Turn, Turn, Turn

Not AI-generated! Completely unedited!

Peak Autumn Color

People kept asking if the turning fall leaves had reached peak color, and I kept saying, day after day, no, not quite yet. There was still a lot of green left. Late Saturday afternoon’s sunshine, though, invited me for a little drive after work, and Sunday’s rain, because it put the kibosh on dog park fun, tempted me farther afield in the car. You can see more of those Saturday and Sunday scenes on my photo blog, and take a look at the Lake Leelanau Narrows on Wednesday morning, while you’re there.

When did we turn the color corner? In Leelanau Township, I’d say it was overnight from Sunday to Monday. Monday! What a perfect fall day! On Tuesday came the rain and wind. Black walnuts thumped and clattered to ground, windblown leaves tossed restlessly, yellow popples shimmered and gleamed.

My stepdaughter (Artist’s oldest child) and her husband came up on Monday, and Tuesday evening we went to the Happy Hour for dinner. I kept saying that Tuesday felt like Saturday and asking why. “Because we’re here,” she said, “so it feels like a weekend.” Also, we agreed, because it just seems that peak color should land on a weekend for all those travelers and visitors hoping to catch it.

Re-reading

At least a couple times a month I pull an old favorite book off the shelf. As October races past, after having read for the first time Le premier homme, by Albert Camus, and Medicine Walk, by Richard Waganese, I turned once more to Elliot Paul’s The Last Time I Saw Paris, the closeup portrait of a Parisian neighborhood and its denizens and how they are storm-tossed by events in the larger world.

The years Paul lived in Paris were the fraught years between the two world wars when the wounds of France and Germany were still festering, both between the two countries and within their borders. My many readings of this book have made almost personal to me the anguish of that time, as the author shows growing tensions of people living on one small street of shops and residences in central Paris, but with every reading, also, something jumps out at me that hadn’t jumped out before. Elliot Paul’s portrayal of his years in France does not spare the corruption or “backwardness” of French politics or society, but he is also put to the test to explain his own country to the French, and never more so than when Sacco and Vanzetti are put to death, news that set off demonstrations across Paris by workers sympathetic to the condemned. 

 

It was no new thing to the French to have undesirables railroaded and executed on one flimsy pretext or another. But, somehow, they had hoped it was different in America, and so, in my innocence, had I.

 

-      Elliot Paul, The Last Time I Saw Paris (1942)

 

His neighbors, Paul reports, were kind to him on the sad occasion and did not hold him accountable for what they saw as his country’s miscarriage of justice.

Nicola Sacco, a shoemaker, age 32, and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a fish peddler, age 29, were immigrants from Italy and avowed anarchists. That much is fact. In 1921 they were tried and convicted of armed robbery and murder, numerous requests for appeal were refused, and they were put to death by electrocution on August 23, 1927, continuing to insist on their innocence.

Were Sacco and Vanzetti guilty? The court said they were. Some believed Sacco was guilty, Vanzetti innocent. In 1925, another prisoner in the same prison as Sacco, Celestino Madeiros, member of the Morelli gang of robbers, claimed in writing that it was he, not Sacco, who was guilty of the armed robbery and murder of the two payroll guards, and in 1927 Felix Frankfurter, later to become a Supreme Court justice, wrote that “every reasonable probability” pointed  to the Morelli gang and away from Sacco and Vanzetti. History, while not taking a definite stand on guilt or innocence, agrees that the defendants did not receive a fair trial, that they were condemned for their beliefs and their status as immigrants rather than for anything they had done or not done.

 

 

Another Four-Letter English Word

To HATE: to dislike intensely, passionately; to feel aversion or hostility toward. 

Most of us growing up in the U.S. in my generation were told as children that hating is wrong. We were even told often that we were mistaken about our own feeling. “You don’t hate your baby sister,” a parent would say patiently, if we were lucky. No, we were jealous, worried that the baby would take all our parents’ attention, etc. That wasn't hate. Later, did another child at school hate me? Or was that child jealous (for some reason) or even, if a member of the opposite sex, attracted but confused?

