It's been much too long...
Sometimes it's good to be uncomfortable. I thought this as I walked the roughly one mile from Biolife in northern Marquette to Presque Isle. The humid July sun found my shoulders and I felt that slow, aching burn I get whenever I walk in summer - surrounded by trees nearly untouched by the breeze.
The walk was bordered by a fairly busy Lakeshore Boulevard to my right, but the scraggly greens and browns of Upper Peninsula wilderness was on my left. It suddenly reminded me of my childhood summers, spent at the family cabins in Curtis - scampering down the dusty path barefoot to the road, diving beneath the water with big lungfulls of air, the smell of our fishing boat as we waited patiently for hours, mid-afternoon snacks made by my grandma.
The problem with being a journalist is that the majority of your time is spent indoors. Fluorescent lighting, computer screens, dirty keyboards and clunky, black telephones. It is a sedentary job and I miss the summers I used to spend watching the trees around me, one dirty bare foot after another.
I was walking to Presque Isle to join my sister and my uncle at his vendor booth at the Art on the Rocks art show. My uncle makes jewelry. I'm not one to wear it, but I have a couple rings and a small pendant necklace. I didn't want to deal with traffic at the island, so I parked the nearest I thought I could and walked the rest of the way.
Either I'm very particular about what I like or my immersion in pop culture for the last 25 years has destroyed whatever artistic tastes I may have had - because nothing I saw grabbed me. Nothing stood out for me and cried "Hang me on your wall!"
That's not entirely true. I saw one very large photo print of an old wooden wagon wheel propped up against a barn wall. Long grass was poking up through the spokes.
I don't know what it is about old, ruined buildings and long forgotten equipment that fascinates me. Maybe I enjoy the history of it, maybe I long for a time when things were less industrialized and more personalized - when a man could make things by his own two hands. I've never really made anything in my life but the idea has always appealed to me.
In any case, the framed photograph was much too expensive.
With my uncle in town, I gave him my apartment and stayed at Sam's - which is always fun. We drank and danced the night away, as is our wont. I fell into a comfortable sleep - not easy for me when not in my own bed.
"Thou, Soul, unloosen’d-the restlessness after I know not what;
Come! let us lag here no longer-let us be up and away!
O for another world! O if one could but fly like a bird!
O to escape-to sail forth, as in a ship!
To glide with thee, O Soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters!
-Gathering these hints, these preludes-the blue sky, the grass, the morning
drops of
dew"
- Walt Whitman
The walk was bordered by a fairly busy Lakeshore Boulevard to my right, but the scraggly greens and browns of Upper Peninsula wilderness was on my left. It suddenly reminded me of my childhood summers, spent at the family cabins in Curtis - scampering down the dusty path barefoot to the road, diving beneath the water with big lungfulls of air, the smell of our fishing boat as we waited patiently for hours, mid-afternoon snacks made by my grandma.
The problem with being a journalist is that the majority of your time is spent indoors. Fluorescent lighting, computer screens, dirty keyboards and clunky, black telephones. It is a sedentary job and I miss the summers I used to spend watching the trees around me, one dirty bare foot after another.
I was walking to Presque Isle to join my sister and my uncle at his vendor booth at the Art on the Rocks art show. My uncle makes jewelry. I'm not one to wear it, but I have a couple rings and a small pendant necklace. I didn't want to deal with traffic at the island, so I parked the nearest I thought I could and walked the rest of the way.
Either I'm very particular about what I like or my immersion in pop culture for the last 25 years has destroyed whatever artistic tastes I may have had - because nothing I saw grabbed me. Nothing stood out for me and cried "Hang me on your wall!"
That's not entirely true. I saw one very large photo print of an old wooden wagon wheel propped up against a barn wall. Long grass was poking up through the spokes.
I don't know what it is about old, ruined buildings and long forgotten equipment that fascinates me. Maybe I enjoy the history of it, maybe I long for a time when things were less industrialized and more personalized - when a man could make things by his own two hands. I've never really made anything in my life but the idea has always appealed to me.
In any case, the framed photograph was much too expensive.
With my uncle in town, I gave him my apartment and stayed at Sam's - which is always fun. We drank and danced the night away, as is our wont. I fell into a comfortable sleep - not easy for me when not in my own bed.
"Thou, Soul, unloosen’d-the restlessness after I know not what;
Come! let us lag here no longer-let us be up and away!
O for another world! O if one could but fly like a bird!
O to escape-to sail forth, as in a ship!
To glide with thee, O Soul, o’er all, in all, as a ship o’er the waters!
-Gathering these hints, these preludes-the blue sky, the grass, the morning
drops of
dew"
- Walt Whitman