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 28 Outdoors: Away from Home--Old Birch on Lake Superior Shore

Tuesday midday, Grand Marais, Michigan

At home on Lake Michigan, sunrise comes from behind a walker on the beach, and sunset streams from over the opposite shore, far from sight, at day’s end. On Lake Superior’s southern shore, the sun comes up on the right hand of a walker facing the water and sets on the left. Only midday light is at all comparable.

On Lake Superior beaches one finds different stones, too—notably, at Grand Marais, agates rather than the Petoskey stones sought by vacationers at home—but trees along the shores of these two Great Lakes are not very different: pines and firs, birch, maple, beech, and the ubiquitous quaking aspen (‘popple’), Populus tremuloides, always edging out beyond the older, larger species, a shy but determined pioneer, finding courage in numbers as it ventures nervously past each battle-scarred veteran, say an old birch, that stands firm and stoical until its life’s last great storm shall at last bring it down.

Day 25 Outdoors: Sunrise Over Meadow

Saturday morning, July 28, 6:40-7:30 a.m.

Even before sunrise there is a hum of insects in the white clover. Air and sky are clear, with a few tatter-ended clouds low in the eastern sky. There is no breeze to speak of, so only occasionally does a stalk of clover twitch, a Queen Anne’s-lace stem sway, or a few popple leaves give a palsied shake to show that, beneath the stillness, life quietly continues.

To the east, the view separates itself into five distinct bands. Sky with clouds forms the highest layer. Beneath that comes the dark band of the eastern woods, light only coming through at the tops of a few trees, taller and standing above the mass. Orchard forms the third band, not as individual trees but mostly undifferentiated texture, with hints of rows given in darker tones.

Between orchard and foreground grasses is a narrow band of white, the compressed space of meadow dominated at present by white clover and Queen Anne’s-lace. Meadow plants, besides those two, include many grasses, red clover and alfalfa, wild grape, dogwood, evening primrose, goatsbeard, star thistle, St. Johnswort (blossoms going from gold to brown), goldenrod (its blossoming weeks in the future), and common milkweed. All these draw bees, flies, butterflies, and birds, as well as the less obvious mice and voles. Some of the Queen Anne’s-lace plants are over five feet tall. They hold their heads at tipsy angles, like spinning plates of lace balanced on poles by invisible circus performers.

Predrawn clarity disappears in what seems only a moment as mist rises from the meadow, obscuring the orchard behind. Then, in another moment, the sun has risen above the woods, and the mist evaporates, leaving behind an expanse of light and color, glistening, sparkling with heavy dew. From all directions come sounds of birds and insects—not disturbing the peace of the morning but accentuating it.

Day 17 Outdoors: Old Dairy Barn

Saturday, May 12, 7:30-8:35 p.m.

(The title of this post has been changed.)

When farmhouse and barn were new, the house sat high on the hill, and the barn was in the backyard, but since the house was moved downhill, their respective positions have been reversed. This view of the barn is from the west, as the farmer would have approached it in the old days to milk cows morning and evening. The barn would not, however, have been as dilapidated then as it is today, no longer housing livestock. The tall and massive section was originally roofed with wood shingles. Later, sections of metal roofing were laid on over the shingles, but on half of the western slope of the roof the metal is gone, and the shingles have been deteriorating rapidly. Old boards curve and sag inward. Gaping holes appear. Framing and side walls (of vertical boards) are in better condition.

Cows were kept in the shed on the north end of the barn. Inside, troughs in the concrete floor of this section received their body waste. There was a door between the two sections so that old Joe could transfer bales of hay and straw—the latter their bedding, former their winter food when pasture was snow covered—to their stalls. At either end of the tall section of barn are doors high in the walls where the last bales would have been delivered to the tops of the mountains inside by elevator.

The cowshed walls were simple boards laid horizontally, but at some point in the barn’s history these had been overlaid with sheets of stamped metal. Now, all these years later, much of the stamped metal has been peeled back and torn off by wind rushing down the hill, so that sections of old board are exposed. One small window is boarded shut, as is the small door on this side, while the other window is opaque silver-grey with the grime of decades.

