Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Mackinac Bridge- This bridge celebrates it's 50th anniversary this year, and is the access between Michigan's upper penninsula and lower state.







These five pictures were from our campsite the second night of our rustic stay in Pictured Rocks. We were right on Lake Superior. The wind was raging and the waves emphatically spilled onto the shore just feet below us. We had to make wind blocks for our campfire so as to slow the burning of our precious wood.




After establishing our campsite and setting up our tent to dry from the previous night's downpour, we set off on a three mile round-trip hike. We were chaperoned by unfamiliar plants and hiding moose (I really want to believe a moose was in those woods, completely enthralled by our every footstep), and serenaded by thunder. We found historical remains of shipwrecks (pics below), and this lighthouse, insinuating an aura of lake times past. This lighthouse was placed at this point as a means to slow the wreaking of ships- a tragedy that occurred far too often at that point in time- as they traveled from Whitefish Point to Munisey. The only way in is by foot now, and we were the only ones harebrained enough to brave the cold, threatening weather. That's the beauty of adventure.






And finally, a pictured rock....

Chapel Rock to Mosquito Falls

On the third day of our adventure there was a reprieve from the rain. The clouds made way for a beautiful, pastel sunrise, and the wind spurred our morning along by encouraging our fire to brew a quicker cup of coffee. We set out around noon on a 10 mile hike (which happens to be part of the North Country Trail that leads from New York to North Dakota) that would wind us around beach and forest, sand and loamy soil, waterfalls and plateaus. We caught sight of a kingfisher, an army of chipmunks, a mink, and yet again the quiet, hiding moose that we never could catch site. One of the first stops on the hike, only accessible by trail, was Chapel Rock. The site of this tree, perched on a massive form of rock, gazing out among the water with it's roots stretched across open sky is breathtaking and exhilarating. The ability of plants and trees to reach for life in adverse situations should remind us all to be extra thankful for their endurance. Without such survival techniques on the part of plant and animal life, our outlook on human existence might be even graver yet. Respect that of which we are the caretaker.




The Great Lake Superior....



These are the Pictured Rocks. We saw a sailboat glide by in the distance and it was from these rocks that many a seagull and the kingfisher floated overhead. Sitting there I wished that I, too, could fly, catching the wind on my wings and diving into the cold water for food....

Marquette

Marquette is the home of Northern Michigan University and was not at all on our roadmap for the trip. We ended up there after our multiple attempts to enter Pictured Rocks were thwarted by literal downpours. And yes, we did find a local brewery that sympathized with our chilled bones and hungry bellies.




Josh was awed by this enormous concrete structure, stained rust from iron.

House of Grime

Layer upon layer- plywood, plaster, dirt, dust, curtain rods, maps, asbestos, insulation, lathe, and more insulation. This was the demolition of 85+ years worth of a ceiling's life. My dad came to help install the drywall two weeks back. Well, we bought the drywall and took the ceiling down. The job was larger than expected, and dirtier than even the most creative can imagine. Armed with dustmasks, eyewear, and layers of junk clothes we exasperated that ceiling, leaving it exposed and confused. But soon enough, it will be covered and safe again. Josh is responsible for leveling the ceiling- there are inches of discrepancy in this old home's first floor ceiling. Then together we'll hang the drywall, and I will do the taping, compounding, and sanding. All in good time to become yet another unsold home in Ann Arbor's struggling market. At least we can hear the birds that have nested in our roof much clearer now. It's only slightly creepy to hear the outside world so indubitably and pieces of the ceiling intermittently falling throughout the day and night.

Hummingbirds and Hobos

I can't even count the number of times I cried his week. But last night was the kicker. The tears started and stopped with this story:

There was a fire in the forest. The flames raged and the animals scattered. They flew and fled to the far edge of the forest. Except for the hummingbird. The other animals taunted the hummingbird, critical of her foolishness. But the hummingbird couldn't bring herself to leave the forest. She looked around her, she felt the heat on her wings. But with all the weavings of an irrational mind, she flew to the nearest source of water, and returned with a single drop of water. She flew back and forth, back and forth, her wings looking still in their constant motion. The animals stared in disbelief, saying "Hummingbird, why do you tire yourself with no purpose?" On and on, she tirelessly dropped the smallest bits of water onto the fire. Finally she breathed, her song breaking, and told the others, "I am moving because I can't bring myself to stand still. I am trying, I am one single bird, tiny and small, dropping these tears of water because it is all I know to do. I can't not do this."

