Snail Trails – Platte River
These subtle patterns in the sandy banks are the work of freshwater snails. You can see their tiny spiral shells — the dark specks in the water, about the size of my tiniest fingernail.
Platte River by Canoe
A generous ranger from Platte River loaned me his canoe, so I was able to float down from the Platte River weir to the mouth (where it joins Lake Michigan in a long sandbar). It was sunny and 80 degrees! The shallow river was full of huge salmon heading upstream. When they dove underneath the canoe, I was reminded of being a teenager, on my bicycle, peddling down the gravel shoulder of a country road with semi trucks blasting past.
Platte River
The air over the mouth of the Platte River is filled with optimistic gulls and patient cormorants; the banks are marked with raccoon tracks. If there are black bear in the Platte area, they’re on their way….
Empire Bluff Trail, Sunset
After a blustery day, the dark skies cleared just in time for a spectacular sunset. I’d hiked up to the lookout at Empire Bluffs Trail to sketch, so I had a front chair view for the event.
Milkweed Silks
Okay, I guess this “cool weather” thing could be more than a trend. It might just be autumn now. One day the fields were gold and the milkweed pods were green — the next day they’d cracked open and the fields were white with drifting silks.
Empire Dunes – hike to Treat Farm
Empire Dunes – hike to Treddle/Treat Farm
Apples on a gnarled, untended apple tree.
Perched Dunes
At Sleeping Bear Dunes, some of the sand dunes formed on top of a bluff along the edge of Lake Michigan, while others are lower, along (and sloping down to) the shoreline.
Sleeping Bear Dunes
I must apologize for not posting even a single summary description of my INCREDIBLE artist residency at Isle Royale, but the summer has slipped away. Following that STELLAR experience, a short trip to “camp” on the Yellowdog Plains turned into a major stay. I recently returned to Minnesota for a week, to connect with friends and repack, drove to Wisconsin to see my folks, and now I’m here in Michigan again; now at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
After an abnormally early 4 am departure from the farm in Wisconsin (unheard of for a poet!), I had a truly serene drive through Upper Michigan. I think I was in Escanaba before anyone else woke up. The trip over the Mackinaw Bridge was smooth sailing — a few thunderstorms had passed to the south just before I reached “Lower Michigan.” I put that in quotes because everything is relative. Folks from the cities at the BOTTOM of Michigan call this area “Northern Michigan” but also “Lower Peninsula.” It can get confusing. They say the Sleeping Bear Dunes are located in the “Western” area of “the Lower Peninsula of Northern Michigan.” In my head, Northern Michigan still means a view of Lake Superior!
My home base for this residency is Tweedle Farm. My studio is set up in a sunroom off the big open kitchen. My time is very much my own, here. The October light is wonderful — soft, diffused, muted colors. The fields have turned amber, gold, rust, russet, maize, ochre, umber. Some of the maples, basswoods and dune grass are brilliant sap-green, while others are blazing up into crimsons and yellows. So far I’ve been busy writing, sketching, and exploring the area around Empire, including an old tree farm on the bluff behind my farmhouse, the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, Cottonwood Trail, north as far as Glen Arbor and Glen Haven, and south as far as Frankfort, Point Betsie, Platte River area, etc.
As always, serendipity is on my side. I’ve already stumbled into several awesome spots and situations. Yesterday, for example, I saw HUNDREDS of huge King salmon swimming upstream in the shallow Platte River, heading in from Lake Michigan, to spawn. The river is shallow and gravel-sand bottomed. Just up from where I first spotted them, they were impounded at a DNR/NPS weir — the fish-gates were closed across the river, and those huge fish were absolutely roiling thick in the water, all fins and shadows and undulating tails. Tomorrow I’ll go back to see eggs and fish being harvested.
The park’s short interpretive film, shown at the visitor center, talks about the native legend that explains the creation of the “Sleeping Bear Dune” (a visible named feature of the park’s headlands) and the twin Manitou Islands. In the legend, a mother bear swims across the Lake to safety but here cubs lag behind. She waits and waits, but her cubs never make it. She falls asleep on the shore, and becomes the Dune, a slumbering, grieving mother bear. The islands are raised up to mark the bear cubs graves. The film ends with the thought that what we experience as “reality” — the land, our lives, every detail — is just the elaborate dream of the sleeping bear. I really found this a profound and moving idea, one with echoes in several world religions and even reflected in philosophies into the nature of “reality” and “time.” My own dreams have been incredibly vivid lately. I’ll try to pay closer attention to them.
