Moonrise, moonset, swiftly go the years.

Moonrise on Monday evening

 

I see the moon, and the moon sees me.

 

You’ve been plenty of sunrises and sunsets on both this blog and the one dedicated to photographs, and I’m sorry to say that once again I failed to get outdoors to photograph the Northern Lights on Monday night, which apparently were spectacular. I did, however, go out one earlier time in hopes of seeing them (vain hopes) and was rewarded by a beautiful waxing moon, orange-red in the smoke from distant fires as it moved toward setting in the western sky. 

Red moon going down in the west one dark morning last week

 

Sunny and I see each other, and my friends and I find time to see each other, too.

 

My sybaritic enjoyment of locals’ summer (September) continued with another Sunday and Monday off work. I did work almost two hours Sunday morning digging up autumn olive – real work! – but then took the rest of the day off to lounge around with a book and later to meet a friend in Suttons Bay for a movie and a bite to eat. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months, so it was good to catch up.

 

Monday morning Sunny and I had another agility session (so sorry I can’t photograph while we’re working), and as I told my sister, I am learning a lot. Is Sunny learning a lot, too? Truthfully, I think my learning curve is much steeper than hers, as all she has to do is follow my commands and gestures, while I’m the one who has to get everything right, which gets more complicated every week. It’s more than having my dog comfortable on the equipment — jumping hurdles, going through tunnels, etc. She has no problem with any of that. But I have to guide her from one station to the next, and the course changes from one time to the next (as it does in competition), so it matters a lot which side of a piece of equipment I’m on, how and when I get there, how and when I signal to her which one comes next, and how well I do getting into position myself so I’m not in her way or misleading her unintentionally, and every week Coach Mike adds a new twist to what I do, so this sport is exercising my mind as much as Sunny’s, if not more. 

"Mom, are you as smart as I am?"

When I made an appointment to have the garage in Leland replace a burned-out headlight, I texted a friend to see if she might be free for lunch or a walk. She voted for lunch, and we spent two leisurely hours at the Cove, leisurely time made possible by the fact that everyone else wanted to sit outside by the dam, while we chose to be indoors where we didn’t have to shout over the roar of falling water to make ourselves heard. 

 

Glad to see the pay phone still in Leland, carrying its freight of memories -- 

 

Before sleep and between first and second sleep, I read. 

I read and fall asleep, then wake again sometime in what my mother called “the wee hours,” turn the light back on, and read for a while more before “second sleep,” waking for good between 5 and 6 o’clock. My current bedtime reading is a novel set (at least Book I is set) in pre-Revolutionary America, the main character a boy ready, in his own eyes, to become a man but not keen on being sent away from home to a big city in the East to study Latin and “cyphering” with a man of the cloth. After yearning for home and parents, however, he finds on his first holiday that the folks of the pine woods are painfully dull and unsophisticated compared to the “quality” he has met in the city. I stopped at the end of Book I on Tuesday morning, leaving young Johnny to his ambivalence. 

 

So far, my strong impression from this novel is of a country – our own – born divided. As Johnny travels from inland pine forest to coastal city for his education, we see various faces of 1770s America: pious Methodists suspicious of “papists”; gamesters, drinkers, and teetotalers; hoi polloi and those who take themselves to be gentry; rich and poor whites; black slaves imported from Africa; Cherokee families pushed beyond the mountains by white trappers; loyalists to the crown, trigger-happy rebels, and thoughtful folks on both sides. The Revolution had not come by the end of Book I (Johnny’s father was convinced there would be no war), and yet many divisions among Americans already existed on the bases of family background, country of origin, religion, skin color, education level, and political allegiance. E pluribus unum seems an impossible dream. Some of us still hold onto that dream.

 

The quiet morning before dawn --

 

Summer stretches out for visitors, too.

 

Northport, Michigan

People are still discovering Northport for the very first time as we drift on a summery breeze into the second half of September. “What’s it like here in the winter?” is the perennial question, to which my tried-and-true answer is, “That depends on the year.” Whatever we get for winter this time around, though, apple season is here now. 

The new look of Leelanau apple orchards --

Apples and goldenrod, anemones and the eagerly seed-making marigolds and staghorn sumac, every growing thing making the most of these days that grow shorter week by week. We need rain, but it’s hard to argue with summer – even in September, when it comes. 

