Theory and Practice of Life

Crabbing upcurrent some evenings [walking in the river], feeling the force of the water on my legs and a night breeze in my face, I often think of myself as passing the house offshore. Up there in that room, as I see it, is the reading and the thinking through, a theory of rivers, of trees, of falling light. Here on the river, as I lurch against a freshening in the current, is the practice of rivers. In navigating by the glow of the Milky Way, the practice of light. In steadying up with a staff, the practice of wood.

 

-      Barry Lopez, “The Whaleboat,” in About This Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory

 

Carried away as I had been and still was by the writing, I felt a shock of recognition (a happy shock) when I came upon these lines in the Barry Lopez essay. This must be, I thought, the seed that Jim Harrison found and nurtured into a tree, his poem “The Theory and Practice of Rivers,” and then into the forest of his collection carrying the same name. Jim himself was a walker of rivers—the Sucker River that flowed by his U.P. cabin, the Santa Cruz (or was it a tributary?) outside the place he and Linda lived in Patagonia, Arizona, and others I don’t know at all in Montana. Somehow I feel closer to Barry Lopez through this bridge Jim built between us, and of course the Artist is there, too, with us, as one of the Artist's images along with a stanza from Jim's river poem appeared on the poster and wine label from the 1991 vendange Leelanau Cellars called Vis-à-Vis. 

(The Artist and I walked the Crystal River many times....)

 

***

 

But now, breaking news, sent by a friend in Tucson: There is a new threat to the Santa Cruz River, in the form of a 30-ft.- tall stretch of new border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, 25 miles of it, through the grasslands of the San Rafael Valley, where cameras placed along that section of the border have recorded an average of five pedestrian crossings a month, including Border Patrol agents, hunters, and hikers. Estimates are that there is one illegal border crossing in the area every 20 months.

 

Read those numbers again. Now once more. 

 

An article in the Arizona Daily Star by Emily Bregel reports that conservationists forecast “devastating” effects for migrating animals, along with a disruption of the hydrology of the Santa Cruz River. “‘Wall construction will bulldoze into a steep cliffside at the [Coronado National] memorial, which already acts as a natural barrier,’ said Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for the Sky Island Alliance. ‘The cliff where they're going to place new wall will be twice as tall as the wall itself,’ he said. ‘It really highlights how disconnected from logic this wall is.’”

 

Some pork barrel projects are simply a waste of money. This one qualifies on that count: “The $309 million contract for the border-wall project went to Fisher Sand and Gravel, a North Dakota-based company with a record of thousands of environmental violations and legal problems including a 2019 lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging poor workmanship on a 3.5-mile border-wall segment in Texas, which was privately funded by Trump supporters.”

 

But other kinds of pork barrel—and this one qualifies also on the second count—seem calculated not only to make money for a private construction company but also to set the stage for environmental tragedy and, no doubt intentionally, to spit in the faces of those who care.

 

In sum, the current U.S. administration has given a $309 million contract to a company with a record number of violations and lawsuits against it to build an environmentally destructive, unnecessary wall, accomplishing nothing of value. Hello, DOGE? Anyone home?

 

Oh, rivers, rivers! How the human race continues to desecrate you!

 

***

 

Back to my little corner of the world --  

 

(Not its permanent location)

The Artist and I moved from Leland out to our Leelanau Township farmhouse 24 years ago, and only now, inspired by having grandson Jack and his crew camping here recently, have I finally taken the plunge and gotten a fire ring for the yard. Sunny and I did not have our agility session this morning, due to rain and wet grass, so a trip to the hardware store fit in nicely, and I was also able to score some jar lids for the next round of rhubarb chutney, having made the first batch on Sunday.

 

My bedside reading stacks had gotten out of control, so it was good to finish three books in the last couple of days—Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers, a mesmerizing post-Katrina true story; The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers, by Betsy Lerner, a reality check for all would-be published authors; and, finally, the book of Barry Lopez essays quoted at the beginning of this post. I had gotten about 1/3 of the way through a biography of Judge Learned Hand before other books tempted me away from it. Will I ever read all of To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History, by Edmund Wilson? Fascinating as it is, I find myself skipping around in the chapters…. And then there is Wilma Dykeman’s The French Broad from the “Rivers of America” series. I’ve only just begun that one and should really not have started it, with the others still waiting to be finished, but—no reading rules in my life! Taking classes, required reading, even teaching are all behind me now, and I can browse the endless buffet to my heart’s desire.

