Escape

Spring buds on the maple trees

This week’s photo challenge at WordPress is:  Escape.

Just wanted to let you know.  We’ve finally busted out of winter here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula after almost seven months.

We’ve successfully escaped.

We can only hope someone hid the keys of that winter jailor…

Melt

Rushing stream with tiny waterfalls

The Long Winter seems to be exiting just in time for May.  We can only hope.  Last weekend the temperatures soared to about 70 degrees (21 C) and our snow began to melt, melt, melt.

Three

We humans scurried outside, sun and warmth-deprived creatures, and we luxuriated.

I found an old cushion and sat with my back against maples and poplars and spruce, trying to feel the sap rising up my back.

Sat and delighted in Spring.

April madness

Chickadee on six foot snow bank

The long winter continues.

Another eight inches of snow yesterday morning, give or take three inches.  (It could have been eleven inches.  We’ve ceased measuring in late April.)

I am really OK with it.  No need to offer condolences.  We escaped to Florida earlier in the month, thereby easing Endless Winter Restlessness Syndrome.

I’m not sure the other locals are faring as well.  One senses a certain madness in the flitting eyes of grocery shoppers.  Alcohol sales are up.  People tend not to make sense anymore.  Just sayin’.  The livin’ is not easy up here in Cabin Fever land.

The light of an ordinary trip through pea soup fog to Marquette

How Lake Superior looks in Marquette

Here we are in Marquette, a town 78 miles from our Little House in the Big Woods.  It’s the Big City, kids.  It even has a Starbucks!  How I love the city–just as much as the woods…

Barry has to cover the Baraga Track Meet for the L’Anse Sentinel.  He–I mean we–have been covering this track meet for more years than you have fingers and toes.

Last year he limped in  to cover aforementioned event with a walker less than two weeks after his first knee replacement.  Oh, wasn’t he cute limping around!  (I wouldn’t know–I don’t stay for the track meet anymore.)  Someone snapped his picture and posted it on Facebook.  He was a sports reporter/hero for five minutes!

Miracle

Here’s what just happened.

I was out reading your blogs, buzzing here and there in the blogosphere for the past hour or so, when suddenly a Fierce Desire struck.  I’m never sure what to do about these Fierce Desires to write blogs, tell stories.  Do you simply allow your typing fingers to have their way?  Or do you attempt to discipline your Fierce Desires into some semblance of order, telling them that they must incubate until morning’s light, or perhaps stay silent until next Tuesday?

I try asking my Heart (which is always the best thing to do) but the Heart feels divided. Or perhaps it’s impossible to hear the heart because too many thoughts are adding their opinions.  So to heck with it, you’ll have to bear with another essay, or perhaps you’ll wander away to look elsewhere on your computer at Tonight’s News or maybe your friend’s latest posting on Facebook.

There’s a story I’ve been wanting to tell you, but haven’t figured out how or where to fit it in.  It has to do with glasses.  Barry’s glasses, to be exact.  I suppose you’re thinking this might be a boring story, but it isn’t.  It’s high excitement!  (At least it was to us.)

View One. The Infamous Glasses.

View Two. The Infamous Glasses

Tiptoeing away…

January, 2012. Our Little House in the Big Woods.

You’ve been expecting this, haven’t you?

You’ve been wondering when Kathy is taking another blogging break?

You clever reader.

You know how it goes.  She writes like crazy for months, and then she accelerates and writes every day for a while, and then she announces a blogging break.  Her last 11-day break occurred in December, so it’s been a long time…

She’s gently closing her blogging door and tiptoeing away.  She’ll leave on a night light in case you want to read past stories–or look at past pictures–while she’s mostly off-line for a while.  She won’t even be reading your blogs during her break.  :(

Thank you for your support during The Long Winter by the Shores of Silver Lake  Lake Superior.  (You Laura Ingalls Wilder fans caught the attempt at humor, right?)  I have so appreciated your readership and comments during these long cold northern winter days and nights.  You’ve helped make this heart feel even warmer than sitting by the wood stove with your support and connection.

