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The woods near Arcadia, Michigan; that blue haze at the horizon is Lake Michigan
I hope you can put up with winter a little longer.
I loved being with my raven sister on the weekend, up in our part of the world, the place we went as kids on vacation in the northwest finger of the mitt of Michigan. We took down Christmas ornaments and lights in the lodge. It’s her hobby to decorate, and I helped her de-decorate. I wound thousands of white lights into balls, for hours while she wrapped 1,500 glass ornaments into boxes. I don’t care about decorating any more, but I got to be with her and watch her in her glorious element. And we watched the Oscars in her cozy condo in the hundred-year-old lodge.
The Anniversary Ball in November at the Inn
Beach Lodge, one of the buildings at Portage Point Inn
Outdoors I got to breathe, walk and listen to the "nothing" of winter in that great north country, among spruces, pines, and birches on the hills around frozen Portage Lake and up on the bluff at Arcadia looking out over Lake Michigan. In winter, these contoured hills, coned trees, and white and green clapboard buildings of the lodge are quiet, unlike in summer when tourists swarm to the aqua waters of northwest Michigan. Only a few lodgers spent the night under neighboring roofs. Hardly a vehicle passed as we parked on the shoulder of M-22 and crossed to climb the lookout over Lake Michigan. Snow quiets and slows everything, even up the road where skiers were shushing down the hills.
Across Lake Michigan, to the right, is Wisconsin, about 60 miles away;
elsewhere Lake Michigan gets to 118 miles across
elsewhere Lake Michigan gets to 118 miles across
I claim this quiet northern winter, though I have never lived there. I spent two weeks of summer vacation with my family at a cottage up the road for just a few years, half of which are prior to my memory. A few weeks’ making, and this terrain is mine. I don’t know if I will ever move to another state. (I have done so previously, even to another country.) I drove four and a half hours to be there Saturday and four and a half hours back again Monday. It was worth it, but how could I move even farther away?
Before winter is over, I have to post the winter poem: The Snow Man, by Wallace Stevens.
The Snow Manby Wallace Stevens
One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow; . . .
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter . . .
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves, . . .
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place . . .
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
Portage Point Inn
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