 

It's almost the 4^th of July! And the day after the 4^th (the 5^th, right?) is the annual Friends of Leelanau Township Library book sale in Northport, beginning at 9 a.m. Last year I was so busy and had so much on my mind that I completely forgot the sale, and the organizers were exclaiming to each other over my absence, as I am one of their best customers every year (if not the best). In the coming week the FOLTL summer author series kicks off with Karen Mulvahill and her historical novel, The Lost Woman, on Tuesday evening. I’ve taken a picture of the poster, since I didn’t see the list on the FOLTL website:

Planning an August bookstore guest

And sometime in August I’ll have as my bookstore guest author Tim Mulherin. (Note to self: We really need to set a date for that!) Tim’s book, The Magnetic North, addresses the idea that, as I put it, “Everyone wants to be here!” If you grew up in Leelanau County, do you regard newcomers as an invading force or grist for your make-a-living mill? If you’ve been coming up for summers all your life, are you dismayed or heartened by changes you see? Maybe you have just “discovered” Leelanau (I know it feels like that to a lot of people, some of whom have never been in Michigan before) and dream about living here someday. We are not the only area in the country experiencing growing pains, either, so Tim’s exploration of the issues will be of interest to just about everyone.

 

Before leaving the subject of books, I’ll mention that I’ve started carrying a few bilingual board books for little ones. So far I have English-French and English-Spanish but will look into other languages if anyone is interested. 

Now, breaking news, local—and good!

 

Saw this sign when I walked by today! Hooray!

More ice cream! Now there is Buster’s on Nagonaba, Barb’s Bakery on Mill Street for frozen custard, and Deep’s at the corner of Waukazoo and Nagonaba for your Moomer’s fix!

I wrote a four-page letter to a friend this morning, and almost all of it was about trees and wildflowers, appearances and disappearances of same in my little world. Will the purple coneflowers that failed to show up last year get back to me this summer? Time will tell. In the meantime, I’m enjoying every blooming thing in its time. 

 

Lately, the letters I write are less and less like chatty “newsletters” and more and more like rambling meditations, occasionally on a single theme. Do you ever read collections of some famous person’s letters? If you do, what interests you most in them? Their daily activities, family and social interactions, their reflections on contemporary events, or something else entirely? What do you most appreciate and enjoy in a letter you receive in the mail?

It occurred to me this morning that I may never write a book for publication—my doing so isn’t unthinkable, but neither is it highly probable after so many decades—and so my writing is of a very ephemeral nature, mostly letters and blog posts. Ephemeral and unremunerative, not to put too fine a point on it. But that takes a lot of pressure off. Metaphorically, I am scrawling messages and corking them up in bottles flung out onto the waves, in hopes someone will be entertained or someone's heart warmed, if only briefly. Sending a letter says, I hope, “I’ve been thinking of you. You were on my mind. Wish we could sit together in the shade and visit in person. If we could, here is some of what I would have to say.” Of course, if my friend were here, there would be no telling where our conversation would go. Even a reply to a letter isn’t always a response but the correspondent’s own rambling thoughts shared in turn. And that’s just fine! 

 

Last thought for the day: One of my recent customers thanked me for having the Ukranian flag in the window, telling me he was born and raised in Ukraine and showing me his tattoo (you can read about the symbol here), which he allowed me to photograph. Here is a statement today from Johann Walter David Rudolf "Jo" Wadephul , member of the German parliament and current Federal Minister of Foreign Affairs, pledging European support to Ukraine. Why? Because all men are brothers. And because theory of freedom is nothing without practice. Will we Americans hold onto our freedom? That remains to be seen.

Long Winter Nights

Little light, except as reflected off snow, and almost no color -- color comes further down.

 

We are past the winter solstice, so each night is shorter than the night before, but somehow in January it doesn’t feel that way to me. Daylight skies are grey, and cloud cover continuing through the night hides moon and stars, making darkness deeper, colder. Theoretically and no doubt actually, cloud cover would make night warmer if there were warmth to hold in, but that if is a big one. And daylight is not exactly a relief, either, when it means having to bundle up and go out in the cold, one of the few minuses of having a dog in winter. Or maybe it’s a plus, that having to wade through knee-deep snow and breathe cold, clean air, but, like the gradually shortening nights, it’s often hard to feel the positive aspect. 

