Toasty Times Are Here

Beech leaves

First, fall color report: Red and orange and yellow are giving way to brown and gold. I’ve written here before, earlier this fall and in years past, that beech leaves in the fall make me think of buttered toast dripping with honey. Now that November is upon us, beech leaves are less yellow, more brown, and the oaks have turned a rich brown, also. Both oaks and beeches, especially the young ones, will hang onto some of their dark, papery leaves all winter.

 

Oak leaves in full sun do have a warm look, don't they?

The French have two words for brown: brun/brune (a hair color, for example) and marron/marrone,  used more often and also one of two names for chestnuts and the chestnut tree (which also goes by the name chataigner -- but see the blue box on this site if you want to increase your confusion), with marron also used as slang to refer to something strange or bizarre. C’est marron! If you want to refer to the color called 'maroon' in English, however, go for bordeaux in French. Like the wine. Oui, c'est marron!

-- Non, ce sont des chênes!

Lakeside oaks

Brown leaves, blue sky

With toasty colors outdoors, it’s time to reach for sweaters and comforters indoors, and I would willingly have sacrificed an hour of after-midnight dark on Sunday in order to have daylight seem to come earlier – I get confused by time changes -- but no! We were gaining an hour (of reading or sleep) to achieve the earlier morning light. (How we humans pretend! “It’s really 8 o’clock, but we’re pretending it’s 7 o’clock” is how I explain the time change to myself.) Earlier morning light is very welcome! Not so welcome is the increase in evening darkness, but next month we’ll turn the corner, I tell myself. It’s good that the equinox comes in December, so that each cold day in January and February we have a tiny bit more daylight.

There she is!

Meanwhile, only on Saturdays now is my bookstore open until 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, if there’s no one browsing at 3 p.m., I turn out the shop lights, lock the door, and go home to my dog, staying until 5 only on Saturdays. My bookstore was so busy last Saturday! I was surprised and gratified by all the number of visitors, browsers, and book buyers. Most of first two groups were also members of the third group, I'm happy to say.

Last week we had sunshine three afternoons in a row, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday – and then again for most of Saturday! Basswood and black walnut trees in my yard had dropped all their leaves and stood bare, letting the sun reach accumulated leaves on the ground as Sunny Juliet and I enjoyed light and fresh air along with exercise. Every sunny hour this time of year is a gift. Soon the silver maple leaves will fall, carpeting the ground, leaving bare branches holding up the sky. (Monday: I think today's bitter cold wind will achieve that result!)

Meanwhile, indoors next to my bed these books await my attention: History of the Rain, a novel by Niall Williams; Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America’s Legendary Racehorse, by Kim Wickens (this is a nonfiction account of the horse featured in the Geraldine Brooks novel); To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey From Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, by Diana Beresford-Kroeger; Meriwether: a novel of Meriwether Lewis and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, by David Nevin; and an ARC of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s new novel, The Waters, due to be released in January. 

I’m trying to save my reading of the Campbell book as a Christmas present to myself. Or maybe Thanksgiving weekend, if I can even wait that long.

The rest? I can’t say I’ll get through them all this month, what with the chance, as happens frequently, that something not in the stack will present itself and cut in line, so to speak -- an ever-present danger of owning a bookstore! After what seems like a lifetime of school and assigned reading, it still feels like a luxury to pick up whatever appeals to me at any given moment, and heaven knows we need little comforts and simple luxuries to keep us going, with winter’s dark and a strife-riven world pressing in upon us.

 

Previous post was my top fiction picks of 2023 from January through October, and next post will be top nonfiction. By the way, a handful of people left comments on my last post, but not a single one chimed in with a favorite novel read this year, and I know that some of you have read novels this year! One person left a new comment on a very old post, recommending a work of fiction from Scotland. Anyone else have recommendations? Anyone?

Another note, not about cold wind: If the only person who comes in the bookstore today was the one who wanted to tell me how much he loves Bonnie Jo Campbell's Q Road, my day was made!

 

The Trail Beckons

 

Fall, like spring and summer, is more continuous change than steady state. Maples and birches demand that we monitor their changes with our attention, it seems, while other trees and plants surprise us later, every year: deep carmine osiers, yellow asparagus, scarlet Virginia creeper, golden tamarack, and the buttered-toast-dripping-honey leaves of beeches. 

Colors shout in the sunshine and gleam in the rain before fading almost imperceptibly against the darkening skies and winds that tear foliage from branches to leave them bare against the clouds.

Does autumn bring forth your wanderlust or tempt you indoors with cocoa and blankets and books? Perhaps it does both, and that’s when books of other people’s travels are so welcome. Armchair travel, vicarious adventure! Where would we be without it? 

 

…Two brothers uprooting themselves to seek adventure or a better life together was a pretty typical Oregon Trail pairing, and our resemblance to the nineteenth-century pioneers was significant. Nick was an injured, unemployed construction worker in the midst of a deep recession in home building in Maine. As a print journalist I typified an American character type that had been familiar since the industrial revolution – the worker with redundant, antiquated skills displaced by technological change. We were going to see the elephant because there wasn’t much else going on for us at home. 

