At one time it was bustling with activity; worried mothers checking and double checking to make sure all the kids and pieces of luggage were accounted for, grandparents eagerly waiting for grandchildren, or family members waiting for that first glimpse of a loved one returning from war.

 Today, the building is quiet, used only as a rundown old storage building.

 I wonder if Bill and Ma had any fond memories of this railroad depot.

 “My Dear Bill,

 This is a fine morning, clear but cool. I am washing out the doors and I am glad that about done for this year. The men went and picked apples yesterday afternoon. Liz gave Joe a bag of Russets. Good bye Ma.” 

September 28 1908 

We didn’t get just a little snow, either. I don’t know exactly how much fell, but as you can see from the photo, it was at least two-thirds of the way up to my knees on the trails at Seidman Park north of Ada. I’m six feet tall and I wasn’t standing in a drift; what you see was the average. In other words, we got lots of snow. Major snowage. Snowissimo.

Michiganders fall into two groups: those who love winter and those who hate it. There’s not much middle ground. There is, however, considerable flux. You can start the winter loving snow, and then sometime around February or March, cross a line and decide that you frankly loathe the stuff. Yet even those of us who at best merely tolerate the cold season because we must, have to admit there are moments of unsurpassed beauty and magic which only that pale old wizard, winter, can conjure up.

The first snowfall is such an occasion. An endless host of plump flakes cascading out of the December night, dipping and rising and dancing in the air currents, blanketing the ground in bridal white and lading the trees like thick frosting—this is Michigan winter at its best. When the sun rises on that confectionery landscape, you’d have to be a real Grinch not to admit that it’s a pretty wonderful thing. For that matter, even the Grinch would probably crack a wondering smile at the sight of the new-fallen snow.

Well-layered and with cameras slung around our necks, Lisa and I emerged from my car at Seidman Park and stepped into that fresh, first layer of snow. I had no idea it was so deep! But Lisa is every bit as much an outdoors person as I am, and of the two of us, she’s the one who has deer hunting in her blood. She’s not easily deterred, and neither am I. So off we went down the trail to see what the fields and woods had to offer.

When was the last time I had hiked these trails? My gosh, it must have been ten years ago. Moving to Caledonia shifted my attention to the attractions of Yankee Springs and rural Barry County, and I forgot about places to my north such as Seidman Park and the Egypt Valley State Game Area. That is, I almost forgot. On this snowy afternoon, I’m glad I remembered this beautiful park with its miles of hiking trails winding over tumbled fields, around ponds and wetlands, across wind-blown dunes and oak barrens, and through silent, snow-muffled forests.

There are varieties of snow. I’m no expert on this subject; I just know that it is so. There’s a big difference, for instance, between the frigid diamond chips that fall on extremely cold days, and the big, soft flakes that stick to just about anything they touch and pack readily into snowballs. This latter kind of snow—snow that falls during relatively warm days—is the stuff that clung to the branches and transformed the woods around Lisa and me into a Narnian fantasy. Strange shapes emerge out of such snow. Logs become white-hatted gnomes. Trees become sculptures of white clumps on black trunks that reach skyward, straining toward the graying evening sky.

Love it or hate it, winter is here—the months of minimalism, the season of black and white. At its worst, we’ll live with it. At its best, we’ll call it beautiful. Its beauty may not be the tenderness of spring, the richness of summer, or the flamboyance of fall, but it is there. When peaches-and-cream clouds drift above a sunlit, snowy landscape, then at least some of us will admit that winter, too, is a fair maiden.

Of course, we’re likelier to appreciate her beauty when we dress warmly and carry a camera.

October is the year’s latter April, a bridge between seasons and a month of many moods.

In October, you may find yourself wearing shorts and a T-shirt, or long pants and a jacket. It just depends. What kind of weather is on the menu? At the beginning of the month, chances are it’s balmy temperatures and crisp, blue skies; at the end, it’s likelier to be chill rains and iron-gray nimbostratus.

Are children aware how short the span is between now and when the snows fly?

When I was a child, I used to wonder what adults meant by the old adage, “Time flies.” Now I know. Take a breath and the leaves will be gone and the months of black, white, and gray will have settled in. Breathe again and the year 2009 will have passed. That’s how it is once you hit your fifties.

But a child, lost in the perpetual moment, experiences time differently for having experienced so little of it. Winter? What of it? It’s a carnival of snowmen and snowball fights and sledding, something to welcome with glee. And it is still weeks away. It might as well be months. The future inevitably arrives for a boy or girl; it just takes much longer to do so. Meanwhile, there are rope swings to swing on, and bikes to ride, and playground games to play, and leaf piles to shuffle through in the hazy glow of an Indian Summer afternoon.

