Elsewhere, Elsewhen

Green moss in winter

These things are no more, and the feeling I am telling here … may have perished, too. It felt like the tide had gone out and taken all the ships with it, and you were left on a shore, a debris.

 

-      Niall Williams, This is Happiness

 

I had no celebratory plans for St. Patrick’s Day, either for the day itself or for the preceding weekend. Saturday would see me in my bookshop, and maybe Sunny and I would get up to the dog park on Sunday, if the weather didn’t turn wretched, but forebodings were somewhat against us. Ay, that’s March!

 

Without thinking, anyway, of St. Paddy on—was it Thursday or Friday? No matter—I picked up a paperback novel with blurbs on the back cover looking good enough that I thought I’d give it a try. I needed a new bedtime book, having stretched Olive Cook’s Breckland out about as long as possible, setting it aside repeatedly, both to read other books (both fiction and nonfiction) and also to make it last, then returning to it time and time again when sleep eluded me in the wee small hours, until finally, against my will, I reluctantly reached the last page. 

 

So now I would read Niall Williams’s This Is Happiness. At least, I would begin the novel and see if it held me. And now, to say that it did hold me did is to make a massive understatement.

 

The fact is, I did not appreciate until much later in my life what subterfuge and sacrifice it took to be independent and undefeated by the pressures of reality. 

 

The narrator, an old man—well, exactly my own age!—is recounting a time much earlier in his life when, as a lad of seventeen years, he left the seminary in Dublin with lost faith and went to live for a while with his grandparents in a remote Irish village during the time that electricity, long promised to the village, came at last. The manner of its coming is not incidental to the story but woven into its essence. Here is the man who has come to the village of Faha to supervise the installation of poles and lines:

 

Everybody carries a world. But some people change the air about them. That’s the best I can say. It can’t be explained, only felt. He was easy in himself. Maybe that was the first thing. He didn’t feel the need to fill the quiet and had the confidence of the storyteller when the story is still unpacked, its snaps not yet released. 

 

And here are the strains of music woven into the story:

 

The quiet of country life can sit on your heart like a stone. To lift it, to escape the boundaries of myself awhile, I took down the fiddle.

 

One of the things about Irish music is how one tune can enter another. You begin with one reel, and with no clear intention of where you will be going after that, but halfway through it will sort of call up the next so that one reel becomes another and another after that, and unlike the clear-edged definitions of songs, the music keeps linking, making this sound-map even as it travels it, so player and listener are taken away and time and space are defeated. You’re in an elsewhere. Something like that.

 

So now, thoroughly charmed and engaged, I read myself to sleep on Friday evening and again when I woke in the dark hours of Saturday morning, but only when dashing off an e-mail to my sisters on Saturday afternoon from the shop and mentioning the book did I realize what a timely choice I had made. Irish! How appropriate!

Woolly bear woke up on Friday!

The temperature rose to 70 degrees in Northport on Saturday, and the sun shone bright, but the wind blew like the devil, gusting up to 50 mph. (So much for my having swept the sidewalk with the push broom two days before!) Sunshine brought people out of their houses, and the wind in Traverse City—worse than we had in Northport, I was told—sent some of them clear up to Northport, so it was a fairly lively bookshop day, and only late in the afternoon, while a couple from Ann Arbor were happily browsing, did the power go out on Waukazoo Street. First the lights flickered, then went out briefly and came back on again, that happening two or three times, until finally they stayed off for good. Luckily, my happy customers were undeterred. We had a meeting of hearts and minds as their choices were books by Wendell Berry and Robert Reich. Closing up then, I only hoped the power would still be on at my house when I got home.

 

It was not. No lights. No furnace. No pump.

 

But I was prepared for a power outage with two deep stockpots filled with water and a brand-new, long-handled lighter so I wouldn’t need to risk fingers by lighting the stove with a match. Right away I lit my two fat candles and sorted through the collection of oil lamps for one with a good wick, cleaned the glass chimney, and filled the reservoir with oil. Success! The power company thought electricity would be back on by 3 a.m., I was at first dubious, but a look at the overnight forecast showed the winds gradually dying down, so maybe….