May you be blessed as the seasons change.  From our Little House in the Big Woods to your neck of the woods…  Love, Kathy

P.S.  Almost forgot to tell you!  Even though haven’t been taking as many pictures as usual during the last year or so, I found enough photos to share a favorite from each month, starting back in January, 2012.  Will leave you with more than a baker’s dozen of memories:

February, 2012. A quiet moment in Nicaragua. (Our nephew married there–an amazing trip to San Juan del Sur.)

Easter on ice, 2013

Hello world!

Picture this. Ice fishing over 280 feet of water on Lake Superior. Floating on 18 inches of ice.  Convinced by husband to leave warm house on Easter morning. No one else on ice, except one lone snowmobiler. Everyone else at church.

We celebrated Easter Services in tent.

Husband snapped this picture.

Coffee was enjoyed in the fellowship hall.

The fish have not risen. Yet.

“Flat Stanley, do you want to go ice fishing on Lake Superior?”

Last week I opened the mailbox to discover a long white envelope with a return address from Connecticut.

It was from an Internet friend, Susan, whose fourth grade students are learning about watersheds and how they can positively impact our rivers, streams, lakes, ponds or oceans. The 88 students are studying the Mill River in Stamford, Connecticut, but are also interested in learning about other watersheds.

That’s where Flat Stanley comes in. How many of you know about Flat Stanley?

Flat Stanley is a laminated cardboard cut-out (sorry, Stanley, I hope that didn’t hurt your feelings) who popped out of my long white envelope and asked to learn about Lake Superior. He is based on a book called Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown. Unfortunately, the tale goes, he was accidentally squished “as flat as a pancake” when a bulletin board fell on him. He is very, very flat but otherwise very fine.

(The better to stuff in white envelopes, methinks.)

Barry and Derrick prepare to pull the ice fishing tent out on the Keweenaw Bay

Susan’s students have sent Flat Stanley’s to visit watersheds all over America and the WORLD! If you are selected to be Flat Stanley’s “host family” you take him to visit one of your watersheds and tell about the exciting things he saw or did with you while he visited.

You take a picture of Flat Stanley by that body of water and write something about the watershed. Then you send it beck to the students. He will be part of a huge learning display at the school’s science expo in May.

How cool is that?

“Hello, is this the Downton Abbey hotline?”

The staff. Downton Abbey.

Last night I called my daughter, Kiah, with a Downton Abbey question.  (As every one of you surely knows Downton Abbey is a very popular PBS Masterpiece Theater Classic that has millions of us following the thrilling adventures weekly.)

“Hello, hello! Is this the Downton Abbey hotline?” I asked her message service when she didn’t answer the phone.  ”My name is Kathy and I’m looking for information about Downton Abbey.  Could you please tell me what time it’s available for watching on the Internet tomorrow?  Can you watch at 8 a.m.?  Please call me back at your earliest convenience at (906) xxx-xxxx.  Thank you very much.”

The Downton Abbey hotline returned my call several hours later.  I believe she announced that her mother was whacko.  And she didn’t know what time Mama could watch the Grand Finale of Season 3.  She informed me that some people have to work and she’d be watching at her usual time after laboring for the day.

I went cruising on-line to discover the answer to this fateful question and stumbled upon–oh no!–a site that contained a spoiler about the current episode. Grrrr.  Second time this season an episode has been spoiled by tell-it-all wagging lips.  Note to self:  do not cruise on-line looking for answers to silly questions.

To gaze, perchance to linger…

Yesterday afternoon I read an article in Orion magazine about the art of gazing. The author, Trebbe Johnson, urges us to open our hearts to brokenness in her powerful essay “Gaze even here.”

She shares about visiting a logged forest clearcut with friends.  About how one wants to avert one’s eyes from devastation, from pain, from ugliness, from loss. Yet she and her companions remained in the scar of the decimated woods and lingered there for days.

The group questioned:  what would happen if they simply settled into this damaged place observing the land and their own responses to it?  Their intention was to get to know this place that they heartily wished to run from.

One crooked poplar survivor…