Never Enough Quiet Summer Morning

Work ongoing

Revealed

Five a.m. The trees are silhouettes against the lightening emptiness behind them. The tree guy worked until 10 last night, felling and grinding popples, and now at last, as we’ve imagined for so long, the big, old silver maple southeast of the farmhouse stands almost alone (work not done yet), apart, in all its healthy, aging majesty. The dog and I go out in the gloaming (shouldn't morning as well as evening be describable with that word, as 'crepuscular' can describe either?) to experienced our changed reality. I look and look and feel the breeze on my arms and face, and she sniffs and sniffs.

Back on the porch to finish a book left open the night before, and after its satisfying last page the coffee is ready. But already it is 5:40! Soon to be six o’clock! This time goes too fast.

These are the hours I like most, when everyone is asleep and the place is mine and I can move from my own dream life to the life of writing.  

-       Mary Gordon, Seeing Through Places: Reflections on Geography and Identity

While hers is the epitome of city dwelling, and my own life is deeply rural, many of her passages speak to me of my own way of being-in-the-world, and none more than her sense of mornings, alone: “It is my time – and there is never enough of it....”

For me, this time is not exclusively for writing (although

Morning songster

sometimes for stretches of time it is so), however; the few brief weeks of heaven we call summer in northern Michigan make of morning very much a time for me to be immersed in outdoor air, in the song sparrow’s sleepy, happy greeting of the day, the raucous scolding of distant crows, the restless, busy fluttering of leaves, dew on the grass, my dog’s contentment matching my own as the two of us, eager sponges, breathe deeply and soak up and absorb our surroundings until we are saturated and then go on taking in more, overflowing with well being.

Mary Gordon’s “here,” the place for which she feels so much gratitude over being able to call it home, is a New York apartment. Mine is a scant, irregular, near-five-acre piece of ground in northern Michigan. But like Gordon, coming at last to her urban, academic life, I feel here that this is “the here that was always the here for me.”

I am not a second- or third- or fourth-generation native on this land, do not possess a family name in common with my neighbors, and have no ancestors’ graves to visit up at nearby St. Wenceslaus. Whatever feelings attach the established old families to their land I will never know firsthand. But their attachment is only possible because someone, once, came from somewhere else, stopped here, and decided to make this home. I am not forgetting Native Americans when I say this, either, many of whom came up along the shore of the Lake from southern Michigan or down from Canada to Leelanau. I feel personally, intimately, rooted here. Isn’t this what a feeling for home is? And is my feeling less than anyone else’s? For me it is an absolute, as all experience is absolute (“personal experience” a redundancy), not measurable against that of another person. My strawberries are no less sweet, my meadow no less lovely, my shade in summer no less refreshing, my snow in winter no less deep or cold, my back no less tired after mowing or shoveling.

Strawberries from my garden 

The greatest portion of my summer day, however, is spent indoors, in town, at my bookstore. I see many people during the day – bookstore customers usually delightful, often fascinating – and in front of my building there is constant street traffic and lots of noise and dust. In the close quarters of a small village, moreover, interests at times conflict, and conflict resolution is not always quick or easy. “What do you think of _____________?” I am often asked, the subject filling the blank changing from one week or month or year to the next.

The truth is that I only think about _____________ when my attention is forcibly directed to it, and even then I often do so reluctantly and have little or nothing to say about it. In general, when I’m at work I’m thinking much more about selling books –  also about reading and writing about books, as well as about finding time for reading and writing and visiting with friends, about what to fix for dinner and how to make time for outdoor projects and about paying bills. I think about bricks to lay and jam to make at home and laundry that’s never done for long, and I long for chickens, obsess over keeping autumn olive at bay, keep meaning to order a peening jig and hammer, and daydream of mowing my meadow with a scythe – all  home matters to which my workday mind is drawn again and again, even while I’m in my bookstore. Home and bookstore – both rewarding, both demanding.

What do I think of _____________? Living out in the country, as I do, means doing without the conveniences of town, so why should I take on the psychological burdens of village life, too? “Because you have a business,” I’m told. But how does being drawn into discussion of controversies do my business any good? Argument and gossip pay no bills and buy no groceries. I’m not on salary, and neither do I get paid by the hour, so I must save my breath to cool my porridge.