 

But we would be fine, Sunny and I, and now my reading choice struck me as even more appropriate. I had only reached Chapter 18, not even the halfway point of the novel, and while Noel’s grandparents had a crank telephone, the only one in the village, no one yet had the promised electricity. That was the fiction. Meanwhile, here in my “real” world I was all set with candles and oil lamps and a cell phone with 80% of its charge. Wind blowing demonically around my old farmhouse, dog lying across my feet, I felt a strong sense of kinship to the people of my own grandfather’s native land, back in times that were difficult and challenging in many ways but much simpler and probably more satisfying in others.

I haven’t said a word about the slowly unwinding plot of Williams’s novel and won’t get into that now. For me, it is the world of the story that matters. Early in my reading of it, I snapped a photo of the cover to send to my stepdaughter and texted her this brief message: “I am elsewhere. It is beautiful and restful.” So then, continuing my reading, I was struck by the passage quoted above about the Irish reels defeating time and space. Elsewhere! Yes!

 

Another of my Saturday customers was a young woman who said that if she could have a superpower, it would be to travel back in time for a day, not to intervene in history but simply to be there in that time. She agreed with me when I remarked that such is the magic of books. 

 

Friday and Saturday nights, Sunday morning in the United States in the year 2025: Snow sifts in shifting veils from the barn roof. I am elsewhere, elsewhen.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all, Irish or otherwise.

Sunday morning...

...snow in Leelanau.

It's Travel Time

WHAT month is it???

In northern Michigan there are, besides weekend tourists and short-term vacationers, summer people and “year-round” people. The year-rounders who can afford to make a getaway in late winter or early spring, though, are not shy about doing so, and who can blame them? Some take February or March in Florida or Mexico or the Caribbean. For years, before and between the Florida and Arizona winters, the Artist and I made more modest forays to Lake Huron on early spring weekends when March rolled around, because cabin fever isn’t just about getting to an exotic location. It’s more about seeing different scenery and different people. 

 

“But we didn’t even have winter this year.” 

 

“We had a month of winter (January).” 

 

“No, we had ten days. That’s all!”

 

Okay, and now February, typically the coldest month in northern Michigan, has been bringing us daytime temperatures in the 40s! Along with many others, I feel a lot of ambivalence about this month’s weather. It isn’t right, isn’t normal, it bodes ill for the future – and yet, in the present, it makes life easier and certainly (because of lower fuel bills and no plow bills at all) less expensive, which is hard not to appreciate. And who can complain about blue skies? Besides that, for me (and I know I’m not the only one) this time of year is a minefield of associations. Anniversaries after loss are ambushes along life’s road, in that you know they’re coming – looming inexorably -- but not the moment or hour or the manner they will hit. So with all of the financial and emotional possibilities threatening, I found unseasonable February warmth and sunshine more than helpful.  

While we still had snow --

Blue view --

Thanks to books, I’ve also been spending a lot of time in Ireland and Scotland, France and Italy, some of it over a hundred years ago and some in more recent times. Fiction, nonfiction – one is as dreamy as the other, when it comes to exploring mountain villages, river sources, stone ruins, and local stories from local folks in faraway places. When March arrives, I’ll post my “Books Read” list for the month of February, with enough annotation to give an idea of each title’s contents for anyone who might be curious.

 

Leelanau County itself, though, provided me with antidotes to cabin fever. Monday, Presidents Day, was a bank holiday, so I had to go to Traverse City on Tuesday instead to take care of banking errands. By noon, though, I was already zipping out of town when the beautiful sunshine inspired me to detour to Good Harbor Bay, where Sunny and I walked on the beach! As close as I live to Lake Michigan, you would think beach-walking would be a frequent life activity for me, but somehow, unless I have company, time just seems to slip away. Well, not that day! I seized it!

Good Harbor, Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Again, the following day, Wednesday, the Artist’s birthday (he would have been 87, if still living), when I felt the need to do something special, Good Harbor was my choice. I'd first contemplated a stop at the Happy Hour for a beer on the way home, maybe even buying for whoever might happen to be sitting at the bar in the middle of the afternoon, but there was no way to include Sunny Juliet in that plan. And as it had on Tuesday, the sun was shining, the sky blue, so with sunset later and later every day, Sunny J. and I had plenty of time after I closed the bookstore at 3 o’clock to drive down to Good Harbor again, scenes of many memories and associations over the years.

