Reflections

One day last fall we were paddling across a small lake in northern Michigan when my vocabulary failed me. It was a bright October afternoon and the woods were in full display. To say they were “ablaze” with a “riot” of colors would be inadequate. Pathetic, really. I plucked a brown leaf from the water and asked Gail what color she saw. “Burnt sienna,” she said. It was a new idea for me: That every place on earth has a visual fingerprint.

The pleasure I discovered in those hours surprised me.

We were treasure hunters, and Lake Michigan was overflowing with bounty.

After a day in the woods, we always bring a bit of the forest back and leave a little of ourselves behind.

You’re fortunate if the first thing you see every morning is a lake.

Winter isn’t exactly the high time for outdoor weddings in Michigan, but they aren’t uncommon in wine country, no doubt because vineyards are such picturesque places, even when blanketed with snow.

“To paint water in all its perfection is as impossible as to paint the soul.”

Night of the Aurora: This was not true wilderness, but to Aaron — 11 years old and hungry for adventure — this was wild as Borneo. - By Jerry Dennis

The bay permeates the Wills and Dennis families in so many ways that a guy could spend his golden years tracing those golden threads.

When they enter a river they drag some of the ocean’s mystery with them.