 

Gift or Grind: It’s All in the Receiving

Although I do it every day, grinding coffee beans is not a "grind" at all!

 

When I was (belatedly) in graduate school at the University of Illinois, there was a wonderful coffee shop west of the main campus called the Daily Grind. “See you at the Grind,” we might say to a friend. “Oh, I was at the Grind.” Etc. Socializing did take place there, but usually only in the late afternoon. Earlier in the day, regardless of the number of people sitting at any given table, most heads were bent over books and notebooks, everyone reading and underlining and scribbling away. All of us regularly spent hours studying at home (some people until after midnight; my own preference was to get up at 4 or 5 a.m.), and there was no end to studying, but when we needed the comforting presence of others, the Grind was more help than distraction, so much so that when I think of my graduate school days, much of my nostalgia centers on the Daily Grind. You wouldn’t think that from the name alone, would you? 

 

This morning, the beginning of the day of the winter solstice, I was beset by all kinds of feelings, but I woke from dreams with a single thought: “We’re alive. We won’t always be alive.” It was not a new thought, not shocking or frightening. It didn’t even have a lot of feeling attached to it. Just truth. We’re alive. We won’t always be alive. The feelings came later, quite a jumble of them, when I looked at Facebook and saw a friend’s memory of her late son, then another friend’s memory of her late mother. May their memories be blessings to those left behind, I thought, and a third friend came to mind, one who is (as we all are, but she is close to the end and aware of it) in the process of dying, even as Christmas comes near. Our beautiful friend, so full of life and laughter!

Full moon, morning before solstice

solstice moon

On laundromat morning, I don’t get up any earlier than usual, but I certainly get dressed and ready to go to town earlier. As the pack made its way from ghost town to “civilization,” the full moon of the previous morning was fading on its right-hand curve, and, as always, I thought of Ahmed (another departed friend), who taught me to distinguish waxing moon from waning moon with the words ‘premier’ and ‘dernier.’ It is the curves of the miniscule ‘p’ and ‘d’ that hold the clue. So this morning’s no-longer full moon is beginning to wane, although the solstice means that our days now begin to lengthen again toward spring.

 

But before we were on the road, there was already Peasy.

the corner I share with Peasy

Peasy has half a dozen stuffed animals, which I try to keep corralled in my little book corner so we won’t be tripping over them everywhere in the small cabin, so when I told him this morning, “Go get your lion,” he first ran to the corner where most of his toys were gathered. But the lion wasn’t there, and he ran back to find it in the Artist’s corner. Has he learned the word ‘lion’ -- or is it simply that the lion, as the only toy still retaining (so far) its squeaker, is more fun than the other toys, his most valuable possession? Squeak, squeak, squeak! Joyously, proudly, he ran back and forth with his lion!

Peasy with lion, taking a break from running and squeaking

No morning is ever a “grind” to Peasy! He doesn’t care that one morning is pretty much like another. To him, each one is a gift. Another day! He’s alive! He’s with us! Life is fantastic! His enthusiasm is boundless and infectious, and we can’t help laughing and feeling grateful ourselves – for each other, for this crazy dog, for another day of life.

another glorious desert sunrise

Originally I had it in mind to write about grinding and milling – various methods from stones to mechanics – but really, do you want to read about that? Somehow I doubt it. You are basking in memories of Hanukkah or celebrating the winter solstice and/or looking forward to Christmas and a new year. And just maybe you have sadness, too, because someone you love is no longer with you or soon will not be. Turn, turn, turn – the seasons and the years. "Everything is temporary!" (my favorite line from the movie "Moonstruck"), I remind myself.

death in the desert (as everywhere)

Is life pointless because it is limited and ends, always, in death? Some people think so. Yet when it comes to gold and silver and diamonds and such, their value lies in their relative scarcity. For each of us, with one precious life to live, what could be more valuable?

All around us, even here in the desert, we are surrounded by life. I should say, by life and death, all mixed up. The earth teems with life and death, as do our days. Would you be a pioneer on another planet, given the opportunity? Not I. The way I see it, our species grew up on this planet and has adapted to it -- and tried to adapt it to ourselves, sometimes with disastrous results, but that is not part of my thought for today. Today I’m thinking only of what a gift our brief tenure is in this wonderful adventure. Not a single human being or even the minds of all human beings who ever lived, all those minds together, could ever have dreamed up such a vast, complex, incredibly fascinating set of wonders! 

