After lunch on Christmas Day I took a bike ride down by the river and up along the frontage road of the new tollway to make a delivery to my friend Phil. The day before, Phil had left me a worn but tidily repaired Robert Parker paperback wrapped in two grits bags and tied in the vines outside our front gate, along with a very nice letter. I had been meaning to make a book drop for him since summer, but doing so is not as easy as with other friends with whom I exchange books and letters, because the postal service will not deliver packages to the abandoned building where Phil has made his home for a decade.
I live across two streets from a small lake located in the midst of corn and soy fields here in Michigan. It’s quite built up with summer/holiday homes so that even though the houses are side by side there are 9 months of the year when the local wildlife and I don’t see anyone. We have small copses of trees that I’m sure somebody “owns”, but are left mostly undisturbed. In the summer, in what a friend calls ‘the big green”, it is impossible to see past the wall of leaves and grasses. I’ve surprised, and been surprised by many a deer breaking cover to cross the road to get to the “other” woods (or my front yard to raid the bird feeders). I know where the trails are though, the one the deer favor, the one the fox has made, and where the rabbits hide.
The road sides have prairie grasses and human-planted iris, the boat launch is a little bit of wild, even in summer when the boat-towing pickups are backed up outside the gates. When I talk about this with the few full-time residents around me, they are amazed. I hear “Really!?” too often.
Your question about when people would no longer be alienated from what is around us struck a chord in me.
Your field notes often give me.insight into my little bit of Michigan and on more than one occasion, I’ve gone looking to see if we have this or that remnant of prairie here still. I wish you a new year filled with joy and wonder.
A wonderful read to start 2022. I'd been reading Didion the past two months so her passing has a weird resonsance. Her first novel is dark and lovely, and covers many of the issues I know you think about. Here's to the New Year.
I live across two streets from a small lake located in the midst of corn and soy fields here in Michigan. It’s quite built up with summer/holiday homes so that even though the houses are side by side there are 9 months of the year when the local wildlife and I don’t see anyone. We have small copses of trees that I’m sure somebody “owns”, but are left mostly undisturbed. In the summer, in what a friend calls ‘the big green”, it is impossible to see past the wall of leaves and grasses. I’ve surprised, and been surprised by many a deer breaking cover to cross the road to get to the “other” woods (or my front yard to raid the bird feeders). I know where the trails are though, the one the deer favor, the one the fox has made, and where the rabbits hide.
The road sides have prairie grasses and human-planted iris, the boat launch is a little bit of wild, even in summer when the boat-towing pickups are backed up outside the gates. When I talk about this with the few full-time residents around me, they are amazed. I hear “Really!?” too often.
Your question about when people would no longer be alienated from what is around us struck a chord in me.
Your field notes often give me.insight into my little bit of Michigan and on more than one occasion, I’ve gone looking to see if we have this or that remnant of prairie here still. I wish you a new year filled with joy and wonder.
Thank you. I feel like I've walked with you in your urban nature preserve. The attention to detail is something that brings it all to life.
A wonderful read to start 2022. I'd been reading Didion the past two months so her passing has a weird resonsance. Her first novel is dark and lovely, and covers many of the issues I know you think about. Here's to the New Year.