Where Shall I Go Now?

This is not how it looked. This was an unintended fancy setting.

The past is no longer there.

 

When I learned that my friend Hélène had died – and although she was my mother’s age, it came as a shock -- I knew that Paris would never be the same for me. It was in her apartment on the rue de Vaugirard that I rented a room for the month of May 1987, and one of my fondest memories from the long-deferred dream journey David and I made together in September 2020 was an evening in an Auvergnat restaurant in Hélène’s neighborhood, David’s young English friend, Justin, completing our international quartet. “We’re making beautiful memories,” Helene said to me, leaning her head on my shoulder for a moment. 

From album of that trip in 2000

Was that really 24 years ago? We always thought we would go back. 

After the expected yet deep pain of losing our old Sarah to old age, followed by the more tragic loss of poor little Peasy, the Artist and I had a few weeks (all too brief) in which we thought about making a much longer, more roundabout trip back to Michigan in May, going north into South Dakota (a state David had never seen but where I was born) and then to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, home of children and grandchildren we hadn’t visited on their own home grounds for too long. But that trip was not to be….

 

One of my sisters spends a couple weeks in early spring down in San Miguel de Allende and says I’d love it there. People I’ve known for years here in Leelanau have bought a house in the south of France and tell me the guest room is waiting for me. “But I have a dog,” I tell them. I’ve crossed the U.S. between southeast Arizona and northern Michigan three times with Sunny Juliet, so domestic travel presents no problems (even Canada would be doable, except for big cities), but how could I leave my little partner to go out of the country?

***

 

The foregoing I set aside without posting and eventually put up something else instead. Travel? Not in my cards at present.

 

Then along came Sunday morning, as it does reliably every week, and the sky was a cloudless blue, sun bright, barely a breeze stirring -- features of the morning that may or may not come together on any given Sunday, so hallelujah! -- and I realized that I had not been any farther from home than Grand Traverse County for almost a year. Several errand trips to Traverse City and one drive to Interlochen were the extent of my “travel” since return from Arizona in May 2023. Also, this year April 15 marked 32 years since the Artist and I exchanged vows for the second time (Kalamazoo, MI, the first time; Paris, Illinois, second). 

Paris, Illinois, April 14, 1992

My gypsy feet itched for the road, and I thought about Benzie County. Specifically, there was allure in the idea of following M-22 south of Empire. But there was a loose button on my shirt….

 

 

Surprise trip back

 

So I got out my sewing basket, and found when I opened it a little red notebook, a diary from April and May of 2015, that began with our last days in Dos Cabezas – that is, the last days of our first time there, a mid-January to mid-April stay. We were eleven days on the road home that year, stopping often and doing a lot of sight-seeing, and every day’s sights and every evening’s stop were recorded in this book. I began reading and couldn’t stop, mesmerized by the memories brought back by my own handwritten lines. 

The little red travel diary

When I reached the last page and closed the book, I looked out my window at robins on still-bare branches and felt as if I had just crossed the continent again and had aged nine years in half an hour. That is the power of written words.

April 2015

 

The road to Benzie

 

Most of the day remained after my half-hour in the past, however, so dog and I, with camera, binoculars, water bottle, and water dish, piled into the car and headed south. Without going into all the details and every road we traveled, here are a few highlights from our Sunday on the road:

 

These were the true colors of Benzie County's Platte River.

 

Old work by beaver artist

Best views of Long Lake were from the road,

where there was no room to pull over,

so a tiny boat launching area was the best I could do.

In Frankfort, Sunny Juliet and I lunched at the A&W drive-in. 

A real drive-in! Shades of my childhood!

From there we drove around Crystal Lake to rejoin M-22, and then it was back home again and dog play for Sunny and Griffin, followed by bedtime with book and dog for me, finishing up my reading of William Kent Krueger's Windigo Island. Sunny and I slept well. We had had a big day.

We Talk to the Artists – Then Go to the Dogs

Kaye, Ken, Kaye's painting, their book

Not knowing until the day of the event whether Ken Scott and Kay Krapohl planned to give a formal presentation or sign books, I advertised their appearance as “Conversation with the Artists,” and that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Ken’s message on Thursday was that they would do a Q&A if anyone who came to buy a book had questions, so I set up a few chairs in the front of the bookstore, with a signing table for the photographer and the painter. People came. They had questions. They had really good questions. The answers were fascinating. I didn’t write down everything that was said but did take a few notes.

