To be or to do? How to reply when the wind speaks your name

The September breeze has decorated our backyard fire pit with a garland of yellow leaves from a nearby walnut tree. That’s a walnut tree for you. They’re always the first to call it quits and drop the curtain on summer.

With our fishing poles and canoe now stowed in the barn, I’ve reluctantly done the same thing. All that remains of summer is a plastic pail of dull stones that someone left on the patio. Could these really be the same red and green jewels that we plucked wet and sparkling from the cold rush of the Lake Superior surf?

Eventually, they’ll end up in the flower bed – just like the others did last year. No matter. I’ve already got plenty of Up North tchotchkes to clutter my fire place mantle. Besides, for this year’s souvenir, I’ve brought home something better: a keepsake memory that I’d do well to ponder for the 45 weeks until my next vacation.

The setting was Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, near Munising in the Upper Peninsula. It was Friday afternoon, the last day of vacation. And while I’d enjoyed the week, a part of me had never let go. I’d yet to feel deeply relaxed, that moment of blissful detachment when recreation becomes true re-creation.

While the family swam and combed the beach for agates, I wandered down a hiking trail near the Miner’s River. It led through a dark stand of hemlock, but it wasn’t wilderness. It was too close to the beach and parking lot for that. The river, too, was pleasant but unremarkable; like dozens of other knee-deep, tea-colored streams in the U.P.

But as I veered off the main trail to visit the river, something stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t a really breeze; it was more like a fragrant exhalation from the woods itself. The air was deliciously hot, dry and sun-cured; sweet with the turpentine aroma of pine sap. Above the water, the unnamed wisp had swept two yellow butterflies into a thermal updraft. They rose in a delicate spiral, a DNA helix come to life. It was an aerial ballet, I tell you. The butterflies mirrored each other’s moves as if choreographed. It was so startlingly human that it almost seemed creepy.

And that did it. The world at hand, the one I’d driven 500 miles to explore and enjoy, finally had my full attention. For the first time that week, I noticed how supremely comfortable I was in my summer vestments: baggy shorts, old t-shirt and fishing cap, good walking sandals. How could I ever stand to wear anything else?

Everything that meant vacation was suddenly right there. The lakeshore, the woods, the U.P., the whole blessed summer had gathered itself into this singular moment and place. Here, in a one-seat shrine edged by living steeples of white spruce.

You could still hear the rumble of cars on the washboard road to the beach. But the sudden quiet I’d found here was of a different sort – more within than without. It was the stillness that I once tried to find through meditation but never could. I must’ve spent 20 minutes there, partly to savor it, but also to ask why all of this had found me here.

Like most of us, I’d gone on vacation to do things. To fish and hike and canoe; to rent a cottage on a lake in the woods; to eat pasties and ride the tourist boats out of Munising Bay. I’d taken a long to-do list Up North, but what I really needed was a to-be list. And you know it’s bad when they have to dispatch two yellow butterflies to tell you that.

A Young Girl's Guide to Power Tools

At age 12, our daughter has discovered that a front yard’s more than a soft, green place to turn cartwheels. It’s also a renewable source of income. I hate to mow, and I’ll gladly pay her since it leaves me free to garden, fish, pick berries and generally indulge the fleeting pleasures of summer.

There’s just one problem: she can’t the start mower without me. It’s a second-hand push model that takes three or four Dad-sized yanks before the engine smokes and sputters to life.

“Dad,” she says, with a girlish, pony tailed sincerity that will soon enough break hearts other than my own. “What’s up with this thing?”

I suppose it could be a rusty spark plug, clogged fuel filter or fractured electron transducer shield for all I know. But there’s another answer that I won’t burden her with just yet. The mower won’t start because it’s a machine – a soulless, unreliable, infuriating and deceptively time-consuming piece of mechanical enslavement.

Own a house, especially in the country, and you’ll feel obligated to own plenty of labor-saving devices. Chainsaws, snow blowers, rototillers, weed-whackers and leaf blowers are the usual suspects. All useful in their own right, yet all encumbered with hidden costs of maintenance, storage and repair. You can quickly end up as a small-engine wet nurse to a fleet of internal combustion ingrates. Here’s three of the biggest offenders:

The Chainsaw: I’ve got a small one that won’t run for any longer than 90 seconds. It cost $120 new, and last week, a mechanic said he’d charge me $100 to fix it. Yet here’s the subversive truth: if all you need is a few cords of wood to burn in a fireplace, then you don’t need a chainsaw. You need to know somebody with a chainsaw and volunteer to help them. That’s because guys who love to cut wood are far less eager to lug and load it onto a truck or trailer. It’s unglamorous work and if you pitch in, they’ll give you some. Especially the crooked pieces.

