It's Travel Time

WHAT month is it???

In northern Michigan there are, besides weekend tourists and short-term vacationers, summer people and “year-round” people. The year-rounders who can afford to make a getaway in late winter or early spring, though, are not shy about doing so, and who can blame them? Some take February or March in Florida or Mexico or the Caribbean. For years, before and between the Florida and Arizona winters, the Artist and I made more modest forays to Lake Huron on early spring weekends when March rolled around, because cabin fever isn’t just about getting to an exotic location. It’s more about seeing different scenery and different people. 

 

“But we didn’t even have winter this year.” 

 

“We had a month of winter (January).” 

 

“No, we had ten days. That’s all!”

 

Okay, and now February, typically the coldest month in northern Michigan, has been bringing us daytime temperatures in the 40s! Along with many others, I feel a lot of ambivalence about this month’s weather. It isn’t right, isn’t normal, it bodes ill for the future – and yet, in the present, it makes life easier and certainly (because of lower fuel bills and no plow bills at all) less expensive, which is hard not to appreciate. And who can complain about blue skies? Besides that, for me (and I know I’m not the only one) this time of year is a minefield of associations. Anniversaries after loss are ambushes along life’s road, in that you know they’re coming – looming inexorably -- but not the moment or hour or the manner they will hit. So with all of the financial and emotional possibilities threatening, I found unseasonable February warmth and sunshine more than helpful.  

While we still had snow --

Blue view --

Thanks to books, I’ve also been spending a lot of time in Ireland and Scotland, France and Italy, some of it over a hundred years ago and some in more recent times. Fiction, nonfiction – one is as dreamy as the other, when it comes to exploring mountain villages, river sources, stone ruins, and local stories from local folks in faraway places. When March arrives, I’ll post my “Books Read” list for the month of February, with enough annotation to give an idea of each title’s contents for anyone who might be curious.

 

Leelanau County itself, though, provided me with antidotes to cabin fever. Monday, Presidents Day, was a bank holiday, so I had to go to Traverse City on Tuesday instead to take care of banking errands. By noon, though, I was already zipping out of town when the beautiful sunshine inspired me to detour to Good Harbor Bay, where Sunny and I walked on the beach! As close as I live to Lake Michigan, you would think beach-walking would be a frequent life activity for me, but somehow, unless I have company, time just seems to slip away. Well, not that day! I seized it!

Good Harbor, Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Again, the following day, Wednesday, the Artist’s birthday (he would have been 87, if still living), when I felt the need to do something special, Good Harbor was my choice. I'd first contemplated a stop at the Happy Hour for a beer on the way home, maybe even buying for whoever might happen to be sitting at the bar in the middle of the afternoon, but there was no way to include Sunny Juliet in that plan. And as it had on Tuesday, the sun was shining, the sky blue, so with sunset later and later every day, Sunny J. and I had plenty of time after I closed the bookstore at 3 o’clock to drive down to Good Harbor again, scenes of many memories and associations over the years.

Lake Michigan, Wednesday afternoon

Calm water

This is how I am traveling in February now. Books take me to other countries, and I take mini-vacations close to home with my dog, because, as the Artist loved to say, so often, “We live in a beautiful place,” and whatever the weather, every road of my county is saturated with memories, making it all the more beautiful. Travel time in my home county is any time, and any county drive is also time travel, my present brimming over with the past. 

Thursday morning fog -- beautiful!

 

Today’s postscript:

 

If audiobooks are your thing, please consider signing up to get yours from libro.fm – and choose Dog Ears Books as your bookstore. Your audiobooks won’t cost any more than they do if you buy from the online behemoth, but you will be supporting a small indie bookstore in northern Michigan. Thank you! And special thanks to those of you already ordering from libro.fm via Dog Ears Books!!!