Septemberland

It’s still summer, but don’t tell the leaves. A few pioneer maples are already well on the way to full-clad autumn color, the sumac groves are flecked with pointilistic red, and along the roadsides, hints of purple and gold have begun to accent the sassafras.
This is the time of year, this time of slanting sun [...]

Lunch at the Grand Hotel

I have to confess that having lunch at Mackinac Island’s Grand Hotel is not something I’d have thought to do on my own. My mind just doesn’t naturally drift toward forty-dollar noontime meals, no matter how good the food may be and how elegant the setting. I’m good with a baloney sandwich.
But for her eighty-fourth [...]

A Day on the Island

In Michigan, we call it simply, “The Bridge.” Everyone knows what you mean when you say that, for while countless bridges punctuate our highway network, there is only one Bridge, and that is the Mackinac Bridge. The Mighty Mac: that elegant, five-mile-long structure which,spanning the turbulent, blue Straits of Mackinac, connects the Upper and Lower [...]

Mackinac Sunrise

Bright days start with a pale glow. With clouds present to serve as tinder, the glow becomes a sullen smolder that kindles on the horizon and spreads slowly upward, up across the eastern sky, its gathering flames invading the darkness with tranquil intensity.
I was lying in my bed in the Hamilton Inn on the Mackinac [...]

The Patterns Around Us

Rarely have I felt so insulted, at least by a plant.

Orchids and Dragonflies

They come from across the state and from out of state. They come from as far east as Ann Arbor and as far west as Chicago, and no doubt farther—naturalists and outdoor photographers on pilgrimage. To this small tract of land in Portage, Michigan, they come to see the orchid.
Michigan is home to many wild [...]

View from the Dune Top: P. J. Hoffmaster Park

I don’t know why the DNR hasn’t constructed an escalator to the dune overlook at P. J. Hoffmaster Park. No doubt it was just an oversight on the part of the planners, but it’s one I wish they’d correct, because trudging the stairway all the way to the top of that ridiculously tall sand mountain [...]

Michigan Seasons Now and Then

Picture yourself standing in a beautifully landscaped garden, gazing across Gun Lake at the far shoreline. Out on the waters, swimmers dive off of pontoon boats while speed boats go whizzing by with skiers in tow. Closer to land, at the ends of the countless docks which string along the lake’s circumference like wooden beads [...]

Deep Ducks

Ducks are deep. I say this with some hesitancy, since I also happen to think that Ronald McDonald is deep, an opinion not shared by everyone. But ducks are deeper. They’ve just got to be. Any bird that appears on the surface to be as comical as a duck has got to have plenty going [...]

Images of Grand Mere

All along the west coast of Lower Michigan, from its southern shores to its windy northern points, a vast tract of sandy beaches and dunes has created a landscape like no other—austere, often otherworldly, always beautiful. Swimmers, sun worshipers, and kite fliers use much of it to good advantage, crowding the state parks along Lake [...]

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