Michigan seems like a dream to me now

"It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw, I've gone to look for America." (Paul Simon, Bookends) Whatever you picture ahead of time, it will turn out to be something different, so I'm not sure what to expect. My friend Jonathan used to say it's best to expect the worst, then you won't be disappointed. Yet somehow the mind conjures images of what it wants to happen.

My parents bought a small lot in a kind of recreational/residential development in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. This was back in the early eighties, when they still lived in Detroit. We went up there with them to go cross-country skiing once before we had kids. Mom and Dad like it where they are in Tennessee and haven't looked back. So there's this plot of land that might be useful to someone, and I'm curious.

I loaded a backpack, a tent, a sleeping bag, a bike, and a bag of food in Gven Golly's Honda and drove north on Friday morning. Past Delaware, Marion, Findlay, Perrysburg, Toledo, Blissfield, Milan, Ypsilanti, South Lyon, Brighton. It started to rain as I ate lunch at the rest stop off US-23 outside Fenton. Past Flint, Saginaw, the Zilwaukee Bridge, Pinconning, West Branch, Houghton Lake, Higgins Lake, Roscommon, Grayling, and off I-75 at Waters.

The weather changes drastically en route, from warm to hot to overcast to wind to rain to downpour to clear to cool and back to warm. The landscape changes from flat farmland to rolling hills to industrial cities to wooded marsh to pine forest to swamp to wooded hills to sandy ridges with lots of smooth stones.

I find the development and go directly to Lot 1000. It has grown up some since I was last here, with bigger trees and more groundcover. There are a few maples, some wild cherry, and lots of poplars. There is a neighbor on the left with a house, garage, driveway, and toolshed. On the way in I saw a few log cabins, A-frames, ranch houses, and faux chalets widely spaced along the three or four paved main roads and branching gravel roads. I threaded my way up to the campground and picked a site under some trees. The forecast called for storms and high winds, and it started to rain while I was setting up the tent, but nothing much got wet. I ate some rice and beans, read a little, and slept reasonably well on the ground.

"Pass me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat. We smoked the last one an hour ago."

Saturday morning I looked at some maps and planned my itinerary: check out Lake Harold, the clubhouse, the riding stable, the sales office; find out about property lines and building restrictions; get the lay of the land. The folks at the sales office/airstrip were friendly and helpful. A small plane took off while I was there. Armed with more maps, I settled in at the golf course restaurant with a veggie omelet and coffee to fortify me for a day of exploring. Golfers coming in for lunch watched the Michigan State game on the tube. I'm hearing the Michigan accent and feeling the temperature change on a cool, clear day. I'm taking in the landscape of logged-over plains where you can see hundreds of stump remains from turn-of-the-century giants.

"So we bought a pack of cigarettes, she read her magazine, and the moon rose over an open field."

Pencil Lake was a major bright spot. Completely surrounded by woods, it has a few houses near it but none right on it. There is a tiny beach, and no one was there, so I went for a swim. The water was clean, the bottom was sandy, and there's a little raft you can swim out to. Nice. Off to the side is a little cove with a boat launch, but no motors, only rowboats and canoes. I like this place, but it's two miles from Lot 1000, so I wonder: would we use it?

Feeling refreshed, I return to the campground and go for a bike ride while it's still light out. The hills are moderate enough for easy cycling, and if you go out Pencil Lake Road and take a left, you go up a hill to the Winter Sports place, where they have cross-country ski trails and an ice skating rink. But would we go there in the winter?

This time I built a fire at my campsite, so I had something to do in the evening besides eat and read. No rain tonight, but I happened to look up between the trees and saw about a million stars. No kidding, the sky was full of stars. Okay, I probably don't get out of town enough, so the night sky up north was really amazing, and just looking up for half an hour, seeing the Milky Way encircle the Earth, was worth the trip.

The ride back to Ohio on Sunday was an emotional roller-coaster. I'd accomplished about all I could for the time being, but I hadn't reached any conclusions. I found a great spot for a workout, however, under a beautiful scotch pine at a rest stop off I-75. I took the M-14 exit into Ann Arbor on a lark and meandered down State Street until I found a parking place by Pizza Bob's. (It's still there!) Fearing my bike would be stolen if I left it on the car, I decided to ride around instead of walk around: east on Hill, north on Forest, east on South University, north on Walnut, and east on Geddes to the Arboretum, where I locked it and walked a little. Then north on Observtory, west on Ann, north on Ingalls, and west on Kingsley, where I found my old house (which is now a coop), south on Thayer to the Bell Tower Hotel, where I used to work (still there but now very upscale), and around the corner to Moe's Sport Shop, where I also worked for a while. (Bud Sr. wasn't there, but Bud Jr. was, and I bought a baseball cap.)

I probably should have gotten coffee before leaving town, because the next hundred miles took me through the melancholy of missed opportunities and things left undone in the distant past before I left Ann Arbor for the UP and left the UP for Georgia, when everything changed. So I stopped for some really really bad coffee in Findlay, and things (that is, my attitude) got better as soon as I turned off the main highway to go south on route 68 through Dunkirk, Kenton, and Bellefontaine, listening to Jessi's mix tape, including "Frozen Lake" and other songs of hope and possibility through shared action.

It only took two tanks of gas, and I saw a lot in a couple of days, but I still don't know if it makes rational sense to maintain a place in Michigan. At least now I have some firsthand data and a bunch of smooth stones on which to base my indecision.