Lake Michigan, Wednesday afternoon

Calm water

This is how I am traveling in February now. Books take me to other countries, and I take mini-vacations close to home with my dog, because, as the Artist loved to say, so often, “We live in a beautiful place,” and whatever the weather, every road of my county is saturated with memories, making it all the more beautiful. Travel time in my home county is any time, and any county drive is also time travel, my present brimming over with the past. 

Thursday morning fog -- beautiful!

 

Today’s postscript:

 

If audiobooks are your thing, please consider signing up to get yours from libro.fm – and choose Dog Ears Books as your bookstore. Your audiobooks won’t cost any more than they do if you buy from the online behemoth, but you will be supporting a small indie bookstore in northern Michigan. Thank you! And special thanks to those of you already ordering from libro.fm via Dog Ears Books!!!

When Letters -- on Paper -- Were Everything

Reading a diary from before the Civil War, I am struck by the number of letters the young male diarist tells of regularly writing and receiving. His lawyer brother in New Orleans seems to have written to Silas almost every day, and it was a rare day that Silas did not write to James or to Warren or to one of his sisters back home and perhaps also to the editor of a local newspaper. And all his correspondence was, of course, conducted in longhand (Does anyone still say ‘longhand’? Or was it only necessary to make the distinction when secretaries took dictation in shorthand?), with every cranny of space filled.

I have trouble considering anything a book if the words aren't on paper. Likewise a letter. E-mail messages can be important and precious -- I don't pooh-pooh them. But they are not letters. And a "diary" kept in digital format? Really?

 

Silas did not write in his diary every day, but when he did, it was in addition to letters he had also written that same day. The diary he kept for himself; the letters were to and for others. Way back then, without cell phones or e-mail or so-called social media, letters were the way he and others kept in continuous contact with family and friends. His letters to newspaper editors, less frequent, were a way to voice his opinions publicly, as he also did in amateur debates and public addresses.

The debates in which he participated, like his letters, were as much public entertainment as they were communication. Conversation, reading books, and playing musical instruments were ways to pass a quiet lamplit evening at home in those days, and letter-writing was another way, but Silas also made preparation for a debate or for offering a public address by writing longhand notes in the pages of his diary, another occupation that filled his evening hours and also served as preparation to reaching out to others, near and far. Back then, townsfolk and country people regularly traveled to schoolhouses, village halls, and churches for evenings spent listening to debates, public addresses, and sermons. Yes, even sermons were entertainment in those days, with visiting sermonizers critiqued afterward in depth by audience members -- often as much or more for performance quality as for theology, judging from Silas’s diary.

 

In our time, now the third decade of the 21^st century (can you believe it?), a general “felt need” for handwritten correspondence seems almost to have disappeared. We have public forums for our every thought and deed in social media, the instant gratification of texting (often with almost instant replies), and none of it requires paper or stamps, let alone a trip to the post office. But if letters are classed by collectors as ephemera, what can digital exchanges be called? Even if the storage media are somehow preserved, is there any guarantee it will be readable in future? Whereas I can take in my hands Silas’s diary and the handful of private letters tucked into the diary pages, all written over a century and a half ago, and read them as if they were written yesterday, how many of the thoughts and experiences shared on Facebook will anyone be able to visit a century and a half from now?

As thrilling as it is for me to time-travel via Silas’s diary, it is just as thrilling or more so to find a letter in my own mailbox, written to me by a sister or a friend, bearing postage and return address and cancellation that tell of its journey and the thought that went into someone caring enough to reach out to me over hundreds of miles. I can tear the envelope open in haste or slit it carefully with a knife, read the letter immediately or tuck it away and carry it with me to enjoy later – or I can do both, reading it eagerly at once and folding it away to read again an hour later, beginning already to form in my mind the reply that will eventually becomposed and sent off, a personal, intimate, committed-to-paper, taken-time-to-write missive sent to one person alone -- although perhaps to be shared with a partner or friend at the other end, too, because once the letter reaches its destination it belongs to the recipient. The gift has been given.