So whether you give gifts or not or send holiday cards or not or bake cookies or light candles or have a decorated tree or do none of those things, I wish you joy in and of your life. Our future together -- as friends, as a species -- is, as our individual futures are, always uncertain, but if you are reading these words you are alive right now, and while we cannot hope to be joyful every moment we’re alive, intermittent joy is a recurring gift, n’est-ce pas? And gracious receiving can be as important as generous giving, I do believe. So if you possibly can, take a leaf from Peasy's book.

And Merry Christmas!!!

 

happy dog!!!

Books read since last listed (and who knows if I’ll squeeze in any more before year’s end?):

 

169. Sisman, Robyn. Weekend in Paris (fiction)

170. Wizenburg, Molly. A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table (nonfiction) 

171. Duncklee, John. Coyotes I Have Known (nonfiction)

172. Palka, Kurt. The Hour of the Fox (fiction)

173. Hudson, Virginia Cary. Flapdoodle, Trust & Obey (???)

Spring Turned Upside-Down

We had a full moon over the high desert and mountains last night, and it was lovely. Days are longer now than nights here in the northern hemisphere. As I think about that, and about how it is autumn, not spring, in the southern hemisphere (which always seems so strange to me), and as I hope every morning to have word from dear friends “down under,” I can’t help reflecting that the world has been turned upside-down for all of us this spring, life in both of earth’s hemispheres topsy-turvy and unfamiliar in ways we’ve never known before.

I read that domestic abuse rates in general are up, with all this mandated staying at home and sheltering in place. Young families must be feeling a lot of stress: that time of life is stressful enough in ordinary times, and many marriages founder on rocky shoals. Bless them all, keep them safe, and give them strength! 

For this particular old couple, the Artist and me, sheltering in place in a small rental cabin in an Arizona ghost town far from our beloved old northern Michigan farmhouse, somewhat surprisingly our tolerance levels for annoyance with each other have risen rather than plummeting. Little things we might have found maddening in each other a month ago we shrug off now with a smile. Door slammed? --Who cares? Crumbs on the counter? --What does it matter? Sometimes one of us reaches for the other’s hand — not for any special big reason — and then tears come to my eyes, because, whatever happens, we are together now.

The desert is greening up. The first few flowering plants are blossoming, while others — ocotillo higher in the mountains, a cactus in front of a neighbor’s house, penstemon in the wash — are, thrillingly, right on the verge. Early yesterday morning I saw a lithe red fox running across another neighbor’s fenced yard. Every day brings gifts. But every day also I wonder about the days and weeks to come. 

Once in the kitchen, with a blanket wrapped about her waist, Mma Ramotswe switched on Radio Botswana in time for the opening chorus of the national anthem and the recording of cattle bells with which the radio started the day. This was a constant in her life, something that she remembered from her childhood, listening to the radio from her sleeping mat while the woman who looked after her started the fire that would cook breakfast for Precious and her father, Obed Ramotswe. It was one of the cherished things of her childhood, that memory, as as the mental picture that she had of Mochudi as it then was, of the view from the National School up on the hill, of the paths that would through the bush this way and that but which had a destination known only to the small, scurrying animals that used them. These were things that would stay with her forever, she thought, and which would always be there, no matter how bustling and thriving Gaborone might become. This was the soul of her country, somewhere there, in that land of red earth of green acacia, of cattle bells, was the soul of her country. 

- Alexander McCall Smith, The Good Husband of Zebra Drive

Where will we be, the Artist and I, on May 7th, when the moon comes round and full again? For now we are here, in what has become a second home to me, and it is a good place. But I had been, I admit, mourning the absence of any of Smith’s Botswana novels on my shelves. I needed Mma Ramotswe. Then I found The Good Husband of Zebra Drive in my book corner! What a comfort! Dear Mma Ramotswe and her loving reflections always calm my own soul. That fictional character is a gift in my life today.