"Are you putting on your coat?"

Beginning with the end of December and continuing through March come also for me difficult anniversaries. The Artist and I had to say goodbye to a dog we had all too briefly, and only weeks later came the Artist’s first trip to the local ER (we were in Arizona at the time), quickly followed by a jolting ambulance trip to Phoenix and, finally, major surgery. At first, that January two years ago, after successful surgery we thought everything was taken care of and were happily, if briefly (as it turned out), planning the rest of our life together. Respite from worry was short-lived. More trips to the ER, more surgery – and ultimately, the end of our earthly adventures together, March 2, 2022.

 

Scenes from those emotionally intense five to six weeks of my life are burned into memory, and while I can set them aside during the long, sunny, birdsong-filled days of spring and early summer and the busy, colorful days of late summer and fall, the dead of winter brings them all to the fore again. It isn’t that I reach intentionally for the most difficult remembrances. Hardly! When I wake with those scenes crowding in on me, I try to put myself back to sleep with happier memories, such as September walks in the grassy, hollyhock-lined alleys of Grand Marais, our dreamy travel through France another September, or the most ordinary summer Sunday spent mowing grass and moving cars and boats around the yard here at home. All those scenes and more I would welcome in dreams!

 

Meanwhile, in my waking hours, I take refuge in books.

 

Over the years, the Artist and I put together quite a little collection of books having to do with rivers and boats, and the one in which I sought solace during the season’s first massive storm was Henry Van Dyke’s Little Rivers, a collection of travel and flyfishing essays first copyrighted in 1895 by Charles Scribner’s Sons and first published in 1903. Van Dyke, an American cleric, writes of boyhood fishing and later travels with father, friends, wife, or by himself to various flowing waters in Canada and Europe, always with bamboo rod and “fly-book.”

 

His fishing was for trout and salmon or grayling. (Here I pause, because I have always thought grayling was a trout, not, as he describes it, some lesser, bottom-feeding fish, and now, looking into the matter, I see it is a salmon and considered very good eating.) But the most prized of all, for Van Dyke, is the ouananiche, “the famous land-locked salmon of Lake St. John” and other Canadian lakes. Don’t you love that name? Ouananiche!

 

Any fisherman would delight in Van Dyke’s description of waters and fishes and the stalking and hooking and landing – or sometimes losing – of piscatorial prizes. (Piscatorial: that’s the kind of old-fashioned language of this book from over a century ago.) For my own pleasure, I am equally pleased by his knowledge of wildflowers and birds and noting which appear in each season along the rivers he walks and fishes.

 

Even that is not all, however, as the book is a collection of memories, and as the author looks back on his happiest vacations his thoughts are colored by what Susan Cain calls bittersweetness, sometimes even recalled from the happy times themselves.

 

And yet, my friend and I confessed to each other, there was a tinge of sadness, an inexplicable regret mingled with our joy. Was it the thought of how few human eyes had even seen that lovely vision? Was it the dim foreboding that we might never see it again? Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature’s loveliness? It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly, nor stay in it forever. 

 

Our Paradise, the Artist’s and mine, encompassed happy hours in a variety of places: A little trout stream in southwest Michigan prosaically known as the Mentha Drain; another unbeautifully named river, the Sucker, in the Upper Peninsula, its mouth meandering an always-changing watery path through woods and wetlands to Lake Superior; Leelanau County’s lovely Crystal River (despite the leeches that clung to us after we waded out); and our own little hidden-away, no-name creek, keeping its secrets until we followed it upstream after a storm to a miniature waterfall. There were the Allier and the Alagnon in France’s Auvergne region, rivers whose names we had never heard until our wandering brought us to their banks. And of course, principally – because of the many times we explored various stretches, never encountering another vessel or explorer – Van Buren County’s Paw Paw River, the “Little River” that gave that name (Little River Cafe) to a restaurant friends of ours had for a while in the town of Paw Paw.

 

During this lifetime, none of us ever “stays” in Paradise, but if we happen upon it now and then, we can count ourselves fortunate, and those are the memory scenes that I court during these long, dark, cold winter nights. Also, dark eventually gives way to daylight, if not always sunshine, and I have a ever-eager companion in the outdoor cold.