Yet all the while, the wolf of winter is prowling close at hand, ready to pounce. I saw one of his relatives just last week while strolling with Lisa down the nature trail at Meijer Gardens. Actually, he didn’t look like such a bad chap—perfectly harmless, you might even say. There he stood at the woods edge, still as a statue. Well, okay, that’s because he was a statue, one of several animal sculptures scattered along the trail, and of countless other sculptures, from the modest to the monumental, that comprise Meijer’s remarkable, world-class sculpture park.

Like everywhere in Michigan, the Gardens are showing the effects of October. They just do it with a little more flair. If the countryside is punctuated here and there with fields of bright orange pumpkins, the Gardens are brimming with luminous hundred-pounders, veritable sumo wrestlers of the pumpkin world. They’re something to see, not just because they’re so huge, but also because there are so many of them.

Nevertheless, wonderful as the Meijer Gardens are, it is the raw, untamed edge of nature that appeals to me most, and never moreso than in October…

…when the forests become a coat of many colors for the great outdoors to wear…

…when the sun’s fading rays cloak the marshlands in shadow while burnishing the distant trees in  light…

…when Canada geese congregate in the waters and wetlands and make plans for the long trip south…

…when cold, rainy days make me glad to be inside, sitting in my easy chair with a mug of tea near at hand and my keyboard in my lap, writing.

Exactly as I have been doing.

That is what afternoons such as this are made for.

May you and I enjoy the October days still left to us this year as the gracious gift that they are.

 One thing that impressed us was not only the talent of the artists, but the imaginative and “out of the box” ways to display their entries. One entry, “The Furniture City Sets the Table for the World of Art’, is basically a large table with two chairs. And while the table and chairs are beautifully painted and probably the largest you have ever seen, what grabs your attention is that they are set on top of the Blue Bridge crossing the Grand River in Downtown Grand Rapids.

 Another favorite entry of many of the people was “Nessie on the Grand”. Nessie is a life size multi-media sculpture of the Loch Ness monster placed in the Grand River.

 Now both of these entries were impressive, but had they just been placed in a building or out on a city street, they would have never had the impact that they did and would not have stood out in the crowd.

 I think this is something to keep in mind when trying to sell your property.  If you are selling a house, do something unique to set it apart. Do something creative with tile or color. If you don’t have the creative ideas to do something different, find someone who can give you suggestions. It doesn’t have to take a lot of money. It just has to set you apart from the rest. Something that will make prospective buyers remember your house. 

 Thursday night the winners of ArtPrize will be announced. Nessie and the Table are both in the Top 10.  See?  It pays to make a little extra effort!

Alaska is home to the Fred W Ruehs Park, a Kent county park located along the Thornapple River. The park is only five acres, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in river frontage, lots of it. Plenty of room for a riverfront picnic and the day I was there, many families were enjoying a late summer picnic.

On February 14, 2004, Kevin proposed to Bren on the high bank side of the river. A round bronze plaque is glued to a large rock indicating it as their proposal site. We have no idea if Bren said Yes or No.

Alaska does not have many commercial storefront buildings today, and maybe it never did. A Sam’s Joint restaurant is one of the few business establishments in the village. Sam’s Joint is located in the former home of the Bavarian Inn. The building started out as a church and many remnants, including the stained glass windows, remain as a reminder of the building’s past.

Sam’s is always interesting with an eclectic assortment of antiques and all sorts of pictures and memorabilia on the walls. You will even find a boat affixed to the ceiling. We chose not to sit there just in case.

When driving thru Alaska or any another Michigan village, slow down and don’t be in such a hurry.

This is the time of year, this time of slanting sun that antiques the farmlands with golden evening light, when the countryside moves into its loveliest season. The corn is still green and the alfalfa lush, but the soybean fields are turning into patchworks of emerald and yellow, and asters frost the landscape. A rustic, ancient feel is spreading like the goldenrods across the meadows. It is the ambience of September, when summer is not fully over and autumn has not quite arrived. Welcome to Septemberland.

Now is a time when the country roads beckon, and it is good to heed their call. I did so yesterday, driving north beyond Lowell toward Gowen.

