My longest vacation in years is now officially over and I head back to the widget mines tomorrow. Hopefully I can remember all of my passwords.
A few vacation snaps to remind me of my week in my favorite place with my favorite people.
Luckily, after a somewhat disheartening experience “floating down the river”, my dad, Miss L’s “Bompa”, was around to save the day with a fishing trip.
I’m not allowed to reveal the exact location of the favorite fishing hole, but it was a successful outing. Miss L stated emphatically that she caught forty fish, including the first and the largest. I was content to let her celebrate this although I think her tally was closer to thirteen and they were mostly little bluegill and perch. My rock bass would likely have taken the prize for largest.
We are a catch and release family most of the time and I was proud that my daughter was totally non-squeamish about putting worms on hooks and taking fish off hooks, as well as my self-started tradition of smooching the fish before they were tossed back into the cool brown glittering depths.
Yesterday was one of those really beautiful, crystal-clear Up North days and it wasn’t too hot, and wasn’t too cold. It was a big sky, pine-scented day colored green and gold and sparkles-on-the-water kind of day.
My folks are lucky enough to live close to Riverside Canoe Trips, a great trading-post kind of establishment on the Lower Platte river on the edge of the Sleeping Bear. They have a general store full of Up North trinkets – t-shirts, postcards, Petoskey stone jewelry, moccasins and beads – and the property swarms with adolescents working their summer jobs running vans full of canoes, tubes, kayaks and tourists. They are a group of the most amiable, cheerful kids you’ll ever meet, all tanned golden brown with toothpaste-model smiles. Our van kid was earnest and helpful and made sure Miss L was in her booster seat and chatted about his upcoming college career at Michigan State and I could just imagine Miss L as a big grown up girl working there someday over a summer and just loving it.
I had been dreaming of giving Miss L a treat on our vacation and spending a few hours on the river. Kayak and canoe trips were out, as their routes cross Loon Lake, which is deep and cold, and I felt unsafe for an almost-six year old. Tubes seemed like a perfect option – you put in below the weir, and float to the beach at Lake Michigan. The river is warm and not too deep, and cuts through pine woods and wetlands, sandy banks full of Sleeping Bear nature. Turtles and sleek brown fish in the shallows, places to portage and sit in the warm sand under tall pines with dragonflies darting. Easy peasy. I imagined us floating in the sunshine and laughing gaily and pretending we were hobbits or old-time explorers. Bouyed by my excitement, Miss L was thrilled and ebullient as we walked down the winding gravel road to the weir on the Lower Platte. I tied our tubes together and we dropped in and that was about the last happy moment she had for the two-hour trip down the river to Lake Michigan.
“Mommy, we’re not going very fast.”
“Mommy, those people are going faster than we are. They’re going to beat us. Oh, they’re in kayaks? We should get a kayak next time.”
“What is that crinkling noise? Snacks? It sounds like a bag…oh, just your phone in that plastic bag? There aren’t any snacks? Why didn’t we bring snacks?”
“I’m cold / hot” (insert proper temperature here every 5-7 minutes)
“MOMMY why are we stuck on this riverbank twirling in circles?? You’re going to have to get off and push.”
“I don’t mean to argue, and I know it sounds like I am arguing, but this life jacket is really ruining my experience.”
“Can I get off now?”
“I have to go to the bathroom… What do you MEAN I have to go in the RIVER?!?”
“Are we there yet?”
For a grownup, the thought of idly floating down an isolated river on a sunny morning with nothing particular to do is pure paradise, but for a five-year old, it was not entertaining. And tubing sounds easy, but it’s not in certain places. The wind is stiff along Lake Michigan. The Lower Platte is mostly very shallow, knee deep, with a warm brown current over clean sand and river stone, but in spots, it meanders without a swift current, and it is very easy to get pushed onto a bank or into a curve and just not be able to get out. Tubes are not maneuverable, they tend to helplessly spin, and I had a couple of bad moments. At one point, I saw no other alternative except to hop off the tube to push us out. I promptly sunk up to my thighs in muck, and in desperation pulled a thick birch branch out of the bank to lean on. As I was struggling for purchase, flailing in the muck, I bruised my foot on something, and as I hopped in the mud trying not to swear or cry, Miss L’s little face appeared over the edge of the tube. “We’re still not moving, Mommy. Did I say that we should get a kayak? I really thought we shouldn’t go tubing….HEY!! CAN I GET A STICK TOO?”
