Day 30 Outdoors: Edge of Cornfield

Wednesday, October 3, 1:30-2:40 p.m.

Field corn harvest has begun around the township, but many fields still hold standing corn, since the drier it is when harvested, the less energy will be required to dry it later. It’s a lovely sight, these tall plants of domestic gargantuan grass with giant, graceful leaves that turn from deep green to bright gold and then gradually become more and more pale as their moisture evaporates in autumn wind and sun. This field is bordered on the south and west by woods, on the east by newly tilled ground, and it faces cherry orchard rows to the south across the road. On a clear, blue-sky day with no farm machinery at work in the fields nearby and no RVs interrupting the stillness, a day with the barest breeze stirring the paper-dry leaves, the cornfield is a peaceful place. A few flies, a distant crow....

Many ears of corn along the outer edges of the field are missing kernels. The work of deer? Raccoons? Crows? Bright yellow kernels contrast sharply with their dark, dry red cradle, colorful botanical teeth in a richly painted but dessicated jaw.

Two uprooted stalks lie akimbo in the dust of the road, golden teeth spilled onto dirt. How long will it take for scavengers to find and devour these easy pickings?

Day 26 Outdoors: Beside the Blackberries

Monday morning, 11-11:40 a.m.

In the late morning a(lmost midday), sun-drenched hayfield, the air is filled with the buzz and drone of insects and the short, undecided flights of white cabbage butterflies, yellow sulphurs, checkerspots, and grasshoppers. Overhead lazy clouds cross the blue sky in crowds, but only traffic out on the highway, audible above the more immediate and peaceful fields and orchards, hurries forward on a fast trajectory.

It has not been a good season for stone fruits, but brambles have produced abundantly—first raspberries, now blackberries, soon thimbleberries and, on small, weedy trees, mulberries. On the hillside next to Claudia’s road grow the blackberries. Large, luxuriantly green, toothed leaves hide a multiplicity of thorns, borne along sturdy canes as well as on the smaller, fruit-bearing branches. Flowering long ago finished, each former blossom’s sepals bend gracefully downward under a corolla of delicate, dry stamens. Heavy clusters at cane ends hold mall green berries, large ripe fruit, and tiny white stubs where ripe berries and cores have dropped or been pulled away—many stages of life together on each stem.

Blackberries and grasses form a dense, almost impenetrable tangle on the hillside, intermixed with wildflowers and small trees, the advance guard of the woods. The fruit is a lure, and those feeding on it will spread the seeds abroad.

Day 18 Outdoors: Meadow at Daybreak

Wednesday, May 23, 5:50 - 7:00 a.m.

Before daylight the bird chorus began. There is a bank of cloud on the horizon to the east, dark, but low enough that the sun will clear it only slightly later than its light would otherwise reach the meadow. Near the ground cool air stirs gently. It is a morning for looking, watching, seeing; for listening and hearing; for feeling the air in all its subtle movement. For being here.

The meadow was a hayfield for a long time. One summer a decade or more ago it was a cornfield, but since then it has simply been a meadow. It is uncultivated but somewhat managed. One corner seeded with native wildflowers, a strip seeded with native grasses, it is bordered on two sides by young orchard, on one side by wooded bank above the no-name creek, and the fourth side by old farmyard and popple grove. The autumn olive is kept at bay by persistent effort. The meadow was mowed last year, in early summer, but nature wants it to be woods again. Deep-rooted alfalfa, dark green and healthy, persists in spotty clumps through the grass, as do last year’s dry goldenrod, milkweed, and Queen Anne’s lace, but there are also, far out from the more recently seeded areas, wild grapevine, clumps of red osier, and seedlings of maple, black walnut, and box elder. Once in a while a pine seedling appears.

Sounds sort themselves out spatially: rooster to southwest, woodpecker to the east, crows off in the distant south, traffic to the west. Nearer, in the silver maples of the farmyard, robins sing. After a while, though, all other sounds become background to one nearby chik-chik-chik. A very plain sound. The sparrow uttering the dry note perches on a brittle stalk of last year’s milkweed and balances with continual small adjustments, so that any still photograph or drawing of this little bird would be false. Its tail and wings flick constantly, and the bird itself looks about and changes position incessantly, never still for two consecutive moments. Streaky chest, black breast patch. A song sparrow but only giving its repetitive call note. Too early for singing?

Light increases, reaches higher, the dark cloudbank giving way to diffuse, trailing scarves. As at dusk, the cool air rises from the ground, and the breeze gains momentum with the rising sun, as if eager to be in motion after the stillness of night.

Another small bird on another dry milkweed, this one surprisingly more musical than the song sparrow, keeps its head tucked down between choruses but stretches its head, beak upward, to trill its song. These birds have no idea how tiny they are and how big the world is, but the world of this small meadow is all-sufficient to the break of day--the cool morning air, a clump of young black walnut, a nervously twitching sparrow, another bird’s throaty, trilling song, and the clouds evaporating by degrees as the sun clears the tops of the trees.

Day 1 Outdoors

Tuesday, January 3, 8:15-9:15 a.m.