The Expected, the Unexpected, and the Big Surprise

Snow in foreground, mountaintop hidden by cloud

Yes, today is the first of March, and we did have a full moon last night, and — still moving backward in time — yesterday was a day of snow here in southeastern Arizona, the day before a quiet one of R&R (reading and relaxing) in the ghost town, but I want to begin all the way back with Monday, because that is when we at last came to the banks of a flowing river.

The first day’s stop along the road Monday, however, was for this hawk. We look for him every day, and this time he sat still for the camera, so that I at last could identify him as a red-tailed hawk, as common in Arizona (if not more so) than it is in Michigan. On average, one red-tailed hawk can be found every four miles of highway in this part of the country. Not a rare sighting, in other words. But I don’t mind identifying common birds, especially one with as many different and perplexing color morphs as occur in this species, and I’m calling this a Fuertes’s morph until someone tells me I’ve got it wrong: light buff breast with barely visible horizontal bar markings. Lovely! On our way back later in the day, he was at a meaty afternoon meal, standing on the meal, in fact, and tearing strips of muscle upward with his short, curved beak.

This is the little bar inside. Patio seating outdoors by fountain.

We had morning coffee in town (cabin coffee comes earlier in the morning) at a charming Mexican restaurant, La Unica, where we went for my birthday lunch three years ago. La Unica features the best tortilla chips I’ve had in my entire life, made in-house and available for sale by the bag in the little store area up front, and on this last Monday of February, a big bean and cheese burro fueled me for another day of adventure.

We’d been to Benson several times already this winter, where seeing what should be the Rio San Pedro as a wide, dusty, dry wash hurt my Michigan heart each time. Monday’s adventure, however, took us to a very different stretch of the river, where to our great joy we found flowing water at last. As you can see, the river between Tombstone and Sierra Vista, when in full flow, would boast two or three different streams. While most of the exposed bed was dry on Monday, one held streaming water, sparkling in the sun. Water! Life itself!

Dry side...

Water!

Sparkling!

A section of deep-cut bank shows the power the river can have and has had many times in the past, probably after summer thunderstorms, although for now its flow is gentle and quiet, with little erosionary force. There was still the mystery of the dry bed at Benson — geographically north but, I’m pretty sure, downstream, since the San Pedro is a tributary of the Gila. Is all the water being drawn off for homes and farms? A couple days later another thought came to me, as I remembered the little no-name creek by our Michigan farmhouse and how in one extremely dry summer the flowing water ducked underground for a long stretch, reappearing farther along its course. Perhaps that’s what the San Pedro is doing. I do hope so.

The Artist called me "Trail Boss" that day.

That was Monday. 

Two days later, on Wednesday, we awoke to the scene at the top of this post. Actually, we woke earlier, at first dim morning light, to heavy fog, and after a while the snow began, falling steadily and more and more steadily for a couple of hours. Our little world was completely transformed, and it was as if we had been transported to another world. 

Expecting the snow to vanish by noon, we set out for our daily Willcox errands, marveling at how different our familiar mountains looked with snow. Willcox greeted us with hail and rain, but that let up after a while, and we resolved on another drive over to Benson, this time to explore further down the river corridor. On the expressway, we encountered driving snow. Not only the Chiricahuas and Pinalenos were snow-capped on Wednesday, but the Dos Cabezas and Dragoons, also, and the snow extended far down their slopes. As it turned out, the day was so cold that those slopes remained snowy late into the afternoon, and there was still a bit of snow on the ground behind the cabin, too, when we got home again.

There were many more opportunities to employ a camera throughout the day, including our visit to a Benedictine monastery outside the town of St. David, monastery grounds guarded by a large flock of strutting peacocks — but unfortunately both camera batteries, mine and the Artist’s, ran out of power. Bad luck! We will have to go back another day. 

And then February, our first month in the ghost town, came to an end, with a full moon and clear, glowing sky promising sun the following day.

A Little Near-Home Vacation

Summer -- time for work, as well as for play

This is an away-from-the-bookstore post, because Bruce took the helm on Thursday, giving me a day off. Now every woman knows (sigh!) that “day off” means time to catch up on housework, right? And in summer, if it isn’t raining on the day off, that day is also a time to mow grass. Add in laundry, processing a big book order (because having a business doesn’t mean only working when on-site), secretarial duties for artist husband, and the usual daily errands, and somehow the day speeds by. That's not a complaint. It was a beautiful day, and I enjoyed every minute of it. But as late afternoon approached, I was not in the mood to think about dinner yet again.