Those moments do not bring out best-in-class parenting.
That stick became my only friend on that river adventure. There were many moments when I cursed myself for not renting a paddle or for even thinking in any part of my stupid brain that this would be a fun thing to do. The stick was my paddle and a push-pole, and I clutched it and thanked the poor beaver from whose den I had yanked it. Thank you, beaver, I thought as I pushed desperately through another wind gust, thank you for sacrificing your weight-bearing structural element to save myself and my child on this river. (These moments also bring out extreme melodrama.) And for some reason, it only seemed to be us struggling. As I spun and pushed and heaved and prayed, flotillas of laughing drunk people passed on, seemingly without effort. Teenagers lolled on half-inflated tubes and called cheery greetings. They always seemed to be in the current and putting in no effort whatsoever.
There were some nice moments on the river, which I think is the most beautiful place in the world. I thought I had mostly convinced Miss L that it was an overall very nice experience, but by the last bend in the river, when the golden sand dunes of the Lake Michigan beach appeared, I was actually walking in the river pulling the tubes along while Miss L muttered discontentedly in her perch. My parents had been in the beach lot for an hour waiting for us, and they stood on the bank waving as I soggily flailed upriver. My mom cheered and swathed Miss L in a towel and walked her back to the car and I heard Miss L say,
“That was NOT A GOOD TIME. Did you know that all we did was FLOAT DOWN THE RIVER!?”
Miss L and I arrived in the land beyond time – Up North – and have officially started our vacation with a beach day yesterday. There was a bit of debate until we decided that Peterson Road Beach in the Sleeping Bear was the right place for us. It’s a winding drive through the woods along a narrow dirt one-track, and the beach itself is much less crowded than other Lake Michigan beaches. It was cool and sunny and perfect, the water is still ice cold.
I got a little sunburned and later in the afternoon I had to stop at the A&W in Frankfort for a root beer. The A&W has been there for as long as I can remember, since I was a little kid coming up here for vacations, and everyone knows that root beer is the best summer afternoon drink for sunburns.
It’s been a heck of year already, and this vacation feels like such a gift. I’m glad I’m safely here for yet another major astrological shift. I know I sound like a wingnut, but every time something happens in the sky, I honestly do feel like my boat has been tipped yet again and I’m swimming in a rough current. According to Mystic Mamma, tonight’s Full Moon in Capricorn will be another big one:
Today we’ve planned some bike riding and farmer’s marketing. My sunburn already feels better, thanks to all of that root beer.
I’m enjoying my Sunday morning lie-in in my favorite way, propped up in bed with my computer, a cup of coffee, and the windows wide open to sunshine and birdsong. Also the Weather Channel, but that didn’t sound quite so lyrical. I’m sort of addicted to the Weather Channel. For some reason, I find the constant flow of information about weather in other parts of the country very soothing. It seems to remind me that I am not alone in my own little weather bubble. Emmett and Sarge are out playing dress-up with Miss L in her room and eyeballing Gaston – the fish – with evil intent. They are, I think, still recovering from the trauma of July 4. They spent most of the booming fireworks either hanging from the screens or hiding under the bed.
Southeast Michigan has been blessed with an amazing weather weekend, sunny and clear and warm without being uncomfortable. Miss L and I spent the day of the 4th in our happy place with a bag of birdseed and binoculars.
In addition to feeding the birds, we had a little chipmunk following us closely to pick up the dropped birdseed. He even came right up and took seed out of my hand, leaving a generous smear of chipmunk drool. Miss L knows better than to try to feed a rodent with her bare hand so she kept a safe distance and rolled her eyes at me.
We were so busy having fun that I didn’t get out to run until midday yesterday, and pulled out a pretty pathetic 4 miles with a lot of wheezing even though honestly, I had no reason for the hystrionics. There was a nice breeze and it wasn’t too hot. Yet still, I came home a bedraggled red-faced mess wondering why I call myself a runner. I sacked out in the backyard chaise for awhile while I finished ‘Attachments’ by Rainbow Rowell, which was a decent if somewhat fluffy romantic novel. I have little stomach these days for fluffy romantic novels but it was engaging and breezy and the right kind of read for a chaise, although there were constant interruptions by the wildlife in the yard. The hummingbirds are crazy pigfaces this year and can’t stay away from our feeder – their tiny motor noise is constant and they aren’t deterred by Emmett’s wild fishtail jumps at the screen window to get them, or our presence in the yard. And we even have a tiny brave baby bunny who came out from the shrubbery to sit a foot away from my sweat-reeking prone figure and nibble on clover.