I think that I have been in the fire all week, fluttering my wings in disbelief, feeling the edge of burn on my dry wintery skin. Wangari Matthai spoke at the Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, MI last night, finishing her talk with that story. Wangari is the 2004 Noble Peace Prize winner, leads the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, and has been the first woman to receive her Phd in Central and Western Kenya. She has been a member of Parliament, the first woman to teach at the university level, and so many other things. As she told that story, I waited on edge for some radical and clever ending of the story. I expected an ending that was triumphant, an ending that brought the fire to a beautiful and fruitful close. But it was so simple, and so applicable.

When I heard that she would be speaking for free in Grand Rapids, Josh and I freed our schedules so we could go, and with a severe winter storm warning and our first trip after a $1700 repair to our Honda, we left with plenty of time to be there early and obtain good seats for the 7pm talk. Twenty-eight miles from Grand Rapids I felt the car lose control. Stopping on the edge of the interstate, Josh walked around the car, braving the side sweeping snows from passing semis. Without knowing what was going on, we dragged the car on the interstate, clutching our seatbelts, to the nearest exit. We traded spots, Josh drove up and down the streets not feeling anything unusual, and then veered back onto the interstate. With the snow, the wind, and the open road Josh finally felt what I had felt and we surmised that we needed new tires. We located a tire place that was still open, all of a sudden with just 10 minutes to go until Wangari began speaking. The tire place had us in and out in 20 minutes, assured us that the new tires would solve our fishtailing and feeling of floating, and told us the easiest way to get back on the interstate. Fabulous.

Approaching Exit 77C, I start to finally feel relief. Then suddenly we are swept past the exit by multiple orange barrels. We end up on another highway, irritated and lost. We stop at a gas station, I walk in and broadly ask to whoever might be listening, "Where is Fountain Street Church?". A man paying for his smokes careens his neck to look at me, smiles with his four tooth grin and says, "Fountain Street Church? I can take you there, if you trust me." I say, "Sure, I'll follow you." To which he says, "Well, it might take awhile to follow seein' as I'm walking." I it's an awfully cold night to be walking, and crawl into the back seat, clutching my cell phone. He tucks on into the front seat, adjusting his belongings into his roomy coat. I immediately start thinking about the weapon he must be trying to comfortably reach. He introduces himself as Martin, and after directing us where to head, starts telling stories of the buildings that we pass, mentioning that he got pneumonia from drywalling in the cold at an ominous looking building just east of us. I tell him that I've spent my week drywalling our upstairs and I am just not patient enough to make that compound smooth. After giving me really great tips on how to improve my skills we finally arrive at the church- it's 7:45. He jumps out of the car saying "Have a good life!" and I look at Josh, making sure we are both still alive and not in a dream. Martin was a very kind homeless man that asked nothing of us, just got us where we needed to go as quickly as he could and gave me tips on drywalling.

We walk into the massive stone church and after a few wrong turns hear the strong, deep voice of a Kenyan woman. We tiptoe to the balcony and catch the last half of her talk. She talked about her initiative to plant a billion trees in 2007 as part of her organization, the Green Belt Movement. She talked of the overthrow of the dictatorship in Kenya and the transition the country has finally made with democracy. She spoke about the time that she and many other women spent in jail for fighting the deforestation of Kenya. And she talked about the relationship between not maintaining the environment and conflict. The poor are reaping the devastation of countries not caring for the environment. Eventually the poor will rise up and fight. But no one wins in these conflicts.

Her overall message seemed simple- Kenya used to survive on their backyard forests and trees, but then Kenya became desert with only 2% of their land remaining forest. So she started planting trees and raising her voice in opposition of the Kenyan dictatorship. I felt such awe for her, but at the same time I was feeling a deep personal discouragment. We live in a democratic nation, and supposedly the strongest democracy in the world. We have trees and clean water. But our leaders choose to lie and deny that they daily make choices which take advantage of our limited resources. We have the information, the science, the knowledge, the money, and our leaders knowingly choose to void these things. What can I possibly do, a drywalling girl with a psychology degree that works at a brewery.

