Happy Holidays!

May your holidays be joyful and may 2009 bring you all the best!

Electronic greetings are no substitute for the tangible ones that show up in the mailbox with a stamp on them, but I'm afraid my handmade-holiday-card tradition got upstaged this year for the first time since its beginnings in my first year of college. Instead of glue sticks and glitter and teeny-tiny cutouts, I've been playing with gallons of paint, stacks of sandpaper, and jars of spackling. This version lacks a bit of holiday sparkle and the satisfaction of depositing a pile of envelopes into the big blue mailbox, but I'm hereby sending you my best wishes nevertheless!

Home at Last!

I'm a homeowner! It's now one week since I signed an enormous stack of papers and got the keys. First order of business was to buy a snowshovel, and then we hauled my furniture over from the house of cousins Michael and Sarah where it had been hanging out since August (just in time for their new furniture to arrive the next day). Then Mom, Dad, Maisie and I promptly departed for my aunt's 60th birthday party downstate, so the first night at home wasn't until several days later. It didn't take Maisie long to discover her spot: From the stairway, she can look out the front window and keep track of squirrels and any other goings-on.













Meanwhile, my project list is about a mile long. The real gratification - unpacking boxes, arranging furniture, putting books on shelves - will be delayed a bit longer. Here's an abbreviated list of what has to happen first:

• Structural reinforcement (adding some posts and beams in the basement)
• Plumbing upgrade
• Electrical upgrade
  
• Refinishing the wood floor throughout the downstairs
  
• Taking apart, sanding, repainting, and reassembling the kitchen cabinets
• Acquiring a gas stove and a more efficient fridge
• Painting everywhere
  
• Replacing the fireplace insert and fixing up the bricks and mantel
• Acquiring new, more efficient toilets
• Putting new flooring in the upstairs bathroom, mudroom, and front entry
• Scrubbing off the slime growing on the siding and trimming the vines that are taking over an entire side of the house.
• Putting up a fence so Maisie can take full advantage of her yard (but that'll have to wait until the spring thaw).
  

The first few items will require professionals, so I don't have to do it all myself - but I do need to coordinate the work. And the rest will keep me busy for a while! Maisie agrees that, at this point, it all seems a little overwhelming. But we're keeping our eyes on the prize!

Let It Snow!

It just keeps snowing! Every tree branch was dolloped with a big scoop of snow-frosting this morning. Here are a few pictures I took as Maisie and I walked in the winter wonderland.

Maisie's New Bed

We'll have two stories in the new house, and I've been thinking Maisie will need a comfortable place to hang out downstairs if I want to uphold my no-dogs-on-the-couch rule. So I made her a new bed - entirely out of old materials.

It was quite a satisfying project. The outside is made from scraps of fleece from an overflowing bin that's been in my closet since 2001. An outfit in Ely, MN used to give away bags of fleece bits left over from making jackets and things, and I ended up with a whole collection after my year at Wolf Ridge. It took a while to sew all the squares and strips together, but the result is colorful and fun. The bottom is padded with several layers of old mattress pads and a few pieces of denim from old holey jeans.

And - the crowning touch - the bumper around the edge is stuffed with a gazillion tiny scraps of quilt fabric and yarn and old socks and underwear and whatnot. I'd been saving all these odds and ends to recycle, but had no luck finding somewhere to take them. So Mom provided me with an old pair of panty hose, and I stuffed each leg full and sewed them together, then threaded this unwieldy snake through the fleece tube and sewed it onto the base.

As you can see, Maisie is a fan. In fact, she wanted to lie in it long before it was finished, so every time I'd set it out on the floor to work on it, she'd manage to get right in. Goofy girl!

Celebrating Snow

Winter is here! We've had several episodes of snow over the past two weeks, but this is the first that's stuck. It's gorgeous fluffy stuff, the kind that makes you feel like you're inside a snowglobe and somebody's shaking it like mad. Maisie, of course, is having a ball.

Home for the Holidays!

I’ve got a house in my sights! It’s not a done deal yet - there are various hoops to jump through between here and full home ownership. But it looks very promising. Closing is scheduled for December 5. Last Tuesday was a day full of suspense as I waited for both election returns and a reply to my offer – and both came out as I had hoped. Hurrah!

The house is in Traverse City’s central neighborhood, within walking/biking distance to town, about seven blocks from my cousins, and a block from wooded walking trails. It has the right amount of space, plenty of historic charm, a yard and garden, and a fireplace; it's in my price range; and it needs just enough work that it will really feel like my own when I’m done with some fix-ups.

The funny part is that the current owner and I seem to be kindred spirits. The house is full of books (with many familiar titles on the shelves). She does have a TV, but it’s an older model tucked out of sight behind a cupboard door. (Just for contrast, several other places I looked at had giant flat-screens mounted above the fireplace.) Upstairs, she has a sewing machine and stacks of fabric. Outside, a bike and bike trailer were parked beside the house, and in the driveway a Subaru with a bunch of Obama yard signs in the back. The huge garden out back was bursting with veggies and flowers and herbs. All good omens that this is the right place for me to call home.

Great Lakes Bioneers

Michigan is the state

where the lakes are great,

and the water is fresh

so you can hydrate

every part of your body -

it’s the mitten-shaped state.

Where you going?

Michigan, man, I can’t even wait!

I’ve adopted this enthusiastic “Michigan Song” by Joe Reilly as the theme music for my new life in Michigan. Joe was just one of the inspiring musicians, speakers, and presenters at the Great Lakes Bioneers Conference last weekend in Traverse City, and the event got me truly energized about living here.