The tomato plants that I bought from Michigan Heirlooms are booming and I have many little green tomatoes starting. The horrible Mr Stripeys that I detested last year appear to have reseeded themselves in one of the other beds and I’m waiting to see what they are going to do – if they seem like they are going to develop flowers, I’ll thin them and stake them and see if I can coax something out of them worth eating.
In front yard news, I worried that the pink Annabelle hydrangeas might have been irretrievably damaged by our harsh winter, but they are back and in better shape than ever. The day lilies need to be thinned and the knockout rose bush, which had grown to epic proportions, reminding me of the gnarled thorn hedges around castles in fairy tales, has bounced back as well even after my vicious pruning of it. I am full of plans for the backyard and feel like every plant and every tiny garden space that I invest in weaves a bit more protective magic around the house.
I’m hoping that this week is short and relatively painless, as Miss L and I leave for a nice weeklong northern Michigan vacation on Thursday afternoon, and I think we both really need the downtime. I, for one, am looking forward to long sleeps, no makeup, and some time spent outdoors and with my folks.
I’m not sure where June went but here we are with sparklers in hand ready for the 4th of July. I feel like I should be baking an angel food cake with whipped cream topping and the stars & stripes laid out in blueberries and strawberries.*
In June of 2014, here is what I loved:
I hope you have had a blessed June and solstice and are enjoying your summer / winter according to whichever hemisphere you are in. We are enjoying warm, humid weather, storms passing, green bursting gardens, and the prospect of a short work week in advance of the US July 4 holiday.
*I might have to make this cake, I just sold myself…
Downstate, the solstice is just another day; up north, however, the solstice is a day of importance.
Long live the light.
For a day that started out so peacefully, with breakfast on the patio with Miss L, yesterday ended up kind of a big deal around here.
One of the downfalls of being a small framed person is a distinct lack of upper body strength, which translates into the embarrassing problem of not being able to pull the starter on a lawn mower with any degree of success. One of the side effects of the overall life transition that has been occurring around here lately is an increased responsibility for yard work and the mower issue was very frustrating for me. I pondered alternatives that all seemed to point to splashing out for a new mower (not something I wanted to spend the money on at this point) until I had a big AH-HAH moment. A little Internet research + quick trip to Home Depot + a strawberry lemonade to keep Miss L happy with this extremely boring-for-her errand + $100 = solution.
I had remembered my mom using one of these when I was a kid, only it wasn’t a nice shiny new one with sharp blades, it was an old rusty antique one that I think had been salvaged out of the shed behind our circa-1800’s farm house. Who knew they still make them?
It’s definitely a different solution than a gas mower. It’s quiet, I can use it whenever I want. It isn’t a perfect cut and there needs to be some weed-whacking afterwards, and raking. It jams up with twigs and sticks, which was extremely annoying around our old shedding tulip tree. But I really enjoyed it. It’s a great workout and maybe after using it all summer I will have the arm and shoulder muscles to pull the starter on the other mower. It’s a convenient, cheap, green alternative and my lawn got mowed yesterday. Problem solved.
Saving the best for last…
As I mowed and trimmed our crazy rosebush, Mommy duck was angrier than usual, hissing and fanning out her tail every time I came even remotely close to her. Usually she just keeps quiet unless I’m sticking my face right near her nest. However, mid-afternoon I learned the reason for her increased agitation.
WE HAVE DUCKLINGS!
The eggs hatched yesterday and by evening, there were at least five little fluff ducklings rolling around the nest and poking their little beaks out from under her sheltering wings. I tried to get closer to take more pictures, but it just made them so upset, it wasn’t worth it. She would hiss and like good little babies, they would freeze where they were. I haven’t been out this morning to check on them, but hopefully they had a good first night and will stick around for a little while before decamping to a water source. Well done Mommy duck!!
The perfect Saturday ended with Miss L. and I enjoying burgers on the grill, a fire in the backyard, and smores. Emmett was furious at being left out and climbed up into the kitchen window precariously to add to the conversation with the occasional indignant yowl (he must have a Siamese back in the family tree somewhere). Life, my friends, does not get much better than that.
Six Ten 