In the Christian Gospel of Matthew, Jesus counsels against hate and sets a high bar for those claiming to follow a God of love: 

 

You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^’ and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.

 

Last Saturday across the United States of America protestors demonstrated against the current administration in joyful, high-spirited pro-democracy rallies. The president and his Cabinet members insisted ahead of time and continued, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, to claim that these were “hate America” rallies, peopled by Marxists and other extremists, including “Antifa” (which the president thinks is an organization). It was also claimed, entirely without evidence—because it was a false claim—that George Soros and other “leftist billionaires” had funded the demonstrations, paying people to attend.

HA! They would like that to be true, but it is not.

I know those demonstrators, not only in Traverse City, but in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Marquette, Chicago, Joliet, Seattle, New York, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. They were my friends and neighbors. They were my bookstore customers. They were my family. They carried hand-made signs. And yes, some of them made negative observations on the president, because “No Kings” was the theme of the day, everyone having decided ahead of time not to fragment the message with a variety of issues, because the bottom line is we do not want anyone in power running roughshod over freedoms guaranteed us in the U.S. Constitution.

Demonstrators were out on Saturday because they love this country! There were many American flags. The protests were peaceful. Counter-protestors were safe, too.

Republicans (I do not call them “conservatives” because they are not) who decry “hate” coming from the president’s opposition would be well advised to look to the president himself. “I hate my opponent! And I don’t want the best for them!” Words from the president of the United States. As for his king-in-the-plane social media cartoon, enough has been said about that. The image spoke for itself. 

Hate pours down from the top, coming from the same source since the campaign of 2016. It takes a lot of resolve not to respond to his words and actions with reciprocal hate but with determination and hope and resolve for a better future. Because there is, too, the image of the East Wing of the White House under demolition, after the president’s earlier assurances that the structural integrity of the building would be preserved. Now, it turns out, he never thought “much” of the building. It was “very small,” he says, way too small. Not the first time he’s promised one thing and done the opposite. All presidents have made changes, you say? Redecorating and even remodeling are not demolition. The demolition image is a metaphor, a friend said. Sadly, yes.

I attended Saturday’s rallies all over the country in spirit. In my bookstore, my colors were on display for everyone to see. 

Hostility, aversion, passionate dislike? Yes, I feel it. What do I hate? 

I hate the militarization of American cities, the setting aside of due process, the attempts to gag the free press and allow only government propaganda as “news.” I hate the storm trooper actions, under orders from the administration, that tear men, women, and children out of their beds and zip-tie them for hours before deciding that some of them have done nothing wrong and can be allowed to return to their ransacked apartments. 

I hate the lies. 

I hate the desecration of the White House, the attempted destruction of unions, and the executive demolition of long-established social safety nets and environmental protections. I hate the killing, by my country and therefore in my name, of unknown people from other countries in open waters with no evidence presented against them and no trial to determine guilt of any kind. I hate having my own government violating the First Amendment here at home.

I hate the lies. 

I hate the way Americans have been encouraged by a would-be dictator (“Vote for me, and you’ll never have to vote again”) to turn against each other and see their own neighbors and family members as enemies.

I hate the lies.

He would never have been put in the White House if he had told the truth all along. No one can support the current administration and the rule of law. To support one demands opposing the other. 

 

Did you mark your calendar yet?

The date is November 12. It’s a Wednesday. The time is 4 p.m., so it won’t interfere with any evening meetings or keep anyone away from dinner or up too late at night. We will have a special guest speaker, with a new book, in the gallery next to Dog Ears Books. I’ll tell you all about it when November arrives.... 

 

But first, Halloween!

A couple of young moms in Northport have been going around town to get those of us in the central part of the village on board for trick-or-treating. I’m on board. Whether or not I’ll be in costume is an open question, but I’ll be there at the bookstore door from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Friday, October 31, and I hope Halloween 2025 will be as much fun as past Halloweens on Nagonaba Street years ago. Here are some trick-or-treaters from 2004. Yes, 21 years ago in Northport!

Guest Book Review: ISABELA'S WAY

Book cover for ISABELA'S WAY

Local Northport author Barbara Stark-Nemon has done it again. After two other outstanding novels (Even in Darkness and Hard Cider), Isabela’s Way may be her best work yet.