The Bioneers hub is in California, with satellite conferences happening simultaneously around the country; Traverse City has the longest run of any of the satellite sites, at seven years. I can trace my interest in TC as a place where interesting things are happening back to the fall of 2004, when I attended my first Bioneers conference just before making the move to DC. Who knew that four years later, I’d be scoping out For Sale signs on my way to and from conference events?

While sitting in Milliken Auditorium listening to the speeches beamed from California, I kept my hands busy knitting a scarf that now contains virtual bits of wisdom and inspiration from “biological pioneers” at the forefront of a new social and environmental paradigm. Highlights included Paul Stamets, the mushroom man with a brilliant vision for saving the world with fungi, Erica Fernandez, a fiercely passionate young Mexican-American activist, and two women who were already among my heroes, Janine Benyus and Sandra Steingraber.

The model - pairing excellent national speakers with local workshops, music, and other gatherings - is a very effective one. I'm looking forward to more opportunities to get to know the great folks who were involved!

Fall the Verb

Wherever you’re reading this from, I hope you're enjoying the geographically appropriate equivalent of frosty mornings, brilliant red-orange-gold trees, long walks through crunchy leaves, and the smell of woodsmoke in the air. I’m pretty sure peak color has arrived here at the “tip of the mitt,” and I’m also pretty sure that it’s an extra-good season for color. (Even residents who haven’t been away for four years agree.) Outside my window, leaves are dropping steadily – a scene that confirms the appropriateness of the name fall.

Mom and I decided to take advantage of the gorgeous day (70 degrees!) and go adventuring. We loaded Maisie and a picnic into the car this morning, headed for Burt Lake to pull some weeds and pile leaves on the garden, and then followed Robinson Road west to Good Hart with lovely red maples the whole way. At Middle Village, we ate bread and cheese on a bench overlooking Lake Michigan and watched a little girl and her dad hard at work on a sand castle. Then we explored the trails at Good Hart Farms, drove south through the Tunnel of Trees, and stopped by Pond Hill Farm, which was awash in colorful squash. Continuing my pantry-stocking project, I loaded a bushel basket full of acorns, butternuts, delicatas, spaghettis, carnivals, and a few other unknown beauties, then topped it off with a bag full of shiny Jonamac apples. With luck, both squash and apples will last well into the winter months.

Which leads me to contemplate that unlike fall (and spring), winter is a word that only works as a noun. It seems fitting, since winter is a season of stillness and quiet rather than motion. (I am, however, hoping for plenty of snowflakes drifting past my windows just as the leaves are now.)

Canned Goods

I've been foraging for winter provisions. The freezer is piled with colorful Ziploc packages of blueberries, peaches, and corn sliced from the cob. Jars of dilly beans, pickles, and beets are stacked on a basement shelf. In conjunction with this weekend’s TC house-hunting excursion, Sarah and I made a sidetrip to Old Mission Peninsula and each picked a bagful of Ida Red and Golden Delicious apples. So I just made my first-ever jars of canned applesauce. And as I write, a big vat of fragrant tomato sauce is simmering on the stove, thanks to a half-bushel of tomato seconds from Bill’s Farm Market.

I read recently that Michigan ranks second in the U.S. in agricultural diversity (after California). At first I suspected that lofty claim might be local lore, but reputable sources repeat it. During my sojourn in the #1 state, my housemates and I concluded that California was probably one of the easier places to live a “low-impact” lifestyle, given the year-round availability of local foods and the sunny, mild-winter climate. So it’s interesting to think that my northern preference might not be such a disadvantage in the environmental-lifestyles game after all – provided I take full advantage of the seasonal abundance of produce. Meanwhile, winter weather here will certainly add to my energy-use footprint, but the lake-moderated summer temperatures eliminate the need for air conditioning (a way of life in the part of California where I lived, and even more so in D.C.). And the abundance of fresh water is another big plus in the habitability column. My heart led me back here, but good hard facts justify the choice!

Michisota? Minnegan?

In a recent email, a DC friend inquired about how I was settling into life in Michigan. “I know you’d rather be in Minnesota,” she wrote. Well, no. It’s true that I spent many months agonizing over whether Minnesota or Michigan was the right destination for me. Either one offered enticing benefits, with the major drawback of each being that I wasn’t choosing the other. The one place I’d rather be is both.

Michisota? Minnegan? Whatever you call it, a hybrid of the two states would suit me splendidly. It would contain my Michigan-rooted family plus the many college and grad school friends who’ve stayed in or moved back to Minnesota. Its state stone would be the Petoskey Stone, of course, but the loon would be its state bird. It would be graced by sandy Lake Michigan shorelines and the dramatic cliffs of Lake Superior’s north shore. It would contain Pictured Rocks, the Porcupine Mountains, Isle Royale, and the Boundary Waters and the Superior Hiking Trail. There would be cherry orchards and wild rice, northern forest and wide-open prairie. I could claim contemporary storyteller Garrison Keillor as well as the late author Ernest Hemingway, said to have lived for a time in a boarding house a block from where I grew up.

But since Michisota isn’t on the map, I had to choose. And a nearly impossible decision became much easier when I discovered that I could keep my job if I chose Michigan. So here I am, and happy with the choice.