It is lake country up that-away. When the glaciers retreated from the area, they left as their legacy a large network of streams, rivers, wetlands, and bodies of water ranging from large, all-sports lakes such as Lincoln, Bass, Maston, Dickerson, and Clifford, to tiny Peterson Lake and Mud Lake (there were, at last count, slightly more than a zillion Mud Lakes in the state of Michigan), as well as scores of nameless ponds.

The rolling landscape is also a crazy quilt of forests, orchards, and farmlands. Not far to the east, just past Greenville and Belding, the vast stretch of the Flat River State Game Area affords decent populations of ruffed grouse and deer. But of course, folks who live out here have their own options for hunting apart from public lands. That’s one of the perks of a lifestyle beyond the reaches of the city.

As for me, well…I’m a scenery junkie. Farming may not be my calling, but I spent my childhood in the country, and the countryside is in my blood, along with my mother’s innate curiosity about what lies over the next hill. This is a beautiful time of year to find out, a time to break up the tedium of life with a drive down the backroads. Set aside the GPS, consult the maps only when you have to, and let your eyes and your thirst for discovery guide you.

Along a dirt road whose name I never paid attention to, I pulled aside during yesterday’s drive to photograph a picturesque farm. The sun was poised just above the horizon, pouring its farewell rays over a long, verdant reach of alfalfa. At the far end, an elegant old farmhouse stood, tucked away in the shade of large, gracious maples. A well-kept, rusty-red barn glowed in the fading light, and toward the end of the field, a couple of horses nibbled at the grass by the woods edge.

A few minutes later and a few miles farther north, I stood on the east shore of Lincoln Lake as the sun finally dipped below the treeline and the twilight drew its curtain across northern Kent County. The flawlessly clear sky had turned from crystal blue to cantaloupe, a saturation of yellow and orange that quickly faded into dim luminescence as the stars winked on.

Daylight no longer lingers perpetually as it does in June and July. This is September, the gateway to autumn’s splendor and the slide toward winter. Apples are ripe in the orchards, and bursts of impossibly purple asters dot the roadside. Septemberland beckons. What are you waiting for? Grab your camera and take a drive.

It’s August  and one doesn’t have to go far to find a supply of fresh, juicy Michigan peaches. U-pick orchards, farmer’s markets, roadside stands, and even grocery stores have this summer treat readily available. 

Michigan ranks 6^th in the nation for growing peaches, but did you know that the most  widely grown variety of peach in the world, the Red Haven, was developed at Michigan State University?

The woman writing this postcard was canning 2 bushels of peaches and I am sure she enjoyed them all winter long. I don’t know much about canning peaches, but I know store bought canned peaches can’t begin to compare to the ones my mother canned when I was a child.

I probably won’t get any home canned peaches this year, but I am hoping for a fresh peach and blueberry crisp with vanilla ice cream!

Today we have a guest post from Mr Ed H. He is a resident of Big Crooked Lake in Kent County.

For me there are a couple things that make Big Crooked Lake unique. Probably the best feature is the lack of a public access. This drastically cuts down on the amount of watercraft traffic. Big Crooked Lake is a 150 acre all sports lake but it is not unusual to come out on a Saturday afternoon around 2 PM and not see a single boat on the lake.

We like that because we enjoy the quiet but that is not to say that we don’t appreciate an all sports lake because we do, just not all weekend. Unless it is a holiday weekend the watercraft traffic is usually very light until about 4 PM. 80 percent of the property owners are year round so they are busy doing things and normally don’t come out to play until later in the afternoon.

Another unique feature is the shoreline and the north end of the lake. The lake lives up to its name with a crooked shoreline, an island and a channel that eventually widens to expose a north end of the lake that is almost as large as the south end. The best thing about the north end is the shore being wetlands and not likely to ever be developed. You can either park or take a slow boat ride past that shore and look north of a clear blue sky day and believe you are in the UP.

When you look at property values amongst Kent County Lakes BCL does not rank with the Big Whitefishes, Murray’s and Bostwicks but that does not bother me at all. Although Murray has some character is also has a public boat launch with lots of parking and can get very busy at times.  Bostwick is pretty much round and boring to me and Whitefish has a huge landfill just east of it and if that does not turn you off when you get off at the exit the constant swarms of seagulls or highway noise might occasionally get your attention. All that being said it is hard to understand why the property values on this lake are lower but that works just fine for me. As my wife and I often say, Big Crooked Lake is the best kept secret amongst waterfront property in Kent County.

Today, we have a guest post from Mr. Aaron K.

Memories are contagious.  That’s quite obvious as I return to Pickerel Lake and beautiful Pickerel Lake Park for the first time in many years.  Located in Cannon Township just off  of Ramsdell Road, its very sight brings me back to a more youthful time, a time when fishing with my father and brothers was the best time of the summer.