The Rototiller: The deluxe hydraulic model that I like cost $5,000. So every year, I rent one for $40 to till my garden. And every year, something breaks. This spring, the pull cord snapped off on the first try. It took a 40-minute round trip to the rental store to get a new one. All that aggravation for a single day: can you imagine the headaches if I owned it for the other 364?

The Leaf Blower: I’ve never had a leaf blower, but God does so I use his. He fires it up in late October, when an exuberant, 30 mile an hour gale blows in from the Great Plains. It sweeps the yard clean and deposits 90 percent of our leaves into the vacant field next door. Best of all, the Big Guy handles all the oil changes.

I’ve always assumed that my daughter would share my aversion toward steel creatures with a crank case heart. This summer, I even begged her to try my beloved hand clippers – the ones that make a musical snip-snip when I trim grass from around a tree. But she just asked why we don’t own a weed whacker.

Then, when I returned from a business trip in July, my daughter dropped this bomb: “Dad, guess what? I started the mower without you!”

Like last year’s MP-3 player, my services had been rendered obsolete. Yet isn’t that the whole point of parenthood? We give kids the tools and let them make of the world what they will. They can hardly do worse than we did. Still, I hope that my daughter will always rely more on her own muscle, and the occasional divine wind, than on the over-hyped promises - and treacherous pull cords -- of mechanical salvation.

Turtle Savers of the World Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose (Except Maybe a Few Fingers)

Along the highways of Michigan, even an animal lover can get jaded by the sight of road-killed wildlife. It doesn’t matter if it’s a rigor-mortised deer, rancid raccoon or dead opossum that’s no longer just playing possum. Unless you’re the one who hit them, you rarely give their sad, gory remains a second thought.

Not so the noble turtle. Their demise always seems especially tragic and deeply unfair. While road traffic can endanger all wildlife, a hapless turtle can’t dash, hop or reverse direction with point-guard agility the way that a squirrel or even agile deer can. No, once a turtle begins its deliberate slog across hard pavement the trip almost always ends in disaster. There’s either a sickening crunch or a carom shot that makes them spin off the road like a jettisoned hubcap.

Some drivers, as a form of sadistic motor sport, even try to hit turtles rather than avoid them. For literary proof, listen to what John Steinbeck wrote in “The Grapes of Wrath" of all places. In this, the 20th Century’s most epic social commentary, he took most of chapter 3 to describe the following encounter:

“… And now a light truck appeared, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it (emphasis mine). His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the highway ...”

In Steinbeck's story -- an otherwise unflinching portrayal of the Okie diaspora -- he lets the turtle survive the collision unharmed. Perhaps there's some reptilian symbolism at work here that only a tenured English professor could understand. But from what I've seen, once a turtle gets thus whacked it’s done for. The turtle’s wonderfully adapted shell, a lifelong home and fortress that’s impervious to all natural predators, has not evolved to withstand the 3,000-pound footprint of an automobile.

On three occasions I've damaged or wrecked my car in deer accidents, but it’s just not the same. Nothing wrenches my heart like the sight of a turtle, stoic and suicidal in its quixotic quest to cross a two or even four-lane gauntlet of asphalt.

So in a response that may be equally quixotic, I’ve started an unofficial club to help them. It’s called the Free and Self-Appointed Protectorate of Esteemed Michigan Turtle Savers. Anyone can join. There’s no dues, no newsletter, no meetings, no administrative balderdash of any kind. All members should operate as individual cells, autonomous and self-supporting. From me, their enlightened and enigmatic founder (praise be to His Most Illustrious Name) they can expect some vague ideological guidance, but not much else.

In fact, here’s all that any Turtle Saver in good-standing needs to do: stop, and pick up a turtle whenever they see one about do something fatally boneheaded like cross a busy road.

Then, carefully and safely (no need to make yourself road kill) carry the turtle to the other side. Just be sure to move them in the direction that they were headed. Most likely, they’re driven by a strong biological urge to mate, build a nest or find a critical food source. They follow their own star and you won't convince a stubborn turtle to change its course. For good measure, I usually set them down 20 feet or so beyond the road shoulder, so that they’re concealed by natural habitat.

I’m always extra careful when I move snapping turtles. Pick one up and you’ll see why. With its long neck extended, a snapper’s frightful jaws can reach about anywhere on its body. And fast. So I grab them by the base of their tail, although lightly as to not damage any vertebra. Does this method give them a backache? Possibly, but it sure helps me keep all 10 fingers intact.

And it’s not just big turtles that need to be saved.

