Day 32 Outdoors: Old Garage at Centennial Farm

Friday, November 9, 2012, 9-10 a.m.

It is a still morning, fairly warm, without a breath of breeze. A crow flaps overhead. Crows work hard to stay aloft, beating their wings steadily, never coasting.

On Kolarik Road, just down the hill from St. Wenceslaus Church, what would otherwise be silence is broken by the sounds of men’s voices. Up in the orchard corner closer to the church, a tractor or some other piece of heavy machinery is idling.

At the Centennial Farm on the north side of the road stands a weatherbeaten garage, sided with wood planks like a barn and roofed with rusting but no doubt serviceable corrugated metal, the car that never quite fit into the building sticking out the open door as it has for decades. This old garage with its long-immobile car, like the church just up the hill, is a kind of neighborhood landmark.

In front of the building a maple, mature but still young, raises bare branches to the grey November sky, a few dark, shriveled leaves clinging to the tops of its branches looking like motionless birds. A smaller tree nearby holds an untenanted nest, its summer family gone before snowfall.

A large piece of heavy machinery has begun serious work in the orchard here on the south side of the road. One man guides this machine to push down trees, while another works with a chainsaw. One farmer walks over to the edge of the road and speaks across the ditch between orchard and road.

“Good morning. Yes, it’s a nice day. Too still to burn, though. Need a breeze to fan a fire.” Are they taking out a block? “Part of it, yeah. One variety turned out disappointing, so we’re taking those trees out sooner than we’d planned. Oh, yeah, we’ll replant.” 

Somehow the men’s voices and the sounds of farm machinery add to the morning’s peacefulness. Things are well in the neighborhood.

Day 13 Outdoors: St. Wenceslaus Cemetery

Saturday, March 31, 4-5 p.m.

Sunshine and blue skies have returned after a couple of gloomy, cold days. Yesterday was spitting a mix of rain and snow, leaving lingering snow in the woods among the spring-new, bright green wild leeks, and this morning looked like more of the same, but the weak sun struggled and struggled until it finally won the day. Wind still blows, and the air is still cold, but certain sunny, sheltered spots out of the wind are almost warm.

At the highest point of Kolarik Road, St. Wenceslaus church and adjacent cemetery are still surrounded by working farms. Unlike the diversified agriculture of a hundred years ago, most of the farms these days are now in fruit trees. From the front door of the church, one can look west past orchards onto north Lake Leelanau below and, behind it, Lake Michigan.

It is peaceful in the cemetery. A few patches of bare ground have fresh grass seed scattered neatly on the dirt, and underneath an old cedar back by the parish hall bright blue vinca flowers have opened wide.

Markers for graves vary from the simplest imaginable to the very elaborate. Among the simple ones are bare crosses formed of a pair of pipes that look to have come from a plumbing supply store. There is also at least one cross fashioned of nothing more than two flat, unpainted boards. Then come the monuments of carved stone, from the very old to the new, polished and even illustrated, many of the oldest stones host to lichens in various subtle shades. The markers most distinctive to St. Wenceslaus are ornate filigree iron crosses made by the early Bohemian iron workers who settled here to work in Leland and Gill’s Pier. Many families have placed plastic flowers on relatives’ graves. Some of these are new and bright, others very faded by a long winter outdoors.

From the north comes the cry of a distant gull. Fields have been freshly tilled today, and the gulls are attracted to the resulting buffet. In a tall, still-leafless tree a red squirrel scolds angrily. Everyone else here is very quiet.