 

-      Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

 

I’ll explain “seeing the elephant” in a minute.

First, though, I have to admit that when I picked this book up just after finishing Crazy Horse, by Mari Sandoz, I wasn’t sure I would find the story congenial. Not only does Buck open his story with some background on the Oregon Trail, but the map also showed me place names I’d encountered in the Sandoz book: Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, Fort Fetterman. And reading of 400,000 pioneers, many of whom “would never have made it past Kansas” without the assistance of Native American guides, I thought of Crazy Horse and his friends, dismayed by disappearing game (disappearance that brought great hunger) but confident that the pioneers would keep moving, on their way to somewhere faraway. I also took exception to the author’s claim that this was the largest human migration in world history, having read so recently The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson, telling of the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to the North, six million people migrating over the period 1916-1970.

 

Still, the story of two brothers setting out is a story of our time, not history, and such an unlikely and challenging modern journey that I set my doubts to one side and read on.

 

The phrase “seeing the elephant,” new to me, was apparently one 19^th-century pioneers used all the time. The “elephant” in letters and journals of the time seemed at first to refer to the hugeness of the plains, later to the dangers to life that crossing the plains involved, the great American adventure of its time captured and reduced poetically to its lowest terms in the malleable elephant cliché.

 

In the year 1958, while conventional suburban American children were gyrating with hula hoops in their backyards, Rinker Buck’s father took his family on an epic vacation. The author was only seven years old when the family set out on a 300-mile odyssey in a Mennonite wagon pulled by a team of draft horses, with a saddle horse tied on and following behind, traveling from an old New Jersey farm by way of old roads and historic sites of Pennsylvania and back home again, and that little seven-year-old boy was entrusted with the task of riding on ahead of the wagon in the late afternoon to locate a likely overnight campsite! What a dream! Who else but someone with this childhood memory would come up with a scheme to take a wagon and team of mules from Missouri to Oregon? And who else but a brother from that original trip would be so eager to sign on to such a crazy scheme?

 

So I know “where the story is going” geographically, but what may happen along the way I have no idea. Anyway, I’m hooked. Nothing like a wacky travel narrative for escape from the daily news cycle....

A busy bookstore is always gratifying to a bookseller, and my next-to-last Saturday in the bookstore was a busy one, but it’s a rare day that doesn’t allow dipping into some as-yet-unread book, and I’d had Michelle Obama’s Becoming set aside for several days. The very first pages of that book then hooked me, and a day later, having set aside the Oregon Trail for the First Lady, I was almost halfway through Michelle Obama’s story. What a refreshingly honest, down-to-earth, and yet thoughtful, absolutely elegant woman!

 

“They’re Chicago people,” the Artist reminded me (as if I might have forgotten). “They might very well walk into Dog Ears someday.” Wouldn’t that be something? 

 

But now it’s Sunday, and I’ve come to Dog Ears Books myself for a couple of afternoon hours, because next Saturday, Halloween, October 31, will be my last bookstore of the 2020 season! What a weird, strange year it has been, in the book business as in every other part of American life (as well as life beyond our own shores). Usually open on May 15, this year it was July 1 before the store was open to public browsing and buying for other than special order customers. We have all had to mask up for in-person meetings, with friends and strangers alike. Manufacturing and distribution chains for books were disrupted along with so many others; special summer events were cancelled; some authors had new book releases pushed off until 2021. And yet we persisted! We went forward with what we had, which was (as always) plenty of wonderful old books and lots of wonderful new ones, as well. Everyone behaved very well. It was a good season. 

 

Already I’ve had forward-thinking customers come in to stock up on winter reading, one man filling two whole grocery bags, others content with tall stacks of books. I welcome, wholeheartedly, all long-time and new customers this coming week! Many books here are calling out to go to new homes as holiday gifts (hint, hint). 

I will miss you all in my bookstore during my months of seasonal retirement, but I’ll remind you now that there are other bookstores here Up North, and while I’m gone I urge you to "shop my 'competition.'” Really? Yes, of course! One thing I have always absolutely loved about being an independent bookseller (one thing among many, of course) is that we booksellers – real indie types -- do not generally regard one another as competition. Customers sometimes make reference to “your competition down the road,” but in our small, fiercely independent shops -- shops that reflect our own personalities and interests as well as the region where we live and work – we see and treat each other as colleagues. It is a collegial line of work. If we don’t have something in stock, we send the customer for that book to someone else’s shop, sometimes even calling ahead to see if the book the customer wants is on hand – which I did only yesterday, in fact. We’re all on a cordial, first-name basis. We know each other, and we like each other. We are real people. And we all want all the others to succeed. 

 

So please buy new books from Leelanau Books in Leland, Bay Books in Suttons Bay, Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor, and Horizon Books in Traverse City. If you're a lover of old books, visit Landmark Books in Traverse City, and if Paul doesn’t have what you're looking for and you must shop online, here are some alternatives to the Online Behemoth.