What gave rise to the idea of two people trekking the Leelanau shoreline together. Ken cited the safety factor first and stressed that safety was particularly an issue in winter cold and on winter ice. Two people also meant two cars, one that could be left at the take-out point while the other (to be retrieved later) could be driven with both trekkers to their put-in location. Ken was also interested in what it would be like to work alongside another artist, especially one working in a different medium.

As a photographer and a painter, it was a given that the two of them would work differently. Ken Scott composes his frames onsite and does not manipulate images later, so his premise is “You get what you get,” in the moment. Very different, of necessity, was Kaye Krapohl’s way of working. She could not afford to stand in one place long enough to complete a painting and keep up with her trekking partner, too, so she made many studies (“scribbles,” she calls them) and photographs and notes for later use in her studio. There were also days when her usual “big picture” vision did not fit the weather, and then she learned to focus on small details she would not otherwise looked down to see.

I have a bit in my notes about an event Kaye and Ken did, sponsored by Inland Seas. It involved an exhibit, mostly of Ken’s photographs, and people with science backgrounds were invited to this free forum that gave the artists an opportunity to point to aspects of what they saw and ask the science people, “What’s going on here?” Sometimes it was sand structures, other times zebra mussels or something very different. Kaye was intrigued to find that environmentalists are not always opposed to docks, in that docks can provide habitat.

Live wire painter and Zen photographer

There were many more questions and answers and discussion, and altogether the conversation was fascinating. Somehow I prevailed upon both artists to stay long enough to sign most of the rest of my books, too, although Ken Scott was in a hurry to get outdoors with his camera, not wanting to miss “the light” as skies cleared after the rain and rainbows appeared. I’m sure he will have gotten some fantastic shots. [Have seen one of them since! Beyond belief gorgeous!] Mine from the front door of the bookstore leave a lot to be desired, but you may get a little feel for the evening.

I’d had our reading circle over for a picnic on Wednesday, but although a camera was mentioned early on, somehow we all forgot about it later, so – no pictures! We had not all read a book to discuss together, but each of us reported on what we have been reading, and there were several recommendations for a group read. I’m not sure which books fall into which category (reports/recommendations/group recommendations), but some titles mentioned were: Independent People, the Icelandic classic by Laxness; something by Hemingway; Huckleberry Finn; Madame Bovary; McTeague; John Le Carre’s A Perfect Spy; The Way Things Are, by Lucretius (translation by Humphries); The Way of All Flesh; and All the Light We Cannot See, which two people reported they had tried to read and couldn’t get into, though everyone else who has told me (in the bookstore) that they read it loved the book. One group member has decided she will read one short story a day for 365 days. A noble goal! I want to introduce her to the stories of Valerie Trueblood.

So, Wednesday was the picnic; Thursday, conversation with artists; Friday, farm market; and then Saturday – dog parade and presentation by veterinarian Mike Petty, author of Dr. Petty’s Pain Relief for Dogs! You have to understand that “going to the dogs,” in Northport, is a good thing. Maybe you already know this, having read in the Leelanau Enterprise that the Northport Dog Parade began 20 years ago. (Yes, once again, time flies.) David Chrobak, then-owner of the Old Millpond Inn, was the instigator and force behind the parade, which quickly won the hearts of locals and visitors alike.

Ready and waiting -- early!

Hi, Chris!

The gap -- as we wait for the second half of the parade to catch up

Rudy #1

Rudy @2

Rudy #3

There he is! Dr. Mike Petty!

Like Thanksgiving dinner, the dog parade is long anticipated, planned for all year, and over in a trice. 

One major dog parade sponsor this year was Dr. Michael Petty, my guest author for Saturday afternoon following the parade. Mike’s book is Dr. Petty’s Pain Relief for Dogs, which I read and reviewed and highly recommend. As David Chrobak noted in last Thursday’s Enterprise, our pets grow old just as we do and, sadly, actually overtake us in their aging. As long as their quality of life can be maintained, however, Dr. Petty’s dog parade banner, on the trailer carrying his old dog (and other dogs with age and mobility issues), was “You’re never too old!” 

Dr. Petty's dog was pretty tired when they showed up at the bookstore for the signing, but one thing is sure: no one is too young or too old to enjoy the Northport dog parade! A limited number signed copies of Dr. Petty’s Pain Relief for Dogs available now at Dog Ears Books -- a reference book for your dog’s aging future and for all the dogs of your life! 

Sunday morning calm after storms