake Michigan as much as I do and so they rented a large house just down the beach and spent two weeks doing the things they like to do, away from their normal lives in Pittsburgh. A friend and her family rented the house nextdoor for the past week, navigating life with two college girls and allowing me to be part of the fray in the evenings, where I weighed in on college and relationships and offered life experience where I could, and when asked.

storm, in distance — *distant storm, Friday evening*

A storm came across the lake last night, taking its time, just after the sunset. The lightning appeared first just lighting up the clouds, and then as the storm got closer the bolts sent short, electric ribbons from cloud to cloud. No big bolts, nothing shooting across the sky or down to lake or land, no loud thunder claps—just a near constant flashing, with ribbony shoots of light between the clouds, and a low growl that was easily drown out by the sound of the lake. It took its time coming across and then over our houses, before it dumped a hard but short rain at the back end, moving south and inland. Frightening, and magical. This morning I spent a few minutes capturing stills of the lightning from the video I took last night.

This morning the lake is storm-wild. The seagulls are alternately fishing and soaring on the wind gusts. A family of eagles is gliding among the gulls, too. Giant white and gray clouds dot the sky. This is a town day, or at least a day where you have a sweatshirt handy to walk the beach, if you venture down.

My cousin and my neighbor are both going through the rituals of packing up this morning, their vacations over. I am the recipient, so far, of a small basil plant (will use it in the lasagna I’m making later today), some heavy whipping cream, a handful of potatoes and onions from a home garden. I know the pain of leaving, but I’m lucky enough to not have to do it very often. I really do know how lucky I am, and I’m going to try to do a little nothing today, watch the gulls soar and just listen to the shouty lake. Or disappear into a book, find jackrabbits chasing dinosaurs in the clouds, ignore all the grown-up things at least for a bit.

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?

the calm serene

May 23, 2023May 23, 2023 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Late spring, before the summer vacationers, when the sun warms the sand and skin just enough to barefoot walk the beach at near sunset. I’d say it’s my favorite time of year, but if you’ve read any of my posts over the years, you know how fickle I am. Every season, when I’m in it, is my favorite on Lake Michigan.

The giant, blooming lilac bush between our cottage and the neighbor’s is humming with life, bumblebees loud as tiny drones busy collecting pollen, honey bees, too, and yesterday an early monarch. Oh how I love the sounds and the smells coming from this bush! I could watch this microcosm all day.

Right now there are wildfires in Canada, and so the sunrises and sunsets create an odd haze, orange creamsicle orb rising behind the cottage and fading into the haze well before it reaches the horizon over the lake. Even the sliver, waxing moon and Venus are a soft, hazy orange.

The beach was quiet last night as we walked until we heard—well before we saw—this low-flying flock heading north over the lake. We stopped to watch and listen, falling quiet to fully take in the language of the geese. Are they shouting directions at each other? Comments, like in a group of cyclists where leaders point out road scrabble, bumps, holes? Is it encouragement, I wonder?

And then it was quiet again.

I finished a roll of film after work yesterday, something I think I’ve only done twice in the past several years, using busyness and lack of inspiration as excuses. I brought cameras with me, too; I have a dozen or more rolls of film just humming with potential. The world is heavy and beautiful, but hasn’t it always been heavy and beautiful? Isn’t there a defiance in celebrating the beauty in the midst of the heaviness? I might try that on for a bit.

seawall

November 26, 2021 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

I’m smitten with this piece of architecture, this battered seawall. I’ve photographed it in all seasons. I love its jagged shapes and protruding planks, the way the incoming rush of a wave moves around or through it.

A few years ago it was in several feet of water. It didn’t have a chance then. The lake was gaining on its borders and there’s no stopping that. Nature says when she’ll give a reprieve, and she wasn’t in the mood to bargain.

As Lake Michigan continues to lower and the shoreline does its normal shifting and scalloping, this seawall is battered less and less. Someday soon, I hope, it’ll be mostly covered by sand, but I’ll keep photographing it until then.

I’m also still attempting to use up a shoebox full of film, much of it expired and of dubious quality. This was a lone roll of Lomography color 100, and I couldn’t tell you when I bought it. Maybe for that Iceland trip in 2018? It’s been carried around, left in hot places, and generally not treated well. The colors on this roll look a little blown out, but that’s okay. I like the pale hues here.

tiny hike in a squall

November 22, 2021 sumacandmilkweedLeave a comment

Yesterday, late afternoon, we left the toasty cottage to hike in the woods behind us. It was only meant to be a short hike, to have a look at the little lake that’s tucked into the trees back there. The woods would offer some protection from the wind that was picking up. When I was little, there was a trail that went all the way around that lake and I knew it like I knew my own image in the mirror. The spots where the trail kisses the edge of the lake, the clearing where local boy scout troops were allowed to camp, the marshy places where you needed to step carefully, the places where locals sometimes fished. The lake was filled with tiny frogs and fish and lily pads, and water skaters carved patterns on its surface. It was magical.

The land went through some ownership changes over the years, including a spell of logging and another spell of an owner who didn’t want anyone in there, so our access became limited. Now, though, a good part of it is owned by a conservancy, and I’m rediscovering it.

After we hiked the ridge that separates the dune from the woods, we made our way down to the water’s edge for our favorite view of the lake. On this occasion, we got to see three eagles soaring and dipping over the lake and into and out of the woods on the opposite end. Luckily, eagles are no longer a rare site here, but it’s never not breathtaking to see one (or three). So we watched for a while before moving on.

After that, we hiked off-trail toward the far end of the lake, noticing that it was getting darker and darker. And then the rain came, and with it a fierce wind that reminded us that the woods isn’t the smartest place to be, with old trees swaying and cracking, so we quickened our pace.

Once back up on the ridge, we could see how wild the weather had become. The wind pushed the remaining leaves from the trees up into the sky, where they danced and pitched and soared like the eagles we’d watched 30 minutes prior. But the sky was filled with them, like a murmur of starlings.

We pushed into the wind as we took our final steps back to the cottage, getting pelted by rain and sand and those soaring leaves, all to the deafening din of a now-roaring Lake Michigan.