Set in the early seventeenth century, this absorbing historical novel describes the impact of the Inquisition on families forced to flee persecution. As the story opens, non-Catholics have been expelled from Spain, and enforcement of the Inquisition is spreading to Portugal.

Isabela is a conscientious fourteen-year-old Portuguese girl and a talented needlework artist. Her mother has died of the plague. Her father, a textile merchant, is traveling and living in Hamburg. While her village is roiled by illness and the terrifying unrest of the Inquisition, Isabela maintains the household and fends for herself, with help from her friend David.

An enigmatic stranger, Ana, contacts Isabela with an urgent message from her father: Isabela is in danger and must leave Portugal immediately. As cover for her escape, Ana announces that Isabela has been commissioned by a family in the Basque region to embroider their daughter’s trousseau. 

Raised as a Christian, Isabela had assumed she would be safe from religious persecution. She is shocked to discover that her own heritage is Jewish and that she and her family, as converts, or “New Christians,” are also at risk. Isabela learns that her friend David has fled Portugal with his sisters and is escaping along a northern route. 

During their journeys across Spain, Ana, Isabela, David and his sisters are aided by a network of friends and sympathizers helping Jews escape persecution. Isabela finds a safe retreat with the Basque family and completes her commissioned work, but she is at growing peril of being exposed and eager to find her father. 

Ana, Isabela, David and his sisters continue traveling east, seeking refuge with additional sympathizers in France. All of them are also being pursued by a priest from their home village, who is determined to enforce the strictures of the Inquisition. The account of Isabela’s attempts to escape to safety and reunite with her father and David is gripping, with many suspenseful scenes and unexpected twists.

The book is rich with historical detail, offering deeply evocative descriptions of the cities, architecture, and culture of seventeenth-century Europe. At the same time, the themes of religious intolerance and oppression are utterly (and unfortunately) contemporary and relevant. 

Stark-Nemon is masterful at creating spirited female characters. Isabela uses her embroidery talent to assist with the refugees’ safe passage; she stitches elaborate symbols for banners that indicate safety or danger at each sanctuary on their route. Her growth from a perceptive but innocent girl to an assured, wise woman makes for a compelling coming-of-age tale. Similarly, Ana is a compassionate and gifted herbalist and healer; she bravely risks being apprehended as a heretic when she aids the sick and injured along the way. They are inspiring characters facing menacing danger with grace and hope.

Like Isabela’s embroidery, this intricate, beautifully written novel, with its complex, intertwining story lines, is a testament to human resilience and strength even in times of tyranny and cruelty. 

Author's needlework rendition of book cover

Reviewer Kristen Rabe also says:

"I am always thrilled when Pamela invites me to review a book for her blog. We have so many talented authors in Northern Michigan, and it’s a delight to highlight their work. Barbara Stark-Nemon is among the very best of those authors, and this fascinating historical novel with its remarkably relevant themes should attract a wide readership. Thank you once again, Pamela, for all you do to promote thoughtful discussion in our community."

Note: The release date of this book is Tuesday, September 16, 2025. I have it on back order and should have copies next week. Barbara will also be signing and selling her book at a booth during Leelanau UnCaged in Northport on Saturday, September 27.

Direct From Paris!

Somewhere along life's road, we paused.

Do you need a vacation from the tense present? Come with me to the past nearly perfect, and from there we will circle back to a recent day of happiness for me in Northport. 

 

Most Americans, whether they have been able to make the dream come true or not, have a dream city. For some it is Manhattan or San Francisco, for others London or Rome. For me, all my life, it was always Paris. It had certainly been that for my father, who was there in the intoxicating days following the Liberation and who had a chance to see and hear Edith Piaf, the “little sparrow,” in person one evening. And for the Artist—well, how many artists from all over the world, through the years, have sought refuge and validation in Paris? 

