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 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.