What in the World Do I Have to Be Thankful About???

 Of course, you know the answer....

EVERYTHING.....

But, specifically:

Somebody told me once that my faith in God is "child-like."  What I think that person really meant was "child-ISH."  It was someone who didn't feel comfortable with me saying stuff like that I believe that God loves me BEST, and that God talks to me, or that I see God EVERYWHERE in my life, most definitely in the beauties of Creation that surround me.  I'm sorry if that offends anyone, or that people are offended because I don't seem to practice my faith the way someone else does.  But I am most thankful that I can drive down the road and see a flock of Snow Buntings fly up ahead of me,

and I can see the barest hint of how our spirits can, and will soar, so freely.  Sometimes I see something so beautiful,

or I can't imagine anything more colorful,

or unusual,

it's a heart

or comical,

he really did look like a Roomba doing this

or inspiring,

and I know that God is just giving me the merest tiny glimmer of what lies beyond. For the many gifts that God surrounds me with daily, I am thankful.

I am thankful for the men in my life.

For my husband, who is everything and more that a woman could want in a partner for life. He is more than I deserve. You can tell that just by looking, right?

I love spending every day with him so much!

I am so thankful for the beautiful, emotional, handsome, sensitive, talented child of my heart.

I don' t deserve him, either.  I wish I was a good enough person to make him know, every day, that I choose him as my son.

And what can I say, O boy of my loins  :)

You give me so much, even though you are 427 miles away most days.  I feel honored that you want to share your feelings, your inspirations, your happy moments with me.  I am truly, truly thankful for everything that you are!

I am also thankful for my supportive friends, both here and far away. I love sharing with you these little moments of my life, these glimpses through words and pictures.  Thanks for caring!

I could go on, but the rest is just "stuff."  What I am truly happy for is the grace I have been given to be able to see the beauty and joy and love in people and in the world around me.  I know I've been given a great gift, and I am so

THANKFUL!

I Wonder Whether the Weather will be wetter...

...or snowy(er)

That is the question.  Here I am, in one of the snow capitals of the whole planet. It is certain that I will see at least 100 inches of snow this winter.  It is likely to be more than 200 inches, and if it is a record year, we will be looking at over 300. That is a BIG WOW for me. So far, there has not been a lot of snow.  I know, it's still early.  The question is, am I feeling anticipation...or DREAD? I have no idea.  I know I don't like driving (or riding...ask Bob) in icy/slick snow conditions. On the other hand, I LOVE snow. So I just don't know.  Here are the pros and cons of it.

Maybe I should get the cons over with first!
There is a BIG Lake near here, and it determines a lot of things about the weather...mostly that the weather is schizophrenic most days.  Go ahead and read the forecast.  Then read it an hour later.  The truth is, no one knows.  See, it's dependent on so many things, but especially the distance you are from The Mighty Gitchigumi, or your altitude, which varies wildly between the two places I hang out most these days.

Really good example.  Saturday, we needed to drive from Paynesville to Ontonagon, and then planned on driving around and taking in the scenery for a while.  It was mostly cloudy when we left Paynesville.  We reached Rockland without anything seeming different, (stopped and took a couple of pictures of the old dam site for the old Minesota [sic erat scriptum :)] Mine by Rockland,

the water was just so perfectly shimmer

but just past town, we could see a WALL of snow approaching. We were in the snow zone from then on all the way to Ontonagon.  I was feeling a little disappointed, because the conditions were nearly white-out, and I knew our drive couldn't happen.  However, on the way back to Rockland, we fell right back out of the snow zone.

The road north

the road south

 It seemed our drive would happen after all.  And it did!  We took forest road 730 (my "Longcut" road from another post) and the snow caught up to us in the forest.  Unlike being on the highway, where you have to worry about slickness and traffic and curvy up and down roads, taking the forest road means you must go slow, so you don't really care.  And you have time to look around.  And stop for pictures.  And get out of the car and pick up dried lichen and grasses  and seed pods and cattail fluff for your craftiness projects, and you count your daily eagles at THREE, although you can hardly see them through the BIG floofy flakes of snow that is so beautifully falling in the forest. AND you realize that you have gotten past the cons and into the wonderful PROS of  UP snow!!!

You should have been there.  I thought my pictures were going to be as magical as my experience of taking them was.  BUT it was snowing really a lot! and most of my pictures are blurry blobs of dark stuff surrounded by blurry blobs of white stuff.

But it WAS magical.  You'll just have to believe me.