 

So Paris was a dream we shared from the beginning. As it turned out, however, each of us made our first trip solo, which was as important for me as it was for him. When I went for the month of May in 1987, it was because so much else in my life had fallen apart that I needed to save at least one important dream. I didn’t want to speak English at all during my weeks in Paris and avoided situations to do so. For me, it was a personal test. When the Artist went for three weeks in April of 1992, it was a different kind of test for him. He needed to make his way around independently with only smatterings of the language. 

My beautiful room!

Complete with a cat named Sirius!

Both of us succeeded, and we made important friends, as well, during our solo times in Paris. The older Frenchwoman from whom I rented a room on the rue de Vaugirard became one of the best friends of my life, and the young Englishman he met became an important friend to the Artist. We dreamed of having these two visit us in the U.S. so we could show them our country. That dream was never realized, but in September of 2000, when the Artist and I finally went to Paris together, it was natural that we would introduce our two dear friends to each other. 

Justin and Hélène as she shows some of the art on her walls

What an enchanted, unforgettable evening that was! Drinks and hors d’oevres at Hélène’s apartment, followed by dinner at a little Auvergnat restaurant in the neighborhood! “We are making beautiful memories!” Hélène said to me, resting her head on my shoulder. She did not speak English any more than the Artist spoke French, but to my great delight they “got” each other without a common language. Of course! 

 

I had chosen our hotel, le Recamier, in part because of its proximity to Hélène’s apartment, my first “home” in Paris, but the peacefulness of the Place with its fountain of the Four Cardinals (and the four cardinal directions), the church of St.-Sulpice with its grand organ, and the bookshops nearby all added their own charms. 

After an exciting but somehow leisurely Paris sojourn, we took the train of grande vitesse south to Avignon, picked up a rental car, and wandered north. We had maps but no reservations, simply exploring as the spirit moved us—and by great good fortune happening upon the village of Blesle, which I will never, never forget. 

We always talked of a return. We wanted to go back to Paris, to see Justin and Hélène again, to visit places we hadn’t had time to see, and maybe spend an entire week in Blesle, seeking out the treasures of the Auvergne. But it was not to be. We never gave up the idea, but time ran out on us. 

 

So imagine the thrill I felt when an email came from the publishing house of Gallimard in Paris, saying they were putting together a new volume of some of Jim Harrison’s work in French translation and that the translator had discovered a couple of screenplay treatments, never sold, that the Artist and the Writer had cowritten back in the 1970s—and would I give permission for translations of those two pieces, with credit given to David Grath, to be included in the volume?!

 

But of course!!!

 

There followed months of emails back and forth between Paris, France, and Northport, Michigan. The flood of forms seemed to multiply overnight like wire coat hangers in the closet of an old farmhouse. (Do I know about that, or do I know about that?) It was international business, there was an advance on royalties involved, etc., etc. About the time I was ready to give up and tell them “Forget the royalties! Just make sure the pieces get into the book!” I was assured that the last form requested would be the final one required and that when the book was published in November 2024 a copy would be sent to me. 

 

Publication timelines are often subject to alteration, so I was not surprised to learn that Métamorphoses would not be released until January 2025. It had been so long since the initial email that for days, even weeks at a time, I would forget about the book completely. Last week, then, when I had a yellow slip to pick up a package at the post office, the contents took me completely by surprise.

Identifying name on package

 

Contents of package

The two screenplay treatments are near the end of the book in a section called “Unedited texts,” and the Artist’s name is in small type in a footnote at the bottom of the first page of the first screenplay (this is, after all, a work of the revered Jim Harrison), but I remember how absolutely thrilled David had been, on his first visit to France, to see the Bob James album, “Grand Piano Canyon,” in a shop in Paris with the image of his painting of the same name on the album cover, so I can easily imagine how pleased he would be to have the collaborative work he did with his friend Jim in a book issued by the one of France’s leading publishers, which is the reason I jumped through that seemingly endless series of bureaucratic hoops—not for money but for love. And there you have it. That's my story.

 

Which brings us back to northern Michigan, on a cold January day, in a turbulent and disturbing moment in American history, but I promised myself and my readers a vacation in today’s post and am not about to renege on my promise. So, some more happy news? There was practically no wind this morning! What joy for the momma and her girl when they went out for their first walk of the day! A perfect morning for chasing chunks of icy snow and slipping and sliding in the process! What fun!