Meanwhile, all the moving around I did between starting out and ending up in Michigan results in two bittersweet outcomes. 1) “Home” becomes a jumbled mix of the best bits of a whole lot of different places, which means any one place is almost certain to pale a bit in comparison. 2) I’ll never be able to invite all my friends over for a potluck. They’re scattered from one coast to the other, busy doing good work, raising great kiddos, and settling into their own chosen homeplaces. Of course it’s entirely worth the trouble of staying in touch (and I rarely have to stay in a motel when I travel), but I sure do wish at least a few of them lived just down the street. Then again, not all of them are permanently rooted yet. Hey, y’all, come check out northern Michigan!

Back in the Great Lake State

Yahoo! I’m really, truly, legally a Michigan resident again, as of today. I now have my Michigan ID and license plate. When I traded them in as part of my last move, I joked that I’d lost my identity - but I wasn't really joking. My photo underneath the word “Virginia” seemed all wrong; my car looked like it belonged to someone else. I displayed the old royal blue “Great Lake State” plate in my bathroom the whole time I was in exile, while I masqueraded as a Virginian in public. So I’m pleased to report that my true identity is now restored.

I would have made the change back in August, but was holding out in hopes that I’d have a permanent address to print on my license. I couldn't wait any longer, though - voter registration is part of the package, and I wasn’t about to miss that opportunity. In contrast to several nerve-frazzling hours at the crowded, impersonal Tyson’s Corner DMV almost four years ago, this transaction required only a quick visit to the local branch of the Secretary of State, where I didn’t even have time to take off my coat before my number was called (and where I ran into a high school classmate on the way out). Maisie waited for me in the car, and we celebrated with a brisk, chilly walk along the deserted streets of Bay View, welcomed home by gusts of cold wind off the lake.

Fall Fungi

SEE-North presents a Northern Michigan Fall Fungi Class. Participants will learn how to identify edible fungi as well as poisonous look-alikes. Ideal for beginners yet challenging for the experienced. Instructor Marilynn Smith is a master mycologist who has traveled the world studying fungi and is an expert on Michigan mushrooms. She is an engaging teacher who puts the FUN in FUNGI!

I signed up for this class, taught by a family friend, and now I’m noticing fungi everywhere. Mushrooms big and small, polypores growing from trees, and other weird fungal friends - they're all suddenly extremely fascinating. Between Wednesday night classes and Saturday morning field trips, I’ve been tramping around in the woods with my ID guide, making spore prints and trying to learn the names of at least a few of the more common species. I love the way a new interest opens my eyes to something that was there all along, just overlooked. And Marilynn is not only extremely passionate about fungi, she's quite funny. "Fungi deserve more respect," she insists. "If you're taking a birding course and you see a new species, do you immediately ask the instructor, 'Can you eat it?' Of course not! But that's the first thing everyone asks about a new mushroom!" (However, we did sample chanterelles and giant puffballs during class. And I'm already looking forward to morel season next spring!)

The mushrooms in the photo are shaggy manes, part of the inky cap family. A patch of twenty or so cropped up where Maisie and I walk regularly, so I’ve been watching their progress. They start out like the one on the left. Then the cap auto-dissolves into an inky black goo to release the spores, so they end up like the one on the right. Cool, huh?

Bedrock

“Everybody needs a rock,” claims Byrd Baylor in one of my favorite children’s books. It would appear that I need more than just one. I have a whole dish of rocks that I keep beside my bed, each one from a particular place and time in my life. Smooth-washed beach stones from Lake Superior, angular granite from a mountain in Colorado, a piece of petrified wood from Oregon. So far, given my wandering lifestyle, I’ve restricted my collecting to pocket-sized pebbles that are easily packed.

But when I visited my friend Emily in Boston this past June, she was assembling a teaching collection of rocks to share with her Montessori students, and she needed larger samples. I offered to find her a piece of Virginia schist, which is how a chunk of sparkly-gold rock got tucked under the seat of my car and made its way across state lines. The other day, Maisie and I walked down to the bay so I could hunt up another rock type for the collection—a piece of Michigan limestone full of fossil shells.

Before mailing the package off to Emily, I set the two rocks side by side to admire them. Metamorphic schist and sedimentary limestone, one forged from intense heat and pressure and the other deposited slowly at the bottom of a sea. Here they are: The bedrock of my old and new lives.

This is Your Life

There’s a fall crisp in the air, and we've switched headquarters from the family cottage on Burt Lake to my parents' house in Petoskey. Mitchell Street, in the middle of town, is being repaved, so there’s a roundabout detour to get almost anywhere. Detours are a drag, of course, but I forget to be annoyed because this one runs right down Memory Lane. It follows State Street past the house where I lived from the time I was born until I left for college, continues uphill along the route I walked every day to school, then zigzags over to Hill Street for a view of the high school before rejoining Mitchell just beyond the Lutheran church my family attended. It’s like an episode of “This is Your Life.”

On daily walks, Maisie and I have been exploring these landmarks at a slower-than-driveby pace. While Maisie pauses for frequent, focused sniffing of recent happenings, I am busy recalling episodes from the past. Here’s a sample of where our wandering takes us.