A picturesque (though not entirely sheltered) place, Pickerel Lake is accompanied by expansive trails for strolling and enjoying the Park’s natural beauty.   Near the main pebble trail I see my first Garter Snake of the season.  Initially his presence is made known by a faint brushing sound in the grass just off to my right as I walk by.  After noticing the Garter, I look up ahead on the trail and see a Northern Water Snake basking on the trail.  My approach scares her back to the brush.

Of course, I am not here for the wildlife alone.  Memories are another reason.  I knew I would be reminded of the fond past of my childhood and early teen years when I came here.  It’s what I wanted.  As soon as I hear the blackbirds cackling in the nearby rushes and walk down the boardwalk across the Lake, a reminiscent smile resounds in my heart.  This is our secret.  Inner joy shouts in these quaint memories quietly relived. 

Pickerel Lake and its adjoining Park bring me back several years.  It’s part of the gorgeousness and native peace of the place.  Though the water is dark from rain, and I see no fish today, it does not matter much.  There is much more wildlife to observe.  Chipmunks and rabbits and other animals will greet you along the trails.

Whether statuesque herons or flitting swallows, birds are also abundant here.  When you visit in the spring or summer take a moment to listen to the songbirds speaking in the trees overhead.  There is something memorable about those sounds that will stay with you forever.  Pickerel Lake is just a memory at times.  But today, it becomes a pleasant reality once again. 

Granted, my opinion may be a bit slanted, as I know the Flat better than any other river except the Thornapple. Years ago, a friend and I canoed from Belding to Lowell, a distance of eleven miles as the crow flies. But a river isn’t a crow, and its ideas of how to get from point A to point B involve many a twist and turn. Going by memory and looking at the map, I’d say that my buddy and I covered roughly twenty miles in what amounted to a full working day of paddling—so precisely an eight-hour shift that we could have punched time cards by it.

Years later, I and my pastor at the church I attended dropped a couple of kayaks into the water up at Greenville and drifted downstream all the way down to Belding. The crow on that day would have had an easy five-mile flight, but the river had its own creative ideas about how to accomplish the trip. Not having looked at a map, neither of us were prepared for all those curves through the state game land, and particularly for the diversion we encountered on what we thought was the last leg of the journey. At a rough guess, I’d say we paddled twelve miles that day.

But time on the Flat River is always time well spent. With high, wooded banks punctuated by marshy shores and open fields, and with broad, lazy backwaters above its dams, the Flat offers an ever-changing feast of scenery for kayakers and canoeists. Among its most distinctive and picturesque views are its two covered bridges.

Five river miles upstream from Fallasburg Park lies Whites Bridge. A historical marker tells its story:

 This picturesque covered bridge, one of the last of its kind in Michigan, was built in 1867 by Jared N. Brazee and J. N. Walker, builders of several covered bridges in this area. The name of the bridge derives from the White family, a prominent pioneer family. The crossing of the river here was known as White’s Crossing before the first primitive bridge was built. In 1840, a bridge of log-corduroy construction was erected. It was replaced by this covered bridge, costing $1,700. It is of the through-truss type with a gable roof. The hand-hewed trusses are sheeted over with rough pine boards. Wooden pegs and handcut square iron nails are used to secure the various parts of the bridge. White’s Bridge has been in constant use since 1867, proof that it was well made.

Just upstream lies the Whites Bridge Dam. The stretch of river that begins below the dam and flows below Whites Bridge past Fallasburg Park and on into Lowell is, in my opinion, one of the prettiest pieces for kayaking—or canoing, though when the water is low, parts of it are a bottom-scraper.

Once you reach Fallasburg Park, look for the Flat River’s second, better-known covered bridge. The Fallasburg Bridge lies at a curve of the road on the southeast fringe of the park, right by the historical village of Fallasburg. If you live anywhere in Kent County, and if you enjoy picnicking at parks and outdoors activities, then chances are good you not only know of this beautiful old bridge, but have driven over it at one time or another. It’s a sturdy and serviceable tribute to the craftsmanship of the pioneer era in Michigan. Just be careful not to speed across it. A sign on the bridge advises motorists that there’s a $5.00 fine for proceeding any faster than a walker’s pace!

The covered bridges of the Flat River. Rustic, rugged, and elegant, they’re a part of Michigan history—a reminder of simpler times when beauty, form, and function came together in things that were made to last.