Pointless Rambling Thoughts

How many leaves remain on this tree today?

We are slip-sliding into winter. Is that an excuse for my lack of focus? In my last post I used a French phrase, sous un ciel couvert, which means under a cloudy sky. Not actual rain but “menacing,” or (I would say) threatening rain. Here is another French word, one that moves easily and frequently from skies to moods: maussade, which means gloomy, dreary, dismal. 

A customer from France brought me this little souvenir!

I love French words the way so many of us also love music. It makes me happy to hear them, to speak the language (to the best of my abilities), to read and write the words. In an often cold, hard world, it is one of my little comforts, a small joy. Malheureusement (unhappily), we have been in greater-than-usual need of comforts if we’re paying attention to world news, but to imagine how comfortless their world must be for those in the midst of war is heartbreaking and goes far beyond first-world self-care.

 

I’m ditching most of what I had composed for today as a draft in the past week. The first frost in my garden feels like old as well as trivial news, along with that green tomato chutney project. Also, I’d written about a forecast for snow “in the coming week,” but now that forecast is only scant hours away. And other parts of the country have the same, so it’s hardly a headline story.

 

For no other reason than because it’s somewhat cheery, I’ll insert here a couple pictures of my latest kitchen production. It’s applesauce with pears cooked along with the apples and a homemade drizzle of black raspberry syrup added for color.…

I like it chunky.

And now I’ll use that food theme to segue to books and at the same circle back to the French. A friend tells me she doesn’t mind being alone but does mind eating alone. I told her I always have a dinner book nearby. The book that has seen me through many dinners lately, a few pages per meal, is Fernand Braudel’s L’Identité de la France. 

 

On our side of the Atlantic, in a country stretching from ocean to ocean, we tend to think of France as medium-sized and  unproblematically unified, but Braudel tells a different story. For reasons entirely different from those pertaining to the United States, as he sees it France is almost two different nations, north and south, with an intermediate buffer zone separating the two, and even that is an oversimplification. Histories, languages, soils, customs – la belle France is one nation politically in the larger world, but its peoples are diverse even from one village to the next.

 

But stop and think. Isn’t that the reality of human life everywhere? We may live under one law, but we inhabit multiple different and distinct smaller worlds. An Ethiopian friend of mine was astonished at how strong regional loyalties were in the United States, e.g., my ties to Michigan, she having expected we would all identify simply as Americans. My friend and I were in graduate school together for two years in Cincinnati (before I transferred to the University of Illinois), and in that unique river city – neither purely northern or southern, eastern or western -- each neighborhood had not only its own name (Clifton, Hyde Park, Over-the-Rhine, etc.) but also its own complete shopping district, so that the neighborhoods were like villages clustered to form the larger city but retaining their village identity. 

 

Similarly, in Leelanau County, still largely rural, every village (incorporated or not) and every informal lake community has, if not always its own grocery store or library, certainly its own history and traditions. Northport and Leland schools resist consolidation – that is, Northport resists being incorporated into Leland schools – because of Comet vs. Wildcat pride. Empire and Northport are worlds apart! I only get south to Empire maybe once a year and always feel, when I do, that I’m very far from home.

Now let me express my increasing crankiness about the term “community” that’s being thrown around so continuously and haphazardly in ways inappropriate to my ear and sensibilities. The word has become ubiquitous, with people (on the news, at least) now speaking of the “world community,” as in, “What has been the response of the ‘world community’ to the crisis in [fill in the blank]?” As if there could possibly ever be a unitary response across all the nations and peoples of the world unless we were invaded from outer space! A local union of musicians or plumbers or autoworkers or screenwriters may put out an official statement, but how long did it take to hammer out something on which all members could agree even in such a limited case?