The east side of the barn is kept mowed, but the west face
has been ungroomed for many years. Weeds and large shrubs grow up against the large old doors (not seen here) where machinery and wagons could once go in this side and out the other. This barn was built by a Bohemian farmer and shows his saving ways. Its decay shows the history of farming in Leelanau County: as livestock declined and orchards came to predominate, the old hay barns were no longer needed and not kept in repair. This one was also built without a foundation, its old twisted cedar uprights, seemingly as strong as iron, set directly on the ground, so over the years the barn has settled more and more, wanting to lie down and return to earth.

Late evening sun, soon to set behind the hill, warms the wood. The light changes almost by the moment. The lower its angle, the more detail appears: wood grain, knotholes, the subtle shading that weathering has brought about.

Sparrows flit in the shrubs. Mourning doves call. 

Day 12 Outdoors: Civilization and Its Discontents

Tuesday, March 20, 5:00-6:15 p.m.

The spring equinox arrived in the night, and today will be as long as that night, but the temperature is more that of a summer day, almost that of the summer solstice. Out in the relatively open ground of yard, meadow and orchard the birds vocalize and flit and feed and preen: robins, bluebirds, woodpeckers, sparrows, red-wing blackbirds and crows. The gurgling melody of the song sparrow rises above the crows’ rusty calls, but inside the edge of the Eastern Woods, where the descending afternoon light reaches in through leafless branches, a quiet calm prevails, disturbed only by the buzzing of large summery flies. The flies heard the call of a small, freshly broken branch, oozing fresh sap, and first came one, crawling quickly and greedily about the sapling’s trunk, shortly joined by two more. From how far away did they sense the banquet, and how?

Below the tree with the flies spreads a perfect jumble of human refuse, the smallest corner a confusion of broken lines and rust, objects half buried and parts of other objects thrown on top of the heap. It is an unofficial farm dump, a tradition of country living. The pile includes wood of all kinds—broken crates, pallets, boards, an old wooden soft drink crate and discarded chairs, with one large fallen tree and many branches mixed in. There are also sheets of metal, sections of old furnace ducting, a kettle, an old charcoal grill or two, rusty appliances and more than one old sugaring pail. There are concrete blocks and wheels, bits of screen and old doors. It’s hard to find anything that is whole and unblemished. Maybe impossible. One old wooden trunk has so rotted out that the old leather handles hang in black, twisted scraps, and light penetrates into the formerly secret interior.

Man is part of nature, too. There is no separation between the branches and the boards, all tumbled together, and the wild leeks and spring beauties are undeterred by the presence of manufactured refuse. An old alarm clock, missing its hands, crawls with tiny ants. This place is as peaceful as a cemetery. Through the trees, in the west, Lake Michigan is bright blue.

Day 11 Outdoors: Between Woods and Orchard

Wednesday, March 14, 9:10-10:00 a.m.

The sun rises considerably farther to the north this time of year. As it clears the canopy of the Eastern Woods, the east-facing edge of Claudia’s Woods is drenched in light, while to the north, bordering the youngest block of cherries and the old hayfield, popples on the south bank of the stream show sharp contrast on their trunks, one side sunlit, the other shaded.

Edges are productive places to spot birds, and songbirds began returning this past Sunday. The east-facing edge of Claudia’s Woods is open to cherry orchard, orchard blocks bounded on the opposite side by the Eastern Woods. Here at the edge, woodland, orchard, meadow, two-track and utility lines provide a variety of bird habitat. On Tuesday morning two bluebirds flitted about in this vicinity, and young trees at the woods-edge were full of robins. This morning was quieter. Birds were audible and nearby but not right at hand.

Many pine trees suffered heavy damage after the recent storm, boughs breaking under wet snow. Large branches from a young red pine lay at the edge of the old farm lane, needles (in bundles of two) soft green still and fragrant with sap. The cones are attached at the ends of branches, tight to the tips.

Four Canada geese fly high overhead, and one honks at regular intervals. They are winging north. Besides this robust quartet, an occasional smaller bird crosses the open space of the meadow or orchard. A single robin flying across the otherwise empty immensity of blue sky looks tiny and brave.

A mourning dove alights on the power line along the lane, constantly adjusting its weight for precarious balance. With its small delicate head, long tapering tail, and gracefully swollen body, its shape is reminiscent of an old carved fertility goddess. Its colors, too, recall the Madonna, all soft cream and taupe.