This June, my daughter found a baby snapper in a roadside mud puddle. She named him Leonard, and for two weeks he lived in a tub on our front porch where he ate worms and lettuce. But a turtle deserves more from life than a Tupperware holding cell. So we carried Leonard to a pleasantly weedy and buggy irrigation pond about a ½ mile away. With a little luck, he'll revel there in the green scum and black muck for a good 75 years or so.

On our walk back, a farmer drove up in his four-wheeler to investigate. We were, after all, trespassers on his property. These days, along with droughts and insect pests, farmers have to worry about thieves who strip electric cable from their irrigation systems. Or, steal their ammonia fertilizer to make the accursed steet drug, meth.

“How you doin’?” he asked, in a tone that was Midwestern neighborly, yet hinted at caution.

Once we explained our turtle rescue and release mission, his lined, dusty face relaxed a bit. That, and the fact that one of the trespassers was 4 feet 5 inches tall, with blond pony tail and a Snoopy t-shirt.

“Oh yeah, they’re really on the move now,” he said. “This morning we found a big ole snapper in the corn field so we put her back in the pond, too. She must've weighed 25pounds.”

Here he was, a haggard farmer with a 1,000 acres worth of reasons to do something else. True, he seemed to face no hardships of the apocalyptic variety, the way that Steinbeck's Tom Joad did. But I don't doubt that he has chronic hypertension and a pile of six-figure debt riding on this year’s corn harvest. Yet somehow, he’d just added the title of Turtle Saver to his already endless job description.

Why? Well, we modern humans already spend most of our days in shells of our own making. They keep us clean and dry, but their climate control and tinted windows (standard equipment, even on most tractors), can insulate us from the plight of our brother creatures. Maybe that’s why it feels so good to commit a random, if quixotic act of turtle rescue. It helps us protect something within ourselves that’s wild, valuable and equally worth saving.

Michigan Cougars: Fact, Fiction and Future

For at least a decade, there’s been an ongoing argument about whether or not wild cougars exist in southwest Michigan. Personally, I haven’t decided either way. But from both sides, I will say there’s been no shortage of “mountain lyin’” if you get my drift.

From the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, we’ve heard dismissive denials and a “we-know-best” attitude about wildlife. The message here has been that only a DNR biologist has enough brain power to identify a cougar when they see one.

As for the public, their cougar credibility has often ranked right up there (or down there) with sightings of Elvis or Sasquatch. We’ve heard reports of black cougars, although in the U.S. not a single black cougar has ever been killed or photographed. We’ve heard claims about deer carcasses hung from trees, which is something an African leopard would do, but not a North American cougar.

But the controversy may soon be settled by an unlikely judge: the cougars themselves. As DNR biologist Steve Chadwick said at a recent public meeting in Three Rivers, “It’s only a matter of time before a wild cougar turns up in southwest Michigan.”

True, the DNR has yet to confirm a cougar sighting in the Lower Peninsula. That would require either a clear paw print, scat pile, DNA sample or legitimate photograph. However, solitary males have already migrated more than 700 miles east from the Black Hills. Last year, a cougar was killed near Chicago and another was verified in Greene County, Indiana, a mere 300 miles south of Kalamazoo.

The DNR, once tone-deaf to public opinion on cougars, has changed its tune. To investigate serious sightings, they’ve formed an official cougar team that trained at a ranch in New Mexico. When they do verify a cougar, as they have in the western U.P., they’re quick to inform the news media.

“When we have the goods, we tell people,” Chadwick said. “We’re not trying to hide anything.”

My question is how the people of southern Michigan will react once the big cats officially return. For me, to see such a majestic eminence pad through an oak-hickory forest at dusk would be a peak life experience. For others, the thought of a six-foot long, 150-pound killing machine afoot in the landscape would be due cause to keep a.30-30 rifle handy.

Given these extremes, here’s what will likely be the cougar’s biggest human obstacles.

The first is personal safety. DNR officials say there’s already an unwarranted fear of cougars, a solitary animal that wants little to do with people. Yes, there’s been rare cases of attack on humans. But in the mountain west, millions of people live safely in cougar country without incident. Around here, shouldn’t we worry more about the amped-up maniacs who run rural meth labs?

The other potential cougar concern will likely involve what the animals eat – which is mainly deer. Some hunters may argue that an influx of cougars will put a major dent in the whitetail population. But consider this: in my own St. Joseph County, hunters bagged 5,300 deer in 2009 and vehicle accidents claimed another 700. By comparison, an average cougar kills about one deer per week. Given the cougar’s wandering ways, we’re unlikely to see more than one resident cougar per county. So if a cougar took 50 deer annually, that’s less than 1 percent of my county’s yearly harvest.