But my dog, while great, isn’t news, and I do have some very good news this week. On Tuesday, (one of my two by-chance-or-appointment days -- BCOA -- along with Monday), I came to the bookstore in hopes of a UPS delivery, and sure enough – my order of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s The Waters came! You can just imagine how happy that made me, and I know it will make many of my customers happy, too. In fact, one local woman walked in just after I had photographed the box of books and said immediately, “I want one!” And we’re off!

The books are here!

First one out the door!

River Dreams -- and More

That was then....

River Dreams

This past Sunday for me was what you could call a lazy Sunday, even an old lady Sunday. I bought a print copy of the Sunday New York Times and spent most of the day on my front porch with the newspaper and a book, reading and dozing and dreaming, the book one I’d pulled from a shelf in the dark the night before. I’d gone to the shelf holding our river books, so I knew that anything my hand reached would be fine, and back in the light I saw it was Mark Twain. 

 

…The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated [steamboat] passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day. Throughout the long twelve hundred miles there was never a page that was void of interest, never one that you could leave unread without loss, never one that you would want to skip, thinking you could find higher enjoyment in some other thing. There never was so wonderful a book written by man; never one whose interest was so absorbing, so unflagging, so sparklingly renewed with every perusal.

-      Life on the Mississippi

 

The Artist and I were always more river people than big lake people (much less ocean people). Our boat world was that of paddles and oars, maybe -- very occasionally -- a quiet trolling motor (borrowed), and more often a silent, nearly effortless floating and drifting glide downriver. Eyes constantly roving, alert for partially submerged obstructions in the stream, we were alive as well to roses and cardinal flowers on the banks, wild iris in the shallows, and turtles the size of garbage can lids sliding with a plop! into the water at our approach or a kingfisher swooping across our line of sight. The Paw Paw, the Little Rabbit, the Crystal, the Cedar, the Sucker – those were our rivers, small and intimate, each with its own personality. Although we read and re-read Harlan Hubbard’s Shantyboat and dreamed our way down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans with Harlan and Anna, their riverside life at Payne Hollow was more our speed. No Mississippi for us!  

 

And of course there was the Artist’s own homemade houseboat on the Leland River for years…. Is it any wonder I found myself slipping a bookmark into the Mark Twain book now and then and setting it aside for my memories?

 

Eco-Us

When we are feeling oh-so-holier-than-X about our environmentally-friendly choices and passing negative on judgments on those whose decisions don't fully match up with our own, we might want to stop and think that we are not accurately measuring and comparing our respective carbon footprints by looking at one or two behaviors. Do what you can, and I'll do what I can.

Belatedly, A Guest Book!

Why didn’t I think of it sooner? I used to have a guest book at the bookstore but haven’t for years now, and it only occurred to me the other day that having people write of their visits would be the perfect way to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Dog Ears Books. I had the thought, then lost it, then had it again – and again – as longtime annual visitors from St. Louis were here … a man from Cincinnati made the drive from Frankfort just to come to Dog Ears Books … the woman who photographed my dog Sarah with her phone and kept the photo on the phone for years came in with her family, boys now quite grown up – and someone else who told me, “This is my favorite bookstore in the world!” Really?! I’m not kidding, he said that. But his words were nowhere recorded!

 

So now, when you visit this summer, you can record your compliments (or complaints), memories, and future hopes in my new keepsake book from the Pennington Collection! Good idea, yes?

 

Busy Times For Us All

Illinois got tornadoes, everyone is getting smoky air, but our end of the Leelanau peninsula did not get rain that was forecast for earlier this week. (After I mowed my yard the night before, too, just to be ready!) Farmers market started a week late in Northport, because of new paving in the marina parking lot, but it was going strong today, and I finally got my maple syrup from Al and Margo Ammons. I’m going to take my usual Sunday off this weekend but will probably bend the schedule to open on Monday, since Tuesday is, after all, the 4^th of July – thirty years since my first bookstore opened in that little, long-gone shed down Waukazoo Street. In retrospect, time does fly. Sometimes the moments fly in passing, too. A pause every hour, even for half a minute, can be important. Ah! We’re here now. We're here now.

Thank you, Heather!!!!!

On the Road: New Mexico at Last

View from Pajarito Rest Area, New Mexico

 

The scene above, from a photograph taken today, was familiar to me from the first time the Artist and I made the trek from Northport, Michigan, to Dos Cabezas, Arizona. That cold January day in 2015, when we paused with cameras at the Pajarito Rest Area, the wind was fierce, and a worker told me with some amusement that many Northerners, somewhat to their dismay, arrive just in time for the windiest New Mexico season. In my opinion, the views more than made up for the wind. "We're someplace different," the Artist said. He liked to say that.