Am I an “outsider,” in the village and/or in the country? The question only arises for me in town, never in my old house, never outdoors, never on my home ground.

Thunder in the distance as the wind picks up.... At six-thirty a driving rain arrives. I love the sound of it on the metal porch roof, even though I have to close the window on the south end of the porch so it won’t blow in. The storm increases my sense of being sheltered and protected by the old house....

Gradually the pounding slows to pattering. The rain has given me the gift of time this morning, as I won’t need to water gardens now for at least 24 hours. And if more rain comes and our evening with friends tonight must be on the porch instead of outdoors, so be it. Being together will be good either way.

The morning is (was, as I wrote this earlier) still quiet, still mine. And that’s good, too. Pen and paper – that is, Staedtler pigment liner, bought for drawing, and cheap, spiralbound, “college ruled” notebook. Do students take notes any more? How, if the younger generation can’t write cursive? “Write cursive” – that looks and sounds awkward. Well, but – pen and paper, coffee, rain on roof, dog at my feet, David sleeping in another corner of the house. I am here, and I am at home.

And that, dear new friend out on the Atlantic, is how I feel about that.

The Dead of Up North Winter: Survival and Escape

January driving conditions

[There is a book review in the second section of this post. Anyone eager to cut to the chase can scroll quickly through my description of the farmhouse in winter and get to the book review further on.]

Waking in the dark is an escape from snow-shoveling dreams.

"It's getting dangerous for us to live here in winter," he tells me, and reluctantly, against my will, I begin to agree. I don't want to understand him, but I do. Falling doesn't count, though. One can fall as easily in town or city as in the country. A daughter-in-law's fall on black ice in her dentist's parking lot resulted in a compound fracture, but here in the country, our paths are like animal trails, and we keep to them when we venture forth from our burrow, so if we fall, it's onto snowbanks, not pavement.

The landscape is a blur....

We haven't lived here all our lives, but just the same, the way I see it, we are the old kind of country people. For one thing, our old farmhouse hides behind a hill instead of ruling from on high. Giving up an expansive view, our house has gained in privacy, but the wind finds us all the same, sweeping down the back of the hill, drifting our paths closed, sifting fine snow between door and sill to fan across the porch floor, and when our truck gets stuck or won't start, or when the drive drifts closed again after the plow has opened a lane for us through walls of snow, like old country people we stay home. Most of our living takes place in one central room -- eating meals, reading books, drinking tea, writing letters, darning socks, and listening to the radio. "This is how old Joe and his wife spent the winter," he tells me. Except that they had cows to milk and hogs to slop and chickens to feed. We don't. But there's plenty of physical exertion to be had, with all the snow. No need to lament being unable to get to a gym when one lives in the old country way.

Bills this winter are going to be crushing. That's where winter really hits hardest: fuel bills and plow bills. So we close doors and shrink our footprint, and piles of projects tower and spread, filling the smaller living space until we are like mice in a nest, snug in excelsior. In the morning dark, to rescue me from endless dreams of snow (day's repetition extended through the night), the dog comes to the side of the bed, wanting up, and I pat the covers to issue the invitation she awaits. New country people have queen- or king-sized beds in spacious bedrooms with enormous windows looking out and down onto water or vineyards. Our small, cold, crowded farmhouse bedroom holds an old-fashioned double bed, and three is a crowd in that bed, but it's comforting, too.

The wind will always batter this corner of the world, as far into any future I can imagine, but we're here now. Wind and snow and cold and isolation haven't done us in yet. We're here now. That's my mantra: We're here now.

Wind sweeps down the hills....

Darning socks by lamplight is a calming domestic task. Mug of hot tea close at hand and dog at my feet, I feel connected to previous generations of women who survived harsh Michigan winters, survival an important concept during stormy days and nights. But sometimes the concept with more appeal is escape! So where is that ARC that arrived in the mail in December? Ah, here!