• Home is perched on top of a hill, so we always start by heading down. First we pass the yard where two of Maisie’s pals, black labs Buddy and Louie, greet her with woofs and wagging tails. As we round the corner, her friend Teddy bounces out and they race and leap in dog delight. As we descend the steep front hill, I look out over the wide blue sweep of Little Traverse Bay while Maisie checks out chipmunk holes along the bank.
• It’s a few blocks into downtown, and I regularly head for the new brick library. Across the street is the old Carnegie building with the wide front steps that was home to all the books until just a few years ago. I suppose the shelves were cramped back when I was little, but I never noticed – I was too busy checking out every Narnia chronicle and Bobbsey Twins adventure in turn and then skipping home with my treasure.
• The downtown shops are a mix of upscale and down-home. Many cater to the “fudgies” (a semi-affectionate local term for tourists), with Up North wear, cherry products, polished Petoskey stones, and (of course) fudge. But there’s also Meyer Hardware, where you can buy bolts or paintbrushes or snow shovels, and McLean and Eakin, the bookstore where I held my first “real job” during summers in high school and college.
• A tunnel under the highway leads to the waterfront, where the bike trail follows the shore in either direction. Sometimes we stroll the wide wooden piers past docked sailboats with mast wires jangling in the wind (Maisie likes to watch the ducks) or venture out the breakwall into a stiff wind. A stretch of rocky beach beyond the breakwall is my favorite place for hunting Petoskey Stones, and was the venue for a workshop I devised one summer about these celebrated 300-million-year-old fossils. I recall a rosy-sunset evening as the workshop was wrapping up, when a savvy young participant pocketed a few choice samples and tossed his less-than-perfect finds back into the water. “I’m putting them back for the tourists,” he explained. “Because we need tourists for the economy.”
• Back on the other side of the tunnel is our natural-foods co-op, the Grain Train. When I was a kid, it was a little hole-in-the-wall on Howard Street, with narrow aisles and creaky wood floors. I was under the impression that it sold only “weird health food” and rarely stepped inside. I started frequenting it when I discovered the Moosewood cookbooks and labeled myself a vegetarian. Now it fills a much bigger space, complete with automatic doors that sweep you inside, and contains almost anything I might write on my shopping list. Just up the street is the site of the Friday morning farmer’s market, new in town and a welcome, colorful addition to the scene.
• A block further is a significant intersection where Howard meets State Street. On one corner is the office of the local paper. Across the street is the post office, with a pole outside where I loop Maisie’s leash (or Siri’s or Sandy’s, family dogs past) while I run in to mail a letter or buy stamps. On the opposite corner is the Catholic church, St. Francis, with its tall landmark steeple rising up over town. And the fourth corner is occupied by Central School, a historic old building which housed the middle school until I finished 7^th grade. Among its more remarkable features were shiny stone staircases worn smooth from decades of shuffling feet and huge wood-framed windows without any screens. The heating system was old and erratic, so teachers often propped windows open to cool off steamy classrooms even in winter. Once a friendly dog stuck its head into a ground-floor social studies class, much to our amusement. Another time, a charismatic math teacher threw a student’s shoe out a second-story window. It was a ploy to get our attention - and I believe it worked. I also distinctly remember sitting in English while the first fluffy snowflakes of the season fell past wide-open windows and the church bells at St. Francis caroled a rich, ringing noontime song. In 8^th grade, we moved to a new building behind the high school with digital clocks on the walls, color-coordinated hallways in shades of mauve and teal, dependable heat, and no character. Now Central is Petoskey’s fourth elementary school, and the grounds are filled with colorful playground equipment befitting its new role. But I still remember rousing post-lunch games of Koosh-ball keep-away in the open space that now holds a pirate-ship play structure.
• Two blocks up State Street is a blue-gray stucco house with brick front steps and a bank of windows across the front. Home. My parents moved to their current house on the hill after I left for college, so this house holds all my growing-up memories. I can’t help looking curiously up the driveway, noting that the white-berried shrubs still grow along the stone wall, the ones we called “pop berries” for the sound the fruit made when you stepped on it or threw it down hard on the cement. And a detour down the alley provides a peek into the backyard, where I can check on the elegant Japanese maple that stands at a corner of the garage. Beneath its deep red star-shaped leaves was an old stump where I would sit when I was very young. I called it my Quiet House; it was a place for thinking.
• From here you can see the house on Grove Street where my friend Jaya lived, and the corner where we met most mornings in middle and high school to walk to school together. She had a wild mass of long curls, a Clinton-Gore sticker plastered to her clarinet case, and a devotion to Star Trek. She was passionate and political; I was the steady, diplomatic one. We had our pictures side by side in the newspaper as our school’s two National Merit scholars, and then went off to polar-opposite colleges (she to Duke, me to Carleton) and drifted apart. But sometimes she still makes an appearance in those bizarre dreams that splice together disparate chapters of life. I'm curious where she is now.
• Another friend, Margaret, lived a block uphill on State Street in a sunny yellow house with a yellow dog named Sunny. Margaret moved away at the end of first grade. Soon afterward her house was painted blue, but it’s always stayed yellow in my eyes. Margaret and I walked to school together, too, and played wildly imaginative games on the playground and picked flowers from neighbors’ gardens to leave on their doorsteps on May Day, ringing the doorbell and running away feeling wonderfully magnanimous. The spot midway between my house and hers was the place where we converged at a run and collided in a fierce, joyful hug on her first trip back to Petoskey shortly after she moved. She came by a few more times through the years, appearing at the door unexpectedly and seeming less and less familiar each time. But I always wondered how the friendship would have weathered our growing up if it had the chance.
• The route to school led straight up State to Kalamazoo Street, where Betty the crossing-guard waited with her orange vest and shiny red stop sign, rain or shine, to usher us to the other side with a cheerful “good morning.” The other day I was out to dinner with my parents and there at the next table sat Betty with her husband. I swear, she looked exactly the same as she did 20 years ago (minus the orange vest).
• A right turn on Kalamazoo will take you straight to Ottawa Elementary. Crossing Lindell along the way, there was an arc-shaped crack beside the crosswalk that we called “the rainbow.” I could never walk straight across that crosswalk – it was necessary to veer out and follow the rainbow arc. On a recent run, I noticed they’d repaved the street and erased the rainbow. Sad. Another little bit of magic has flickered out of the world.
• I stepped inside Ottawa School for the first time in decades this fall, invited to visit a neighbor’s second-grade class to talk about my job at Ranger Rick. The school has been added to and updated since the days when I sat in those miniature chairs, of course. But the first thing I noticed was that it smelled just the same. Not a bad smell or a good one, and not some generic elementary-school smell, either, just a familiar Ottawa odor that my nose remembered and no words can describe.
• Lately Maisie and I have been running past Ottawa and then down the roller-coaster hill of Northmen Drive past the middle and high schools. First we intersect the old cross-country course, where I once doggedly ran at the back of the pack. Now, as Maisie drags me along behind her, I suppose not much has changed. Next we come to the marching band’s practice field. If it’s first thing in the morning on a weekday, the drums will be thumping, horns ascending and descending scales, and several hundred feet stepping in rhythm between the yardlines. Oh, does this bring back memories: lines of footsteps etched in frosty grass, a pair of pink gloves with the fingers cut off, cold metal flute keys, the soft feathery plumes we stuck in our uniform hats, Mr. Brien’s strained voice magnified by microphone as he calls out orders that verge on insults but produce impressive results.
• On we jog, past the stone wall that fronts the high school. Now I'm pulling Maisie as she tries to scarf down tidbits littering the parking lot or snatch wayward tennis balls that have escaped from the courts. Continuing down Hill Street and back to Kalamazoo, we pass my friend Donna’s brick house. Her mom and mine led our Girl Scout troop together; her dad was my cross country coach and calculus teacher. Her parents live here still, now proud grandparents.
• At the end of Kalamazoo, a downhill path deposits us at the Winter Sports Park, bottoming out onto a field that is transformed into a skating rink in winter. Here I spent many after-school afternoons in puffy snowclothes and shiny white skates, dutifully attempting maneuvers in group lessons or just careening in wide circles and launching into the snowbanks.
• Maisie heads for the sledding hill that rises steeply ahead of us, which in this season is just a grassy slope that beckons us to scale it. We do, often, and then duck through a cedar hedge at the top, cross a dead-end road, and skirt the edge of a backyard to a super-steep path that descends into the Bay View woods. A network of trails offers varied terrain to explore, from hardwood hillsides to a hemlock grove and a cedar swamp. When I got my driver’s license in January of 10^th grade, this was my first regular destination – I’d borrow the car after school, load up my snowshoes or skis, and make tracks through the silent, snowy woods lost in introspective adolescent musings.
• These days, my canine companion tends to yank me out of any reveries with a determined leash-tug in the direction of the nearest irresistible scent. But the present is a pleasant place to be, too, especially in the fall in a beautiful woods with a pup brimming over with enthusiasm for life. So off we go down the trail, over hill and dale, and soon enough we’ll be home – until it’s time for the next walk.