 

And if I say, “New Mexico at last!” you can be sure I will also say, a little way down the road, “Santa Rosa! Finally!” 

Remember when I posted a shot of this theatre last fall?

The little town in New Mexico captured my heart in April of 2015, when we stopped to explore on our way back to Michigan, and on every trip thereafter, we stopped at least for a meal in Santa Rosa and often overnight and usually found time to cruise slowly around town to visit again and again our favorite sites.

 

“We should spend a few days here sometime,” the Artist said. I agreed readily. In the spring, when the water is warm enough for swimming. Maybe find out when a rodeo might be scheduled. Try a couple more restaurants. But “when we have more time” has a way of never arriving, since every sunset subtracts a day from however many any of us may have left, and we never know how many that is to begin with.

 

Although I had gotten a motel room early on Monday, not wanting to endure any more stress on ice-covered and slippery highways, with more snow still coming down, I didn’t sleep all that well, mostly because Sunny didn’t. She would hear voices in the hall … or outside in the parking lot … and she seemed to feel called upon to bark a warning. Sigh! What a coincidence that Patricia McConnell wrote a post on that very subject on that very day (November 14)! I read the whole article, although, as you might guess, getting a dog to stop barking is a long-term project, even for Patricia McConnell.

 

The good news was that the roads were clear on Tuesday morning, despite the very cold temperature in Liberal, Kansas: 20 degrees Fahrenheit, down from 50 two days earlier. Slush in the parking lot was frozen, footing treacherous. But we were on the road by 9 o’clock (Kansas time) and knocked off the Oklahoma panhandle in less than an hour. Even Dalhart, Texas, which I had dreaded because of all the giant trucks that converge on that area from all directions, was a snap! Going through Dalhart early in the day must be the secret to making it easy. Coming in at sunset is something you definitely want to avoid. 

 

But then – back to my opening image – came New Mexico. Mountain time. High plains, then mesalands. And because I hadn’t slept well, and because fatigue must be cumulative, and also because the sun was shining and I had time, if only I was willing to take it, I decided to slow down and spend the afternoon and evening in dear little Santa Rosa.

Everywhere, wonderful buildings and walls made of lovely local stone!

The Artist and I, in our years of traveling together, often – more often than not -- explored without a plan, and that’s what I found myself doing on Tuesday afternoon. River Road. Had we ever been out River Road? Where was the river? 

 

A sign for a fish hatchery caught my eye, inviting me into a parking lot. I thought of the hatchery at Wolf Lake west of Kalamazoo and the one at Thompson in the U.P., where a friend worked before he retired. Does it sound funny to say that fish hatcheries were part of our “love world”?

(Where the fish are raised)

This one turned out to be (as many are) every bit as much education center as hatchery, and it revealed itself to me in stages. First I was drawn to a signboard illustrating birds that one could expect to see. And then to a sort of blind, with viewing windows that framed the scenes beyond to resemble paintings.

 

A more elaborate building gave information about the Pecos River watershed. No, I didn’t photograph every display, but the ones below should give you some idea of how well the education component is put together.

 

Already impressed and pleased with what I'd found, I noticed a footpath along a fence, and that called to me, as well. Sunny, wearing her new harness, was doing just fine on-leash, so we followed the path. I loved the long overland view, back toward dear little Santa Rosa.

But more awaited. Of course! The Pecos River itself! 

When we encountered a couple of Game and Fish employees clearing brush, Sunny was eager to make friends. The young woman said she had a Great Pyrenees at home, only three days younger than Sunny, and the young man told me his dog, a heeler mix, was only accustomed him and not to anyone else. Although Sunny wanted to jump on these people (we still need to work on that), she was friendly and sociable in a way the two dog-lovers seemed to find quite winsome. 

All in all, our afternoon exploring worked out very well – exercise, a social encounter, and beautiful views of a lovely little river. I only wish the Artist, a.k.a. River Rat, could have been there, because he would have loved it all! And nothing is the same without him.

