Michigan Outdoors: A 2008 Retrospective

This little guy appeared as intrigued by us as we were by him—“we” being my friend and fellow storm chaser Kurt Hulst and me.

Kurt and I were on a photo expedition near the Otto Audubon Sanctuary last Saturday, braving the cold in order to take advantage of the afternoon light weaving its magic over the Barry County State Game Area. You’d be hard put to find a more photogenic place in this part of Michigan. The region is a crazy quilt of rolling farmland and forested hills pockmarked by scores of lakes and wetlands and laced with streams.

Where whitetail deer are concerned, the area is Utopia. Just minutes prior, we had stopped to photograph a small herd convening in a snowy field. Now, a little farther down the road, we returned the stare of this lone yearling as he scrutinized us from the top of an embankment scant feet away. His picture seems a fitting way to cap off the year of 2008 in the Michigan outdoors.

It has been a year rich in experiences, leaving me with a storehouse of images residing both in my memory and my photo archives. Join me, and let’s backpaddle together through the seasons.

It wasn’t so very long ago that autumn transformed our landscape into a living kaleidoscope. Scarlet maples, gold and purple sassafras, coppery oaks…the forests resembled vast, Impressionistic canvases, drawing the eye like a magnet. Yet the fields also yielded portraits of their own—pictures of gentler glory and deeper texture, with purple exclamations of asters set against the quiet, burnished beauty of the prairie grasses. At a time of year when brilliant hues dominate the landscape, shifting one’s view to close-up yields rewards of a different kind.

The summer is both a revelation of greenness and a paradox of light and dark. Blown into full foliage by the long, bright days, the emerald canopy of the trees blocks out the sun rays that first warmed the forest floor out of hibernation and into bloom. Now the season of the hepaticas, wild leeks, and spring beauties is past. Lemon-like fruit hangs at the juncture of the May apples’ twin, umbrella-like leaves, the forest’s understory has filled out, and the woodland is a warm, shadowy cathedral infused with ambient green light.

But the sun that brightens the sky also energizes the mighty weather machine that cloaks the land in storm shadow. Summer is when squall lines sweep in from the west and northwest before advancing cold fronts, driving long, menacing arcus clouds across Lake Michigan and bringing high winds, lightning, thunder, rain, hail, and relief to the hot, muggy landscape.

Winter, autumn, summer…the progression of the seasons begins with the spring, and with Michigan backroads that lead us out of the winter into the first unfolding of warmth and wildflowers, the return of the songbirds, and the advent of bass fishing. This final image originally appeared in my first post for Waterlandliving.com, in celebration of the arrival of spring in Michigan. Now, standing at the cusp of 2009 and looking back, I’m also looking ahead. Winter has gotten off to a fierce start, and plenty of cold, snowy days lie ahead. But beyond them lies the promise of spring, when golden light coaxes the maples into bud and makes us glad we live in a state so richly blessed with natural beauty.