Then there are the enclosures that letters may contain, as delightful in their way as the letters themselves. This old bit of "ephemera" captured my attention, and I wish I still had new snapshots every week to send with my own letters. Sadly, our photographs are another thing we rarely commit to paper any more.

The biggest problem for me with Sundays is that there is not even the possibility of finding a letter in the mailbox. Monday’s return to mundane, everyday life does not trouble me at all, because the postal carrier may bring me news and thoughts from someone I love.

 

One friend back in northern Michigan who shares my enthusiasm for written correspondence is doing more than writing letters: she has started a movement for slow correspondence called Leelanau Letter Writers. You don’t have to live in Leelanau County, Michigan, to join. There are no membership fees, no meetings. 

You may also elect to join the LLW pen pal group, but you don’t even have to do that. Just let it be your inspiration to write and mail letters. Will you write about what’s really on your mind? What will that be? You need share that only with your recipient. It's that personal. Who will receive the next letter you write? No need to tell me -- just write and send that letter. On paper.

 

We Are All on a Journey

In the nineteenth century, crossing the North American continent became a new adventure and challenge.

 

Narcissa Whitman was a new woman out there on the plains….

 

On cool mornings, Narcissa loved galloping sidesaddle ahead of the wagons on her new horse and even briefly losing sight of the party….

 

‘…I never was so contented and happy before…’

 

-      Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey

 

In a book published in 1952 (in England, of all places) with a story set in 19^th-century Michigan, we find a fictional female character discovering, like Narcissa Whitman, the joys and freedom of travel.

 

If only she could feel like this always! If she never had to go back to the narrow streets of houses and the regulations and proprieties that governed every moment of her life at home! If she could stay on the road! The idea was like a burst of light. 

-      Elizabeth Howard, Pedlar’s Girl

 

But there were always those to whom the travelers seemed more like invaders. 

 

So came the winter of Plenty Buffaloes, the one the whites called 1861, the year that saw the Holy Road dark with moving men, many going to the places of the yellow metal, many running away to the mountain diggings to keep out of the war parties the whites seemed to be raising against each other.  

-      Mari Sandoz, Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas

 

 Moving or staying in place, however, life is a journey for us all. 

 

For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end. …

 

It’s all a process, steps along a path. Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor. Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done. 

-      Michelle Obama, Becoming

 

If you don’t already live in Northport, I hope you’ll find a chance to visit this week before Dog Ears Books closes for the 2020 season. We expect and hope to be back in the spring of 2021 to serve locals and visitors alike, connecting you to books new and old, authors familiar as well as new acquaintances, and to share with you our joy of reading real books.

But we will have a couple of surprises for you in the spring, too --  maybe something you would never expect from us! Because, you see, you never know. That’s what the Artist and I tell each other every day when we wonder what the day will bring, who we might meet along the way, what stories will brighten our hours. And that’s the way I like to keep Books in Northport, too. You never know what I’ll write about next? Neither do I!

 

Book Review: THE NARCISSISM OF SMALL DIFFERENCES

The Narcissism of Small Differences

by Michael Zadoorian

Brooklyn, NY: Akashic Books

Hardcover, 304pp, $28.95

Paper, 330pp, $16.95

E-book, $16.99

What did it mean to be turning 40 in 2009 Ferndale, Michigan, to be in a committed15-year-long relationship frustrating to two sets of parents because it involved neither wedding nor, more to the point, children? Joe resists selling out to a “real,” i.e., full-time job paying real money, while Ana supports them both as a creative worker in a Detroit advertising agency. She enjoys solving creative problems but is beginning to wonder if she and Joe are weird. — Or does she fear they are not? 

She didn't used to worry about being weird. Weird used to be a good thing, something she aspired to but never really achieved.

Joe’s response to Ana's stated worry is that they are a “disgustingly normal” couple. What he doesn't say to her is that in addition to being monogamous, they no longer stay out all night, rarely have sex any more, and spend much more time on work than fun. But isn’t that what normal is?

