Search This Blog

Thursday, June 9, 2011

May or June? Lake Superior or Lake Michigan? Both and Both!

The wildflowers in the woods are at their peak in the merry month of May, and there is always a single magical day in May when I would give anything for a PAUSE button. It’s that day when the smallest flush of first leaf and bloom takes the winter nakedness away from trees, that perfect Impressionist moment of light and color after months of winter and early spring drab. When May arrives, it is the best time of the year. It’s a miracle, time after time. Then along comes June and steals my heart, for what is so rare as a day in June? June is the culmination of spring and the beginning of summer. If May is the courtship, June is the wedding. The days are not all sunny (in either month), but the season rushes on, relentlessly filling and greening.

This year June is extra-special for me, "Lake Superior Month" at Dog Ears Books, so to introduce the theme, below is a photograph of Lake Superior at Hurricane River, west of Grand Marais, from our last September's all-too-brief getaway.


A week from now, on Friday, June 17, we will be hosting the Leelanau launch of Ellen Airgood's South of Superior. I've written about this book before and about Ellen and about my love affair with the Upper Peninsula and particularly with the little town of Grand Marais, the model for Airgood's fictional McAllaster. As wonderful coincidence would have it, the following Monday we will have a visit from another author whose novel is set on Lake Superior. Danielle Sosin, from St. Paul, Minnesota, will come to Northport to sign copies of her book, The Long-Shining Waters, at 1 p.m. on June 20. I hope some of you will be able to meet both of these talented authors and welcome them along with me to Lake Michigan country.

I'll end today's post with an image of Lake Michigan at Peterson Park. I could have chosen a sandier beach, perhaps a dramatic sunset over Good Harbor, but Leelanau Township is my home grounds, and this cool, morning-shaded, rocky strand is a favorite summer haunt. Besides that, I feel rich to have it all--May and June, Lakes Superior and Michigan, the rocks and the sand and the Michigan authors and their books.

5 comments:

dmarks said...

One of my favorite bits of song lyric is from "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald":

"Superior sings, in the rooms of her ice-water mansions"

Some have misheard it as "ruins", which implies some sort of antedeluvian villas on the bottom of the lake.

Gerry said...

Rich. We're rich.

P. J. Grath said...

Hey, dmarks and Gerry, thanks for stopping by. Also, thanks to Blogger and Facebook: because of them, only five people thought my first author event was to take place today. Our local paper announced it simply as "Friday," leaving off the date, a key element. It's next Friday, June 17. Two people called early in the day to double-check. Next week, next week.

Kathy in Oz said...

Bucket list:

1. See Great Lakes.

P. J. Grath said...

I'm guessing you will find the water strangely cold and the waves oddly small, Kathy, while for me saltwater feels and tastes weird, and ocean tides are too bewildering for words.