It was daybreak without sunrise, overcast. The fierce, brutal winds that blasted through the first two days of the year had largely abated, but the air was very cold. At the tree line, on the edge of the field above the stream, only a gentle breeze moved. Most of the time it seemed to come from the north, but at times it would pulse gently, as if the atmosphere were breathing, and then it would shift and gust.

The snowflakes fell lazily, sometimes sparsely, sometimes more thickly, until a breezy gust blew them horizontal. Then they looked more like asteroids streaming through space than water crystals. Overhead, against a light grey sky, they looked dark, like bits of airborne litter or ash. Once for a few minutes the clouds parted to let a bit of blue sky through, but then they closed again. Shifts in wind and changes in light were all small, undramatic, scarcely noticeable. 

Except for the slow, slight swaying of the tallest popple trees, the only living things stirring were black-capped chickadees. At first there were half a dozen of them, flitting and chipping, up in the highest branches, searching for food. After a while, there were none, and no other birds took their place.

Once in a while a heavy load of snow on a slender branch exploded in a tiny, noiseless puff and tumbled to the ground.

Leaves of grasses curled against the white ground like Arabic writing. Each dried umbel of Queen-Anne’s-lace held a small mound of snow within its curved ribs, and no two of these intricate snow-catchers were the same.

Our little nameless stream was hidden beneath the snow. No sound of the stream’s trickling challenged the wind, but the low, deep, rumbling roar of Lake Michigan, its waters still tossing from two days of wind, never ceased.

Later, at 10 o’clock, the temperature for Northport was recorded at 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

Setting Out the Plan

My feeling for what constitutes my home ground has shifted in recent years, the terrain smaller with each passing year. No longer for me the entire county or even the whole of our township, my home ground is apolitical and nondenominational. It does contain two important cultural centers, but between the two poles of St. Wenceslaus Church, the neighborhood’s spiritual home, and Fischer’s Happy Hour Tavern, its social center, lie no towns or villages and, other than farms, only scattered rural businesses. Landforms are modest, rolling hills, some sand dunes, others clay.

My neighborhood is an intimate landscape, the scale not grand or imposing except where a view opens out onto Lake Michigan. Small creeks and streams meander unobtrusively through hidden low areas. Swales are inconspicuous unless one takes the time to see them. Remaining forest is mostly (with one notable exception: Houdek Dunes Natural Area) farm woodlots, unremarkable to the passing motorist or cyclist.

Cherry orchards are the primary agricultural activity, with scattered small corn- and hayfields, home gardens, and small populations of livestock and poultry. A few horses grace the landscape. Here and there a farmstand, in season, animates the roadside.

This was Ojibwa and Ottawa land before Europeans ever saw it. The first rudimentary white man’s roads began at Lake Michigan and followed well-worn Native American footpaths. Most of the lakeshore roads and paths near me are now on private land, however, so my home ground, from the vantage point of hills looking out at the lake, does not extend to the shore.

In more recent history, the area became Bohemian country. Immigrants arrived from Czechoslovakia in the late 1800s and put down roots. The little cemetery at St. Wenceslaus church, built to serve the community of Gill’s Pier, is full of Houdeks, Jelineks, Kalchiks, Kolariks, Korsons, Kovariks, Reichas, Roubels and Sedlaceks. So is the current telephone directory and (here on my cookbook shelf) Favorite Recipes: St. Wenceslaus Altar Society, Gill’s Pier (1998).

Fischer’s Happy Hour Tavern, where our host these days is Paul Fischer, son of universally beloved Stan Fischer (gone but not forgotten), began life in the heart of Gill’s Pier as a general store. The little community had its own post office (opened in 1883, closed in 1908) and twelve houses, and a one-room school (later converted to a private residence) was established at Gill’s Pier in 1856. The tavern-keeper for years was “Happy Joe” Korson, in whose old farmhouse we now reside. Now even the old piers are gone, the piers where boats on Lake Michigan docked to take on wood, first for fuel and later as lumber for building in distant places like Chicago, but the tavern remains, a landmark and refuge for locals and visitors alike.

This small area is saturated with history. My aim this year, however, is not to research the cultural past but to immerse myself in the natural present of this limited, circumscribed bit of northern Michigan that I call home. Driving slowly the neighborhood back roads, hiking hills and woods with my dog, I have a certain degree of familiarity or couldn’t call it “home ground” at all. I know where to look for morel mushrooms and where the first spring beauties will bloom. I see the tracks in winter of deer and field mouse and have followed paths taken by coyotes. (We hear the coyotes at night, too, often—though not, I suddenly realize, lately. Why not? What has become of them?) But driving slowly, even walking, is moving through, and this year I want to do something different.

I want to take an hour each week of this new year to sit still in some corner of my home ground, to take note of everything happening there, to be immersed, and to make notes and sketches. No camera. Only pencil and paper. A full hour of sitting still outdoors may be difficult in January, but I’ll bundle up and do the best I can.

That’s my plan. This blog is my way of committing myself to the plan.