ESPECIALLY

We’re home tonite – have been for several hours.

We’ve unpacked and sorted mail and fed Sophie Matilda and snacked and finished up reading thet last few pages of novels started Up North…

And emergency laundry is in the machine.

And now I sit before keyboard - and once again it is late and it has been a busy day.

Yesterday was a special day.

We were concluding our week or so North and winding things down.
We attended a 152 year-old chapel in Leland in the morning – a delightful Priest takes the reigns over the summer – it is a seasonal chapel – and then breakfast in a small town - good fellowship and decent food but inexperienced waitstaff –

And then home to camp for an unexpected nap –

And then off on a hike up the Whaleback trail – a lovely little hike up to a site overlooking Lake Michigan –

Have not done the trip for couple of years….

Very emotional – there we were lookin’ out at the Big Water…pure beauty with sun and waves, gentle from our height – and drift wood and beach far below – and …it was very emotional.

Could have cried. Did a little.

And yet we were so happy – and yet, could have cried. Did.

So many emotions.

The Jesuits have a saying: “Let us have the kids when they are young and we will never lose them….”, or words to that effect…

And it is so true.

50 years ago I was privileged to spend summers on one of the Arms of Grand Traverse Bay.

A veteran of WW1 gave me his cottage for a week at a time – a teenager, can you believe that?

And I drove up to the Bay and unloaded my gear and made the bed and cooked the food and built fires in the Franklin Stove and walked the beach and swam in the Bay and heard the woods sounds and took Dear Gramma Gaines there to enjoy it too and inhaled the woods and Bay air – and so many other things too – and lived the life of a Northerner – and I have never forgotten.

And yesterday brought it all back.

It was so long ago, those fifty years. And yet they seem so recent too.

And then we walked back down the trail….downhill this time, with the roots and the sand and the mushrooms and the fallen trees and the sun’s rays shining through the trees - and o my….all the memories.

Anyway, it is late and I am not sure what you will make of this…but there it is.

The North is special, especially if you have known it as a youngster.