Finally, for all their wily ways, cougars don’t fare well on highways. In south Florida, about 100 cougars still haunt the Everglades – and eight to 10 are killed each year in vehicle accidents. With nearly 1,000 miles of paved roads in St. Joseph County alone, there’s bound to be some big flat cats for local taxidermists to work with.

Despite the odds, there’s seems to an unstoppable force at play here. Since I moved to the country in 1995, I’ve seen several near-extinct species -- sand hill cranes, beavers, coyotes, and wild turkeys -- make a remarkable comeback. Now, after a 100-year exile, our reigning feline predator stands poised to reclaim its ancestral hunting grounds. I think we’re lucky, indeed blessed, to get such a second chance. And I hope we’ll find room in the countryside, and in our hearts, to welcome the cougar home.

Country dogs: born to be wild -- and smell that way

When it comes to chew toys for dogs, some last for years but others … well, they’re much easier to swallow. Consider the coyote – we dubbed him Crunchy Calvin -- that showed up at our farmhouse recently.

“Calvin” had obviously had a rough winter. By the time our black lab dragged him home, he was little more than a scruffy pelt with a few crunchy parts attached. During their first dog/coyote play date, Calvin literally lost his head. Within three days, his feet, tail and other bits of anonymous fluff were likewise detached and most likely eaten.

So: would you let your dog eat a dead coyote? Or browse on the spoils of a compost pile? Or eat a baby rabbit that it just dug – still squeaking -- from a grassy burrow?

If you answered “yes” to at least two of these questions then chances are you’ve got a country dog – or at least, a city dog that lives by country dog rules. By that, I mean a dog that’s left as free as possible to pursue its own doggish nature. Country dogs enjoy plenty of freedom, with all the adventure and hardship that a life lived out-of-doors entails. Country dogs are loved, but never smothered; they’re cared for, but rarely pampered; they’re well-trained, but not expected to act like a miniature human being.

When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, dogs occupied a much lower rung on the social ladder. Even in town, they lived in backyard dog houses where they chewed real bones and survived on table scraps or cheap pet food. They had dog names like Sport, Dixie, Buddy and Sarge. They were friendly enough, but your hand always smelled a little funky after you petted one. Except for the occasional rabies or distemper shot, they rarely saw the inside of a vet’s office.

Nowadays, millions of Americans have elevated their dogs to the status of life partner or surrogate child. In his book “One Nation Under Dog,” author Michael Schaffer writes that eighty-five percent of pet owners now refer to themselves as the Mommy or Daddy of their companion animals. Forty-seven percent of dog owners say their pet sleeps in bed with them at night.

Across the United States, spending on pets mushroomed from $15 billion in 1995 to $45 billion in 2009. There are now pet-food nutritionists, veterinary dermatologists, dog kennels with TVs, and – inevitably -- lawyers who specialize in pet custody cases.

The sad paradox, animal experts say, is that dogs get confused and misbehave when we treat them too much like people. They still expect us to be leaders of the pack. Consequently, thousands of “pet parents” now medicate their animals for doggie A.D.D, anxiety, depression and other suspiciously human-like disorders. But what if we’re trying to make a simple, fur-bearing mammal serve a social purpose that it’s biologically unsuited to fill? Furthermore, what if it’s not the dog that needs therapy? As Edward Abbey once said, "When a dog is a man's best friend, then that dog has a problem."

With a country dog, you try to balance reasonable safety with the canine need for self-directed exploration. This means that sometimes they’ll kill little live things that you wish they hadn’t. And that other times they’ll roll in something dead, flat and stinky that you wish they’d left on the road. Yet these are dogs after all … must we micromanage their every instinct and pleasure?

It’s been about 10,000 years since dogs first consented to live with humans. So in truth, they’re no longer born to be wild. But every so often, it doesn’t hurt to unhook the leash, cry havoc and let them live that way

39 bottles of wine by the road, 39 bottles of wine ...

There's an otherwise scenic country road near my home that holds great appeal for aficionados of cheap wine. And not just any wine, but Arbor Mist. While I've never drank the stuff, I now know this much. It costs around $4 a bottle, rarely shatters on impact and comes in 12 tooty-fruity flavors that eventually all smell like putrid Kool Aid.

Now there's no reason to feel morally superior because your buzz comes from a $20 bottle of Merlot with a genuine cork instead of a screw cap. When times are this hard, there's a legitimate need for some cheap happy. Besides, mix in a little slow dance and Michigan might even achieve positive population growth.