Maybe this will give you an idea:

white aspens in white snowstorm

two of the three daily eagles 

snow on spruce

queen anne's lace or future addition to my paper-making endeavors

this is one of the pictures I thought would be beautiful....hmmmm....

here's another...these little spruce trees stood out a lot more in real life!

beautiful floofy snow

I love how the snow mutes all the colors

or makes subtle colors stand out

or provides even more camouflage for an already camouflage-y bird

or how it can make a little red squirrel even more cute(r)

Anyway, the rest of my pictures do look a little bit like that famous painting "White Cat in a Snowstorm" or something similar.  I'm not worried.  Because it's only the beginning. We have another month or so of the days getting shorter, before the rest of the winter lags on (and on). That alarms me a little as I look directly SOUTH out my window and see the sun lower in the southern sky than this Iowa girl has ever seen it (what a difference 600 miles makes!!!)

But I'm determined.  To take beautiful pictures. Of white cats, maybe.  And come March or April, when I am announcing to my UP friends, (and you know who you are) how much I LOVE the snow, you will know that I have the chance of becoming a real Yooper Girl after all!

God is good, eh?
Amen!

PS. If you are not from the UP and want to see how deeply I'm buried in the white stuff here, this link takes you to the current snow depth map.  Pretty interesting stuff....for snow lovers like me :)

Upper Peninsula Snow Depth Map

Daily Eagles and the Rules of the Road

I live in a wonderland of nature.

And mostly everyone around here knows it.

Yoopers are interesting drivers.   They are sort of on-the-road oxymorons.  Don't worry, I don't mean that word sarcastically at all. It's just that they will tailgate you...a lot.  But, they are NICE about it.  Nice tailgaters.  They will tailgate patiently for many miles, through passing and non-passing zones.  They won't rev their engines or gesture at you rudely. Then, when they are ready, they will pass you nicely.  No revving, just gentle, I-think-I'd-like-to-be-first-in-line-now passing.  The only exception is during deer hunting season, maybe.  Then they rev just a little.  Because their CAMP is waiting.  And even though Yoopers LOVE LOVE LOVE to hunt, CAMP is a code word for a lot of things.  It's the home base to coordinate their hunting strategies.  It's their yearly getaway from civilization, a place where if nobody showers, nobody cares.  It's a place where the only fashion statements are in camo and blaze orange. It's a place to drink a lot of beer. What could be better than that!

So anyway, while they are out hunting and camping and drinking, I am doing my usual stuff. Which, in part, involves driving to and fro between Paynesville and Ontonagon.  And I try to watch behind me for tailgaters, but I also have to look around me for photo ops.

For several years, and especially since moving to the UP, my constant car buddy has been THIS:

It is a Nikon Coolpix p510, lovingly used and slightly mangled, complete with tiny wobbly tripod. It's been dropped twice, hence the dent and the loud whirring noise it makes when zooming in or out. Coolpix models are up in the p900s by now, which tells you this one has been around the block a few times.  And to Utah and back.  And all the way around Lake Superior....etc.  It is a fixed lens point and shoot, not a DSLR, so it is limited in what it can do, but what it does for me, it does nicely.

Anyway, it usually sits on my dash, ready to be grabbed.  Fortunately: 1. I am a careful driver.  2. I try to stay on the road less traveled. 3. Yoopers are understanding when they see you pulled off the road in front of them.  Some will offer assistance, others will wave in a friendly manner, but most will look around and try to see what's caught your attention, and is it something they are currently on the hunt for? Since most of them are not hunting for birds, or porcupines or Bald Eagles, which can't be hunted anyway, they go around me without any revving or rude gestures.  Sometimes they pull off with me and grab their cameras off of their dashboards.

Because it is mid-November, most of the migrations of birds are over and done.  There are a few hangers-on, because of nice weather and only one snowstorm so far.  So what I find mostly to take pictures of these days are eagles (and an occasional porcupine).

number 3 of 4 spotted so far

In fact, these days I look for what I call my "Daily Eagle."  What some people don't know is that our National Symbol Bird of Freedom and Glory is for the most part a big vulture with a white head. Meaning that it is a very opportunistic eater of roadkill.  Especially during deer season, when the roadkill du jour is mostly going to be Whitetail Deer.

today's DE

Anyway, I LOVE photographing eagles.  While I am photographing one, I am sure that eagles are my favorite bird (that's how it works....if I am photographing a Rose-breasted Grosbeak, IT is my favorite.

not an eagle

Once you get used to looking at them, you realize that all eagles are unique.  It's the reason why people who watch the famous Decorah Eagle Cam can tell Mom from Dad without a problem.

