Endlessly Remarkable Quiddity
Like most butterflies, monarchs specialize in one host plant: in their case, it’s milkweed. That’s their nursery. Accept no substitutes.
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climate change, Michigan, nature
Not Consumed
What does it mean, I wonder, to encounter a burning bush, flaming but not consumed, and hear nothing? Beauty manifests God, but what if God does not call your name out of the flames? Only silence. No appointment with destiny. You admire for a moment and walk on by.
Farm Refugia and Church on the Edges
People were doing this. Churches were organizing community gardens and small farms, trying to combine faith practice, community, discipleship, health, justice. Healing land and community at once, reconnecting faith to place.
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Michigan, nature, spirituality
Riding the Wind
At one point, Trevor was down below looking for his GPS, foolishly leaving Ron and me in charge. Well, here comes a gust of wind. We immediately started rounding up and almost burying the rail.
Meanwhile Messes, Meanwhile Graces
Meanwhile, healing takes a long time, and the first stages look like a mess. The grasses are scruffy, the trees old and some dying. Windthrow and snags are a key part of a habitat in equilibrium anyway, but seeing them on a golf course makes the place look neglected and unkempt. As the LCWM website points out, “in restoration, ugliness is often the first sign of progress.”
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memoir, Michigan, nature, Uncategorized
Cutover Dreams: Michigan Folk Songs Updated
Maybe this is why my favorite songs on the album are the most melancholy.
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cultural commentary, Michigan, nature, pop culture
Coastal Ingenuity: Up North Tales
In honor of the official beginning of summer, I shall relate some maritime history of the Great Lakes. I knew almost nothing about maritime history until last summer, when my husband and I visited the Sleeping Bear Point Coast Guard Station Maritime Museum near Glen Haven, Michigan. (Acronym: SBPCGSMM?) One can find this attraction “up
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dunes, Michigan
Blizzard, Looking Out
Morning, west window The sky feels oddly bright, considering the snow thickly falling in clustered flakes. The wind gusts, whirling flakes into powder, snowglobing my backyard vista. For a moment, a cloud of white obscures the trees, the neighbors’ backyards, the whole world. I exist inside a house inside an utter blank. Then the wind
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memoir, Michigan, nature
Pitcher’s Thistle
What is the value of a thistle? We don’t entirely know. I suppose God does. I suppose the little prickler gives praise to God in its own thistly way, just by being itself in cooperation with other nearby creatures being themselves. Is that enough for us to give it some respect, help it along?