This hummingbird recycles, reads, reuses grocery bags at the store, denies plastic bags when offered, shops at the Salvation Army and trades clothes with friends, buys local, grows some of her own food, talks to friends, questions her governement, votes on her values, listens to people that have been challenged and in turn challenged these issues, keeps her heat down, doesn't buy food wrapped in plastic or food processed with chemicals, avoids meat from feedlots and cramped coops, bikes, carpools, walks, and is learning the Ann Arbor bus system, works locally, cleans with baking soda and vinegar....

I don't know what else, and really this isn't exactly the point. The point is that Wangari spoke to a thousand people last night, and I heard her say that by my living a life where I choose to think and listen and then live, I am doing enough. I will bring the drops of water, and just by doing something rather then nothing, I am making a difference. This week was so discouraging, each day a new set of tears appearing unexpected. But all of a sudden the overwhelming notion that I fail and don't make a difference in this life that I live has completely dissipated in the very same fire I humbly drop water on.

Halloweeeeeeen

It was a weekend sandwiched between crazyness. Halloween in Stillwater, Oklahoma. We had such a great time! I loved meeting Rebekah's friends, and as much as I can dread wearing anything besides a grey t-shirt and jeans, the costume action was quite fun. And according to everyone we know who was at the party, Rebekah and I won the costume contest but weren't there to claim the honor.



The weekend included a lot of animals sleeping at/on my head and stomach, hiking in the Wichita Mountains, and an Evil Jungle Prince (thai food).




And it wouldn't be a weekend with my sister if she wasn't wearing crazy wigs.

Ode to my Sista (the hipsta)

here is a toast to my sister Rebekah, soon to be a DVM. She took these beautiful pics with a couple of friends out in Southwest Oklahoma this weekend. Proof that good was had despite a wallet being lost. I love my sister very much and am very happy to know that she never will change- she'll always be wonderful and crazy and empathetic and loving and a genius with those animules of hers. So, to Beka.

natural sickness

I knew it would happen- I could feel it coming. Sickness. And it might seem weird, incomprehensible even, but being sick can be so beneficial. It stops you right in your self-centered, circular tracks. Here I've been, jogging around my life, just going where my schedule in my non-existent planner takes me. So it says I go to the pub, I go to the pub. Drive to NYC, off to NYC. Throw clothes in the laundry, round and round they go in the washer. But there's no time to consider why I do what I do. No time to think to myself about the washing machine we have, or the trees changing colors in Pennsylvania, or the conversation to be had while putting the chairs on the table at the end of the night at the pub. So where does it all lead? In a circle, perhaps. But the great thing is that I got sick. So I sat here, wallowed a little, begged my partner to go buy some juice, and slept, and slept, and slept. And then, intermittently, I would wake up and send an email, write an email, read a few pages in a book, and try to functionally manage an impending 5 year anniversary from Josh's accident (hence some of the emails).
Most of all, I've been wondering, in this short span of life we've been given, at least until it's gone, what is worth doing? What validity does art really hold? What should we be doing with our time? It only makes sense to me that life is about survival, and the first priority to survival is maintaining our biosystem and land and the people living on this land. Where is the balance in this? So I've been learning to grow food and thinking outside the confines of agro-business of which we almost all partake. I've started thinking that there are no other options in this world but to dedicate the self to healthy lifestyles in our relationship with the earth and food.
This morning I have been reading a book called "The One-Straw Revolution" by Japanese author Masanobu Fukuoka. He is not only a subscriber to "natural farming", he goes beyond techniques of even the organic farmer. While not using fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, or pesticides, he also does not plough or disrupt the soil. I know this is becoming tedious to read, and I apologize to those that love me... but here I am, reading, thinking of all that I know, which is really very little, and wondering if I am somehow going to have to learn how to be an entomologist and soil purveyor in order to live a life of meaning. And then Masanobu says these things after describing the silk of spiderwebs resting on his field of rice:
"The spectacle is an amazing natural drama. Seeing this, you understand that poets and artists will also have to join in the gathering."
Also, "And so the use of chemicals is not a problem for the entomologist alone. Philosophers, men of religion, artists and poets must also help to decide whether or not it is permissible to use chemicals in farming, and what the results of using even organic fertilizers might be."
Also, " Since advanced technology had nothing to do with growing this grain, it stands as a contradiction to the assumptions of modern science. Anyone who will come and see these fields and accept their testimony, will feel deep misgivings over the question of whether or not humans know nature, and of whether or not nature can be known within the confines of human understanding. The irony is that science has served only to show how small human knowledge is."
ah, I love sick, rainy days, the water pouring horizontal from the sky. Time suspended and out of your control. That's just it- sometimes when you think you are most in control and so suave in your choices, you are smacked with horizontal rain, humbly shaking your finger at it while you lie, your back against the ground, laughing just the little bit amongst your sneezes.