Saturday's Daily Eagle on a wobbly perch

1

future site of a food fight!

the guy who stayed out of it

the guy who WON

some Iowa eagles who want to be recognized

remember this face for a moment

sleepy eagle

Busy being a mom, and yes, you've seen this face before! The sleepy eagle is Dad. (Old friends from Dunbar Slough in Iowa)

Eagles only get a totally white head when they are five years old or so, so in the meantime, they have lots of different looks.

yearling and adult eagles

might be one or two years old

three

I would guess two eagles from this year's fledge and mom or dad (plus a lot of crows and ravens not sharing well)

The other day, I was fortunate enough to chase these three away from their du jour. 

from the bottom to the top I would guess three, four and five+ years old

Anyway, I could bore you with many more DE (daily eagle) pictures, but unfortunately, I want to go see if I can find a new eagle to photograph.  Is it an obsession?  Maybe a little.  But I think everyone has their own.  I hope whatever you are obsessed with makes you happy, too!

Construction, Destruction--And Other Forces of Nature.

After I have lived in the UP for a year, I will know more stuff.

I am exploring, studying, living the seasons here, in a way I never did in Iowa.

I remember when I was a kid, I was fascinated with nature trails.

You know, like when you go to a state park and there is a sign marking a trail into the forest.  Most parks have one or more.  We used to go to parks often when I was a kid, mostly because Dad loved to fish. He'd come inside in the afternoon after working on the farm and tell my mom we were going fishing. She was always prepared for this by being stocked up on picnic supplies.  She would pull the cold meat out of the fridge, butter, and make some open faced sandwiches on soft white bread.  A jug full of Kool-aid or iced tea, a can of Van Camps pork and beans, and we'd be on our way.

Just like most kids, a quiet summer evening of fishing wouldn't hold my attention for very long. After a few casts, unless the fish were biting ferociously, I'd be done with that and off exploring.  I would usually stop at the sign to the nature trail in whatever park we were visiting, asking to take the tour of mysterious forest beyond the sign, and just as usually, my mom would say no.  Various reasons, I might get lost, it was too close to dark, there were probably ticks, mosquitoes, bees, poison ivy, cockleburs, mud, lions, tigers and bears (not really).  I was always disappointed, because the forest was, and still is, so alluring to me.

As an adult, I have found myself on those forest trails more often.  Sometimes just to sit on fallen log and BREATHE all the respiration from the myriad green things around me, or to listen and wait for the birds to get used to my presence and show up.

Fast forward to present:  Here I am, in the middle of Forest World.  It's like a shopping mall of forests.  What kind do I want to explore today?  There are old growth forests....few areas of them left after the rampages of logging that took place in UP's history.  There are VERY new growth forests, often regenerating aspen trees or small evergreens.  More often it's a mix of hardwoods and softwoods, deciduous and evergreen, sometimes selectively logged, and therefore allowing light to show far into their depths, or not logged, with a dark wild look. Nearly a million acres of forest to be explored.

Everywhere there is an extreme mix of living and dead, healthy, unhealthy, straight, twisted, falling, fallen, dead, decayed, parasitized or partially consumed. You don't have to go far to see the entire circle of  life. Each stage of a tree's life provides something for some THING, and strangely, there is beauty in every aspect, if you and look and really SEE it.

I took a picture recently and titled it "I like lichen," which I thought was kind of clever.  But it's true, I love lichen, and moss and algae, and everything else I see in a forest. There is even beauty in a tree that has been struck by lightning, broken, twisted by wind, even taken over by pests and diseases. You may not agree.  I'm okay with that. Here are my pictures to help you decide.

Even naked trees are beautiful

after their covering fall to the ground.

Pine trees don't like to give up their clothing.

Trees fall prey to other lifeforms for many different reasons...

to build homes...

or dams.

Sometimes they provide homes for other critters...

or they become a restaurant

where many different courses

are served.

They can provide recreational activities, like this climbing wall for woodpeckers.

Even though I love trees, sometimes I think I love moss more,

When it grows on rocks

or fallen trees

AND, are you fascinated by fungus?

I am!

And this whole algae/lichen thing...

intriguing, don't you think?

See, I think there is a metaphor for humans here...that even in death, there is life.  

I also think about, as I look into the forests, all the things I don't see. We hardly ever see an animal, or bird, yet I know they thrive here. And sometimes, I see something that really ISN'T there.

at first glance, I thought this was a man walking through the woods...Mick Dodge-like. 

Then I saw this.  Do you see her?  Graceful woman of the forest.

I saw a commercial yesterday for a TV show that was talking about it's not to late to rescue the natural world from the terrible influences of humankind.  Then I look at the forest and see that in spite of humans, it continues to flourish and recreate itself...all in this little remote bit of Michigan.  And THAT'S the allure.  There is a wildness, growing, flourishing, untamed, untamable, here.

And I long for it.