Six Months! Can you Believe it! Resolutions and Things!

I am NOT a New Year's resolutions type girl.

Why is it that the New Year is the only day that people do that?

Then they make this list of things that if they just did them all, they would be a perfect human being and have a happy life and everyone would love them and they would be rich and famous and beautiful forever.

Six months ago exactly, I made a big resolution.  And I kept it.

I resolved at that time to give up my old life in Iowa for a totally new one in the beauteous north woods of the western UP.

What did I give up, precisely?

My house and home in Carroll, which I hear no longer bears any resemblance to its former wild wilderness of an oasis (complete with cherry trees and raspberry brambles) in the middle of town.

Their loss is not my loss at all.

My job of 32 years. There are so many things I don't miss about it.  Meetings, restrictions, distractions, lack of understanding or support by others about what music education is and should be all about. Having to ask for and justify every dollar, and to scrimp, donate necessities myself or do without. I do so miss my friends, and the kids...but not enough to ever want to put myself into a similar situation again.

I gave up cornfields, hog barns and cattle lots.

I gave up Swan Lake, Dunbar Slough, Blackhawk Lake, De Soto Bend, the Loess Hills, Artesian Lakes, and all my other favorite bird sites.

some kind of teeny flowers in Blackhawk Lake...I have no idea

yep, I made them do this

they didn't fly away

he thinks he sounds better than he does

greater white-fronted geese

there are no bobolinks in the UP

mutant teal

white faced ibis in Dunbar Slough

I gave up the comfort of knowing that every bill will get paid on time every month, because I have a "steady" job.  The freedom and security to spend a little money impulsively once in a while.

And what did I get in return?

Acres and acres of my own woods and pastures and swamp, and streams and aspens and alders and pines and spruce and maples.  Raspberry and blackberry brambles, daisies and goldenrod, yarrow and tansy. Ferns and moss and blueberries. Deer and grouse and wolves and coyotes and snowshoe hares and chipmunks and sweet naughty little red squirrels.

Joe Pye weed

interrupted fern opening in the spring

skippers

aspens in Aspen Meadow

tansy is beautiful but toxic

Aspen Meadow

Bob and Shane Creek

roomba

pileated

little red

A little house in Paynesville.  A herd of deer in my yard every day.  Chickadees and nuthatches and goldfinches and crows and ravens and blue jays.  Hairy and downy woodpeckers, an eagle, and a little girl pheasant.  Just a short drive away, mountains and lakes and rivers, like the Ontonagon, brown as Willie Wonka's chocolate river. Never-ending forests and the mighty ever-changing Gitchi Gumi.

snow bunting

red-breasted nuthatch

penguin with snow fro and black-capped chickadee

downy woodpecker boy

my favorite baby is growing up

Ontonagon

calm before the winter

A business where it is my business to be creative and get paid for it.  An inviting shop with purple and green walls, a grand piano and plenty of room to make music or things.  My husband working in the next room, sharing the ride to and from work every day through the most beautiful of valleys.

military hill

coyote

Time.

Because Yooper time is different.  It is expected that you stop and enjoy the scenery, sleep in a little on the really dark days of winter.  Go hunting or fishing or birding or determine your own hours based on what you want or need to accomplish that day.  Take a long breakfast or lunch, catch up on the catch or news of the day.

A little insecurity of how we can continue to pay our bills on time in an area of the country where everyone struggles with the same problem, yet are still generous with their time and talents. Where barter is a real thing, and everyone has things to barter. A simpler lifestyle of being surrounded by people who don't care about and can't afford the frivolous stuff anyway.

The fun of making new friends, new friendships with kind, real, down-to-earth people. New acquaintances, new accents, new and original-in-all-the-earth characters.