 

Okay, back to my sheep. My Ethiopian friend was proud of the fact that her country had never been a European colony, but she acknowledged that it had been “colonized from within” by the Amhara group, who dominated politics under the country’s period of monarchy. One could say of France, also, I suppose, that it was “colonized from within” by the powers of the Île de France region, as it was their language that eventually became the official national tongue, edging out Latin (brought by the Romans), Basque, Provencal, Occitan, etc., etc. Free, mandatory, secular education instituted in 1882 prohibited regional languages in French public schools after, as I understand it, the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71) convinced the government that in times of war, soldiers needed to understand each other and their commanders. A young generation growing up across the country with one language was also ripe for the subsequent age of empire – wars and annexations and conquests around the world – but that’s another story. Colonialism within preparing the way for colonies overseas? 

 

Years ago, when we lived in Leland and started our mornings with coffee at the Early Bird, the Artist and I sometimes had conversations with an older man who had been – or his father had been; I forget which – superintendent of county schools here. It was he who made the decision, finally, that all public instruction should be in English. Before that, various small country Leelanau schools conducted classes in the dominant language of that area’s immigrants. Note: As for Catholic schools in Leelanau County, St. Mary’s School in Lake Leelanau had classes in English, but Holy Rosary for a long time had Polish nuns teaching Polish-American farm children in the Polish language. Then there is the history, now well known, of Native American children in boarding schools being forbidden to use their native languages, which was the case for many Ojibwa and Odawa from Leelanau. 

And now, all over at least the Western world, the Odawa, the Irish, the Welsh, etc. are reclaiming the language lost by the generation before them.

 

Curious, I looked up sites discussing the Tower of Babel and found this one interesting, but the idea of verticality led me to think of homo sapiens beginning to walk upright, and then I questioned the writer’s conclusion that humans seek verticality to escape the earth’s surface. Did early bipedal humans want to escape the earth’s surface or simply be more at home on the ground than in the trees?

My friend Laura calls this the coming-home tree.

 

I have no conclusions today, only questions and sadness, because what more can we ask other than to feel at home on the earth, wherever we are? But being driven from home, cut off from the place of memories, or having that place invaded and stolen – sadly, this is a major theme in human history. Une idée maussade, vraiment. Truly a dismal idea – but accurate, isn’t it?

 

If only humans could see difference among our species as enriching rather than threatening -- 

Le monde est un souk énorme!

My plan for my next post is happier and more book-focused. Although the year is not yet at an end, I am too impatient to wait: I want to share with you a few novels I read this year for the first time (not necessarily newly published, in every case, but I’m not including those I re-read) and highly recommend without reservation. Maybe you will want to think about your top fiction picks for the year so far, too. I’d like that. 

 

Happy Halloween (if that's your thing)!

New Bohemian Cafe folks do holidays well. (They do everything well.)

We Turned the Corner, Walking

The north wind blew for a couple of days, and Leelanau residents and visitors closed their windows against the chill night air. When the wind shifted around and came back from the south, it wasn’t any longer a summer breeze but pleasantly balmy again, as September winds and breezes can be (even with rainclouds above), and so the windows were opened again. Now along county roadsides, pinkish lavender of spotted knapweed and cornflower blue of chicory share the stage with the whites of Queen Anne’s lace umbels and white sweet clover racemes, and there are peaches and nectarines in the markets and on roadside stands.

 

Is September an exciting beginning to a new year for you, or does it signal a bittersweet, melancholy season? Opinions are divided, but I’m wondering if it can’t be both. So few things in life are cut and dried, black or white, don’t you find? The very idea of bittersweetness captures the absence of a clear-cut distinction, and I’m all for the William James’s non-static view of life: 

 

It is, the reader will see, the reinstatement of the vague and inarticulate to its proper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the attention. (Principles of Psychology, 254) 

 

We don’t pass from one “state of mind” block to the next, with a sharp dividing line between them. Thoughts and feelings can be hazy, fringed at the horizon, spreading into one another. Certainly that sounds like the bittersweet feeling Susan Cain describes in her book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, about which I wrote a bit last winter.

September 2000 took us to Paris, France.

Whether you find September exciting or melancholy or maybe a bit of both or something else altogether (What else? Pray share!), summer’s end is a good time for poetry. Not that there is a bad time, but September’s apple-scented air seems to call for poetry in a special way, and I’ve been reading High Water Mark: Prose Poems, by David Shumate, rationing the pages so as not to run through the slim volume too fast – and then Fleda Brown’s Flying Through a Hole in the Storm, with its marvelous poem, “Milkweed,” in which these lines appear: 

 

            The stalks remain upright

in spite of their hollowness. Everything is hollow

      in a good way. Everything has finished its job

            and has moved on to the next thing.