The Collector of Dying Breaths, by M. J. Rose
NY: Simon & Schuster, 2014
On sale April 8, 2014

This is total escape! Complete, riveting fantasy! Once again, mythologist Jac L' Étoile, daughter of an American mother and French father and heiress to a famed house of Parisian perfumes, is plunged into a whirlwind of mysterious history (16th-century Italy and France this time around) and present danger. Once again she yearns to connect with the man she has always loved but is held back by fear for his happiness and safety. The visions she experiences -- are they memories of past lives or evidence of a brain malfunction? Either way, concern for Griffin North gives her pause, since in all her visions of a past concerning a man who seems like Griffin and a woman she seemed to be, she was responsible for his death!

Now. Here's where I confess that I am not usually a reader of fantasy, apart from Wind in the Willows and Palmer Brown's The Silver Nutmeg, and that romance-suspense is not a genre I generally find appealing, either. And there's more. Belief in reincarnation, religious or otherwise, has no hold on me, and I can become downright irritable when subjected to talk of "past lives." So how does M. J. Rose do it? How does she pull me in time after time? This is the sixth novel in a series, and I've read three of them, which is an extraordinary record, given the subject matter and my reading preferences. How to explain it?

One aspect of these stories often mentioned by reviewers is their wealth of sense detail. Rose's descriptions involve not only the sense of sight but also, tellingly, the senses of smell and touch, much less frequently utilized by fiction writers. Aromas and textures draw readers into Jac's world, and we are so grateful for the sumptuous sensory banquet that we accept all kinds of literary excess. In The Collector of Dying Breaths, for example, the character of Melinoe Cypros, in her old castle outside Barbizon, France, is completely over the top, a kind of cartoonish Cruella DeVilla on the page, with her long tunics and pounds of jewelry and white wings of hair. Everything about her spells DANGER in huge, flashing lights, and it is incomprehensible that Jac will go forward with Melinoe's crazy project! And yet she does -- and we follow with bated breath!

Another, very clever way Rose keeps us hooked in is with Jac's own reluctance to buy into reincarnation. Throughout the series the protagonist moves between flat-out, hard-headed, rational skepticism (rationality always emphasized) and weakening resistance to the temptation of belief. Jac's doubts allow a doubting reader to accompany her on journeys that we skeptics would otherwise have no interest in taking.

So that's life Up North these days, during a brutal Michigan winter. It's a kaleidoscope of adventure and retreat, comfort and hardship, survival and escape. Thank you for joining me in my world today.

Our parking area when the sun came out four days ago....

Counting Our Holiday Blessings

Many people had horrible weather and inconvenience stretched to the point of danger. Downstate there were ice storms instead of fluffy snow, with power outages closely following the ice. Temperatures are as cold as they’ve been lately, and right in the middle of Christmas? Losing power couldn’t have come at a worse time. We were so lucky! It has happened to us before, and it will again, but we were happy to miss the excitement this time around and to have a quiet, cozy Christmas at home, snug and warm.

The snow is deep. It’s been snowing for days, and it’s been cold for such a long time it’s hard to remember anything other than cold, but no one can deny that the recent Up North snowfall has been beautiful – sparkling and glittering in the sunny air on Christmas Eve day like chips of mica, sifting down like finely granulated sugar on Christmas Day morning.

Sarah was a little puzzled when we went out on Christmas Day. She couldn’t figure out how all the bunny tracks from the day before had vanished so thoroughly. For me, the outside interest was more visual than olfactory.

"Where did the bunnies go?"

Presents opened, holiday meal eaten, phone calls made to and received from relatives, and now it’s the Day After. Our plow guy came again and, once again, did his work splendidly. We came to Northport and found the sidewalks cleared of drifts, too. We have been blessed by beauty, by warmth, by family, and by neighbors just doing their jobs. I know that people doing their jobs in places where the power is out will have it on again as soon as humanly possible.

Now, if anyone wants to help me eat pretzel stars dipped in white chocolate and peppermint chips – or caramel corn – or windmill cookies – stop by the bookstore. The coffee’s on, and Sarah and I are here, keeping snug and warm. We have also (well, I have: Sarah didn't have much to do with it) restocked that Bright Wings book, the poetry anthology edited by Billy Collins with Sibley illustrations, and I have another new one bird-lovers will find fascinating, Their Fate Is Our Fate: How Birds Foretell Threats to Our Health and Our World, by Peter Doherty.

Here is what Sarah and I saw when we went out for a walk about an hour ago. No birds in sight. No bunnies, either.

Northport Creek today