And lots of love.  Love of family, here and Iowa and elsewhere.

my littlest 

Love for new adventures. Love for this beautiful country and all the flora and fauna contained herein.  Mostly love for an awesome God, who allows me to feel the joy of his creation every day, to see the humor in every situation, to see something positive and constructive and good about this new life that we decided to make for ourselves exactly six months ago.

Time sure flies when you are incandescently happy.

Happy New Year to my friends, old and new!

It's a Good Thing....

I told someone yesterday that it's a good thing that the UP is a big secret to most people.

Or else everyone would be trying to live here.

Really.

The snow has started.

I think.

Finally.

It is dangerous and so beautiful at the same time.  I have lived through a white-knuckle trip through the Military Hill area, which was made easier because of the fact that I wasn't driving, and my husband was (slowly), and that I could see that the county road trucks were busy going up and down to get the ice and slush and snow under control so everyone would live to tell about their own white knuckle experiences.

Not surprisingly, people talk about the weather a lot in the UP.   There are more reasons for that than you might think.

First is because there are FOUR VERY DIFFERENT seasons up here.

I used to live in the land of hot humid summers, followed by Indian summer, followed by a sudden shift to cold and ice.  Then a long winter of terrible wind chills and not a lot of snow. Followed by a couple of days of spring and then eighty degree weather, leading back in to hot humid summers.

Up here, summers are long and mild.  People tell you to enjoy the weather if it occasionally gets above eighty.  It means they can dip their pinkies in Mighty Gitchigumi without hypothermia.

June might be a little too early to try this.

Or maybe not.


Autumn is a long period of gorgeous fiery foliage, gradually cooling temperatures. I like how there seems to be enough of it to enjoy both subtle changes sometimes, and sometimes huge gluttonous swipes of God's paintbrush.  God is the Van Gogh of autumn.

Winter...well...it's BIG NEWS every day.  This year, it's slow to get rolling, unlike the usual snowball down the hill that it literally is. But the snow is coming, and starting to be a most-days thing. Something I love is how right now the days have sort of an ethereal light (or gloom) to them due to the angle of the sun, which is SOMEWHERE under all the clouds and snow squalls.  It  creates these subtle glowing moments like this:

I don't know if this picture does it justice.  In the distance there was fog, or snow, and in the sky, the sun (from wherever in the southern sky it was hanging out) lit up the moisture in the sky, turning it very delicately pink...and it GLOWED. Magical, really...you should have been here.

Anyway.

After winter comes Spring which comes LATE, beings that I have seen quite a bit of it still getting underway throughout the month of  June. The Aspens seem to be the last to realize that it has finally arrived, and with little lime green roundnesses of leaves hurry to catch up with the rest of the forest.

No wonder that the weather is always the biggest news item of the day.   Be prepared to talk about it to everyone you meet.  Especially in the grocery store.  Or really just about anywhere else, too. But don't worry, there is always something interesting happening, so you'll have plenty to talk about.

For instance, I like how you can drive ten miles and be in two distinct weather zones. It all has to do with that big LAKE, and your proximity to it.  Yesterday, I drove through squalls and almost clear skies and gloom as well on my 7 mile trip to Ewen and back. It was clear, though, that every type of weather I drove through yesterday was WINTER...and beautiful in its own right.

Hmm....


I guess if everyone had been in my car with me yesterday, looking at the beauty of the snow covering the pines and every branch of every tree and bush, and the inviting trails going off deep into forests, well, then, everyone would want to LIVE here.

Where would we put them all???

Let alone, how would they all fit in my car in the first place?

 I just don't know.

But it would probably wreck the wildness of the place.  Because scenes like this picture

I know it's the same picture.  It's worth looking at at least twice. 

would just get trampled or driven on or people would be brushing up against the trees and knocking the snow off and stuff...not good.

Hmmm....

It's IS really starting to get snowy here.

And it's going to get really way MORE snowy.  Dangerously so.  Hundreds of inches of snow.

 See?

You probably wouldn't like it anyway.

Probably.

Forget I mentioned it.

: )