 

Brown writes of milkweed’s “bliss of shedding.” Can we learn to do that? To shed blissfully? I need to think about whether or not I want to shed and if so, what....

 

After reaching the end of a very unsatisfying murder mystery on Saturday, I was ready for a dose of good nonfiction and turned to Rebecca Solnit, who never disappoints me. Her book Wanderlust: A History of Walking had a title that called my name. Solnit writes of pilgrimages and labyrinths and has this to say of the latter:

 

In such spaces as the labyrinth, we cross over; we are really traveling, even if the destination is only symbolic, and this is in an entirely different register than is thinking about traveling or looking at a picture of a place we might wish to travel to. For the real is in this context nothing more or less than what we inhabit bodily. A labyrinth is a symbolic journey or a map of the route to salvation, but it is a map we can really walk on, blurring the difference between map and world. If the body is the register of the real, then reading with one’s feet is real [travel] in a way that reading with one’s eyes alone is not. (p. 70)

 

A friend of mine who is a labyrinth facilitator (guide?) would probably appreciate this book, although I suspect she would be impatient with the way the author uses ‘labyrinth’ and ‘maze’ interchangeably, but Solnit did acknowledge on the following page that “many” people distinguish mazes from labyrinths (as does my friend), the former intending to confuse, the latter having only one possible route.

On Sunday morning, the day before Labor Day, I drove down to Cedar. There are many possible routes to take from my house to Cedar and back, and the Artist and I seldom returned north on the same roads we took south. I did not on Sunday morning, either. But, as always, I missed his presence acutely on all the familiar county roads, and so these words of Solnit’s struck a chord with me:

 

…Just as writing allows one to read the words of someone who is absent, so roads make it possible to trace the route of the absent. Roads are a record of those who have gone before, and to follow them is to follow people who are no longer there…. (p. 72)

 

Solnit had in mind “shepherds, hunters, engineers,” etc., but I had in mind my own past and a shared life. We did a lot of “riding around” and “county cruising.” Far from home, too, we sought out back roads, those less traveled, where we might explore at a slower pace than people anxious to get “from Point A to Point B” (as another friend of mine likes to travel). Most of my long walks, on the other hand, not only now that he’s gone but also in the last years of my life with the Artist, were taken with a dog or a friend or friends and dogs (example: in Arizona). He and I didn’t do a lot of walking together, I was thinking, so it’s no wonder my associations are stronger on county roads.

 

But as the book slipped out of my hands and I began to doze (there on the porch, a sweet breeze through the open windows and the dog lying quietly on the floor nearby), memories surged back. Walking home from downtown Kalamazoo, uphill, holding hands, past old historic houses, noticing architectural details. Long-ago nighttime walks through sleepy, dark, summer Leland. On Lake Michigan beaches and along the Lake Superior shore. Wading in the Crystal River (and picking off leeches afterward). A Christmas Day walk through deep snow in Houdek Dunes, having it all to ourselves, our footsteps the first. Strolling in Paris, in Avignon, and oh-so-memorably in Blesle, that sweet medieval village! And, of course, our last long walk through the dear meadow bordering Shell Lake.

In the Yoop

Avignon

Aux Crozes-Hauts -- and still alive!

An unexpected dream come true --

We had many, many memorable walks together over the years, I realize, and seeing them again in my mind, eyes closed, I re-read those happy days, my hand in his, the world sparkling around us.

 

In the meadow, two years ago --

September is a good month for walking, as well as for reading. 

 

And so, now that the season has turned the corner, I’ll be shortening up my open hours to take advantage of “locals’ summer,” adding Tuesday to Monday’s “by chance or appointment” on the schedule line: 

 

 

Dog Ears Books

FALL HOURS

September-October 2023

 

Monday-Tuesday: by chance or appointment

Wednesday – Saturday: 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sunday: Closed

Time for "Locals' Summer"