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.