The sun warms as it mounts. A soft southern breeze feels semitropical. The wooded hill blocks traffic noise from M-22, but a single car way over east on Jelinek Road delivers a long drawn-out dull roar long before it appears in binocular sight between stacked layers of tilled field strips. Here at the edge of the woods a few patches of snow remain. The last of the season? Maybe, maybe not. Où sont les neiges d’antan?

Back home in the front yard, an oriole flashes in the high branches of the silver maple.

Day 5 Outdoors: On High Ground, Creekside

Tuesday, January 31, 1:40-3:15 p.m.

Mild temperatures brought a serious thaw, reducing snow on the ground and increasing snowmelt. The small stream north of our farmhouse has no name but shows on county maps, its source not far east, over on the other side of Jelinek Road. From there it meanders through orchard, woods, open fields and more woods. Small and easily overlooked, it nevertheless offers a great deal of variety along a relatively short length.

Flowing briefly north at the base of wooded hills to the east, the stream crosses a low, waterlogged area (not a fully developed bog or marsh but soggy walking) before falling in a very minor cataract to a lower level, and there it enters another small bit of woods and turns west again. A few cedars and pines crowd the north bank, rising to a large stand of pines further uphill. 

Wild roses and red osiers tangle among fallen trees and branches on the south bank as the stream cuts deeper, heading for a wide, low area overhung with old willows. Beyond the willows it crosses open land, through an old homestead and cattle pasture, before flowing beneath the highway and through more woods to reach Lake Michigan.

The sheltered stretch between insignificant waterfall and giant willows attracts wildlife, and their tracks through the snow—deer and coyote, mostly—come at the creek almost at right angles, trails purposeful and straight from orchard and across meadow. The surface of the snow, both in the open and under the trees, is dimpled now with small craters, shrunken heavily down to earth, pulled by the weight of crystals becoming liquid again. As the crystals melt, they leave their impurities behind. Trees here are on the scrubby side—small, lichen-garbed maples, shallow-rooted quaking aspen (locally known as ‘popple’), young ash trees and now and again a black cherry, straight and tall, its high clusters of fruit black now in midwinter. Many trees have lost limbs. Some entire trees have been felled by wind since autumn. At the base of each standing tree today is a hollow in the snow.

In the current thaw, the little creek itself, ice-covered four weeks ago, is darkly visible between its steep, snowy, brush-tangled banks. Certain stretches look almost still, reflecting as perfectly as a mirror the branches above, silt and dead leaves settled to the bottom, a bed that shows dark brown, almost black beneath the clear, cold water. In other stretches, where the flow is obstructed by fallen branches or tumbles of rock, the creek talks quietly to itself. Those sounds today are too slight to be called gurgling. The word purling describes the sound better. A quiet, gentle murmur.

When the breeze catches them, dangling clusters of tiny rosehips (red, orange, yellow) bounce in the winter air, while high off the ground the top branches of pine trees sway in a stronger wind, sending their sharp, resiny odor abroad in soft, passing bursts. The wind has left the mark of its work on several trees—places where a neighboring branch has rubbed and rubbed, sanding away the bark to expose the underlying cambium layer.

Here on the south bank, outside the tangle of trees, there are dry grasses, Queen-Anne’s-lace and thistles bobbing and whispering in intermittent sunlight. Each thistle is a miracle of complexity.

From out on the highway comes the noise of traffic. From far to the southwest, southwest of Claudia’s woods, comes the yipping of coyotes.

Day 4 Outdoors: By the Wild Apple Trees

Sunday, January 22, 4-5 p.m.

Clear, blue sky and bright sunshine, temperatures up from recent single digits to somewhere around the freezing point. Up Novotny Road from M-22, where the road flattens out after the steep hill, and beyond the driveway into the old Sedlacek place, there is a winding two-track. Along it grow a few old wild apple trees.

A remnant fence post, bare of boards or wire, stands near the main road, casting its shadow across the snow-covered two-track. (Another fence post is almost hidden by overgrown apple trees on the other side of the track.) Tawny grass stems cluster around the fence post. Their leaves twist gracefully like ribbons. Some rise straight  from the snow with no preamble, while others have reflected enough sun to create small pockets, little shadowed craters, in the snow around them, as do trees in the woods at the end of winter, when snow is still on the ground but begins to retreat from the bases of individual warming trunks.