Back Home and Back tto Work

Michigan — lush, verdant, overflowing! Has there ever been a greener spring? To be fair, Missouri and Illinois greeted us with spring vistas on our way home, and earlier, even before leaving the southeast Arizona ghost town cabin where we spent the winter, hadn’t we been thrilled to see the mesquite sprout green leaves and to see — at last —and to smell — a chinaberry tree in bloom, a treat that had been eluding me, teasingly, for years? 

If only you could smell the blossoms, too!

Taking our leave of Willcox, Arizona, we followed Fort Grant Road, one last time, up to Bonita, turning onto that beautiful, beloved mountain road through the Stockton Pass to where it joins the highway to Safford, and to my delight, near the end of the twenty-mile stretch, staghorn cholla were blossoming. I didn’t dare look for wildflowers on the much more challenging mountain road between Globe and Apache Junction, because I was at the wheel, but before the day was over, we had reached Carefree, north of Phoenix, where towering saguaro was in flower. And then somehow, in what seemed no time at all, though we had stayed two nights with my friend in Carefree and cruised slowly and wonderingly through the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest, and though we whiled time away pleasantly in Santa Rosa, New Mexico, and McLean, Texas, as if we had nothing but time and would never come to its end — somehow we found ourselves in Oklahoma, with green-leaved trees and choruses of singing birds greeting us at the state line. We have returned more than once to Santa Rosa and now have added to our list of “towns in which to spend more time in on future trips” Globe, Arizona, and Pawhuska, Oklahoma.

From Osage County courthouse steps lead downtown.

Missouri was beautiful. North from Cuba on narrow, winding, charming little state road 19, blossoming tree dogwood and spreading green colonies of mayapples along the way invited us to linger, but dogwood was delicately lovely in Springfield, Illinois, too. We had crossed the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers, and now came the Vermilion and the Kankakee as we made our way north through Illinois (staying four nights with family) to southern Michigan, where the dogwood was not fully open but already lovely and redbud clearly queen of the spring. Maybe once before in my life I’ve seen so many spectacular redbuds, but that was long ago. The St. Joseph River, our own little Paw Paw River, the still-beautiful Kalamazoo, despite what it has suffered: our way home to northern Michigan is always marked by rivers, and we cross each bridge as we come to it.

Northern Michigan does not have the dogwood of the southern woods of our state, and redbud trees Up North are few and far between, only one planted as a landscape accent, not clouds of them growing wild, so north of Grand Rapids that role was taken by pin cherry’s flowering branches. Mayapple colonies persisted as far north Newaygo County. As we drove north, it was as if we were traveling back in time to the beginning of spring, finding the season less advanced the nearer we approached home, as if held back for our return. We stopped along the Pine River to stretch our legs and delight in the warm, sunny day, to walk along flowing water — our feet releasing a heady, familiar perfume from pine needles underfoot — and to take deep, happy breaths of Michigan air.

This historical marker is worth reading.

 And finally came, of course, welcome glimpses of trillium in the grass at the edges of second- and third-growth woodland.

Home at last, having imagined knee-high grass in the yard, we were pleasantly surprised to find it not yet terribly out of control … to find daffodils blooming … to realize we had not missed cherry and apple blossom time, after all. One neighbor’s apricot tree, the first to flower on the highway between our place and Northport, held its pretty flowers against the blue sky, but most of the orchards at our northern end of Leelanau County had yet to blossom and are only just now coming into their brief seasonal glory.

The last book we had been reading aloud at bedtime, John Hildebrand’s Mapping the Farm: The Chronicle of a Family, had brought us from Arizona back to Michigan: the story ends in springtime, with plans to put in crops for another year. We came home to find the straw bales for the modest garden I’ll have this year ready to be wrestled into place, and I got them positioned the very next day, because even without livestock or field crops, our country life and village businesses make heavy demands on available time and energy, especially as the latter quantity seems to decrease significantly each year. 

But we are home again and back to work after a winter of leisure, and Memorial Day weekend is just around the corner, and there is much to do between now and then — planning, mowing, planning, cleaning. In Northport I’ll be weeding out storage areas and ordering new books for the shop. Expect many announcements in the weeks ahead, the first of which you’ll find here. Just don’t expect a new post every day, because even my to-do list, as I told a friend yesterday, has to-do lists of its own right now, and when it’s too dark to mow grass, I’ll be reading Rachel May’s An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery until my eyes cannot remain open one more minute.

The bookstore will definitely be open Memorial Day weekend. If I can get enough done by this Saturday, I'll put out the OPEN flag. Time will tell....