Weeknotes: September 22–26, 2025
Monday, September 22
I'm listening to the Tannahhill Weavers, a Scottish folk band who include a glossary of pronunciations and Scottish words on their lyrics sheets.
Some are logical:
Dinnae = don't know
Gane = gone
Tae - to
Twa = two
Wasnae = was not
Some less so:
Ken = know
Maun = may
Muckle = big
Trews = tartan trousers
Yin = one
I've loved this band since I first heard them on a Rykodisc compilation sometime around 1990. They were my gateway to Celtic music.
Out my office window the ground's quiet applause welcomes rain for the first time in a month. Later, at the pet store, the ceiling has sprung a leak and two dog pools have been pulled off a nearby shelf to catch it. On the equinox the world is liquid again.
Weeknotes: July 28–August 1, 2025
Monday, July 28
Site 41 at Brevort Lake Campgrounds. It's on the quieter, wilder side of the lake and comes with a small corridor leading to a secluded window of access framed by shady cedars and bisected by a tall white pine. After a dawn swim I lay in the hammock I've strung up next to this window and read my book. A mallard and her nearly-grown brood glide by. An eagle’s reflection slips across the water's surface. A loon makes its tremulous, watery call. Chipmunks race up and down the cedars.
A few hours later our group of nine is paddling down the Manistique River through eleven unpopulated miles of the Seney Wildlife Refuge. It's a stunning bit of wilderness, though none of us was prepared for the unrelenting swarms of deer flies that circle our heads for almost the entire trip. There's a lot of swearing and waving of hats mixed with determined nature-going. We gut it out and survive to drink whiskey around the fire later. Out on the lake the loons' calls sound like a closing ceremony. LOL — Lots of Loons.
Tournotes: July 17–19, 2024
Wednesday, July 17
Just after highway marker 334 on I-75, the bridge suddenly appears on the horizon. Depending on the atmosphere it may be a hazy mirage jutting out of the woods or a sharp relief of cream-colored gates against the blue. Today the weather is dramatic and I make my crossing to Dina Ögon's pastoral "Oas" while freighters churn into the straits from sunny Lake Michigan. To the east, stormclouds fall across Lake Huron in a foreboding smear above the three nearby islands. Dead ahead is an uncertain mix of gray and white over the green expanse of the Upper Peninsula. Crossing the Mackinac Bridge is never not special. Midway through, the right lane is cordoned off where two workers in hazmat suits blast flakes of Federal Standard 595c #14110 (foliage green) off the massive suspension cables with a firehose. I don't think I have ever crossed without encountering some type of maintenance. At the toll booth in St. Ignace I pay my own fare and that of the car behind me, a custom I learned years ago from K.