Everything casts a shadow today, from the largest tree to the smallest bird track. Any open stretch of snow looks like wave-contoured sand beneath the water at the edge of Lake Michigan, and so the snow casts shadows on itself along the contour lines made by the wind as, swirled into wave patterns, the frozen ridges contrasting with the expanse of crystals stretching to the next miniscule ridge.

The apple trees provide startling color in an otherwise stark landscape. Never pruned, they are a tangle of disordered limbs and branches. The oldest trunks have died. Their bark long shed, they look similar in their bare woodiness to the fence posts nearby, except that suckers have grown up around the old trunks to make new trees.

These are late season apples. In November some were yellow, some red, the best-tasting with a striped skin and white, very white but pink-tinged flesh. Now, in January, much of the fruit remains on the trees but, frozen many times already, it has changed color dramatically. Not yet shriveled, the glossy skin is somewhere between the bright color of its ripeness and the resigned brown of old oak leaves. These soft, old apples glow in the late afternoon sun. Some of them weep juicy tears that catch the sunlight. Most have given up firm roundness for soft, gently dented, still fleshy but now lumpy, almost apologetic shapes.

The track lies lower than the orchard blocks that rise above it to the north and south. It winds secretively eastward, ever downhill as it goes. Perhaps there was always a gully here, or perhaps it was carved by decades of runoff. Besides the apple trees and grasses, near the road there is red twig dogwood, and there are big thistles. In the background are dark stands of conifers.

As the winter sun nears the horizon, the light takes on a warmer and warmer color, while the air grows correspondingly colder. To the senses, it is a paradoxical effect, bone-chilling wind and glowing light increasing together.

Day 3 Outdoors: Edge of an Old Clearing

Monday, January 16, 1:20-2:45 p.m.

Morning’s fierce north wind calmed to a gentle breeze, and by early afternoon the air was swinging gently from north to east, a lazy pendulum of a breeze, losing momentum as the temperature rose. Almost-still air amplified traffic noise from M-22, as well as occasional snowmobiles (heard but not seen). Even with cloud cover, the snow on the ground was blinding. White of sketchbook paper looked lavender by comparison with white of snow.

Directly east from the house, beyond the meadow and past the newest orchard trees, a line of straggly trees demarcates the old 80-acre line, and behind that line, as the land climbs from a stream to the north to wooded hills farther south, there have long been two small clearings. One of the trees dominating the line from a distance is a tall, short-needled conifer. Spruce? Its lower branches have been hacked off to make room for the easier passage of orchard equipment, but the tree remains very much a sentinel. Even close up, its height is obvious. Behind and on the hill above the sentinel the small clearings are beginning to fill in.

This small bit of land is in transition, not only between orchard and woods but also as the clearings evolve from grasses to brambleberries and tree seedlings to larger saplings and shrubs, almost as if the woods to the north and south yearn to reconnect and are reaching across to close the breach.

There are popples in this transition area (the pioneer tree of the region, not found in mature woods) and also young beeches and maples and ash trees and very small firs. Overhead the smallest branches and twigs of young beech trees criss-cross and interlace in a delicate filigree, the highest twigs graced with clusters of small catkins, two to four in a cluster. Perhaps deer have eaten lower ones. 

Without yet a thick, mature forest canopy, grasses still grow thickly here, bowed over at present by snow, their heads buried, and the ground is not smooth and flat but lumpy with snow-covered vegetation and full of air pockets. It looks ideal for sheltering small rodents. Not one is stirring aboveground today, and there are no tracks in the new snow in the clearing, but many small animals may be tunneling underneath the snow. Once a dead grass stalk gave a sudden, quick, unnatural jerk, nothing like a wind-caused movement but more as if something had passed by underneath the snow and collided momentarily with the stalk.

A very old, gnarled tree, long dead, continues to stand, although it has lost the central trunk of an original three forking from the main, and all of its dead branches end in severed stumps. Bark still loosely surrounds parts of trunk and branches; other sections are bare. Its bark looks like black cherry, a forest tree in these parts, but the habit of its growth is more that of an old orchard cherry tree. Snow lies along its branches.

Not a single bird visits at this time of day, though there is an occasional one-note call from nearby, and crows (as always) caw from time to time as they fly over the orchard. Now and then a tiny fir tree releases a part of its load of accumulated snow. 

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.