Dippin' in the Desert

We landed in the smoggy and sprawling city of Denver on July 27th, eager for our reunion with family. Josh’s loving parents picked us up at the airport, ready to embark on the four hour return trek to Rawlins, Wyoming. Ironically, the first reunion we came upon was “a new hometown- Reunion, Colorado.” They named a town Reunion, and claimed it to be everything any perfect suburbanite might ever want, and in driving distance to every box store imaginable! Needless to say, the arrival into the state of Wyoming was glamorous and glorious, a relief to be seized and appreciated. The 12 days spent there was devoid of our cell phones and internet. We spent time making and eating delicious dinners, enjoying Aunt Cindy’s backyard gardens, moving cattle on horseback and via truck, celebrating Sadie’s birthday, hiking, enjoying time with Grandpa Bellin and Gramma Smith, and spending time at the ranch.






Josh and I took a trip to Sinks Canyon near Lander, about two hours northwest of Rawlins. We hiked to some falls and slept under the stars. It was both wonderful and refreshing. We were able to make the same trip with DonRay, Sue, Cindy, Sadie, and Rebekah, hiking and then sharing in a wonderful campfire meal.

Traveling often seems to bring about recognition of contradictions- this time proved to be no different. Wyoming offers stillness, darkness, quiet, beauty. But you can’t find an organic apple to save your life. Cattle, elk, antelope, and wild horses roam free. But the ranchers and cowboys don’t get compensation for lean and healthy hormone-free cattle. Nights are cool and the air is clean, but the state is in its eighth year of drought. It’s a place of immense history left unscathed, but being stripped of its ancient rocks and landscape. Coming back, flying over fields of lush green plants, arriving to a garden overgrown, was a bit trippy. Wyoming is dusty and dry. The people are worried and wondering. Water tables are dropping.
Going there, or maybe just going away, really makes you think about things… things you believe in, things you love, the steps you walk. The steps that most recently I’ve been walking have been over farmland, gardens, farmer’s markets, and food co-ops. Being in Wyoming and not being able to buy fresh, local produce really threw me for a loop. It is not available in Rawlins unless you actively grow in your own backyards (applause to Cindy and her tomatoes). The only organic option at the single Rawlins grocery store was a jar of 505 salsa. And I think that’s only because they offer almost a whole aisle of Mexican salsa. It isn’t an affluent town or a town with booming businesses or universities. It’s the hub of Carbon County, a county that spans 7900 square miles and has 15,639 people (I’m not kidding), but none of that land mass features a farmers market or a marketing organic farm. I guess that’s not too hard to imagine considering the elevation of 7,000, 8 year drought, and the fact that it really is a desert. But even so, shouldn’t these members of this community have available to them pesticide and chemical free food, free of corporate schemes? Food available that benefits the local economy and the local people? The very things I love about Wyoming, the things that are so opposite of what is happening in Denver, are exactly what submerses the citizens of Carbon County in a world lacking healthy options. Even crazier and more contradictory is the fact that all this beautiful, slick cattle wanders free on the range, lean, healthy, and happy. Yet the carnivorous people aren’t feasting on this meat, the animals they dedicate their land and resources to. They feast on what City Market, the monopoly grocery store offers- fatty, “choice” beef that may have once been theirs, but is now full of fat and cholesterol, chemicals and hormones.
So anyway, that was our vacation. It was time spent comparing worlds and places that are both from the earth, and both full of people who come from this earth. It was time enriched with home, family, and lots of love.

organic reality

Daylillies, potato, watermelon,tomato, polebeans, our porch, mesclun and sunflowers, and strawberries.
Now all we need is a little time so we can make some progress... it's been so crazy busy working all these jobs and preparing for the show- not my idea of a wise use of time when you can't even say a sentence without spinning in your steps. But anyway, here are a few simple shots of some things we're attempting to grow. Most of the strawberry plants got gnawed to the root crowns by some critter.... we need a watchdog.