Grey skies and threat of rain cleared off, making a lovely evening for a drive, and my suggestion for dinner out was met with approval. Since my usual day takes me north, south is the natural direction I turn for a mini-vacation. Aren't these fields a beautiful sight?

Still farther south, we stopped to visit horses, because, as Alice Walker so famously put it in her poem, “Horses Make the Landscape Look More Beautiful.” Even a fence cannot obscure their grace.

These two-year-olds (I’m pretty sure these are last spring’s yearlings I recognize) were livelier than we’ve ever seen them, charging around their pasture like wild mustangs, only to pull up short at the fence, wheel around, and run another circuit around a nearby shed. While they were running, I couldn’t even think about my camera: it was enough simply to watch them move, poetry in motion. (If horses had any idea how beautiful they are, they would be insufferable.) Here is one of my favorites, a dusty grey with a flirty little tail, maybe older than the others.

It was delicious to watch them trot and canter and wheel in great arcing circles, like a school of fish or a flock of birds in the sky but so much more thrilling than fish or birds to a bookseller with a thwarted cowgirl's heart. 

After supper down in the southern inland part of the county, we came back north along the shore of south Lake Leelanau, slowing down on the stretch of road where I always look for the sandhill cranes. And there! My cup runneth over!

We were away from home less than three hours, but it felt like a vacation to me. And when we got home, the moon -- oh, my!

Not quite full, but I like its rough, unfinished edge

Moon, Dune, Swoon

First, before the day came the night and the welcome sight, after many overcast nights, of the moon over our old farm.

My friends and I wanted to meet in the morning for an autumn nature walk, and one of them urged me to bring Sarah along. My dog and I were the first to arrive at the rendez-vous spot.

Most of the time I don’t know what-all Sarah is smelling on our walks, but "Eau de Monday Morning Skunk" was too high for even my crude nose to miss. Exploring the edges of the parking lot while waiting for our friends, we discovered that the strongest odor came from near an old apple tree. That made sense. What skunk wouldn’t enjoy fresh apples? I held tight to Sarah’s leash.

Also on the edges of the parking lot were enough miniature moss landscapes to entertain me before the others arrived.




Once the four of us (counting dog) set off on the trail, one of the first unusual and fascinating sights we discovered was an almost full circle of primitive plants, some of them flowering. Kathie told Ellen and me what they were, and then all three of us promptly forgot. Can anyone else name these plants? Are they club mosses? (Late-breaking bulletin: a botanist friend tells me, yes, they are. The common name is ground pine, and there are several species of the genus Lycopodium.)


Here’s what they look like close up. It was the pattern they made, growing in a "fairy circle" in the woods (as do certain fungi), that caught our fancy.


We were charmed by this very young tamarack.


Toasty brown beech leaves against white bark of paper birches were beautiful, too, as of course were the giant birch trees that are the hallmark of the Houdek Dunes Natural Area.



The dunes themselves are interesting in November, when nature’s palette is more limited. This 330-acre preserve, the literature informs me, contains “dunes of all types, including active dunes (they are moving over time), stabilized dunes, pitted and perched dunes,” as well as “’blowout’ dunes, where all the sand is blown out around a large clump of vegetation.”

Besides noticing dunes and trees, Kathie and Ellen and I are always stopping along the path to appreciate what Ellen calls “Lilliputian” landscapes. Mosses, lichens and fungi captured our attention all along the way.





And we can’t walk Houdek Dunes without stopping by this tree (our Council Tree) to memorialize the event, agreeing that Michigan dunes are wonderful to explore in every season of the year. By the way, the best overview of their natural history, in my opinion, is Borne of the Winds: Michigan Sand Dunes, by Dennis A. Albert. It’s well illustrated with color photographs and drawings and has good lists, too, of things to look for on your explorations.

I’d decided it would be all right if I opened the bookstore by noon (since it was, after all, a Monday in November), and this gave us time for coffee and treats at Kamp Grounds Creamery, the new cafe in the remodeled Willowbrook in Northport. After that it was good to be cozy in the bookstore until five o’clock, when the moon again appeared in all its glory.