While Joe and Ana live in Ferndale, it is Detroit that takes center stage, both in the novel and in the identity of the two main characters. The couple takes pride in not living in “the affluent suburbs,” but in an “inner-ring city,” as Ana somewhat defensively describes it. The author describes Ferndale is an 

...in-between, an interzone amalgam of white and black, gay and straight, blue collar and no collar, that had enjoyed a brief period of gentrification a few years earlier, but was not suffering along with the rest of the state after the collapse of the auto industry.

Ana’s job is for a Detroit advertising agency, one fortunate enough not to have been dependent on the auto industry and thus still financially viable, while Joe concentrates on freelance work, which mostly means writing snarky capsule reviews (or “any writing job they would give him, no matter how shitty”) for the Detroit Independent as his dreams of finding recognition as a fiction writer fall by the wayside. His dream died after three literary reviews in a row folded after accepting stories from him. 

He considered writing a novel, but then thought about all the people who would be left unemployed and homeless if he happened to put down a major publisher. That was what he told himself, at least.

And that very reason Joe gives himself for not attempting a novel sets the tone for the youthful urban society Zadoorian holds up for our scrutiny. It is a society ruled by irony. As he begins to realize he’s aging out of the reigning ironic worldview and having a harder time catching the tone, Joe begins to think of it “dog-whistle irony.” But the same coffee house waiter’s comment that a job waiting tables keeps his “head straight” while he hopes for success in the music world, his real love, is an example of one of the things Joe loves about Detroit. 

It was that twisted Midwestern work ethic, the factory rat DNA that threaded through Detroiters, embedded by generation after generation of immigrants who put their heads down and ground it out in a loud, grimy, windowless place for thirty or forty years, because that was just what you did.

Does he, though, love that working-class DNA unironically? Grinding it out year after year in a factory is not, after all, what Joe does. He has been riding along on his girlfriend’s salary, as his dreams of living by journalism, let alone literature, grow ever dimmer. Finally, at one point in the story, he goes to the editor of the independent newspaper that has bought occasional pieces from him, with the slim hope that he might be hired on a full-time basis.

Once Tim stopped laughing, he filled Joe in on the realities of the situation. … “We love your work, but I can’t offer you shit. There’s only one person in editorial with a full-tie position, and that’s amazing in itself. I fear they’re trying to figure out how they can get freelancers to do my job.” 

“So there’s nothing?” 

Another deep drag on the cig. “Joe, this is an alternative newspaper. Part of ‘alternative’ refers to finding alternatives to actually paying people money."

Part of Joe’s education in the ways of the 21st century involves learning that the “independent” newspaper he loves is now owned by a giant conglomerate. Jobs are hard to come by these days in the former Motor City. 

Not too many years before 2009, Joe had written an article on “Detroit’s burgeoning underground tiki culture,” and readers familiar with Zadoorian’s previously published work will immediately recall his haunting collection of short stories, The Lost Tiki Palaces of Detroit. Why, Joe wonders about himself, is he still going to tiki parties when other people his age are at PTA meetings? The tiki theme, further developed later in the novel, harks back to a particular moment of Detroit's past, as well as reflecting on a character and a city having difficulty moving forward.

On an out-of-town ad shoot in Chicago, the line producer for the production company asks Ana,

“Isn’t it nice to get out of Detroit?” 

Maybe he didn’t mean to imply that Detroit was a hellhole and anyone in their right mind would want to escape, but that’s sure how it sounded to Ana. Even though it often was nice to get out of Detroit, considering the perennially dire situation there, she certainly wasn’t going to admit it to him. 

“Actually, I miss it,” she said. And she truly meant it. 

“Really?” 

“Yes. And there’s no need to be so surprised,” she said, not bothering to hide the anger rising in her voice. “I love where I live.” 

Zadoorian's comedy of manners gently and lovingly mocks and ridicules a generation that has grown up on irony, men and women who don’t see themselves as selling out even when they do it, as if their irony proves to them that they aren’t taking themselves seriously enough to be accused of selling out. Joe thinks of the people he has met in the advertising world -- excluding Ana, of course -- in this way:

It was as if they were saying, We are not like the people to whom we sell things. Often they didn’t seem anywhere near as evolved as they fancied themselves. Sometimes they were just people with bigger paychecks, bigger egos, better clothes, and too much cynicism for their own good.