Freshwater Sharks

So far, no sharks have turned up in Burt Lake. We’ve had no sightings of the Brutusaurus (our local Loch Ness monster), either. But there is definitely wildlife to be seen, and now that I’m back to work in my new “office,” I’m more likely to be sitting still to spot it. In my present work routine, my laptop and I start the day at the dining room table looking out on the lake. In midafternoon, we usually move to a patch of shade on the porch, still just within range of the wireless. I’m currently editing a story on coral reefs, so if I do start seeing sharks, that’s my excuse.

In reality, the first “wildlife” I’m likely to see is Maisie. She definitely has her wild moments, mostly when we’re down on the beach and I have a frisbee in my hand. We've decided she is a golabalope – golden retriever and lab crossed with antelope. It’s the best explanation for her truly impressive running and leaping. She’s agile, speedy, and definitely more graceful than your usual galumphing lab.

But I’ve also been hearing a loon tremolo, and today I spotted the bird itself. It was paddling far out in the lake, so Mom and I got out the binoculars for close-up confirmation. Then, minutes later, we saw a bald eagle soaring high above the water. We’ve also been noticing some curious scat many mornings on the bridge over the creek. It’s large, and very seedy. I suspect it is raccoon, but haven’t seen the culprit. Meanwhile, something must be living in the muddy banks of the creek, as Maisie has taken to digging with great gusto and then sticking her entire head into the holes, sniffing like mad and emerging filthy. So then I have to fetch her frisbee and send her leaping into the lake to clean up, which brings me right back to where I started.

TC Exploring

“So you’re here for a visit?” “Well, no, actually, I just moved back to the area…” This conversation has been on automatic replay since I arrived, followed by attempts to explain my Long Term Plan. And what would that be, you ask? Well, I believe my destination is Traverse City. Northern Michigan’s largest city overlooks Grand Traverse Bay, about sixty miles southwest along the Lake Michigan shore from where I grew up in Petoskey. (Here’s a “handy” trick for keeping track of Michigan geography: Hold up your right hand (palm facing you) to represent the Michigan mitten. The indentation above your fourth finger is Little Traverse Bay, with Petoskey perched on its south side. Slide down to the larger indentation above your pinky, and that’s Grand Traverse Bay, with Traverse City at its base.)

