Snowbound

Reduced to striking imagery, one might call Superior's northwoods a winter wonderland and get away with it.

Except images, no less so than words, lie.

It's certainly true that there's wonder found in the stark season.

And I've always loved how in the depths of winter the northwoods stand revealed like no other time.

But wonderland is for tourists and does a disservice to those who live along Superior.

Mostly, they endure.

Too often, not.

In Superior's northwoods, the margin between the two is always slender. Never more so than during the long, hard winter.

Maybe you're running low on wood. Or the propane budget's exhausted, so you steal from Peter to pay Paul and sink further in debt. Perhaps you require medical treatment in February and must risk uncertain roads to get it. Or the tractor breaks down after the 4^th run that day at making the driveway passable so to keep the world beyond your dangerously snow burdened roof at least vaguely at hand.

In any event, you want this to be the winter you didn't die.

So when viewing Superior's winter by proxy, if we call it a 'winter wonderland', we'd not be completely wrong.

But we'd be a long cold universe away from anything like right, too.

Creative Conversation - 2021

 A reprint, slightly revised and with updated links. I can't say it better, except to add that my stay at Dan's Cabin remains the finest socially distanced period of my life...

For two weeks during October of 2012, I reveled in my residency at Dan's Cabin, courtesy of the Artists in Residence Program sponsored by the Friends of the Porkies, in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness of Michigan. 

So extraordinary was the personal experience, so gracious the hosts and splendid the accommodations, upon leaving I promised myself to promote the work done at the Park by those who stand among its very best friends.

While there I led the ideal artist's life -- near the only time in my life I've been at liberty to do that, for whatever length of time. As result, I accomplished some my best work ever.

Where I've gone you can too.

That opportunity is found here.

Yes, it's in the wilderness and maybe that's outside your experience, much less comfort level, I get that.

So here's the gig:

Nestled in a splendid grove of hemlock a mere quarter mile from the road, your fellow creatives have built a comfortable, sturdy cabin just for you.

Outside, the real world rules and a creek runs by. Inside there's a comfy bed, a well equipped kitchen, ample working space, a wood burning stove for warmth with everything framed by a wide expanse of windows that let the real world shine in, day and night.

What the place lacks is phone, Internet, T.V., radio and all the distractions of contemporary life. There're resorts that charge big money to rent that sort of liberty.

Out your door is a well maintained trail system cut more than 87 miles through 60,000 acres of wildness and offering prospects that range from remote waterfalls to accessible vistas. Then there're the pristine beaches of Superior, where folk hunt agates or swim or simply spend a contemplative afternoon beneath a warming sun.

After which you might choose to bathe in the wonder of twilight as seen from the edge of the world's greatest inland sea, then marvel as the Milky Way blankets the sky one star at a time, an exquisite filigree undimmed by light pollution.

And being a creative, you will work, as the spirit moves.

Maybe you're thinking it all still seems too daunting. That you're too utterly urban to risk the real world or it's too distant or maybe you're too old to engage it or that your particular creative effort is an unlikely fit for the program.

What's true is that artists grow excuses like an untended garden grows weeds.

The Residency's hosted a rich array of artists whose work runs the gamut. Writers. Photographers. Poets. A filmmaker. Sculptors, painters, composers, graphic artists and musicians. Ceramicists and a glass artist. Printmakers and more.

That includes an octogenarian painter, a ceramicist in from Australia and an installation sculptor who traveled from Tokyo. So there's that.

What these folk share is a commitment to creative effort and the rewards earned when willing to take a leap of faith in oneself.

Did I mention the built in audience?

In return for Residency, your obligation is to donate a piece of work inspired by your stay and to give a public presentation during it -- the audience for which is involved, informed and friendly.

Can a working artist ask for more?

The deadline for 2021's entry is February 12th and I've left you little time to prepare. I apologize, but pandemic combined with the vicissitudes of life and here we are.

Regardless, most working artists have their best work compiled and at hand and I'm here to tell you that a modest if well considered effort can pay off for you in spades...

Of all the miles over all the months across country grand & hard, of the people, places, sights, sounds and smells, of the incredible history freely mixed with triumph and misery and truth and lies and glimpses of a regional future with promise unlimited -- even considering all that and more -- my two weeks at Dan's Cabin during the original Odyssey stand out for me.

So do yourself a favor -- consider applying for an artist's residency at the Porcupine Mountains.

Do it for your work. Do it for yourself. Do it because 2020 was an exceptionally crappy year.

Click here, to stop procrastinating and get started.

Because creative conversation is the name of the game and you never can tell where that'll lead...

Resilience - an Image Essay (mostly)

Hunter's Point, MI

Life is resilient.

Kingston Plains, MI

Under circumstances where humans wouldn't last a day, even life's most modest forms find a way.

Hunter's Point, MI

That's manifest.

Iron County, WI

There is but to look.

Presque Isle River, MI

By contrast, human construct - what we build to insulate and protect ourselves from life - is maintained only via perpetual maintenance.