My problem concerns the containers that all that cheap happy comes in. On a walk last Sunday with my wife and two daughters, we picked up 39 empty Arbor Mist bottles -- 39! -- that were scattered along a two-mile stretch of road. We'd brought along two empty trash bags, but they got so heavy and foul-smelling that we had to come back with my car and get them later.

After some initial grousing the kids even made a game of it. They'd chant Ar-bor Mist, Ar-bor Mist, Ar-bor Mist until they found another dead soldier -- about every 200 feet or so. And they kept track of the most popular varieties. Like a truck stop sommelier, my 8-year-old daughter's vocabulary now includes the terms Exotic Fruit and Sangria Zinfandel (which won hands-down). Although I'm afraid the moldy dregs she found inside the bottles may make her swear off fermented beverages forever.

But we also talked about the sad truth behind all this dismal litter. There's likely no romance here, just some lonely soul who's in a deadly hurry to get joylessly inebriated. So it's drink, drive, toss out window and repeat as necessary. I just pray that he keeps one steady hand on the wheel since the road's lined with big, obstinate trees that do not suffer fools gladly. That's the dark side to cheap wine and anyone who makes or sells this stuff must know that.

For the kids, this was also good practice but for reasons that they can't presently fathom. Soon enough they'll have to clean up numerous messes that were not of their own making: trillions in ill-spent government debt; two or three unfinished wars; the occasional oil spill or nuclear catastrophe; and once they're parents, the dank surprises that they'll encounter inside several years' worth of loaded diapers.

After their Dad-mandated community service, the girls were proud and even a bit self-righteous about what we'd accomplished. A little of that's fine by me, though. Because after someone trashes your home ground, they've got no right tell you to put a cork in it.

Dough, Ray, Me: a Home-Baked Solution to Community Bliss

Last week, in my small town of Three Rivers, we watched with pride as our Lady Cats basketball team fought its way to the state championship in Lansing. They lost, but not for want of vocal support. Nearly 2,000 purple-clad fans drove two hours to see the game -- about 25 percent of our population. When the team bus arrived home at 11 p.m. it was faithfully met by a fire truck, police cars and even an RV that led them on a victory lap of downtown.

Even if you don't care much for sports, you've got to appreciate such a generous display of community spirit. I was sad to see it end, and wished the excitement and camaraderie would've lasted a few weeks more. But alas, to everything there's a season.

Or is there? As I thought of other ways that communities can build unity through shared experience, another event came to mind. This one took place in Munising, an unpretentious Upper Peninsula town on the shores of Lake Superior.

It was early afternoon and we'd stopped for a picnic lunch at a lakeside park. While the kids played on the beach, I saw a guy -- let's call him Ray -- loading split chunks of maple into what looked like a wood-fired pizza oven. Except that it was outside.

"So what do you call this thing?" I asked.

"Oh, dis is da community oven," Ray said, with a classic Yooper accent. "I'm firin' it up for my girlfriend so they can bake in it tonight. Gotta keep 'em happy, eh?"

When we came back that night, it wasn't just Ray's girlfriend that he'd made happy. Hundreds of townsfolks had gathered for a free outdoor concert. It was a kaleideocope audience: young parents with kids on blankets, old folks in lawn chairs and walkers, kids on bikes and bikers with beards and black leather jackets. The musician, an acoustic minstrel who'd slept in his van the night before, played enough Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Kurt Cobain and Johnny Cash to keep his eclectic fans happy.

But the singer was no more a hit than the oven was. There it sat, a sturdy beehive of brick as humble and lovable as a plump grandma in her kitchen. From its mouth came forth a procession of blueberry muffins, biscuits, cheesy bread and some incredible little hand-tossed pizzas. Volunteers manned the oven with long-handled paddles and as each batch hit the table it sold out immediately to a swarm of customers. A seductive, fresh-baked fragance hung over the entire evening like a benediction.

The oven was low-tech and low-maintenance -- no electricity, no mess to clean-up. The bakers showed up, rolled out their dough and once it was gone so were they. All proceeds went to charity.

It all reminded me that a community's like a tribe of sorts. Yes, we gather to cheer our young warriors, resplendent in their local colors and totems, as they fight rival tribes on the fields of athletic conquest. It's a healthy outlet for our competitive human bloodlust.

Yet tribes also have an inborn need to celebrate and feast around a common hearth. That's how it was in the Middle Ages when villages often had a shared oven where people could bake bread and rehash gossip in equal measure.

Community ovens have caught on nationwide and I hope we build one in my town. There's a perfect spot by the fire station on a grassy bank that overlooks the river. The firefighters could savor the smell of blueberry muffins as they laid another coat of polish on their big red trucks. And when the baking's done, maybe an escort of Lady Cats could bring them over a plateful.