I Miss You Daddy...

"Oh, there will come a day, a twilight,

when I shall sink to rest

in deep wet moss and cool blue shadows

upon a mountain's breast.

And yield a body torn with passions

and bruised with earthly scars,

to the cool oblivion of evening

of solitude and stars."

(~Lew Sarett~)

Nature Awareness Journal

Living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, I am surrounded by natural scenic beauty.  It’s everywhere I turn and I can’t help but feel a bit spoiled and rich.  Lake Superior is only a two- minute walk from my office and my favorite beach a 15-minute drive out of town.  I live 30 minutes “in-land” and am blessed with the opportunity to own property where I can have my gardens, raise animals, lose myself in the vast magical woods of my backyard, and take my dogs for long walks on the numerous hiking trails that begin just outside my door.  Wildlife is abundant and although there are others houses that dot our private road, we enjoy a relative semblance of solitude and privacy.

I spend the majority of my lunch hours (when I’m not running errands for work or picking up egg layer crumble at the animal feed store), exploring places that have been my favorite haunts for more than 20 years in the city where I work but no longer live.  A person can never go wrong spending quality time with Lake Superior in all her serene and turbulent moods.  One of my favorite hangouts during the past year has been Park Cemetery, a place brimming over with nature and history located smack dab in the middle of an urban neighborhood of a small northern town.  That place serves to remind me what I always knew as a kid growing up in a much larger city three hours south—that nature is all around us and we don’t have to take long day-trips to the country or state parks to immerse ourselves in it.  Nature’s voice can be drowned out by the traffic and city noise, but she still speaks to us…we only have to learn how to tune in to a different frequency.