Traverse City is still close to home and family. As in Petoskey, the days are colored by the moods of Lake Michigan, and inland lakes, woods, and farms surround the town's core. It has the four gloriously distinct seasons that brought me back to the north. But it also offers me a chance to make my own life there, instead of simply stepping back into a familiar role as my parents’ daughter, still known by most as Katie. As much as I love Petoskey, Traverse City has a larger population and a few more opportunities (socially, culturally, occupationally). TC seems to have a lot going for it, in fact; more than a few pockets of progressive goings-on, as well as a small-town feel (with a thriving downtown) and an up-north flavor (with all the water and woods nearby).

But I still need to see if it adds up to a whole that resonates with me. (For example, in addition to its good points, it has a lot of sprawling development and too many shopping malls.) So I just spent a couple days exploring the area. I camped out with cousins Michael and Sarah, brought my bike, and cruised around checking out the scene.

Here’s what I came away with:

• 15 pounds of blueberries for the winter and 10 purple-stained fingers from Buchan’s Blueberry Hill out on Old Mission Peninsula, where I filled my big bucket twice over from the heavily laden bushes.
• A few more miles on my sandals, thanks to a long post-work walk with Michael and Keelie-dog to check out streets in the central neighborhoods, and later a stroll into town for dinner at Poppycocks (pita chips = yum).
• More miles on my bike, which took me on a tour that included the snazzy Oryana natural foods co-op, the super-nice public library, the post office, a small section of the TART trail (the local bike path), the waterfront, a garage sale on Webster Street, and a great secondhand-clothing shop. And I was pleased to note that I was sharing the road with lots of other bikers, too.
• One bunch of kale bestowed on me by Lou, who was prepping greens for the farmer’s market on Friday afternoon. I stopped by the Commons, a new development on the site of the old state hospital, to see what it was all about. There, I got the scoop on the bike co-op that shares space with the coffee shop, along with an enthusiastic endorsement of TC from the folks I talked to there and a lovely loaf of seedy bread from Pleasanton Brick Oven Bakery. And while I didn’t find my way to the community garden that’s somewhere on the grounds, I did find a network of wooded trails that would be great for romping with Maisie.

All in all, it definitely adds up to a good feeling about making this place home. And given the number of for-sale signs I noticed, I guess it’s time to start the house-hunting game!

Maisie in Action

When my coworkers learned I was moving to Michigan, more than one said, "We’ll miss you, but we’ll really miss your dog!" Bethe calls her "fuzz therapy." Lori, not generally given to flowery description, refers to her as "a little bit of sunshine in the office." So, for any of Maisie's office pals wondering what she's up to, here's a glimpse of her new life as a northwoods dog. Basically, she’s very busy.

First, there’s a lot of frisbee. We play in the yard, which involves much spectacular leaping, and in the lake, which involves much splashing and shaking (and sometimes shouting if she decides to chase ducks instead of the disc). She also gets distracted by the creek that runs between our yard and the neighbors’. She is determined to investigate it inch by inch, and comes out a muddy mess but smelling minty fresh from the profusion of wild mint growing there.

Then there are all the dog friends to meet. Here she is with Lucy, my brother and sister-in-law’s border terrier. Lucy is small but scrappy and runs with the big dogs. Maisie loves her. Daisy, the yellow lab a few doors down, taught Maisie how to jump off the dock. They had a great time fetching tennis balls out of the lake and climbing back up a nifty dog ramp Daisy's owner had built, while I had a great time watching the Maisie-and-Daisy show. Currently, Maisie's favorite play-dates are full-speed figure-eight laps with Taffy the standard poodle (two doors down) and run-leap-and-wrestle games with Max the sheltie (visiting next door).

My cousin Tom prescribed more challenges of both the physical and mental variety for this hyper-energetic pup. We started planning an agility course for her. So far we've procured only a hula hoop, but it didn't take her long to figure out that game. Maisie the circus dog sails through the jump with the greatest of ease. Look out, Libby!

Most every day brings some new adventure for this former city-dog. Here she is on her first boat ride, enjoying a stiff breeze. Among other things, she has also: gone canoeing (and nobody got wet), ridden in a convertible with the top down (and nobody jumped out), gleefully dug holes on the beach, pursued frogs, raced through a field getting covered with burrs, and enthusiastically accepted her very own breakfast pancake. Life is good.

Her boundless energy does actually have a limit, though. She has two speeds: full throttle and off. Here she is demonstrating the latter. This is after back-to-back runs in one morning, first with me and then again with Tom and Deanne.

Maisie says she misses belly rubs and biscuits from all her NWF friends, but you are welcome to come visit her in Michigan anytime. She'll take you on a tour of all her favorite smells. Just be sure to bring your running shoes!

Les Cheneaux Canoeing

If you head north from Burt Lake until you reach the tippy-top of the lower peninsula, then cross the straits via the Mackinac Bridge and follow the shoreline of Lake Huron east toward Cedarville, you come to a group of islands called Les Cheneaux. “The Channels” are ideal for paddling: narrow passageways between rocky, forested islands, some inhabited (but not densely) and some not at all.

A few days after I arrived in Michigan, Tom and Deanne and I strapped the canoe to the top of my car and set off on overnight adventure. In my pocket was a scrap of paper with directions I’d copied down during a phone conversation with my dad’s coworker Jim. He said we could park on his property, paddle down Snow’s Channel and around Marquette Island into Duck Bay, then look for a small clearing with a dock and a fire ring. That was his friend Joel’s place, and if anyone asked us why we were camping there, we should explain that Jim said it was okay to use Joel’s land. We picked up a map of the islands at a tourist stop, and away we went.