Zadoorian’s writer’s heart, however, is too true to reduce his characters to caricatures. At their cruelest and most smart-alecky, their creator never loses sight — nor does he allow his reader to lose sight — of their essential humanity and the tender vulnerability lying beneath the shiny surface. A promotion for Ana and a full-time job for Joe move the story forward with an apparent solution to the couple’s financial problems and promises of greater opportunity for creative fulfillment in their careers. Ironically (and really, one cannot resist the word in the context of this novel), the solution creates its own problems, both personal and professional, and pushes the main characters to a cliff edge of decision.

As one reviewer said of a previous Zadoorian book, you don’t have to be from Detroit to enjoy this novel. But as well as offering entertainment, The Narcissism of Small Differences also serves, in its way, as a social time capsule for one particular part of one particular generation in one very particular Midwestern American city, Detroit, Michigan. You should visit! It's a good time for time travel right now.

*  *  *  *  *

Note: While the publication dates for many books due out this season have been pushed back, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the official release date for The Narcissism of Small Differences is still officially May 5, 2020. If that changes, I'll let you know. 

[Note: For my photos, with fewer or no words, go here.]

In Which We Explore the Other Side

Sign encountered in our travels to the Other Side

Other Side, yes, but not at all the Dark Side. Hardly that! Our annual U.P. getaway, lovely as it was in so many ways, had been just too short after a summer of retail captivity, and while I was hungry for more time out in the world, David had been thinking about the area where his grandfather had farmed and where his grandparents are buried. We had not made an expedition over to the Michigan’s Lake Huron shore, the “Sunrise Side,” for about fifteen years, and it’s not much over 200 miles from Traverse City, easily close enough to make the trip with a single overnight.

And so we started out on a Monday morning.

When we drive up to the U.P., we take either 31 or 131, so neither of us had been east of Kalkaska for a long time. On the west edge of Luzerne, stopping to let Sarah have a run and do a little exploring of her own, I found the first discovery of the day’s explorations, a mysterious and fragrant green plant co-existing with patches of wild blueberries and lichen. This is what sweet fern looks like. Its fragrance, however, is the real excitement, and I was holding and smelling it for the first time in my life. Unbelievable!

The next surprise was no farther down the road than Mio.

You don’t have to be Catholic to explore and be impressed by the Our Lady of the Woods Shrine (“a Pilgrimage with Mary”). The inspiration for the shrine came to a young priest in 1945, and work was begun in 1953, “without a penny to spend and two borrowed shovels,” says the free brochure. My first question on seeing the very large and complex structure had been how a little parish in Mio, Michigan, had ever raised the money for such an ambitious construction. The brochure’s answer:

Much of the work was done by hand with the aid of a huge scaffold, a homemade elevator, shovels and wheelbarrows. It is estimated that 25,000 tons of native Onaway stone and an equal amount of cement were used to construct the shrine. The Shrine rests on footings that are 8 feet deep and 4 feet wide. The finished product is filled with spiritual and natural symbolism of Michigan.

Indeed, Mary has a lot of company. We approached the Shrine from the back, pulled off the road by the sight of it, and so we came around to the front by the right wing, that part dedicated to Michigan – the Upper Peninsula, Tahquamenon Falls, Father Jacques Marquette, and the deer of the Lower Peninsula. Have you ever heard of St. Hubert? He is the patron saint of hunters. My artist husband appreciated the wildlife sculpture as much if not more than the statue of the saint.

Built into the towering, curving stone wall are many niches and grottoes, and more statues stand in the gardens, as well. There is Our Lady of Guadalupe from Mexico, Our Lady of Fatima from Portugal, from France Our Lady of LaSalette and of Lourdes, and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel from England. I was especially charmed by the colorful Our Lady of Czestochowa, an image that owns a most colorful history, which I quote here only in part:

In the 14^th century, the painting was sent to Poland in response to a dream had by Prince Ladislaus of Opola. An attack by the Tartars prompted the Prince to flee with the painting. He stopped in the town of Czestochowa. The painting was installed in a monastery and church there that the prince built for its protection. The monastery was overrun by the Hussites in 1430, but they were unable to remove the painting. 

