Miles of smiles

Determined to complete the ten-hour drive within the hours of daylight, carrying Red Canoe from the southernmost tip of Ohio to an unknown cabin on the lakeshore of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, an early morning’s start, by late afternoon, left us giddy with anticipation of a wonderful week.

click photo for a smile

And each hour further into a landscape that resembled the north woods of the Northeast, a place I grew to love as a child, made me wonder if I have been imprinted, much as a young animal identifies most strongly with those images to which he is first exposed.
Why the gritty texture beneath my feet or the silhouette of a jagged tree line against the evening sky, still sends the sensation of its being a perfect “fit,” even after years in different surroundings.
And why a place I've never before been, instantly feels like home.

Mackinac Bridge as seen from the U.P.

We amused ourselves imagining conversations involving this interesting display where we stopped to refill our gas tank.

Caption Contest
(Yes, those are 50 lb. bags of carrots!)

Of Flyways and Thruways (SWF)

The path is one of certainty.
A long, straight road, with few opportunities to escape—the trimmings bounding it edged, now, with field fencing sporting the bright orange drift guards of an upstate New York winter.
An otherwise gray drive in every way—from the concrete roadway, stained white with salt, to the thick clouds meeting snow-covered hills in the distance. And carrying, this time, a sadness that floods my mind with the many previous drives made over many previous years.


I have traveled the New York State Thruway countless times since leaving home for college thirty years ago, two figures waving from the driveway each time, as I left. Back and forth along its flat course from its eastern origin to its arrival in Buffalo, watching the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains dissolve into the wide, spreading land of the Niagara escarpment, and beyond. Measuring our progress in the passing of small river towns along the Mohawk, the smokestacks of industry, billowing. Until, curving southward at Lake Erie, past sloping hillsides planted in grapes, we reached Pennsylvania and Ohio. And made a new home.


With bags of snacks between us, and wrappings for winter weather stowed handily behind our seats, we left hugs and kisses, this time upon just one, and began, once again, the 12-hour journey, westward, to Ohio.
On this day, gazing mindlessly off into the gray, I saw large formations of geese crossing overhead, as never before. Their Vs shifting and sliding, as if drawn across by some unseen force, turning and tilting. One after another, in fluid strings of more than a hundred individuals.


And I watched, amazed at the sheer numbers in this unending dance that will, season after season, be performed.
The travelers above travelers—on Flyways and Thruways.

image credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

The Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge consists of over 7000 acres of wetland habitat in central New York State. It is situated "in the middle of one of the most active flight lanes in the Atlantic Flyway," and is cut in half by the NYS Thruway.

See more Skywatch here.