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Michigan

memoirMichigannature

Birdsong

Suddenly I’ve realized how stupid I am. I’ve lived in this climate and latitude most of my life, surrounded by these fellow creatures going about their quick, fluttery lives, and I know almost nothing about them, not even how to recognize their voices.
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May 12, 2018
dunesMichigannaturepoetry

To Love Michigan in Summer

Sumac and scrubby grass, dense-leaved oaks and maples, jumbles of every possible green. Blue spruce, Douglas fir, white pines, red pines, the astonishing symmetry of jack pine trunks in a sudden stand. Dead trees like skeletons rising from swamps. Everything stubby and scruffy and sassafrassy.
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July 1, 2017
college lifeMichigan

Wolverine Pilgrimage

In the van on the way there, I wind up sitting in the way-back with my twelve-year-old niece. She is hopelessly bored, fiddling with her phone while the grownups discuss my college’s cuts to arts programs, the difficulties faced by arts organizations, recent discoveries concerning…
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October 17, 2015
Michigannaturespirituality

At the Mineralogical Museum

“I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.” — Ezekiel 11:19 Hardness has advantages. I think of this today here in Michigan, where the temperatures have been so cold that snow absolutely crackles when car tires push…
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February 20, 2015
memoirMichigannature

Snow Day

Six-thirty a.m. Dark. No sound save the wind’s distant crescendos and calms. No traffic sounds. Slip out of bed to check the internet for closings: could it be? Oh, snow day! A peek outside: streetlamp light illuminates the snow, still blowing horizontally, at least eight…
mm
January 9, 2015