 In 1655, Poland was overrun, leaving only the area around the monastery remained unconquered [sic]. After those remarkable events, Our Lady of Czestochowa became the symbol of the Polish National Unity and was crowned the Queen of Poland.

Russian troops in 1920, we are told, withdrew when they saw an image of the Virgin Mary in the clouds.

The Shrine is worth traveling to see. It is beautiful, both in itself and in the work and faith it represents. On October 9 a Year of Mercy Mass with Bishop Raica will be held at 11 a.m., outdoors, weather permitting. In case of inclement weather, the mass will be celebrated in adjacent St. Mary’s church.

Moving right along....

David and I cannot claim to have discovered the Au Sable River, but we did manage on this trip to find many beautiful little county roads, giving onto even smaller access roads that allowed us appreciate the river from uncrowded, tucked-away vantage points. “This is great!” David exclaimed joyously. “I don’t have any idea where I am!” To which I responded with matching happiness, “I’m not even looking at the map any more!” 

On one tiny dirt trail when we had to pull over to let a vehicle pass in the opposite direction, David and the other driver stopped to exchange a few brief, friendly words. In parting, David said, as he often does to gallery visitors in Northport, “Enjoy the day!” and the other fellow replied, “Keep ‘er watered down!”

From the Lumberman's Monument overlook

The little crossroads of McKinley was almost nothing but wonderful old log cabins. Log and stone – the vernacular architecture of northern Michigan. Not a starter chateau in sight!

Much of what we traveled over to Tawas to see would not be interesting to other people – a house and barn here, there an empty country corner filled with goldenrod where the primary family farm once stood, a peaceful country cemetery, and the framed photograph of a now-deceased old-timer, one of David’s shirttail cousins, in the restaurant where we ran into the cousin in person fifteen years before. That was the personal part of our pilgrimage, a kind of family time travel.

But we also experienced time travel of a different kind in the sweetly unspoiled nature of the Lake Huron shoreline. Do you remember Traverse City’s East Bay in the middle of the 20^th century? The little mom-and-pop motels and tourist cabins ringing the beaches? That is Lake Huron still today, from Tawas north to Alpena. The place we stayed had modern siding, but the line of little cabins looked like Monopoly houses (only white instead of green), and inside the knotty pine walls had that rich patina only time can bestow.

Door hardware and wall decor were many decades old, as well. The floor had a few perceptible slopes and dips, but that is all part of the charm of time travel.

I did not realize until morning that our road had curved around the shore as far as it had to reach East Tawas, and so the sun rose up the shoreline, rather than straight out across Lake Huron where I had expected it.

Downtown Tawas is lovely. It's also full of little surprises if you look more closely.

Carved wooden door

Lighthouse at Tawas Point

Farther north, little, hidden-away Harrisville was delightful!

Lovely lakeside park and marina (out of camera range) in Harrisville

Old historic train depot, Harrisville

We used to travel over to Alpena every spring when end-of-winter cabin fever got too fierce, and in those old days our destination was a marvelous old used bookstore and antique shop that reliably yielded up treasures. The bookseller has been up in Calumet for years now, but Alpena’s lovely old buildings are still there, and the town has a more prosperous atmosphere than we remembered from years ago. For instance, we had lunch in a hip little bar/restaurant that would have been unimaginable in Alpena’s old days. The front opened to the street, and there were tables out on the sidewalk. How Parisian!

All in all, we felt we had been away from home much longer than two days. We had seen so much! We saw old sights and new sights ... old places we’d seen before but didn’t remember ... things we thought were new that probably weren’t ... new places that will be new to us again the next time. All that was and will be fine. What I do hope is that the modest, unpretentious, friendly and welcoming atmosphere of the Sunrise Coast won’t change too, too much by the time we see it again. Maybe we shouldn’t wait too long? We definitely need to plan for a longer stay the next time.

Michigan! How fortunate we are to live in such a varied and beautiful state!