Editor’s Pick
FEBRUARY 9, 2009 9:57AM
Country sites in pictures along a Michigan road.
These are photographs from one of my favorite side streets out in the country.
It's difficult to imagine that the landscape looked like this just a few months ago, warm, golden and bright. It was a good year for making hay. Three cuttings.
The blueberries have long been picked, dropped one-by-one into tin pails and baked into pies and cooked down into jams. The copper-red bushes in the background are like a crayon dragged across the snow.
On a zero-degree day, bins of dried corn glow as warmly as the sun itself.
It's been a cruel winter for outside creatures. Just the other day I watched a flatbed truck pass down the center of town with three dead cows. They probably froze to death.
Every wardrobe should have a little red. Winter shows it off best. I think barns are painted red because they are the heart of any farm.
Newer barns are metal and high tech. I like the older, wooden ones. They leave a fingerprint on the landscape.
Stacking wood is an art and this pile is a beauty. Wood heats you three times. First, when you cut it, then when you stack it, finally when you burn it.
If I veer south and drive two streets over, I arrive at the state park. I'm a sucker for any photograph with a path. This park has preserved the dune tundra. One summer I made the mistake of leaving the path to photograph fungii on a rotting log. It was so difficult climbing up, I pulled a muscle in my neck. Follow the path through the shadowy woods and you arrive . . .
. . . at a frozen Lake Michigan. It resembles a salt bed, the mound-like waves frozen in piles as far as the eye can see. It's eerie and quiet. Moonlike. Not a soul to be seen. How great is that?
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Comments
SmithBarney: Yes, I saw those pictures in the NYTimes. I almost added a picture of Chalk at the end, but I'm working on a separate story about him. Thanks for remembering.
Mary: The last few years we've noticed a definite trend with Europeans discovering the beauty of the Midwest, especially the the Great Lakes. They can't get enough.
High Lonesome: It's really not so bad. If you live along Lake Michigan like I do, the lake-effect snow is quite incredible and lovely. Even inspiring.
Amy: You don't know what you're missing. Michigan is a really a jewel. And so diverse. It just breaks my heart to see in floundering economically and so many people moving away.
I also like the old wooden barn doors which seem to be such an elegant fingerprint on the landscape. I like older building, currently living in a renovated adobe casita which dates to the 1880s or 1890s. I think some of us are old souls who fit more comfortably in more historical surroundings. That might be why New Mexico is a good fit for me.
Thank you for sharing these photos. They are truly lovely. I also like your cat in the avatar as it looks like a cross between my two kitties.
Beautiful. Thanks.
I love Michigan!!! The winter helps you truly appreciate the other seasons. I am like you-if it's going to be cold let it snow. It makes it magical.
loved your captions, loved the pics.
more. want.