It was a perfect summer day. The shoreline was cedar and pine, deep green against the deep blue of the water. There was just a slight breeze, and the reedy shallows and rocky island shores beckoned us to go exploring. We found the clearing, unloaded the gear and set up the tents, then spent the rest of the afternoon paddling and wandering. We skipped rocks, we dissected scat, we inadvertently harvested a boatful of spiders by cruising through the reed thickets. Later that evening (after burned beans and cold tortillas for dinner – I’m out of practice with the campstove), we lay on the ramshackle dock and watched a herd of crayfish maneuver in the shallows. Deanne built a picture-perfect fire and Tom invented tales about Mr. Withers in the boarded-up shack at the edge of the clearing. When it was completely dark, we slid the canoe back into the water and skimmed along under a skyful of stars.

I was happy to crawl into my sleeping bag when the time came – and here's to making this trip the first of many more times I'll put that sleeping bag to use in the near future!

We've Landed!

The license plates on my car still say Virginia, but Maisie and I have officially begun our new lives as Michiganders. We arrived just in time for the annual family gathering on Burt Lake, a summer tradition that began when I was two years old. The photo above will join a parade of family pictures that now spills off the mantel and fills shelves on either side. The gang was all (almost) here – Mom and Dad; me; brother Jeff and sister-in-law Courtney from downstate; the Californians: Aunt Linda, Uncle Steve, and cousin Tom with Deanne; and from across the lake, Aunt Fran, Uncle Charlie, cousin Michael and Sarah. Plus the dogs, of course: Maisie, Lucy, Libby, and Keelie. Only cousin Colby was missing from L.A.

We’ve been enjoying the best weather of the summer, I’m told. I’m happily washing off the urban residue with lots of freshwater swimming, as well as some canoeing, sailing, and an amusing raft trip on the Sturgeon River with the Morales clan. Deanne and Maisie both dove right into their first Burt Lake experiences, enthusiastically taking part in essential activities from aquatic frisbee and cocktail bocce to player piano singalongs and s’mores around the bonfire. I don't know about Deanne, but Maisie has spent the past few days recovering from all the excitement.

Lest we forget about the rest of the world altogether, Tom and Deanne left us with a geographical quiz, which I’ll hereby pass on to you, dear reader. Can you name ten countries whose names contain only four letters? I still have not come up with the final country, but am feeling more worldly anyhow after Tom and Deanne's slideshow from their round-the-globe travels last year. They showed photos from at least nine different countries, with eye-opening stories to go with them (and we only scratched the surface of their adventures). Makes my ten addresses in just one country seem very tame!

Meanwhile, speaking of moving, all my belongings have been recovered from the truck, which docked at the ABF terminal in Kalkaska. Muchas gracias to Mom, Dad, and Tom for their unloading help. The majority of my things are now in storage, awaiting the day when I have a house to move into. But it just so happened that Michael and Sarah closed on a house in Traverse City the very day I unloaded the truck. Now they have a house and no furniture, and I have furniture but no house - so we struck a deal. My couch, chair, futon, table and various other items have established early residency in Traverse City, even though it may be a while before I follow them.

On the Road

Friday was Moving Day. After sleeping (sort of) on the floor in my echoing apartment, I got up at 5:30 to finish loading the car. Maisie, usually the one who rousts me out of bed, was having none of it. Everything fit (just) until I discovered three more plants out on the balcony that I’d missed in the dark the night before. Further rearranging was in order. At last, we were off: the dog on her bed amidst a forest of houseplants, the bin of composting worms balanced on top of various other items I couldn’t bring myself to entrust to the truck, two bikes strapped to the back, and me. Over 750 miles, from Virginia through Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan, and all in one day – hooray!

It clearly hadn’t sunk in that this was a one-way trip, though – I kept having to remind myself that I didn't have to do it all again in reverse in a week or two. I’d find myself thinking, ‘Oh, I’ll listen to that CD on the way back,’ and then recalling, ‘Nope, there isn’t any way back.’ Wow, that sounds definitive. There isn't any way back! I’ve buttered my bread, and now I’ll have to lie in it, to quote a book character I once knew with a penchant for mixed cliches.

To Miss or Not to Miss

Now that I know my days in Reston are numbered, I keep placing items on an imaginary set of scales. On one side are all the things I’ll miss here. On the other are the things I’ll be glad to put behind me. So I thought I’d turn the mental list into a real one and see which way the balance tips.

Things I’ll miss from Reston/DC:

• My NWF coworkers and the smattering of other friends I’ve gathered here.
• The view from my desk into the green, green woods.
• My morning bike commute (well, the idea of it, if not all the particular sidewalk bumps and traffic lights).
• The vast public transport system, especially the part where I sail through the metro gates with my smooth Smartrip card.
• All the culture to be had for free in the capital - museums, monuments, music, festivals.
  
• Spring’s glorious flowering-tree show (dogwoods, cherries, redbuds, etc.).
• The summer profusion of fireflies.
• The incredibly loud summer insect chorus (crickets, katydids, and most notably cicadas).
• Carolina chickadees.
• Fish crows (aka “the uh-uh bird”).
• Plot #10 at the Lake Anne community garden, my little triangle of dirt where I can harvest arugula and mustard greens and parsley right through the winter in this mild climate.

