The weekend weather

Last weekend left the world white.

For a while, I watched from the window--as a wave from the west brought wind and fluffy flakes, turning the woods into a wonderland.



I went for a walk along the trails, weaving my way around the wide circle,
the few frosty flakes already wet and melting.


The slightest snow, wonderful

on this first day of winter.

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Underneath it all

It doesn’t look like much, perhaps even an oversight—the terrarium left sitting on the front porch stoop, while others’ homes are now tidied for Christmas. But, the frosted glass and pile of leaves within are there, just as I like them.
Something’s going on--underneath it all.

Giant Leopard Moth caterpillar

As summer days were waning and butterflies had moved on, I found a hairy caterpillar wearing his woollies for winter—the prickly, black bristles that sprout from bumpy knobs in rings winding around his body. Bands of red skin flashed through them, as he bent and wiggled along. Intrigued, I kept him—and placed him with three more in the terrarium that always waits, ready, for something to come creeping.

Swainson's Thrush watching

For several warm weeks, they ate. And I was happy to bring them their favorite—short stems of that unwelcome honeysuckle, with the tender, fresh leaves at the tip. Then the days turned sharply colder and from the tree above, leaves fell in piles to the ground. Slower and slower, each day, they moved. Until they one day, I found them curled head to tail, resting in slight depressions they’d found or made for themselves in the rich, dark dirt I’d given them.


I peek in on them now, from day to day, as wintry frost lines the windows of their room.
Underneath the leafy blanket, next year's beauty sleeps.

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Heartland

We traveled up the highway in the dark, leaving the city lights behind, as flat farmland unrolled around us in every direction. Aside from the occasional cluster of buildings whose pointed cone roofs rose above the faint forms of small homes, their lights glowing warmly within, there was much of nothing to see.

Then against the barren black, one red, flashing light in the distance became many.
And a broad, pulsing bank appeared, hundreds of acres across.
On the horizon, beat the heart of a sleeping giant.


By day, it looks quite different.
The tall turbines of Horizon Wind Energy stretch in lines, or arrays, towering up to 300 feet above the fields in northwestern Indiana. While beneath them, combines and trucks roll like the toys of a child--the season’s harvest, now, both wind and corn.



Operational since October 2009, Meadow Lake Wind Farm’s 121 wind turbines, whose rotors and blades each sweep an area 250 feet across, have the capacity to provide 60,000 homes with clean energy each year.

farm vehicles working beneath turbines (above)
close-up of area beneath turbines for scale (below)

Harvesting

Clean and white, their long arms slowly and silently sweep.
By night, their presence nothing more than a heartbeat.

wind turbines above farm fields
(click to enlarge)

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In Hiawatha's Footsteps

Tahquamenon Falls, Michigan

the Upper Falls from the platform

The Tahquamenon River (rhymes with phenomenon) flows north into Lake Superior, after winding nearly 100 miles through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to empty into Whitefish Bay. From swamps lined with hemlock and spruce, their tannins having stained its rushing waters brown, it passes here, over the Upper Falls in Tahquamenon State Park, falling 50 feet from a magnificent rocky bed, 200 feet across.
A viewing platform holds visitors from the edge and steers them along a partially paved, intermittently boarded walkway, scattered with signs and heavily treed with birch and dense evergreen.
Years ago, the Ojibwa walked these woods—traveling this river in their birch bark canoes, hunting these woods from its shore.

the Lower Falls,
Tahquamenon State Park

We stepped from the boardwalk, leaving the hollow footsteps of galloping children at the river’s edge, and entered the dark and quiet woods. A narrow, marked trail crossed a small feeder stream then climbed up a hill where patches of sunlight fed an assortment of ferns on its bank, and heavy moss grew soft on fallen logs beneath their shadow. Though still September, already the leaves of poplar and birch were fading and fallen—the winding trail, no more than an earthen path between them. And our footsteps, barely heard.




From behind a small hemlock, scurrying steps suddenly stopped. And we peeked beneath its lowest branch to see three dark birds, just off the trail, several feet in front of us. Not rising in the flurry of flapping wings as I would have expected, the small group of Ruffed Grouse barely moved, disappearing in their stillness against the shaded leaves. And as I sat squarely on the dirt, inching forward with my camera, they stayed, perched on the low branches, peeking back at me. Then in no hurry, stepped off and crossed to the other side of the trail, following the hillside past the patches of sunlit fern.
Here, on a quiet trail in the land of Tahquamenaw, it was as it could have been, in years past.
As if I walked in Hiawatha's footsteps.

Ruffed Grouse

From an assortment of sources, I have learned that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Song of Hiawatha, which was written based upon legends of the Ojibwa and other Native American peoples, refers to “the rushing Tahquamenaw,” a spelling variation coming from an Ojibwa word meaning “dark berry.”
Written in several forms, some dating back to Jesuit maps published in 1672, this word has varied in spelling from Outa koua minan to Otikwaminang, Outakwamenon, Tanguamanon, Toumequellen and Tahquamenaw.
From Wikipedia:
"The current name for the Tahquamenon River in the Ojibwa language is Adikamegong-ziibi, "River at where the Whitefish are found." This name is also the naming basis for the Whitefish Point and Whitefish Bay, both known earlier as Tahquamenaw."

Tansy

Pearly Everlasting

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Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

The pictures worth a thousand words...

northern shore of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan,
Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

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An Ocean of a Lake

American Marram grass on the dunes of Lake Superior

I pause, wandering the dimly lit aisles of a small, densely packed general store coupled with one of the few gas stations sparsely scattered across the northernmost shore of the U.P. of Michigan. Bread and milk, canned goods, a few frozen confections and assorted toiletries share shelf space beside a broad selection of fishing lures, beef jerky and t-shirts.

Sea Rocket, Cakile edentula,
on the beach at Grand Marais

We arrived here the day before, after several hours’ drive along the dusty, unpaved roads connecting the small communities along the northern shore of Lake Michigan with the more remote villages bordering the larger lake to the north—Lake Superior, Gitche Gumee, Big Water.



We walked at sunset along the shore of this cleanest of the Great Lakes, 160 miles across and 350 miles from side to side. Gentle waves washed smooth colorful stones in the shallow water beneath our feet. While, just out of the lapping waves’ reach, piles of larger stones left higher on the sand suggested this calm is sometimes otherwise.

A gull at sunset

As we approached, gulls flew up from where they’d been standing, facing the wide water, in a long trail of white to float and bob on the still, evening surface.

This is Grand Marais.
Beyond its bold beauty is its space apart from all else.


A t-shirt on the rack says it quite plainly.

End of the earth…2
Grand Marais…4

tracks on the beach

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