Montreal, WI

We must work hard at that.

Constantly. Diligently. Wisely.

Lest life eats our construct and us in the bargain.

Wolverine/Mohawk Mine, MI

Inevitably, structures fail. Even despite our better efforts, much less prevailing good intentions.

Woodspur Public School, MI

Sometimes, philosophical construct is built sufficiently durable that it survives despite all odds.

Gogebic County, MI

Cracked, battered and worn, still it provides.

Gile, WI

But by refusing to engage the profoundly hard work while still counting on our structures to protect us…

Presque Isle River, MI

…we yearn only for the most common end.

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness, MI

And on the occasion that's the case then there's no cause to cry, if/when our vaunted constructs collapse of neglect and the ultimate fate we've unwisely courted for so long finally arrives.

Porcupine Mountains Wilderness, MI

Life finds a way. It will, with or without us. So it's high time we get back to work, there's much needs to be done.

Undeniably, the season is dark. Opportunity runs short.

But for today at least, the choice to fully embrace life remains ours.

Pukaskwa National Park, Ontario

Thin Ice

The last few years, our local prairie landscape's suffered what's called a snow drought. No fan of snow, the phrase feels distinctly counterintuitive to me.

Except I also know that all through the season - especially come spring when winter's dark rule crashes down - snowmelt is life.

And you can't beat snow for a classic winter scene, either. Generally, it's what makes working in the stinkin' cold worth it. Sometimes, you hardly even have to leave the car…

Earlier this month, after a good run of unusually warm weather that included a welcome stiff rain, the temperature was predicted to plunge overnight. The next morning, I walked out searching for signs of the fast freeze.

I'd hoped all that rain made my local prairie ditch run swift and deep. Then perhaps in the night a lattice of fresh ice was thrown over all the resolute brown, making work in the cold worth it.

The day after our national election and its outcome still in doubt, I went looking for late autumn splendor. Mostly I found prairie fire, which in hindsight seemed incredibly apt.

On my last working day of the year, amidst the pandemic I went looking for crystalline beauty and found only thin ice.

Right now, it's snowing. First of the season.

Tomorrow calls for cold driving rain. So 2020 ends with the landscape resolutely abstract and obscure.

Here's to 2021 and us keeping afloat through what'll undoubtedly be a long dark season.

Or at least until some sense of uplift and clarity returns to the now mostly confused and colorless landscape.

Prairie Fire

The abundance of metaphors just begging for use makes choosing one (or two or three or five) confounding. Like trying to capture fire with my fingers.

Pandemic autumn. Made your brain hurt too, right?

I've witnessed two separate & distinct peak autumn seasons most every year of my adult life. It's been a blessing and a privilege.

The first always came during late September/early October on Superior's northwoods. From those, I drew perennial vision and strength.

A month or so later, fall chased south and caught up with me on the prairie. That gave the boot to mystic reverie by reminding me what time it was.

This year I skipped the northwoods pilgrimage and weeks of miserable foul weather ate peak autumn down here. Stinkin' 2020.

Then in November just when you thought it wouldn't, "Indian Summer" arrived. That's a nettlesome term of longstanding cultural currency, not all of it strictly appalling.

As opposed to Injun Summer, which you don't much hear anymore.

On the prairie of my childhood, that's what folk called the typical late autumn warm spell just before winter set in. Despite the multigenerational myth pimping, looking for vanished Indians dancing on the smoke of burning leaves never made any sense to me.

Even as a kid, Where there's smoke there's fire seemed more relevant.

I've heard it said that at autumn's end, with life stripped bare and its bones not yet buried beneath snow, the interdependent world becomes transparent. That for brief times and in the right places, one might catch the whole of things at a glance.

Occasionally what people say is even true. Kind of.

Except the whole world revealed doesn't of necessity bring further clarity to either life's sum or its parts.

Often, it just tells us what we already know.

Or simply confounds.

This year I didn't breathe clean Superior air during any season, not once. Reliably, Indian Summer came to the prairie. Once again, no dead Indians danced in any smoke that I saw.

Gifted a last minute opportunity, I searched late season fields for idols cast of light not gone completely cold. Even found a few.

We now know the prairie's continued existence depends on periodic fire. It burns out the old, converts death to energy and that feeds the new. On the savannah, fire births mighty oaks from little acorns.

Apparent abundance once blinded us to the essential role of fire. Not so much anymore.

I already knew what time it is. The ever-evolving quality of light kept me informed. Winter's not coming, it's here.

But time spent roaming afield where Indians once lived reassured me the real world progresses more or less apace. The burning autumn prairie confirms the circle of life remains unbroken.

The other evening, in cold clear air and fast fading light, sandhill cranes flew south into the night. It's late enough I doubted they'd come this year, so that was good to see. When next they visit, it'll be on the wings of spring.

Availability of apt metaphors notwithstanding.

Forward, through winter. Stay safe, be well.