 

Has the idea of an independent bookstore yet to become important to you? Take a look here. Community, curation, convenience. My place won’t be convenient while it's closed for the winter, but Dog Ears Books has always been about a curated collection, and our community commitment has only grown stronger over the years.

 

And we certainly expect to re-open Dog Ears Books in 2021 – I hope by May 15^th. One thing I can safely say, after over 27 years in business, is that I have lived up to the promise I made an earlier Northport landlord long ago: “I’m in it for the long haul.” And in retrospect 27 years have flown by. -- Someone the other day wished me another 27, which is rather more than I wish for myself, but I do hope and plan to be back in 2021. 

So come down to Waukazoo Street this week! We are here now! And really, isn’t that all that any of us can ever say with certainty?

Autumn Vacation Hours

 

[Late note: This should have been titled "Hours of Autumn Vacation," as the title I gave it sounds like bookstore hours, and that's not what it is. It istime stolen away from bookstore and housework and yard tasks to immerse myself in balmy autumn hours.]

It’s Sunday, and the sun is shining bright, and all over northern Michigan colors are popping. The Artist and I will be working outdoors this afternoon, preparing for a family visit and clearing the deck for visiting on Monday, rain or shine. Actually, the forecast for Monday is rain, with sunshine and clear skies to return on Tuesday. Whatever future days may bring, however, today’s post is a showcase for sunny days and the stunning colors of fall.

Friday, while Bruce manned the bookstore sales counter for me, I took the opportunity to take care of a couple errands down in Suttons Bay and then – oh, sybaritic escape! – took what remained of my New Bohemian Café chai latte and my dog and the novel I was reading down to the beach just north of the marina and sat there reading and looking up from time to time to note a sailboat out on the water or gulls huddled on the sand. Once in a while a gull would take wing and scream or laugh; other than that, the day was quiet and peaceful. 

I drove south and west in the county to see what I could see. Every prospect pleased. Back around the old homestead, asters in their stunning colors put a song in my heart. I was home, but I felt, just then, for a while, as carefree as if I were on vacation.

Not that my ordinary commute to Northport or time in the bookstore is a hardship. Here is some color from Leelanau Township and Dog Ears Books.

This morning, though, I vowed to pay full homage with my camera to the wonders of green ash leaves in autumn. While we have lost many mature ash trees in Leelanau County (perhaps the majority), enough remain to give some idea of the range of their subtle fall colors.

 

[Second late note: I haven't given you any idea at all of the range of colors of ash leaves. These all look yellow to brown. Where are the reds and purples?]

Going out to photograph ash leaves, I came upon an oddity that might have puzzled a newbie botanizer looking to identify a wild vine. Here is what I saw, and what do you say about it? 

If you realized that the wild grapevine had twined around the scarlet-leafed Virginia creeper, you are correct.

But pictures above show only the beginning of the northern Michigan fall color palette. Everywhere, overall, there is so much! 

Our eyes drink and drink, and still there is more! Lovely, lovely October in Michigan! What good medicine you are for our weary souls!

 

On Saturday afternoon a friend who dropped by the bookstore remarked on the soft, mild air we had enjoyed on Friday evening. “It reminded me,” he said, “of when I jumped ship in Caligari, Sardinia.” Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Wonderful, the associative leaps memory can make – and the delightful surprise of such a remark to the ear of a listening friend! 

 

Thank you, October! We needed you!

Especially ... in the Rain

The reds and yellows, oranges and golds and purples of fall foliage—all are especially beautiful in the rain. The past two weekends here Up North we’ve had both company and rain, and we and our company have all had a wonderful time.

Two weekends ago my stepdaughter remarked happily, “We’ve never had this much color when we’ve been here before!” She and her husband were thrilled to have been here for the peak of a most colorful autumn.

This past weekend’s guests talked us into a walk in the woods in the rain. We went in search of the striped maple, a small tree they had never seen. We were able to show them many (easy to spot this time of year), a couple quite large. No, I did not take my camera into the rainy woods, so there are no photos from that walk, but believe me, all came home from the expedition wet and well satisfied. The colors were stunning, too. We had to stop to catch our breath several times, and not because the hike was too arduous but because the scenery was breathtaking.

Locals and visitors who don’t want to get wet can easily enjoy fall color in comfort as they drive the roads of Leelanau County. Leaves and pavement alike gleam as if lacquered. Sous un ciel couvert (under a cloudy sky), time seems to slow down and almost stand still, an illusion I cherish. Even then, it's worthwhile to pull over to the shoulder (signal first, please) and get out of the car for a closer look. Asparagus adds a surprising charm to fall composition, and sumac particularly rewards the closer viewer.

The groundwater needs recharging, and higher lake levels (back to “normal”) would be appreciated by all. Still, I have to admit we’re glad our grandson had clear skies earlier in October when he drove up from Kalamazoo on Friday and back home on Sunday with the top down all the way. Sunshine for David and Lyric, peak color for Carson and Kirk, striped maples for Michael and Majda--no complaints from our happy guests, whose cups of blessings all overflowed.