The Paths We Take

I cannot resist a meandering two-track leading off a narrow two-lane blacktop. The irresistible track may wind through a long-abandoned meadow, where memories of old cedar fenceposts lie hidden in crumbling bracken fern, or it may disappear into a deep, green, shadowy forest. The closer to Lake Michigan or Lake Superior, the better, too, so there’s nothing like a few days Up North to satisfy my longings. Since we already live Up North, “getting away Up North” for us means crossing the Mackinac Bridge to the Upper Peninsula.

What does vacation feel like, though? This shot of Sarah on the beach—or rather, above the beach, flying through the air—captures the feeling pretty well, I think. Yippee!!!

Ours was a modest trip this year. A lot of what we did was simply to drive a little way from our vacation “home base” to lounge around and read somewhere different that day, taking our books to the end of Coast Guard Point in Grand Marais, out to Grand Sable Lake, and past the end of the paved road to Hurricane River. The first book I finished was AN UNCOMMON FRIENDSHIP, by Bernat Rosner and Frederic C. Tubach, with Sally Patterson Tubach. This unusual joint memoir tells of two boys in small European villages, caught up in World War II--one in Germany, the son of a Nazi officer, the other a Hungarian Jew who at the age of twelve was torn from his home and lost his family in the concentration camps, barely surviving himself. The paths of these two cross many years later in California. Retired from successful careers and married to women with a long friendship of their own, Fritz and Bernie gradually come to share with one another the stories of their early years. Reading this book and imagining the scenes it described made a strange contrast to my surroundings on Lake Superior, in another small village, far from war and strife.

Vacation book #2 was a complete change of pace. GIRL FROM FITCHBURG, by Bernadine Kielty Scherman, is billed on its jacket as a “light-hearted chronicle of living in New York through the past five decades.” The book, however, was published in 1964, so Scherman’s introduction to the city in 1908 took place a full 100 years ago. Still, some of the names were familiar. It was her husband, Harry, who launched, first, the famous Little Leather Library, and then the Book of the Month Club, and who wrote THE PROMISES MEN LIVE BY: A NEW APPROACH TO ECONOMICS (1938). Their daughter, Katharine, wrote a favorite book of mine, SPRING ON AN ARCTIC ISLAND. I almost feel I know this family in some distant, literary way, though my own New York life is strictly imaginary.

Then, finally, a murder mystery. My 1952 whodunit by Ruth Fenisong wasn’t set in Michigan, though the title, DEADLOCK, reminded me of a mystery by Sarah Paretsky with the same title. Other than murder by person or persons unknown, little similarity. Fenisong’s story, perhaps a function of the time in which it was written, is more Agatha Christie than Sara Paretsky. No matter. And no matter that I never solve the mystery before the solution is revealed. It is the not-knowing that keeps me reading.

David and I did some reading aloud to each other—A. A. Gill, A. J. Liebling, Joyce Cary. But no, our noses were not always in books. Vacation for us is also looking out over the water, watching boats, taking note of changes in familiar scenes, visiting with old friends, and exploring road and beach and woods. What a wonderful and completely unexpected surprise to find that the sweet little wild blueberries were not all gone as I had feared they would be! To pick a handful and eat them right there, standing in dry bracken fern, appreciating mounds of soft reindeer moss, watching for deer, alert for bear (and for bear-hunters), then to walk down the soft, sandy two-track with David, the two of us taking turns throwing sticks for Sarah to chase—this was a getaway. The whole thing was a series of adventures for Sarah: her first vacation, first crossing of the Mackinac Bridge, first visit to Lake Superior! Not for her the memories of other years, reminiscences of a long-ago campsite down on the beach and later travels with Nikki, our old dog. Time after time, we would recall the past, and Sarah’s exuberance would bring us back to the present.

Driving back from St. Ignace today, Monday, we notice here, too, signs of fall’s inroads, the occasional red maple splashed into the cool green surrounding stillness or deep crimson Virginia creeper standing out against the evergreen it embraces. Pumpkins suddenly stand out bright orange in patches and displays. Swiftly go the days!