August Afterglow

Lake Michigan after sunset

The past weekend brought many visitors to Northport, some familiar for years with Leelanau, others seeing it for the first time. My stepdaughters had booked four nights at the Jolli-Lodge, south of Leland on Lake Michigan, their favorite place for the past two years, owing to special 2022 memories, while grandson Jack and his college buddy, Daniel, tent-camped in the backyard of my old farmhouse. 

Jolli-Lodge

Backyard camp

Before any family showed up, however, my friend and book colleague Helen, from Arizona, appeared in Northport on Thursday evening, all the way from Arizona! We had dinner together at Faro and then a visit in the bookstore on Saturday, when I was able to introduce her to my stepdaughters. Our visits are never long enough, since that very first week we spent together in Carefree years ago, but Helen’s first visit to northern Michigan will not be her last, and we are already looking forward to the next. Book people never run out of conversation!

 

Booksellers Pamela and Helen

My Michigan-&-Minnesota contingent joined me for Indian food (from Rosie at NJ’s) on the porch on Saturday after my stepdaughters enjoyed their very first Northport dog parade and the boys showed up (too late for the parade) from Kalamazoo. And after dinner? Those college boys cleared the table and did the dishes and put away the leftovers, all on their own sweet initiative! What a treat that was! They can visit any old time they want, believe me! I must admit there was a lot of barking over the weekend, but no wonder! We were all in high spirits. 

Sunny loved the soccer ball.

I took Sunday off work – did not even go to Northport – and, other than giving Sunny a bath and doing a single load of laundry to hang out in the sunshine, did very little before our family dinner meet-up at Nitolo’s in Lake Leelanau. Resisted the compulsive urge to make another batch of two of jam and held myself down to a little desultory weeding and edging, cutting of flowers for the porch table, tossing a tennis ball and a Frisbee a few times before stretching out comfortably with a book on the end of the porch -- the book at last resting on my face, I took a short summer nap! (What a concept!) Meanwhile, the boys explored Sleeping Bear and Traverse City, and the women beach and vineyard, disappointed only that the Port Oneida Fair on Friday and Saturday did not continue through Sunday, as they'd hoped.

But Nitolo’s never disappoints, and neither did sunset afterward at the Jolli-Lodge with s’mores, beach fires, happy families, lapping waves, and Petoskey stones. 

BIG one!

Sweet, peaceful place! No doubt there would have been less sleeping that night if any of us had remembered the Perseid meteor showers and/or known in advance that there would be a show of northern lights! As it was, we missed both. Still, no complaints. 

Before Monday morning’s bookstore opening, there was an agility session for Sunny and me. I can’t be taking photos while we work, but when Sunny and Duffy had a little playtime after the work, I whipped out my phone. These shots aren't much, but we don't want to leave the dogs out of the post, do we? Especially since the past two years I have not photographed the dog parade but just let myself "be in the moment." 

The triple jump

Coach Mike's sheltie, Duffy

I have finished my reading of Constance Fenimore Woolson’s Anne, a novel that took many twists and turns before the last page (I won't give away any of the plot of Anne, so that anyone who digs up a modern reprint won't be deprived of surprise), and have started A Lantern in Her Hand, by Nebraska's Beth Streeter Aldrich. (It was, in fact, the Aldrich book that led me gently into an afternoon nap on Sunday.) Published in 1928, A Lantern in Her Hand tells of the life of a pioneer girl grown to womanhood in the days of prairie homesteading, with descriptions of both the beauties and the hardships of frontier life in 19th-century Nebraska. Woolson and Aldrich both portray strong female characters making their way and finding happiness in American times past, despite challenges and social strictures. 

 

From the visit of my Arizona hiking buddy and her dog through visits from my son and his wife to the annual sisters get-together and now August bringing another friend and more family, summer has been a busy time, passing as always in a happy blur. All of my July FOLTL book-author events are behind me now, too, and the long sunset of summer has begun. 

Family time. Happy dogs. Good books. Fresh cherries and sweet corn and bright flowers and berries galore. Sun and wind and water. We are almost halfway through August. Now life might be slowing down a little bit. Do you think it's possible? Afterglow --