Today I found my first morel mushrooms of the year. A friend had texted me earlier in the day saying she’d found some. Had she not texted me, I wouldn’t have been on high alert during my hike, and I might’ve missed them. They were exactly where they should’ve been: in a mossy patch on the side of a…
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The goldenrod is browning. Queen Anne’s lace is closing up shop. The milkweed pods are bursting. Bloodroot — one of the earliest and loveliest spring wildflowers, the heart-shaped leaves of which stand tall through summer heat and storms — is starting to collapse under its own weight. Fall is…
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Last April, in a post about early spring, I wrote, “Fact is, spring will always find you. There is no repressing spring, no stopping it. It is a promise that is always kept. It is a wish that always comes true. How many things in life are like that?” What a different April we found ourselves in this…
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To live on the northern shores of Lake Michigan is to frequently confront the ancient past — whether in the form of Petoskey stones, or the glacial topography of dunes, moraines, erratic boulders, and kettle bogs. As a kid, I vacationed with my family on the Atlantic, where life is teeming…
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This was supposed to be a different post. I was all pumped up for a 10-mile hike on the wonderful Otter Creek / Platte Plains Trail, by Esch Beach. I’d been there when the early spring wildflowers were blooming, and this was going to be my autumnal bookend. But when I got there, my heart sank. The…
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