• The so-familiar loop around Lake Anne where I walk or run more days than not.
• Crossing paths with Maisie’s dog friends on our daily walks (we'll miss you, Kenobi, Xerc, Tiger, Bruno, Lucy, Annabelle, Fenway, Maddy, Cooper, and Randolph, plus Cooper and Randolph's mom, who always has treats at the ready so Maisie makes a beeline at first glimpse).
• The Saturday-morning farmer’s market and my Wednesday bag of CSA veggies from Potomac Vegetable Farms.
• Thursday night concerts at the Lake Anne plaza, with people and dogs strolling by, kids splashing in the fountain, all four restaurants buzzing with outdoor diners, the barefoot guy cruising by with his fishing pole and his cocker spaniel in tow, and the pontoon boat with the inflatable palm tree bobbing out in the water…
  

Things I won’t miss:

• The wave of oven-heat that hits me when I open the car door on a summer day.
• The equally shocking refrigerator-blast each time I enter a building.
• The fact that summer always comes too soon and lingers long after I’m ready for a crisp in the air.
• Wimpy winters and the panic that ensues whenever a snowflake is mentioned in the weather forecast.
• The many-times-daily wail of sirens from the nearby fire station.
• The longest traffic lights ever.
• The amount of time I spend just trying to get somewhere, whether it’s by car (waiting for said traffic lights and the crush of rush hour) or biding my time on the train platform or leaning against the side of a bus shelter watching the minutes tick by.
• A squirrel population gone wild – I regularly count fifteen or twenty within the first few minutes of a walk with Maisie (as she drags me halfway up a tree in pursuit).
• Overzealous enforcement of a very strict leash law.

Well, neither list is comprehensive, but I’m glad to see that good memories will outweigh the bad from the 3 years and 9 months of this east-coast interlude!

The Trail Home

Before I really get into this story, allow me to step out of the narrative for a moment. This is my first attempt at “blogging,” and I still find the noun form of the word a little goofy, let alone the verb. So how exactly does this everywhere-and-nowhere, plugged-in, zoomed-out communication tool fit into my scheme to get local and natural and low-tech? Why put my daily occupations, obligations, and observations out there for the whole world to read? Hmmm. Well, every morning Garrison Keillor signs off the Writer’s Almanac with the words, “Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.” That pretty nicely sums up my rationale, not necessarily in that order.

1. Be well. Keeping a journal always tops my list of personal goals. A journal is valuable, as a record of my days and also as a tool for thinking and writing more effectively. But I’m always falling behind, no matter how many times I resolve to do better. Here’s a tool that will make it convenient – and fun – to write regular entries. So I can stop feeling bad about not journaling and instead put that energy toward doing it. And I can accomplish another goal at the same time . . .
2. Keep in touch. My friends are scattered far and wide. As much as I love real, handwritten, stamped-and-mailed letters, it’s simply not realistic to keep up that way on a regular basis. Even email isn't realistic, unless I ruthlessly pare down the list of folks with whom I want to maintain ties. Voila! Along comes this thing called a blog, and I can write as eloquently as I’m able just one time and anybody who cares to check in can read it. And if nobody does? No worries, it’s still a way to . . .
3. Do good work. My hunch is that finding and celebrating a home place is indeed good work, both for me personally and for the state of the world. And journaling, in any form, is a tool for paying closer attention to what’s happening around me. John Tallmadge calls writing “a form of discovery as well as expression.” He suggests that “we can learn to use writing as a window into nature, a way to…discover the variety, intricacy, and wonder of our home landscapes.” * So I’m not just writing about the process of homing; writing is part of the process of homing.

* From “Writing as a Window into Nature” in Into the Field: A Guide to Locally-Focused Teaching.

DC to TC

Two weeks from today, my life’s trajectory will make a major u-turn. That’s when I’ll leave Reston, Virginia (part of the sprawling metro area surrounding Washington, D.C.) and head home to my native northern Michigan (to land, most likely, in Traverse City). Maisie-dog and I will hit the road in the trusty Subaru, to be followed by the rest of my worldly possessions on a truck a few days later. Half my job – as a writer for a children's magazine – is coming too. From this vantage point, it looks pretty ideal: I’ll get to keep doing something I love, but now from a place I love. Plus, without all my work hours spoken for, I’ll have time to delve into other projects (writing and otherwise).

It will be a momentous transition. Each move I've made since leaving Michigan thirteen years ago has been a temporary one. Often the end was in sight before a stint had even begun: four years of college in Minnesota, a summer in the field in Alaska, a season on a farm in California, a year of teaching at an environmental center on Lake Superior’s north shore, two years of grad school in Wisconsin. For this latest chapter, the timeline was less fixed but not intended to be permanent. I’ve been here over three and a half years now, and once again it feels like the right time to move on. The difference: This time, I plan to stay.

So why Michigan? There are certainly other places I’ve lived (and surely many where I haven’t) that I could make my home, and happily. But none are my place in the same way. The water of the Great Lakes is in my blood, the trees here whisper words I heard before I could speak, and the shape of the land fits my feet. I don’t think sinking roots here will necessarily be easier than in some other place, but I think those roots may be deeper. And I believe that sinking roots is tremendously important work.

Back when I was working on a masters thesis (about nature journaling as a technique for place-based education), I noted a paragraph from Earth in Mind by educator David Orr. He urges us to make a conscious decision to “rediscover and reinhabit our places and regions, finding in them sources of food, livelihood, energy, healing, recreation, and celebration. This means rebuilding communities…restoring local culture and our ties to local places…reweaving the local ecology into the fabric of the economy…rediscovering and restoring the natural history of our regions…finding our place and digging in.” These words struck me then, and now they aptly describe what I’m aiming for in this next phase of life: finding my place and digging in.