What I saw was the big picture: a highway no wider
than duct tape dotted with life, stretching across a patchwork
of greens to glinting blue hues off Michigan’s west coast.
What I heard was the roar of twin engines, deafening thoughts of
anything but my bird’s-eye view. And what I wondered was
how I could feel so big, when I really was so small — just
another one of those dots.
Flight fuels your senses. Life gets bigger on the
wings of exhilaration — whether in the air, or on the ground.
Happily, you can fly both places. This issue of BLUE celebrates
the tie that binds: taking off.
“The big drawing card of a seaplane is the
freedom to go where you want,” notes Don Seelye of Charlevoix
(page 52), who has been flying a floatplane since 1971. “Most
people like the thought of jumping into that plane and possibly
going somewhere nobody has ever been before.”
While international travel and adventure writer
Jim DuFresne explores the allure of flight by seaplane, award-winning
Michigan author Jerry Dennis per-uses bounty found soaring by
foot (page 48): “It changes every day,” he says of
regular shoreline meanderings. “Yesterday’s tracks
are gone, the swash is clean, the lake has carried a new miscellany
to shore.”
Rivers offer their own rhythm of flight — and
invitation to fly.
Over the years, noted Michigan fly fisherman Glen
Blackwood has come to learn that while people seek and find peace
in different ways, it is a river’s current that pushes
him along that path (page 57). “Being on the river,” he
says, “is very cathartic. It’s escapism at its finest.”
Between earth and sky, flights of imagination offer a new plane of perspective.
On Union Lake in southeast Michigan, architect
Kevin Akey’s inventive waterfront home evolved on the wings
of ecological consciousness, but wouldn’t do less than
impress Willy Wonka (page 62). Meanwhile, from luxury hotels
to cedar cabins, new shoreline communities are on the rise — tributes
to resort inspirations and nostalgic summertime escapes.
“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to create something with longevity that strengthens our sense
of history,” notes architect Wayne Visbeen of Montague-based
Ravenswood Resort.
Northern Michigan artist Christina Hahn — whose
layered oil renderings fuse maps from past to present as backdrops
for unique panoramic shorescapes (page 100) — presents
another vantage point.
“In my works, the viewer is standing at the
edge of the water,” she explains. “Usually, this
makes you look at the water’s force and the openness of
the sky, and come to a realization of how big the world is, or
how small we are. The maps contrast that by grasping our world
in an image.”
It’s human nature, Hahn believes, to want
to know where we are, and where we stand.
This summer, venture to take a few steps above
and beyond. A thousand details await.
Lisa M. Jensen
Editor, Michigan BLUE Magazine
To learn more about one-hour, introductory
learn-to-fly flights offered at a discounted rate across
the state at participating airports, visit www.projectpilot.org. |
