Around the Corner...

In June I (foolishly) accepted an unacceptable (but thankfully temporary) role at my job. So the time that is usually a glorious, decadent restorative visit to the land of my ancestors "up north" in Michigan. I did still make the pilgrimage and I did, half-heartedly engage in those meaningful traditions, but I also worked endless days solving problems that felt so small and incremental once solved, but the effort to solve them was routinely unpredictable, tedious and complicated.

I should not be allowed to complain, and please feel free to leave a thumbs-down-emoji in the comments just to remind me that most people did not get to go up-north at al. Many people have never been up-north ever and very few of you granted the good fortune of having a Dentist for a Grandfather, and the kind of dentist that loved to escape all those open mouths each weekend to build a little cottage with his own hands and then hew a road through the boulders and the trees that would turn into an escape each year for you every year of your life no matter how many times you migrated, no matter how far the pilgrimage that would finally end in a robust chorus of "Around the corners the cabin, around the cabin..." (please use the folk tune - "Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre" if you decide to sing it on your own)

So I repent of my banal complaints about not getting a full-throated time away. And, as you hum the tune forthat great classic journey. I'll clarify that the picture you're looking at was taken during my late evening hike one evening and the unexpected beauty of the flare that my phone-camera cast in the ferns - a lesser sun floating in the forest-- encamped directly above the tiny hunting cabin that my Dentist Grandfather had built when he was just 14 years old. The ruins of that celebrated accomplishment now difficult to even find, except if your exhibition is led by one of the elder members of the family. He was fourteen and he rowed across the channel from the Island where he grew up and then transversed a long wooded path to arrive in this sacred, lit-up space at the edge of the creek and not far from long ridge where you should probably set up your hunting blind.

I've hiked here with my Aunt, my cousins, my father, my friends, my children, my nieces, my brothers andmost of all with my father.

The funny thing about visiting a sacred spot of memory is that often the photos you take cannot match the depth of meaning that those shrines should feel. I don't know if this photo managed, but it felt like a fortunate moment of peace and remembrance.