Starting quite young and continuing for fifteen straight years
thereafter, deep autumn tent camping in Superior’s southern wilderness was
my annual peak season.
The time every year when I explicitly challenged myself against a wild and sometimes frighteningly fast turning world.
Most years, that adventure was fully engaged exactly now.
Like the week one September it never got above 45° F, rained for five straight
days and on the sixth day, it snowed. Four inches.
By & large, my companions and I had a blast. And on occasion
we didn’t much, we learned stuff.
Things that’d go on to enrich, empower and sustain us the
rest of our lives.
Because each and every year we returned to edge season wilderness driven by evolving purpose. Through that, we were gifted lessons in perennial perseverance.
Of my two stalwart fellow travelers I’d the good fortune to marry Heather reasonably young, while Johnny’s recently dead.
Such is life.
In the good old days, when winter’s hard edge typically first
arrived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula wilderness, we were there to brave it.
On the calendar then, that'd be just about now.
These days, prime time autumn viewing along Superior’s southern shore is preempted until conditions are met, likely nearer the middle of October. That was all but genuine winter, back when.
Time sure friggin’ flies under our unyielding whip, eh?
Just the same, I think being able to justly say long time
gone now is an unadulterated good thing.
Turns out this is my 300th post.
That wasn’t at all the original plan.
Yet, here we still are.
And more of us, besides.
Turns out life can sprout from the hardest rock. Flowers, even.
I’ve got proof.
Imagine that.
Anyway, It's always darkest just before dawn.
At least folk used to say.
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