Now where were we? Weren’t we talking about summer days in northern Michigan? The story didn’t get finished…
We saw the garnet sands. We saw (for some definition of “saw”) the colored cliffs of Pictured Rock as the winds blew the surf and the waves crashed onto the beach. And we decided on a hike into the haunts of nature.
In the beginning, there was a clear and civilized path with benches set alongside looking out onto the waters of Lake Superior. We hiked for a while with other hikers under the canopy of trees with leaves shaking in the wind. And we kept on hiking as the the last benches disappeared behind us and the other hikers turned back, because the path kept going, and because we were up for it.
The path wound along the top of the bluffs. To our left, waves and wind. To our right, blowing Pines and Huckleberry. (Imagine the bliss of bears when the berries are blue and ripe!)
The Pines gave way to Maples. Great boles reaching upward with a canopy of leaves shaking in the wind and silver-bark saplings waiting for a chance to shoot to the skies if only one of the big trees would succumb.
We hiked and hiked. Ben periodically would stop and look back to make sure we weren’t falling too far behind. The path kept mostly to the edge of the bluff, although we were just far enough away that most of the time we could only hear the crashing waves and not see them. And the greenery at the very edge of the cliffs sheltered us from the wind so that even as the canopy of leaves far above us shook, we found ourselves walking in a noisy kind of stillness.
And then among the Maples, I spotted a Beech sapling. I called to Trudy and to Ben. To see the Beech. To admire the dark green leaves. The serrated edges.
And then there was another. And another. As we hiked, the Maples gave way to more and more Beeches, until there were no longer any Maples to be seen, and instead we found ourselves hiking in a Beech forest with great glowing silver Beech trunks thrusting upward, holding up the sky.
Now you must know that there is something about Beech trees that runs deep in the soul of my family. So please forgive me if I tell you that in that moment, as we found ourselves in the midst of a forest of Beech trees, small ones and huge ones, with the wind blowing into the Beechen canopy off Lake Superior, as we stood just feet from the precipice of the painted rock cliffs of Pictured Rock, I was overcome.
Trudy and Ben were ahead of me when I began to quietly sob. I figured it would pass, so I stopped for a moment to let it pass. But the sobbing grew into deep gasps, and I was no longer in control of my breathing.
Trudy looked back at me and saw me standing in the path in the middle of the Beeches in the wind by myself with the green canopy shaking overhead. And she walked back to me and put her arms around me and held me closely without saying a word. And then Ben looked back at us and saw us standing there hugging each other. And he walked back to us and put his arms around us and held us closely without saying a word. And my sobbing slowly subsided.
At which point, we turned around and hiked back out of the wind-blown Beech woods to the wind-blown Maple woods to the wind-blown Pine and Huckleberry.
And that was our hike into the Haunts of Nature.